For as long as I can remember, strategy games have been part of my life. I grew up with Rook, Spades, Chess, Checkers, Risk, Monopoly, and all sorts of other card and board games where, to me, figuring out the optimal strategy for winning was the objective. Add to that a few turn-based and real-time strategy computer games and you can see where my view of games comes from. I always wanted to win, and maybe more importantly, play perfectly.

Poker was never something we played much, mainly because without real money betting, it really isn’t much of a game. Once I got a little older and poker became more popular, some friends of mine started playing one-table tournaments for $10 or $20 a person. This was right up my alley. The cost to play was small enough where everyone could handle it and the game was defined and structured enough that I felt like I could get my head around ways to strategically outmaneuver my opponents instead of it just being about gambling and getting lucky.

At this point, and for many years after,I always had this notion in the back of my head that everyone wanted to play for the same reason I did: to win. When we played Spades, I wanted to win just as much as I do when I play poker, but the difference is that in Spades, we measured winning by a point race to 500. In poker, it was always self-evident to me that the measuring stick was your bottom line. If over the course of a month of playing these little one-table tournaments I was the person that had netted the most cash, I was the winner.

The very first night I ever played ended with me sitting at my computer designing a spreadsheet in Excel to track my results and included the date, location, buy-in, number of entrants, my finish, my payout, and my net profit or loss. I can still go back and pull up the data from those sessions, long before the days of PokerTracker and Holdem Manager.

There was a major flaw in my thinking at this point in time, though: I assumed everyone else was doing the same thing. I thought because I was playing to win and because I was defining winning as showing a profit over the long-term, everyone else was too. They weren’t then and they aren’t now. And that is a really, really good thing for poker.

So why were they playing if they didn’t want to win? Well, they didn’t mind winning, but it wasn’t their main reason for being there. For some, it was a chance to get away from their family for a little time with the guys. For others, it was an excuse to grab a few slices of pizza and a beer. For some, it was simply somewhere to go and be social. Of course, there are those that just love the adrenaline rush of gambling.

Over the years, as I have thought about it and observed, I have seen that there are more reasons to play than there are cards in the deck. Playing to profit or win is only a small percentage of what drives people to play poker.

One of the most interesting reasons I have heard for why people play is relaxation. I enjoy playing poker, but have never thought of it as relaxing. I’ve always viewed strategy games as a mental workout. But, some of my favorite people to play with are high-powered, extremely smart and calculating businessmen who do all their strategizing and maneuvering at their day job and, to them, the chance to sit down and play poker is relaxing. If they really wanted to, could they learn to be good or even great players? Yes, but that isn’t why they are there.

Understanding your opponent’s motivation for playing is another step in understanding how they will play and devising an effective strategy for playing against them. Don’t assume that just because you are playing for profit that the guy next to you is. And please, if he is playing for fun, do your part to make sure he gets what he is looking for out of the game.

Court Harrington has worked on the business side of the poker industry in roles including tournament reporting for PocketFives, radio hosting for PokerRoad Radio, coaching for the WSOP Academy, and a variety of behind-the-scenes responsibilities. He also plays in cash games and tournaments. Harrington is currently doing consulting work and exploring business opportunities outside of the poker industry. You can contact him at PokerRoadCourt@gmail.com.