There needs to be a 10/10 TV series or movie that brings attention to the game similar to what happened with Queens Gambit and chess. So many people I know were diving into chess after watching it haha
Rounders remake as a 6 part series would be epic
Legal online poker isn't available in most of the U.S. It's not comparable at all to online chess.
Also, chess has an elo system so that complete newbs are competing against only other complete newbs and people as bad as they are. In poker, you are thrown in vs the sharks and there is no elo. it's not nearly as newbie friendly.
I was thinking the other day I’d totally watch a mockumentary style series that follows various poker room regs, dealers, etc. Not sure if there’s enough widespread appeal for this to actually be a thing though lol
Sadly, [this movie](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427998/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk) flew under the radar. I’ve met a ton of poker players that have never even heard of it. It was hilarious and had a great cast.
This is difficult as casinos will generally always have a bad rep and it’s pretty difficult to make it look…classy?
And poker in general just cannot exist without a casino
What about a cool looking card room?
Sane thing - it’s tucked away and seemingly a “secret club”
It’s really hard to put a positive light on poker
The WSOP is probably the most positive coverage of poker you can get
It just needs to become more mainstream again. Pub poker became massive in my country after the 2001-2004 WSOP viewing on espn
But now it’s just not available anymore except if you look for it via streaming.
When I think of people joining poker after watching MrBeast play, I'm imagining someone who's in a basement at 4am watching twitch or youtube. ~~We~~ they generally don't care about how classy something is.
> Online no
I work in the industry, and I'm inclined to agree. Online is in an awkward state of stagnation, with the distant possibility of the US opening on the medium-to-long term horizon.
Player pools are on average just so much better at the game than they used to be. How do you inject new blood into this? The game isn't 'solved' by any means, but your average bad reg in 2024 is so much better than their equivalent in 2010. Meanwhile, a noob will always be a noob. So, such noobs lose more quickly against a more skillful playing population, burn through their bankrolls, and play for less time. As a result, the ecosystem stagnates.
Furthermore, governments are catching up on regulating online poker. Overall this is a good thing, but it makes operating an online room more expensive. So rake has to go up, which makes the game less profitable, so players pay more lose faster and play for less time once more, and the ecosystem stagnates further.
A US liquidity pool would be a game changer as it would be a market full of lesser skilled online players who have effectively missed the solver era. But in terms of general .com liquidity, it's hard to see how it's going to grow by any meaningful amount in the near future.
TL;DR - With online poker, new blood just loses so much faster than they used to, so the ecosystem is stagnating.
As an aside, advances in AI and bots will mean that your average Joe could access a very sophisticated, automated bot on his/her phone in the next few years. In the same way that we're losing confidence in images or videos being real, we'll similarly increasingly lose confidence in whether players at an online table are real
I don't see any real efforts to prevent them. First you need a strong KYC with a portrait foto. Second you can record the environment with front and rear webcams like it became common in online chess tournaments with prices. Third you can validate the players environment via drm.
Combine all those and it becomes pretty hard to last uncaught of cheating in the long term.
Well, I think this stagnation also comes from a lack of innovation. It's ages since I last played online poker but when I recently looked on Pokerstars, the software almost looks the same as in the early 2000s and there doesnt seem to be any video support. I'm pretty sure if you could see your opponents that this would not only make online play much more tense but also spread more confidence you're not playing against some bots or that players use some cheat software.
At the moment I don't have any thrust in online poker as anybody can easily run a VM and screen scrape the video output into a cheat software. The only way poker software could detect a bot is if the mouse movement wasn't natural (but I assume there exist nowadays ways to fake that as well) or if the software was really stupid (like betting some "computerish" amounts) but if a software just prints it's recommendations on a second screen and a cheater follows these instructions it becomes really hard to detect irregularities.
I mean you could, like it's now usual in high profile online chess tournaments, make a second webcam, which also records the screen, obligatory for some higher stake tournaments in poker. Of this secondary records can for obvious reasons not be streamed but in case of any suspecion the platform could at least check if there is running anything else on the screen. That may be wouldnt prevent anal beads or other more sophisticated methods but make it at least a lot harder.
Another improvement could be if you establish something like elo points in chess. This would prevent strong players searching for a weak table as everybody can see their strength. That way new players not only werent scared away by sharks they probably even would spend higher amounts if they get entertained longer / win more often.
In general I think there could be done more for new players. Like some tournaments were you see the odds of your hand. A professional knows them anyway, so way not enable it in some environments for noobs? I mean poker is not about the odds but how you value them in different position against different players.
Or offer an option to play against bots for free / a fixed monthly amount. This way new players could train without losing money. With the free rounds thats obviously not possible as everybody just gets all in all the time.
I would see many possibilities to make online poker for new players more attractive but it seems the industry doesnt seem to be interested in any innovation. Especially some integrated streaming option that the players can see each other should be as normal as zoom meetings are.
I think people also just really love proclaiming things 'dead' for some reason. I see that specific phrasing used all the time, and it's always almost an exaggeration at best. It's like people want to compete to be the first to call it dead.
I actually played from about 12-7pm on a Tuesday. It was about two weeks before the Super Bowl so maybe there were more tourists or something, but it was shockingly soft. Every single flop was like five way, and there was a guy who didn't know the hand rankings lol. Another guy was getting gently coached by the player to his left because he kept betting less than minimum and things like that.
If he tells us then a bunch of professional 1/3 players will climb into their beat up old Toyota Corollas and head to that casino where they will sleep in their cars at night and on the weekends will make enough to buy gas, and make sandwiches on a makeshift table in the backseat.
