Welcome to the Sports Poker blog! I am a recently retired math professor, reborn as a game inventor, game theorist, and someone with lots of opinions on sports. This is my new full time gig! I hope to engage readers with enjoyable and interesting discussions on games, poker, sports, Sports Poker, and other topics that interest me.
Let’s get started! This is the Sports Poker blog, so what is Sports Poker?
If you google “sports poker” today (as I write this) you will find things like:
· Is poker a sport?
· Online poker sites
· Sportsbooks that also have poker
· Poker games at sports bars
Hardly anybody has ever heard of the game we call Sports Poker! Well, now you’ve heard of it, but maybe you still don’t know what it is.
Sports Poker is exactly what it sounds like - a combination of (live) sports and poker. It is a real poker game, or perhaps a “poker-like” game. It has bets, calls, folds, bluffs, etc., and those terms mean precisely the same thing in Sports Poker as they do in regular poker. However, live sports are an integral part of Sports Poker, so it’s obviously not normal poker! A “hand” in Sports Poker is not what you’re used to. There are no straights or full houses.
How can a live sporting event be an integral part of a poker game? Well, in Sports Poker the value of each card depends on what happens in the live sporting event you are watching, so the strength of your hand changes with the action on the field.
If you are a sports fan and a poker player already, you will understand Sports Poker effortlessly. If you are not already a poker player, learning to play a Sports Poker game is about like learning any other poker game. The rules are simple, but there is strategic complexity for those that want to play well.
Just like traditional poker has Texas Hold’em, Stud Poker, Draw Poker, etc., Sports Poker is more than one game. There are versions of Sports Poker for any and every sport. Of course, we have not worked out the game details for every sport! But we have prototypes for Football, Baseball, Soccer, Daily Fantasy Sports contests, and Bracket games, with more on the way. In fact, we currently have two kinds of Football Poker!
Our first version of Football Poker (called Drive Poker) has a new hand for every drive. We also have an alternate version of Football Poker, which divides the games into the intervals between scores. We call that Football Next Score Poker.
We also have a deck for Soccer - we call that game Futbol Poker. Futbol Poker also divides the game into intervals between scores. And there is a version of Sports Poker for baseball, called Inning Poker, which has a hand for every half inning. This blog will keep you informed on every aspect of these games, from how they were designed to (hopefully) news about a growing community of players. Ditto for future Sports Poker varieties for basketball, hockey, tennis, fantasy sports, bracket games, and everything else.
The next set of posts will explain the rules common to all Sports Poker games, and then some specifics on the varieties that are available to play today. Together they will serve as a tutorial for aspiring players. I will then branch off into related topics and see where this all goes!