The biggest poker players/professionals more often than the general population bets on sports, and they universally lose money doing that, but more than make up for it in their poker earnings.
The biggest poker games are not all these professionals playing each other for high stakes, but one or a few of them playing against one or more whales for medium-to-high stakes, which are wealthy-to-super-wealthy fish who enjoy the thrill of playing the biggest stakes poker against the best poker players/professionals in the world---and who can afford it!
Whenever the pros butt heads it's always intense poker but they're essentially equal and it's about who plays better when their opponent has the nuts. Who controls their losing the best is the one who wins the most. Everybody plays their winners like the sharks they are. It takes patience and discipline to play your losers well. You're not always sure it's a loser. If you fold early you'll be negative overall, so you have to stick with medium and medium-strong hands as long as possible in order to not lose pots to weaker bluffers/professionals with weaker hands than you. And if your senses are telling you that your very strong hand is beat, then you have to learn to connect that sensation with a reasonable explanation as to what's actually going on. It's not always the case, but it is sometimes, that your very strong hand is beaten already, with no drawouts possible to improve on the river, no matter what happens till the river.
The edge in sports betting is with those who make book. The edge in poker is poker skill, but there's a threshold above which it's going to come down to catching cards, and not skill, so the extra-poker skill is choosing situations that give poker skill the edge. Those who have mastered both poker and choosing the right situations to target are the best poker players/professionals in the world.
And they lose money betting sports.
The biggest poker games are not all these professionals playing each other for high stakes, but one or a few of them playing against one or more whales for medium-to-high stakes, which are wealthy-to-super-wealthy fish who enjoy the thrill of playing the biggest stakes poker against the best poker players/professionals in the world---and who can afford it!
Whenever the pros butt heads it's always intense poker but they're essentially equal and it's about who plays better when their opponent has the nuts. Who controls their losing the best is the one who wins the most. Everybody plays their winners like the sharks they are. It takes patience and discipline to play your losers well. You're not always sure it's a loser. If you fold early you'll be negative overall, so you have to stick with medium and medium-strong hands as long as possible in order to not lose pots to weaker bluffers/professionals with weaker hands than you. And if your senses are telling you that your very strong hand is beat, then you have to learn to connect that sensation with a reasonable explanation as to what's actually going on. It's not always the case, but it is sometimes, that your very strong hand is beaten already, with no drawouts possible to improve on the river, no matter what happens till the river.
The edge in sports betting is with those who make book. The edge in poker is poker skill, but there's a threshold above which it's going to come down to catching cards, and not skill, so the extra-poker skill is choosing situations that give poker skill the edge. Those who have mastered both poker and choosing the right situations to target are the best poker players/professionals in the world.
And they lose money betting sports.
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