It's poker season once again.

Hide the women and children, people, because it’s poker season. I know what you’re saying, “I thought this was a sports column, poker isn’t a sport.” I beg to differ, my friends. Poker is indeed a sport, and how do I know this? Well, ESPN tells me it is.

ESPN is about to embark on 600 Tuesdays worth of poker leading up to the legendary World Series of Poker. Starting with this past Tuesday you can begin the road to the World Series. You have to wait until October 11, to see the main event, but ESPN will be sure to pound you relentlessly with poker until then.

The World Series of Poker is not just a five day tournament, oh no, it is an event. It is an event that takes 44 days to complete, and you will see every bit of it. I don’t want to sound like I am anti-poker. On the contrary, I enjoy a good poker game among friends. I will admit that since you can’t turn on the TV without seeing a Texas Hold ‘Em tournament, I am getting a bit burned out. I mean it really is getting out of hand when PBS has the Sesame Street World Series of Poker for Toddlers.

I enjoy other poker games, you know, games that are so outlandish that you really need no skill to win. I like to be able to sit down and let luck carry me to the big bucks. With Texas Hold ‘Em you practically need a degree in quantum physics to be a professional. If I wanted to think I wouldn’t have dropped out of school in the eighth grade. But seriously, you need to keep up with how many cards are left in the deck, the odds on what your opponents have, the odds on your winning the hand, the effect the natural oils in the dealer’s hands has on the cards, whether or not your opponents have seen the movie Rounders and know when to cuss you with a Russian accent. You see, that’s too much information to process for me.

Perhaps the hardest part of poker is trying to figure out your opponents tell. A tell is most commonly a physical reaction to your hand, whether it be a good hand or a bad hand. For instance, when I have a good hand, I tend to yell out, “Woooooo hooooo!” That is a tell. I would imagine most of us don’t play with a simpleton like me or a smug Russian who eats Oreos, so it may not be as easy to catch a tell from your opponents. For professionals it’s easy. They know within five hands that you have a bad hand when your arch your left eyebrow, while at the same time, flare you right nostril. For a guy like me, I know you have a great hand when we show our cards at the end of the hand. I am not going to strike fear into most poker players.

As I said, I enjoy games with the craziest aspects and the most ways to win. I love wild cards because I am too lazy to bluff someone into thinking I actually have the natural three of a kind, remember, I don’t like to use my brain during most activities, much less a card game. I also enjoy a game that has a card that guarantees you half of the pot. That aspect requires no skill and as soon as I receive said card I stop playing cards and start waiting for the hand to end to claim my part of the pot. If I make a good hand, who cares, half of that is mine, buddy.

I know that ESPN has shown a lot, and I mean A LOT, of poker over the last couple of years and this has caused a very heated and important argument for our generation. Is poker a sport? Hmmm, that’s a prickly one, isn’t it? My rule of living life is like this, if you see it on TV, then it must be true. If ESPN tells me poker is a sport, well, by my rule, it is.

Let’s look at the evidence, shall we? What qualities must an activity possess to be considered a sport? Endurance is one, I would say. Sometimes you have to play poker for hours at a time. Sometimes a good poker game will last longer than a double header in baseball. That is a lot of pressure….for your rear end. So we are agreed a poker player has great endurance.

Another quality to be considered a sport is courage and heart. I guess you could also call this quality, guts. A poker player shows his guts every time he sits down, not because most of them are a bit portly, no, it’s because every time you enter a poker game you may lose some money. I don’t know about you, but I don’t make enough to lose it in a silly card game. The poker players who enter backroom, back alley poker games show the most guts because they never know when someone may have a little too much to drink and pull his pistol and shoot them right between the eyes. Guts, courage, and heart has been established; poker has got two qualities for sportdom.

I am saving the most important quality for last. Without this aspect of an activity, the others don’t mean anything. To be considered a sport, the participants must have or show some athletic ability. This is the quality that makes Lance Armstrong an athlete; otherwise he is just riding a bike with some friends. Poker players, I believe are athletic. I have only one example to prove this and it proves my assertion. Poker players are expected to be able to eat, drink, listen to music, watch TV, and perhaps smoke, all the while having to keep up with their hand and their money all at the same time. That, my friends, takes some athleticism. Poker is a sport. The debate can now end.

I hope you enjoy the poker season as it has already kicked into to full swing this past Tuesday on ESPN. Maybe you can pick up some pointers from the pros to take the hard earned money from your friends. We all know what the real goal of a poker player is; it is to humiliate and leave your friends broke at the end of a game. Just like in any sport, you play to win the game and anything beyond total domination is not acceptable. Or maybe that is just me.