There's an old saying in gambling that the man who invented the casino was smart, but the man who invented the chip was a genius. The reason behind the saying is clear to anyone who has ever gambled for significant stakes using cash. Actually, it's probably reasonably clear even to people who have only used chips. Chips look and feel like toys. You can fling them about in ways you would never fling money about. Most games would have CONSIDERABLY less action if people had to play for cash.

None of this is remarkable news; these are fairly old concepts. But the poker chip has recently gone to the next level. Online poker and the virtual chip make regular poker chips seem like $20 gold pieces by comparison.

I had been staying away from online pokers until recently, because I was concerned about possible collusion, but I kept hearing too many stories about players who liked the games, and I figured it was my duty as a gaming writer to investigate.

I have plenty of stories that have come out of my first few ventures into online poker, but the biggest and most obvious is the almost ridiculous ease with which one's mouse can be coaxed into throwing chips into a pot.

Think about it.

You don't need to pull cash out of your wallet to buy chips.

You don't need to pick up a physical item, even if it does look like a toy, and remove it from "your" stack and put it into the "communal" pot.

All you need do to is PLAY A VIDEO GAME. All you need to do is click your mouse and play with the pretty pictures. This is something that even old fogies like me have gotten used to doing on computers (I was in college when "Pong" came out and we thought it was the coolest thing we'd ever seen. Well, second-coolest, after the 5-foot high "rhymes with pong" that a friend of mine had).

Two whole generations have now been trained to think that video games are fun, that you can just click an afternoon or evening away… except, as they would say in hyping a boxing match, "this time it's personal." Now it isn't a game. Now it's real money, even if it doesn't look that way.

It gets worse (or better, depending on your point of view). If you go on tilt or play badly, you're not doing it in front of people you know and whose respect you might want. You're sitting in your favorite comfortable chair (at least, it's that way if you spend much time at your computer), you can drink or smoke whatever you like… all the comforts of home.

Except that poker isn't played well "comfortably." Poker requires alertness and concentration. Even more so, it requires a respect for the chips in front of you. If you don't respect your chips, they tend to wind up in other people's stacks, and as we've seen, it's pretty easy to lose respect for virtual chips.

I have a feeling this inevitable disregard for virtual chips plays a big role in why so many friends have reported "good games," and I must confess (without wanting to lure anyone into playing who isn't already) that in my limited sample of about 20 hours play, the games have been absurdly good. I might just be running good, we'll see.

Nonetheless, one of poker's greatest traps is to loosen up too much when you see a loose game, and with virtual chips, that trap is even easier to fall into than it is in a regular game. Do yourself a favor and put some cash in front of you when you play. Count off the bills, at least roughly, when you lose a hand. You'll probably treat your virtual chips with more respect, and that'll make it a virtual certainty you'll have a better chance to win.