Online poker - peaked?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So, in another thread playing online poker for money is discussed.

My only experience of this is a very smart friend of mine (near the top of his class) who now … well, I’d hate to call him professional in any sense, but he seems to make a very good living off online poker. He pays about US$200 a week in rent, has an insanely flash car and travels constantly (LA, Australia, the Canaries - he’s like a Romeo agent).

But he got into it about 3 years ago, and I’ve heard dark murmurs that boomtown has bust - with the rise of bots and the pool of willing chumps drying up, not to mention the US crackdown.

So what say you - almost over or just getting started?

BritBoy

2

I’m no poker player, but the US laws are trivial to legally circumvent (I’m not going to detail how), so I don’t see that being a longer term issue.

3

Neither. Still going strong as far as participation, not NEARLY as lucrative as it once was. Evidently 3-4 years ago anyone with an IOTA of poker knowledge could make a killing playing online. Fish saw the advertisements and flocked. But where there are fish, there are sharks. And after Joe Bob Sunglesses started loosing their $100 buy-ins in mere hours, they finally realized it may not be the best place for them to gamble.

Can you still make money? SURE! You have to be an extremely good and experienced to do it these days though.

4

The Times had some news about US banks and credit card companies being banned by Congress from processing gambling payments, is this going to be trouble?

5

I suppose it would depend on what our government considers gambling payments. Funding PartyPoker with a personal check/electronic transfer? Probably. Funding PP with a credit card? Sure (I don’t know of any that allowed it anyway). Funding Neteller electronically from a US bank… (when technically, moving money from a US bank to Neteller is not a gambling payment, only when you fund a gambling site with Neteller. That is a gambling payment. However Neteller is not in the US). So how are they going to deal with that? I don’t know. Neteller is the PayPal in the online gambling world, but you can send money to other sources with Neteller, so what about that?

6

I’m a poker dealer, so I hope online poker has peaked. :slight_smile:

In my state, you can only play poker legally at pari-mutual facilities or Indian Casinos. Low states of either location. Poker rooms have saved these places. We have a 45 table poker room that I would venture to guess brings in as much money as them broadcasting their races around the world. Jai-alai frontons are closing quickly, pretty much the only ones that are still open are the ones that were able to survive until the card rooms opened.

Poker will always be more popular than dog racing, horse racing and especially Jai-alai. You don’t need a dog, a horse or a fronton to learn to play poker. You need a deck of cards, a jar of pennies/rocks/whatever and someone to play with. I think this is the reason poker is as popular as it is, kids grow up playing it. (Perhaps I should say the reason poker has the potential to be as big as it is vs. other forms of gambling)

I’m surrounded by “professional poker players” everyone thinks they are one. They brag about it endlessly. However, a mathematical analysis of 30 minutes of their playing time can pretty much prove them wrong. I had a guy the other day brag that he hadn’t played with his own money since his second week of coming to our fine establishment. It was the 3rd tournament I had seen him be knocked out of that day. He is routinely there close to 12 hours a day, most days. I don’t consider him to be an exceptional player. I seriously doubt anyone would bankroll him for long. You just can’t win that much where I work. To just enter our large tournaments each week would cost $630. You would have to place in the top places pretty often to make that worth while.

On the face, everyone thinks they are a pro and few people will call bullshit on them. Most certainly not folks who do not play. Therefore they can walk around and tell folks they are Pros when in all probability, they are not.

IMHO, most of our players are retirees. They have a steady income, lots of them have pensions +social security, they are by far our bread and butter.

I guess what I am saying is that as a sustainable phenomenon, no, I don’t think it will continue like it has. However, as a relatively easy game to learn, the easy availability of it and the cache of being a pro will probably continue its success.

I began dealing poker almost 15 years ago. We operated at capacity pretty much all the time.

I don’t understand it, I hate playing poker. As far as games go, I find it exceedingly boring and the luck aspect is just, bleh.