ride of the valkryies or the anschluss of austria

I am here to discuss why people are playing poker. From bottom to top people have many different drives to play poker. I read an article at cardrunners.com about 2 years ago, the title was "poker economy" and the author was trying to categorize where the money comes from and where it goes in a poker network (in terms of winning and losing players, exluding the network fees). We have blue collars, white collars and whales for losing players and we have different stakes pros as winning players.

Blue collars are the ones playing very small mtt's once or twice a week and micro stakes cash. They can afford losing 5-25 dollars a week and when they hit the prize in a tourney they usually withdraw their money. Poker is a kind of entertainment for them when they come from work to home and they like to tell the stories of how they won a prize in tourney when they do. I believe this segment is the most important of all as it keeps the big machine working.

White collars have a higher status in real life than the blue collars. They are managers or small entrepreneurs with a huge ego that comes with it. They like poker because they like to compete, they like to proove that they are smarter than other people. They can afford losing up to 1000 dollars a month and satisfy themselves about being smarter than others while blaming their luck for the amount they've lost. When they hit a big prize in a tourney they usually tend to sit at a high stakes cash game. They are important because they move the money from bottom to top.

Whales are very rare to find in online poker but there are more of them in casinos. They are rich people who see poker as a way of interacting with common people and realize how rich they are. They enjoy watching other people winning or losing and seeing how important that amount of money for them. They don't care much about winning or losing, they like that ambiance where everything is related with the money in the middle. That's why they don't care which stake they are playing but they enjoy playing higher stakes more.

There's not much to talk about the winning players. Most of them are playing to earn their lives and when you're playing online you're confronted with them 80-90% of the time. But there are people who have different drives amongst them as well. When I asked Mr.Aki why he still plays poker and how he didn't lose his ambition, he replied "respect". I said I'm sure he's getting enough respect, one must be fool not to show him respect, then he said "there are different levels of respect". Well, that I believe shows the difference between being a winning player and a top player.

GL all.