Ashley, the Proud Poker Father – Poker's Net-Positive Impact

[shipitfish]

In all this discussion in my journal the last 48 hours about poker harming people, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to link to this article. It's not the article itself that interests me for its own sake. I like it because it shows three generational connections, made through poker.

I got to know Ashley Adams (the father writing the introduction and coda to the article) while I lived in Boston. I went to his home a few times for home games. I met Rebbecca, his daughter, only once, briefly. She came home once as we played in Ashley's club room. She rolled her eyes a bit with this oh, they're playing poker again look. I wondered at the time, not having kids myself, about how a hobby like poker interacts in the family structure.

Reading this article, it became clear that as Rebbecca grows up, she's getting some appreciation for who her father through his love for poker — enough so that she's inspired to write about it. Given Ashley's excited way of writing about his daughter's article (and the fact that he emailed every poker buddy he has to let us know the article was up on the site), he obviously feels tremendous pride and goodwill that his daughter is learning about him through his hobby.

This whole story reminds me that — despite some negative sides to poker that we have been debating here in my journal the past few days — poker is a reasonable part of our culture that has positive impacts on people and their relationships. Sure, it's played for money and some people make bad decisions about money and get in trouble due to addiction. But how can we say it was bad for Ashley to teach his daughter to play poker, to use it to connect with her aging grandfather, and now to connect back with her, as he watches her go out into the world?

Poker is a net positive to the world and there is no harm in sharing it with those we love. Some of those we love will have pain from poker, but those people were probably destine for pain in life one way or the other anyway.