What’s Up with this Poker Ambassador Thing?

There are a few terms I hate to continually hear.  One of them has to be when people call poker “pokes” as I don’t understand this at all.  Seriously, can people not just say poker?  Or is that one extra syllable just too much for them?  Another thing I hate to hear is donkey.  This isn’t annoying in terms of sound like pokes, but rather because it’s so overused by people who have no idea what the hell they’re talking about.  They’ll call people donks for sticking in a hand where they were only a slight underdog (ex. Q-Q vs. K-K).

All of this aside, my new most hated poker word is ambassador.  I just don’t understand why the phrase poker ambassador is used so much these days.   You can’t go a week without somebody writing an article about how we need more poker ambassadors.  Now I know the game needs help in legality terms and maybe some players actions can give poker a bad name.  However, there are certain things that just make poker fun to watch like Scotty Nguyen getting drunk or Hevad Khan acting like a complete jackass. 

To me, this is the kind of stuff that makes poker entertaining.  I want to see Layne Flack hated by 80% of the poker population because he’s rude and an 8 o’clock drunk.  I like watching clips of Tony G berating other players for challenging him in a hand.  Poker is a game of personalities and emotions; not a gentlemen’s club where everyone is sipping tea and talking politics.  Thousands of dollars are on the line for all of these players so they’d be betraying themselves if they sat there and acted like a “poker ambassador”.  I honestly hope I never hear this phrase again!