Nice chart 
Singapore dollars but still glad I walked away.
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Thank you for posting that link
I can relate to this topic.
My parents recently asked about Christmas gifts, and I told them that, if they wanted to get me something, I have developed an interest in poker and wanted some strategy books on the subject. My Mom kind of freaked out and flat out told me there was no way she would ever buy me poker books.
She was clearly terrified that I will become addicted to gambling and lose every penny I earn. I tried to explain to her how there is really a large element of skill to the game, so if you are good and aren’t stupid with your bankroll, there is no real risk. She was not convinced because, as said previously in this thread, she sees poker as pure gambling and is unwilling to see it any other way.
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@MajorLeeDumb,
Hi , If you want access to some real good poker strategy stuff for free there is a links library here in the forums. There are links to free online books by top players and to some really good strategy stuff from them too.
Look under the… “PokerStrategy” …category and you will see. The Links Library". Jump in there and have a good look at some of that stuff.
Good Luck
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Cool, thanks for the tip!
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Good thing you didn’t ask her to buy you a few million play chips here hahahahaha.
The Links library is awesome
i’m sorry for you to hear that.
don’t know if it helps but besides of using the links that has been offered to improve yourself, you might also use some of them which has evidence that poker is a skill game to show to your mom.
i have searched a little and here is a link to begin with, there is probably also much more to find so you can also look for stuff that fits best to persuade your mom yourself, obviously you know her best so you should also know best which link to show.
you also said you explained the fact that poker is largely skill and if you don’t be stupid with your bankroll the risks are gone. which is obviously true, but try to also explain the facts, details and math behind the BRM and long term skill part, that way she has stone cold evidence and can’t go anyway around it if she is rational about it.
if this is hard to explain you can also try to find a link about BRM. and about the long term skill increasing, i have wrote a part about it myself in the forums a while ago. i’ll copy/paste it for you and edit it a little since i wrote it at someone else:
since some people might think playing poker is mostly or even only luck based, here is proof that it’s pure skill when you play it well:
if you take the long term the odds of going broke with BRM and good play is just so small it is just not worth worrying about. yes of course you might get bad luck several years straight, but the chances that will happen are just so extremely small that it just won’t happen so someone. just compare it to someone having a normal job. there is also a “gamble” or “luck” part to it that even if you do extremely well you will lose money anyway: if you work for someone you might get fired by your boss and not get a new job in time, which can happen for several reasons: you just got cought my making a crucial mistake which normally won’t happen to you, they have to fire some people because they can’t pay this much personal anymore, and who knows what more reasons there are. resulting in losing your home and everything you got. or perhaps you are your own boss, and performing great work making it a great copmpany. but suddenly the stuff you sell isn’t popular anymore resulting in the company going broke, or you sell stuff that everyone needs and someone else also with a good company is getting more and more of your customers resulting in less and less profits until they are negative, also resulting in going broke and losing everything. as you see no matter what job you take there will always be a luck factor, but because poker is known for it’s luck factor and often associated with gambling, we just assume the luck is way more important here. and it is in short term, but in long term the luck factor is just like any other job. and if we are talking in really long terms like several years (for example when you are going pro or are pro already) i would probably rather take my chances with poker then a regular job.
and when you just play poker for fun the risks are even much much less when you do well, this because you won’t have to pay any other expenses from it.
as for the improvement of luck in the long term in poker. i can’t give you the math of about 20K hands or more because such a calculation would be impossible to make this year 
. but i am able to give you a small sample to prove the fact of decreasing luck and increasing skill: take the 60/40 chance as a base in this one: so obviously we have 40% chance of losing money with the best hand. but now take the odds of losing money with 3 60/40 hands. here we hold 8 possiblities. win/win/win = 60% of 60% of 60%. which is 21,6% chance of winning three. then we have 3 possibilities of winning 2 of them, leaving you with 1 win (win/win/lose. win/lose/win. and lose/win/win.) which is 60% of 60% of 40% which is 14,4% each. now the same for two losses which can also happen 3 times, which is 40% of 40% of 60% which is 9,6%. at last we can also have 3 losses once, which is 40% of 40% of 40% which is 6,4%. so if we purely take our winning chance only we hold 21,6 + (14,4 x 3) = 64,4% chance of winning money and 6,4 + (9,6 x 3) = 35,2% chance of losing money. so even on this incomplete calculation we are already holding 4,4% more chance of winning money with just only playing 3 hands instead of one. then we also have the fact that they aren’t all the same and we have 1 of both that contains winning or losing thrice instead of one so simply said this one is three times as important. so winning is (21,6 x 3) + (14,4 x 3) = 108. and losing is (6,4 x 3) + (9,6 x 3) = 48. since we have a total now of 156 we should divide both by 1,56 to bring them back to 100, which makes it able to see the actual %. 108 / 1,56 = ~69.23% and 48 / 1,56 = ~30,77%. which means that when using the real calculation we do have even more chance of winning, so instead of an improvement of 4,4% we do actually have an improvement of slightly more then 9,23% of making money with using just the exact same hand we used when just playing it once. and imagine that this is just for increasing 1 to 3 hands. now imagine we use 20000 hands like in my example, or maybe even several 100000’s of hands like many good players have. or even the 1000000’s (millions) like the big pro’s have. then you have such a big long term that almost no one can lose in that, well unless you tried to murder lady luck for some reason and now she’s coming after you 
. but serious, you can probably imagine now you how big the skill factor is in long term and that the luck part just get erased in long term.
i really hope this will help you, if there are still issues feel free to ask.
yiazmat.
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That was awesome of you to take all that time explaining!!!
Job well done
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I think the point made in this thread, and that I was trying to make with my story, is that many many people (and I will lump my Mom in with this group) are not willing to look at the facts rationally. To them gambling is gambling, gambling is addicting and leads to a broke and miserable life, and any attempt to justify participation in gambling is just rationalizing addictive behavior. This is sad, because poker is such a beautiful game.
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thank you very much.
i truly get what you’re saying, and i fully agree that it’s extremely hard to convince someone that doesn’t want to be convinced.
i only wanna say to at least give it another try since it’s still your mom and i truly understand that that’s very hard to have her against you in doing something you love. of course as i earlier said you know best of all what works and what doesn’t. so the most obvious thing i could think of is the stone cold evidence thing but if you know of something that works better of if this just won’t work then try to find something else that proves your point.
here an another idea that might work: i think you can see that i am a rational thinker i can see that you are too, but i know some people are more emotional thinkers (my mom included) and then evidence don’t work like it would with you and me. so what i thought i just ask her to read this thread we are on now. this because even while i don’t know you i can easily read your love for the game into your posts, can you imagine what someone who knows you her entire life would read into it. at the same time she reads all the evidence both of us and some other people wrote in here which might help you too. even while she is scared to poker i can imagine she loves you and might at least want to read it for you if you ask.
besides of all this if you know something else like evidence, facts strategy, BRM or whatever else you might think that could help you feel free to ask and i’ll search some stuff about it for you and i’ll post it here, or if i can’t find it i’ll write it down myself.
hope this helps, yiazmat.
edit: another good point of evidence might be pointing out the fact that there are several pro’s who can make money just as much (and sometimes even much more) with poker as with a regular job. while real gambling games have no such thing, there just isn’t something like a roulette, blackjack or slot machine pro. meaning poker is a huge difference.
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