Nightwish,

I don't have such a strong opinion on the topic to spend much time arguing. Still, I disagree with your logic so I will give it a final stab:

Did you you read my post? I admit that it was lengthy and did not provide good examples, but the ideas were still correct. In my post I was arguing why participating in financial markets or creating art or whatever other examples were given are NOT like playing poker and THAT IS WHY you cannot conclude that since any of those activites is not hurting society so poker is OK too

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These examples in many ways are fairly close to poker. Once you realize how and why these are not "zero value" or "negative value" activities with respect to society, you should also be able to extrapolate the same for poker.

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1. I already said, those acitivities are NOT "zero or negative values" to society. Never claimed they were and even argued the opposite.

2. My point was that the similarities between those activites and poker are VERY,VERY small/negligible/insignificant... Yes, trading a stock is a transaction and so is playing a hand. But that is pretty much where the similarities end.
- What is the purpose of buying a stock? The owner of the stock receives more money than what he values that stock at the time of the transaction. The buyer of the stock gains equity ownership in a company which is at least as valuable to him as the money he gives away. In any case, DURING a financial transaction, a financial instrument is exchanged. In the example above, at the time of the transaction, the buyer of the stock is better off, the seller of the stock, and either directly or indirectly the company whose stock is bought/sold is also better off. [Of course, the transaction might take place so that one or both sides instead of maximizing profit tries to minimize loss. Logic is the same...]. You also mentioned that the stock market fluctuates and that creates risk/uncertainty, which is also similar to poker. Very superficial similarity: the stock market fluctuates based on how companies are valued, not according to some random generating mechanism like in poker. In other words, if you buy a stock and lose money it is because the value of the company in which you are a shareholder has decreased, not because somebody randomly tossed a coin and you lost....
What is the purpose of playing a hand of poker? As I said in my original post, it seems to be for money to exchange hands. In any case, as I said before, the main reason why playing a hand is different from all the examples above, is that IN POKER NO GOOD OR SERVICE IS TRADED. SOME MONEY SIMPLY EXCHANGES HANDS according to how well the parties involved are able to predict and react to a random event (cards being dealt).

3. So to sum up, because of the reasons I mentioned above and possibly because of others:
- Poker is NOT like trading a stock, it is NOT like creating music and offering it to the public, it is NOT like any of the examples given.
- We already agreed that that the examples above are not necessarily harmful to society, so what does that tell us about poker which is NOT like any of them? Nothing.

That is why I don't agree with your quote from above.

In any case, thanks for the discussion. It helped me clarify things for myself. I guess I just discovered the hard way some of the reasons why poker is illigal in certain domains. [Yes, there are arguments for legalizing online poker but they are the same as the arguments for legalizing drugs. I mean, if drugs are legalized it would not be because they have a positive impact on the average person and similarly, if poker is legalized it would not be because it has positive impact on the average person.]

Again, did not try to preach against gambling. I will probably continue playing and I guess, as suggested, I will have to try to make up for it in some other way :-)

Bate