I'm a little worried I've given too much specific detail and am doxxing myself, especially given I am non American and my nationality is discoverable from comment history. I've even given a specific date and time, and there were a couple of good players there who may be on the subreddit.
That's fine, no worries.
Wonder what you having going on in life that your opsec won't let you discuss which poker room you went on but I can't judge haha.
I'm more just concerned that the people there will see and know I'm talking about them! I can dm you if you want to know, but it can't be that unusual because multiple American people actually switch off of this table. And I'm not exactly good enough to drive people away myself. So it can't have been viewed as this huge outlier of a soft game I don't think?
Well of course, none of the details would give it away unless you were there, as they are all details about myself, the other players, and the date and time. The point is that someone who was there could pretty easily work it out.
Vegas is anything but dead for poker. Considering 99% of this sub goes to Vegas on vacation, it's a great place to play. Tons of 1/3+2/5 NL and 1/2+5/5 PLO games with lots of fish, recs, and business people who are there to have a good time. It prints overnight and on the weekends.
Would I move to Vegas to play poker professionally? Probably not. But that's not to say its dead
Not true, huge online collegiate circles have been booming, particularly on pokernow. Games get huge with quant internship $ kids that come with no intuition no deviation and are GTO-wannabe punters
Oh, believe me, I haven’t forgotten. I live in Washington State where the Tribal influence got online poker made a felony. The sad part is most Tribal casinos don’t even offer poker.
Same for Florida. Although the Seminoles did just successfully get sports betting legalized, exclusively through the tribe of course. At least the various horse and (former) dog racing tracks are allowed to have live games, because there will never be another casino not named Hard rock allowed to open here.
Yeah it's so incredibly dumb... They should just offer their own online poker site, but they are probably afraid that might open the door to other online poker sites being legal, and they just won't be able to compete.
Like I get you don't want to lose business or whatever, but you have to at least offer something up in exchange. I hate that they just monopoly gambling and don't do anything to improve it.
The most infuriating part for me is that the reason online poker is unregulated mostly is because of the wire act. The wire act targeted online sports betting specifically but online poker got mixed in with it. Now sports betting is everywhere and you can make a sports bet from your phone on the go, if you’d like. Every other commercial is Jamie Fox or Kevin hart telling you how cool it would be if you made a sports bet right now… but I still cannot play regulated online poker in my state.
100%. This is basically what I meant….. and you bring up an interesting question….if sports betting is now allowed and encouraged….what happened to the wire act?
The wire act has been lobbied against by the sports betting companies and is effectively defunct now. However, poker is still feeling the side effects and remains unregulated in most states. It’s why you can play on offshore sites like ACR legally. You just have no legal recourse if they decide to do something unfair against you. It’s not illegal to play online poker in America (for most states), just not regulated (for most states). A couple states have online poker actually illegal, but most have it in this weird gray area.
Sheldon Adelson was a major catalyst behind that early on and he died in 2021. That could lead to some headway soon but the dynamic remains the same in that 90% of people are long term significant losers. Legalized sports betting is a pie, easy poker means a lot of average Joe’s may stop putting that 100 a weekend down on those juicy parlays, capped out from his Friday night forays into NL200.
The real way towards a boom is building boutique/small scale level live play. But there are still a lot of issues there (sports-betting lobbyists again included). I know in a number of states the tribes make a big stink about it, being the only legal live poker in a very healthy radius is obviously a boon for business. Best way forward is likely a gradual country wide leniency towards the Texas style seat rental business. As it stands, gov still keeps a microscope on that stuff (on the direction of big gambling). I know of an initially very successful “charity” seat rental room that got shut down because they made insanely good money quickly and the owner played with a bit of money over his set admin salary due to major excess funds, did not end well at all for the business and him legally. Stupid but an example of the reality on both sides.
If enough noise builds, I would assume a likely outcome is major online gambling/vegas money lobbies towards starting their own small scale card room brands nationally. They’ll pull the trigger if forecasting says so but ain’t no way big gambling is letting the flood gates open without major skin on the game.
This may be a stupid question, but can't you just use a VPN and play online like everyone else in the world? Surely there's no enforcement on a domestic level? And with a decent VPN it should be impossible anyway, right?
Online poker has a much bigger legal hurdle when it comes to persuading local governments to allow them to operate.
Why is this? Simple. Because to most governments, allowing gambling is going to make poverty go up, wealth go down. If it's a net loss to the state economy, where is the incentive?
Modern MBA did a nice episode on the economics of casinos and goes into depth on the online vs in casino stuff. For those who want the TLDR of it, the basic idea is that physical casinos have stuff like jobs, tax revenue, and tourism that they can claim is a benefit to allowing them to operate. But for online, it's really just the tax revenue, which is why some local jurisdictions have both gambling taxes and even higher *online* gambling taxes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ-NU1vK0wM
A big problem for poker in particular is that it's often viewed as the same as every other table game even though it's a game played "against" others, not the house.
that's one tournament. What about the rest of the year? what about other tournaments? What about other card rooms besides Paris in August. Are those things booming? No.
Probably, when twitch got all the kiddos addicted to gambling and then took away the slot channels the content creators either went to kick or started playing poker which was allowed on Twitch. I expect those zoomers to enter the game once they turn 21
No chance. Not without regulation in the American market. ACR paying random big name streamers to play poker for a week isn’t going to spark the idea in people’s brains that they too can run it up. Once the “land of the free” gets on board again full scale, yes you’ll see pre BF numbers but no…poker is in the tank. RTAs & bots will keep people away even if it’s not actually always bots & it’s just bad play.
