Humorous look at poker as an Olympic sport

It’s Olympic time again and no doubt we’ve all tuned in at some point to watch the ritual humiliation of British athletes lining up to be beaten as they give it their best.

We’ve sighed as our triple jumpers failed to made a legal jump after four year’s training, sat despondently as Paula Radcliffe crashed out of the marathon and shared unbridled excitement when some cycling bloke we’d never heard of inexplicably started winning medals left right and centre.

But there’s one sport we won’t be seeing at the games in Athens this year – poker!

According to guidelines set by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), a sport must be played in at least 75 countries across four continents for it to be considered for certification as an Olympic event.

So with around 100 million regular players around the world poker fits the bill nicely.

Sure, players may have a preference for large hats, cigars and shades rather than tracksuits. And any six packs on view tend to get drunk to feed expanding beer bellies rather than make up part of a finely toned body. But the game is still mentally tough and deserves its place in Athens.

Well, that was the argument of a group of poker fans who set up the internet-based Poker in Athens campaign anyway. Poker is the greatest game ever invented they argued. It should be an Olympic sport!

It’s an interesting idea. Of course, the campaign failed, though that probably had something to do with the fact it was a little tongue in cheek. Actually, more like glued to their cheeks.

The ribbon wavers (aka rhythmic gymnasts) came in for particular stick, being dismissed by campaigners as “utterly meaningless” amid warnings that some disciplines could, and should be dropped to make way for new sports.

A spokesman even went as far as saying: “Poker is as worthy a sport as any other, and it’s certainly more worthy than friggin’ rhythmic gymnastics.”

Campaign leaders did have the foresight however to submit to dope testing with the general consensus being that Steroid Rage could harm the game’s image if, say, a player were to have his Pocket Rockets cracked by 7-2 off suit.

But perhaps the thinly veiled threat in a petition to the IOC sanctioning committee to deal in poker in the Athens games “Or I’ll come to your house. I know where you live,” didn’t help win the members over.

Either way there were hard feelings when the campaign leaders discovered poker was not going to make it into the games which culminated in a classic story that the Olympic torch had been lost during its journey round the world.

The Poker in Athens team got to the bottom of the story – and provided pictorial evidence that only part of the story had emerged. The torch had indeed been lost – in a poker game when Aces full was beaten!

It seems no one really took the time to sit back either and figure out what one of the world’s best players would make of it when, after winning a gruelling 5-day tournament they were handed some flowers and a small gold medal instead of several million dollars.

But such problems haven’t deterred the activists. Despite failing to get poker in the Athens games the campaign refuses to fold and there are still high hopes poker’s time will come.

Which leads to a word of advice from the Big Slick team. Try using the word “synchronized”. Seems to work with every other sport desperate to get into the Olympics. Yes, Synchronized poker. That’s it. Job done. See you at the tables in 2008!