Sumo

I became a Life Master of the American Contract Bridge League in 1967.
. Those are duplicate hands where you compare what you would do against others in the identical situation. However, this lowers but does in no way eliminate variance. Your opponents might screw up or make expert playes. You can play into placing in a large field withs skill, but you need some luck to win first. I know duplicate poker is played, but I don't know much about it.

I have played some tornaments after a long layoff. I'm not great like I am at poker.

I feel like the rules would be something like this:

It would be a team competition

16 people from each country, ranked 1 through 16 by a "coach". Each 1 would face each 16 of every other country, each 2 vs all 15s, etc. in a HU 8 game match. You get points for each number player you knock off (ie if a 1 beats a 16, they get 16 points), plus 5 points for each win. the top 6 counties advance to tournament play. Top 2 teams get byes, 3 vs 6, 4 vs 5 etc.
In bracket play, each player will face each other player 1 through 16. You get points based off of the biggest difference between the seeds-with wrap around (ie a win from a 1 vs 16 would be 1, 2 vs 15 2, 3 vs 14 3, 3 vs 5 2, etc).
Whoever has the biggest total advance. Triple Elimination so the better team wins more often.

After we get to three teams left, we play ten 9 man SnGs-3 players from each of the top 3 countries. 10 points for first, 5 points for 2nd, 3 points for third. 5 Bonus points for 2 places. 25 bonus points for sweeping.

The scores after the 10 SnGs are the Gold, Bronze, and Silver medalists for that year.

Beat me to it lol

variance is too high to make it an olympic sport IMO

hypothetically, then, if it were perceived by the general public as a sport, would top pros play it for the glory of a medal (and no $$)?

You honestly consider yourself great at poker? Do you honestly think you are in the top 1,000 or even 5,000 poker players in the world?

Judging from the smell of players after returning from the Rio parking lot on breaks, this will never happen until they stop testing for green. Not that this would ever happen in the first place.

A bigger travesty is how is bowling not a sport at the olympics still yet all these other P.O.S. sports are, especially since there are already worldwide competitions with competitors representing their countries.

lol, flinging a card at a target would be more legit than actually playing poker, keep dreaming fatties

Most top pros would only get to keep around 15% of the medal

lol

OK so what about Hopscotch, Ring around the Rosy, and Circle Jerks??

that evolved into the 4x100m relay

52 card pickup in a swimming pool is the best i can come up with.

Don't think they have sumo in the Olympics. Not sure though.

There was a huge movement for bridge to get into the olympics. As someone mentioned, it was even a demonstration sport in a winter olympics.

Ultimately, this movement failed. Or should I say sanity prevailed!

In response to this, the world mind game olympics was formed (think its called world mind sport games).

This makes sense, bridge is not a sport, it's a mind game (or "mind sport" if you want). So is poker. If anything poker should get into that (I think the other games are draughts (which is like checkers on a bigger board), chess, go, and chinese checkers.

BTW because of the move for the olympics, there have been some unusual things happen in bridge. Notably, I have been drug tested when I've played in the world championships lol. This is absurd imo, but there you go. One player even was stripped of her medal for refusing to take the drug test.