[TheMathProf]

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I think getting a pro to take down the main event solidifies the argument that poker is a game of skill.

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People keep saying this, but it's just nonsense. That "evidence" would be so easy to refute.

Let's say you go in front of a congressional committee that's having a debate about whether or not poker is a game of skill.

{snipped fake congressional hearing}


There are sooo many better ways to make the skill argument.

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I agree that there are better ways to make the skill argument using statistical data and such.

However, I think the public perception of skill lies in the idea of "the best players in the world can do this". When people who consider themselves amateurs repeatedly win the main event, that hurts the credibility of the skill argument.

It's not so much that you use the point of "Pro X won Main Event 2008" as an argument that poker is a game of skill, but that "Pro X won Main Event 2008" discourages people from questioning the amount of skill involved.

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...[My] point is that if these FOF types try to attack this guy on how he sees and practices his faith, it will backfire. They will be revealing that they are using the idea of family as a guise to force their morality on the rest of us -- "My god!! Even being a Christian is not enough for these guys, you have to be a certain type of Christian. How dare they!!!"

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But in all honesty, how many people took a look at this guy the first moment they saw him praying for a knockout and said, "Wow, this is tremendous! What a fantastic upstanding young man, fervently praying to the Lord for the river to hold his hand"?

A more accurate reaction is going to be of the "WTF?" or the LOL variety. He looks bad doing it, and I do think many Christians will want to distance themselves from that behavior.

The other piece -- that there are Christians out there who want to shove morals down your throat and think that everybody else is doing it wrong -- is not new and is not really a secret, and I don't really know why this particular instance would cause them to act any differently.

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Am I the only one who thinks this is a non-event. Do you think most others who won it would be foolish enough to redistribute $6-$7 million back to others via losses? This is an insane argument and not the first time I heard it.

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He probably wouldn't.

At the same time, Moneymaker didn't have to in order to get that amount of cash redistributed (and more) to the poker world. All he had to do was win, look and act like Joe Average, and have other people say, "Hey, I can do that!"

I haven't exactly put my finger on why, but Jerry doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who is capable of doing the same thing for poker.

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We don't need to change the percpective of extreme right conservative Christians though, we simply needed a champion who could be a Christian with solid morals to show that many poker players are GOOD people (whether Christian or non-Christian) to the general non-poker playing public. We got that in Jerry Yang.

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But, and tell me if I'm off my rocker a bit, is there public perception that the past few ME champions aren't good people? With the exception of Jamie Gold, who struck me as a bit offputting, Hachem, Raymer, and Moneymaker all generally struck me as being good guys. Perhaps not "religiously" so, but I don't think they have the opposite spin that makese people want to look at poker players and talk about how horrible they are.

Edited for formatting.