On Episode 17 with Scott Long, one of the subjects we discussed was the image of a poker player. I feel that it was an issue that was not close to being resolved. Scott then revisited the subject on his show, Ante Up. I felt the subject was brushed off to quickly and dismisses. So I want to further examine the subject.

Poker has a long history of being outside the law. Poker has been played in back rooms for hundreds of years. It seems that the “old time” players where looking for an angle, even today we have way too many angle shooters. Whether its collusion or out and out cheating, it’s been around since the first bet was placed.

In my opinion poker has an image problem on several levels that is basically a continuation of the old days and leading to today. Also we need to keep in mind that people do not think of us playing $5 multi-table tournaments or $25 NL cash games, they think of the people on TV, betting more then a lot us make in a year.

The biggest issues are:

• Money, it’s the only sport or game where you try to take money from someone.
• Celebrates degenerates and low life personalities. How many times do we see the destructive life styles many of the players have and they are glorified.
• Staking, am I the only person that believes this is going to ruin big time poker?
  • I find it hard to believe that if someone getting staked is at the table with the person who is staking them or someone else from the same stable of players is going to play as hard against that person as they would against some random player.
  • It concentrates the money to fewer people.

The challenge is that we do not have a way to change these things thus the image problem.

I feel we cannot rely on the poker player’s alliance, they are a lobbying group not a PR firm. We cannot shout it from the mountain tops that we are good people, nobody will listen. The only way to change the image of a poker player is to reduce the high profile bad eggs and increase the profile of the everyday poker player. This too causes an issue because does not make for a very interesting story.

I am proud of the fact that I am a poker player, I think it is a noble past time, I encourage my children to play when they get old enough, but my story, while being in the majority, is not the one anyone wants to tell.

-Loser64

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