# Classifying a gambling addiction. Do psychologists consider professional gamblers that way? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 29, 2019, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classifying-a-gambling-addiction-do-psychologists-consider-professional-gamblers-that-way/834725 "2019-05-29T18:13:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2019, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classifying-a-gambling-addiction-do-psychologists-consider-professional-gamblers-that-way/834725/21 "2019-06-01T14:09:20Z")
Beating blackjack counters is a matter of perception. If the house counted and shuffled as soon as the count was favorable, that would be viewed by players (rightly or wrongly) as “unfair”, and so people (even non-counters) would stop wanting to play blackjack, and so the house would lose all that money. So instead, they go to continuous shuffle, which is just as effective at stopping the counters, but is not perceived as unfair. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2019, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classifying-a-gambling-addiction-do-psychologists-consider-professional-gamblers-that-way/834725/22 "2019-06-01T14:12:41Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I would expect that the majority of self-described “professional gamblers” are in fact addicts, but that they _don’t_ make enough, at any or all games, to support their habit. They’re just on a temporary downturn right now, but it’s sure to clear up soon and put them back in the black, if they just gamble enough more. Yes, it’s very easy to tell the difference between a professional gambler and a gambling addict. The professional isn’t trying to borrow money from you. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2019, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classifying-a-gambling-addiction-do-psychologists-consider-professional-gamblers-that-way/834725/23 "2019-06-01T14:15:01Z")
> [@doreen](#): > > Depends on which game you’re playing- for “blackout” , you need to cover the whole card. I was gonna say. I never played, but bingo was popular in my parish (and I think it still is.) we had both regular five-in-a-row games and then the big “coverall” game as we called it. ---
**Author:** ![Rob54](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rob54/32/4665_2.png) [@Rob54](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rob54)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2020, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classifying-a-gambling-addiction-do-psychologists-consider-professional-gamblers-that-way/834725/24 "2020-10-01T15:32:02Z")
I believe that the psychology of the game of poker is subject to models or labels that are convenient to hang on opponents after a preliminary assessment of their behavior at the table, for example, this “cautious” and comes forward only with a strong card, the other is “inadequate” and rushes for a raise in any situation in the hope of others’ passes, and if you take the psychology of online poker, which is full of such labels, then the faster you learn to make a preliminary assessment and mark confirmation or denial, the more profitable and interesting the game will become for you ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2020, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classifying-a-gambling-addiction-do-psychologists-consider-professional-gamblers-that-way/834725/25 "2020-10-01T16:24:35Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Certainly poker pros can make money. Basically they are playing against players like me and not the house, although the house takes a small cut. From what I’ve read (which may be out of date), celebrity poker players don’t make money by their poker skills, but by acting as celebrities. That is, they need to be out there winning poker tournaments and such to keep their reputation, but it isn’t what makes them rich. The biggest way to riches in poker is being enough of a celebrity that rich guys will want to have you in their poker games, so will stake you (that is, pay for your chips) in games with huge amounts of money on the table for the fun of playing with a celebrity or to show off to a friend that they can get you there. Endorsements, books, videos, classes, and the like also provide a lot of income. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2020, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classifying-a-gambling-addiction-do-psychologists-consider-professional-gamblers-that-way/834725/26 "2020-10-01T16:35:26Z")
Once I met someone who put himself through school by playing poker (no celebrity appearances involved!), so it can be done. Of course, he had to spend late hours at smoky card tables, and could have made as much or more money at a “real” job. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2020, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classifying-a-gambling-addiction-do-psychologists-consider-professional-gamblers-that-way/834725/27 "2020-10-01T16:43:28Z")
> [@Gray\_Ghost](#): > > Poker players play against each other. The house takes a fee (the rake) for the privilege of hosting the game. For many subsets of card playing, this fee may be the only positive expectation out of any of the players. IOW, at the end of the session, it’s entirely possible if not probable that everyone at the table lost money. For other subsets, it’s definitely possible to earn money long term. Many players will talk about their win rate, in dollars per hour, and have the gambler’s diary entries to prove it. Yes, in poker you don’t have to beat the house, you have to beat Melvin from Topeka. But Melvin probably plays at the low stakes table, so even if you are quite good you probably won’t make huge amounts of money. