Quote:
Originally Posted by Gzesh
While I agree with your sentiment about poker being a cross-section of society, something especially so when playing small stakes in Las Vegas, or Panama or elsewhere in Central America, I think you overstate the point about "literally no place on earth".
I suggest that the DMV, a McDonalds, and pretty much any airport, will provide a more broad cross-section of society generally than does a live poker venue and will also include people under the age of 21.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 5thStreet
Disagree.
Fast food and public commercial air travel are heavily filtered for the top/bottom ends of society.
Yes, Warren Buffett eats Egg McMuffins and we all have to go get a drivers license, I suppose you could say a courthouse would also have a similar cross section, what with the contract disputes happening on the 3rd floor and the felony cases on the 1st floor, but that's an autistic argument and the point stands.
As far as voluntary social environs go, Poker room has the broadest cross section of the top and bottom of society's strata, at any given time, that will see wildly different people in very close social proximity who would otherwise have nothing to do with each other, or actively avoid each other, yet for that one glorious session, sit together as one, trying to gank each other's cash.
Nothing else like it.
I'd say you're both on it. Gzesh is correct that you can find all walks of life at other such places like the DMV or the airport. It's not unique to a poker room.
But more philosophically, I like 5thStreet's observation. Unlike the DMV or the airport, I'm far more likely to strike up a random conversation with someone at my poker table than I am with a person waiting for a mobile order in a McD's. And that's the difference: the interaction.
Then again, I would assume the stakes matter. I'm a low-stakes guy who plays $3/6 or $4/8 limit or as small as $1/3 no-limit. So while there might be a huge range of people in the room, the scope of those in my "social proximity" is narrower.
I'm glad you mentioned the courtroom, as I find jury duty to be another one of these environments. While I'm not as likely to converse with a stranger on a one-to-one basis, the nature of the process is that many of the potential jurors are instructed to reveal parts of their background. This is something that does not happen at, say, O'Hare Terminal 5. Discovering the vastness of this one sample of your community is pretty eye-opening, especially if you live in an area that is not that large (my county has about 200K people).