Comments on: Is Poker a Sport?

By: esci

esci — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 05:03:09 +0000

‘sport’ has always been difficult to define, but the best definition i’ve heard (as in, i have yet to find a sport that doesnt meet the criteria) is;

‘A competitive activity that requires a physical skill’.

so by that definition, no poker isnt a sport

By: SL

SL — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:58:06 +0000

I agree with everything you said except about golf. I’m not an avid golfer, but its fairly clear that the guys on top of the sport are in good physical shape, john daly is just an exce3ption to the rest of the tour, a guy who doesnt need to do jack to be able to hit a ball 350 yards straight consistently. The rest of the PGA is in general, a group of world class athletes.

By: PUNTE

PUNTE — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:47:00 +0000

No one is taking steroids in poker so it must not be a sport.

People take performance enhancers in poker all the time. It’s just that all of them are legal.

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:54:44 +0000

The game of chess is considered sport?
Like chess, poker is a sport of the mind, an art of handling opponents.
I think yes, poker is sport.

By: barloworld

barloworld — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:34:36 +0000

You overlooked the obvious here. No one is taking steroids in poker so it must not be a sport.

(And ESPN covers the National Spelling Bee too, is that a sport?)

By: PUNTE

PUNTE — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 04:03:54 +0000

I disagree. While the variance does compromise the skill to some extent, there are so many other forms of “variance” that exist in other sports, even though those forms might not include cards coming out of a deck.

Think about the offensive line for a professional football team. Each guy was almost trained in his craft at a different school and evaluated in a separate way based on the needs of his team. And the team arbitrarily decides a plan for how they’ll contribute to the team, even though that plan may not best showcase their actual SKILLS the way another plan would.

That’s one example. What about injuries ? Different-sized ballparks in baseball? How about a 9-7 team reaching the Super Bowl last year (I’m looking at you, Arizona).

I totally agree that tournaments aren’t the best showcase of skill, and maybe “sport” isn’t the best way to classify poker, but other sports have comparable illegitimacies to those found in our great card game.