Thursday, October 25, 2007
Displacement, Bowling and PokerStars
For years people have been able to choose other activities that compete with primetime TV. My parents went bowling two or three times per week in the 50s and 60s. On a good night my dad might roll over 600 for a series of 3 games and get his name in the newspaper. Or roll a 287 game. It was a social event and I spent many an evening playing with the other little kids of bowlers.
Displacement is usually the effect of TV on normal life. Watching TV keeps you from other activites. In the case of bowling, TV was the activity being replaced. There were no TiVos or VCRs so whatever was on Monday night just never got watched.
Unlike my father, I socialize online. I'm a little old for Facebook, although I have an account, and not weird enough to spend much time on Second Life. My sport is poker (using fake money) and instead of playing face to face, I sit in virtual poker rooms at PokerStars.
The difference is that I can pull up Joost and watch old TV shows from my childhood in one part of my screen and, in another part of my screen, I can knock out strangers on the river (poker slang) as they play me from various cities in the world. The other night I entered a big freeroll tourney and simultaneously watched missed episodes of Big Bang Theory on Joost. Instead of displacing TV, I was time-shifting and instead of bowling I was place-shifting.
Miraculously I won the game, against 11,999 other opponents in the tournament. Too bad each hadn't paid a $1 entry fee, or even a penny, but it was a freeroll tourney so there was no cash prize. I played over six hours, held the chip lead most of the night, which began at 10:30 p.m. and ended after 5 a.m.
My placing on the final three tables won me a seat in a future tiny-cash-prize tourney with no assurance of victory. My winning the final table on this one, however, with the big blinds at $200,000 and the antes at $10,000, was a real rush. Playing heads-up with a guy from Stilwell was just like playing someone on TV or in a live poker room face-to-face.
It's hard to believe, but photographic evidence is plentiful. Screenshot 1 Screenshot 2 Screenshot 3
I wonder what my dad would say. It's a different world in which I need not rely on the local newspaper to chronicle my achievement. Then again, his small-town newspaper had regular subscribers and this blog reaches about 30,000 fewer readers.
Displacement is usually the effect of TV on normal life. Watching TV keeps you from other activites. In the case of bowling, TV was the activity being replaced. There were no TiVos or VCRs so whatever was on Monday night just never got watched.
Unlike my father, I socialize online. I'm a little old for Facebook, although I have an account, and not weird enough to spend much time on Second Life. My sport is poker (using fake money) and instead of playing face to face, I sit in virtual poker rooms at PokerStars.
The difference is that I can pull up Joost and watch old TV shows from my childhood in one part of my screen and, in another part of my screen, I can knock out strangers on the river (poker slang) as they play me from various cities in the world. The other night I entered a big freeroll tourney and simultaneously watched missed episodes of Big Bang Theory on Joost. Instead of displacing TV, I was time-shifting and instead of bowling I was place-shifting.
Miraculously I won the game, against 11,999 other opponents in the tournament. Too bad each hadn't paid a $1 entry fee, or even a penny, but it was a freeroll tourney so there was no cash prize. I played over six hours, held the chip lead most of the night, which began at 10:30 p.m. and ended after 5 a.m.
My placing on the final three tables won me a seat in a future tiny-cash-prize tourney with no assurance of victory. My winning the final table on this one, however, with the big blinds at $200,000 and the antes at $10,000, was a real rush. Playing heads-up with a guy from Stilwell was just like playing someone on TV or in a live poker room face-to-face.
It's hard to believe, but photographic evidence is plentiful. Screenshot 1 Screenshot 2 Screenshot 3
I wonder what my dad would say. It's a different world in which I need not rely on the local newspaper to chronicle my achievement. Then again, his small-town newspaper had regular subscribers and this blog reaches about 30,000 fewer readers.
Labels: pokerstars bowling
