I was just reading through the Annie Duke chat transcript, and saw that the first question posed was this:
"Gaming? GAMING? Where I come from, playing for money -- on the Internet or elsewhere -- is called GAMBLING. And that's okay by me, but why do you insist on calling it "gaming"? How can you have an honest debate when you don't use honest language?"
Frankly, I think Annie's answer is disingenuous. Not to accept the term "gambling" for poker isn't realistic, and won't win points for honesty. To limit "gambling" to +EV situations, as she appears to do, doesn't conform to any standard definition that I know of. It also has the problem that poker would be "gambling" for some players but not for others--not a very clean or useful way of defining a word.
But my purpose in posting this note isn't primarily to bash Annie or her response. It is, instead, to educate others who might face similar questions/comments/accusations from people who have heard that "gaming" is an industry euphemism, used to avoid having to say the ugly word "gambling," and that as a result it's somehow a fundamentally deceptive or dishonest word. That just isn't so. For details, see
http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/...-gambling.html