You know it’s a slow news week when the poker media takes leads from the UK middle class fear-mongering tabloid the Daily Mail when it publishes a story.
The high-circulation scare rag, famed for publishing stories like how Facebook may cause cancer, how a radio-active paedophile was on the loose and many other such gems, published a content-light article yesterday about pop star Robbie Williams putting his name to a new free-play social online poker site.
This, according to the Daily Mail, has caused “outrage” among his many fans or, more accurately, outrage in one liberal democrat MP, who felt that the Take That star “directly targets his fans, including children,” noting that it was particularly inappropriate seeing as he is a former drug addict and that he was “taking advantage of vulnerable people for financial gain.”
The Daily Mail lights the fire, but it’s the other media outlets who fan the flames. According to CardPlayer, it is now a “controversial” poker site and it is “causing a stir.”
Of course, the only stirring going on is in the article itself, rendering the statement entirely self-referential, an irony that escapes the writer.
But more to the point, there is clearly no controversy in a pop star putting his brand and likeness to a new free-play poker game, and to think so requires multiple logical fallacies and ignorance.
Firstly, Robbie Williams is not launching a poker site: PokerMania, a German B2B media firm, that already operates social media poker games with brands including Playboy.de and Sport1poker.de, is launching it. Williams is providing his name and likeness to endorse the brand. The game is entirely free to play, using virtual chips to play fun games and tournaments with friends.
For this to somehow be an issue or “controversy,” we have to ignore many obvious truths, perhaps most importantly: poker is a game enjoyed by countless players of all ages, and there is no evidence to suggest playing a free chips game of poker with friends, family or online has any connection to gambling addition.
We must also ignore the ubiquitous presence of Zynga’s Texas Hold’em Poker, played by tens of millions every month, available on practically every device and platform. We must also ignore that, up until recently, Apple made their own official Texas Hold’em game available in the App Store, with no age restrictions, and a quick check on Windows official games store has multiple poker games available.
In addition, the writer committed two logical fallacies: First, the slippery slope that a child playing a fun card game will turn in to a degenerate gambler in adulthood, an unsupported claim. Secondly, the ad hominem attack that William’s personal battle with alcohol and drug addition has any bearing on endorsing a card game, of which it clearly does not.
No, there is no controversy, and while it may be the remit of mainstream tabloids to print inaccuracies to try to drum up indignation, it falls on the media in the niche field to correct the fallacies and put such misnomers to bed, or, at the very least, refrain from regurgitating it.