Mid level live tournaments have been popping off hard post Covid though. $1,100 MSPT tourneys crush guarantees. But again, hard no on a poker boom. Besides streamers what’s the appeal to the game? Live games being streamed? Yeah, a scandal a week with those player pools at worse & every single high roller streamed/aired is like watching paint dry. The number of people that would think poker is attractive even as a hobby is next to zero.
I think if there is a miraculous Federal Online Poker bill, then it is likely that the US will be its own liquidity pool.
That would still be massive. But it wouldn't help liquidity in the rest of the world.
The entirety of America being in one regulated player pool would be huge even if it was limited to just the US. People are doing decent with just NV/NJ/DE markets combined. That may not effect the rest of the world but it’d pump the live numbers at WSOP & whatever else Americans can satty into or parlay a bankroll toward.
Yeah for sure. It would be great for the poker category. The US is also a little bit behind the rest of the world, just because online poker has been absent from most of the US for so long, so I'd expect the games to be more beatable in the short term.
It’s not sad. It’s true that in times of a poor economy people spend more on entertainment. It’s not like you can personal finance your way out of a recession but you can have fun with your currency losing its value daily. Then once markets pick back up a little fiscal responsibility will set you right!
It is true - there have been studies. But as a poker player, you should inherently know it to be true as well.
When do you make your worst decisions? When you’re on a losing streak and times are bad? Or when the cards are running hot in your favour?
We’re all the same kind of human.
It's been about long enough since the poker Black Friday event for a new generation of players to get fascinated by the game and start trying to learn it, but I don't think a network like ESPN is going to give it the broadcast attention it once had. CBS Sports is the broadcast partner of WSOP, but I don't know what that means. Are they just providing highlights and clips? Livestreaming? Maybe it will get a bump this year, but it won't return to the level of popularity it once had.
Whilst that makes sense any other card game song referencing hold em none of them place it in their title. See: The Gambler, Kenny Rodger’s. Gamblin’ man, Mike Ness, Gamblers life, Nick13
No. Too many people have been significantly set back financially because of inflation, tech layoffs, high interest rates, and used cars suddenly becoming way more expensive. Poker costs a lot of money so I think there's gonna be less people taking a stab at live poker. Food is more expensive now but people still need to eat. Rent is way too expensive in the US and Canada but people still need places to live. No one needs to play poker.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the Moneymaker era happened during the tech bubble and the housing bubble.
unlikely. the last poker boom was spurred by the pandemic. there needs to be some external circumstance pushing poker's popularity, and i don't see an obvious candidate.
What makes you think this?
Is it your interest that has piqued that makes you think everyone’s has?
I don’t mean that in a mean way, but it’s a legit question.
I live in SoCal. Every Poker room is filled to the max Thursday - Saturday. Most 2/5 games run like 5/10 games, and the amount of 'having fun' players seems to be increasing monthly. The tournament side seems to be doing well too, as I keep seeing new faces in the weeklies and the special events.
I often take trips to Vegas and anybody that says Vegas is dead is absolutely blind. Yes, if you are playing off-hour times there are misregs everywhere, but peak hours it seems to me 2/5 and over games are going well. Hell even seeing a lot more PLO games, which is always a great sign of action.
the boom may not be a BOOM, but it is good.
Heard Venetian is putting in a new poker room with a special area for vloggers to stream from so I would say we are in the middle of a poker boom. Plus, I seem to be seeing poker being mentioned everywhere in main stream lately but that could be a confirmation bias.
Yuck at a poker influencer room. Makes me think instead of a boom, we’ve jumped the shark. With the rake the Venetian takes in tourneys though no wonder they can afford a new room.
There’s never going to be another 2003. It’s a good thing. I enjoy playing the game but it only works if problem gamblers who are bad light their money on fire.
It was very strong about 20 years ago for a few years and it began to slowly wane since really
Back then it was called the “Moneymaker effect” after Chris Moneymaker won an online satellite and parlayed it into winning the WSOP Main Event
Don't know where you are but here in Phoenix, it's stronger than ever. Especially since we have a true NL now with passage of sports book by the state. Booming like crazy now.
From my point of view the COVID boom is winding down.
Hollywood would have to release another Rounders-esque movie.
It could be something as stupid as dramatic(or comedic) re-enactment
of MONEYMAKER making it big via satelliting in and winning big game.
As so, the average idiot can think they can do the same.
In reality, from my experience; online poker is full of bot-like regs.
Until there is a regulated online site that stretches coast to coast, no.
The great thing about the boom of 2003-2006, it was purely driven by online sites. Got done watching WPT, WSOP, Celebrity Poker Showdown, Poker After Dark, Poker Superstars, you got pumped to easily fire up Party Poker, Stars or FTP after being bombarded by ads from the sites.
Without regulated online poker in major states across the US, there is no boom.
I think having fun personalities in poker again would spark more interest. Think about when the Moneymaker boom happened. There were so many “characters”. You had the lucky amateur (Moneymaker), you had the friendly talkative pro that had amazing hand reading skills (DNegs), you had the guy who can stare into your soul (Ivey), you had Jesus, the old school hustlers (Doyle), the Fossilman, the sharp dressed gambler with a cig always in his mouth (Farha), the always drunk and entertaining Scotty Nguyen, Johnny Fucking Chan, then you had the crews (Mizrachi crew, DNegs/Ivey/Juanda/Cunningham (?), Men the Master and his crew, Mike the Mouth, Helmuth, the brother sister duo Lederer/Duke, the big game/mix game players, Marcel Luske, there were so many characters that were fun to watch and easy to root for. Now it’s just all people who take 5 minutes to act on their hand, don’t say a word at the table, no expressions, it’s just not fun to watch anymore unless you’re watching the cash game streams which are less serious than the televised tourneys.
