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Doping in Poker and Online Gambling

written July 29, 2007

With all the doping scandals in other sports, this might be a good time to get the doping issues in poker out in the open.  Whenever a player is engaged in an activity such as poker or sports betting for a long period of time, the tempation to use performance enhancing drugs increases even for online gambling as well.

The 2003 WPT Bellagio 5 Diamonds champion Paul Phillips openly admitted in Slate.com that he took Adderall (a prescription drug used to treat Attention Deficit Disorder) for the express purpose of gaining an edge on opponents.

Phillips further admitted openly that he was taking Modafinil during the 2005 WSOP, the same stimulant that disgraced former world champion sprinter Kelli White was caught taking, to gain an edge.

http://www.slate.com/id/2122188/entry/2122189/

We are all aware that Caffeine (a stimulant) is the most popular performance-enhancing drug among tournament poker players, ingested primarily in the form of energy drinks. The amount of caffeine present in 2-3 cans of energy drinks (equivalent to about 5 cups of coffee consumed per hour) is sufficient for a poker player to fail an WADA/IOC-administered drug test if that drug test were administered to tournament poker players.

I am certainly aware of other performance-enhancing poker drugs out there:

1. Sleeping pills, as a "downer" for players after a long day at the tournament table

2. Sudafed, a cold medicine that can be used as a stimulant and is banned by the IOC.

3. Beta Blockers, a class of medicine prescribed to treat irregular heart beats, can be used by poker players to slow down heart rates and reduce physical tells. The IOC banned beta blockers over 30 years ago because archers and shooters used the drug to gain an edge.

4. Amphetamines, or "greenies", which were widely abused as a stimulant by baseball players until MLB banned the drug (Neifi Perez of the Detroit Tigers was caught recently.)

There are probably a bunch of others.

The big question: how much of an edge, if any, does a gambler gain against a bookmaker or a poker player gain against the rest of the field in a tournament?

Furthermore, will there ever come a time that gamblers may be tested and treated in the same manner as athletes?

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