Is Poker the new smoking?!

DublinWriter

It used to be the preserve of auld fellas in kitchens, playing cards all night.

Now it seems everone is at it, some even have given up the day job to play professionally as appears from recent posts on boards.

Does anyone else think that there's a certain, worrying addictive element to Poker?

To me, something about the whole craze just doesn't feel right.

Dmtiling

Poker is a great game and passtime. If some people are good enough to go pro then fair play. It not addictive its just good clean safe fun.

super_furry

Poker and smoking? I fail to see the correlation.

Poker's just another past-time and there's nothing sinister about it at all.

pisslips

It's not really that bad considering your destiny is kind of in your own hands(i.e.you can actually win, unlike substance addiction and some other forms of gambling)
what a vague question

Wacker

It doesn't give you lung disease for one thing. Good clean fun, in my opinion.

faceman

wow, i just had an ephinanmanmey. why not play poker using cigarettes as currency!

You are in.... the twilight zone

RoundyMooney

faceman wrote:

wow, i just had an ephinanmanmey. why not play poker using cigarettes as currency!

Two birds with but one stone... Yes, I like the sound of that...

/wonders off absent-mindedly rubbing his chin.

phantom_lord

DublinWriter wrote:

Is Poker the new smoking?!

No

SpAcEd OuT

no, smoking damages health and is physically addictive.

Pokers a great pass time

cormie

You get nothing good in return of smoking, poker however can give you many rewards. Great game! My brother and friend both play for a living, they are their own boss, choose when to work, when to have lunch, no deadlines, no restrictions, freedom and they enjoy their work:)

Tar.Aldarion

Smoking is stupid, poker is not. It puts food on my table sometimes! and maybe it cures cancer? do you see :)any cancer around here?

Calibos

Woah! This really is like something from the twilight zone. Its like running into a room to warn your friends about the alien body snatchers taking over peoples bodies, only for all your friends to turn around and say in unison, "the body snatchers are actually good!, body snatching is great, here have a bodysnatcher" while little alien tentacles portrude from the back of their necks.

BuffyBot

no, smoking damages health and is physically addictive.

Pokers a great pass time

Poker, like all gambling, can be addictive too. People seem to regard it as a "great pass time", but gambling addiction can be a horrendous thing for both the people involved, and those around them.

Sangre

If anyone thinks poker can't be terribly addict with painful consequences then are naieve. People can put everything to fund it because it *is* gambling. Cards play a factor and can bankrupt you

cormie

Poker is a lot more about skill than pretty much any other type of gambling. Take the lotto for example, now, I'm not sure exactly what % of money paid for a line goes to the actual prize pool, but even if it was 100%, which it's definitely not, then there is about €1,000,000 spent every couple of days in this country on the lotto. That's a lot of money! And doing the lotto is much more of a gamble than any hand in poker could ever be.

With regards smoking, well, say somebody smokes 20 a day, that's €6 a day for say 55 years. €2K a year, €120K a lifetime.

If somebody spends most of their disposable income on poker, even if they lose, I'm sure they still enjoyed playing. Some people choose to dish out loads of cash on a fast car or whatever else. Poker is a very sociable game.

Like almost everything, there can be an addictive element to it. I run poker.ie and would have a lot of dealings with poker players. I haven't come across anybody with an addiction thus far.

Smellyirishman

Just won €40 tonight;
Haven't done my health any harm, don't feel the need to play every 4 hours.
Had a good aul laugh, free food, and again, won €40.


Difference is, the majority (I would argue all) of people who smoke are addicted. A minority of poker players are addicted.

I would say poker is the new pool or some such.

pisslips

Come on, life is pure addiction.
Poker must be one of the best addictions you can have.
It's a level playing field,there's no middle-man,it's competition,that is surely what life is about and it's free.
You can actually feel a sense of achievement, instead of just being lucky.
As said before it's more sociable than gettin hammered on a hard bar stool with loads of strangers.Now that dangerous addiction.

NickyOD

As someone someone who left his job to play poker for a living I think the comparison is ridiculous.

