It should be pointed out here that most of the folks who are arguing here are not of the mind that poker is NOT gambling. We understand there is gamble in the game.
What we are arguing is that gambling, per se, should not be considered an evil, unless we include all forms of gambling, and that is a conceptual thing.
The original post was put in such a way that it looked as much like someone trolling for ammunition as it did anything else.
The notion of morals, and morality, begs the subtle difference between Ethics and Morals. So similar in so many ways, morals suggests a 'faith based' ethical system. And your faith based morals will be different from his/her faith based morals, sometimes profoundly different. Ethics will deal with the same issues for the most part, but tend to be more rational, practical approaches to those dilemma, often with the same solutions. When talking about the negative aspects of the Morals/Ethics issues, Immorality sounds so much more evil than Unethical. It is that brainwashing that irks many of us.
So, for example;
The Ultimate/Absolute poker issues a few years ago, where insiders had access to a program that showed them the hole cards of each player in a hand, is no different from a stock scam where a brokerage house conspires to make a stock look good in order to create a buzz and jack the price per share up so then can dump their substantial holdings in a worthless company on an unsuspecting public. Both scams create a lot of money for the perpetrator. Both are unethical, but the OP here would seem to want to consider one, the poker instance, as immoral, while not ascribing the same to the stock swindle. In both cases the insiders were out to con honest folk out of their money.
