Poker Mom

 The Excalibur Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas is the first Vegas resort to install automated poker tables in their poker room.  Yes, that’s right ladies and gents; you can now go sit inside a poker room and peck away at a computer-generated poker screen to get your poker fix.  As a result of this new addition, many of the dealers at the Excalibur have been given their walking papers.

Honestly, this makes no sense to me.  If I want to play a bazillion hands per hour or play on a computer, I can do so from my home in my pajamas.  Why would I bother going anywhere to do this?  I read in a poker blog (forgive me, I have forgotten which one) that one player loved it because the other players at the table (those that fall under the title of fish) seemed to go all-in a lot more often than they would if they were playing with physical chips.  So from that perspective, I can see the allure of the automated system.

However here is where my personal beef with the system comes in to play.  When I go to a poker room to play poker, I do so for the live player aspect of it.  I like to work on reading other players, pick up on some nuances, work to keep myself from going on-tilt, etc.  If I’m behind a computer at a casino, sure I can see other players but people play differently with computer-generated cards than when they have cards and chips in front of them.

I really hope that this isn’t going to be the new trend.  Las Vegas is my favorite destination vacation spot and if all of the card rooms go automated, I’m not sure I’ll have a reason to go.

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