How Poker and Baseball Compare in Excitement

Just like with Baseball, the games of poker is sometimes filled with hours of boredom followed by moments of pure excitement.  Deal the cards, someone raises, and everyone folds.  Rinse, lather, and repeat.  Sounds very similar to the game of baseball.  The players take the field.  Throw to the players, three of them strike out, pop or ground out, and switch for the other team to have their time at the plate.  However, as you will see below, both games also have moments of thrilling excitement, and those are the moments that fans of both live for.

Take for instance baseball.  It is the bottom of the sixth inning and the game is notted up at 0-0.  So far, the game has been a pitchers duel with both teams only giving up a couple of singles each.  The number six hitter is up with a .273 average and 12 homers on the season.  Not a big power threat.  The pitcher makes a mistake and hangs a curveball that the batter launches to deep right.  Fans are now on their feet and erupt into a frenzy as the ball goes sailing over the fence.  Their team is now up and the place is rocking. 

Now let's look at the World Series of Poker.  You are watching the feature table with several well known players, but there hasn't been any real action for quite a while.  Suddenly, there is not only a pre-flop raise, but now a re-raise.  That raise is called and a flop comes down.  The initial raiser puts about 30% of his stack in on the flop and his opponent shoves all-in.  Fans are rising to their feet as the initial bettor calls. 

Now every is up on their feet to see what the two players have.  The players that moved all-in is actually behind and his fans are now all screaming for his needed card to win.  Fans of the player ahead are now chanting for his hand to hold.  This continues through the turn that happens to miss both.  The river card falls and the behind player hits his card.  His fans go crazy and the player that wins the hand runs over to celebrate with his buddies after not being knocked out of the event. 

As you can clearly see, both poker and baseball have elements similar to one another.  It is no wonder that many sites like Pokerlistings.com and many TV stations, including ESPN, now cover poker.  Granted, both games have their similarities, but you cannot doubt that both are games with long periods of boredom followed by moments of absolute excitement.

-Andrew