Mar 16 2011
Mainstream Media Poker Pieces: Operation Poker & Health Tips
written by: Jennifer under Poker Comments: Comments Off
Poker is funny. As the game gained popularity in the last decade, its vernacular also made its way into metaphors and story headlines about everything from politics to sports. Someone went all-in via a public relations campaign, a politician bluffed his way through negotiations, or a celebrity put all of her cards on the table. In addition, stories about poker players and tournaments often make mainstream news, allowing for writers unfamiliar with the game to botch the lingo and create amusing content. This weekly column will look at some of those stories as well as the incorporation of poker terms in bigger news pieces.
With poker players in town for The Big Event at the Bicycle Casino, the Los Angeles Times took the opportunity to speak with Jonathan Duhamel and David Williams about their lives in poker. Though the interview was very brief, it touched on some interesting topics for the general public’s reading pleasure.
Should poker dealers have CPR training for the moment they deal that heartbreaking river card? That sure came in handy at Raynham Park’s poker room recently, where a poker dealer and two other players performed CPR to a man who had a heart attack. They were credited with saving the man’s life.
This may be in the “duh” category, but a Duke University study recently found that some individuals who were deprived of sleep made decisions based on monetary gain instead of loss reduction. Attention and memory were said to have suffered due to lack of sleep. The subjects of the study were monitored for gambling outcomes based on sleep deprivation. So … sleep leads to better gaming decisions. Who knew?!
The point of the story is to explain that a number of heroin dealers were caught and jailed. The interesting part is that they were caught by the police department’s Operation Poker, which is used to target those involved in drug crimes. Why Operation Poker? A 2009 article interviewed the chairman for a group connected with the operation who said, “Users are gambling with their lives when they buy [drugs] off the streets as they can never be sure what they are being sold.” Ahhh, gambling … poker … such a 2009 correlation.
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