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If you are not familiar with craps, it is a game played with dice, and the important thing to know about it is that you cannot win at it unless you figure out some way to control how you throw the dice…ie, you cheat. You CANNOT win by playing by the rules. It is a mathematical impossibility.

You can, however, win at poker, to the point where some people actually play it as a full-time job.

Craps requires that you throw dice, can count up to twelve and add single-digit numbers in your head up to a total of twelve. You don’t need to know anything else; you can if you wish control your rate of loss by learning the odds of the various bet types and rolls, but as you’re going to lose repeatedly no matter what, it doesn’t really matter if you do or not.

Poker requires that you learn how many cards are in a standard playing deck, what suits those cards are, what the non-numerical cards mean and how they are ranked, what the different poker hands are and how they are ranked, just to play a single hand. If you want to win, you must then learn the statistical probabilities of each hand, modified by how many players are in the game; what the various positions at the table mean in terms of increasing or decreasing your odds, and how to calculate the odds of your hand winning versus how much of your bet it requires to win the entire table of bets. This is more math than most people exercise during their adult lives already.

So, think about the kind of person who would get hooked on craps–a mindless low-skill game where you are guaranteed to lose–versus the kind of person who would get hooked on poker–a psychologically and mathematically complex game where if you’re willing to work at it you’re guaranteed to win.

Or:

“Enjoying craps opens up a window on a central thread constant in John’s life,” says John Weaver, McCain’s former chief strategist, who followed him to many a casino. “Taking a chance, playing against the odds.”

Or:

[Obama] always had his head in the game. The stakes were low enough — $1 ante and $3 top raise — to afford a long shot. Not Obama. He studied the cards as closely as he would an eleventh-hour amendment to a bill. The odds were religion to him. Only rarely did he bluff. “He had a pretty good idea about what his chances were,” says Denny Jacobs, a former state senator from East Moline.

And:

McCain’s campaign, like his life, has been marked by its embrace of living dangerously and by clear runs of fortune and disappointment. Obama, meanwhile, has succeeded, no less remarkably, by diligently executing a premeditated strategy.

Thanks, Time Magazine!

Think “delicate international situation.” Think “perilous economic balance.” Think–

Let’s go Obaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaama ‘08!