Quote:
Originally Posted by Silver_Man2
Amazing post.
The thing is though, a lot of the things you mention, like the country deteriorating, less jobs, less job security, etc, is a good reason for skilled poker players to make a career of playing cards. Sure, they can do something else, but you are on your own more or less, like you said, and that something else might not pan out.
I'm not meaning to beat a dead horse here about the lawyer profession, but lawyers working at their firm don't have any real tangible skills either, also, I think you said that do you want to look back on your years saying you played a card game? As if it wouldn't be a fulfilling thing to do in life and that might be true. But I'm sure a lot of lawyers who are retired that didn't find being a lawyer fulfilling career choice. My dad has been an investment banker since the early 80's making at least 400k a year throughout the 80's when I was growing up and through the 90's and up until today. And he always was and still is a pretty miserable person.
Also, define "waste" I am sure there are lots of people out there that think they are wasting their time doing some job where they make good money and could be doing something else. I don't think a career should define whether one's life is fulfilling or not, or what they are potentially capable of. We will all be dead soon enough and it won't matter what we did to make money. A lot of people enjoy playing poker and if a zero sum game allows them to do other things they want to do and free up their time and what not, that sounds successful to me. Not to mention, I think there is a certain sense of fulfillment being able to make a living by being better than other people in something like a card game.
What about Tennis players??? Would you lump them into the same category as Poker players as far as thinking that they are wasting their time? Not every player on circuit is making Rafael Nadal type money. What about golfers on the Nationwide tour? How much you think an average player there is pulling in a year? Probably not much.
You are off base on many things. You keep claiming that Lawyers offer no benefit to society, but in actuality, our legal system, as well as our tax system that everyone cries about, are two of the main things that make us the strongest country in the history of mankind. The United States is a machine, and even though people like to whine about it, it is still the place that most everyone in the world tries to connect with, one way or the other.
And to compare a professional, or even a wannabe professional tennis player with that of a poker player is a joke. Spending a decade chasing the tennis dream would hardly be a waste, no matter how it turned out, as long as it was that person's dream. They could teach tennis after that, or even do nothing related to tennis at all, and it would not have been a waste, even if they never had a significant achievement.
The reason that poker is many notches below all forms of every activity mentioned in this whole thread, is that it damages a lot of people. There are very few people who can really make it, and even those people live a shallow existence, as the only way they can profit is off of someone else's loss. Playing tennis hurts nobody. It is a constructive activity and a worthwhile activity. Just like golf, or any other sport that people enjoy.
Poker does more damage to a society than it benefits. There is no utility in it on a net basis. If all anyone ever did was play it casually, then you could argue that it was similar to chess or backgammon. You don't hear endless stories about people killing their parents, friends, and others because they like to play chess or backgammon. What percentage of backgammon and chess players can get a credit card with a 10K limit? Now compare that with poker players.
If there was a game invented tomorrow, where 6 people sat around at a table and the person who blinked first got eliminated, then as each person blinked they got eliminated, until there was one left who won all of the money, then that game would add no value to society. That is not so much different than poker. If these "staring" games took 10 hours per day, as people sat around at a table and looked at each other, that would hardly be an experience worth repeating. But that is basically what poker is.
You might have a few people who rarely blinked and they would be called geniuses, and make a good living, but it would be a soulless life, as all of those who blinked too quickly, but were still addicted to playing the staring game, would be bankrupt idiots like a huge number of poker players are.
People have been trying for the last decade or so to make poker into something it isn't. Notice how far it has fallen in just a few years. Every single person or entity that has ever been put in a position of trust, has exploited those whom have given it trust.
The lawyers, insurance agents, and others whom you think offer no value to society, are actually the ones who do the heavy lifting and make sure the society runs like a fine-tuned machine every day.
If poker didn't exist tomorrow, it is easily arguable that the world would be a better place. You cannot argue that it is a good thing for young educated people in any society to spend lots of hours pursuing poker. Millions upon million of hours are wasted on it, by people who could be spending that time on making the world a better place.
Poker is a joke. It is an extremely flawed game, and it is much more flawed than the United States Dollar that you think has no value. In poker, there is no way to guard against being cheated. Period. There can always be collusion, and there usually is. You cannot defend against it.
The only pure form of poker would be to play live heads up, and you would have to make sure the cards were not marked. Any and every other form of poker is just a cheaters paradise. It is theoretically NOT POSSIBLE to ever set up a poker game that is not vulnerable to cheating.
Last edited by dreddy; 11-18-2012 at 03:08 AM.
