Sunday NY Times Magazine 5000 word article on online poker

[adanthar]

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Sucks for Hogan, g0000t for me.

He learned a valuable life lesson for less than the price of one semester. I really dont see what the big deal was. I am sure he learned more during this fiasco than in any of his classes.

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Did you read the bank robbing part? It's probably gonna cost him a lot more than a semester (even if he gets probation somehow, there's still the lawyer fees, heh.)

Personally, if given a choice I'd just never play with guys like this.

[LongDongSilver]

I think you fail to recognize one important aspect of Compulsive Gambling. You tell parents to reprimand their kids when it comes to going over the top but compulsive gambling is like any other disease...a disease. Those whom are affect can not control it. It is just harder to spot unlike Alcoholics or drug addicts...I once read somewhere a guy cleverly stated, "...well you don't smell cards under my breath." Your whole conception of compulsive gambling is skewed by the possibility that those affect can merely stop and control themselves where and when they want to. This is not the case.

[disjunction]

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I think you fail to recognize one important aspect of Compulsive Gambling. You tell parents to reprimand their kids when it comes to going over the top but compulsive gambling is like any other disease...a disease. Those whom are affect can not control it. It is just harder to spot unlike Alcoholics or drug addicts...I once read somewhere a guy cleverly stated, "...well you don't smell cards under my breath." Your whole conception of compulsive gambling is skewed by the possibility that those affect can merely stop and control themselves where and when they want to. This is not the case.

[/ QUOTE ]

The article occurs at a time when Congress is contemplating gambling legislation, and it practically begs the reader to conclude that the solution to this Alcoholism is to ban alcohol.

I read at least one study that said Alcoholics do better when they learn to control themselves rather than going cold-turkey. So yes, teaching children to control gambling at an early age is the correct solution. Rather than shuttering it away to the side and calling it a "disease".

If they don't play cards, they will play the stock market, and when they go broke no one will write a sympathy article for "bad investments". The article would have been much better if it provided the correct prospective on how gambling is unavoidable in a free society, and how an education system in which most children never encounter the word "probability" produces a nation of dumb people unequipped for the modern world.

[Gotmilk]

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"When I spoke with an online hold-'em player from Florida who had lost a whopping $250,000 online, he told me: "It fried my brain. I would roll out of bed, go to my computer and stay there for 20 hours. One night after I went to sleep, my dad called. I woke up instantly, picked up the phone and said, 'I raise. "

You gotta be kidding me. The reporter just made that up.

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Whatever foolio the reporter interviewed probably made it up, as well as the $250,000 loss.

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Two days ago my girlfriend woke me up after I had been playing bridge all night and I said "You just cost us two tricks." Awhile back after playing poker and drinking all night, she tried to wake me up but I said "But I have pocket Kings."