Is poker a sport?

Is poker a sport?

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Takes_Two_To_Tango

Takes_Two_To_Tango

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We all know it's a game, but is it a sport?

I guess some will say it's a sport of the mind.

Plus poker is shown all over sports channels.

So what do you guys say?

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By definition, a sport requires an athletic activity. So no. Neither are video games.
 
It's a sport in the same sense that Monopoly, Yahtzee and video games are sports.

So in other words, not at all. They're games.
 
In poker, the best player can lose to the worst player. You won't find that in other sports.

Edit: It could be a sport hypothetically. Like let's say for instance a group of 10 people all play 200K hands and whoever had the best results over a big enough sample size would win. That's not very practical though.
 
Last edited:
No.

No one with a brain would say so.
 
No. Chess isn't a sport either. They're both just games.
 
grappling is like sex, but it is a sport

so is sex a sport

???
 
I'll be a wee bit more controversial than those who have already pointed out that parlor games are not sports.

Darts, billiards, and bowling aren't sports, either. The last is the most controversial, I'd say, but yeah, I don't care that it takes a bit of forearm strength to apply spin to the ball, and (albeit minimal) power to apply enough velocity to the ball to really smash the pins. Not a sport.
 
Darts/snooker/bowling have a physical element. Poker is just mind work.
 
Depends on how the word "sport" is used. Poker is intensely "sporting," and one who plays poker avidly may be a "sportsman," but it is not a sport by common definition and it's too big a stretch to call it a sport. I'm in neither camp; I prefer Hemingway's definition above all.
 
BoobyMcBoobFace said:
Darts/snooker/bowling have a physical element. Poker is just mind work.
Click to expand...
In fact, they've studied the impact of physical fitness (as well as nutritional replenishment) on both Poker players and Chess masters at the highest level, and there's a physical element to those games, too. More physically fit grandmasters hold up better under the grueling grind of standard games or tournaments, and the brain functions better if one's body is healthy overall, generally. This explains why you see very few fat Super GMs. They've also charted a negative correlation in performance for those who binge on sugar during these long hauls, or who ingest nothing at all. The same is true for other board games like Go. Concentrating as hard as they do for these lengths of time is actually quite draining.

Meanwhile, video games also contain a physical element, including the hand/eye coordination, though much more intensively, I'd say, and then there's another dimension which has greater carryover to traditional sports than any of these: reaction time.

So Darts/Billiards/Bowling are barely more "physical" than these, and are-- like Poker-- parlor games. They're not sports.
 
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