Poker News

Ashley Adams

I digress from my typical column on stud strategy to address a question that has been posed to me and that I have posed to myself with increasing frequency during the past few months - as poker has moved from an adult activity to an activity engaging people of all ages. The question is this. Should we encourage children to play poker?

I’ll tell you when the question hit me the hardest. I got a call from the sister of a former girl friend of mine (the girl friend was, of course, from a time before I was married). She had a son who was turning ten. He was absolutely fascinated by poker. He loved to watch it; recognizing all the TV tournament players; he talked about it all the time; and he had friends whom he played poker with regularly.

She wanted to know if I would be interested in hosting a poker tournament for her son at his tenth birthday party. The call did not come out of the blue. She had learned from her sister that I was a “big time” poker player and author — and that I ran charity tournaments. So she thought that perhaps I’d be interested in running one for her son’s tenth birthday.

I didn’t hesitate for a minute. It literally didn’t occur to me at the time that anyone might find anything even slightly wrong about this. I agreed to do it; we set a date; we agreed on a generous fee for me; and off I went about my business.

In the weeks that followed however, as I proudly told my friends and family about this event that I had coming up, I received more than a few raised eyebrows and some downright negative responses. “Do you think that’s a good idea Ashley” they’d ask. “You’re pushing gambling on kids?” someone queried pointedly. A friend of mine who is a religious Christian frankly told me that I was committing a sin by “placing a stumbling block before the blind”.

Too many people - people whom I respect - rang alarm bells too loudly for me to ignore their concern. So I’ve been asking myself if there’s anything wrong with kids playing poker. Here’s a quick assessment of my thinking on it.

In a word, “no”. In a sentence, “Poker is a positive activity for a kid that engages their brain and their heart.”

I don’t come to those conclusions lightly. I’ve thought about the potential negative influence of gambling. But the stock market is gambling; life insurance; auto insurance; banking; and business are all gambles. The fact that poker involves risk not withstanding, learning poker skills, in my opinion, is a positive. It is learning a thoughtful way of managing risk. The fact that some adults and children succumb to the temptation to take foolish risks is no more significant, to me, than the fact that many student athletes succumb to the temptation to artificially enhance their performance by using steroids. Sure it’s a concern. But it’s not a reason to give up athletics. It just means that we should be careful to monitor the activity, teach restraint, and encourage learning and self control.

So Moms and Dads, from this poker player’s perspective, poker is fine for kids. While learning how to play poker well, they’ll have to learn about probability, odds, statistics, and psychology and money management. In the process of teaching your kids how to become skillful poker players you’ll also be showing them how mindless gambling literally doesn’t pay off.

Filed under: Poker News