Poker

[JarodRussell]

I've never played Poker just for fun, mainly because I simply don't know anyone who would play it without money, so I don't understand it either.

 

[Shatnertage]

So? Just because they aren't playing for real money doesn't mean they don't treat the stakes as real for the purposes of the game play.

Poker's a different animal. There's a tremendous difference between "for entertainment purposes" and playing for money--it effects the actual nature of the game.

Not to get too technical, but if the chips were free, the games would be much "looser" than what we see on screen--people would call every bluff, because there would be no disincentive for it. The game would be meaningless.

To take it to the next level, I'll make a distinction between "real world" gambling behavior and what we see on-screen, just like there's a difference between "real" science and the science of Trek.

The characters act as if the chips have more than symbolic value--they express fear of losing them, and satisfaction in winning them that seems to me to be beyond the game itself.

I'm not saying that this necessarily contradicts the "we've evolved beyond money" Big Idea, though that's a foolish idea in a lot of ways. I'm just saying that, in order to show a recreational activity with some level of understanding for current viewers, the writers chose poker, without really thinking it through to its logical conclusion.

Hey, that's what makes Trek so endearing, isn't it? From "Esper abiltiies" to "red matter" killing black holes, this stuff doesn't always make sense in the real world.

 

[Christopher]

Player for "fun" just can't compare since the players are just too eager to take risks or go all in since the wager is something they do not value.

Again, you're missing the point I've made over and over again here, which is that there are more ways to define value than you're assuming. Just because people aren't playing for money doesn't mean they ascribe no value to what they are playing for. It's just a different set of values from your own.

Any way you look at it it's a contradiction of some sort.

No, it's only a contradiction if you look at it in a way that assumes your own personal and cultural definitions of value and stakes are the only ones that can possibly exist. Just because it's a contradiction by your standards, based on your experiences and values in life, doesn't mean it's a contradiction by the standards of people raised from birth in a post-scarcity, non-materialistic, multispecies civilization 400 years in the future, people whose life experience and worldview are different from your own in fundamental ways.

Heck, you don't even have to look outside your own culture. To me, your view on the worth of gambling is downright alien. I find the idea of risking money or other meaningful personal costs as a stake in a card game to be bizarre and unpleasant. I would never play a game with money at stake. Yet that doesn't mean I ascribe no value to winning or losing. On the contrary, I'm very competitive and I hate to lose (which is why I'm unwilling to risk losing money in a game). What's at stake for me may be intangible, may be nothing more than a matter of pride and achievement, but I value it greatly. You may find that a contradiction by your standards, but it's not a contradiction to me.

Those are all valid arguments except that all the games you mention last for some time and there is pleasure to be gained from actually playing the game. A game of poker on the other hand lasts for minutes at the most and the sole object is not winning the "game" but gaining the reward.

A hand of poker lasts for minutes. A game of poker can last as long as the players have something to wager, and if the stakes are not monetary, they can decide arbitrarily to start out with enough to last all night. The object is for a group of friends and colleagues to spend time together. It's something to occupy them while they enjoy each other's company, and it's an opportunity to learn things about one another. And for someone like Riker, it's about the thrill of competition, the challenge of out-bluffing keenly observant, intelligent opponents (which is certainly a useful skill for an aspiring starship captain to practice).

My original point hinged on the argument that it seemed strange, to me at least, that grown adults could take such a game as seriously as they appear to do when there is in essence nothing to play for.

I find it very sad that you can imagine nothing of true value beyond money.

Not to get too technical, but if the chips were free, the games would be much "looser" than what we see on screen--people would call every bluff, because there would be no disincentive for it. The game would be meaningless.

Again, this is where it becomes clear that different people have different values. To me, if your stakes are purely monetary, that is meaningless. Personal achievement, surmounting challenges, social interaction with your friends -- those are things that actually have meaning.

