Texas Hold'em Ain't No Sport
It leads some to compulsive gambling. Basketball great Michael Jordan said that he is ashamed of how far he allows gambling to take over his life. He went on to say that he is not a compulsive gambler. "I've gotten myself into (gambling) situations where I would not walk away and I've pushed the envelope. I want to go out on a limb and win, and sometimes that can take you past the stage where... you know you should probably take a step back from. "But my drive to win is so great I just step over that line. It's very embarrassing... one of the things you totally regret. So you look at yourself in the mirror and say, 'I was stupid'." (http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/7242_1525844,001800090001.htm) Hmmm…doesn’t that sound like a compulsive gambler? But byadmitting his problem, he again has shown his greatness as an individual. He needs help and he will get it. When I was a kid, gambling was always in the background. Back when real cowboys rather than professional athletes dominated the rodeo scene, my friends and I would watch the cowboys shoot crap in the cow barns. We had never heard such language? (I thought I knew how to swear in both English and Spanish but I was just a piker.) We had never seen such enthusiastic energy dissipation either. Now those cowboys seemed compulsive to me. And crap shooting looked like a sport. I became interested in compulsive gambling when I moved to the Atlantic City area of New Jersey. The state allowed casinos to be built along the famous boardwalk. Donald Trump build three casinos. One was across town on the Inlet. (That’s the one Ivana Trump ran and she did a good job of it too.) Casino workers from Los Vegas (along with their drug addicted kids) moved into the area and before long everything on the gambling scene was booming. When I arrived in the area, only Mervin Griffin had a casino, but there were many when I left. In the meantime, I got interested in compulsive gambling. Once-wealthy business owners were described in the "Atlantic City Press" as being broke because of compulsive gambling. Some were suing the casinos for egging them on. Many other citizens of the area, not immune to the gambling virus, were going bankrupt. I decided to have one of my novels focus on the problem (In No Way Guilty). I contacted the Council On Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey. The Director provided me with what I needed to know. At first, I thought: I’ll write another “Lost Weekend.” Realizing that would require talent, I decided to keep things simple by killing the compulsive gambler in the first chapter of a new detective novel. I called up Richard Lacey out of the recesses of my mind (Bone China), and let him deal with the talented and beautiful wife of the gambler. The Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey has announced that poker has taken New Jersey by storm and that their help line is ringing off the wall. Many adolescents are calling in for help. You can read their report at: http://www.800gambler.org/PressDetails.aspx?ContentID=100 From “Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia” we read: “Texas hold 'em (or simply hold 'em or holdem) is the most popular of the community card poker games. It is the most popular poker variant played in casinos in the western United States, and its no-limit form is used in the main event of the World Series of Poker (abbreviated WSOP), widely recognized as the world championship of the game.” Read the full report at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_hold_'em#Texas_hold.27em_in_popular_culture. Texas hold ‘em is treated as a sport by the television sports media. (The travel and other channels also.) Actually, Texas hold ‘em is less of a sport than butterfly catching. (We all know that a true sport must have a ball.) Texas hol’em, is like watching pond turtles on a rock. This "tutle watching" has gone too far. The purpose is to get more people in to cascinos and also into online gambling sites. It has gone past that. Have you read ads in your local newspapers announcing a poker tournament on the weekend at the blaw blaw hall? Everybody puts in a hundred bucks and they play until someone wins the pot. Many juveniles are wrapped up in gambling. Some have dropped out of school to pursue gambling careers. (It's sad that much of this gambling activity is carried out on college campuses.) A few have been lucky and made considerable money, but there are far more loosers than winners and some have hampered their future careers, and their educational goals, to seek what Coronado could never find, The Seven Cities of Cibola. My research into compulsive gambling told me a story of greed, failure, and despair. Compulsive gamblers may steal, commit fraud, lie, or even kill to get the money they need to keep gambling. Sadly, their families suffer terribly as I tried to betray in “In No Way Guilty.” Nothing is more disheartening than a hundred bill collectors pounding on your door and not knowing where the children's lunch money will come from. What are your kids up to?
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