Pub Poker is the new Social Basketball

As much as I love playing basketball, there was something about basketball stadiums, particularly on social basketball league nights, that kind of depressed me. The people were always the same, week after week, month after month, year after year. Obviously I was complicit in this too, I played social basketball for close to ten years straight. But I almost always just played once a week, trying to balance the sport with having a life and stuff.

The thing is, I knew (and saw on a number of occasions) that if I were to go to say the Powerhouse on a Monday night, or Wayville on a Wednesday night, or St Clair on a Tuesday night, I'd see the same people from my Thursday Night St Ives league. These guys would play several times a week, even just turning up to the stadium to hang out and watch their friends play if they didn't have a game. I don't know why it made me depressed - people are free to live however they want, and it's not like they were shut-ins. But it did.

Last night I went down to the Palais with Andy and Murray for their poker night. I hadn't been in a couple of months, but noticed a lot of the same people from previous times. And noticed that many of them seemed to have become friends, presumably because they play against each other every week. And not just at the Palais either, as the night went on you'd overhear them swapping stories about games they play at a whole range of venues around the city.

Again, its good that they've found something they love to do, and have made friends (of sorts) with other likeminded people. But as the night went on, and I overheard snippets of conversations, it became obvious that the only thing that anyone there was comfortable talking about was poker. "I totally had him with pocket Tens but then he lucked out with an Ace on the River." "I had that hand two nights ago, but came up against Big Slick."

I started getting the feeling I used to get around basketball stadiums. Like I said, it's great that people can do something they love, and find likeminded people through it. But if the ensuing relationships don't go any deeper than a surface level shared appreciation for a particular pastime, it makes you wonder if its worth it.

OK, rant over, we'll be back to our scheduled reviews of violent movies and rock music shortly.