If you are talking purely about the addiction side of the game, granted there are people of a certain obsessive nature who will willingly dump there money regularly at a poker table, but these people would also quite happily do the same at the bookies or at the racetrack. At least with poker they have the oportunity to bet on their own skills and not on somebody elses, however limited those skills may be.

iBoT

yes theres a lot of skill to the game , which have some skills but i lost a forture tonight and im feeling so good about the game at the moment, in the depths of depression at the moment :eek: or mayb its just tirenees:eek:

hotspur

And as someone who did their postgrad psychology thesis on online poker addiciton I agree with the OP in a way, poker is an active addiction for huge numbers of people, and very large numbers of my sample were clinically classifiable as being problematically addicted. In a way gambling is becoming the new alcohol in many many countries in the Western world in terms of addiction.
And there are more problem gamblers than drug addicts. I wouldn't compare it to smoking though.

Pigman II

Is boards the new poker?

DublinWriter

hotspur wrote:

And there are more problem gamblers than drug addicts. I wouldn't compare it to smoking though.

It was probably a bad metaphor on my behalf - I should have asked "Is Poker the new smoking/alcohol?"

One sociological question I'd consider would be will gambling be the next thing to be banned?

Considering how widespread smoking was 30 years ago, and how much it was tolerated, and/or how most chronic alchololics in this country were just classed as being "fond of the sup", will gambling be the next thing to come on the moral radar in the next 30 years?

Could that really happen, considering that many US states don't allow gambling for profit, even in private houses, and that slot-machines were banned in Dublin many years ago?

From another sociological perspective, why the rise in Poker now? It would be tempting to say that it's all down to the Internet, but nearly every town has a poker club of some description.

Could it be that in this litigeous age of Health & Safety and increasing rules and regulations, that Poker is the only outlet for 'risk' that people have to turn to?

cormie

Good points Dublin Writer, if poker is banned, it will be a very sad day. Not just for poker players, but the fact the government would ban such a thing doesn't say a lot for the way society is heading.

Smoking isn't banned though, people still freely buy cigarettes and light up, just not in enclosed public areas due to health risks for others surrounding them. Smoking, alcohol and gambling all have age restrictions. Of course, it's easy for anyone under 18 to log on to a poker room, so a certain level of responsibility has to be laid down by the parents/guardians too.

Why the rise in popularity of poker? A lot of this comes down to the tv show, "late night poker" which first aired on channel 4 in the late 90's. It took a few years but it soon grew into what we have today. And rightly so, it's a brilliant game and much more enjoyable than going out to a depressing night club where it's too loud to have a conversation so people just turn to drink for entertainment. People also have more disposable income now than ever. You could pay about €9 for up to 2 hours of entertainment at a Cinema, or about €5 for a full nights entertainment of poker. It's sociable, it works the mind and is very entertaining.

fruitcake

but if poker is a form of gambling there is an element of risk, how can someone justify giving up their jobs to play it, you could lose it all!!:eek:

SpAcEd OuT

BuffyBot wrote:

Poker, like all gambling, can be addictive too. People seem to regard it as a "great pass time", but gambling addiction can be a horrendous thing for both the people involved, and those around them.

re read my post i specifically said isnt physically addictive, hell everything can be mentally addictive

Hitman Actual

fruitcake wrote:

but if poker is a form of gambling there is an element of risk, how can someone justify giving up their jobs to play it, you could lose it all!!:eek:

It's not quite as simple as that. Anyone who plays poker for a few months and thinks they're good enough to go pro would be broke in a few weeks. The guys I know who have gone pro will have been playing for a few years at an amateur level (amateur is the wrong word here, I just mean it's not their sole source of income). They will know that they can beat (and more importantly, earn a living at) the games they intend to play. And they will have enough money saved to cover their usual living expenses for six or maybe even twelve months. Nobody takes this decision lightly.

Anyway, you could lose your normal job in the morning, and "lose it all" as well. Turning pro poker player is just another career change for a lot of people.

cormie

fruitcake wrote:

but if poker is a form of gambling there is an element of risk, how can someone justify giving up their jobs to play it, you could lose it all!!:eek:

85% upwards of all poker players are losers, this makes it statistically positive for a player to go pro.

What justifies playing poker for a living? You work when you want, for however long you want and you love your job. My friend who plays for a living, is also interested in health and is a qualified personal trainer etc, he was thinking he'd like to work in a health shop, but then thought about it a bit more... he'd have to get up early every morning, work 8 hour shifts, come home tired and not be able to do much for the rest of the evening due to being up early the next morning again, and at the end of a 40 hour week he'd earn about €350.

