I watched Doug’s two minute town council speech and at the end thought “seriously?”

It was the most pathetic attempt at a pro-card room speech you could possibly think of. It sounds like it was written 5 minutes before he walked up to the podium. If I didn’t know who Polk was, I would have thought this was a protest speech at first with his references to all the poker players already having infiltrated this small community.

If you actually care about the “poker community”, you seriously need to higher some political consultants to do this for you next time.

This is a good point, city commission probably think the metro area is too saturated with so many rooms operating.

Dont see why any town in Texas would be against poker... ah well

Well, imagine you live in a small, quiet town.

You've seen overdevelopment of other areas bring in massive traffic bottlenecks into other once small towns.

Now you have outsiders show up wanting to build THE BIGGEST POKER ROOM IN TEXAS!

And they're going to do it in a location where they already know there will be parking challenges.

It's not a stretch to see why many locals would oppose this

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Imagine you’re a lifelong resident of a small town.

Some young kid w/ a short haircut comes in talking about how he made millions gambling and he wants the same for others by opening a gigantic gambling hall in your town.

All you see is increased potential for crime, influx of unsavory types, and more traffic. Also gambling is evil.

Yes I know it's a poker room and not a gambling hall. But the above is basically how most of those that voted no are taking in what's presented.

It's not shocking why they are opposed. But obviously if you're someone who's life has been nothing but poker it's going to be difficult to see things from other perspectives.

Pretty easy, actually.

I'm pretty sure it was more about "membership" and paying a "rental fee" or "time rake" for a seat at the table in the room. Any business will have economic benefit, hopefully. I think the language you were looking for was something closer to "allow a game of skill to be played where the house has no edge and therefore no economic benefit outside of the fees."

Austin is liberal, a state university based city, I think he should just repeat that in another place with that same type of environment. Suburbs with retirees and DFW commuters already see the unwanted traffic in their neighborhood and don't like it.

Who says the other rooms operating in that DFW area haven't done their due diligence to keep competition away?

Several people giving advice on what is going on in people's minds & what Doug "should" have said.... but none of them actually addressing specific stated objections from the 4 "no" voters. Who here even has any experience at all getting a city council to approve a proposal? This looks like the blind leading the blind.

It does strike me that Doug posted this only 2 days before the vote, suggesting he didn't do much homework or groundwork for the vote.

Lucky for Doug, it sounds like there's plenty of other municipalities he can practice his pitch on until he gets it right.

https://x.com/CaitlinComeskey/status...29098944430569