LOL, stopped reading here.

Another dumbo that believes we are all constantly dancing on top of pink soft clouds...

Good for you....

Ok bud prove me wrong and I'll donate $100 to a charity of your choice.

Now I know you're 20 and never played live.
Come back when you've grown up and have a little more experience from life.

lol ok, source?

I'll make the orginal bet $200 & I'll give you another $10k if you can prove I'm 20 & have never played in a card room.

Deal?

Cardroom? You mean one of the potty-trained shinny new ones inside a casino?

Try an underground one, the kind that doesn't pay taxes, sells illegal alcohol and cigarettes and is run by maffia connected people. The kind you see in "rounders", which I know most of you think it's just a movie staged cardroom, but it in fact reflects reality very accurate.

Anyway, I'm not here to teach you or anybody else about facts of life, just thought that it was out of place that a succesfull poker writer, website owner, publisher, etc..., in other words, somebody finnancially interested in poker being around at any cost wrote an article about how good poker is for society.

But that's only my opinion and it was clearly explained to me that that is how things work in America.

End of thread. (for me)

PS. I answered "yes" to 5 of the questions from gamblersanonymous, but I thought many of the questions were quite bad. It was impossible to answer "no".

You are making this way to complicated. The fact is that to become a decent poker player you have to have many useful attributes. Many more than required for other games. If you didn't have them already, as most people don't, poker gives you an incentive to learn them. You do agree with that, right? And you also agree that many of those who have a negative opinion of poker did not realize the above, right? And that upon realizing it a parent, for instance might have more reason than he thought to encourage or at least accept that his child take up the game, especially if the parent didn't think his child would obsess over it.

If more people realize the above it may or may not affect governmental decisions about playing poker. There are already plenty of people who think that internet poker be allowed even though they didn't realize all of the positive aspects about the game. There are also undoubtedly people who pretty much do appreciate poker's upsides and STILL think internet poker should be illegal. But there are also many people who presently think it should be illegal partially because they think poker is just another gambling game. They might change their mind.

Whether they SHOULD change their mind is a political and philosophy question that is not addressed in our paper. And I refuse to argue it because as you say, I would be considered biased. But even though I would benefit from the full legalization of poker doesn't mean that a straightforward laying out of the facts, regarding attributes you need to be a good poker player, is somehow disingenuous. We didn't break new ground here. Poker players already knew about the things we wrote about. Most non players didn't. Whether letting them know will change anything, or should change anything is another subject.

"Funny as well how many keep saying that it is not the role of the gvt. to tell us what we can or cannot. Well, big surprise, but that is exactly their role"

You are completely insane,and your wish to impose your ideas upon others is sickning.Your logic is also idiotic.You see an addict and claim the object seeked by the addict is the problem.This is foolish.The problem more likely is the addict fails to control his addictive personality.He is at fault,nothing else.If it wasnt poker,trust me,hed self destruct another way if this is the road he chooses.Freedom comes with responsibility,to deny freedom to everyone just because a few abuse it is obscene.And to even think its the governments job to force us to make life choices against our will because they will protect us from making bad decisions is a scary thought.They should keep me from killing you,not keep me from killing myself because i have the right to do that.

Hey will, if you are saying that poker is a rather silly game DS would most likely agree with you. It's not really the game he would like to defend but the nature of the game. No one denies that a few persons will get caught up in what they consider to be "gambling". Yet you are overextending the purpose of DS's and Alan Shoons'; article. I must ask because I respect your opinion, will, what are DS and AS doing that is so wrong?

They are noy doing anything wrong but they are presenting poker as if it was something everybody should learn and play as it can only be beneficial to your life... wich is not, quite the contrary in way too many cases.

But no problem, it was pointed out that the article is supposed to be like that and then it will be up to the politicians/public to decide wich part is better at presenting they point of view/pushing their interests.

Maybe they (the politicians) will think of creating a comitee to judge the game, but as I understand, that kind of comitee sells itself to the highest bidder.

Not easy.....

david s/alan s

great article. poker is a great game in that it exposes countless character flaws for you and your opponents.

I do think poker is a great thing.
I also think online poker is rigged and I would expect gov. regulated online poker sites.

I've also started a project that will prove (or not) that online poker is rigged.
You can find more about it at:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...=2#Post12001978

I also believe that if the online poker industry crash another one will rise instead and it will be better regulated by more trusted/independent commissions.