Poker at College

[Jason Strasser]

Here's an article about poker at Duke, where I go to school. I'm Jason in the article, it's an interesting read for a little perspective on how its done in college /images/graemlins/laugh.gif.

http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/10/21/4177d6f7749e5

[Sandstone]

Interesting article. I wish my college offered better games.

[bogey]

andy bloch is dating a Duke undergrad? thats pretty skeevy

[Gamblor]

What is the fallout on campus after that Philip Kurian article?

That kid should be expelled.

[Homer]

My girlfriend's brother goes to Duke and is a sophomore as well. He said last year he used to help his roommate (or some dude on his hall) when he was playing on Party Poker. Apparently, he lost a lot of money. It would be kind of funny if you were the guy he was talking about. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Okay, I'm sure you weren't, but this is the gossip forum, right?

-- Homer

[Victor]

whos phil kurian? whats his story?

[Sponger15SB]

[ QUOTE ]
but this is the gossip forum, right?


[/ QUOTE ]

everyone has AIDS? huh? who said that?

[Sponger15SB]

[ QUOTE ]
whos phil kurian? whats his story?

[/ QUOTE ]

search his name on yahoo news and came up with this...

[ QUOTE ]
Jewish-conspiracy theorist surfaces at Duke
By Phoebe Maltz
October 27, 2004 in Viewpoints
The good life. Most people picture seaside vacations, mojitos served by attractive members of one’s preferred sex, and not having a care (or midterm) in the world. Not so for Philip Kurian, a student at Duke University. No, in Kurian’s eyes, the good life is being Jewish in America. There’s nothing quite like it. “It is well known,” writes Kurian in a recent op-ed entitled “The Jews” in his school paper, “that Jews constitute the most privileged ‘minority’ group in this country.” In describing American Jewry, Kurian uses the words “privileged,” “advantages,” “well-funded,” luxury,” and, once again, “privilege.” Being an American Jew certainly sounds pleasant. Perhaps Kurian should think of converting.

Unlikely. When Kurian writes, “We are dealing with a very well-funded and well-organized establishment,” he is not expressing his admiration for this establishment. What we have, I’m afraid, is a good old-fashioned Jewish-conspiracy theorist. “When former-President Bill Clinton nominated his first two judges to the Supreme Court,” notes Kurian, “both were Jews. Remarkable in the slightest? No, of course not.” Certainly not, given that, to a Jewish-conspiracy theorist, Jews control the government, the media, the economy, and so much more. Jews are not statistically overrepresented at elite universities; as Kurian sees it, “four schools [Harvard, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia] have particularly stark Jewish advantages.” [Italics mine.] For Kurian, it’s not so much that there are many successful Jews in America as that there is “exorbitant Jewish privilege in the United States.” His use of the word “exorbitant” implies that this “Jewish privilege” comes at a cost, presumably, in Kurian’s opinion, to non-Jewish Americans.

Kurian is writing not as a tradition-loving, reactionary outcast at a P.C. university but as a campus liberal. He is concerned not that Jews are taking the place of white Christian students at places like Yale, but that Jews, using our sneaky ability to be both “white” and a “minority,” are putting underrepresented minorities in particular at a disadvantage. “In short, Jews can renounce their difference by taking off the yarmulke. Clearly, this is not a luxury enjoyed by all minority groups.” As I revel in the luxury of my yarmulke-free existence, I’d like to add that Kurian almost makes a reasonable point, then blows it entirely: “What’s worst is that the ‘Holocaust Industry’ uses its influence to stifle, not enhance, the Israeli-Palestinian debate, simultaneously belittling the real struggles for socioeconomic and political equality faced, most notably, by black Americans.”

Ignoring the absurd idea of a “Holocaust Industry”—which I do not have space here to refute—one can give Kurian credit for this much: blacks have had it worse in America than Jews. While much of Europe has long been divided between Jew and Christian, America has been divided, more in the past than today, between black and white, with (most) Jews falling into the second category. Acknowledging that American blacks have suffered more, historically, than American Jews is one thing; saying that “Jewish privilege” is the cause of black suffering is another. It simply has no basis in reality.

