The Rhetorical Lines on TV’s Poker Face: Rhetorical Constructions of Poker as Sport

Recent accounts that suggest that poker is a sport do so by characterizing poker along five lines: (a) physical challenge, (b) competition, (c) strategy, (d) excitement, and (e) the ability of audience members to understand how to play. As poker is associated with the term sport through these lines, the term sport functions as an ideograph in that, as a commonplace, nebulous term, its deployment in connection with poker promotes practices of consumption that serve the interests of institutions such as networks that televise poker, casinos that host tournaments, and sponsors that advertise at tournaments and during telecasts. Additionally, use of the term sport to characterize poker along these five lines connects poker to myths of individualism and the American Dream steeped in consumerism, along with a new stylized, commodified form of masculinity that reproduces structures of hegemonic masculinity while providing a means through which to identify with masculine identity for individuals who might struggle otherwise to do. Analysis of the example of poker as sport illustrates the need to recognize the rhetorical construction of the term sport, the interests that it serves, and the ways in which sport promotes consumerism.