Why Poker Is Not A Sport
Is poker a sport? Is bridge a sport? Is cribbage a sport? Is pinochle a sport?
Give me a break! Anyone who actually thinks poker is a sport should be taken outside and beaten with a hockey stick or made to put on the pads and stuck on a football field with Ray Lewis. If that isn't convincing as to what defines a sport, maybe blocking out Shaquille O'Neal on the baseline would be a good lesson.
Seriously, in no way does poker even resemble a sport and making the argument that it is a sport is simply silly and illogical. About the only way you could argue for poker being a sport is based on the fact that it is competitive. Well, so what? You could have a competition as to who could build the best Lego house, but that doesn't make it a sport!
In days long gone by, games such as poker were simply games of leisure. Games like golf, cards, darts, bowling, croquette, were simply games played by gentleman. (or gentle-people!) We didn't have to classify everything as a sport then as we seem to feel the need to do now. Sports generally required some degree of competitive physical activity and walking around a golf course did not cut it. Nor did sitting around a card table drinking brandy and smoking cigars with your buddies.
While I am on the subject, things like Spelling bees are not sports either. I think we could probably trace the root of the problem to a television station coming up with an all-sports network called ESPN. Just due to the fact that you cannot cover the same basketball or football game 24 hours a day, they had to come up with alternative 'sports'. Just watch covering of the World Series of Poker on ESPN if you would like to see a perfect illustration of my point.
We live in a society where everything in every phase of life seems to require a term. If something does not have a term, then someone is there to argue that it should have. But what we really need is a hard dose of reality. If more people in the world simply called a spade a spade, we would be much further advanced in our communications and maybe we could quit fooling ourselves into thinking games like poker are a sport.
Perhaps next we can see the World Championship of Yahtzee on ESPN and then immediately afterward the Mayan calendar will bring the world to an end...
Is poker a sport? Is bridge a sport? Is cribbage a sport? Is pinochle a sport?
Give me a break! Anyone who actually thinks poker is a sport should be taken outside and beaten with a hockey stick or made to put on the pads and stuck on a football field with Ray Lewis. If that isn't convincing as to what defines a sport, maybe blocking out Shaquille O'Neal on the baseline would be a good lesson.
Seriously, in no way does poker even resemble a sport and making the argument that it is a sport is simply silly and illogical. About the only way you could argue for poker being a sport is based on the fact that it is competitive. Well, so what? You could have a competition as to who could build the best Lego house, but that doesn't make it a sport!
In days long gone by, games such as poker were simply games of leisure. Games like golf, cards, darts, bowling, croquette, were simply games played by gentleman. (or gentle-people!) We didn't have to classify everything as a sport then as we seem to feel the need to do now. Sports generally required some degree of competitive physical activity and walking around a golf course did not cut it. Nor did sitting around a card table drinking brandy and smoking cigars with your buddies.
While I am on the subject, things like Spelling bees are not sports either. I think we could probably trace the root of the problem to a television station coming up with an all-sports network called ESPN. Just due to the fact that you cannot cover the same basketball or football game 24 hours a day, they had to come up with alternative 'sports'. Just watch covering of the World Series of Poker on ESPN if you would like to see a perfect illustration of my point.
We live in a society where everything in every phase of life seems to require a term. If something does not have a term, then someone is there to argue that it should have. But what we really need is a hard dose of reality. If more people in the world simply called a spade a spade, we would be much further advanced in our communications and maybe we could quit fooling ourselves into thinking games like poker are a sport.
Perhaps next we can see the World Championship of Yahtzee on ESPN and then immediately afterward the Mayan calendar will bring the world to an end...
