Poker is not a sport. While it is certainly a highly competitive game, it is most certainly not a sport.
Those who would maintain that poker is a sport often say that to succeed in big tournaments, players must play 12, 14, sometimes 16 hours of poker per day, and that this kind of intensive schedule takes a monstrous physical toll on the perched gladiators. They say that poker players must maintain a demeanor at the table which at once carefully obscures others" views of their thoughts and yet allows them to remain relaxed; a sort of batting stance, if you will. The argument even exists that the hand-eye coordination necessary to look at your cards constitutes athletic prowess -- just imagine the Olympic quality of the chip riffle!
One need only look at poker players themselves to determine that poker is not a sport: Chris Moneymaker is not often confused with LeBron James just as Greg Raymer bears little resemblance to Alex Rodriguez. There have been successful small players, tall players, blind players, players with Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson"s - there is no requisite athletic ability for succeeding in poker.
However, a fair number of ex-athletes have metamorphosed into wildly successful card players: Erick Lindgren was a collegiate basketball player, Daniel Negreanu was a semi-pro hockey player, Gus Hansen was a tennis prodigy, Doyle Brunson himself was once a promising prospect for the Minneapolis Lakers.
No one could ever definitively say why a number of ex-athletes have found success in poker, but for my money, there are a lot of important poker lessons that can be extracted from other sports.
Take baseball, the great American pastime; baseball and poker actually have a lot in common. Both were invented in America, baseball in 1832, poker somewhere around 1829; both produce players of -- how should we say?-- varied body types; both feature long periods of doing nothing; and most important to our purposes, both subject the player to stacked odds, aka situations where you usually lose.
The greatest single season batting average in baseball history is .424 by Rogers Hornsby, meaning that 42.4% of the time that he went up to the plate that season, he got a hit. The last man to hit over .400 in a season was Ted Williams in 1941, the highest all-time career average belongs to Ty Cobb who hit .367 over the course of his 24 year career and a .300 average is generally considered to be the hallmark of a good hitter.
Then there are pitchers; integral to the success of the team for their performance on the mound, but by far and away the easiest player to get out up at the plate, at least in the National League. While a good hitting pitcher will hit about .200, some even a bit higher, most pitchers hit in the .130-.200 range. If your team is up to bat, the last thing you want to see is your pitcher come up to the plate. On the other hand, you are not going to do much better than Rogers Hornsby.
Now say that you are playing No Limit Texas Hold"em. You are at a table with Johnny Chan, Doyle Brunson, Phil Hellmuth, Eric Seidel, Gus Hansen, Stu Ungar, Wild Bill Hickok, John Edwards, and another, actual psychic. You are the big blind, Wild Bill has raised and everyone has folded around to you. You are scared. You are scared of his cowboy getup, his raise and his apparent ability to cheat death. You fear that a man who can cheat death could easily cheat at cards - luckily, Gandhi is dealing, so you feel pretty sure that it"s an honest deck.
You check your cards-- a pair of deuces. Sure, it"s a pair, but it"s still far from a killer hand. And just as you are about to throw your cards into the muck and cry, a little voice squeaks from the back corner of your mind, "Baseball...baseball." Wild Bill could have any pair bigger than yours and he"d be about an 80% favorite, he could have any two over cards and the two of you would be about 50-50. In baseball terms, the absolute worst case scenario you"d be facing going into the flop is that you would be a good hitting pitcher up at the plate. And even pitchers get hits -- watch a couple of baseball games, nothing in baseball is ever for sure. Not to mention, that with a player as aggressive as Wild Bill, you could easily be in the 50-50 range, heck, he could even be holding something like a 2-7, and you"d be a 70% favorite.
Now let"s put you at a different table. Still No Limit Texas Hold"em, but this time the table is 5 kindergartens with convincing fake IDs, your own Grandmother and a guy in a coma. Big Blind again, and Grandma has raised. You check your cards, Aces, wired, you feel a little bad for the impending destruction of your own grandmother, but hey, she shouldn"t have raised. You just call, you figure you"ll slow play and take every chip she"s got. Flop comes 3 of Spades, Jack of Clubs, 6 of Diamonds. You check, she bets, you call - the family fortune is about to change hands! Turn comes Queen of Hearts, you check again, she bets half the pot, you spring the trap, go all-in...she quickly calls. River comes a 2 of hearts. Grandma shows a Queen - Jack, she has two pair... and all of your chips.
Just as you are about to go Matusow on your donkey grandmother, that same little voice chirps up again, "Baseball...baseball." And you think to yourself, "Hmm, the best hitter in the history of baseball... got out. Maybe not as much as the worst hitter, but he still got out." With that, you bid good day to the kindergartens, good luck to the comatose, and you tell your grandmother that you love her and that you"ll see her soon.
The point of this article is not for you to go all-in with deuce- three and then start screaming about Greg Maddux, neither is it to fold aces and call your Grandmother; the point is to put things in perspective. Wherever you think you are before the flop, you are never a lock to win and never a lock to lose. Poker is about staying confident without getting too excited. After all, no one has ever won the final hand of the WSOP Main-Event with pocket aces, but two people have lost it with them.