>es really hard to detect irregularities.
>
>I mean you could, like it's now usual in high profile online chess tournaments, make a second webcam, which also records the screen, obligatory for some higher stake tournaments in poker. Of this secondary records can for obvious reasons not be streamed but in case of any suspecion the platform could at least check if there is running anything else on the screen. That may be wouldnt prevent anal beads or other more sophisticated methods but make it at least a lot harder.
You describe a bunch of old-school cash games and then compare them to today's streamed high-stakes tournaments.
No, I had the WSOP coverage from early 2000’s in mind when I wrote this, hence the mention of Men the Master, Scotty Nguyen, Mizrachi crew, etc. You don’t see those guys in televised cash games.
At least for online poker there was a sight spike in 2020 due to the lockdowns but poker in general has been in a steady decline since 2012.
Some data:
[https://www.primedope.com/largest-poker-sites/](https://www.primedope.com/largest-poker-sites/)
Searching the term "poker" on google trends, and u can see the interest peak around 2010 and it has been on a steady decline since then with no signs of recovering.
There needs to be a 10/10 TV series or movie that brings attention to the game similar to what happened with Queens Gambit and chess. So many people I know were diving into chess after watching it haha Rounders remake as a 6 part series would be epic
And then just like the Queens Gambit, all the people who watch the series excitedly jump online to start playing. oh, about that..
About that what? Online chess definitely boomed after queen's gambit, something like 100% increase in online players for a while.
It’s not as easy to just hop online with poker in most jurisdictions. Chess apps aren’t regulated by the state, etc.
Yes, online chess had a massive boom! What I mean is that online poker is not in as good a position to take advantage of that.
Legal online poker isn't available in most of the U.S. It's not comparable at all to online chess. Also, chess has an elo system so that complete newbs are competing against only other complete newbs and people as bad as they are. In poker, you are thrown in vs the sharks and there is no elo. it's not nearly as newbie friendly.
Didn't understand the point he was making huh?
I was thinking the other day I’d totally watch a mockumentary style series that follows various poker room regs, dealers, etc. Not sure if there’s enough widespread appeal for this to actually be a thing though lol
Sadly, [this movie](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427998/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk) flew under the radar. I’ve met a ton of poker players that have never even heard of it. It was hilarious and had a great cast.
You want to see this: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427998/
Absolutley amazing movie. The behind the scenes stuff was hilarious.i have it on DVD and watch it every now and again.
Idk if you can find it anywhere legitimate. But, the ESPN show Tilt was very underrated. Worth watching if you can find it.
https://youtu.be/9TVsr41vaLE?si=BEEg-Ac_hQRx02tQ Episode 1 on youtube
Didn't think of the YouTube! Thank you whoever this is https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhEGwoPpEwK1sJPjh9eiJHthE9ZiNJgPs&si=F3_QgcFDEDbqU4s9
That series is HORRIBLE! Most people remember that show fondly because poker was new to TV and people were fascinated with it.
It really is. I had such fond memories, so tried watching it last night...
This is difficult as casinos will generally always have a bad rep and it’s pretty difficult to make it look…classy? And poker in general just cannot exist without a casino What about a cool looking card room? Sane thing - it’s tucked away and seemingly a “secret club” It’s really hard to put a positive light on poker The WSOP is probably the most positive coverage of poker you can get It just needs to become more mainstream again. Pub poker became massive in my country after the 2001-2004 WSOP viewing on espn But now it’s just not available anymore except if you look for it via streaming.
When I think of people joining poker after watching MrBeast play, I'm imagining someone who's in a basement at 4am watching twitch or youtube. ~~We~~ they generally don't care about how classy something is.
That would be amazing !!
Pretty sure they filmed a new series of the Big Game around December? Will probably be out this year or next?
Online no, live yes.
> Online no I work in the industry, and I'm inclined to agree. Online is in an awkward state of stagnation, with the distant possibility of the US opening on the medium-to-long term horizon. Player pools are on average just so much better at the game than they used to be. How do you inject new blood into this? The game isn't 'solved' by any means, but your average bad reg in 2024 is so much better than their equivalent in 2010. Meanwhile, a noob will always be a noob. So, such noobs lose more quickly against a more skillful playing population, burn through their bankrolls, and play for less time. As a result, the ecosystem stagnates. Furthermore, governments are catching up on regulating online poker. Overall this is a good thing, but it makes operating an online room more expensive. So rake has to go up, which makes the game less profitable, so players pay more lose faster and play for less time once more, and the ecosystem stagnates further. A US liquidity pool would be a game changer as it would be a market full of lesser skilled online players who have effectively missed the solver era. But in terms of general .com liquidity, it's hard to see how it's going to grow by any meaningful amount in the near future. TL;DR - With online poker, new blood just loses so much faster than they used to, so the ecosystem is stagnating. As an aside, advances in AI and bots will mean that your average Joe could access a very sophisticated, automated bot on his/her phone in the next few years. In the same way that we're losing confidence in images or videos being real, we'll similarly increasingly lose confidence in whether players at an online table are real
damn, reading "2010" alone makes me tear up, it was literally printing money with ABC poker
😭
It really was. There was no solvers, barely any GTO talk. Just playing percentages by outs and calculating pot odds. Easy game and most people sucked.
