On being a 'player'...
...in the sense of being 'part of the action'.
(from 'Crap Shoot', an essay by Garret Keizer, in this month's Harper's)
We should be cautious of aligning the player with playfulness and placing the worker on the opposite side. Sports and gambling have always been highly esteemed among the working classes and among working people in general. What distinguishes the worker from the player is the former's understanding that the game is just that. The worker possesses the consciousness, as noted by Huizinga, that play is "different from ordinary life." That's a large part of what makes it fun.
In contrast, the player conceives of ordinary life as "the game". The casino world of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, or the racetrack or the numbers racket, is the norm. Work is the diversion. Work is something you do at the gym. You work at your "relationships". You work during your "off" hours. But business is all about the game... You always know you've met a player when someone tells you about an activity that's "better than sex." What the person generally means is less work.
(not available online but you can find much of the article quoted and paraphrased here.