FINALLY!!  I had my opportunity to speak at Southern CT State University.  My first attempt was interrupted by a virtual shutdown of the Merritt Parkway 3 exits away from the campus.  It took me almost 4 hours to get to Southern from Hartford.  I got there after the entire presentation was over and all of the people had left.  I apologized profusely.  It was the first speech I had ever been late/missed.  Hopefully it will be my last.

But I was able to re-schedule and spoke for students and faculty during a lunch presentation in the Student Center.  The speech went really well, but I couldn’t help but notice all that was running through my head before the speech.  It’s amazing what public speaking can do to your mind.  I can’t get over the thoughts that were scattered in my brain.  I intend to write a piece about that sometime soon, but I don’t want to divulge all of the details just yet.

I was able to give my usual presentation and then showed the Ivey video.  Once again it got a great reaction and we continued on to talk about current events, including online poker.  It’s clear my stance on the topic so I won’t re-iterate it at the moment, but I will soon bring up a couple of new articles I read tonight.

The speech concluded and hopefully I will be back at Southern come this fall to speak with some incoming freshman.  I think “Into the Muck” can play a vital role as part of young people’s first year experience/orientation into college, or even as part of a high school health class.

We teach high schoolers about drugs, alcohol, sex, and tobacco.  Yet when they leave high school we don’t teach them all of that because we expect that they’re going to be drug addicts or alcoholics.  We teach them about it so that they are aware of what they could end up getting themselves involved with.  Why isn’t this also true with gambling?  When will gambling be added to that list and be brought up in senior health?  Perhaps “Into the Muck” can help present the other side.  I’m not in any way trying to tell people how to act/gamble/play poker, but I continue to stand by my point that it’s important for awareness.

It’s not the casino’s or the online poker company’s responsibility to educate the public about gambling awareness.  It is society, and corporations like ESPN presenting poker in such a fabricated way in order to accept the online poker company’s sponsorship money have played a role in how its portrayed.  As the cliched saying goes, “Knowledge is power.”

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There continues to be a stir about “Black Friday” throughout the social networks, including Twitter.  I looked at a piece by Calvin Ayre, “Black Friday:  Calvin Ayre picks online poker’s winners and losers” (Article).

I made sure I left a comment on the page about the lack of comprehension for anything other than poker player’s wallets.  No one has yet considered any of the young people who haven’t been exposed to online poker as winners and that perhaps the regulations that will be made will be successful in making the online world safer to gamble.  There needs to be more stringent guidelines as how to deposit and access funds online.  It was too easy the way it was and I’m not 100% sure exactly how to change that, but there needs to be something done.

Calvin responded to my comment with an incoherent mess that didn’t seem worthy of a response.  “Religious mumbo jumbo???”  If you read my comment, I’m not sure what religion had anything to do with it.  I have downloaded the piece he’s referring to about one individual person referring to gambling as good for kids.  However, as he continued to make reference to me not having any clue what I’m talking about, I decided another comment was necessary.  Then I realized who this guy Calvin was, a founder of Bodog.com (an online casino) — of course I had no idea what I was talking about.

The statement that gambling is good for kids depends on how it’s being used.  I think gambling knowledge is EXTREMELY important for kids, it teaches various life skills/lessons and enables people to recognize different things within themselves.  But if this author/scientist has proven that kids should be outside on the playground gambling away anything that they can get their hands on then I’m definitely going to call bullshit on that one.  I’ll get back to all of you on that piece once I have a chance to get a grasp on exactly what this guy is referring to.

I was also forwarded three additional articles about “Black Friday.”

One was written by someone I highly respect, Josh Axelrad (Axelrad’s piece), author of “Repeat Until Rich” and the others were written by former US Senator, Al D’Amato (D’Amato’s piece), and Professional poker player, Matt Matros (Matros’ piece).

Axelrad enlightened me on a new way to look at online poker.  His claim is that perhaps online poker is too powerful to regulate.  It presents such a difficult task and most likely, one that isn’t even possible.  After reading his article and considering some of the usual comments from poker players, and some of his responses to comments, it has brought me to think he could potentially be right.

Online poker is an unbelievable creation.  It allows people to never leave their home nor display their addiction to anyone who may want to help them.  It presents many opportunities to be overtaken by the online poker world and with the speed of game play the addiction can spread much faster than the slow casino play.  If this is actually the case, awareness has never been more important and it goes back to my point about senior health class/freshman in college orientation.

The other two articles are from the pro-poker perspective and continue to just dwell on the fact that they have lost their liberties.  At the risk of repeating myself, I will briefly react to them.

Both of them state that poker is not a game of chance.  It’s a skill game.

Sorry boys, it is STILL gambling.  Just because you talk of how you can manipulate how often you win or lose by recognizing ‘tells’ in other players – whether it be reactions or a betting pattern – this is still a game of chance.  As much as you continue to state that you “control your own destiny,” that’s ridiculous.  Can you control what hand you’re dealt?  Can you control what cards are revealed for the flop, turn, and river?  Can you control the percentages that certain hands beat other hands? (I’m pretty sure the answer is NO to all of those questions).

The only thing you can control is how you play the hand, which I will agree involves some skill, but not enough to separate poker from gambling.  IT IS STILL GAMBLING AND IT IS A CARD GAME, ONE OF CHANCE.

If there wasn’t a luck component, poker would not have exploded when amateur Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker.  Since then amateurs have believed they can win and because of how many people enter these tournaments, amateurs do win, which in turn makes people think they can strike it rich too.  This had led them to neglect considering the overwhelming odds against them.  There wouldn’t be an online poker issue right now if there wasn’t a luck/chance component because the pros would win every time and no one would want to play.

I think poker players are having a hard time dealing with the fact that their cash crop may start to dry up.  Honestly, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened sooner.  The problem?  Because each and every year, people turn 21 and haven’t been exposed to the issue of poker and gambling.  Also, a decent percentage continue the new “rite of passage,” a visit to the casino for their 21st birthday.  Until we can reach young people, this will still be an issue, but because of the online shutdown, there may be a stall in the cash crop.

Think about how most industries work.  There is an initial boom (at some point – it doesn’t necessarily have to be in the very beginning) and then eventually the industry levels off to where it should be.  Think about internet stocks and how many people made millions of dollars from them.  Now it’s not like that.  They have leveled off and people aren’t making what they used to.  Poker will eventually level off.  It can’t be like its been, there will be the next fad to take over and if this online poker shutdown is any sign of how poker players will react, there will be many people left sitting in their rooms wondering how to live their lives because there isn’t the money there once was in online poker.

(to close I’ll use a line from “Into the Muck”…)

Good luck online players… oh wait… it’s all skill, yeah right…

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