Poker at College

[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. 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