Give me your thoughts on this

[Steve-O]

Hi guys, I wrote an Op-Ed piece today titled How the Poker Boom has Gone Bust, which basically centers around the way poker theory and strategy was monetized during the Poekr Boom. I'd like to get some opinions and feedback on the article (Be warned: It's a long read at about 1,400 words): http://pokernewsboy.com/op-ed/how-th...one-bust/12754

[Deal]

Good read and spot on my observations as well. There is some hope that a move towards mixed games will bring in a higher gap between newer fish already competent in NL and those that have studied the mixed games in detail. The other avenue for profit is the private games. The rich business men will seek out good friendly competition and if you can crack into that circle you will always be able to profit. The days of grinding obscene profits online are basically over. The grinders are making the majority of their income from rakeback/bonus schemes and not from the games themselves.

[ErickAA]

As someone who recreationally plays in major poker cardrooms I would say the "bust" has reached the live poker world as well, although it is delayed and will never reach the level of the online world because recreational players still like to go to the casino and play live against other recreational players.

Compared to say 6 years ago, there are very few "big" games (100-200 or higher limit, 10-20 or higher NL) running, and all the amateurs (fish) who used to feed the bigger games seem to have moved down in stakes. I think this has to do with there just being too many good young kids waiting around for the "fish."

For the most part, these "fish" are actually successful people who are intelligent, they just choose to play poker at the amateur level. When they show up to play in their old 200-400 game, (or whatever) they can see there are six skinny, pale 20 something year old guys in t shirts, shorts and sandals hanging around waiting for him to sit down, so obviously the fish is going to pass and find some other game to play, be it a private game or a lower stakes game at the casino.

I could be wrong, but I kind of feel like this is just going to get worse and worse, as the fish move down in stakes and the pros have to move down to chase them, and this (along with rake continually increasing) will make live games harder and harder to beat.

If online poker comes back to the US and there is a new mini boom, I think this will be good for mid/high live games in the short term as the internet pros will go back to the online games, but I think even this would be temporary as the games would inevitably dry up again, and we would be back to square 1.

[Steve-O]

Deal


Good read and spot on my observations as well. There is some hope that a move towards mixed games will bring in a higher gap between newer fish already competent in NL and those that have studied the mixed games in detail. The other avenue for profit is the private games. The rich business men will seek out good friendly competition and if you can crack into that circle you will always be able to profit. The days of grinding obscene profits online are basically over. The grinders are making the majority of their income from rakeback/bonus schemes and not from the games themselves.

Thanks Deal,

I still see total fish in private games I play in, especially when it's dealer's choice and such. Whenever I hear of "regular" Texas Holdem games I always pass, because the game is always full of casino regulars. Yeah I have an edge, but I have an even bigger edge if I drive to the casino. The couple times I have gone to these it's basically the 10 best local tournament players and 4 or 5 other competent players. By this point, nearly 10 years after the Poker Boom, all the fish are broke or disenfrachised with poker.

As someone who recreationally plays in major poker cardrooms I would say the "bust" has reached the live poker world as well, although it is delayed and will never reach the level of the online world because recreational players still like to go to the casino and play live against other recreational players.

Compared to say 6 years ago, there are very few "big" games (100-200 or higher limit, 10-20 or higher NL) running, and all the amateurs (fish) who used to feed the bigger games seem to have moved down in stakes. I think this has to do with there just being too many good young kids waiting around for the "fish."

For the most part, these "fish" are actually successful people who are intelligent, they just choose to play poker at the amateur level. When they show up to play in their old 200-400 game, (or whatever) they can see there are six skinny, pale 20 something year old guys in t shirts, shorts and sandals hanging around waiting for him to sit down, so obviously the fish is going to pass and find some other game to play, be it a private game or a lower stakes game at the casino.

I could be wrong, but I kind of feel like this is just going to get worse and worse, as the fish move down in stakes and the pros have to move down to chase them, and this (along with rake continually increasing) will make live games harder and harder to beat.

If online poker comes back to the US and there is a new mini boom, I think this will be good for mid/high live games in the short term as the internet pros will go back to the online games, but I think even this would be temporary as the games would inevitably dry up again, and we would be back to square 1.

