Use this player to hear a 1 1/2-minute message from Ann about what prompted us to do this survey:

Is Poker a Sport?

You bet it is! It takes a real athlete to play poker for hours! Poker? A sport? Heck, no! You've gotta be kidding! I couldn't care less whether it is or isn't. Tell the world how you really feel about this question: Don't have a question? Just enter "none" in the question box below along with your first name and e-mail address to receive e-mail updates about the results of this survey. Type Your First Name: Enter Your Primary E-Mail Address:

Poker certainly seems to be everywhere these days. Online and on the Travel Channel*, ESPN, Bravo, E! and even on NBC. There are television broadcasts of tournaments such as The World Series of Poker. The World Poker Tour, Poker SuperStars, and the Ultimate Poker Challenge do their best to make poker entertaining by televising shows like Celebrity Poker Showdown, High Stakes Poker, and Hollywood Hold'em. There's even a "Poker Dome Challenge," (sounds like guys in a cage fighting it out tooth and nail) and a ficitonal show called "Tilt," which no doubt makes anyone who doesn't know about playing on "full tilt" wonder what the heck the show's name has to do with poker.

On thing's for sure. Lots of poker players like Chris Ferguson*, Phil Helmuth, Daniel Negraneau, Phil Gordon, Mike Sexton, Joseph Hashem, Johnnie Chan, Doyle Brunson and his son Todd, Mike Phil Ivey, Howard Lederer, his sister Annie Duke and Jennifer Harman (to name only a very few) have become media celebrities. Even actors like Jennifer Tilly, James Woods and Vince Van Patten have enhanced their celebrity status (or used it) to also become "poker stars."

With all this attention on a game I used to play around a card table with my father when I was a kid, my boyfriend and I have this little disagreement about whether poker is a sport or not. He says it is, because it takes "concentration and stamina." I say: So do a lot of things, but that doesn't necesssarily make them a sport.

Fortunately, we don't let this disagreement get in the way of our relationship. But neither he nor I can seem to let it go.

So he said he'd figure out a way for us to settle this, once and for all, and then got the idea for using an online survey to let people (like you) vote. So here it is.

Be fair, and vote only once. But feel free to get your friends and family to vote, too, if you think they'll help sway the results in the direction of your choice.

We're going to keep a running tab of all the votes and keep updating the results, which we'll send you by e-mail, along with other valuable information of interest to you as someone interested in the world of poker. (You can unsubscribe at any time.0

Here's your chance to let us, and the world, know how you feel about this very important issue. Is poker a sport, or isn't it? Help us decide.

Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you. Whichever one of us wins, the other has to take us on weekend vacation of our choice. I'll let you know how it goes...

Ann
(You don't really think I'm going to give out my last name, do you? That's almost as funny as thinking that poker's a sp.... OK, boyfriend, I did't really mean that.)

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