The 2010 Winter Olympic Games taught us that activities such as curling can be considered a sport. With this being the case, many people are starting to ponder the question “why not poker?”
This thought has especially been circulating ever since the announcement that poker will be accepted into the International Mind Sports Association. The link between the International Mind Sports Association and the Olympics is that the International Olympic Committee looks at games in this association as true games of skill.
Of course this doesn’t mean that we will see poker in the 2012 Summer Games, but it does at least mean poker is on the radar. And I think it would be really cool to see the world’s best poker players competing against each other for a shot at Olympic gold. Just imagine players like Phil Ivey and Phil Hellmuth competing for their country against international opponents from other nations. It would make for one of the most interesting poker events ever!
Going beyond pure sporting ramifications, having poker as a recognized Olympic event could give the game the boost it needs to blast through legal issues in certain countries such as the US. If poker was in the Olympics, it would be pretty hard to look at the game as some sort of semi-illegal gambling activity.
But there are a lot of requirements that poker would have to meet before it could ever be considered an Olympic sport. For instance, the IOC says that a sport must be played by at least 75 countries and on 4 continents. The sport must also be played by women in 40 countries and on 3 continents. Then there is the issue of skill games as a whole being accepted into the Olympics at some point, which hasn’t happened yet. We can always dream though.
