[Xhad]

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A drugdealer can say " if i dont sell drugs other people do it ", " they want the drugs, so i do it ". In fact poker is a "ugly" business, i say myself everytime "

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What's funny about this tangent is that I is that I don't think drug dealers are inherently doing anything especially wrong either; they're just opportunists taking advantage of people's stupidity and laws that shouldn't exist.

In fact, here's the parallel as I see it: I have no problem with drug dealers who just give the junkies/bored college students what they want. If a drug dealer were to hang around a high school campus trying to get clean teenagers to start trying his stuff, then I could see a moral objection. Similarly, I'm not actively trying to get anyone to go play poker and lose their money; if I had more rich friends and said "hey guys lets start trying this poker thing on weekends" and then talked them into playing high enough buyins that I could supplement my income with it, that would be a scummy thing to do. However, if someone is going to voluntarily start throwing their money around the table, and I happen to sit down and start catching it...not my problem.

I have given fish playing advice...away from the table, after they asked me for it. I've also told one guy to leave a game after he hinted that he was playing with money he couldn't afford to lose. He didn't listen to me, then flopped trips against my kings full and I busted him. Not my problem.

(BTW, while I don't have a moral problem with poker, saying that the winning players "provide entertainment" is just silly rationalization. The fish would have just as much entertainment if they only played other fish and only the rake was winning. Look at the success of completely -EV house games.)