Poker Articles

Bringing Live Poker Back to Life

Now that partaking in online poker in the United States has become somewhat of a risqué and restricted leisure activity (thanks again, Bill!) I’ve decided to spend more of my sparse free time searching for alternative hobbies. At first the only options seemed to be reading the latest forum posts on the new legislation, staring blankly at the Party Poker icon on my desktop, and weeping uncontrollably as I recollect all the great times that online poker and I had together. Alright, so the situation isn’t that bad… of course it’s not that good either.

One of the upsides to this whole situation though, was that I really needed a little bit of a break from the online poker arena. Not necessarily an eternal break in the form of government crackdowns and power-hungry politicians preaching their values from a self-proclaimed moral high horse… but a break nonetheless. Alas, now I had time to sit back, relax, and reexamine some of my priorities in life.

After my brief respite from everything poker, I decided it’d be a good time to regroup most of my winnings, putting a portion straight into savings, and the rest into the formation of a live poker bankroll. That’s right boys and girls… poker can be played live… with real people… leave your keyboard and mouse at home. I don’t know how this novel idea escaped me for so long.

Perhaps I just never had the time to search out fellow players, or I didn’t feel like going out to find a live game when I had thousands of real-time and real-money simulations at my fingertips. Whatever the reasons, I was glad to rediscover the old-fashioned form of playing cards – the form that originally got me hooked in the first place.

Apparently I’m not the only one who has gone back to the good old way of doing things. Since the online poker ban has been signed into law, there has been a noticeable increase in the live U.S. poker scene. American players are seemingly de-gluing themselves from their computers, rubbing their eyes, and waking up to a resurgence of live poker action. Personally I have noticed more clubs popping up in the area, as well as new freerolls and charity events at nearby establishments. Given our ever increasing dependence on technology and the recent trends of social interaction in our society, this just may be another silver lining to the gray cloud of online legislation.

A few years back in my finer college years, I remember reading Bowling Alone, a book by sociologist Robert Putnam detailing the steady decline in social connectedness and civic engagement, among other similar things. Even in our times of cell phones and instant messaging, there does seem to be a lacking component of social capital in our modern lives, disappearing as bigger and better technological innovations arrive to fill the voids. Not to say that this is wholly a bad thing, but clearly it has its ups and downs.

Television and the Internet were undoubtedly powerful catalysts in spreading the popularity of Texas Hold’em and poker in general. The availability of online poker created thousands, most likely millions, of additional poker players, including everyone from occasional nickel-and-dimers to full-time bathrobe pro’s. However, we can also speculate that it created quite a few isolated poker hermits that could desperately use a little break from their computers. I certainly know of one.

So now that Internet gaming has taken a bit of a low blow, what’s an online poker junkie to do? Well before crushing your mouse and keyboard to bits I’d suggest staying online and searching for a little live poker action around your neighborhood. Chances are you’ll find all sorts of players just like yourself that have started coming out of the woodwork. Hopefully not only will you get to meet some friendly fellow players, but you’ll actually learn to have fun while playing the game again, and will enjoy the social aspects of traditional poker regardless of whether you win or lose. Just as I discovered in my time away from the game, there are more important things in life than poker, like good friends and having fun. Of course if you can combine all of them then you’ll always wind up a winner.

Best of luck at the tables.

Mad Terp

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