Posted by Johnnymac 5:54 PM


Apparently this Diet Pepsi as been on for a while but I just caught it as I was catching up on some old TV from last week. I thought it was pretty funny, but some online research led me to this:

PEPSI'S POKER AD DOOMS FAD

March 19, 2006 -- It's official: Poker has jumped the shark.
The once white-hot gambling fad sailed right past ubiquity into sellout-infested waters with a Diet Pepsi commercial currently in rotation featuring professional players Daniel Negreanu, Scott Nguyen and Phil Hellmuth losing to a sweating cola can.

"Poker was a real underground trend, but now it has become so commercialized that the game's lost the gritty flavor that made it attractive," said Ryan Berger, Euro RSCG's creative director of buzz.

Not unlike the major record labels' bum rush to sign alternative bands after Nirvana blew up, or department stores glomming onto the latest downtown fashion trends, once underground movements gain mass acceptance, it typically signifies the beginning of the end.

Well, lemmee see, on the one hand I kind of like this news, because I liked playing poker back when it was something no one else did and now it's just seems like I'm part of the fad, too. For this reason I don't like to talk about it in public (this blog notwithstanding) and sometimes I hide the fact that I play. But on the other hand, the MGM didn't used to have the nicest poker room to play No Limit Holdem in Vegas and now it does. In fact, it didn't have a room at all and that didn't really matter because you couldn't find No Limit anything anywhere anyway. Things have improved tremendously, especially when it comes to the availbility of games.

Another thing is that as Fro and I were discussing on the phone earlier this week, there are no more newbie fish out there - the guys who were getting their asses kicked two or three years ago have either quit playing or have improved. Getting your ass kicked does that to you, and, as Fro himself said, all of those guys have read at least one poker book by now. I can think of a lot of examples of these types of guys and in fact, two of them play regularly at my house: my buddy JR and his friend Mr Compton.

So I am torn. But the ad is still pretty funny, no matter what it supposedly portends.

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