Even if he was playing for that same 40 hours and broke even at the end of the week, he would have a LOT more than €350 in rakeback (rake is what you pay to the online poker room, say you enter a $10 tournament, you pay $1 to the room, all the $10's go to the prize pool, all the $1's go to the poker room, rake back is when you get a % of this $1 back). Now, if he's a winning poker player, which he is, you learn to deal with your losses well as if you are a long term winner and playing within your bankroll (money you have set aside for poker) then you will be in positive figures. Depending on what stakes you play, these figures are quite substantial.

Another thing, my friend might be moving to Spain in August... all he needs is an internet connection and he can keep the exact same job. He'll be earning the same money in a country where things are much cheaper meaning his wage is a lot more valuable.

Wacker

Cormie, you've convinced me. I';m handing in my notice!

cormie

Wacker wrote:

Cormie, you've convinced me. I';m handing in my notice!

Hehe, sounds nice doesn't it?

You'll lose everything if you don't know what you're doing by the way so be careful. Read up books, ask questions in forums and build a bankroll, don't dive in at the deep end, you'll be eaten by the sharks. Start small and the experience you gain at the lower stake tables will be invaluable at the higher stakes. Both my brother and friend started very small, deposited no more than $300 altogether into online poker, started at the very low tables, built thei way with experience and bankroll and they are now playing for ridiculous sums of money:rolleyes:

Dave!

Yeah as someone said, I think poker and pool is a better comparison

Wacker

cormie wrote:

Hehe, sounds nice doesn't it?

You'll lose everything if you don't know what you're doing by the way so be careful. Read up books, ask questions in forums and build a bankroll, don't dive in at the deep end, you'll be eaten by the sharks. Start small and the experience you gain at the lower stake tables will be invaluable at the higher stakes. Both my brother and friend started very small, deposited no more than $300 altogether into online poker, started at the very low tables, built thei way with experience and bankroll and they are now playing for ridiculous sums of money:rolleyes:

Well, I hsve been plsying in a mate's house at least once a week for about a year now. I'm getting pretty good, although I have never played online.

Daithio

DublinWriter wrote:

It was probably a bad metaphor on my behalf - I should have asked "Is Poker the new smoking/alcohol?"

One sociological question I'd consider would be will gambling be the next thing to be banned?

Considering how widespread smoking was 30 years ago, and how much it was tolerated, and/or how most chronic alchololics in this country were just classed as being "fond of the sup", will gambling be the next thing to come on the moral radar in the next 30 years?

Could that really happen, considering that many US states don't allow gambling for profit, even in private houses, and that slot-machines were banned in Dublin many years ago?

From another sociological perspective, why the rise in Poker now? It would be tempting to say that it's all down to the Internet, but nearly every town has a poker club of some description.

Could it be that in this litigeous age of Health & Safety and increasing rules and regulations, that Poker is the only outlet for 'risk' that people have to turn to?

Smoking hasn't been banned, just in places of work. And the logic behind this is that passive smoking is harmful, and so as a result non smokers shouldn't have to put up with it. This is fair enough.

On the other hand I don't think the same can be said about poker. I'm not going to go broke simply sitting and watching a poker game, it is and can only be harmful for the people involved in it. OK, granted, it can be harmful if somebody is spending their weeks wages on poker rather than on the family, but IMO this is a personal issue, and the state shouldn't have to intervene in matters like this. If one person can't control their lives and look after their cash properly, I don't think that the rest of us should have to pay for it.

pyramuid man

Poker is a fantastic game but I can not see any likenesses to smoking.

Goodluck2me

pisslips wrote:

,there's no middle-man,.

where do you play? rake free poker count me in...:)

Dub13

goodluck2me wrote:

rake free poker count me in...:)

See This post.

hotspur

DublinWriter wrote:

One sociological question I'd consider would be will gambling be the next thing to be banned? ... will gambling be the next thing to come on the moral radar in the next 30 years?

Don't worry about the next 30 years gambling is the next thing on the [not moral] public health radar *right now* in America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and it is starting to be in Europe recently.
One interesting thing about your comparison of poker to smoking is that I very recently made the point to problem gambling academics around the world that we are in a privileged position to affect the current gambling liberalisation debate that tobacco focused researchers would give their eye teeth to be able to go back in time to contribute to at the time of its original proliferation armed with what they now know.