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2020, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classifying-a-gambling-addiction-do-psychologists-consider-professional-gamblers-that-way/834725/28 "2020-10-01T18:16:45Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > _Professional Gambling_ has been in the news recently. Jeopardy champion \*\*James Holzhauer calls himself a professional sports gambler. This is absolutely a thing. Bob Voulgaris made an enormous fortune by betting on NBA basketball. However, the ratio of actual professional sports bettors to addicts and maniacs who THINK they’re professional gamblers is one in a million or so. Someone like Voulgaris found inefficiencies in the sports betting markets, and exploited them. Famously, he realized like 30 years ago that NBA games usually have more points scored in the second half than in the first - and yet the casinos and bookmakers didn’t know that at all. They would set a line on the total points for the game based on good data, but then would set lines on the points scored in each half by just cutting the total in two. Voulgaris would bet massive sums on almost every single NBA game that the first half score would be under the line and second half score over, and he won a fortune. The challenge in sports betting is finding information you have that the bookmaker does not have. Of course, that’s WAY harder now than it was in the 90s. But it’s theoretically possible, because the bookmaker doesn’t control the sport (you hope.) It is not possible to be a professional roulette or craps player without cheating, because you cannot exploit an information advantage. Unless the roulette wheel is broken, the casino has accounted for every possibility. > [@Pantastic](#): > > From what I’ve read (which may be out of date), celebrity poker players don’t make money by their poker skills, but by acting as celebrities. That’s generally not true. Major celebrity poker players do in fact have vast cash winnings, and their positive expectation in most tournaments and cash games is extremely high. You won’t get famous enough to make money off your celebrity without winning millions. A top pro like Antonio Esfandiari or Vanessa Selbst can walk into any high stakes casino game or private game tomorrow and have a huge, huge positive expectation. Rich people and celebrities play in those games, and those people have far more money than skill. Below the famous poker player, there are grinders who eke out a living by beating up tourists and fools in $2/$5 games and such. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2020, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classifying-a-gambling-addiction-do-psychologists-consider-professional-gamblers-that-way/834725/29 "2020-10-01T19:23:07Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > A top pro like Antonio Esfandiari or Vanessa Selbst can walk into any high stakes casino game or private game tomorrow and have a huge, huge positive expectation. Rich people and celebrities play in those games, and those people have far more money than skill. Yeah, I call that making money off of being famous, not off of poker skills. They aren’t making money by overcoming the skills of other players or by winning competitive tournaments, they’re making money because they will be invited into games where rich people are tossing around huge stacks of money. Obviously they need some level of poker skill to come out ahead, but the key to making huge stacks there isn’t whether your skills rank as a 5 or 10 compared to other poker players, but the fact that you have access to play against a bunch of rich people with skills at a 1 or 2 level. That doesn’t make for good TV or stories though, so those kind of games aren’t what get televised or what you hear anecdotes about. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2020, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classifying-a-gambling-addiction-do-psychologists-consider-professional-gamblers-that-way/834725/30 "2020-10-01T19:48:56Z")
I knew a guy who did that. He was a natural for it, tremendous attention to detail. He knew the various games very well, knew how to avoid being cheated, how to exploit advantages in odds, and he had a great sense of the psychology of the gamblers in private games. He thought the best targets were bored middle-aged men in sleepy southern towns where he went to school. Those weren’t big stakes games but those guys wanted to show they could afford to lose $50 to $100 on a bet (late 60s, would have been serious enough money in those days). When I knew him he enjoyed playing poker for fun but he really objected to any serious money at risk, he didn’t want to see the dark side of people that could bring out. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2020, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classifying-a-gambling-addiction-do-psychologists-consider-professional-gamblers-that-way/834725/31 "2020-10-01T22:17:12Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > Yeah, I call that making money off of being famous, not off of poker skills. By definition, if they win money at those tables, they are doing so with poker skills. Celebrities who play a lot of poker are generally going to be good players, they just aren’t good enough to beat the masters. Poker isn’t THAT big a thing. The ancillary sponsorships and whatnot aren’t like what you see in major sports. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2020, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classifying-a-gambling-addiction-do-psychologists-consider-professional-gamblers-that-way/834725/32 "2020-10-02T04:37:18Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > By definition, if they win money at those tables, they are doing so with poker skills. By your definition, not the one I was using. Not really interested in a semantics debate, I clarified what I meant and so I’m done now. ---
**Author:** ![Rob54](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rob54/32/4665_2.png) [@Rob54](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rob54)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2020, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classifying-a-gambling-addiction-do-psychologists-consider-professional-gamblers-that-way/834725/33 "2020-10-02T15:48:58Z")
“A child tossing one coin after another, trying to catch an elusive toy, does not assume that the furry bear cub won, in the end, cost him much more than its real value. Likewise, an adult player who has bet big money and won, in the end, does not weigh his costs and revenues” ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2020, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classifying-a-gambling-addiction-do-psychologists-consider-professional-gamblers-that-way/834725/34 "2020-10-03T11:43:47Z")
My friend’s son is a professional gambler, which is an interesting profession for the son of a Mormon bishop. I understand he makes a “reasonable” income but the drawbacks include lots of late nights. He doesn’t drink and it appears to be simply a job for him. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/classifying-a-gambling-addiction-do-psychologists-consider-professional-gamblers-that-way/834725.md?page=1)