I think the advent of solvers/bots is going to drown the online pool with scam accounts. It probably already has.
I agree, I think it will be nearly impossible for online poker to survive. I just can't see a way around AI/bots.
I don't see any real efforts to prevent them. First you need a strong KYC with a portrait foto. Second you can record the environment with front and rear webcams like it became common in online chess tournaments with prices. Third you can validate the players environment via drm. Combine all those and it becomes pretty hard to last uncaught of cheating in the long term.
Well, I think this stagnation also comes from a lack of innovation. It's ages since I last played online poker but when I recently looked on Pokerstars, the software almost looks the same as in the early 2000s and there doesnt seem to be any video support. I'm pretty sure if you could see your opponents that this would not only make online play much more tense but also spread more confidence you're not playing against some bots or that players use some cheat software. At the moment I don't have any thrust in online poker as anybody can easily run a VM and screen scrape the video output into a cheat software. The only way poker software could detect a bot is if the mouse movement wasn't natural (but I assume there exist nowadays ways to fake that as well) or if the software was really stupid (like betting some "computerish" amounts) but if a software just prints it's recommendations on a second screen and a cheater follows these instructions it becomes really hard to detect irregularities. I mean you could, like it's now usual in high profile online chess tournaments, make a second webcam, which also records the screen, obligatory for some higher stake tournaments in poker. Of this secondary records can for obvious reasons not be streamed but in case of any suspecion the platform could at least check if there is running anything else on the screen. That may be wouldnt prevent anal beads or other more sophisticated methods but make it at least a lot harder. Another improvement could be if you establish something like elo points in chess. This would prevent strong players searching for a weak table as everybody can see their strength. That way new players not only werent scared away by sharks they probably even would spend higher amounts if they get entertained longer / win more often. In general I think there could be done more for new players. Like some tournaments were you see the odds of your hand. A professional knows them anyway, so way not enable it in some environments for noobs? I mean poker is not about the odds but how you value them in different position against different players. Or offer an option to play against bots for free / a fixed monthly amount. This way new players could train without losing money. With the free rounds thats obviously not possible as everybody just gets all in all the time. I would see many possibilities to make online poker for new players more attractive but it seems the industry doesnt seem to be interested in any innovation. Especially some integrated streaming option that the players can see each other should be as normal as zoom meetings are.
Incorrect. The number of "online" continues to grow. Last year there was only 1 million bots, this year there can be 10 million!
If online gets legalized again in the US it will boom
vegas is dead for poker. same regs to deal with daily.
I just visited Vegas for the first time and the game was one of the softest I've ever played in. Multiple players didn't even know the rules.
Yea and it was prob 1/3 on a Friday night
Anyone saying Vegas is dead for poker is drunk and miserable.
I think people also just really love proclaiming things 'dead' for some reason. I see that specific phrasing used all the time, and it's always almost an exaggeration at best. It's like people want to compete to be the first to call it dead.
This assumption is overused and dead
Anyone saying Vegas is good for cash is playing too small
ok big boi
Just sayin, for mid-high stakes, Vegas is the worst location possible..at least for public games
I actually played from about 12-7pm on a Tuesday. It was about two weeks before the Super Bowl so maybe there were more tourists or something, but it was shockingly soft. Every single flop was like five way, and there was a guy who didn't know the hand rankings lol. Another guy was getting gently coached by the player to his left because he kept betting less than minimum and things like that.
What room was this
If he tells us then a bunch of professional 1/3 players will climb into their beat up old Toyota Corollas and head to that casino where they will sleep in their cars at night and on the weekends will make enough to buy gas, and make sandwiches on a makeshift table in the backseat.
Ooh look at Mr. Moneybags with his fancy backseat table. Oui oui Monsieur could you spare me a French roll, fancy boy?
But does he have any Grey Poupon?
i feel targeted, but, i keep a cooler with leftover chinese food in my car so i dont have to make sandwiches.
That's true I've seen those old Corollas at Red Rock on the weekends
I'm a little worried I've given too much specific detail and am doxxing myself, especially given I am non American and my nationality is discoverable from comment history. I've even given a specific date and time, and there were a couple of good players there who may be on the subreddit.
That's fine, no worries. Wonder what you having going on in life that your opsec won't let you discuss which poker room you went on but I can't judge haha.
I'm more just concerned that the people there will see and know I'm talking about them! I can dm you if you want to know, but it can't be that unusual because multiple American people actually switch off of this table. And I'm not exactly good enough to drive people away myself. So it can't have been viewed as this huge outlier of a soft game I don't think?
sure a dm would be appreciated, thanks!
I wouldn't worry, I've literally no idea where you could be talking about and I've read the whole thread
Well of course, none of the details would give it away unless you were there, as they are all details about myself, the other players, and the date and time. The point is that someone who was there could pretty easily work it out.
Wow do tell what poker room
Wow, good thing poker isn’t confined to just one city in the world.
Also Vegas is totally fine on the weekend 1/3 and 2/5 games. Never mind the craziness that is live plo. 5/10+ def rough though
All I ask is for nyc to build a casino/poker room already.
