THIS is how popular poker has become

[shaniac]

I guess I'll add mine to the chorus of voices pointing out just how widespread poker's popularity has become.

I live in New York and was on the subway today, waiting for my train, and there were a handful of MTA (Metropolitan Transity Authority) contractors milling about. Two of them were having a heated, highly opinionated, discussion on how to play a certain hold 'em situation. Their discussion was interrupted by a supervisor who had some details about the task at hand to discuss and my train came shortly thereafter, but I'm fairly sure they were discussing how to play AA preflop in No Limit Holdem.

Poker is now pop culture, but not just that, it's an aspect of pop culture that seems to transcend all boundaries of class and social status. It seems to have become just as acesible to blue-collar workers as it is to Wall Street businessman and EVERYONE in between.

I guess it's striking to me because I can't think of anything else that holds such universal appeal at the moment.

Moreover, unlike a movie (like Pulp Fiction) or a book (say, The Da Vinci Code) which can take a huge place in the hearts and minds of people and become staples of pop culture, poker requires a fair amount of organization, time and money in order to hold a person's interest and it amazes me that the game has acheived this.

At what point, if ever, do you think poker's newfound populatrity and accesibility, will plateau and begin to wane?

Shane

[MaxPower]

It reminds me of the Stock Market of 4 or 5 years ago, when everyone was obsessed with it.

I have no idea when it will end, but it can't last forever.

[shaniac]

You know I think the Stock Market is a good analogy. It involves the one thing in life that is tangible to almost everyone--money--yet it also has aspects of gaming, strategy etc.

Similarly I suppose, the Market was a huge hobbie for everyone when they were (or thought they were) making money off of it but of course the bubble did burst. I wonder what it will look when the poker bubble bursts.

Shane

btw MaxPower, nice graphic, one of my favorite albums.

[1800GAMBLER]

I walked into the local Greek chippy which i've been going to for years to see late night poker on the TV. So me and my friends went watching it, then the owner was asking if i watch poker, i tell him i play for a living and find out he plays in the $2k UB NL games. He says he's been playing for 15 years but now plays online. Interesting stuff.

[AJo Go All In]

there is no 2K ub NL game?

[southerndog]

[ QUOTE ]

Poker is now pop culture, but not just that, it's an aspect of pop culture that seems to transcend all boundaries of class and social status. It seems to have become just as acesible to blue-collar workers as it is to Wall Street businessman and EVERYONE in between.


[/ QUOTE ]

I'm surprised that you're surprised at this. This statement isn't much different from, "and oh my god, now black people are playing golf too!"

[Acesover8s]

How about 2.5k you nitpicking twat?

[zuluking]

I was at a crawfish boil a couple of weeks ago DEEP in the Atchafalya basin (a really big swamp covering half of south Louisiana) and these two cajuns were talking about getting "sucked out on the river" playing .50/1.00 on Party. Amazing to here it discussed with the accent too.

[Diplomat]

[ QUOTE ]
How about 2.5k you nitpicking twat?

[/ QUOTE ]

Can, you feel, the loooooove tonight....can you feeeel it...

-Diplomat

[baggins]

my younger sister (i'm 25, she's 23) used to tell me that i shouldn't play poker, and feared i was addicted and generally Didn't Approve.

on sunday, I talked to her on the phone. she had to work at Starbucks that day, and it had been very slow, so she and some coworkers had sat around and played poker! she was excited to tell me that she had fun playing it. i asked her what game she played. she didn't remember. i said 'was it texas holdem?' and she said 'yeah! it was texas hold up!'

now she wants to play with me. she was excited because she had won like 3 or 4 hands.

that's how far poker has come. that's huge.

[morgant]

funny story baggins, mine is quite similar i 26 she 24, used to think all the gambling addiction crap that non players believe, then she watched a little on tv, saw the nice presents i have been purchasing(for myself and others) and asked if i would teach her, it looks kinda fun /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[DcifrThs]

[ QUOTE ]
You know I think the Stock Market is a good analogy. It involves the one thing in life that is tangible to almost everyone--money--yet it also has aspects of gaming, strategy etc.


