Poker is it a sport

You're sweating. Your heart rate has increased. You're attempting to control your body, the slightest movements differentiating between success and failure.

You're facing multiple opponents. You're on ESPN, with millions of dollars at stake. You're dating actresses who would find you repulsive if you didn't play what you play.

You're a professional poker player. And you're playing a sport.

It's not basketball or football or field hockey or lacrosse, but limiting the idea of sports to the running, jumping and colliding ball sports leaves out a lot of activities, not just poker. But if you care about the head-to-head, guts-to-guts constantly changing variables of competition -- where there's no right answer, only your chosen path to victory -- well, go ahead and see how golf and bowling stack up to poker now.

Poker players sit down for their sport -- just like NASCAR drivers and baseball players waiting to hit.

Poker requires stamina, but no real physical strength -- just like table tennis. It requires no speed -- like weightlifting.

But if you think poker isn't a physical activity, you've never tried to put on a poker face, preventing your eyes, mouth, legs and hands from showing what your brain is thinking. And go check out the workout routines of some of the best pros.

You don't have to run a marathon to see that poker is a sport. Just sit down for a tournament, and explain how that adrenaline rush of competition isn't sporting. Pretend you aren't exhausted after a few hours of playing, more tired than you might be after standing in the outfield for three hours and swinging a bat four times.

Poker isn't like roulette or craps or the slots, because there is real skill involved. It's not like Monopoly or Go Fish or Chinese Checkers, because the parameters are so greatly influenced by the opposition.

We're not just talking about the pros. Looking for a sport to replace baseball in the Olympics? Poker is taxing, strategic, unpredictable and could be taught in countries from Bolivia to Uzbekistan in 15 minutes.

You think poker in the Olympics is laughable. Is it less of a sport than archery or shooting? What's the difference between settling your nerves to aim at a target and settling your nerves to bluff with lousy cards?

Winter Olympics? Put the table in a slab of ice, and poker is twice as much of a sport as curling.

But, wait, everyone screams. How can poker be a sport when a virtual novice can take on the best player in the world and have a chance to win?

All that means is that poker isn't just a sport, it's one of the greatest sports around.

You can't be too tall or too short for poker, too heavy or too light. Men and women sit down together on equal footing, as do players of all races and ethnicities. You can roll up in a wheelchair and compete.

If you're 6-foot-4, you'll never ride in the Kentucky Derby. If you're 4-10, you'll never play in the NBA. And if you're 138 pounds, you couldn't pass for a tackling dummy in the NFL.

Genes never knocked anyone out of a poker game.

Pumping yourself full of steroids won't give you an edge in poker, and neither will running up your payroll to add three All-Stars at the trading deadline. Poker players don't go on strike or get locked out, and none of them leave as free agents.

Pokers players don't go out of bounds or argue line calls or miss a year after elbow surgery.

The best poker players win most of the time, but not always. Underdogs, true empty-pocket, no-hope underdogs, have better odds in poker than any other sport. And what is better in sports than rooting for the underdog?

You say poker isn't a sport.

Maybe in a time when we've grown accustomed to freaks of nature doping, whining and blinging to victory, we don't recognize a real sport anymore when we see it.

Martin Frank says poker lacks sport's mandatory sweat of physical exertion

I am trying to come to grips with this whole poker craze.

I turn on ESPN, and there it is. I turn on ESPN2, and there it is. I turn on Comcast SportsNet, and there it is.

Surely, if it's on a sports station, then it's got to be a sport. And, surely, if there are millions of dollars at stake, then it's got to be a sport.

Right?

Wrong.

Poker is not a sport. Watching a bunch of people sit around a table, smoke cigars, drink beer and wear sunglasses, with their entire success lying at the total mercy of a deck of cards, does not qualify as a sport.

Maybe it's a cure for insomnia. But it's not a sport.

I have played poker on many occasions during my adolescent and adult life. When my friends and I were home from college all those years ago, we'd gather in my friend's basement and sit around for hours on end until we either passed out or ran out of money.

We never got up from our seats, unless it was to get another beer.

I know auto racing drivers stay seated in their cars for hours on end, but at least they're racing, relying on the speed of their car and their driving skill.

In poker, the only speed involved is when you absolutely, positively have to get to the bathroom after a hand to prevent your bladder from exploding. The only skill involved is finding a way to make your buddy next to you admit that he's bluffing.

There is nothing athletic about any of that, unless you count the race to the bathroom and subsequent contortions when you have to wait.

Now, if that were included in the rules, then poker might be on to something.

I don't like to stereotype, but ... have you ever seen some of these guys? They wear sunglasses indoors to hide their facial expressions. Bicycle riders in the Tour de France wearing sunglasses look cool. Poker players wearing Harry Caray-like sunglasses do not.

How can I put this kindly? Many poker players are not exactly svelte or in good physical condition. Their exercise for the day probably consists of getting up from the table, taking 10 steps to the refrigerator, grabbing a bunch of hoagies, then coming back to the table and lighting a cigar or 10.

I know linemen in football love to eat and are overweight. There are some golfers who aren't exactly in the best physical condition, either. And sumo wrestlers are rather large.

But at least they're sweating through physical exertion.

Sure, poker players sweat. But you'd sweat, too, if you were about to lose your house, mortgage, college fund and both cars.

Keep in mind that this World Series of Poker, with a purse of $7.6 million, only focuses on the winners, those who are guaranteed to walk away with thousands upon thousands of dollars, making it seem like anybody can get rich quick.

But, really, they are the luckiest of the lucky. You never hear anything about those who are thousands of dollars in debt, or the college students who flunked their exams and blew their student loan money.

And, with poker, there's no practice involved. That might appeal to Allen Iverson, but even he spent years and years working on his game to make it to the NBA.

In other words, your Average Joe can't just walk up to Citizens Bank Park, hit a bunch of home runs in batting practice like Bobby Abreu in the Home Run Derby, and all of a sudden start in center field for the Phillies.

Or your typical portly guy can't just show up to Eagles training camp and say he's ready to block for Donovan McNabb.

If they could, Ed Wade would be a genius and we wouldn't care about T.O.

Basically, it comes down to this: If you don't exert any amount of physical energy whatsoever, then you're not playing a sport. Lifting a 12-ounce bottle of beer doesn't count.

We have to draw the line somewhere, or else you'd have to include spelling bees, Yahtzee and Pinochle as sports. And I'd much rather watch someone yell out "Yahtzee!" than a bunch of guys sitting around a poker table saying nothing.

By Doug Lesmerises

News Added: 15 July, 2005

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