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It's so sad, to me, that he has to hide his love of the game for political purposes. How sweet would it be to log onto Full Tilt one night and see a player name "Prez B-Rock" w/ his own suit and blue tie-wearing avatar sitting in the 1000/2000 game w/ Gus (Goose) & Co?

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Link was acting upBefore his recent loss in the Nevada caucus, Barack Obama took heat (from the Clinton camp and from casino executives) for his history of opposing the expansion of legal gambling. His campaign people never pointed out, in his defense, that their man considers himself to be “a pretty good poker player.” (That’s what he told an Associated Press reporter who asked him to name a hidden talent.) This puts him in the company of Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Warren Harding, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Richard Nixon. And, like Teddy Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, Senator Obama seems to have played the game at least partly because it enabled him to form political alliances that he might not otherwise have formed. Obama was greeted coolly by some of his fellow-legislators when, in 1997, he arrived in Springfield to take a seat in the Illinois senate. Perhaps realizing that both the Chicago machine pols and the downstate soybean farmers viewed him as an overeducated bleeding heart and a greenhorn, he decided to woo them with poker. Along with another freshman senator, Terry Link, Obama started up a regular game in Link’s Springfield living room. It began with five players but quickly grew to eight and developed a long waiting list, which included not only Democrats but Republicans and lobbyists. “When it turned out that I could sit down . . . and have a beer and watch a game or go out for a round of golf or get a poker game going,” Obama told the Chicago Tribune last year, “I probably confounded some of their expectations.” But it was no Deadwood. Link, discussing the game over the phone the other day, said, “You hung up your guns at the door. Nobody talked about their jobs or politics, and certainly no ‘influence’ was bartered or even discussed. It was boys’ night out—a release from our legislative responsibilities.”Obama’s analytical mind helped him excel at draw, stud, and hold ’em, and also at the sillier, more luck-based variants of the game that other players chose, such as baseball. Yet, even with the beer drinking and cigarette smoking, there were unspoken rules of conduct. When a married lobbyist arrived at a Springfield game with a person described as “an inebriated woman companion who did not acquit herself in a particularly wholesome fashion,” Obama made a face indicating that he wasn’t pleased. Link says that the lobbyist and his date were “quickly whisked out of the place.”Obama never played for high stakes. Only on a very bad night could a player drop two hundred dollars in these games, typical wins and losses being closer to twenty-five bucks. Link describes Obama as a “calculating” cardplayer, avoiding long-shot draws and patiently waiting for strong starting hands. “When Barack stayed in, you pretty much figured he’s got a good hand,” former Senator Larry Walsh once told a reporter, neglecting to note that maintaining that sort of rock-solid image made it easier for Obama to bluff. Many Presidents have been known to use poker lingo when they talk policy. Lincoln used a poker analogy to explain his decision not to apologize to Queen Victoria during the Trent Affair. Teddy Roosevelt’s Square Deal sprang from a poker sensibility. “When I say I believe in a square deal, I do not mean . . . to give every man the best hand,” Roosevelt explained. “If the cards do not come to any man, or if they do come, and he has not got the power to play them, that is his affair. All I mean is that there shall not be any crookedness in the dealing.”F.D.R. played nickel-ante stud games—“an exchange of much conversation but little money,” according to Justice Robert H. Jackson, who played in them regularly—to unwind after his gruelling days managing the Depression and then the war. Truman had played as a doughboy during the First World War and kept up with war buddies at poker games, including during his years in the White House, where he played with chips embossed with the Presidential seal.On the campaign trail, Obama has been known to play Uno with his daughters, but no card games involving chips. It may be that his advisers are being cautious. In some forms, poker, after all, remains illegal in much of the country. ♦

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It's so sad, to me, that he has to hide his love of the game for political purposes. How sweet would it be to log onto Full Tilt one night and see a player name "Prez B-Rock" w/ his own suit and blue tie-wearing avatar sitting in the 1000/2000 game w/ Gus (Goose) & Co?
I'd like to see him heads up vs. Ivey.
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It's so sad, to me, that he has to hide his love of the game for political purposes. How sweet would it be to log onto Full Tilt one night and see a player name "Prez B-Rock" w/ his own suit and blue tie-wearing avatar sitting in the 1000/2000 game w/ Gus (Goose) & Co?
My bad-triple post.
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It's another plus in his column. Can you imagine Hilary playing poker? Now Bill I could see but Hilary, not a chance,lol. And have no idea about McCain but if he's going to appeal to the conservatives in his party he'll come down against it. Most conservatives that I know foam at the mouth whenever a new casino is proposed here. Even though many of them are farmers and ranchers and you have to be a incurable gambler to ever stay in those 2 professions.

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It's another plus in his column. Can you imagine Hilary playing poker? Now Bill I could see but Hilary, not a chance,lol. And have no idea about McCain but if he's going to appeal to the conservatives in his party he'll come down against it. Most conservatives that I know foam at the mouth whenever a new casino is proposed here. Even though many of them are farmers and ranchers and you have to be a incurable gambler to ever stay in those 2 professions.
She strikes me as more of a bridge or yahtzee player.
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It's so sad, to me, that he has to hide his love of the game for political purposes.
Yea i think its silly. I can just see it now Obama will go to a high stakes poker game, run out of money then put the white house up for payment. :club:
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Yea i think its silly. I can just see it now Obama will go to a high stakes poker game, run out of money then put the white house up for payment. :ts
Now THAT would probably get Hilary into the game :D:club:
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Now THAT would probably get Hilary into the game :ts:club:
DN takes the pot, the whitehouse ( Just don't make us watch TTMR )
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I find that not to be cool in much the same way that New York prostitutes were less than enthusiastic to find out that Spritzer (it turns out) actually enjoys the exchange of money for sex.

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Bump. Somebody argue with me.

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Does anyone know where Obama stands on the legalization of online gambling? Poker in particular?
I love poker as much as the next guy...and more then many but I just don't see this being a real factor in the support of any candidate.
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