Those living in the UK will have done well not to notice the recent slew of TV program’s concerning gambling. A wide range of approaches have been taken to portray the country’s perceived love affair with gaming, from the quirky three part documentary ‘£50, says you’ll watch this’ brought to us by documentary maker Hardeep Singh Kohli to the rather ridiculous offerings of panoramas Declan Lawn and the extremely negative efforts of the channel 4 dispatches team.
  
The current interest being shown by the mainstream media is not really surprising considering the recently announced Super Casino plans and the government’s attempts to entice offshore gamming concerns to the UK. The present government’s attitude to gambling and the affect on the populous following these policy decisions will be the subject off constant media scrutiny, this hopefully should encourage healthy and well reasoned debate on the effects of gambling. But of course certain facets of the mainstream media can always be relied upon to attempt to sensationalise and titillate and as poker was the main thread in the three mentioned TV programs already aired, then it seems likely our beautiful game can expect much more media attention in the ensuing months.
  
I find myself increasingly bewildered by the attitude towards poker from some quarters of the main stream media. I believe the grouping of our game as ‘just’ another form of gambling clumsy, inaccurate and extremely frustrating and because of the high profile of poker and its perception as glamorous it finds itself the main target of attack from those that wish to highlight the pitfalls of gambling.
  
It’s ironic that a game with such a large skill factor, can be rather slow paced and has a unique tendency to find and punish human frailties is so often held up as the main target for assault on all forms of gambling. All of these factors make it the least likely gaming opportunity to appeal to the compulsive gamblers, who have a tendency to look for fast paced gambling opportunities where they can absolve themselves of responsibility. Does this sound like poker to you? 
  
Certain gambling opportunities are perceived as much more socially acceptable than poker, this really should not be the case. If your aunty mentioned she visited the Bingo hall or played the lottery twice a week hardly anyone would bat an eyelid, but what reaction would she get if she mentioned she played poker for the same stakes? I’m pretty sure it would be a mixture of concern and bemusement.
  
Bingo Halls attract hundreds of thousands of people every week across a broad section of the community to gamble money they can often ill afford to lose on a randomly generated number game with a house edge, the same applies to the national lottery. We all know a certain Mr Gold is the current ‘World champion of poker’ but who is the current world champ of bingo or the lottery? Yet these forms of ‘pure’ gambling rarely warrant a mention in the gaming debate, very strange.   
  
I have some personal reasons for getting so vexed by the constant attacks on poker and its inaccurate grouping with games of chance.  I have played poker for most of my life, as a young boy at school and through many different jobs I have almost constantly been involved with one social game or another. But it’s only really in the past four years with my involvement with UKPOKERINFO that poker really has become an essential part of my life.
  
In these recent years I have studied hard to improve my game and have learned some valuable lessons in risk control and bank roll management. The lessons my involvement with poker have taught me has lead me to no longer gamble at all. Personally I no longer class poker as gambling and I only play in a game for stakes I can afford within a structured bank roll system.  I have previously bet £1,500 pounds on the spin of a roulette wheel and I have bet £2,000 pounds on a horse race, the very thought of doing this now is abhorrent.  
  
Poker has taken the gamble out of me and most of my friends within the game feel the same. But there are plenty of people who play poker and still gamble, in fact many of the worlds most famous and successful poker players past and present have been near compulsive gamblers. Most of them learned to control this compunction to gamble to be able to succeed in poker and there involvement in poker and other casino games comes from the two activities sharing the same locale.
  
It is my own personal believe that the only danger in poker is its relative proximity to other forms of gambling and the encouragement from poker players who happen to partake in these games of chance. I believe that in all probability a person with a compulsion to gamble to the point of destruction will find his own way to the games of chance with no involvement or encouragement from poker.
Kevin Stevens is Article Editor for UKpokerinfo and content writer for UKpokernews