Life of a Poker Player

One of the stories about world-class sports competitions, such as the Olympics, is the prevalence of performance-enhancing drugs. To me, discussion around drugs is silly. There are many people who scream at the top of mountaintops in a self-righteous holier-than-thou fashion that performance-enhancing drugs taint the sport(s). I have never taken performance-enhancing drugs, not that I competed in any meaningful manner. But the athletic feats are impressive regardless of any drugs involved. When you look at the roster of most athletes caught for cheating, most are not that successful. For every Barry Bonds, there are ten thousand Randy Velardes.

The definition of drugs is somewhat arbitrary. I could easily argue that good nutrition is more of an advantage than taking drugs. Taking drugs is definitely not an unfair advantage; it is available to everyone. People may argue, it is unfair since it is illegal. I would argue that athletes factor in their own guilt, rewards, risks, shame, talent, etc. to make their decisions. Therefore, nothing is truly unfair. Some athletes will cheat blatantly, with a poor risk-reward situation. However, even the athletes who absolutely detest performance-enhancing drugs would do so, given the right circumstances. When I see my favorite athletes do amazing things, I think that the feats are executed in an environment of angling for every edge, including training, nutrition, and supplement/drug use. I still do not understand what makes certain drugs "unfair" and the fact that certain people can more easily eat particular foods not to be an equally "unfair" advantage.

For example, there are performance-enhancing drugs in the regular workforce too. There are millions of businessmen, bankers, lawyers, etc. who require morning caffeine, prescription drugs, and illegal drugs to function properly. Does society make a big stink of how the productive people of this world create ideas and solve problems by working unfathomable hours under grueling stressful conditions? Of course not. And it should not. There are many online poker players who use drugs to play all day and night. Do I think it is unfair? That would be stupid; I could do it myself, I simply choose not to for a variety of reasons. Now, if there was drug testing among businessmen or poker players, and my peers were still using the substances, would that be unfair? Still no. That would be like whining when an opponent makes a bad call and gets rewarded with an improbable card. People make decisions based on certain risks/rewards. The primary reason why I have not attempted to rob more banks is because the punishment for getting caught is severe and the likelihood of getting is high. If either factor were sufficiently low, I would have a ski mask on right now. So I wish people would get off this stupid moral high horse about taking performance-enhancing drugs. The decision is mostly financial.

Most of my theories about human behavior center on economic theory. One of my favorite ideas is that everything has a price. People can say a possession is invaluable, but money can sway opinions easily. Of course, money is only one form of exchange. You may say that there is nothing you would receive in exchange for the Mona Lisa painting. An economist would simply offer, "How about the Mona Lisa painting + $1 trillion?" Obviously, this is theoretical, but it makes sense that nothing has infinite value; I could simply offer said invaluable object + 1 in return, which is clearly greater.