you need intelligence and more to compete high stakes poker..you need BALLS too. You are unfortunately deficient in this department
You need to stop writing and start thinking. The reason this is the case is because chess is a game of perfect information, and therefore great skill dominates and luck plays much less of a role. On the contrary poker is a game of imperfect knowledge and luck plays a much greater role. Now, think for a moment. Say I sat down and challenged even a player rated a couple of hundred rating points higher than me. What would be the use of a wager? The chess rating system is extremely accurate, and my expectancy to win would be well known. So unless I got money odds to equalize it more or less, it would be foolish to enter into this wager. Wagers are most interesting when the game actually has some skill, but luck has a very if not most of dominating role. Otherwise who in their right mind bets when they know they are going to lose? Inspite of all this, chess is played for money to gamble, just not enormous sums of money for this very reason. Bridge is the game that sits almost perfectly between chess and poker, although it is far closer to chess than poker, and it is played for money, although again nowhere near the same prize funds.
what would be use of a wager you ask? do you think that maybe the difference b/w paper trading and actual risk kind of illustrates the point
White to move and win. Remember, white goes up and black goes down. So blacks rook pawn is just two moves from promoting. Most white players would resign here since it appears that black cannot be stopped from getting a new queen. No computer help. Do not move the pieces (if you set it up on a board). Solve the puzzle in your head. If you can't solve it, then don't, but randomly moving pieces defeats the purpose of the puzzle.
White to move and mate in exactly three moves. White moves down in the diagram (which is backwards to most diagrams). So in other words, the white pawn is on e6, not e3.