CBS columnist bashes gambling, WSOP

[vhawk01]

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Gambling, Poker, Drinking, Pot, Women, Cars, can ruin lives and so can many other things that most people enjoy reasonably. To say that you are a favorite to become a degenerate with any of those things is a flat out lie.
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Whether or not you disagree with the author of the article, the vices you listed aren't similar in nature. You can blow through your paycheck in a gambling binge much faster than you can an alcoholic or other drug binge.

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Why pick on just things that some consider "vices". A lot of hobbies are expensive. You can easily go through $20k on camera equipment, or home theater equipment, or model trains, or dance lessons also.

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In addition to the points I made earlier, with vices such as drugs or alcohol, or hobbies(?!), there's no pretension that spending money on these things is going to result in you getting more money back. This incentive, unique to gambling, acts as an accelerant in the race to blow your paycheck for a very small minority of people.

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[revots33]

I love how this guy takes 3 random calls to some gambling hotline in Indiana someplace, and uses them as his proof that "You may be that one unlikely person impervious to its evil lure. But in most cases the addiction will eventually win."

LOL how did this guy pass his college courses? Has he ever heard of research or statistical evidence or fact-checking?

And how the f**k is Chris Moneymaker "absurdly named"? That's his freaking name jack*ss. It's not like he's a pro wrestler who made up his name.

[FireStorm]

1) This is America, the freedom of speech and freedom of the press still exist, no matter how badly morons want to take them away. The man has the fundamental right to pen this article. If you do or don't agree with it, that's fine, but people in this thread are basically going berserk and calling for heads b/c someone had the audacity to suggest that poker isn't the most positive thing in the world. Relax people, it's one person's opinion.

2) The actual point of the article is fairly well made. Almost all televised poker focuses on the dream stories, that everyone can become rich off a small investment, and that Joe Smith and John Q Public are such great players and etc etc etc. We rarely if ever hear about the losing side, the people who play 100 events and cash in 3, the people who overrun their bankroll to play, the people who cancel appointments and neglect jobs and family when they clearly shouldn't be playing. This is sort of akin to the fact that some of the know it alls in the cash game forums on this site constantly flame people in threads, but have been subsequently been proven to be among the worst losing players on XYZ site. Poker is unfortunately not all glamour.

3) This being said, the article is over-sensational, poorly worded, and contains very little hard analytical fact or numbers presentation. It doesn't make for a great read b/c it doesn't differentiate poker from slots/craps etc, and we only get vague references to unknown people with gambling problems. He also, as aforementioned, doesn't suggest an alternative.

[Lori]

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You won't hear that you're more likely to become like June Williams, the New Orleans retiree profiled by the Boston Globe after she lost her home to Hurricane Katrina and then days later lost her life savings -- less than $1,000 -- at a nearby casino. You won't hear how she cashed her grandson's $279 emergency check from the government and gambled that away.



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Mississippi's gulf cost casinos generated $500,000 (£270,000) a day in gambling taxes alone and every single casino has been wrecked.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4202952.stm

Lori

[T-God]

Don't give these guys attention. Any reasonable person will read this article and see the countless leaps of logic he has made as well as the lack of proof of any of his claims. He's a retard who has managed to intimidate a webiste into giving him a job through writing aggressively. Just ignore the [censored] loser; he's either completely retarded and believes what he says, or he'sa miserable POS who has to lie to get paid less way less than a poker pro.

[FireStorm]

It would be fair to note after the last post that the author's key point is that very few people are in fact being paid more than he is, and that the term "poker pro" applies to about 5% of the field.

[T-God]

But it applies to me!!!

[aislephive]

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2) The actual point of the article is fairly well made. Almost all televised poker focuses on the dream stories, that everyone can become rich off a small investment, and that Joe Smith and John Q Public are such great players and etc etc etc. We rarely if ever hear about the losing side, the people who play 100 events and cash in 3, the people who overrun their bankroll to play, the people who cancel appointments and neglect jobs and family when they clearly shouldn't be playing. This is sort of akin to the fact that some of the know it alls in the cash game forums on this site constantly flame people in threads, but have been subsequently been proven to be among the worst losing players on XYZ site. Poker is unfortunately not all glamour.

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Sure this is true, but at the same time the current "cinderella stories" aren't really that great or help prove poker's legitimacy. Chris Moneymaker overcame all odds, beat a table full of mostly pros at the final table including one of the most feared players in the event HU to win it all. This just adds to the "luck" mystique in poker where people look at Moneymaker and say to themselves, "well damn I could do that!". While it's good for poker in the sense that it brings more players into the game who think they have as good of a shot as anybody else, it's also bad in that people who don't play poker and are just overall uneducated will immediately look at poker as a game of luck. But imagine if the stories of players like CTS and Aba were widely publicized as well as the entire world of the consistent winning online players. I have a feeling the way poker is looked at by randoms would change dramatically as well as change a lot of peoples opinion on the anti-poker or neutral side.

[tpir]

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High-stakes gambling is for addicts and idiots, which makes the World Series of Poker a celebration of the sad and the stupid

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at least he's not biased.

sounds like he just thinks gambling is tacky. any valid points about gambling addiction are overshadowed his obvious disdain for anyone who gambles, even recreationally.

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qft.

i have a hard time understanding why this person would be employed as a columnist... unless being biased and polemic is his shtick or whatever.

[Cactus Jack]

Some people do suffer from an addiction. Many, many more people suffer from poor writing. I lost too many minutes of my life reading his column and the responses.

I think piss-poor writing should be illegal. Those who engage in it for profit should be jailed. The worst offenders, such as the columnist in question and the writer of this post, should both be put to death, immediately.