Since I proposed the other gambling site I guess I should comment here. Short answer no, expanding the scope of poker to include other gaming games would not help at all, indeed I think there is a very good chance that it would hurt. Poker players in general are a little snobbish about their game of choice and do not really want to mingle much with other gamblers. I know a lot of pro gamblers with other games, and while most of them play poker, only a few of these are really good poker players, and the majority just dabble in poker as rank amateurs.
The proposal itself is more likely then not a no go. Three months in there are 6 followers, this to me demonstrates that three is not a lot of interest in a question and answer site about gambling in general.
When I wrote the proposal I was more curious to see if there would be interest then expectant that there would be. I have been around poker forums and lots of them including the one I had put sections in for other games. Nobody had much success. Many sports sites have forums and that is were the sports bettors go. If you ever really listened to the silly things many poker players say about sports you can understand why. Black jack players also the same thing, not enough interest because with shuffling machines and such counting cards is not something many people do anymore. Blackjack players might have some interesting things to say about bankroll, but other then that the types of minds that master blackjack are not particularly the types that make good poker players.
I have met guys that have played everything successfully in Las Vegas. Keno players who track numbers, the old balls get dirty or cracked you can find an edge. Slot machines, they play 100% machines, run teams on favorable progressives, work the slots hosts and slot clubs to get an edge. Horse and sports bettors, work hard and crunch lots of stats and hope in the long run to make one or two percent on the money they have in action. And of course the schemers that work angles on everything. These guys lay low when the think they have an edge the casinos have overlooked and certainly will not be coming to a general gambling site talking about it.
We would really have no experts for the gaming. The questions would be very low quality. The answers might suffer even more. These people working the gambling towns are not going to become experts here, they are smart enough to know that the more people whom know about any particular edge to be had in a casino, the sooner that edge will disappear.
Poker on SE will make it all by itself, it does not need to expand to include other casino games. The game of poker itself is more often then not played in a casino that does not offer many other games. In California for example half the poker games are in bars and other limited license locations like the LA and Bay Area clubs. Before Indian casinos came along all the poker games were in venues were poker was the main if not only attraction. Online, few of the poker sites offer anything but poker, and if they do offer anything else it is just a tiny fraction of revenue.
Poker Beta has problems, and I have outlined them and made very strongly worded suggestions to the moderators about it in other Meta posts. In Essence what the problem here is, we need more experts. Poker is a much broader subject then the existing experts and moderators can see. This has had a stifling effect on the growth of Poker Beta. The original site proposal was made by someone whom was not particularly an expert in poker and has not participated much in the site. From what I can tell the original proposal was written by an employee of SE. Which means the site had a bad start. Enough experts have not become interested in the site, nor have gained enough points to gain moderator privileges. The basic thing that needs to be fixed is that more experts come, and give us their expertise, and they gain enough up votes to become the leadership of this site.
