While I'm feeling frisky, here's a poker boom thought that recently occurred to me.
I've had concerns that this whole poker explosion would dry up. The popular doomsday model is that the bad players lose enough money that they stop coming back, so without any fish, the sharks just have to feed on each other and everything gets much harder. Poker is a huge fad right now, so tons of dollars are flowing into the poker economy, enabling decent players like me to (barely) make a living. But when the fad dies, that money will stop coming. The best players will probably still make a living, but lots of marginal players like me will have to reenter the work force.
But what occurred to me is that poker's popularity has increased with its availability. 10 years ago, how many people lived close enough to a public card room to play poker regularly? It was basically just AC, Vegas, southern California and maybe a few other spots near Indian casinos or riverboats. So availability of poker was fairly limited. Today anyone with a computer and a credit card can play poker any time they want.
And even in those areas near the casinos, poker rooms were very mysterious and intimidating. But now coverage all over the TV has stripped poker of its seedy image, and commercials for online gambling make everyone forget about its ambiguous legal status.
People play games that are fun and available. Poker has always been fun, but it wasn't always available. Now people know that poker is a widely available entertainment option, and they'll spend a little less time in the theaters or bowling alleys. I'm sure eventually the poker craze will slow down, and maybe it already is doing that. But unless the government explicitly criminalizes online poker, there's going to be plenty of action for a long time.
4 comments:
the most obvious thing, to me, is the explosion of card rooms in the two Meccas of poker worldwide:
Las Vegas, NV, and Atlantic City, NJ.
Casinos don't just stupidly throw around hundreds of millions of dollars just for shits and giggles (Donald Trump does, however, that's why he's always declaring for bankruptcy).
The fact that Boyd Gaming's Borgata is kicking everone's ass in AC is because of smart business marketing.
Attracting poker pros and tournament celebrites and the hottie girls that come with them is part of this. Poker doesn't make casinos anywhere as much money as table games such as blackjack, but the glamor DOES.
That's why the Borgata is building a $hundred-some-million poker room which, when completed, will be the biggest poker room in the world (or the nicest and most showy, I could be wrong about sheer size).
In Vegas, every casino that matters has gone out of its way to include poker rooms. Again, oftentimes this translates into the casinos switching their budget around to include millions of dollars in building costs.
Baseball has always been the nominal national pasttime in our great country. However, now poker is America's new, ACTUAL past time.
If you disagree, you're just ignorant, self-righteous, or misinformed. And maybe all 3.
pas·time: n.
An activity that occupies one's spare time pleasantly
If you play poker for a living, it's not spare time. If you don't play poker for a living, you need to have at least a nominal amount of disposable income to throw around. I'd venture to say that a very large percentage of people fall into that category. Watching baseball on tv is free. People under 21 can't (legally) participate, and aren't allowed to even be in the card room to watch. This is all ignoring the whole 'pleasantness' issue, which is a pretty big one if you lose a lot. People are also stupid and lazy, and therefore are better suited to watching baseball than playing or really watching poker.
I wonder which combination of ignorant, self-righteous, or misinformed I am.
shit. DON'T fall into that category.
Sparks, you make great points. Even without the TV coverage, poker would have been fine. People still bet sports and play slots, and virtualy everyone in those games are fish. Aside from analyzing the poker economy in the first paragraph, it is important to realize that poker is a subset of the world economy. So as long as the bigger circle is increasing, poker can continue to grow. Who knows how big it can get.
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