While many consider poker to be just another form of gambling, it is certainly more than that. It may not be a traditional sport, but poker most certainly is a sport, as it takes the same amount of preparation, skill and effort as a sport like basketball.
With all of the negative publicity poker regularly receives in the news, there is generally a poor public perception of the game.
From NBA Head Coach Chauncey Billups and Former NBA All-Star Gilbert Arenas being arrested recently due to illegal rigged poker games, the game really suffers from these big headlines.
Despite this, poker requires skill and focus that aren’t rivaled by many other games and it should widely be recognized as a sport.
So what is a sport? A sport is something that requires skill and strategy, something that requires practice and effort to master. This is why we believe that poker should be considered a sport.
Traditionally, sports have been viewed as physical competitions, but this definition has evolved. Many sports, such as chess and e-sports, have been recognized as sports because they require intense concentration, strategy and skill.
Esports has amassed a large and loyal following in the past few years and is extremely similar to poker in the sense that it requires a ton of preparation and focus, but lacks physical exertion. This lack of physical exertion tends to cause these games to be laughed at when being in the conversation of sports.
Poker is constantly rising in popularity
among teenagers. In college fraternities everywhere, you will often see a poker table occupied by a group of guys on a typical night. The beauty of poker is the variance, no two sessions are the same, which means you never know what’s going to hit you.
Poker’s rise in popularity isn’t just limited to college kids and teenagers and this is prominently due to the rise of live-stream poker and poker on youtube in general, which makes it easier than ever to consume poker videos.
Youtube has also given viewers an up close, and more personalized experience with these players. Some of these rising players don’t have as much money as the established professionals, which allows viewers to witness the ups and downs of high stakes poker that they couldn’t have in the early 2000s, when the only televised poker was on TV.
There are many different types of poker, with themost popular being Texas hold-em. In this game, every player is dealt two cards that no one else can see and the goal is to make the best hand possible with the 5 community cards that everyone can see. To succeed, players have to be able to make tough decisions based on probability, read opponents’ behavior and actions, as well as disguise their own intentions.
A huge reason that poker should widely be considered a sport, is because the professionals turn 50-50 odds into 80-20 odds through various strategies accustomed to each specific player.
Professional poker players don’t always win big because of this variance. For example, professional player Daniel Negreanu. Some of Negreanu’s career accolades include being a 7x WSOP Bracelet winner (7 professional tournament wins) and the only Poker player to win Player of the Year twice (2004 and 2013), which makes it almost impossible to believe he lost in a match to an amateur poker youtuber. To make a comparison to basketball, that’s equivalent to Steph Curry losing in a match to a G-Leaguer, which would obviously never happen but demonstrates how much luck there is in poker. The fact that a professional could lose to an amateur is another reason why people don’t view poker as a sport, however, if Negreanu and the intermediate played each other 100 times, Negreanu would certainly win over 80% of the matches, despite how much luck is involved in a given hand. For example, every hand, before the cards are dealt, each player would have a 50% chance of winning the hand, but Negreanu’s skill gives him an extra advantage.
“I’ve seen so many thousands of hands that I am just going to be right more often than most people,” Negreanu said on the Lex Fridman Podcast.
Through studying hand histories, analyzing data and hours of practice, professionals are able to spot betting patterns and emotional cues. Just as chess players and quarterbacks study different plays and strategies, poker players dedicate much of their time to perfecting their skills.
Daniel Negreanu believes one of the most common reasons players lose is because they have become “too predictable” and highlights how important it is for players to constantly change and adapt their play-style based on who they play against.
For many professional players, the pre-match process includes scouting their opponents. This helps players develop complex strategies for how they can maximize their chances of winning. An example of this is using your own perceived image (how other players believe you play) to influence them to do what you want them to do. For example, if a player thinks you don’t bluff often, you could start bluffing 5-10% more often when playing against them.
This can be extremely hard for intermediate players to navigate, as it is human nature to tend to follow patterns. By switching up his playstyle constantly, Negreanu is able to halt or completely throw off his opponents’ progress from solving the puzzle that is how to beat him.
In this way, poker resembles other sports because unpredictability can cause someone to win. If a poker player bets and uses the same strategy every time, they will be easily read and lost. This is extremely similar to a basketball player like Luka Doncic, who has a lethal combination of shooting a 3, driving down the lane, or throwing an alley oop to a center when coming off a pick and roll.
But what about when professionals play against each other? This is where the beauty of poker is demonstrated. All the best players playing against each other often brings the best quality of poker and when everyone is capable of changing their strategy at any given moment, it can leave even the best players confused.
Tournaments like the World Series of Poker (WSOP) showcase extremely competitive and advanced levels of poker. In 2023, WSOP’s main event attracted over 10,000 players and paid out more than $90 million. Players from over 100 different countries came to compete, demonstrating the same endurance, skill, focus and preparation found in any physical sport.
Like other sports, you can’t master it overnight. Poker takes a long time to master and it takes even longer to master if your opponents are constantly changing. This is because the best players change their playstyle depending on their opponents. For instance, if a player is perceived to be playing too many weak hands, a good player would try to raise the bet and fold them out of the hand.
To improve, players review hands, watch tournaments and hire coaches. This mirrors the preparation of many athletes, with one key difference. Poker players aim to train their minds, focusing on probability, emotional regulation and split-second judgment.
Poker at the highest level requires constant attention and determination.
An argument for poker not being a sport is the lack of physical exertion, it makes up for it mentally. Poker arguably requires more focus than any other sport and it’s played for longer than any other sport. Professional cash games are often played for six hours while tournaments can take multiple days, depending on how many entrants there are.
Critics of poker being a sport claim that sports require physical movement not sitting at a table playing cards. And yes, poker doesn’t require sprinting or running but neither do other classified sports such as chess, bowling, darts and even golf. They require a different type of exertion.
In poker the mind is constantly being tested. Studies from sport psychology shows that elite poker players experience the same amount of physiological responses such as rising heart rates and adrenaline spikes as athletes in physical competition.
While poker is primarily mental it requires high amounts of physical skill and control. Top players have to train their bodies to handle long hours under pressure. This includes steady hands, calm breathing and consistent posture. Even minor physical cues have to be maintained like eye movements, breathing, even the way someone stacks their chips can reveal information to their opponents. Poker players have to train to control these physical aspects of the game just as athletes have to train their bodies. They both have the same end goal, a high level performance.
While traditional sports tend to push athletes to their physical limits, poker pushes the players to their mental limits. Even if you play a hand perfectly, a session perfectly, you can still lose huge. This tests a players confidence and patience, as players who are able to keep their composure and focus after huge losses, tend to make it in the long run.
The reason poker should be considered a sport is because of the respect these players deserve. Professional poker players are generally considered gamblers, however they are much more remarkable than that.