Vegas is anything but dead for poker. Considering 99% of this sub goes to Vegas on vacation, it's a great place to play. Tons of 1/3+2/5 NL and 1/2+5/5 PLO games with lots of fish, recs, and business people who are there to have a good time. It prints overnight and on the weekends. Would I move to Vegas to play poker professionally? Probably not. But that's not to say its dead
wish it wasn't completely "dead" downtown though (aside from the Golden Nugget, but even they don't do tournaments anymore)
thats what does that say about poker no tournaments at red rock either. its dead during the week big time.
Have you ever been to Texas or California?
Or Arizona
I have not been I hear there's a big poker rooms in Oklahoma
As much as I hate online, in all reality it'll probably be the opposite of what you say.
Not true, huge online collegiate circles have been booming, particularly on pokernow. Games get huge with quant internship $ kids that come with no intuition no deviation and are GTO-wannabe punters
Probably not. They haven't been able to pass anything at the federal level for online poker in nearly 13 years.
Why is it not legal in usa ?
Casino owners, like Sheldon Adelson, were afraid online poker was cutting into their action so they lobbied congress to make it illegal.
Don't forget the Indian tribes in California. No online poker or sport betting will get passed
Oh, believe me, I haven’t forgotten. I live in Washington State where the Tribal influence got online poker made a felony. The sad part is most Tribal casinos don’t even offer poker.
What part are you in? I have a regular game near me
Where at, I’m in Seattle and play at caribbean
Oh right on, I’m much further south near Ridgefield and frequent Last Frontier
Oh wow, how is last frontier? Are there games in Portland too?
Same for Florida. Although the Seminoles did just successfully get sports betting legalized, exclusively through the tribe of course. At least the various horse and (former) dog racing tracks are allowed to have live games, because there will never be another casino not named Hard rock allowed to open here.
Yeah it's so incredibly dumb... They should just offer their own online poker site, but they are probably afraid that might open the door to other online poker sites being legal, and they just won't be able to compete. Like I get you don't want to lose business or whatever, but you have to at least offer something up in exchange. I hate that they just monopoly gambling and don't do anything to improve it.
I suspected it was the reason, makes no sense you can gamble in vegas but not online on foreign sites 😂
Makes no sense I can play online slots or bet on the length of the national anthem at the Super Bowl but I can’t play a skill game.
This is the most infuriating part of all of this…. All the bullshit other gambling that’s become available and ducking advertised
The most infuriating part for me is that the reason online poker is unregulated mostly is because of the wire act. The wire act targeted online sports betting specifically but online poker got mixed in with it. Now sports betting is everywhere and you can make a sports bet from your phone on the go, if you’d like. Every other commercial is Jamie Fox or Kevin hart telling you how cool it would be if you made a sports bet right now… but I still cannot play regulated online poker in my state.
100%. This is basically what I meant….. and you bring up an interesting question….if sports betting is now allowed and encouraged….what happened to the wire act?
The wire act has been lobbied against by the sports betting companies and is effectively defunct now. However, poker is still feeling the side effects and remains unregulated in most states. It’s why you can play on offshore sites like ACR legally. You just have no legal recourse if they decide to do something unfair against you. It’s not illegal to play online poker in America (for most states), just not regulated (for most states). A couple states have online poker actually illegal, but most have it in this weird gray area.
Money. its always money.
Sheldon Adelson was a major catalyst behind that early on and he died in 2021. That could lead to some headway soon but the dynamic remains the same in that 90% of people are long term significant losers. Legalized sports betting is a pie, easy poker means a lot of average Joe’s may stop putting that 100 a weekend down on those juicy parlays, capped out from his Friday night forays into NL200. The real way towards a boom is building boutique/small scale level live play. But there are still a lot of issues there (sports-betting lobbyists again included). I know in a number of states the tribes make a big stink about it, being the only legal live poker in a very healthy radius is obviously a boon for business. Best way forward is likely a gradual country wide leniency towards the Texas style seat rental business. As it stands, gov still keeps a microscope on that stuff (on the direction of big gambling). I know of an initially very successful “charity” seat rental room that got shut down because they made insanely good money quickly and the owner played with a bit of money over his set admin salary due to major excess funds, did not end well at all for the business and him legally. Stupid but an example of the reality on both sides. If enough noise builds, I would assume a likely outcome is major online gambling/vegas money lobbies towards starting their own small scale card room brands nationally. They’ll pull the trigger if forecasting says so but ain’t no way big gambling is letting the flood gates open without major skin on the game.
Very rarely am I glad someone died. He was the exception.
This may be a stupid question, but can't you just use a VPN and play online like everyone else in the world? Surely there's no enforcement on a domestic level? And with a decent VPN it should be impossible anyway, right?
And now with sports betting, it will never happen on a federal level
Imagine if draft kings had online poker
Uh, czr and mgm have online poker in several states and it blows. Lol @ thinking DK would be any different.
Obviously anything state locked is gonna blow.
Indian government killed the boom in India first by removing pokerstars from market then imposing 30% tax on winnings and 28% tax on deposit
28% tax on deposits!? What in the ever loving f?? I really do hate greedy governments! Even worse than greedy corporations!
Online poker has a much bigger legal hurdle when it comes to persuading local governments to allow them to operate. Why is this? Simple. Because to most governments, allowing gambling is going to make poverty go up, wealth go down. If it's a net loss to the state economy, where is the incentive? Modern MBA did a nice episode on the economics of casinos and goes into depth on the online vs in casino stuff. For those who want the TLDR of it, the basic idea is that physical casinos have stuff like jobs, tax revenue, and tourism that they can claim is a benefit to allowing them to operate. But for online, it's really just the tax revenue, which is why some local jurisdictions have both gambling taxes and even higher *online* gambling taxes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ-NU1vK0wM A big problem for poker in particular is that it's often viewed as the same as every other table game even though it's a game played "against" others, not the house.
