dlowan wrote:I would assume poker MAY have less of the second than games of pure chance??????
Nah, it's got a nice variable schedule of reinforcement for all playing skills. But because it is confrontational and because your decisions actually have value, anyone who plays long enough knows that to "gamble" in poker is ultimately to elect a losing strategy and that's not as fun as a game where there's nothing to it but gamble.
cicerone imposter wrote:I know the winner gets the biggest pot, but how are the second and third place winners pot calculated?
In cash games, there is no winner or loser to the game, only for individual hands.
In tournament poker, the structure is determined by the tournament organizers. For example, it may be that 15% of the players will finish "in the money" and the winner takes, say 20% of the total prize pool and then it dramatically drops till the bottom half of those "in the money" get little more than twice their buy-in.
That's just an example and each tournament can differ (I just played a "winner take all" tournament for e.g.)
Here's an example of the 6-handed WSOP tournament I played:
http://www.thepokerforum.com/wsop0712.htm
The buy in was $1,500 and there were 1,427 players for a $1,947,855 prize pool. 126 places paid and the payouts ranged from $481,698 to $2,143.
) profit, rather than a small loss ...