Poker and the Boy Scouts

A couple of summers ago, Representative Joe Barton (R-TX) introduced a House bill that aimed to license, regulate, and tax online poker in the U.S. While the poker community gave it some attention, it didn’t really earn much elsewhere. However the bill was referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce who a few months after the bill’s introduction had a hearing to discuss “Internet Gaming: Is There a Safe Bet?”

While that hearing was nominally about online gambling, generally speaking, much of the talk focused more specifically on poker and the prospects for federal legislation regarding online poker in the U.S. Nothing would come of that discussion, and the bill went no further. Meanwhile some states have moved forward on their own, most notably Nevada and New Jersey.

I found Barton’s comments in the hearing interesting, though. I remember at the time sharing them with my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class that semester. I wanted to give the students an update on how Congress was then talking about poker, but also I wanted them to hear Barton make reference to some of the stories and ideas we’d been discussing in the course.

“Poker is the all-American game,” Barton began. “President Richard Nixon financed his first Congressional campaign partially with poker winnings from World War II. Our current president, President Obama, is reputed to be a very good poker player. I learned to play poker, believe it or not, in the Boy Scouts. So if you learn something in the Boy Scouts, it's got to be a good thing, right?”

The stories of Nixon and Obama’s poker playing are both fairly well known, especially that of “Tricky Dick” reportedly taking $6,000 off his fellow Naval officers during a couple of months in the Pacific, then using that money to help fund his first successful Congressional campaign in 1946. Indeed, we’d read about both Nixon and Obama and their poker playing in the class already.

But the story of learning the game in the Boy Scouts was something we hadn’t really encountered. We certainly had talked a lot about poker being played by soldiers in all branches of the military, but nothing about Boy Scouts playing poker. I decided to investigate further.

As Barton was implying when sharing the story, his having learned poker as a scout is not unique. Many who have participated in the Boy Scouts of America learned how to play card games, including poker, along with the many other activities that form part of the scouting experience.

I was a Cub Scout for a few years, and remember making it to Webelos and perhaps even getting the Arrow of Light, although I didn’t continue on into the Boy Scouts. I do remember playing card games as a scout like “War” and “Navy,” and while it’s possible I learned about poker hand rankings back then I don’t have any clear memories of playing poker back then.

Many others do, however, have memories similar to Barton’s. Among professional players, Andy Bloch has noted in interviews how he first learned to play poker as a Boy Scout. WSOP Circuit regular and ring winner at the 2007 WSOP-C Tunica event Robert Castoire has likewise noted that he first learned the game in the Boy Scouts.

Indeed, many who learned how to build a fire, pitch a tent, and other lessons for life in the Boy Scouts similarly found themselves learning to bet their big hands, not to chase inside straights, and that accurately anticipating an opponent’s move is another way to apply the Boy Scouts’ motto to “Be Prepared.”

I dug a little further. As it happens, poker and card playing form part of the story of the origins of the Boy Scouts of America.

William D. Boyce, a newspaper publisher from Chicago, first founded the BSA in 1910. Boyce was himself an avid poker player, and his wife, Mary Jane, was said to be a good player, too. A highly successful entrepreneur, the 51-year-old Boyce was already a multi-millionaire when he started the BSA. In fact, some have even speculated that Boyce’s financial well-being might have been significantly bolstered by his poker playing, although no evidence exists to support such a conjecture.

As it happens, the very first edition of the Boy Scouts Handbook published in 1911 does contain a reference to card playing, although there the activity is presented in a somewhat negative light.

The reference appears amid a sequence of stories and essays about American wars, politics, presidents, government, the military, and other matters falling under the heading of the chapter’s title, “Patriotism and Citizenship.”

Among the stories told by the chapter’s author, Waldo Sherman, is that of the War of 1812 between the U.S. and the British. Interestingly, rather than provide an account of the war itself, Sherman focuses instead on the story of a 10-year-old boy, David Glasgow Farragut.

Farragut would go on to make a name for himself fighting for the Union in the Civil War, but he was just a boy in 1812. Nonetheless, when his father (a naval officer) was sent to New Orleans to help fight off the Brits, young David was taken along to serve as a cabin-boy. Sherman shares some of Farragut’s memories of the trip.

“I had some qualities that I thought made a man of me,” said Farragut. “I could swear like an old salt, could drink as stiff a glass of grog as if I had doubled Cape Horn, and could smoke like a locomotive. I was great at cards, and was fond of gambling in every shape.”

However, David’s father was less than pleased with his son’s precocity, and thus following dinner one night confronted him with a question: “David, what do you mean to be?”

David’s answer was that he wished to be like his father and “follow the sea” as a navy man. But his father objected, telling the boy “you will have to change your whole course of life if you ever become a man.”

