Why I Love Sports

This week’s feature on the sports channel here @ b5, we’re discussing what it is we love about sports and/or our sport of choice (mine being poker).

I always laugh when people say poker is a sport. If you can do it sitting down, while drinking a beer, and be 300 pounds overweight, it’s not a sport.

The major difference I see in the ‘Is it a sport?’ argument, which covers things from poker to badminton to chess, is that there are sports, and then there are games.

Games require no kind of physical prowess to excel at. They might require luck or some amount of methodical skill, but anyone can develop the skill based on the amount of time they do it and how quick they are in relation to the game.

It’s clear from some of the idiots who win at poker that you don’t have to be smart to win a game.

Anyhow, I’ve always loved poker because it combines strategy with making money. I like to make money. I like the feel of taking someone else’s money based on superior play ability. Poker is one of the few games that allows you to do that; unless you’re betting on Risk or Monopoly or something.

While there are definite luck associations that let the inferior player win, it is the overall haul, the ability to in the long run show a profit based on superior work, as well as the analysis and math and progressive study  that is necessary to become a great player, that really makes me love the game. Which is why, in the face of tremendous odds in my favor, that people seem to keep hitting their minor outs really begins to break me.