Why Poker is Better than Men's Figure Skating

I was hoping to make it without seeing any of the Winter Olympics, but after putting the boys down to sleep, my Dad had wrestled the remote from my Mom and switched from Legally Blonde to Men's Figure Skating. I got to watch the Snowboard Motocross thing as well, which had a feature on the eventual Gold Medalist, Seth Wescott, jumping out of helicopters in Alaska snowboarding down virgin slopes. I normally don't get into these X-game-type of pseudo sports, but this guy was more of a man than I'll ever be for sure.

Having said, that, here are my top reasons that Watching Poker is better than Men's Figure Skating:

• Ted Forrest, Scotty Nguyen, and Johnny Chan, on their worst clothes days, could never look as ridiculous as these guys look on the ice. Seinfeld looked better in his puffy shirt. OK, strike that.
  
• There are no commentators in sport who are such homers as Dick Button et al. Every American was wonderful, well done, all this stuff, yet all these commies were robotic, etc. Where is Gabb Kaplan when we need him?
  
• No one in poker ever misuses the word courage. This one guy kept saying it was all about courage, his getting out there on the ice after he was falling all over the place. Courage is running into bullets and all that stuff. It isn't courageous to choke then skate and do well. This is the Olympics, you've got like two things to skate. If you screw up one, you're done.
• You always understand why you won or lost a hand (unless you're playing PL Omaha H/L, where you can't be sure if you actually won or lost a pot). In skating, these guys can't know how in the world they got 125 points instead of 140 points.
  
• Free stuff. OK, this is something I like better about skating. In poker, we don't get much free stuff. Even comps are really rakebacks, giving our money back to us in the form of bad buffet vouchers. In skating, you get all of these stuffed animals and flowers thrown on the ice, and little kids bring them to you. I like stuffed animals and flowers, so I'm all for that. It would be a nice touch after someone busts out if you could throw stuffed donkeys to Hellmuth.
• Our terms are just better than theirs. The nuts. Drawing dead. Flopping a set. Triple lutz/double toe? Salchow? I know nothing about skating, but I could say these terms.
  
• Poker players are just plain tougher. I think even Jen Harman could take every one of these guys (except for the Russian guy maybe). These guys fall once, then they just fold like babies, turning triples into singles. I eat at Wendy's. I've had a triple. Why would you ever want a single? Just fall every time, you know, rather than wuss out at the end.
• Math. I was good in math, I like that being smart helps you in poker. You don't have to understand implied pot odds to skate.
• Poker blogs are gay, but cmon...

Tried to talk my wife into going to Tunica since an ice storm in coming into Memphis, ("Look if we're going to be stuck somewhere, wouldn't it be great to be stuck in Tunica?). This was after we passed a PowerBall billboard that had the jackpot at $365MM. I pointed it out and told her I should buy some tickets. She then said, "No, because if we won it would be bad. You'd just play poker all the time, and I would divorce you." I would play golf a bunch, and I would play all the tourneys, so I wouldn't play all the time. But that's probably not a good sign, if your wife would rather that you not receive $240MM (probably the take home) so that you can stay together.