met Dr Al Schoonmaker here at Vegas, great guy in person also.

[steamboatin]

suprisingly good for an academic.

[darydarling]

Steamboatin it was nice to meet you as well.

[MicroBob]

You've had some pretty noteworthy guests at this group I believe I once read....but I can't recall who they were.

How many people do you have attending these meetings?
Seems pretty interesting if you ask me.


That's one difference that has just occured to me between poker and chess.
I used to play in a couple of different chess clubs and it really was more of a combination of 'semi-serious' play AND a discussion/social group.
Then you'd see some of your friends at the bigger tournaments in (and perhaps outside) your area and would obviously pull for each other and lend support.

There was really some camaraderie there.


Whereas in poker you are mostly sitting with a bunch of strangers and it's not as much a 'discussion' group as it is "I'm better than you so let me tell you how terrible you played."


In chess there are semi-concrete ratings so you pretty much know whether you suck or not.
Consequently, the atmosphere is more on everyone trying to improve...and when you make a mistake and lose TRYING to figure out how and why you made that mistake (very similar to the discussion at 2+2 of course).

In poker there's obviously a lot of self-deception going on regarding one's own talents and it's often-times more about "how much everyone else sucks and how lucky everyone always seems to get only against me."

So a discussion group involving poker people who have gotten beyond that stage of always thinking they are better than everyone else could, I suspect, put it closer to the chess-clubs as I've been involved in them.

[steamboatin]

I got the impression there was a very broad range of skill levels at the group. The hand discussions were a little sparce mostly because they had scheduled Dr Al to give a talk but there were no bad beat stories. After the talk there was a good discussion about moving up in limits and why some of us want to move up. Was it to make more money? A competitive challenge or an ego trip, etc.?

[ QUOTE ]
I got the impression there was a very broad range of skill levels at the group.

[/ QUOTE ]

Very tue. I have been to several meetings now. They remind me of a cross between a social club, and true stuctured discussion group.

Each person will get a different amount out of attendance, but everyone should get something valuable out of it. The question is how valuable your time is, compared to what the meeting is worth.

It clearly works the best when there are a few expert players on hand, which there usually are. Lower skill players talking amongst themselves rarely focus on the right points, the expert can interject ideas as needed.

Expert players get the opp to use the group as a sounding board for talks they need to give, or to promote lessons, or to get ideas/insight for columns and so on.

Plus the social aspect is pretty nice.