Candidates' Vices: Craps And Poker

Time :

The casino craps player is a social animal, a thrill seeker who wants not just to win but to win with a crowd. Unlike cards or a roulette wheel, well-thrown dice reward most everyone on the rail, yielding a collective yawp that drowns out the slots. It is a game for showmen, Hollywood stars and basketball legends with girls on their arms. It is also a favorite pastime of the presumptive Republican nominee for President, John McCain.

The backroom poker player, on the other hand, is more cautious and self-absorbed. Card games may be social, but they are played in solitude. No need for drama. The quiet card counter is king, and only a novice banks on luck. In this game, a good bluff trumps blind faith, and the studied observer beats the showman. So it is fitting that the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, raked in so many pots in his late-night games with political friends.

Read the whole story: Time

Comments

[AdobePhsyko]

04:00 PM on 07/03/2008

Ask any Dealer in Las Vegas and you'll get the same answer.
A good player can make money at Poker / Craps is for Suckers.
Who Would You Rather Have Running The Country ?

[rwe]

03:48 PM on 07/03/2008

Hey Hey Hey... These photos have been doctored!!! Alert Dan Abrams .....

[tds1273]

02:39 PM on 07/03/2008

The main difference is that it takes a Smart man to truely excel at poker; where as with craps, it merely takes a Lucky man.

Poker is about strategy, thinking, knowing people and getting things done.

Craps is about having some bar sl*t hopefully blow luck on some dice, throwing them out there like bombs, and hoping they either coming up lucky or you break the bank entirely.

[mergina]

01:34 PM on 07/03/2008

The political process has become such a sickening game.

[wadenelson1]

01:12 PM on 07/03/2008

>The backroom poker player... The quiet card counter is king

Another MSM writer discredits himself within his first two paragraphs.

You count cards in blackjack. The deck gets shuffled after every hand in poker.

[imusintheevening]

12:58 PM on 07/03/2008

Congrats to Scherer and Weisskopf on an article that exceeds the normal quality of Time.

[JUSTME]

12:38 PM on 07/03/2008

Boy, that McCain sure is a maverick. Now he wants to play craps with our armed forces: maybe we'll keep them in Iraq for 100 years, maybe not; maybe we'll have lots of casualties, maybe not; maybe the rich will get richer and the middle class poorer, maybe not. But let's give the rich more tax cuts just in case. . .

The more I see John McCain the more convinced I become that he is a total creep. I bet Cindy has a few things to say about his temper and what she has had to live with all these years. She looks absolutely subjugated to me, defeated, mindless.

What a horrible human being he's turned out to be.

[MaracaKabob]

12:16 PM on 07/03/2008

I hate caricatures with big heads on little bodies.

[wadenelson1]

01:07 PM on 07/03/2008

I prefer big boobs on little bodies myself. And there's no bigger boobs than Bush or McCain.

[MPeter]

12:00 PM on 07/03/2008

Obama takes in a soccer game as one of his daughters plays. Great to see a family relaxing and being ordinary for a change. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTsTQuSsu-0

[BlueOnBlue]

11:49 AM on 07/03/2008

This says a lot about our choices.

Everything about McCain's life shows him to be a reckless individual and craps fits right in with that. It's a game where the odds are stacked against you but where you can win if you're willing to buck those odds. The problem is that if you do it long enough, the house always wins..

Poker is a game of strategy, where the best player wins, not the most reckless.

I don't know if JFK was a poker player, but he had the right mentality, as proven by how he played his cards during the Cuban missile crisis. That's the kind of guy I'd like to see in the game for us, instead of someone who would roll the dice on a longshot and bomb, bomb, bomb away.

[imusintheevening]

01:00 PM on 07/03/2008

It is worth pointing out that craps has the best odds of winning of any casino game.

[BlueOnBlue]

02:53 PM on 07/03/2008

Actually, the odds are that you will lose in the long run, just as you would with any other casino game of pure luck. But, you will lose.

In casino poker games, the house takes a share of every pot, but the players are still betting against each other. The skillful player only has to be enough better than the other players to overcome the house's share. A good player can do this fairly consistently.

In blackjack, the odds can actually be in the player's favor, if he gets away with counting the cards. This is not technically an illegal thing to do, but most casinos will kick you out for doing it because they know you will win.

But anyone foolish enough to play a game like craps for an extended period is a guaranteed loser.

[NoMercy]

11:07 AM on 07/03/2008

Interesting metaphor. I'm a dice man myself, but I aspire at cards.

Still, it's Obama for me, whatever game John likes.

[brrichter]

11:53 AM on 07/03/2008

Screw BarBQue's, I'd love to play some poker with Barack. If Barack finishes this deal, I'd love to see ESPN2 cover some high stakes Hold'em tourneys at the white house. Tears from laughter would come to my eyes to hear Mike Sexton say something like, "Vince, the president just made a stiff raise their with big slick. If Gore wants to win this pot, he's going to have to take a stab at it. Oh, and Al goes ALL IN with his wired pair of sevens. Now this is presidential poker ladies and gentlemen."

Oh man, that would kick butt.

[tds1273]

03:22 PM on 07/03/2008

I forget his name, but there was a guest on the Colbert Report that came up with the greatest idea evar! Best to do it at the beginning of the primaries so as to have a full table but have a debate/poker tourney. Just like you say like they have on tv, only through a little policy back and forth, just between candidates- no mods.

It is amazing how much you can learn about a person just from watching them play poker. Who likes to bluff, who slow plays, who goes on their gut, who bullys, who lures, who can and can't read others. So much insight could be gained from such a thing; what a dream that would be.