Times they are a chang'n.....

Doyle Brunson once said that the best judge of the economy is a poker room. If you look around the local games, I'd have to agree. Of course I would say there's two main factors involved for the games drying up around here, one is the economy. When things get a little tight and the wife starts complaining about not having enough money for her shopping, its the husband's fun money first to be sacrificed. The second is the types of games that everyone wants to play. With the poker boom of the past few years and with high stakes games being broadcast on a regular basis that has trickled down to the home games in some respects. People want bigger pots, more action so naturally the game has to change and the introduction of Omaha comes to the forefront. Its not a stretch to say that the majority of players playing Omaha and O8 really are bad players. They were bad at hold'em and are even worse at Omaha but in their mind they think they have a better chance to win bc they have more cards. They fail to realize that everyone has more cards too...lol. Another aspect that they always forget is that Omaha is an extremely high variance game that takes far more money/bankroll to support. Used to, a $200 buy in in HE would last for a night with only a couple of rebuys maybe but most people can't make that last two hours in a Omaha game. So for some strange reason players will buy in for more upfront not realizing that they will lose more money at the same rate with a smaller buy in. Second nut is second nut and you're going broke with it every time just about. I've said it before and I'm really starting to see more and more of it coming true, I really think that dealer's choice games are going to make a strong come back along with more tournaments replacing the local cash games. Of course the problem with that is the house will not be able to make money hand over fist every night a game is held. It will be interesting to see what happens over the summer with gas prices going higher and higher, vacations, longer days, and just plain ol' burnout of playing poker so much. The games are going to only get tougher with more and more sharks circling the softer games. The last time I went to one of the games here in Greenville I noticed that even though there were a lot of players there, the majority of them were not action players but tightwads waiting around for monster starters and there were only a handful of fish compared to what used to be there in the past. On Friday night's were I play, an interesting change is taking place with the introduction of Badugi and double draw low ball which allows for a lot of action with just about everyone there chasing really horrible draws just to be part of the game and we're having some really sick action bc of it.

Also online I've noticed a huge influence into the limit games and especially Razz where I'm still trying to concentrate on. The Full Tilt Online Championship is going on right now and is running strong last time I checked. I'm really looking forward to Thursday night's Razz championship bc last time I really donked it off at the end when I was playing asleep and made a massive misread. Hope to be smarter and more focused this time and make the final table or I'll be greatly disappointed.

Well, good luck to everyone out there end hopefully come this fall games will be running strong again around town. I sure hope so....