title=comment for an article, below, that was written in November 2011, but imo the post-Christmas blues + the economic horizons not looking any brighter = even more true today than it was 3 months ago.
I believe there's a larger reason why folks have stopped watching televised poker. It's not only that the casual fans stopped tuning in as the boom drew its last breaths. It's not only that Black Friday effectively stopped the influx of new American players to the game. It's not only that televised final tables were increasingly made up of people folks had never heard of rather than familiar old-school pros. It's all of those things, but it's bigger than that.
People aren't just broke, they're broken. They are so fricking broken they're actually starting to turn off the Real Housewives and rise up out of their self-induced collective coma against the institutions rigging the game in this country. Russ Hamilton's crimes are downright quaint when held up against the shoot Goldman Sachs gets away with every single day.
With economic depression, high unemployment, falling wages and a bleak future facing the citizens of our hopelessly sold-out country, who the hell wants to watch a bunch of 23 year-olds in hoodies play cards for millions of dollars? Why give a rat's ass about the newest poker-minted millionaire when you can't even play a $10 sit-n-go in your own home anymore thanks to our government?
-
http://potcommitted.blogspot.com/2011/11/last-november-nine.html(and even in countries where we are "allowed" to play online, it's so depressing (soul-breaking!) to realize that online the action is either dried up, or a table is super-nitty (never a non-miniscule pot unless somone has a SD-worthy hand, whee isn't it fun surviving by stealing blinds preflop :sigh: ), or else completely filled with LAGtard Russians whose only button is labelled "bet/raise" (the others are broken in their localized client interface I guess) who have no problem check-raising and 3betting the river with absolutely nothing (i.e. very tough to know who is taking whom to Valuetown!) ... so it's no wonder I'm starting to prefer grinding live, at $50 donkaments, but also even *gasp* at live $3/6 LHEfullring :wtf: )