Young David understood the implication of his father’s words, and from that point made a resolution. “I’ll change my life, and I will change it myself” he decided. “I will never utter another oath, never drink another drop of intoxicating liquor, [and] never gamble.” Telling the story years later, Farragut was able to proclaim that he had “kept these three vows to this hour.”

The implication, of course, is that by setting aside the card-playing -- a vice here associated with drinking, swearing, and other activities to be avoided by civic-minded citizens -- Farragut did successfully grow into the sort of man that boys reading his story might well take as a model to follow.

As an organization designed to build character, foster citizenship, and improve physical fitness (among other goals), the Boy Scouts of America has never officially included poker as a scheduled activity. Even if over the years it has been proven time and time again that a game of cards has repeatedly proven an inviting option when sitting around a campfire.

Thus there is no BSA merit badge for poker. Except, of course, for the spoof badge created by the same folks who came up with merit badges for making popcorn, snoring, belching, and outhouse tipping.

That said, the idea of there ever being a real poker merit badge perhaps became marginally less far-fetched when the BSA not too long introduced a new merit badge for chess. Among the requirements for earning the badge, scouts must learn the rules and scorekeeping, chess notation, play in a tournament, organize a competition, and teach someone else how to play chess.

Who knows? Perhaps these stories of Boy Scouts learning poker might become even more common, especially if the decision is made to create actual poker merit badges.

After which point, the scouts could then play for them.

A Break-In, a Brouhaha, and a Beginning

Hugely busy these days, trying to get everything together before all the gift-giving, family-visiting, and food-stuffing gets going in earnest this weekend. As a result I haven’t had a lot of time to devote to poker -- either playing it or giving a lot of attention to the various news items surfacing in the poker world.

I did get a chance to skim through a few stories standing out from the most recent cycle, though.

Truly hated to hear about 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event champion Jonathan Duhamel being the victim of what sounds like a harrowing home invasion this week. Two men broke into his Montreal home, tied him up and physically assaulted him, threatened to kill him, then left with money and other items including his 2010 WSOP Main Event bracelet.

Of course, that bracelet is a pretty damned conspicuous item -- hard to imagine the thieves being able to pawn such a thing with ease. It sounds like they also made off with a lot of 500 Euro notes that are also rare enough to raise eyebrows, should they try to use them. Here is a report about the incident from a Canadian news outlet.

I also found myself a little distracted the last couple of days by this multi-way spat that has arisen involving I. Nelson Rose, the Poker Players Alliance, Mason Malmuth, and Rep. Joe Barton.

Barton, as we know, has proposed a federal bill designed to provide a means to license and regulate online poker in the U.S. He’s also appeared a couple of times before the House committee that’s been discussing the topic of online gambling, speaking in particular about poker and his desire to see his bill or something similar move forward.

Earlier this month, the gambling lawyer I. Nelson Rose attacked Barton in a piece for Poker Player Newspaper, primarily aiming at Barton’s previous record regarding votes to prohibit online gambling (including his votes on the UIGEA).

The Poker Players Alliance took issue with Rose’s article, sending out a rebuttal of sorts on Tuesday. And Mason Malmuth stirred the pot some more by starting a thread on Two Plus Two in which he shared the PPA’s statement, then jumped in to criticize Rose himself. Then following Rose’s appearance on QuadJacks Radio yesterday, Malmuth appeared on QJ Radio as well to further discuss Rose, Barton, and everything else.

The result is a fairly noisy, overlapping discussion touching on a number of different issues, including the prospects of Barton’s bill, Rose’s political leanings, the PPA’s effectiveness as a representative of poker players’ interests, the possible editorial stance of Poker Player Newspaper, Malmuth’s status as a firebrand, among others.

Finally -- and not unrelatedly -- today we’re learning of Nevada moving forward as expected to adopt intrastate internet gaming regulations. A vote today confirmed that Nevada has agreed to rules for allowing entities to apply for licenses to operate online poker sites.

It sounds like this vote means that should any sort of federal legislation come to pass, Nevada will be a place to go for those seeking licenses to operate sites. It also sounds like Nevada may be ready to go forward with in-state-only sites, too, but work will have to be done to ensure they'll be able to pull that off (i.e., successfully limiting play within the state's borders).

I still need to read up more on this latter item in order to grasp the particulars. Here’s a Wall Street Journal piece from yesterday describing what was voted on today, which as mentioned did pass. (EDIT [added 12/23/11]: Here is a report from PokerFuse about the Nevada vote and its possible implications.)

Definitely appears as though movement on the state level is going to be happening a lot more swiftly than on the federal level, as far as the licensing and regulating of online poker in the U.S. is concerned. And while it is hard to say just yet what the significance of today’s move in Nevada will ultimately be, it does appear to be the beginning of something.

