[Voltron87]

Great letter. I read the same letter and had a similar reaction.

I would make to clarifications to your post. Athletes provide entertainment to millions, that is what they offer to society. Do they deserve as much money as they get? Probably not. But they certainly provide something to society. I think the ethics of professional poker are in a very gray area to say the least.

Second, the rapid increase in youth gambling is also worrying. While I have learned an absolutely staggering amount about money, life, professionalism, everything from poker, it is going to mess with a lot of kids' lives. I agree that the "kid finds credit card, goes into debt, gets killed by mafia" notion is off base, but I don't think you can play up youth gambling as a positive experience. I have learned so much from poker but I frankly am much more intelligent, responsible and mature than your average teenager and a lot of kids aren't equipped or prepared to learn from poker or have it as a positive influence in their life. Look at all people who get into credit card debt for example. Tons of people have awful financial skills. The kids benefitting from poker are the smart kids and the outliers. So while I defintely agree with you that poker can teach kids a lot, and that anti gambling proponents are off the deep end, youth gambling can be a really bad thing. I'm not saying gambling and youth gambling are the most and only dangerous vices in this culture, but be careful not to overstate your case here.

Your point about the athletes who chase big league dreams and waste two decades of their life while ignoring everything else is a very important one and I agree with it 100%. Araton doesn't even mention these people.

The Times' sports columnists are awful. Murray Chass wrote an article recently about how even though Arod had an MVP season and lead the league in OPS, doing exponentially better than his first year in New York, he was doing something wrong because he was striking out a lot more. That is asinine.