First, a disclaimer: This subject is ridiculous. Advancing the notion of poker as sport and its players as athletes will certainly get you laughed at out in the real world – away from the gambling hall – and possibly slapped around by anyone who has ever made a living at basketball, golf or even bowling, for that matter.

Yet there must be a good reason Chris Tarantino showed up a half-hour in advance of his day at the World Series of Poker to go through a rigorous regimen of stretching. There must be a reason poker pro Phil Gordon drinks enough water to fill Hoover Dam before he enters the main event. There must be a reason the most popular people on the tournament floor come 10 o’clock each night are not the cocktail waitresses but the roaming masseuses.

“This game,” Gordon says, “is about sustenance. You use a whole lot of mental energy at the table and if you don’t replace it, you’re killing yourself.”

Gordon isn’t trying to fool anyone. He doesn’t consider poker a sport.

AP Wire | 07/31/2006 | Pays to be in shape for poker – really