Matt Ingenthron's Stream of Consciousness

Sunday September 12, 2004

The Power of Television

I talked to my 92 year old grandfather, Ed Ingenthron, for a little bit tonight. [I'd wanted to post a link to this article about him in the Kansas City Star, but their content isn't solely advertising supported :( ] Anyway, he's an avid poker player (his preferred game is Omaha hold-em), and has been for many, many years.

In one of my last few visits to Kansas City, we went to a riverboat casino¹. He showed me a room they had on the barge where they used to have poker pits. He told me that the casino closed the poker pits, due to lack of popularity. He was forced to go to Las Vegas to play poker.

Well, when I talked to him this evening, I asked him if the recent popularity of poker on television had any effect on the casinos there in KC. It turns out that all of the casinos have re-opened their poker pits and they're packed all of the time!

I just find this weird. I wish I understood the chain of events-- did latent poker players become inspired to go to casinos? Or did people get enough confidence watching it on TV to chance their own money on it? Btw, the casinos do win more often than not, in case you weren't sure.

In any event, it just reconfirmed how powerful television is in this society of ours...

1. It's a bit of a misnomer to call it a riverboat. It used to be they had to go out and cruise the river to be legal. Well, over time, the boat became a barge on the side of the river. In an accident, one boat broke away from the bank. There were more changes to laws, and now the barges only need to be in river water, in a pool, attached to the river. To me this is just silly....