Child's Play

The suggestions made by this study are ridiculously stupid!

More importantly, learning to play cards, even for money, at a young age helps to develop important statistical experience and applications of controlled risk in real life situations.

I played plenty of card games for money as young as 11 years old, and I learned plenty about the inherent risks and different strategies - at a time which I didn't really have money so could only bet small amounts at a time.

Good poker players generally have many other attributes that may be quite useful in the real world, like the ability to read the intent of other players, and understand that others will be trying to deceive you.

Does gambling at a young age contribute to addiction and impairment to gambling later in life?
Probably, but it also can contribute to many other social abilities. The best thing is to provide a controlled environment in which the risks and possible rewards are studied and understood.

The statistical validity of this study aside (which seems to contain a few flaws in experimental design) aside, the implications are not, as you put it, "ridiculously stupid". Gambling addiction is a crippling problem for many that robs them of their time, money, and social lives - one of the most dangerous to fall into. While I do agree that the skills gained from learning to play cards (calculated risk, statistics, probability, etc) are important for children to understand, you have to be careful with children - they are impressionable and what they learn to be accepted behavior during their youth can escalate into problems later on.

The results of this study are not saying that learning to play cards is dangerous. Instead, it looks to predict gambling problems in children from early on. While the behavior of these children at the end of the study does not warrant cause for alarm (I myself played quite a bit of cards at that age), it is important to nip problems in the bud, and that is all this study is aiming for. While playing poker for small amounts of money in middle school is acceptable, it is important to make sure this innocent gaming does not evolve into a debilitating addiction later in life.