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Pokers future. Bleak or Healthy.
TheEdge949
Member Posts: 5,283
in Poker Chat
Can you remember the halcyon days of Late Night Poker and the "Moneymaker effect"? Suddenly cardrooms were filling, online poker was booming and a new generation of high rolling millionaires were catapulted into the limelight as poker almost cracked the main stream and presenters like Jesse and Kara were as welcome in our living rooms as your favorite Aunt.
Now as I look around the poker scene it's as if it's regressed and I'm not sure how many more knock backs it can take before it goes back, certainly in the publics perspective, to a game played by shady characters in seedy back rooms.
Online poker sold us a dream that anybody with a solid theory and understanding of equity could profit and yes that is probably still true, but nowadays more than ever the rec is playing against a battery of solvers, probability calculators, data mining and analytics. Great if you're tech savvy and have the ability to collate and use the statistical data garnered, otherwise you get left behind.
The live games continued to grow in popularity with both Grosvenor and Genting ensuring that even a cultural backwater like Stoke had live tourneys 6 nights a week and cash games every night, many of these comps carried qualification to the bigger Tours and continued to grow the game.
Then came Black Friday and the implications for many were not good. The whole debacle cast a huge shadow over the online world and for some, me included, meant that my biggest ROI site and easiest games had disappeared along with players whole bankrolls and many waited up to 12 months to get the money back. This prompted many to question the ethics and honesty of every site. Not a good image in a business where expansion and new accounts are the lifeblood.
Live poker meanwhile rode out the crisis. In fact for many Americans live poker was now their only way to play, WPT and WSOP fields increased year on year and other tours took off and grew EPT, APT etc.
Then Covid - 19 brought the whole live game to a shuddering halt. Cardrooms closed, travel was banned and social distancing ruled out all but the most secret of home games. Live Poker was on life support.
Mini boomtime however for the online game, which having overcome the fallout from Black Friday now offered the poker starved live players more ways to feed their habit as numbers were up across pretty much every platform. This also encouraged another generation of online players who with nothing to do with their time and even less options about where to go found online gaming, gambling and poker helped while away those lockdown hours.
Now here we are in 2022. The Household names of Late Night Poker are consigned to history, Ulliot, Beevers, Boatman, Triple P, Scally, Frazer, Colclough, Sunar, Vaswani, Pink Lady, Lucy Rokash et al. The big names of the boom have perhaps had their time Dwan, Antonius, Isildur, Moorman, Jungleman, Schwartz and the legends of the live game Ivy, Helmuth, Negranu, Trickett, Benyamin, Esfandiarni just seem to carry on regardless. Elsewhere players seem to flourish for a year or so then fade away and more importantly there is much less poker on TV now and in my mind that's crucial to attracting new blood.
Live poker is once again an option although it would appear on a much less available basis. My nearest games involve a two hour round trip to play tougher fields with less value or a local cash game where if I'm lucky I'm only the 8th worst player at the table.
Online, the fields are shrinking, the games are tougher and soon I think that we may see a real decline in the online poker sites. I know that if I have £100 to spare I can generate more ROI trading sports than I can playing online poker. Also it's more scalable as unlike poker when you move up the stakes there is no increase in opponents skill to worry about.
Will there always be enough of a rec player pool to keep the regs playing with the same win rates they currently enjoy? I don't know but with more of a squeeze on peoples finances than ever I feel that poker, both live and online might be heading for rough water.
In fact in another 10 years time will we be playing at all online or just meeting up in the room above the snooker hall every Tuesday with a couple of buy ins and hope.
Really like to know what others think about the future of poker.
Mark.
Now as I look around the poker scene it's as if it's regressed and I'm not sure how many more knock backs it can take before it goes back, certainly in the publics perspective, to a game played by shady characters in seedy back rooms.
Online poker sold us a dream that anybody with a solid theory and understanding of equity could profit and yes that is probably still true, but nowadays more than ever the rec is playing against a battery of solvers, probability calculators, data mining and analytics. Great if you're tech savvy and have the ability to collate and use the statistical data garnered, otherwise you get left behind.
The live games continued to grow in popularity with both Grosvenor and Genting ensuring that even a cultural backwater like Stoke had live tourneys 6 nights a week and cash games every night, many of these comps carried qualification to the bigger Tours and continued to grow the game.
Then came Black Friday and the implications for many were not good. The whole debacle cast a huge shadow over the online world and for some, me included, meant that my biggest ROI site and easiest games had disappeared along with players whole bankrolls and many waited up to 12 months to get the money back. This prompted many to question the ethics and honesty of every site. Not a good image in a business where expansion and new accounts are the lifeblood.
Live poker meanwhile rode out the crisis. In fact for many Americans live poker was now their only way to play, WPT and WSOP fields increased year on year and other tours took off and grew EPT, APT etc.
Then Covid - 19 brought the whole live game to a shuddering halt. Cardrooms closed, travel was banned and social distancing ruled out all but the most secret of home games. Live Poker was on life support.
