The Great Poker Debate

Announcer · Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2005 3:25 pm

http://www.casinobuzz.com January 07, 2005 - We're not here to challenge the popularity of poker. That's a given with the growing number of casual and professional players, celebrity tournaments and television programs centered on the ancient gambling game. What needs to be discussed, however is poker's place in the world of men of all ages in America. For a great many guys the powerful trinity of forces that shape our lives come from the very short roster of sports, beer, women, sleep, money and chicken wings (food). That is to say, if you want to know what three things take up the most brainspace of the dude in question, you'd do well to pick a few from that list. Of course there can be exceptions and all sorts of variants like mortgages, ninjas, skateboards, bikinis and what have you. But the point is finding poker's place is important because it can't quite stand on its own yet as an institution and therefore must be considered under the meta-category of sports.

And that is the question we must answer here: is poker a sport?

ESPN Original Entertainment is debuting its brand new show TILT Thursday January 13 at 9PM PST and thus the stakes are high, if you'll pardon the pun.

Because science is often boring and has no place here, we'll use anecdotal evidence and refutations here by taking the two strongest arguments for poker as a sport and the two strongest arguments against it.

Poker is a sport because:

?.they air tournaments on ESPN. If showing up on ESPN was the only standard an activity had to live up to in order to be considered a sport, then some hefty, loafer-wearing toy poodle trainer from Nova Scotia is as much of an athlete as Carmelo Anthony.

Sorry, poker, you don't get to be a sport until the kids on SportsCenter are breaking down highlights of Chris "Jesus" Ferguson with some regularity. And that's not going to happen because watching some pasty dude in sunglasses staring at a pile of chips just isn't compelling theatre. Stuart Scott can't drop a "Boo-YAA" on Phil Ivey catching his fifth diamond on the river. We love ESPN but they're really letting the game of poker considering there are no jersey numbers or specialized shoes for the competitors.

?.it takes concentration and strategy to succeed. That's a fairly compelling argument. At the highest level of any sport, physical abilities aren't as important as mental focus and game-specific intelligence. Michael Jordan would be as ferocious at a poker table as he was on the hardwood because of his ability to dial-in. Plus poker is all about keeping your cool and keeping your wits about while under pressure, something that all guys can appreciate. The big piles of money supply the weight that's placed on the participants' shoulders and the silence during a tense moment can be deafening.

We'll have to allow this argument to stand in spite of the fact that this is still a game of chance where a significant piece of the outcome is completely out of your hands.

Poker is not a sport because:

?..there are no balls involved and there's no sweating. We invite you to sit down with some of the professionals in Nevada and see how much you sweat. And experience also tells us that while there are no inflatable or rubber filled balls involved like in many conventional balls, you'd better have something down there when it comes time to put another player to the test for all of his chips. The poker rule book can't tell you when it's time to man-up and draw a line in the sand daring somebody to make a move on you.

This argument is rejected. Poker may be about nothing more than sweat and balls.

?..the best players are not athletes. This is true. There's nothing obvious about Johnny Chan's physical abilities that makes you want to hop up and become a pro poker player so you can emulate him. That is unless you consider sitting at a table sipping cocktails and flipping chips around to be something graceful and amazing.

We're not ones to point fingers about doughy physiques, but it's pretty much a fact that a sport has to have athletes for it to be the real thing. Baseball, bowling and golf barely make the cut because at least some of those athletes have well developed body parts and coordination to help them get by.

This argument stands. If they ran around the table after every hand they lost, then poker players might be able to up the athletic quotient of the "sport"

So in the final judgment we'll allow poker to barely be a minor, niche sport because of its extremely competitive nature. If track and field and boxing are the original sports because the first things humans did on this planet was run and fight, then poker can squeeze in there too because the next thing we as a people did was take each other's money.

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Source: Casino Buzz
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