Compare for a moment any table game version of poker and "real" poker. What are the differences? Well, there are several, but probably the first one you think of is that in table games, you play against the house, and in poker you play against other players. That's true. An implication of that difference is even more important: In table game versions of poker, nobody's cards are hidden (for long) and no betting decision is made after you see your cards. Add to this the reality that virtually no skill is required to play, and the dealer has no discretion in what he or she does with the house hand. In "real" poker, you get to see your cards, and then have one or more betting opportunities after that.

Bets made (theirs and yours) help clarify the ambiguities of what the cards truly are. If poker did not have this feature, it would be just like a video poker game or a table game, where essentially the outcomes are the results of the whims of chance. Skill and judgment (two words used with great pride by seasoned poker players) are really bound up in discerning how to bet the cards given to you in light of what you think or know the other players' cards are.

The key phrase in the preceding sentence was "how to bet the cards." To say "play poker" is the same thing as saying "make bets." The rest is just mechanics. "Poker strategy," therefore, is the same as "betting strategy." This embraces all the other topics.

Experienced poker players will say, with justification, that luck has very little to do with winning poker, at least in the long run. The key is to maximize the production out of the hands you do get through the wise making of bets. Luck, like the rain, comes down on the just and the unjust, the good and the bad. At the end of the night, the more skillful player will prevail. This is an article of faith. The only concession to its validity is that the standard deviation around any game of chance is big enough to allow an undeserving winner to walk off every so often with part of a sharp player's bankroll.

To make this point a little more concrete, play a couple of rounds of poker with all the cards face up all around the table. When each player can see not only his or her cards, but also the cards in all the other hands, the game is reduced to the mechanics of matching up cards to see which hand is strongest. This gets really dull quickly. The only decisions to be made in the betting are technical ones; that is to say, choices relating to the probabilities that a hand will improve. For example, does it make sense to draw two cards to a three-card mini-flush? These questions can be decided by calculation or experience. David Sklansky, one of the most widely-read authors on poker, restates poker's essential feature of dealing with the unknown - the ambiguities of the adversaries' wagers and their hidden cards. He calls it "The Fundamental Theorem of Poker" and expresses it thus:

"Every time someone acts, if they would have acted differently had he or she seen your cards, you win. Every time you act, if you would have acted differently had you seen the other players' cards, you lose."

In this context, "winning" and "losing" refer not to pots, but to gaining and losing ground in the long quest to arrive at the end of the evening, ahead by enough money to have made it worth your while to have been there. Notice that he says, "acts" in his theorem. He could have said "bets." It's all the same. Poker strategy, therefore, in the framework of Sklansky's "Fundamental Theorem of Poker," is to induce others to bet in ways inconsistent with their cards and yours, while grounding your own bets firmly in reality."