And there is a disincentive within the rules of the game. If you come to the table with a finite opening stake, then if you run out of that stake, you lose. Just as if you run out of men in a game of checkers, you lose. The chips are resources, indicators of what percentage of the total available resources within the game you possess. Whether those resources have external value is irrelevant to the role they play within the game. If you care about winning, then you don't just casually throw away your chips. You husband them as necessary resources which you need to hold onto and add to in order to achieve victory. They have value within the microeconomy of the game itself, regardless of any external economic considerations.

The characters act as if the chips have more than symbolic value--they express fear of losing them, and satisfaction in winning them that seems to me to be beyond the game itself.

I fear losing even when I'm playing Scrabble or dominoes. I hate to fail at anything I undertake, and I take satisfaction in succeeding. The fact that there's no money at stake doesn't reduce the emotional stakes for me in the slightest. Money is not the only thing a human being can value. Ultimately, we value success and fear failure. Money is just one way of reckoning success.

I'm not saying that this necessarily contradicts the "we've evolved beyond money" Big Idea, though that's a foolish idea in a lot of ways. I'm just saying that, in order to show a recreational activity with some level of understanding for current viewers, the writers chose poker, without really thinking it through to its logical conclusion.

I don't think it's logical at all to assume that poker would cease to exist in a post-scarcity civilization. It's more logical to assume that it would evolve in its meaning, in the philosophy underlying it.

 

[sbk1234]

I suppose it's possible that there is some kind of tournament going on on the ship, and points are being tabulated. Perhaps at the end of the month or something, the one with the most points gets some kind of reward?
Personally, I just ignore the stuff about "no money in the future," since that's a bunch of BS that they're feeding to primitives from the past. When they're not with outsiders, they're probably laughing their asses off that someone else bought that crap about no money.

 

[Joshonator]

Again, you're missing the point I've made over and over again here, which is that there are more ways to define value than you're assuming. Just because people aren't playing for money doesn't mean they ascribe no value to what they are playing for. It's just a different set of values from your own.

I said in order for the game to be "interesting to me" there must be a wager of some sort. If a game can be interesting to you with nothing but pride at stake then that's a whole other story. Personally I don't value pride very much and therefore a poker game with no wager will never be as interesting to me as a game with a wager, the possibility of losing something that I value adds another dimension to the game.

No, it's only a contradiction if you look at it in a way that assumes your own personal and cultural definitions of value and stakes are the only ones that can possibly exist. Just because it's a contradiction by your standards, based on your experiences and values in life, doesn't mean it's a contradiction by the standards of people raised from birth in a post-scarcity, non-materialistic, multispecies civilization 400 years in the future, people whose life experience and worldview are different from your own in fundamental ways.

Heck, you don't even have to look outside your own culture. To me, your view on the worth of gambling is downright alien. I find the idea of risking money or other meaningful personal costs as a stake in a card game to be bizarre and unpleasant. I would never play a game with money at stake. Yet that doesn't mean I ascribe no value to winning or losing. On the contrary, I'm very competitive and I hate to lose. What's at stake for me may be intangible, may be nothing more than a matter of pride and achievement, but I value it greatly. You may find that a contradiction by your standards, but it's not a contradiction to me.

Did you read what i said? Picard says "money doesn't exist in the 24th century", and then in almost every episode of deep space nine, currency is mentioned. Please explain to me how that is not a contradiction.

 

[T'Girl]

it would contradict Picard's statement in the movie first contact: "The economics of the future is somewhat different. You see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century... The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of Humanity."

Captain Picard also said to Lily "Actually we're rather like yourself and Doctor Cochrane" which is amusingly followed by Cockrane statement of "You wanna know what my vision is? ...Dollar signs! Money! I didn't build this ship to usher in a new era for humanity."

In fact watch Lily the next time you see the movie, after Picard does his no money dialog and then makes a comparison the Cochrane and herself, Lily makes a amused face and begins to laugh at Picard.

When Picard says "we have no money," you ever wonder just how many people compose this "we?" In the face of so many example of monetary and value exchanges in the 24th century, Picard might have just been expressing a personal philosophy. One that embraced by relatively few others.

