One fun thing that online poker players love doing is hanging out in poker forums. At forums, you can check out poker strategy, ask other people for advice, give advice of your own, learn about new developments/tools for the game, and do a lot of other cool stuff. Unfortunately, another thing that you’ll come across at a lot of poker forums is the whole news and gossip scene.
Now it’s understandable why players are interested in this kind of information because, well, it pertains to poker. However, there is a tendency for people to get overly-involved in poker news and gossip. In fact, it’s almost like a competition between people to see who can post the latest and most relevant stories. And some people are willing to spend their dateless Friday and Saturday nights looking for the latest poker news gem.
The obvious downside to immersing yourself so deeply into the world of poker gossip is that you miss out on the opportunity to do more meaningful things – most notably, learning more poker strategy. Sure pouring over poker strategy isn’t as fun as finding out what color of panties Liv Boeree wears, but it’s a lot better use of your time.
Furthermore, if you’re fretting over posting A-plus poker gossip in a forum or dissing somebody who posted a news story that’s a few hours old, you’re becoming more detached from the real world bit by bit. Expanding on this point, you’re wasting precious social time by trolling in poker forums, and you can’t exactly discuss most of this stuff with non-poker friends.
Of course, this isn’t to say that you have to be a mindless poker strategy-studying robot who steers clear of news and gossip. However, don’t make your entire day about playing online poker and living a second life through a poker forum.