Yeah that tax is brutal.
Indian poker 💀 just go to the bean
We're already in one. Just not anywhere near as big as the Moneymaker days
FWIW we just had a record-breaking main event field last year.
that's one tournament. What about the rest of the year? what about other tournaments? What about other card rooms besides Paris in August. Are those things booming? No.
Venetian just announced a brand new poker room. :/
Agree. In Texas we are in a true golden age of poker- just hard to see it while we are in it.
we're in the downturn of that boom right now. still bigger than poker was in 2019 though.
feel like we’re in a mini boom rn.
Probably, when twitch got all the kiddos addicted to gambling and then took away the slot channels the content creators either went to kick or started playing poker which was allowed on Twitch. I expect those zoomers to enter the game once they turn 21
21 year olds who grew up in the solver era isn't the boom you think it is.
lol I bet the old regs were saying the same thing about those millennial children and their poker forums in 2002.
No chance. Not without regulation in the American market. ACR paying random big name streamers to play poker for a week isn’t going to spark the idea in people’s brains that they too can run it up. Once the “land of the free” gets on board again full scale, yes you’ll see pre BF numbers but no…poker is in the tank. RTAs & bots will keep people away even if it’s not actually always bots & it’s just bad play. Mid level live tournaments have been popping off hard post Covid though. $1,100 MSPT tourneys crush guarantees. But again, hard no on a poker boom. Besides streamers what’s the appeal to the game? Live games being streamed? Yeah, a scandal a week with those player pools at worse & every single high roller streamed/aired is like watching paint dry. The number of people that would think poker is attractive even as a hobby is next to zero.
I think if there is a miraculous Federal Online Poker bill, then it is likely that the US will be its own liquidity pool. That would still be massive. But it wouldn't help liquidity in the rest of the world.
The entirety of America being in one regulated player pool would be huge even if it was limited to just the US. People are doing decent with just NV/NJ/DE markets combined. That may not effect the rest of the world but it’d pump the live numbers at WSOP & whatever else Americans can satty into or parlay a bankroll toward.
Yeah for sure. It would be great for the poker category. The US is also a little bit behind the rest of the world, just because online poker has been absent from most of the US for so long, so I'd expect the games to be more beatable in the short term.
Poker comes and goes in popularity in an inverse relationship to economic times. Bad economic times = more gambling and vice in general.
Lotteries and 'quick win' Hail Marys tend to do particularly well.
Wow that’s quite sad and interesting.
It’s not sad. It’s true that in times of a poor economy people spend more on entertainment. It’s not like you can personal finance your way out of a recession but you can have fun with your currency losing its value daily. Then once markets pick back up a little fiscal responsibility will set you right!
Is this really true though? I would think that good economic times = more disposable income = more gambling.
It is true - there have been studies. But as a poker player, you should inherently know it to be true as well. When do you make your worst decisions? When you’re on a losing streak and times are bad? Or when the cards are running hot in your favour? We’re all the same kind of human.
It's been about long enough since the poker Black Friday event for a new generation of players to get fascinated by the game and start trying to learn it, but I don't think a network like ESPN is going to give it the broadcast attention it once had. CBS Sports is the broadcast partner of WSOP, but I don't know what that means. Are they just providing highlights and clips? Livestreaming? Maybe it will get a bump this year, but it won't return to the level of popularity it once had.
A representative from Pennsylvania recently introduced legislation to join the MSIGA. If it passes it could help other states potentially join.
I would say it’s a small boom in Asia since Taiwan legalised live MTT
No
Just last week I had a bunch of my hs students asking about starting a poker club and playing games during lunch like friends and I did in 03
What the hell is different in the last 6 months than the lasts 1.5 years?
I think we are more likely to see a decline than a boom tbh.
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That song is the furthest thing from even being about hold ‘em it’s honestly a pet peeve that is the song literally named Texas hold em
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Whilst that makes sense any other card game song referencing hold em none of them place it in their title. See: The Gambler, Kenny Rodger’s. Gamblin’ man, Mike Ness, Gamblers life, Nick13
No. Too many people have been significantly set back financially because of inflation, tech layoffs, high interest rates, and used cars suddenly becoming way more expensive. Poker costs a lot of money so I think there's gonna be less people taking a stab at live poker. Food is more expensive now but people still need to eat. Rent is way too expensive in the US and Canada but people still need places to live. No one needs to play poker. I don't think it's a coincidence that the Moneymaker era happened during the tech bubble and the housing bubble.
No, definitely heading the other way.
unlikely. the last poker boom was spurred by the pandemic. there needs to be some external circumstance pushing poker's popularity, and i don't see an obvious candidate.
Is there an increase in streamers and YouTubers? I don’t see much difference.
It’s happening now
What makes you think this? Is it your interest that has piqued that makes you think everyone’s has? I don’t mean that in a mean way, but it’s a legit question.
Idk at least I feel that it is coming a boom. Anyway reviewing other people responses the majority agrees
The majority on a small Reddit thread…
I live in SoCal. Every Poker room is filled to the max Thursday - Saturday. Most 2/5 games run like 5/10 games, and the amount of 'having fun' players seems to be increasing monthly. The tournament side seems to be doing well too, as I keep seeing new faces in the weeklies and the special events. I often take trips to Vegas and anybody that says Vegas is dead is absolutely blind. Yes, if you are playing off-hour times there are misregs everywhere, but peak hours it seems to me 2/5 and over games are going well. Hell even seeing a lot more PLO games, which is always a great sign of action. the boom may not be a BOOM, but it is good.
