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BGonline.org Forums
How many pro BG players?
Posted By: Jake Jacobs In Response To: How many pro BG players? (Timothy Chow)
Date: Friday, 15 March 2013, at 3:24 a.m.
Timothy, I made my living for decades from one sort of gambling or another. I am not judgmental by nature, and having been a gambler I don't judge others. But anyone who thinks that by gambling they are doing something socially useful is kidding themselves. I include a large chunk of our brethren in the "finance" industry. All of the useful portions of it, from banking and joint stock corporations, to the insurance industry and speculating on futures (all forms of gambling), were invented long ago. The innovations of the past three decades have served to divert money from useful purposes, building better widgets, to enriching high rolling gamblers. And society has paid the price. The benefits of Indian casinos are somewhat illusory. If (and it is sometimes an "if") the local economy gains, the money has been bled from somewhere else.
As for chouettes, I started gambling by playing hearts for ten cents a point with friends, or nickel-dime-quarter poker. So there was rivalry, and the thrill of winning someone's money, but it was social. Graduating to three-dollar, then five-dollar, then ten- and twenty-dollar chouettes was a natural progression. About a dozen years ago I found I was playing in twenty-dollar games, which were big enough for some players to be hurt,to see them sometimes disappear for months or years. At the same time many of the players in these games were really "chouette friends," not real friends, and the atmosphere was often ugly. The eye-opening moment came when one of the players, a nasty fellow who made his living as a pimp, pulled a knife on a player I did, and do, consider a "friend friend," a sweet guy. The pimp threatened him with the knife, and called him a "dirty Jew." I don't think the sweet guy was overly impressed with the knife, but he said he wouldn't play in a game with someone who did and said things like that, and stopped playing.
I guess if I were the heroic type I'd have also quit the game. The pimp had insulted and threatened a friend after all. But what the heck, I am no role model, and the pimp was a fish. But it did start me thinking a bit more about what we were doing to each other, and to ourselves. I moved to Tucson shortly thereafter, cutting deeply into my playing. Now even at tournaments I seldom play in side games.
The only game I have been interested in joining in recent years has been at John Koonman's house in Tokyo. John, and the rotating cast (Mochy, Falafel, Sander, Henrik, Serge, Morten Holm, Paul Weaver, Ed O, Svobo {by proxy}among others) are gentlemen all. Fortunately or unfortunately I have been too busy working to join the game, and have had to settle for meeting up later for the sushi.
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