Well, I was over at a friend's house the other night and while flipping through the channels we eventually landed on ESPN and started to watch the World Series Of Poker. It amuses me to watch grown men wine and cry like babies while throwing around chips that are worth more than I make in a year. However, between whinings over "bad beats" and "horrible plays", mostly by Phil Hellmuth of course, a question popped into my head. Is poker a sport? For that matter, what constitutes something being recognized as a sport?
Immediately I start to collect my thoughts and try to ponder on what makes something a sport? First I was thinking competition between two people or more than two people, i.e. a team. Competition means to compete for something. I usually think about competition as a way to separate the winners from the losers. OK, well poker falls into that. So poker is a sport right? Mmmm, I'm not ready to make that leap just yet.
Then I was contemplating that if a sport is competition and there must be winners and losers, then are hockey and football not sports? Both of those "sports" have a chance to end in a tie and then how would you know who the winner or loser was? And for that matter, does that mean that poker really is a sport? They don't have ties for the gold bracelet at the WSOP. I know, I'm getting confused too.
OK, I got it. For something to be a sport there has to be physical exertion. What does that mean, physical exertion? When race car drivers are going round and round for 500 miles, one might argue that they are just sitting there like I am when I'm watching them on TV go round and round. However, some might argue that the endurance needed to pay attention that long and using their brains to create strategy through, gulp, thought, might be physical exertion. So if auto racing is a sport and the athletes just sit around, does that mean that poker is a sport because they are sitting down for hours on end, enduring to the end of the match or tournament.
Well, I don't know if I have answered the question I set out to answer, or just confused the hell out of you and me. One final thought though, I know that football, hockey and auto racing are sports, at least I think I do, but I still haven't figured out what badminton is. It is a sport, not a sport???
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You know I'm going to comment when you write on article discussing poker. At first I would immediately consider poker a game and not a sport. However, you bring up a VERY interesting point in that sitting and concentrating on EVERY hand, ESPECIALLY the ones you are NOT involved in for extremely long periods of time does indeed require a great deal of mental exertion. I believe to truly answer this question one needs to seriously consider the true definition of the word sport itself.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Rob. It's like the argument you hear at a bar about race car drivers being athletes or auto racing even being a sport. I think that the word itself has to be examined. Because there is a way to consider everything a sport.
ReplyDeleteI say you are both queers...but I'd still like to hang maybe one more time before we die.
ReplyDelete--Dee