CBS columnist bashes gambling, WSOP

[SGspecial]

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The author, Gregg Doyel, is well-known for being a huge douche. I have flamed him on the message boards and sent him hate mail directly on many occasions.

Last year he wrote an article that said, in essence, that because Ryan Howard was hitting a lot of home runs the presumption should be that he's using steroids or HGH.

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It's interesting how people's opinion changes based on which teat they are suckling at. The author is making his living (in part) off of bashing a tremendously talented and classy guy like Ryan Howard. Howard, in return, is being exploited by his employers, the Phila. Phillies, because even though he was tremendously talented, he spent 1.5 seasons stuck in the minor leagues while Jim Thome played 1B for the Phillies and management refused to trade him. As a consequence, instead of being arbitration eligible after his MVP season last year (and ROY season in '05), he had no recourse but to accept a 1 year extension at <$1M, probably the lowest salary for a reigning MVP since 1982 or something.

Meanwhile, the Phillies fans have it even worse. I mean, many of them are probably clinically "addicted" to baseball, shelling out $1000's of dollars a year on tickets, parking, concession, merchandise, etc. to feed their addiction. It's just these kind of sports crazed losers that will frequent said douche's website to read his articles. Of course, the house in this "game" has about the biggest edge anywhere as the Phillies are poised to lose the 10,000th game in their ignominious history and have won a championship exactly once in 125 years. Hell, even Hal Fowler could have won another bracelet if given that long.

[NHFunkii]

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The guy's clearly an idiot and too quick to conflate poker with slots, but his central point about the drawbacks of gambling (including poker) is an important one that doesn't get enough attention among the professional poker community, in my opinion.

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agreed
if you guys think poker isnt just as capable of ruining lives as any other form of gambling, you're wrong
of course I vehemently oppose banning it just because of that and I disagree with the main point of his article, but that doesn't mean that gambling addiction isnt a huge problem and that poker doesnt contribute to it.

[fees]

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He has a point.

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Yeah but its silly, wreckless, and causes more trouble than the alternative

[SGspecial]

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Maybe he's just bitter at everyone who wants to have fun, perhaps he can't get it up.

Eitherway he's a misinformed,biased idiot.

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I bet someone just stole his crack pipe.

[dogsballs]

Who's teh editor; I think they shoulda caught this one...

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Beginning with Moneymaker, an accountant, four of the past five WSOP winners have been relative novices, people who don't gamble for a living.

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ummm....Money, Fossil, Hachem, Gold....who's that 5th one since moneymaker..?

[Jeff76]

I wonder if most of the people who plunk down $10,000 do it for the experience or the chance to win big monies? I mean, I realize no one would play if it weren't for the money, but I'd think a lot of the losing players who are in this view it as a chance to have "the experience" more than a chance to win big.

At any rate, poker can ruin people's lives, especially those with a gambling addiction. It is true that for most people it isn't a skill game- they have to get lucky to win. I don't have a problem with talking about that or discussing what might be done to lessen that effect, but if we're going to discuss poker in this light, you have to include other similar activities like day trading. It irks me that people are so outspoken about poker because it's so easy to lose a lot of money fast while there are plenty of slick advertisements on TV for non-skillful investors to do the same thing.

[PokeReader]

My biggest problem is that he essentially says that no one can gamble without getting addicted, which is clearly untrue. That you can't play high stakes without being an idiot. And the sum total of his support for this is a few antedotes and one vague statistic with no citation. Three percent of the country addicted, I guarntee you that was a biased study, but does he tell us where it was from so we can judge? No, that would let readers make a judgement for themselves. And zero support for this notion that you can't win at higher stakes and every at the WSOP is by definition an idiot. Classical piece of just putting weak evidence in to support the supposition you had in the first place. Editors must be terrible to not change it at all.

[KurtSF]

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ummm....Money, Fossil, Hachem, Gold....who's that 5th one since moneymaker..?

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Yeah, and the WSOP is ten days long, too. The article is full of idiocy of all sorts.

[Uglyowl]

CBS Sportsline Fantasy Sports = Gambling… Burn in hell

[NHFunkii]

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ummm....Money, Fossil, Hachem, Gold....who's that 5th one since moneymaker..?

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Yeah, and the WSOP is ten days long, too. The article is full of idiocy of all sorts.

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the main event is at least that long isnt it?