[/ QUOTE ]

I disagree. The similarities are simply in the apparant variance of individual stocks vs. the short term luck factor in poker. and that really studious people can beat the market while others lose their ass.

but people don't go "play the stock market" on weekends to have fun. people don't go to "stock market anonymous" because they're addicted to stocks. idiots cannot have as much of a rush playing the stock market as they do sitting at a table with people and winning as a result of bad decisions with other people there for the comraderie (or aggrevation). stocks aren't illegal in almost every state. stocks have a lower tax rate, but are easier to verify by the IRS. further, you cannot simply FOLLOW one stock around and be almost 100% certain you can profit from it (poor players you can, just be real nice and get'em in your game-or goto party 15/30).

but on the plus side. stocks don't yell at other stocks and take away from the profitability of another investor involved in the market.

but other than that...good analogy /images/graemlins/wink.gif
-Barron

[toots]

There are big differences between the stock market and poker.

The biggest is that over the long haul, the market has been a positive sum game. Someone else doesn't have to lose for you to win. By contrast, Poker is a zero sum game (or negative sum if you count the rake, tokes, time charges, tournament fees, and/or any of the other ways that money gets siphoned off the table). In poker, for you to win, someone else has to lose.

Having said that, it's been my observation that professional poker players tend to be an awful lot more grounded in the actual probabilities and mathematics involved than the average professional trader. The latter, by my experience, go in for total garbage statistics and mostly superstitious in their effort to make short term predictions of what's essentially brownian motion.

[LikesToLose]

Was that a point flying by? I think I missed it.

The stock market was the 'water cooler' conversation 3 to 5 years ago. What stocks you bought, sold, made money on, lied about what you lost, etc. A lot of people who were never in the market were in it, and now they're gone. Maybe they still have 401k's and mutual funds, but MUCH less people are trying to pick the hot stock of the week.

Poker is the new stock market.

BTW: I think there was a real need for a stock picker's anonymous.

[southerndog]

Do you always write stuff this funny!?!?

[ericd]

Please define what you mean by the "average professional trader". You can't be referring to the top Wall Street firms. If their traders based their trading decisions on whims, they'd be fired before the trade cleared.

[toots]

No whims. Superstition and questionable mathematics.

Usually, very commonly accepted superstition and questionable mathematics, which is how they get away with it.

That, and other factors:

1) With the markets in general on the rise over the long haul, random actors will tend to show profits that more or less track the market (although few whiz kids seem to be able to consistently outperform any of the bigger market indexes)

2) We've all seen the dirty dealing and back-room deals from the dot-bomb era. Touting stocks that are known dogs so you can manage a good pump-and-dump on a stock. Insider trading, brokering deals for others.

3) When the market's up in the short term, just about everyone who happened to be there gets to look like a genius

4) Herd mentality. When everyone's reacting the same way to the same superstition and flawed analysis, no one looks like he's worth firing.

[ericd]

Wow. You lump a lot of diverse things together.

The math at the top firms is state of the art. They each pay tens of millions of dollars a year for the top PHDs from the top schools in the world.

Point by point:

1. Tracking a market index is how they are measured. However, they better beat it. This is especially true in down markets.

2. It depends on what you want to hear. If you followed someone like Barton Biggs from Morgan Stanley, then you would have concluded in 1999 that the market was overbought and you would have adjusted your portfolio accordingly.

3. True

4. I believe someone from CSFB published an analysis of the herd mentality. It boils down to which sectors are in and which are out. For example, if tech is in and retail is out then an average to below average tech stock will do better than a top retail stock. By the way their math people created the models to prove this and helped create the trading models to benefit from it.

Eric

[elwoodblues]

The stock market is probably a pretty good analogy. What happened is that nearly everyone was involved. After the dust settled we probably have more people interested today in the market than before the boom. That will probably be the same for Poker. We'll see a dramatic increase of players followed by a less dramatic decrease so that the net result is a decent increase.

The other comparisons I think are to other games that went through high popularity then dropped off...
Canasta was once very popular as were
Bridge
Trivial Pursuit
Pictionary
etc.

Many are still popular, but certainly not to the extent in the past.