Hi all,

I'm new to poker and terrible at it, a total fish. An online casino basically gave me free money and I managed to spin it up to about $40 with blackjack. I started playing poker with it and have got into a bad habit of returning to blackjack to win back my losses using a combination of progressive staking and basic strategy. The problem is that even though blackjack is designed with a house edge so that players will eventually lose if they play for long enough, at the moment I play optimal strategy blackjack so the house edge is about 0.44% but I'm not playing anywhere near optimal strategy poker so the edge that skilled players and the rake have on me is probably much more than 0.44%.

I think I'm just venting this to help me see the error in my logic. The basic error is yes - at the moment I'm probably statistically more likely to be a profitable at blackjack rather than poker but that doesn't mean I should play blackjack intead because the house always have an edge on me unless I use advantage play. Also, there's an opportunity cost - the time I spend grinding back those losses on blackjack could be better spent studying poker, doing hand reviews, playing on play money sites etc. In poker speak, that would be the EV move.

/vent

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