[David Sklansky]

You are making this way to complicated. The fact is that to become a decent poker player you have to have many useful attributes. Many more than required for other games. If you didn't have them already, as most people don't, poker gives you an incentive to learn them. You do agree with that, right? And you also agree that many of those who have a negative opinion of poker did not realize the above, right? And that upon realizing it a parent, for instance might have more reason than he thought to encourage or at least accept that his child take up the game, especially if the parent didn't think his child would obsess over it.

If more people realize the above it may or may not affect governmental decisions about playing poker. There are already plenty of people who think that internet poker be allowed even though they didn't realize all of the positive aspects about the game. There are also undoubtedly people who pretty much do appreciate poker's upsides and STILL think internet poker should be illegal. But there are also many people who presently think it should be illegal partially because they think poker is just another gambling game. They might change their mind.

Whether they SHOULD change their mind is a political and philosophy question that is not addressed in our paper. And I refuse to argue it because as you say, I would be considered biased. But even though I would benefit from the full legalization of poker doesn't mean that a straightforward laying out of the facts, regarding attributes you need to be a good poker player, is somehow disingenuous. We didn't break new ground here. Poker players already knew about the things we wrote about. Most non players didn't. Whether letting them know will change anything, or should change anything is another subject.