Poker: Love and addiction

Separate love and addiction It's not the same It's not as if I was waiting for you to come and make it all okay - Counting Crows, "Love and Addiction"

At first it was interesting, then it was funny, and then it just pissed me off.

The tease of Tuesday's early "SportsCenter" promised a story on the popularity of poker among the teenage crowd, of which I'm still a part until next July.

It as preceded by an ad for the night's World Series of Poker action (and paced throughout by a bottom-of-the-screen ticker for the same), the short piece interviews a teenage player, his father, and a teenage gambling addict, with additional advice from standout pro Chris "Jesus" Ferguson.

It also features, in what must be a huge shocker, an ESPN programming exec saying he doesn't think televised poker is addictive.

By and large, the piece intimates that the increasing popularity of poker is the next It Problem with teenagers.

Excuse me?

I sat there for a moment and thought it all through. It couldn't have come at a more ironic time: I was wearing my World Poker Tour T-shirt and had earlier in the day put up my framed photo of myself and Phil Gordon on my bookshelf.

I'm only a year older than the 18-year-old interviewed for the piece. That didn't change the fact that I felt it to be completely ludicrous.

Let's stipulate the stupidity of the fact that they hype the WSOP before and all through the piece -- contributing to the same culture they've got in the crosshairs.

Let's not even talk about the questionable journalistic integrity of using one of your own programming executives as an interview subject.

No, forget for a second that this piece was obviously horribly composed, and let's talk about the issue of TV poker making gambling addicts out of teenagers.

I won't say that it can't happen. I won't say that it doesn't concern me, as the media's effect on people is both the thing I respect and prize the most as a writer and the thing I recognize as the ultimate responsibility.

Didn't we go through this "corrupting our children" uproar with all of the following: video games, the rest of TV, comic books, collectable card games, and music, plus who knows what else?

It seems we like to find convenient targets to blame for what happens to youth culture, as long as it's not us.

Nowhere in the ESPN piece is it mentioned what a parent's responsibilities concerning teenage poker playing are, although the adult interviewed does say he brought potential problems up with his child.

Meanwhile, people are still taking elementary-school kids to R-rated movies. Wrap your brain around that.

I can't speak for the whole youth subculture of America, but I can tell my own story as a teenage poker player, and at least speak up in my defense, as well as hopefully somebody else's.

I came to the sport of poker in December, 2003, when the first tournament of Bravo's "Celebrity Poker Showdown" aired.

Originally I tuned in because of the presence of some people I respect from the media -- Ron Livingston, Paul Rudd, the cast of "The West Wing."

Over the course of the first tournament, thanks to the expertise of Phil's analysis and the experiences happening at the table, I became fascinated with the sport.

I became a regular "CPS" viewer and was shortly involved in tracking the World Poker Tour.

It wasn't long before Wednesdays and Thursdays were poker nights around the house, and I was online playing the Challenge hands offered by the Travel Channel's WPT fan site, trying to test my knowledge.

I set up a rare home game or two to test myself against actual people.

I wrote an e-mail to Danny Negreanu, I'm still intimidated by Howard Lederer, and Phil Gordon became my poker hero.

You know the rest of the story.

I played in the College World Series of Poker in June, 2004, and by that point I was already your poker analyst, breaking down "CPS" and the WPT on a weekly basis.

I'm a registered member of Andy Bloch's WPTFan.com, hang out on the Web sites of my favorite players, and I've read a few books on the sport.

If I get bored I'll break out a deck and play a few hands, and I still want to play in a WPT event someday.

I'm a poker player, and I'm damn proud of it. I'm not an addict, and I'm proud of that, too.

There was one day where I saw nothing but poker on TV for about 24 hours.

I happened to be awake at midnight when the WSOP showed a no-limit tourney with Danny Negreanu.

This was followed by FOX Sports Net's Championship Poker at the Plaza, which I wanted to catch because I'd been tipped off that Danny wins.

That was the day FSN was hyping the "live" American Poker Championship, which turned out to be six hours of badly-produced poker where I made fun of Paul Phillips' most recent hair color.

If you were going to argue for me spending too much time watching poker -- especially since I was doing it two nights a week, two hours each night by then -- I really couldn't disagree with you. If TV poker really was supposed to screw me up, by then it should've done it.

But it didn't, and I know why it didn't: because I knew better.

To quote Paul Rudd, "What I like about this has nothing to do with celebrity."

Unlike some people, including those interviewed for the ESPN piece, I don't think I'm going to pull together a $10,000 buy-in and go play in the WSOP.

For me, my love of poker is not about the money or the fame.

I'm fascinated by the psychology and sociology inherent in the sport, the reading of people and the strategy required.

I love how my brain is my first weapon and how my disability doesn't matter.

I spent four years in street hockey using my body as a weapon, and now I get to outthink people while challenging myself.

Would I love to play opposite Danny, Howard, Annie Duke, or Chris Moneymaker?

I'd be honored to share the felt with them. I don't think I'm going to be them, though.

As Chris Ferguson says in the piece, if you think you're going to be the next big thing, look around -- there are plenty of other people just like you and that's just in your town.

You're going to have plenty of competition.

I want a poker nickname, but that's about all I want, and I want to feel like I've earned it.

I'm a student of the game, keeping myself disciplined and continually challenged. You know what gets me most excited?

The same day the ESPN piece aired, I played a hand in Yahoo! Poker, and I correctly folded pocket jacks against a flush.

I was proud of myself for making the right decision, for testing my intelligence, and that's where my joy comes from.

I know that I'm insulated from some of the threats of gambling addiction because I'm still too young to gamble in some casinos, but I am of age to gamble in others, and I haven't done that, nor do I plan to.

I also know I'm not drinking, I'm not taking drugs, I'm not hanging out with a bad crowd, and unlike my previous sport, I'm not subjecting myself to potential injury.

In that sense, poker is a relatively tame pastime.

At least parents know where their children are and should know who they are with. And at least in my case, some great friendships have come out of the deck, too.

We shouldn't be decrying the negative effects of any sport.

As one of the members of Linkin Park once said, it might be best if we stopped defining ourselves by what we don't like and started focusing on what we do.

Every sport, every hobby for that matter, has its risks and benefits -- that's life.

Rather than live in paranoia, let's build constructive relationships between teenage poker players and their parents.

I'm fortunate enough to have that support in my family.

When I watch poker, my parents are almost always around, including later that same night when we watched the WSOP's main event together (and all gaped when the legendary Doyle Brunson knocked out two players in one hand).

We don't really talk all that much about it, but we do sometimes discuss the game, and we've talked about the dangers of excessive gambling.

In fact, the running joke in our family is that my mother will give me the $12 for a satellite buy-in if I can turn it into some $47,000 (as happened to one WPT amateur), but that's all she's going to give me.

It's well clear to me that Howard, et al., are professional poker players and I'm not, and that it takes immense talent as well as brains and responsibility to get to that level.

I don't have the time, the money or, honestly, the ambition to do what they do, because largely I'm in the sport to challenge myself and become a better person, mentally and socially.

Maybe it's because of this that I'm not at risk for a poker addiction.

Still, I was made that way because I have a great support group: my parents, a couple of reasonably knowledgeable friends, and hey, even my hero. If you're that worried about your teenager's gaming habits, get involved.

At this point, I'm going to shut up, because I think I'm coming from passionate into passionately irritated.

The fact of the matter is this: love and addiction are not the same thing, and both are what you make of them.