Private Investor: I've cashed in my chips and made a virtue out of a vice

So, if I'd hung on I wouldn't have been disadvantaged. Maybe I shouldn't have sold out so fast?

I don't think so. That is to say, I'm still glad I got out of the online poker lark. I simply cannot see how such a fairly straightforward business can erect sufficiently high barriers to entry to protect the existing players from new competitors.

I may easily be wrong about this, but I also don't believe that the Americans will be out of this game forever. When they pull up a chair and sit at the poker table we will see some significant changes, and they won't be to the benefit of the existing firms.

In any case my investment in Sportingbet was just a punt. I've made a little out of it. It's time to move on. The proceeds of my brief career in vice (by proxy) have been invested in a much more sober sort of stock, GSK, or GlaxoSmithKline. I'd already bought two slices of shares, one lot being acquired in the old SmithKline Beecham company and the other earlier this year.

They're not the most glamorous share but they have demonstrated some very steady progress over the past year and I have every expectation that they'll continue to do so.

In the short term, GSK should benefit from the current - relative - strength in the FTSE 100 index, being one of the largest quoted companies in the land.

GSK also seems to have got over the recent difficulties it's had with its Seroxat/Paxil anti-depressant treatment. Of course the Vioxx case against Merck demonstrates the terrible risks investors in pharmaceutical companies run in litigious societies such as the US. No wonder, then, that GSK seems set on widening its base with plenty of action on the vaccine front - a lower margin but much more reliable source of revenues.

The latest move from GSK is the purchase of a Canadian firm that produces flu vaccines for the American market. There are also great hopes for GSK's cervical cancer vaccine, a development that should prove to the "all drugs should be free" school that big companies sometimes make big breakthroughs. GSK also has an interest in manufacturing the vaccine for bird flu.

Again if that vaccine can save even a small proportion of the number of lives threatened by the coming pandemic, then again the case for Big Pharma will rest on the strength of its products. On Aids too GSK has shown itself to be a responsible citizen.

The generic drugs lobby, the folk who seemingly wish to strip the pharmaceutical companies of all patent protection, are the dangerous ones in this debate. If a company such as GSK isn't allowed to make a profit on its products, where will the funds come from to create newer, better, more powerful drugs and vaccines?

I digress. Longer term, all the big drugs companies make sense because of the global trends. First, there is the rapidly ageing population of most of the advanced western countries, where the demand for drugs associated with getting on in life will grow inexorably. Second, there will be the new prosperity of markets such as India and China. Defending intellectual property might be tricky, but the basic argument there seems sound.

Investing in such a virtuous activity as creating new treatments to alleviate pain and suffering make a change from vice.

I've got plenty of my portfolio tied up in gambling (William Hill) and drink (Scottish & Newcastle, Belhaven), it seems only right to introduce more balance. It should pay off in the long term.