Poker hardly a menace to society (North Adams Transcript)

Even a brief glance at the ominous-looking headlines splashed across the front page of the Berkshire Eagle on Sunday -- "A game gone bad: Poker can have its dark side" -- would lead a reader to believe that America's most popular card game was some sort of dangerous new drug that presented a startling public health risk. Then, in case you already didn't think that, the paper's lead story spelled it out for you.
"I've been doing this for 35 years and I've never seen anything like this Texas Hold 'Em rage," the Eagle writer quotes New Jersey Council of Compulsive Gambling's Ed Looney as saying. "When crack cocaine came out, the phenomenon was familiar."
Well, golly. I suppose you could sound more ridiculous if you tried, but let's face it -- you'd have to try pretty hard. What's more, you'd have to be working plenty hard to wait until the 29th paragraph of a 36-paragraph article to mention the fact that poker -- equated with gambling without hesitation throughout a piece purporting to reveal the shady underbelly of a popular pastime -- is at most a hybrid of skill and chance, a cocktail of two parts good fortune and three parts expertise. "It's not like putting $300 on red," Michael Carlson of Great Barrington is quoted as saying. Quite an understatement.
If anyone tunes in to any of the nine television channels that the article says aired some type of poker last week, what he or she would have seen is game of skill and talent being played at the highest level at which it is contested. The Travel Channel's "World Poker Tour" series, Fox Sports Net's "Championship Poker" and ESPN's stable of "World Series of Poker" events all showcase a rotating series of this planet's top poker minds, players like Howard Lederer or Phil Hellmuth whose careers and successes have spanned decades.
What is the skill set of a championship poker player? Discipline and focus, for starters, along with a healthy knowledge of game theory and probability. Mastering one's emotions, reading other players and acting rationally are irreplaceable elements of a winning game, and being able to act a bit doesn't hurt. Conspicuously absent from the list is the ability to put $100 on the pony with the pretty sash and close your eyes. In the short run, it's possible for a clown to be lucky and for a sage to fall victim to chance. Over the long haul, however, it's clear that the cream rises to the top.
Does the common poker player understand this? They certainly do. If they are watching the programming that the Eagle article indicated is omnipresent, which more often than not shows the same group of stars taking the chips of any amateur that stumbles into the camera's path. If they are reading the best-selling books that Hellmuth et al take time to hock on ESPN, the ones that preach discipline and tactics and risk aversion on every page, they certainly do. It's the same in every book -- play solid, keep your money out of bad situations, fold often. Don't, you know ... gamble.
Just for a point of reference, Doyle Brunson's "Super System," considered the bible of competitive poker since it came out in the 1970s, is currently ranked No. 187 in sales on Amazon.com. "Super System 2," the updated sequel? No. 177. Unless these folks just need hefty doorstops, a huge proportion of the population being exposed to poker is clearly learning to play it correctly.
In fairness to the Eagle reporter, his point that poker can be addictive is well-taken, even though the evidence used to support the claims of the aptly named Looney is rather sketchy. Certainly, though, people should know that poker isn't necessarily for everybody, and that there are support groups available for those who begin to play compulsively or recklessly.
But then again, so what? The list of activities that become harmful when taken to unsafe extremes is practically endless. Plenty of people are addicted to liquor, beer, wine, chocolate and elective surgery, and The Eagle had no problem running ads for each in the same Sunday edition. The paper contains a sports section, even though I'd bet far more people run into problems gambling on sporting events than go broke because of poker. I won't even mention the lottery results listed on Page B2.
And none of that is a problem, because we realize as a society that adults have the right to partake in activities that aren't necessarily G-rated. Part of the fun of poker is that it isn't a risk-free venture -- that even the tenured veterans take a beating from time to time, just as they do in tennis or golf or NASCAR. Luck factors into sports (see: deflections of pucks, 25-car pileups, weather) just as much as it does poker, and you're not going to tear your ACL sitting at a card table. Football, like life, is unsafe. Everybody knows this going in, and nobody blames the game.
So, yes, poker has a dark side, like almost anything else you can imagine. Point conceded. It's when The Eagle or anyone else starts reaching beyond that for headlines that you realize that someone is not playing with a full deck.