Poker (Texas Holdem) or Blackjack?

[mofungoo]

In Blackjack, everyone at the table can beat the dealer on a given hand. In poker you are forced to ante up every hand and there can only be 1 winner (except in rare circumstances) among several players at the table. You'd better be good at poker.

In Hold'em most cash games do not have an ante, you have to post a big blind and a small blind, usually 1/2 of the big blind once each per round of the table. Tournaments sometimes require an ante as the blinds increase.

[ohbehave]

ohbehave is wrong in stating:

"Poker is a much slower game at about 20 hands per hour in live play."

30 hands per hour is the standard.

Fair enough. I was going to change that to 20-30 per hour but left it as 20. Still slow compared to BJ at anything other than worst conditions.

[biggg]

I can make more with a $3k BR playing online poker than I can with $30k at BJ. Playing multiple tables it is rare to have a losing month. After expenses and travel time it is not close. If I had to play live only, then yes, probably BJ is better.

One caveat is that online these days the competition is usually pretty tough so you have to bumhunt hard. In addition you probably have to put in hundreds of hours studying the game or playing very low stakes just to be a tiny winner. Whereas I can teach anyone to beat BJ in a few weeks. But even when one counts this time spent learning the equation is still heavily in favor of online poker.

The one thing I will say is that poker is horribly boring and frustrating. BJ is much more fun.

If I lived in Vegas I would go for the best of both worlds, I would check out the poker room and sit when the opposition was truly terrible, otherwise play BJ or other games.

One last thing, the experience I have from studying BJ and other forms of AP gambling greatly changed my approach to poker, in particularly when it came to table selection and BR management.

[ZenKinG]

to put it simple

BIG BANKROLL - Blackjack is better

Small to medium Bankroll - Poker might be better. But like others have said, you better be a real solid player at poker, because you might just run into players way better than you, and sometimes luck might not be on your side, etc on the river and turn card.

All in all blackjack is still probably better overall, but if you want to, i highly suggest to learn both because they go very well together. When casino is crowded you play poker, when the casino is empty you play blackjack.

[bigplayer]

the glory days of easy winnings at poker are long over. It takes much skill to win versus players far better than you or a lot of weak players at the table. Even the best poker players at normal 2/5 NL games seldom have a lifetime win rate in live poker of more than $40 or $50 an hour. You can win that spreading 2x$10 to 2x$80 on a typical locals Double Deck game in Vegas. With BJ you KNOW what your edge and expected win is. At poker, you have no way to know your expectation.

BP

[redthetiger]

The way the question is worded, the answer really is that it depends. If you don't have a large bankroll, then I think poker is definitely the answer to which is better. A sub 10k bankroll in Poker is probably going to go a lot further than Blackjack, and assuming you are a skilled/winning player and able to 'beat the game', you'd likely have a better win rate at that level in Poker ($1/2 NL) compared to $5 blackjack tables. But, the competition level has improved overall, and is much much tougher in online poker. I used to play a lot during the big poker boom 10 years ago and have plenty of stories I could share on how bad the players were and constantly wondered to myself how long it would last. Well, its certainly a lot different now. The point is whether it is live or online play, game/table selection is key, which is something that both Blackjack and Poker have in common. There are still are bad players playing live, but its important to be able to play at the times they are most likely to be at the table.

I could go on a lot further, but the question is so general that it's really hard to give a concise answer for it.

[johnvic]

One caveat is that online these days the competition is usually pretty tough so you have to bumhunt hard. In addition you probably have to put in hundreds of hours studying the game or playing very low stakes just to be a tiny winner. Whereas I can teach anyone to beat BJ in a few weeks. But even when one counts this time spent learning the equation is still heavily in favor of online poker.

biggg, are you playing online in the US? The sites I found that fly under DOJ radar are much smaller than Stars and Full Tilt.