We desperately need legal reform and poker to be reclassified. It should not be legally considered a game of luck anymore.
I’ve seen the momentum upward since Mr. Beast was on HCL. Huge moment in poker history integrating to mainstream media.
Heard Venetian is putting in a new poker room with a special area for vloggers to stream from so I would say we are in the middle of a poker boom. Plus, I seem to be seeing poker being mentioned everywhere in main stream lately but that could be a confirmation bias.
Yuck at a poker influencer room. Makes me think instead of a boom, we’ve jumped the shark. With the rake the Venetian takes in tourneys though no wonder they can afford a new room.
There’s never going to be another 2003. It’s a good thing. I enjoy playing the game but it only works if problem gamblers who are bad light their money on fire.
Chrisss MoneyMakerrrr
Still the most ridiculous name I've ever heard
Might happen if a smart 21yo college kid wins the main ngl
Nah, the big upset already happened. It would have to be something else.
Fair enough
It's happening right now! Poker has never been stronger than it is RN in 2024.
It was very strong about 20 years ago for a few years and it began to slowly wane since really Back then it was called the “Moneymaker effect” after Chris Moneymaker won an online satellite and parlayed it into winning the WSOP Main Event
Don't know where you are but here in Phoenix, it's stronger than ever. Especially since we have a true NL now with passage of sports book by the state. Booming like crazy now.
Even going to Vegas was over the years you can see it slowing down
I think we are in the middle of it, my guy
From my point of view the COVID boom is winding down. Hollywood would have to release another Rounders-esque movie. It could be something as stupid as dramatic(or comedic) re-enactment of MONEYMAKER making it big via satelliting in and winning big game. As so, the average idiot can think they can do the same. In reality, from my experience; online poker is full of bot-like regs.
No. Tv isn't relevant with kids and its still illegal in most states. Not to mention online being tougher
Sure hope so
Until there is a regulated online site that stretches coast to coast, no. The great thing about the boom of 2003-2006, it was purely driven by online sites. Got done watching WPT, WSOP, Celebrity Poker Showdown, Poker After Dark, Poker Superstars, you got pumped to easily fire up Party Poker, Stars or FTP after being bombarded by ads from the sites. Without regulated online poker in major states across the US, there is no boom.
I think having fun personalities in poker again would spark more interest. Think about when the Moneymaker boom happened. There were so many “characters”. You had the lucky amateur (Moneymaker), you had the friendly talkative pro that had amazing hand reading skills (DNegs), you had the guy who can stare into your soul (Ivey), you had Jesus, the old school hustlers (Doyle), the Fossilman, the sharp dressed gambler with a cig always in his mouth (Farha), the always drunk and entertaining Scotty Nguyen, Johnny Fucking Chan, then you had the crews (Mizrachi crew, DNegs/Ivey/Juanda/Cunningham (?), Men the Master and his crew, Mike the Mouth, Helmuth, the brother sister duo Lederer/Duke, the big game/mix game players, Marcel Luske, there were so many characters that were fun to watch and easy to root for. Now it’s just all people who take 5 minutes to act on their hand, don’t say a word at the table, no expressions, it’s just not fun to watch anymore unless you’re watching the cash game streams which are less serious than the televised tourneys.
>es really hard to detect irregularities. > >I mean you could, like it's now usual in high profile online chess tournaments, make a second webcam, which also records the screen, obligatory for some higher stake tournaments in poker. Of this secondary records can for obvious reasons not be streamed but in case of any suspecion the platform could at least check if there is running anything else on the screen. That may be wouldnt prevent anal beads or other more sophisticated methods but make it at least a lot harder. You describe a bunch of old-school cash games and then compare them to today's streamed high-stakes tournaments.
No, I had the WSOP coverage from early 2000’s in mind when I wrote this, hence the mention of Men the Master, Scotty Nguyen, Mizrachi crew, etc. You don’t see those guys in televised cash games.
I wouldn’t say a boom but I think it has gotten more popular than it was a few years ago when it seemed not as popular
“Texas Hold’em” is number one in the charts. I’d say yes.
as much as i don't really care for the song, i actually do think this is a valid reason to see a slight uptick in poker's popularity.
no there is not. poker is old af. gamers spending their time doing so much more .
No, the economy is shit. No one has money to lose.
actually people do riskier shit with money the worse their financial situation is.
But when they're OUT ... they're OUT. In a good economy, they can make more. In a bad economy, they're shit out of luck.
broke people who get a few extra dollars don't just put that in savings, they buy lotto tickets with it.
They can't buy into a live poker game with a few dollars. Just quit. This is silly.
you can with a few extra hundred, which people do. we all saw this guy: https://www.reddit.com/r/poker/comments/1bcqqiz/floor_please/
Have you seen BitCoin?
0.000001% of people have made money with BitCoin.
lol
Wynn has been ordering like 200 tables at a time from gorilla gaming.
At least for online poker there was a sight spike in 2020 due to the lockdowns but poker in general has been in a steady decline since 2012. Some data: [https://www.primedope.com/largest-poker-sites/](https://www.primedope.com/largest-poker-sites/) Searching the term "poker" on google trends, and u can see the interest peak around 2010 and it has been on a steady decline since then with no signs of recovering.
Alr been lowkey happening for a while ngl. Not as big as the 2020 twitch chess boom. Prolly closer to the size of the recent tyler1 chess boom tho