The Game Has Changed

With the World Series of Poker winding down and the WSOP Main Event starting up, I thought I would throw my two cents into the fountain. After a month of playing and watching the world's best poker players battle for bracelets, I have come to this one conclusion...I have no idea what the hell is going on! I have decided this though, the game of poker is no longer my game. I'm not making these statements because I have become a losing player, which I have, but the atmosphere or texture of the game is so radically different from its roots. I don't respect the game any longer as a game of skill, patience and character, it's nothing but Russian Roulette.

Poker has become a flagrant series of slot machine pulls in which doubling up or going out are the only two options. I don't blame the X-Games/Punk'd/MTV kids that now dominate the sport either. I blame television! The journalists, color commentators and media gurus (ha!) said Chris Moneymaker is the reason the sport exploded. That's crapola. The WSOP was already up 300% the year Moneymaker won. The rise of the sport came via internet gaming. This new avenue popularized bringing the garage and basement game to the masses. The internet poker industry made the game available to practically everyone. Along with the influx of new, younger players came truckloads of new money. These enormous sums of money blanketed the "ugly" poker stigma. The game was on it's way up.

Then came ESPN and television technology of the "hole card" camera. Yeah, I know ESPN covered the WSOP long before the game exploded. But it wasn't the same. Have you ever watched poker on television without seeing each players "hole cards"? It is slow, tedious and mind numbing, a game only Doyle Brunson and Amarillo Slim could love. That game would never intrigue today's generation of adrenaline junkies. They would rather tune in to Days of Our Lives and needlepoint than listen to Dick Van Patten and Gabe Kaplan consider the possibilities of what two or three very ugly men are contemplating while they stare at the felt. It is a truly painful experience.

Then came editing! The television gurus never seem to remind the television viewer that 5500 hands of poker will not be televised due to boredom. Poker is game of FOLDING, people. Not pushing all-in because its been twenty minutes since you sat down and a new episode of Transformers is about to air on the Cartoon Network. Take your friggin' Ritalin already. The new young gun-type players don't know the game any other way than what ESPN shows them. I don't like it and I don't want to play anymore. You can keep the new game and its new breed of players. If I wanted to go all-in or bust I'd spend my money on Lotto.

By-the-way, if baseball caps were meant to be worn crooked, wouldn't they have been designed as such? I don't know...just wondering.

Main Event starts tomorrow at the Rio in Las Vegas.

Al

Pick of the Day(36-8-1)...Dodgers, Yanks