If you’ve made your way to a poker tournament, you know the tremendous strain on your physical and mental skills should you last long enough to get close to being named the winner.
The pressure is on from the start. If you haven’t prepared your mind and body well enough, haven’t honed your skills to a high degree and don’t have the stamina to keep your concentration, you’ll likely lose.
Naturally, looking from the outside in, few even entertain the idea of poker as a sport. It’s not as overtly athletic as many traditional sports like football, boxing or even throwing sports such as darts.
Still, plenty of aspects are similar between traditional sports and poker, which might lend the competitive card game more toward being classed as a sport.
How Does Poker Compare to Traditional Sport?
It’s easy to point to the apparent lack of athleticism in poker to discredit it as a sport. However, a sport requires the activity to be both physically exerting and determined by skill, and poker seems to tick both of these boxes.
Poker Tournaments vs Traditional Sports Competitions
Tournaments are where sportspeople come together to prove their skill.
In both traditional sports or in a sport like poker, the pressure is piled on and the biggest prizes are on the line to award those who prove themselves the most skillful against their fellow top-ranking peers.
For the most part, tournaments require players to battle through multiple rounds of games, beat several opponents and still have the stamina at the end to defeat the foe who has also proven themselves strong enough to get to the final.
Is There Any Athleticism or Physicality to Poker?
While all degrees of athleticism are born from physical traits, not all activities that are physically demanding are inherently athletic.
In poker, the body’s strength, fitness, and agility – the key traits of athleticism – may not strictly come into play, but the competition is physically draining.
Poker requires players to hone their minds and bodies to be durable and boast a good level of stamina, allowing them to stay on top of their game at all times.
So, is Poker a Game or a Sport?
It would be easy to resign poker to the sector of games, but those who compete in tournaments certainly have an argument for poker being a sport. So, maybe there’s a middle ground on which poker can be seen as both.
Why Poker isn’t Usually Considered to Be a Sport
Poker isn’t usually considered to be a sport because there isn’t any overt use of athleticism or activities that can be honed by physical exercise and practice. It looks very different in play from more athletic sports.
How Poker Could Be Considered to Be a Sport
A game of poker, let alone a poker tournament, is physically exerting. The stamina required to concentrate for such long spells while working your mind to get the better of your opponents is a skill that drains the unprepared.
Is Poker Luck-based or Skill-based?
Traditional poker, as opposed to video poker, is mostly skill-based but incorporates an element of luck. Players can’t control what cards are dealt from the shuffled decks, but they get enough control over their decisions that poker falls more heavily into the skill-based category.
Regardless of what hand is dealt, the player has to make the most of it. On top of this, poker games tend to be played over several hours and perhaps even hundreds of hands, balancing out any spells of good or bad luck.
Professional Poker Players at the Top of their Game
Top poker players treat their discipline like a sport in order to get the edge and try to win huge prizes at major competitions.
Top Poker Players at the Biggest Poker Tournaments
The biggest poker tournaments of all are the World Poker Tour (WPT) Main Tour and the World Series of Poker (WSOP). The former is a series of international tournaments that culminate in the awarding of the WPT Champions Cup.
The World Series of Poker is the biggest poker tournament in the world featuring several big-money matches across poker variants. The Main Event No-Limit Hold’em gets thousands of entrants battling for the multi-million prize.
On the WPT rankings, the top-ranking players include Mikita Badziakouski, Carlos Mortensen, Daniel Negreanu, Andrew Lichtenberger and Dan Sepiol, while 2023’s WSOP Main Event winner was Daniel Weinman.
How Much Skill and Strategy Are Required to Be Successful in Poker?
You’ll need a tremendous amount of skill and strategy to become a successful poker player. You both have to play the cards you're dealt and any community cards while also subtly working out your opponents as you go. These two elements play into your strategies, and it takes a lot of skill, stamina, and experience to master them when you bet on poker.
More Questions on Whether Poker is a Sport
What Skills are Necessary to Excel in Competitive Poker?
To excel in competitive poker, players first need to perfect their knowledge of winning hands and skills of deduction to work out a rough probability of success from their hands and calls.
On top of this, staying healthy and fit gives players the stamina required to stay focused and play at a high level for the long sessions required of them.
From there, being adaptable, studying opponents and their actions throughout a game and remaining calm under pressure are all major skills required for competitive poker success.
How Do Poker Tournaments Compare to Traditional Sports Events?
Poker tournaments, like traditional sports events, require a tremendous amount of stamina, concentration and the ability to up your game as you progress through the competition. With each success comes another challenge as the lower-skilled players or teams get knocked out at each stage.
In the final, the pressure is high, and it’s the poker player’s or sports team’s one shot at the big prize – which in both cases tends to be a lot of money.
Can Poker Be Classified as an eSport?
There’s a firm line placed between an eSport and just competitive games. Those that are dictated by skill (like League of Legends) are considered eSports, while those that are much more heavily influenced by the game’s programming (like FIFA) are just competitive games.
In poker, while there is luck, it’s predominantly down to the skill of the player and their decisions rather than any kind of game programming. Being digital and skill-based, online poker could be classified as an eSport.
Are There Professional Athletes Who Also Compete in Poker Tournaments?
Two of the most famous stars of their respective sports are known to have partaken in some poker tournaments: Boris Becker and Cristiano Ronaldo. They’re part of a group of professional athletes who compete in poker tournaments that also feature Michael Phelps, Alex Rodriguez and Richard Seymour.
Which Countries Recognise Poker as a Sport?
No country has officially labelled poker as a traditional sport, but those that recognise the International Mind Sports Association (IMSA) most probably find poker to be an official mind sport.
The IMSA is affiliated with the World Bridge Association, the International Chess Federation and the International eSports Federation.
How Does the Athleticism of Poker Players Compare to Traditional Athletes?
Poker players do measure up to traditional athletes for their physical endurance and ability to maintain their high levels of play for extended periods of time and under a tremendous amount of pressure. They build this aspect of athleticism through hours upon hours of time dedicated to training in this kind of situation each week.
Is Poker an Olympic Sport?
Poker isn’t an Olympic sport and hasn’t been confirmed as a future Olympic sport at the time of writing. However, there are plenty of movements – particularly revolving around the sportified game of match poker – advocating for its inclusion, similar to when skateboarding made the cut for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
Is Poker a Type of Gambling?
Poker is a type of gambling. From the professional stage to just about any form of online poker, players are expected to play with real money, bet that money on their hands and then either lose or win more money as a result.