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This is why, for earning money, you should participate in positive sum games like the real economy. Poker is worse than 0 sum, its negative sum.
by brigadier132 2y ago
This is why, for earning money, you should participate in positive sum games like the real economy. Poker is worse than 0 sum, its negative sum.
- snikeris 2y agoPerhaps in a casino taking a rake. But if you're playing w/ friends? The good times make it positive sum. Even in a casino, the players can be getting enough utility / enjoyment out of the game that it's positive sum.
- brigadier132 2y agoYes you are right but “pros” are playing with rake typically. In a way you can consider poker 0 sum or positive sum depending on the utility you derive from the enjoyment of gambling. But that should also factor in the negative utility from gamblers that lose
- fartsucker69 2y agothe sum here is the sum of wins or losses across all players. for you to win, someone else has to lose. in an economy everyone can be a winner.
- _gmax0 2y agoCare to elaborate on how the real economy is positive sum and poker is negative sum?
- brigadier132 2y agoPoker has a rake and the amount of wealth in the system is the money people put on the table (not even factoring in that gambling winnings are taxed). Meaning the total wealth decreases for every hand played in a raked game. Economic transactions and increasing efficiency are positive sum. You can combine pieces of metal into new alloys and machinery which are more valuable than the sum of their parts. This is positive sum. If two people trade they only engage in trade if the transaction is mutually beneficial.
- PaulRobinson 2y agoWhat do you think two poker players still in a hand raising each other are doing? They both still think it’s mutually beneficial. The maths if you have full visibility show it isn’t, but I’d argue that’s the same of the “real” economy too. In the latter example we can point to long-standing increasing income and wealth inequality as a proxy for the house rake at poker.
- brigadier132 2y agoWhen two people are continually raising eachother in a poker game they are doing it because there is an probability of winning the pot. It remains zero sum. edit: The economy being positive sum has nothing to do with the way wealth is distributed.
- psd1 2y agoWhen is down to two, it's zero-sum. Income inequality does not imply zero-sum.
- jstanley 2y agoIf you think the economy is zero-sum how do you explain that there is plainly more wealth now than there was 200 years ago?
- PaulRobinson 2y agoIs there? In real terms once adjusted for inflation? Or is it just distributed differently?
- muffinman26 2y agoI don't quite follow this. Surely each poker player who raises thinks that they will take the pot and the other players will lose. So they don't each think that the raise is mutually beneficial. Player A thinks that the raise is beneficial for player A and detrimental for player B, and player B thinks that their call is beneficial to player B and detrimental to player A. Which seems like the definition of 0 sum. Compare this to something like trading apples and oranges, where one person gets an orange (maybe they are tired of apples) and the other gets an apple (maybe they are tired of oranges). Both gets something they want in exchange for something they don't want.