... is a WHOLE different thing than eBay loyalty, Russ, and I couldn't agree more with your opinion on playing poker.

Or any other game, for that matter. When my kids were small and we played games, I never let them win, regardless of what we were playing (sometimes I would modify the rules to make it easier for them to win -- such as introducing a larger chance element, but within the rules, we all played the same). My wife and my mom, in particular, always used to ask, "Why don't you let the kids win sometimes?" I always replied, "I want them to know that if they won, they earned it, I didn't give it to them." To this day, each of them can tell you exactly when they beat me for the first time at a game they cared about (my daughter still has the scorepad from her first win over me at hearts).

If I play, I play to win. If I play for money, I play for blood. (Sometimes I'm just not very good at it! <g>) ----- jim o\-S