OK, so granted that it’s possible for a skilled poker player to consistently bring in more money than they’re losing: I don’t think anyone disputes that. But when such a skilled player sits down at a table, what are the other players at the table doing? You can’t have everyone at a table winning. If they’re gambling by playing poker, then poker is gambling.
Seems logical to start with a definition. From Merriam-Webster online:
No mention of “chance” in any of these definitions, only a risk of losing money and/or valuables. Seems like gambling to me. As does farming for a living.
That’s more about the question of poker as a game of chance versus a game of skill than whether it’s gambling.
Phil Hel"Mouth" may not be my bitch, but he is certainly a bitch, and a whiny one at that.
To the OP: Yes, it’s gambling.
But what about my point: that the general connotation of “gambling” and “gambler” are such that it’s automatically seen as a sad story if the head of the household does a lot of it? If he’s using math and psychology to consistently bring home the bacon, why should he be lumped in with desperate characters who bring ruin to their families, hide from bookies, etc.?
I think there’s a widely understood connotation to this word, or set of related words, that someone “gambling” has at *least *as much chance of losing money as they do of winning. Which is just not true of a good poker player.
Then you need to rehabilitate the word “gambling”.
But most gambling doesn’t deserve to be rehabilitated. It’s either a minour, relatively harmless, vice; or it’s a serious addiction that ruins lives. Games in which, over the long run, no one with any level of skill can come out ahead should not just be lumped into the same category with games in which people with skill extract money from people with less skill.
ETA: When I lay it out that way, it does occur to me that it could be described as a different kind of vice, of taking advantage of the foolish and the drunk. But that’s a different argument and still puts it in a different category (it’s precisely because it’s not “gambling” in the vernacular sense for the skilled poker player, that it becomes a little like conning old people out of their life savings).
Well put, this is exactly what I mean, and of course I never considered or implied that chess is a “game of luck”.