Anyone an SI subscriber? Poker article by Rick Reilly

[Easy E]

Rick Reilly: Life of Reilly
This poker craze is the biggest waste of time since Stevie Wonder went to a mime festival

You have to be an SI subscriber to get this online. Anyone care to reproduce it for us?

[B Dids]

Why would I read somebody by Rick Reilly on purpose?

[Tyler Durden]

Why would someone read your post and not make sense of it? How about b/c it makes no sense at all?

[Edge34]

Here goes:

"I am clueless. I am about as plugged in as an Amish toaster. Not only do I not know what's up, I would need a GPS and two sherpas to find up.

This became clear the other day when I heard my fairly athletic 17-year-old son on the phone, trying to "get a bunch of players" together. And he said how "the game yesterday was sick!" And how he was working on his "reads," needed "a really good kicker" and "wouldn't it be cool to get on ESPN someday?"

And I thought to myself, Hey, that's great! He and his schoolmates are playing some backyard football!

Wrong. He and his schoolmates are playing Texas Hold 'Em in the basement. He and his schoolmates and what seems like half the formerly sane world have been sucked into the televised poker craze. Do you realize that the 2004 World Series of Poker drew bigger ratings on ESPN than the first two games of the last Stanley Cup finals? And by one website's estimate, $100 million is bet on poker every day online?

So I started watching. And I came to this startling conclusion: This poker craze is the biggest waste of time since Stevie Wonder went to a mime festival. From what I can tell, it seems to be a lot of people who sit in dark rooms and watch a lot of other people sit in those windowless rooms wearing sunglasses.

I haven't seen this many doughy people since the Krispy Kreme company picnic. Do they tan under 40-watt bulbs? Where is the thrill in watching guys with 300 cholesterol levels play cards and rattle their chip stacks 1,000 different ways? The current World Series of Poker champ, Greg (Fossilman) Raymer, wears back-of-the-comic-book gag glasses and gemstone necklaces and goes about 275 pounds, though a good 3% of that is muscle.

Now Bravo has a hit with Celebrity Poker Showdown, featuring celebs like Carrie Fisher saying breathlessly to Mimi Rogers, "I'm all in!" You know your sport is smokin' when you can get Carrie Fisher.

I hear what you're saying. You baboon. You don't have the foggiest idea what it takes to play world-class poker. It's cerebral. It's psychological. It requires patience, aggression and brains.

Really? Is that why a guy named Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 World Series of Poker after having played the game on the Internet for three years? Or why actor Ben Affleck won a major open poker tournament this year? Can you imagine somebody taking up basketball three years ago and suddenly becoming the leading scorer in the NBA? Or Affleck winning the Buick Open?

Yet teens hold up these pasty poker pudges as gods. I never hear them talk about Tiger Woods or Kevin Garnett anymore. They talk about Chris (Jesus) Ferguson and Phil (the Unabomber) Laak, who peers out from under a sweatshirt hood for the whole game, shadowboxes during hands and kneels behind the dealer as the last two cards are turned. Maybe he should pray. God: "Look, let's put the whole Fallujah thing on hold. I need to make sure Phil gets a six here."

Hey, at least the guy gets out of his chair. Everybody else just sits. These people spend more time on their butts than FDR did. And now you, too, can get the entire 2003 World Series of Poker on DVD, featuring all that sitting! (Comes with an ice pick to insert into your brain.)

The dullness is built right into the game. The way to win at Texas Hold 'Em is to be as expressionless as drywall and fold a lot. Whoo-ee! You talk about exciting! What's ESPN going to put on next, the World Hairline-Receding Championships?

Is all this a good thing for teenagers? Is this what we want -- kids who used to be outside on perfect fall afternoons suddenly hunched in the basement like Nathan Detroit's floating crap game? Is it a good thing that my son's buddies are all wearing green eyeshades and taking one another's busboy tips for hours on end while their muscles turn to linguini?

Betty George of the North American Training Institute, which runs youth gambling-prevention programs, doesn't think so. She says that a teenager who gambles is two to three times more likely than an adult to become addicted to gambling. "We get a call every day from another teenager who's trying to figure out how to tell his parents he lost the car insurance money," she says.

What really sucks is that the kids are losing their own cash while the poker stars sort of aren't. Do you realize that Moneymaker won his World Series of Poker stake in a $40 Internet contest? He might as well be your grandmother betting buttons.

