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Is the famous and popular card game known as Poker a sport?
Well let us drag over the metaphorical microscope of scrutiny and check this one out.
Webster's Dictionary reveals to us that a sport is any physical activity engaged in for pleasure.
I would be the first to point out that under such a loose description sex could be viewed as a sport,-and indeed [for some] it is- So, we've established that with a little finagling just about anything can be considered a sport.
Let us now veer off into the medical aspect really quick. Medically speaking, a sport is a physical activity which elevates blood pressure, which means the heart is pumping more vigorously than normal, respiration (breathing) is increased , the sweat glands begin expelling more of the body's precious water and nutrients than normal, muscles and bones are have more force and pressure (exercise) applied to them, and neural activity is increased.
Poker induces all of these physiological changes just like any other sport. Whether your hand is good or not so good, you're liable to be perspiring (sweating), breathing a bit more rapidly, your pulse will be up, as will your blood pressure, and while the physical activity may be less in comparison with say, volley ball or swimming, you cannot ante up, raise, or call without a certain measure of physical activity, and since that physical activity is using the energy stored in the player's body, we have our example of exercise.
Everyone who is into a certain type of sport has certain sports heroes (or in certain cases heroines) as do those who watch professional Poker on television. You have your sports action figures, and video games, Likewise with Poker. There exists merchandising for most sports covering everything from forward billed caps, to shot glasses, and this is certainly the case with Poker. One might ague that people don't get behind Poker the way they get behind say a football or a baseball game. One would be mistaken. As human beings we all feel the need to rally behind somebody. This is the reason we vote in elections even though all parties involved appear to really suck. This is the reason why when the government back in the early 00's told us all that SUV's were patriotic, many an American and his brother went out and bought the biggest fuel-chugging blazer type vehicle he/she could ill afford.
This is the reason we get behind the hero in a movie. We, as humans, all have a basic need to belong to something bigger than we are, and many of us turn to sports. How many, while watching a Poker tournament on television have immediately favored one player over all of the others if only in the secrecy of his/her own mind? Can any of us ever truly say that we have ever watched any contest or struggle with genuine indifference? If the answer is no, and I weren't sure that it is, I would not be expending my body's vital energy writing this if I thought otherwise (Wow, another example of exercise!).
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No
The word "sport" has been defined in many ways, by many people, but mostly to cover their own regards towards some aspect of one game or another. Most encyclopedias agree that sport is "an activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs, and often engaged in competetively, with some form of physical exertion". Poker fans will adamantly yell at the tops of their lungs that poker is a sport, and that the long hours that they spend in front of the computer, or in front of a table, sitting in a comfy chair defines a sport. Poker, however, is a game, as stated by Gus Hansen, Daniel Negreanu, Doyle Brunson and many more of the world's best and most widely respected poker stars.
Most of the big money, and now charity and celebrity poker tournaments, many of which are now shown on sports channels, take days to complete. Poker games and tournaments are also shown on regular television channels, and over the Internet, which may be what started the "poker-as-a-sport" arguments. The game itself is a multi-billion dollar industry now, with much thanks to Internet poker rooms. The players may sweat, but that is mostly from nerves or television lighting systems, and the fact that they are in rooms with hundreds of other poker players, many chomping on cigars, with hundreds of fans watching. And most of the sweat seen on poker players faces is there because they may be losing their paychecks before paying the bills.
Sports commonly refer to activities where the physical capabilities of the competitor are the sole or primary determiner of the outcome (winning or losing). However, the word sport is also used to include activities such as mind sports and motor sports where mental acuity or equipment quality are major factors. There are skills to poker, but it is mostly chance, the chance that your cards will match the cards on the table to give you the best possible poker hand.
Okay, many people may be jumping at this, saying that certain aspects of the meaning of what entails a sport imply that Poker most definetley is a sport. Well, it seemed like a sport when I was a dealer for a roaming charity casino in Ottawa a few years back, but the game is not a sport, it is a game, like euchre or bridge, not hockey or football. It may be televised, ever popular on the Internet, casinos and basement weekend games, but to say Poker is a sport is the same as saying Bridge, Euchre and Monopoly are sports.
When Monopoly makes it to the Olympics, I may just jump on the Poker-as-a-sport bandwagon. But please, just imagine Doyle Brunson on the gold medal podium, and your thoughts of poker being a sport may just be compromised. Poker, especially the tournaments, can be physically and emotionally exhausting, but that does not make it a sport. Since there are all night and tournament Bingo games, does that make Bingo a sport as well? Will Bingo be an Olympic sport soon after poker makes it's debut?
Of course, there will always be the crowd who say their favorite past-time, hobby or game is a sport. Lawn Bowling, Cribbage, and Clue! will be on right after the mens 4x100 relay during these Winter Olympic Games, next up on Fox, right after these commercials! No, this naming of games as a sport really has to stop. Keep games classified as games, and sports as sports, and never the twain shall meet.
Poker brings to mind cigar chomping, cowboy boots, and dark sunglasses, played in dark, dank, smoke-filled rooms. Men jumping for joy and then screaming red-faced the next minute, heart attack or stroke seeming imminent. Books on strategies and reading your opponents abound, but never the proper exercises or diets for a Poker game that would even suggest it being related to sports. Pick any real sport (Olympic inclusion would do), and see how many books there are on the proper stretching, diets and exercises needed to be in the top of their group of competitors. Poker may have hundreds and hundreds of books on strategies and the best and worst hands to play, but nothing on diet, exercise or stretching. Hmmm.
Simply because it is quite possibly the most popular game in the world at the moment, poker is no more than that, a game. I love to play it, always have, but have never imagined myself on the podium at the Olympics accepting the gold medal for Poker. I have, of course, imagined myself accepting a World Series of Poker bracelet, along with the millions of dollars that go with it, but an Olympic medal? Please! Poker is a card game, not a card sport. Has there ever been such a thing as a "card sport"? Gambling as a whole could not be considered a sport, and that is what poker is, gambling.
Learn more about this author, Marc Phillippe Babineau.
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