Schrodinger's poker chips

I used to hate playing cards but then a friend challenged me to a game, and I got addicted to playing poker online. When I first started it was with play money, poker chips that had no value at all. It took a while but I turned 5000 into 7000000, and then decided I should perhaps try playing with real money...

It's a different game when you're actually putting money on the table. Trying to steal the pot by going all in with crappy cards is a lot more scary when it might actually cost to loose. High stakes poker can have a drastic effect on your playing style and make you a soft target for aggressive players that sense your fear and take advantage of it.

So, where does Schrodinger fit into all this? You've probably heard of his cat. The cat that's locked in a box with a mechanism which kills it if a radioactive element decays... seems like a pretty stupid idea to me but quantum physicists seem to like it. Apparently the cat would be simultaneously alive and dead until you open the box. I won't even try to explain why, you'll have to read a book on QED if you really want to understand it (Schrodinger's Kittens is a good place to start). The point is that a quantum particle exists in every possible state until an observer looks at it and forces it to choose one over another. You probably know this already...

What does it have to do with poker? When you play with play money you know that the chips are worthless, and you can play without excessive fear. When you play for a huge pile of cash you know that the chips could pay for a lambo, and you get nervous... If you play with bitcoin, as long as you have no intention of cashing out or spending the bitcoin for at least ten or twenty years, the cost of BTC in todays market has no bearing at all on the value of the chips on the table. According to some people bitcoin will be dead and gone, completely worthless. Others predict it will live on and one could cost $1000000 once the world adopts it and 21million coins have to be shared between the billions of people that could want some.

Until and unless you open the box, by taking your BTC poker chips out of the game and cashing them in, they have the potential to be both worthless, and worth a fortune. The chips seem to exist in this strange quantum dual state. To my twisted mind this makes the game far more interesting and fun. You could be playing high stakes and not even know it, you can relax and play freely because you could be playing with a big bag of nothing. Because of the uncertainty you still care enough to focus and play well. Bitcoin poker rocks.