This has always been my feeling, and I started talking about this in 2006 when UIGEA first went thorugh: Basically you have sharks canabalizing each other once the fish are all gone. At the time people thought I was overreacting but it was becoming so obvious that the games were getting tougher and the gravy-train wasn't going to last. I agree with you that it will likely only get worse even if there are periods where influxes for new players make the games soft for a certian amount of time. The way people think about poekr is so high-level that until the game truly dies (when biggest stakes you find in a casino are $5/$10 NLHE and $20/$40 Limit), and there is no longer big money in it, it will simply be like professional chess and backgammon.

[Sitting Out]

Good read, and well documented. It really reflects where we are in today's environment. An environment that's exceedingly competitive. A much different world than those earlier years. The big question is where poker is going from here...

[Dan Druff]

That was a good article, Steve-O, and I agree with most of it.

I was explaining years ago (well before Black Friday) that the poker boom had the unfortunate consequence of bringing many additional GOOD players to the game.

That is, many look back upon the poker boom fondly, remembering the myriad of fish that donated at the tables.

Unfortunately, the fish don't lose forever, and eventually either improve or leave the game (usually the latter).

At the same time, the huge influx of new players caused something inevitable: A small percentage of them would rise up to become good or great players. With such a large number of new players, even this small percentage translated into a lot of people.

So suddenly you had a whole lot of new, highly-skilled players in poker that weren't in the game in prior years, and not enough fish to continue supporting them. This, in turn, caused the pros to turn to "eating each other", resulting in the game becoming much tougher, and often a who's-running-best-at-the-moment contest.

I have said before that the absence of good players is actually more important to game selection than the presence of bad ones.

For example, let's say I'm at a 6-max table. Would I rather be up against 5 moderately losing players, or 3 really good players and two really bad ones? It's not even close. I'd much rather take on the 5 moderate losers. This is because you can easily dominate a table when there are no other good players around to steal your thunder or interfere with your strategy. Unquestionably, my EV is highest when I'm in a game that lacks good players, and my results have proven it time and time again.

Sadly, it's very hard to find a game these days with zero good players. The much more common scenario in a 6-max these days is four good opponents and one moderately bad (but not terrible) one. It's very hard to win consistently in a game like that, and it has made poker much tougher on everyone.

I am not sure I fully agree with Steve-O regarding the books and training videos. Yes, they have made poker tougher, but I think more of today's problem is simply a numbers game. We just have too many damn good players now, and there just aren't enough fish to go around.

If online poker gets legalized in the US, we will see some improvement in the games, as there are still plenty of bad players out there, and they will likely give legalized online poker a try. However, I don't think it will ever be like the 2004-2005 days of online poker, where even a mediocre player could crush the average game. It will still take a lot of skill and a lot of game selection to make a living at poker.

[The PINO]

Great read Steve. Couldn't agree with you more on most of the points in the article. The part about the poker training sites that would eventually flourish after the "boom" was especially true.

God I remember when Sheets and JohnnyBax from Stars started up PokerXFactor and I knew right then that this would be the eventual demise of the great "boom" we all got to experience as players. Now granted it was great for the evolution of the game itself, but in the long run it assisted in making bad players a lot better over time and turned the already decent players into total sharks in lower to medium-stakes games both online and live.

Seems the market is now more flooded than ever with PokerXFactor-type sites like CardRunners and DragTheBar, with online pros even offering private one-on-one training via their shitty blogger/wordpress blog sites, lol.

[Steve-O]

Thanks for all the positive feedback everyone. Interestingly I left poekr in late 2006 (family) and came back in early 2008. When I came back my jaw almost hit the floor at the difference in skill level but moreso at what was being discussed in forums. FFS, I used to be the only person who described Theory of Poker as a "basic" poker book in 2004, most forum users thought this was advanced reading, god I miss those days.

Totally agree with Druff's point on table dynamics. Give me predictable players all day long. My favorite lineups (I played Limit cash games) always include one nutball maniac type to help juice pots and the rest could be either passive fish or average ABC players for all I cared. The great thing about ABC players is they keep the money in the poker community. You can't always be the one beating the maniac fish in the game, but so long as one of the ABC players does you'll still get the money eventually.

I remember one particualr juicy game at Foxwoods where another reg and I kept losing to the absolute worst player in the history of poker. He eventually lost like 5 buy-ins in three or four hours and then left. The other reg was all pissed off saying "all that money and I got none of it, I'll never have a chance like that again; blah blah blah". All I said was, "the guy is gone but his money is still here". All those players are good for is injecting money into the poker economy, whether it's through my stack or someone else's it's still always there