Kurian’s piece in the Duke Chronicle, like the article a while back in Adbusters magazine that put an asterisk next to each Jewish name on a long list of “neoconservatives,” has gotten a great deal of attention from those concerned about anti-Semitism. While the more paranoid among us (the Uncle Leos of the world, for those familiar with the show Seinfeld) may cry anti-Semitism if they perceive someone has given them a funny look on line at a supermarket, there are instances when a reasonable person, one who acknowledges that, by and large, America has been “good for the Jews,” can see a problem arising. Kurian argues that “Jews feel the overwhelming sense of entitlement not to be criticized or offended.” And Kurian, for one, is doing his part to criticize and offend; we have to allow him that much. Speaking as a representative of the Jewish conspiracy, controlling the media, as I do, from an unassuming dorm room, I’d like to say that I’m fine with being “criticized or offended” as an individual. It’s when, by virtue of a group membership of which I am neither proud (it was no accomplishment of mine to be born Jewish, or female, or anything else along those lines) nor ashamed (why should I be?), I am implicated as part of a vast, well-funded movement to ruin everything for the “real” Americans, then, yes, I am offended. Well, not so much offended—one cannot take such things personally—as pissed off.


[/ QUOTE ]

[scrub]

I'm astonished that the article wasn't more sensational, and that you gave them an interview.

The Daily Princetonian ran an article about a few of my campus games last year, and it was a disaster. Attracting the attention of the administration is never a good idea.

scrub

[edtost]

i don't think the administration was nearly as affected by the article as by the numerous poker players failing out, regardless of how they found out about them.

[Jason Strasser]

Yes. She is also my TA for one of my engineering labs, so we talk poker a bit between connecting inductors and capacitors.

-Jason

[Jason Strasser]

Hahaha,

Who is this kid? PM me. If he plays poker, chances are I've run into him.

-Jason

[Jason Strasser]

Phil Kurian was a very respected columnist for the Chronicle (which I work for as a sports editor), until he wrote a very controversial article called 'The Jews'. It said a lot of things which are fairly blatantly anti-semetic. You can search for the story at www.chronicle.duke.edu. (http://www.chronicle.duke.edu.) A lot has been made of this in the national media.

-Jason

[Jason Strasser]

Firstly, our administration knows whats going on. Apparently they've chosen to pick their fights, and poker is just something they really dont care about (see Michael Bloomberg in NYC).

Secondly, they don't have my last name, so in theory its anonymous. Plus I dont think exposure will hurt our games in the slightest, because you need to have an in to get in any of our games.

-Jason

[Homer]

[ QUOTE ]
Hahaha,

Who is this kid? PM me. If he plays poker, chances are I've run into him.

-Jason

[/ QUOTE ]

Dunno, I'll have to find out his name for you.

[scrub]

[ QUOTE ]

i don't think the administration was nearly as affected by the article as by the numerous poker players failing out, regardless of how they found out about them.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you're partially right. But I also think that having all of those numbers from the Forbes game in print really bothered them.

scrub

[scrub]

[ QUOTE ]

Firstly, our administration knows whats going on. Apparently they've chosen to pick their fights, and poker is just something they really dont care about (see Michael Bloomberg in NYC).

Secondly, they don't have my last name, so in theory its anonymous. Plus I dont think exposure will hurt our games in the slightest, because you need to have an in to get in any of our games.

-Jason

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know how much control you had over the article, but at least at Princeton, every kid on the paper was trying to have some sensational story to add to their clips.

When I ran an eating club, I learned not to talk to the paper because every story they wrote was about substance abuse or sexual harrasment.

When they wrote about my poker games, they focused on the amounts of money that people had lost (I played in some fairly large games for a college campus), about the money one guy had lost playing online blackjack (enough to buy a nice mid sized car), and about the number of kids who played poker who had run into academic problems (too many to fit in the car comfortably).

The kids' academic problems coupled with the article led the administration to make some pretty serious statements about online gambling and live poker games, and our game ended up having to stop playing in the place it had run for three years or so.

Unless you know the kid who is writing the article and know he's not going to screw you, talking to the press is always dangerous. The author could have taken the quotes you guys gave him and written a much more negative article which could have easily have gotten a rise out of the administration. All he would have needed to do was focus on the amounts involved and focused on the guy who lost "thousands of dollars" in a couple of weeks without giving the story a happy ending. Add in interviews with a couple of losing players from your game, and you've got a very different article.

scrub

[Zetack]

From the article:

[ QUOTE ]
Regardless of the law, though, Bloch sees a problem “with younger people playing poker and acquiring debt. Financial trouble can often ruin futures,” he advises. “We don’t know how long [the poker boom] is going to last. Finish school now.”

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, right. The debt loads from student aid for school has exploded. I was fortunate enough to get out of Duke with very little debt, but the graduate program would've left me with a mortgage size debt and no house. So I blew that off and ended up going to a well respected state school for my "advanced" degree for less than a third of the cost...and eight years later the montly bite on that payment still hurts.

Plus it sucks to have to say "go to hell" before the name of the school you do your graduate work at.

If a school official had made that statement rather than bloch, I'd be truly outraged.


--Zetack

[Jason Strasser]

I actually did know the kid writing the article.


-Jason