In popular poker you are just playing against other players, not the house.
Doesn't the house take a percentage of the pot ("rake", isn't it called?).
Not a poker player, just thought that was a thing.
Depends on where you play. For some the house is a literal house not a casino, and thus no rake.
Yes. The person you are responding to doesn't quite understand the comment they are responding to :) The rake can turn a breakeven or even winning player into a losing player. That's what we mean.
Sorry, that is fair enough, he is describing a casino. I never played in Vegas during the hold 'em boom, but went to plenty of houses where there wasn't really a rake.
Sure, that’s considered the worst player type to be and generally tight aggressive is considered the best strategy.
Zero-sum nature of the game aside, Meta developed an AI that wins consistently at poker, so it is possible to be good at poker and win consistently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluribus_(poker_bot)
Once you consider what the house earns, poker is a net negative for the players. In order for there to be some big winners, there have to be a lot of losers. And a shocking number of those losers will, thanks to our selective memories, consider themselves winning players.