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Old 11-20-2007, 10:35 AM
oldbookguy oldbookguy is offline
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Default Re: November 14th: House Judiciary Committee Hearing Thread

First, look at what gaming is and put it in context with everything she said then compare to gambling.

GAMING: verb, 3. a competitive activity involving skill, chance, or endurance on the part of two or more persons who play according to a set of rules, usually for their own amusement or for that of spectators.

Gambling: noun, 1. to play at any game of chance for money or other stakes.
2. to stake or risk money, or anything of value, on the outcome of something involving chance: to gamble on a toss of the dice.

Since we consider poker a game of skill with a chance factor as secondary, then gaming is correct.

obg

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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

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