Speaking of beginning something, these gifts aren’t gonna wrap themselves. Better go get started.

The Rebranding of Poker

I watched the live streams of both of those Congressional hearings regarding online gaming this week.

This first happened yesterday afternoon over in the Senate where the Committee on Indian Affairs had an oversight hearing on “The Future of Internet Gaming: What's at Stake for Tribes?” Then this morning came a second meeting in the House of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade to talk about “Internet Gaming: Regulating in an Online World,” in particular the bill proposed by Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) to license, regulate, and tax online poker in the U.S. (H.R. 2366).

Yesterday’s discussion in the senate regarding Native Americans’ potential stake in a regulated online gambling environment in the U.S. did deal in some specifics with regard to how it might be reconciled with the current situation and the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988. Otherwise, the talk was mostly of a generic variety when it came to what such an environment would be like.

The upshot seemed to be that proponents of regulation all want to assure the Native Americans that neither their current rights nor their brick-and-mortar casinos will be unduly threatened by the dawning of a regulated online gambling in the U.S. Meanwhile, representatives of the Native Americans’ interest are somewhat divided, with several sounding less than enthusiastic about such a prospect.

That is to say, there are more than a few reservations from the reservations.

Meanwhile, today’s House subcommittee hearing was much more specific about logistics and seemed to indicate the real possibility that the Barton bill could move forward soon. Still, there were a number of points made to suggest at least some legislators aren’t thrilled with the idea of allowing anything like H.R. 2366 to move along, including Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) whose nickname may or may not be “Big Bad.”

Channeling our old friend Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) -- the House Financial Services Committee Chairman currently scheduling hearings to look into insider trading while being accused himself of having benefited from the very same practice (no shinola) -- Wolf spoke of suicides and ruin as unavoidable consequences to unleashing the “crack cocaine” of online gambling upon citizens who will necessarily be unable to control their worst, most self-destructive instincts.

Responding to Wolf in today’s hearing, Rep. Barton tried to distinguish poker from other gambling games -- his bill is, after all, poker-specific -- promoting it as a true test of skill that primarily attracts intelligent people who aren’t in such dire need of governmental hand-holding. Referencing the World Series of Poker on ESPN, Barton praised the smarts on display there, noting how the players seemed more like “very intelligent, ‘MIT’ type engineering people” than potential gambling addicts.

Wolf wasn’t really hearing that argument, and indeed others who would support Barton’s bill such as Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) who also testified at today’s House hearing aren’t that excited, either, to start distinguishing poker as particularly different from other gambling games. Not when it comes to arguing for individual liberty and citizens’ rights to play those games, anyway.

All of this made me think of a Forbes article that just appeared a couple of days ago by Jeff Bercovici titled “Poker Shuffles the Deck.”

Taking an argument that is currently being advanced by the International Federation of Poker, the group currently holding a duplicate poker tournament in London (“the Nations Cup”) designed to highlight the skill the game requires, Bercovici discusses current efforts to try to “rebrand” poker as a “mindsport.”

Besides improving poker’s cultural status (and perhaps helping legislators like Barton make his case for poker’s difference from other gambling games), such a “rebranding” may also help in the securing the support of advertisers other sports currently enjoy. So goes the argument, anyway.

“If poker ever manages to transcend its unsavory origins and become a mainstream sport with big-league sponsorship -- and that's a big if -- it will have followed a familiar path,” writes Bercovici. He then goes on to compare poker to Mixed Martial Arts, stock car racing, and even football -- all sports that weren’t initially accepted by the American culture at large before eventually becoming some of the country’s most popular sports to watch.

The comparisons are interesting, as is the overall effort to “rebrand” poker into something more acceptable to more Americans. I can’t help but think, though, that it would be easy to take all of this too far -- to try to characterize poker as a game that does not involve real gambling, or to make the game over into something else entirely (as one could argue duplicate poker tries to do).

Barton’s words today implied the idea that it’s mostly super-smarties playing poker, but we all know that is hardly the case. And even if everyone who played poker approached it as studiously as many approach other “mindsports,” it would still be a gambling game in which chance necessarily plays a significant role. And well, not everyone is okay with that.

Apparently there might be another online poker-only bill introduced over in the senate before the end of the year -- at least that is what the New York Post reported this week. Harry Reid (D-NV) is said to be behind this one (again), with UIGEA-architect and former opponent of all things gambling-related Jon Kyl (R-AZ) allegedly on board as a co-sponsor. Kyl is on that “super committee,” you'll recall, and so some are wondering if the subject might have come up as that group works on discovering ways to reduce the deficit, including creating new revenue sources.

Am highly curious to see where all of this legislative pushing ultimately goes. And, of course, what the poker “brand” will become in terms of its significance to American culture if and when it does.