Comments on: The Scarier Side of Poker http://www.fascinationplace.org/2008/01/18/the-scarier-side-of-poker/ Michael Rawdon's webjournal Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:37:50 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Michael Rawdon http://www.fascinationplace.org/2008/01/18/the-scarier-side-of-poker/comment-page-1/#comment-15838 Michael Rawdon Sun, 20 Jan 2008 06:17:58 +0000 http://www.fascinationplace.org/2008/01/18/the-scarier-side-of-poker/#comment-15838 Hi Ken! I don't doubt that you have a core group of close friends, but an extended group of 100 people is a lot of people, and I have a hard time believing that the whole group of 100 is really "tight". You may all be friendly, but a group that large involved in a gambling activity like poker and it seems to me you're likely to end up with someone who doesn't have the group's best interests at heart, one way or the other. I think this is just the nature of large groups mixed with gambling - even if the stakes are low. (I don't think poker is a bad thing, but I think any activity that involves gaining and losing money is fundamentally different than other activities, and you're more likely to have some people who think about the activity irrationally. Poker is different from bridge in this way, for instance.) That's just what my point was: It became larger than just your close friends and buddies from work playing the occasional home game. And at some point the risk of crossing some line became a lot higher. I'm not sure where that point was, but at 100 people it seems like it's more of a club than just a group of friends. And at <i>that</i> point, given the uneasy relationship between poker and the law, you ran more of a risk of being noticed by the law. I don't know what you could have done to have prevented this, other than to have kept the group small. Hi Ken! I don’t doubt that you have a core group of close friends, but an extended group of 100 people is a lot of people, and I have a hard time believing that the whole group of 100 is really “tight”. You may all be friendly, but a group that large involved in a gambling activity like poker and it seems to me you’re likely to end up with someone who doesn’t have the group’s best interests at heart, one way or the other. I think this is just the nature of large groups mixed with gambling – even if the stakes are low. (I don’t think poker is a bad thing, but I think any activity that involves gaining and losing money is fundamentally different than other activities, and you’re more likely to have some people who think about the activity irrationally. Poker is different from bridge in this way, for instance.)

That’s just what my point was: It became larger than just your close friends and buddies from work playing the occasional home game. And at some point the risk of crossing some line became a lot higher. I’m not sure where that point was, but at 100 people it seems like it’s more of a club than just a group of friends. And at that point, given the uneasy relationship between poker and the law, you ran more of a risk of being noticed by the law.

I don’t know what you could have done to have prevented this, other than to have kept the group small.

]]> By: Ken http://www.fascinationplace.org/2008/01/18/the-scarier-side-of-poker/comment-page-1/#comment-15771 Ken Sat, 19 Jan 2008 09:37:03 +0000 http://www.fascinationplace.org/2008/01/18/the-scarier-side-of-poker/#comment-15771 Thanks for reading/linking/commenting. To answer your question about how tight a group that size could be, 20 of us are all meeting for dinner and drinks on Saturday evening. No poker on the agenda...just hanging out. So believe it or not, fairly tight. I think I also back that up with the description of our recent holiday party and our plans to go out together after last Saturday's tournament (which were ultimately foiled). Cheers! Thanks for reading/linking/commenting. To answer your question about how tight a group that size could be, 20 of us are all meeting for dinner and drinks on Saturday evening. No poker on the agenda…just hanging out. So believe it or not, fairly tight. I think I also back that up with the description of our recent holiday party and our plans to go out together after last Saturday’s tournament (which were ultimately foiled). Cheers!

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