 

[Shatnertage]

Poker is a gambling game. Gambling has three elements:
1. A stake of some sort, wagered on an
2. event of unknown outcome
3. in the hope of winning

If you don't have a meaningful stake, by definition, it's not gambling. Sure, it's possible to gamble for things beyond currency--the oldest gambling is about 40,000 years old, which is way before the invention of currency--but on TNG, for the purposes of poker, the characters treat the chips as if they have value, which would make that the stakes. Riker's bluffs would just be extremely loose/aggressive play if he didn't have to "pay" to make them, and pretty annoying too.

Do they really have value? I don't know. Could poker survive in a post-scarcity economy? Maybe, but since the idea is to win money (not necessarily hands), I can't begin to think of what it would look like.

I'll rephrase again what I think is going on here: the writers of a 1980s/1990s television show wanted to include a sedentary recreational activity that could shed some light on the characters. Poker is as good as any, and it's been featured in TV shows since the 1950s. They probably didn't think through exactly what that would entail as far as the betting goes, but that's OK--I don't think that supernova explosions timed to the second is really how science works, either (but I could be wrong).

They've clearly got gambling in Trek--just focusing on TNG we've got the poker game, and the dom jat table from "Tapestry," and probably a few more I'm forgetting. The characters refer to it as gambling--Picard talks about the "gambling foreman" (I guess he means pit boss) in "Tapestry. If it's gambling as we know it, there's got to be stakes.

It's not a case of some of us not being in growth, or rooted in petty materialism. It's that the game, as played by millions of people, is a game that's played for money. Yes, there's freeplay games online, but without any money at stake it's more like a simulation of poker than real poker. The play is markedly different than what we see in real life cash games, and what we see in TNG. Which leads me to humbly conclude that TNG is more like what we call poker today than a game played for no stakes but bragging rights.

I think the ideas of gambling in Trek are actually pretty interesting, as they're anything but consistent, and there are probably a few academic papers to be written there, in addition to a more popular narrative survey.

 

[Joshonator]

When Picard says "we have no money," you ever wonder just how many people compose this "we?" In the face of so many example of monetary and value exchanges in the 24th century, Picard might have just been expressing a personal philosophy. One that embraced by relatively few others.

Picard did not say "we have no money" he said "money doesn't exist in the 24th century". He was stating a fact, not a personal philosophy. The writers probably just overlooked this or didn't think it was important.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

The crew was really playing strip poker all this time. It was just censored for TV.

 

[flemm]

I'm not willing to reject off-hand the possibility that poker might still be enjoyable without any monetary value associated with the chips. When I play poker with friends, we intentionally keep the stakes pretty low so that there isn't much real risk. Just enough to make winning and losing mildly significant. I also remember playing poker as a young child with pennies, and even without money at all. We still thought it was fun.

That said, I think the op has a point, if for no other reason than the actual gameplay of poker is pretty thin and repetitive compared to other social games, including many other card games. Basically there is the question of the odds that what you have is better than what the other players have, the chance of your hand improving (depending on what style of poker you are playing), and then there is the question of the bluff. Plenty to think about, calculate and analyse, but not much to actually do. The thrill and tension comes from the feeling of risk. So it does strike me as unlikely, though not impossible, that poker would be the game of choice for a group of people who had no intention of actually gambling.

It's not as if it were extremely difficult to find a contemporary example. Despite the importance we place on money, it's not at all unusual for people in our culture to get together to play games for fun. We do it all the time and are not incapable of perceiving that money isn't the only possible measure of value, or that the risk of winning and losing money isn't the only source of enjoyment to be derived from playing a game. It's just relatively unusual for people to do this with poker because a great deal of the fun in playing this particular game comes from the gambling aspect of it, while many other card games, board games, sports, etc. are more focused on the actual process of gameplay as the source of enjoyment.

Not that it matters as far as TNG is concerned, since the poker game fulfills its function quite nicely, dramatically speaking, which is to get a bunch of the characters together in a friendly, yet competitive environment where banter can be exchanged.