What is action to you?? What stimulates your pleasure in gambling and money? Poker? Sports betting? The stock market? Are you an action junkie? Needing to get a bet down.

A wise old tight player/bookie/loan shark once gave me the perfect advice on money management. He said, "You count your money in the morning when you leave the house. You count is again in the evening when you get home. The difference is how you did."

I still do that thinking of the stock market as action, ups and downs. I have my whole bankroll in two funds so I can track it in my head daily or hourly. It is really hard to go to the poker hoping to win 500 when you are up and down 20 dimes in a week or so.

For the poker action, I keep a journal but I have this figure in my head on how I am doing over a certain period of time. The poker concerns me far more than the market because it is my current skills or lack of that make a day.

How do you gamble and how do you feel about the ups and downs of gambling? Somebody said that losing is the next best thing to winning. I disagree.

I don't bet on anything but the market and poker but I get plenty of action.

Nick the Greek, once the world's most famous gambler ended his days in Gardenia, California playing five dollar limit. He said, "It's action." Johnny Moss ended his days playing ten twenty limit.

Since my first gambling experience less than two years ago ... I've always taken the approach that it's really just a fun thing to do. (Gambling that is.) I know that poker is a form of gambling, however I've developed a business attitude towards the subject. I like the action, but I like the action when I'm holding the edge. That's basically it. I have no real desire to risk anything, and I don't see poker or the stock market as risky when done intelligently.

You will definitely never see me in Vegas with my life savings riding on one spin of the roulette wheel. To me ... that kind of silliness is gambling. I guess I'm saying that I don't like the word gambling, as it doesn't convey enough about what it is. To me, there's risky dangerous gambling, and there's safe, growth-oriented gambling. Amateur Bob wants to get rich on a lucky hit. I'd never put so much on one outcome that it would make me rich ... far rather repeat a low risk 1000 times over.

Of course, we all already know this or we wouldn't all be here.

I know...intellectually, that poker is gambling. I don't see it that way. I think of it more as a game, similar to chess, and the money is how you keep score.

For me, the challenge/entertainment/"thrill" of poker comes from the mental action of figuring out hands, hand ranges, odds, pot odds, reads and such to make a decision, correct decisions (which I haven't been making a lot of lately) are awsome, incorrect decisions can cost you the bank. It's stratagy (think risk), it's cards (think rummy) it's luck (monopoly) and fun all rolled into one game.

I'm not a "gambler" per se. untill i started playing poker, I didn't play blackjack or craps or really anything that risked money in that manner. Ok, I have played penny ante dealers choice games with friends, but when you start with $5 and play all night (win or lose) you're playing more for the sake of playing then for money...and that's what that was...

I will agree with anybody that poker is gambling, but i tend to think that it's also a hobby (albiet one you can make money at instead of costing you money), it's educational...how many of us study and study and study on a regular basis to learn more about poker. I wonder if people who collect stamps spend as much time reading stamp forums as we do. There are a lot of reasons I play poker, "to gamble" isn't one of them.

I don't really think Poker is fun, it's just less boring than a job and pays better. I very rarely feel any "urge" to play and I don't buy lottery tickets, play black jack or any other -EV proposition. Other than some very limited sports betting (Iike $5.20 on a result of my home team or something), which is obviously skill dependant but I don't have the skill to make it +EV so I guess to me it is gambling.

I try to make it as unemotional as possible but as a person I am extremely competetive and results oriented. I'm also pretty risk adverse when it comes to money and get a cold knot in my stomach when I'm facing a risk. If I'm all-in withpreflop for a $200 stack and cards are flipped, I don't get a positve "Yay! Action!" feeling, I get a ball of ice in my gut.