Hey, I play poker with my buddies. But it's four times a year and comes with the requisite bad meatballs, cold beer and dirty jokes. Poker isn't a sport, it isn't for kids, and it sure as hell shouldn't be on my damn sports channels.

Sorry, I'm all out. "






To be totally fair, I think one of the points he's getting at is how the TV poker thing has taken over much of the young kids who would normally be doing other, "more productive" things, such as participating in sports. And a lot of these kids DON'T know how to play responsibly, and WILL end up losing money they shouldn't. Just take it with a grain of salt I guess. TV poker isn't for everyone, and for those who aren't really into the game, its going to be really, REALLY boring. Guess he's one of these. He's still the reason I read SI's back page first.

-Edge

[Nottom]

[ QUOTE ]


To be totally fair, I think one of the points he's getting at is how the TV poker thing has taken over much of the young kids who would normally be doing other, "more productive" things, such as participating in sports.

[/ QUOTE ]

Although I tend to agree that gambling could become an issue for many teens if their parents aren't careful and look for the signs of a problem, I don't suscribe to the theory that kids are playing poker instead of doing more athletic things. If they weren't playing poker, tey would be playing Halo or Madden or looking at internet porn or doing whatever other non-athletic things kids were doing 2 years ago.

[Edge34]

Hey Nottom,

I agree with you on this one, and not Reilly. I should've been more clear in my post. As a matter of fact, I started to play poker in high school while playing varsity football among other things, and still play football in college. Of course, I still find time for poker AND those other non-athletic things. This article being in THE sports magazine, I just naturally figured this was one of the points of his article. If he were just to write about kids being irresponsible gamblers, it wouldn't tie in to well to SI, I don't imagine.

[Justin A]

[ QUOTE ]
Really? Is that why a guy named Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 World Series of Poker after having played the game on the Internet for three years? Or why actor Ben Affleck won a major open poker tournament this year? Can you imagine somebody taking up basketball three years ago and suddenly becoming the leading scorer in the NBA? Or Affleck winning the Buick Open?

[/ QUOTE ]

This is why I don't like tournament poker.

Justin A

[Blarg]

Writing critical takes on things that are very popular is an easy way to get a laugh, get published, and be thought of as a little more clever, insightful, and "cutting edge" than the next critic. Critics often compete to see who can be the most negative, whether they believe it or not. When smart-aleck critics try to puncture the poker balloon, it usually turns out to be more like a pinata dumping lame jokes and half-witted analysis, at best. Seems like that's this guy's program.

Ever notice how much effort is put into describing poker players as fat and ugly and pale? Are we all somehow "fat by association" or something? Are the blacks, Filipinos, and Mexicans all pale too? Are the women players ugly too, or is that dumb stereotype one that won't go unchallenged unless it's applied to men?

Writers like this are riding the poker craze in exactly the same way as its proponents are. Pretending to be above it all is part of the act -- just a particularly cheesy part.

It's ignorant, too, and usually it's pretty easy to find the irony. Fat sportswriters writing about fat poker players -- well, that'll show 'em. People who spend many hours a week wasting time watching sports indoors on t.v. saying it's nutty to spend so much time playing poker indoors. People who bemoan the lost wonders of childhood their kids are missing out on when most people don't even know what the hell their kids are doing in the first place. And who, if they found out, probably wouldn't be a bit surprised to see that their kids aren't for the most part out annointing lepers, discovering cold fusion, or solving world hunger anyway.

Just exactly what is it that everyone's unquestionably dynamic, productive, truly miraculous children who should get an award or something by the way! are doing that is getting so misplaced by poker to their serious detriment? Hanging around with friends? Poker is actually a part of that, anyway. In fact, it's a very easy way to make new friends and keep socialization active with a broader base of people than one would usually meet. What, then, is getting so lamentably misplaced? Playing Nintendo and watching t.v., in large part. Horrific loss, there.

But I guess it's an idea for an article, anyway. Real cutting-edge stuff.

And for god's sake, won't someone please think of the children!

[ihaterivers]

The most rediculous thing he said was greg raymer weighing 275 lbs.

[Neil Stevens]

[ QUOTE ]
This poker craze is the biggest waste of time since Stevie Wonder went to a mime festival

[/ QUOTE ]
Bet they wouldn't publish that if poker were on Time Warner networks instead of just Disney and News.