World Series of Poker fails to highlight losers, addiction

[MadJack]

what a dikwad this guy is

July 8, 2007
By Gregg Doyel
CBS SportsLine.com National Columnist
Tell Gregg your opinion!





They're in Las Vegas this week for the 2007 World Series of Poker, the visionaries and the dreamers, the desperate and the degenerate, the winners and the losers.


Actress and World Series of Poker player Shannon Elizabeth sure makes the game seem attractive. (Getty Images)
Oh, wait. Sorry. Made a mistake there. When it comes to hard-core gambling, there are no winners. Just losers.

High-stakes gambling is for addicts and idiots, which makes the World Series of Poker a celebration of the sad and the stupid. Watch this train wreck for yourself. It's available live on the Internet and will come to free television later this year thanks to ESPN, which can next build on this viewer experience by televising a DUI checkpoint or maybe a crack house.

Some studies say as many as three percent of all Americans have a gambling problem, and that the suicide rate for pathological gamblers is 20 times higher than for the rest of the population, but you won't see any of those stories on ESPN.

You'll hear instead about people like Dan Nassif of St. Louis, who parlayed a $160 investment at an online qualifying tournament into ninth place in the 2006 World Series of Poker, which earned him about $1.5 million. You'll hear about 2006 champion Jamie Gold, who won $12 million. Those are great stories, but every lottery has its handful of winners. And then there is everyone else. The ones you don't hear about. The losers.

? You won't hear about the woman who called a gambling hotline to say she was at the riverboat casino again, her weekly paycheck gone.
? You won't hear about the man who called a gambling hotline to confess that he had embezzled $48,000 from his job and lost it at a poker table and now is afraid he's going to jail.
? You won't hear about the woman who called a gambling hotline in tears after spending her family's grocery money on slot machines.

Those calls were placed within six months to the same hotline in Indiana. Those callers are among gambling's losers. Every state has them. Every city. Your city. Mine.

But still we tolerate and even celebrate this abomination called the World Series of Poker, this 10-day advertisement for addiction and loss. Now listen. Normally, I'm not one to rail on about the evils of this sport or the dangers of that one. Let boxers box. Let race-car drivers race. Let football players bang helmets. Let UFC fighters fight. This is a free country, and those are legal, noble pursuits even with their inherent risk. Freedom is cool.

 

[MadJack]

Gambling is not. Freedom to gamble is like freedom to inhale crack or inject heroin. You may enjoy it once or twice or a hundred times. You may be that one unlikely person impervious to its evil lure. But in most cases the addiction will eventually win.

Every day around the country, people -- regular people like you or me -- lose their job or home or car or wife or kids or all of the above because they cannot stop gambling. Regular people go to jail. Regular people commit suicide. Because of gambling.

Those are not the stories you'll hear about during this 10-day marathon of naked greed called the 2007 World Series of Poker. You'll hear about the sunglass-wearing and absurdly named Chris Moneymaker, whose victory in the 2003 World Series of Poker helped pull that event out from under its rock. Beginning with Moneymaker, an accountant, four of the past five WSOP winners have been relative novices, people who don't gamble for a living. Listen and you'll hear that this could be you.

You won't hear that you're more likely to become like June Williams, the New Orleans retiree profiled by the Boston Globe after she lost her home to Hurricane Katrina and then days later lost her life savings -- less than $1,000 -- at a nearby casino. You won't hear how she cashed her grandson's $279 emergency check from the government and gambled that away.

You'll see the beauty of Las Vegas with the winners smiling and the lights beaming. You won't see what happens when the cameras are off and the lights are dimmed and another degenerate has been allowed to gamble until his last penny is gone. You won't see how the casino that took his money bought him a bus ticket home, not from kindness but from self-preservation, because a loser like that would be bad for business. Get that guy out of here. Look -- here comes another one to take his place.

They're coming at a faster and faster pace, if the World Series of Poker is an accurate reflection. This thing started as a quaint little lark, a nine-player event in 1970 that was decided not by attrition but by congeniality -- a vote among players at the table. By 2003, it was still a humble event counting 839 contestants. After Moneymaker, it began to grow exponentially. Last year, there were more than 8,000 entrants. This year, almost 12,000 were expected.

A seat at the table this year can be had for a $10,000 buy-in, and I don't want to know what some of these habitual losers had to do to get their hands on the money. There were countless qualifying tournaments, which means hundreds of thousands and perhaps even millions of people tried to get into this event and failed. They'll be back next year, but with more competition than ever.

This is the world today. We'd rather not work hard for our fortune. We'd prefer to win it in the lottery or on a game show or at a felt-covered table. This is why U.S. college students are flunking out at an alarming rate as they spend their time hooked to a computer, trying to beat an endless supply of anonymous losers on the Internet.

And this is why that Indiana hotline recently took a call from a man wanting help for his wife, who gets paid every other Friday and then disappears for the weekend. She always comes back on Mondays because she's broke and has nowhere else to go.

Maybe some day she'll end up in Vegas at the World Series of Poker. Maybe she's there this weekend, just another loser in a city where she has way too much company.

 

[dunclock]

Love the guys tagline, Tell Gregg your opinion

I think Jack gave a pretty good opinion in his one sentence preface to the story:142smilie

 

[Penguinfan]

I left him some feedback

Your "piece" on the WSOP was, at the very best, garbage.

Here's some insight for you, people die in car accidents every day, so according to you only idiots drive cars.

People go broke using credit cards, only idiots use credit cards I guess.

People die from sexually transmitted diseases all the time, I guess only losers have sex ( I am sure this is the only instance I would not refer to you as a loser).

Go grab your crayon and try again. Don't hurry, I am sure nobody is waiting.

 

[jasperjones]

I wonder what Gregory's take is on investing in stocks and bonds. (the "gentleman's gambling arena")

 

[freelancc]

Go grab your crayon and try again. Don't hurry, I am sure nobody is waiting.

:mj07: :mj07:

 

[Kramer]

Truth be known this guy is a world class dickhead
and is taking his frustration out on anyone he can,
just happens to be gamblers on this particular day.
Guaranteed it will be someone else tomorrow and
on and on. HE is the LOSER.

 

[amhlilhaus]

with any activity that stimulates your brain to excitement, there is the potential for abuse. gambling, drinking, shopping, sex, religon, food, anything and everything we do for pleasure has the potential to make an addict out of us. some can't handle it, and when they inevitably crash due to their own lack of self control they want someone to blame. this guy wants us to care, to take a long look in the mirror at our addictive nature and feel bad.

no thanks punk, I'm in control of myself, and I like my addictions.

 

[SpursDynasty]

this guy needs to learn what a slippery slope argument is.