Wimbledon finals, British Grand Prix, the Tour de France . . . what a great weekend of sport. To that list should be added another global event that started on Saturday, pitting thousands of hopefuls against each other in a gruelling test of stamina and nerve, live on tv with millions of dollars at stake.

Yes, the World Series of Poker has begun, appropriately on 7/7/7, that combination of numbers the Vegas slots player waits her whole life to see. The biggest poker tournament in the world culminates with the Texas Hold' Em No-Limit main event. Entry numbers are down since the US banned online poker - Americans are no longer able to qualify on the web - but still thousands are taking part. The competition is open to anyone, or at least anyone with a spare $10,000. Last year, the winner got $12m.

I've lost you. Shouldn't this article be in the Features section? Or next to sudoku? Poker is clearly not a sport.

Why not? The sports desk dictionary (the cover and pages up to "Alabama" have fallen off due to overuse, so forgive me for not being able to tell the edition) defines "sport"

as "an individual or group activity pursued for exercise or pleasure, often taking a competitive form". Poker fits.

Other definitions might require a "sport" to involve physical exertion, which some would claim rules poker out. On the contrary, there are few sports that require the stamina, physically and mentally, necessary to beat 8000 poker players.

Contenders play for 12 hours a day for 11 days straight. The brain is working overtime, considering odds, trying to read body language, planning 10 steps ahead. Meanwhile, Novak Djokovic, say, is quitting because of a blister, and moaning mightily to anyone who'll listen about his workload. Diddums.

If we say physical exertion is the key feature of a sport, where does that leave snooker, with its pasty-faced, semi-alcoholic champions? Golf, where Colin Montgomerie's lithe figure is regarded enviously by his rivals? Darts . . . don't even get me started on darts. There are plenty of others, many of which we take great pride in bagging Olympic medals for: shooting and archery (sit on ground, pull string/trigger); sailing (sit on boat, point boat at wind); motorsport (sit in car, press brake/accelerator); all varieties of bobsled/luge/etc (sit on teatray, pray not to die).

Then there are the other "sports" where somebody just decides who's best: figure-skating; artistic gymnastics; synchronised swimming; etc. How can we call these sports when the matter of who wins or loses is an entirely subjective affair? In poker, the winner is clear: it's the man (or woman, as there are a surprisingly high number of women competitors) struggling to wheel $12m-worth of chips to the cashier's window.

Some will object to poker as a sport on the grounds that luck decides the winner. That is not true. Luck plays a major part, but in what great sport does it not? How often have you cursed those jammy b******s that knocked your team out of the cup?

Just as Roger Federer will nearly always beat Tim Henman, no matter how many points the plucky Brit wins off the net cord, a good poker player will nearly always beat a bad poker player (as I regularly find to my cost).

Some will object on moral grounds, but the money is just a way to keep score. And if we took that moral argument to its logical conclusion, what sports would be left?

Football, one of the most perfidious businesses on earth is gone. Bye bye cycling, athletics, baseball and all other pharmacological pursuits. Carry on down the list and even the likes of figure skating would be scrapped (anyone remember Tonya Harding?) The New York Times includes poker in its sports section. Sports Illustrated are fans. ESPN expect to make a fortune from live pay-per-view coverage of the final table at the World Series.

Anyway, the real definition of a sport is how much you can use it to bore your friends with stories of your exploits. Only golf or possibly fishing beats poker in this regard.

But don't worry. I don't think Herald Sports' Old Firm coverage is likely to be supplanted by poker reports any time soon, much as some people might enjoy that.