[Dodoubled]

I think the article had the potential to be excellent for a number of reasons:

1.) I've been playing the game for a while and I was actually intrigued by what the author said. Great storyteller.
2.) I've heard the Hogan story before (it first ran in a paper I used to work for, The Morning Call, which was referenced) several months ago. It's a fantastic story and a good lede, if only for shock value alone.
3.) It does a great job of illustrating the federal government's naievete to the issue of online gaming, and the quagmire it finds itself in when it comes to legalizing or illegitimizing it.

But the story falls flat where it counts most. Here's why:

1.) It's chock full of hasty generalizations.
It seems like everyone who does a story about college kids and online poker uses the Moneymaker tale in a hugely irresponsible way. Man throws up 40 bucks. Man wins online tournament. Man with nothing but a bag on a stick and a dream ventures out to Vegas, falls face-first into a pile of cash and wins WSOP Main Event.

Bullshit.

The Moneymaker story is good, but all these retellings seem to lose sight of the fact that he was probably a really, really good poker player (amateur or not) before playing in the Series. Yet, in nearly every single story I've read, he's made to sound like a guy who rolled into the 7-11, bought a lottery ticket and hit. It takes luck to win the lottery, sure. But it takes a lot more than just that to win the WSOP.

It's no wonder so many kids out there throw their money at the tables. They look at poker as a "get-rich-quick" scheme when in fact, it's exactly the opposite. They read books about how to play "winning" poker, when in fact, they should be reading books about how to make correct judgments. How many college players REALLY understand implied odds?

Fuck the Moneymaker story. What kids really need to hear is the McNugent story. How an 18-year-old kid goes from penny games to a $50,000 roll in a year's time. Hmmm ... let's start with smart bankroll management and work up from there. Most college kids can't even balance their checkbooks. And they're sitting at the fucking poker tables??

2.) Speaking of hasty generalizations, if I were a housewife who didn't know a thing about poker and I read that article, I would think two thoughts:
College kids-Poor, Defenseless Victims
Poker-A Disease, not unlike the Plague. Or An Addiction, not unlike Cigarettes, Alcohol or Cocaine. (The story itself didn't dumb down the game. It simply dumbed down the cause-effect scenario).

This is completely the author's fault. Instead of offering any new, real insight on the matter, or more importantly, an opposing viewpoint outside that of the corporate talking head, he simply regurgitates facts that have been passed around the block. This story would have been quite good with a few quotes from some of those students who play the $1,000-buy ins, as opposed to the friend-of-the-friend who knows them. These are my questions for the populous:
How does a college kid finance such a high-stakes game? Do they borrow from the rents? Do they break knees? Do they really build their bankroll from scratch? If so, tell me the story.
Which ones are the really good players, and why, and which ones are the smoke-and-mirror fish on the run of their lives? How can veteran players tell the difference?

Don't just rehash tired facts. Tell me something new, something intriguing. Get Moneymaker on the horn (wow, he probably feels like shit considering he's apparently singlehandedly responsible for the wasting away of America's youth) and have him dole out advice for youngsters who want to play the game. Explain to them that maybe, just maybe, poker isn't the problem. It's the laziness of the newcomers who are unwilling to learn how to play the game right, who don't know the difference between pot odds and potluck.