Mini boomtime however for the online game, which having overcome the fallout from Black Friday now offered the poker starved live players more ways to feed their habit as numbers were up across pretty much every platform. This also encouraged another generation of online players who with nothing to do with their time and even less options about where to go found online gaming, gambling and poker helped while away those lockdown hours.
Now here we are in 2022. The Household names of Late Night Poker are consigned to history, Ulliot, Beevers, Boatman, Triple P, Scally, Frazer, Colclough, Sunar, Vaswani, Pink Lady, Lucy Rokash et al. The big names of the boom have perhaps had their time Dwan, Antonius, Isildur, Moorman, Jungleman, Schwartz and the legends of the live game Ivy, Helmuth, Negranu, Trickett, Benyamin, Esfandiarni just seem to carry on regardless. Elsewhere players seem to flourish for a year or so then fade away and more importantly there is much less poker on TV now and in my mind that's crucial to attracting new blood.
Live poker is once again an option although it would appear on a much less available basis. My nearest games involve a two hour round trip to play tougher fields with less value or a local cash game where if I'm lucky I'm only the 8th worst player at the table.
Online, the fields are shrinking, the games are tougher and soon I think that we may see a real decline in the online poker sites. I know that if I have £100 to spare I can generate more ROI trading sports than I can playing online poker. Also it's more scalable as unlike poker when you move up the stakes there is no increase in opponents skill to worry about.
Will there always be enough of a rec player pool to keep the regs playing with the same win rates they currently enjoy? I don't know but with more of a squeeze on peoples finances than ever I feel that poker, both live and online might be heading for rough water.
In fact in another 10 years time will we be playing at all online or just meeting up in the room above the snooker hall every Tuesday with a couple of buy ins and hope.
Really like to know what others think about the future of poker.
Mark.
Comments
Drink more eat more.
Daggers x
Most players are likely to be break even or small losing players, only a small percentage will be able to make the big cash
With that said, there are still enough fun players making a deposit and splashing around to at least make your hobby free. Then the question becomes what is your motivation for playing? I agree that sports trading has a better return, but then is it comparable to your day job? If it was just about hourly, then I know I could pick up some consulting work at a rate higher than most professional players are earning. Then I realise I need to do something different with my time and I enjoy the competition, as long as my hobby doesn't cost me anything. The same can't be said for my other hobbies like sim racing.
If you want to be able to make minimum wage or there abouts I don't think it would be to dissimilar You would just need to be able to multi table proficiently have good game selection and discipline.
If you want to make a decent wage then yeah your going to have to work at it. There will likely always be casual/weak players who do not put the time into studying the game. If everyone was studying hard and approaching this with a professional mindset then Casinos would likely be going out of business due to the same mind set not taking negative ev bets and only really going down there when they are offered bonuses which make it plus ev for the punter and as soon as their introductory bonus offer is used up that's it they gone not down casino again.
Also solvers and all the other tools still needs a lot to learn, in fact to such an extent that even if someone was to spend their entire life studying the game and trying to memorize everything they still would not be able to learn 100% everything. Although if everyone did it, its likely the edge that the slightly better players had would be unlikely to win post rake.
there are three major threats to making a living from online poker/live poker in the coming years.
1. Nuclear war, in which case well you got much bigger problems to worry about.
2. AI advancing to the point that allows people to cheat easily This potentially is a threat time will tell. However that really could be an entire other thread so I will keep it brief there.
3. Government legislation changes. This is the real threat and this could potentially make it unviable. There is ongoing discussion and people pushing for different things with regards to the gambling legislation.
If they limit how much one can wager/Stake which some are pushing for its game over for making any decent money from the game at all even Min wage money. effectively for every single game type one can only have a reasonably small Roi Mtts for example even if you have 50% from MTTS a very very strong figure you would need to wager £200 to win £100 profit. Under legislation proposed by some you would need to show you can afford to lose £200 a day to wager £200 a day in which case for nearly everyone it would be impossible to make decent money as you would not be allowed to play. Even if you could show this the game volume would no longer be there. This is the real threat and what I worry about and it could be game over but until the White paper comes out we can only speculate.
Deposit limits I am not worried about at all because I do not deposit and have not done so for years. In theory it could kill games potentially since the people I win money from may not be able to play as much, I dont know how that would all work out and who deposits what etc. However if it did affect things much I guess Sky poker would die out but international poker sites would still work as plenty of money from international poker players if not from UK players anymore.
Poker takes 2 minutes to learn but it takes a lifetime to master
I've done the first bit
You enjoy it and there’s an added bonus of making a bit of money from time to time
Most hobbies cost money with no chance of a return
You’re also a lot better than you give yourself credit for
I’ve always found you tough to play against
Are we talking poker, here, or football?
And @Tikay10 it's definitely not the football we've done our best to help Derby this season by gifting them six points, i hope they stay up and i rate Rooney as a manager