And as soon as that enters the picture, you might as well be playing craps or baccarat-games that truly are gambling. Unlike, say, Go or chess, poker involves betting. I’m going to be explaining this over and over, so I may as well get it right.īut the misperception is ingrained in the popular mind for one simple reason. Let’s get to the tables! But looking at Baba Anya, I realize that the battle for support-and the justification for poker as not just a learning tool, but as one of the best tools there is for making decisions that have nothing to do with the game itself-is going to take a bit more fighting. And a poker player! Not just a poker player, but someone for whom poker inspired brilliant insights into human decisionmaking, someone who considered it the ultimate game for approximating the strategic challenges of life. I mean, think of John von Neumann! One of the great polymaths of the 20th century, father of the computer, one of the inventors of the hydrogen bomb, the creator of game theory.

To my mind, the journey was well motivated: Of course people would understand that poker was an important way to learn about decisionmaking. And first among them is the very one I’m seeing from a stricken Baba Anya: equating poker with gambling. The world of poker is laden with misconceptions.

Great old ones playing poker