I am betting that the majority of Americans you see in those rooms are American soldiers stationed overseas. It is huge among soldiers. Probably close to 80% of soldiers I know are playing on at least one of the big sites–if not several.
I knew guys who did almost nothing else with their free time in Iraq besides online poker. When they weren’t online, it was RL poker. Work, eat, sleep, poker.
Lots of bored guys with disposable incomes.
There are hundreds of thousands of Americans playing online poker at home every day.
The UIGEA specifically spells out that it does not make it a crime to play; the law applies only to the transfer of funds by financial institutions. As mentioned earlier in this thread that has made it slightly more difficult to get started, eliminating many of the spur-of-the-moment-home-alone-and-drunk type players but anyone with the desire can still be up and playing pretty quickly.
If the OP was referring to televised games, remember that they’re usually showing the final tables of big tournies most of the time. Since it’s the final tables, the weak players were weeded out long before the cameras started rolling.
Other than that, I agree w/ the previous posters.
Does the law really only apply “to the transfer of funds by financial institutions.”? According to the wikientry for Party Poker:
US legislation
On September 29, 2006, the U.S. Congress passed the Safe Port Act. Senator Bill Frist successfully lobbied to attach unrelated anti-gambling language to the act; this language is known as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.
On October 2, 2006, PartyGaming announced that it would “suspend all real money gaming business with US customers” in light of the passage of the Safe Port Act.[7] George W. Bush signed the act into law on October 13, and PartyGaming suspended offerings of real-money games to U.S. players. Free play games and non-US customers were not affected.[8]
As a result of this news being released to investors, PartyGaming’s publicly traded stock dropped almost 60% in 24 hours. The company was moved from the FTSE 100 to the FTSE 250 Index on October 11.[9]
In April 2009 the company made a settlement with the United States government where they agreed to pay a penalty of $105 million over the next four years as part of a “non-prosecution agreement”. As part of the deal, Party put its name to a “statement of facts” in which it admits for the first time that, before October 2006, it had targeted US citizens, resulting in the processing of transactions that were “contrary to certain US laws”.[10]
So they must have been doing something illegal even before the Act… ?
Yes, it does. Read the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. What it specifically spells out is somewhat different from the bullying the US government was able to pull off … but that’s a rant for another day.
Yes, some companies like Party Poker immediately pulled out of the US market … but they had already made their billions … others were quick to step in and take up the slack.
Quoth hajario:
Presumably, though, it was also something you enjoyed. Plenty of people will pay money to engage in their hobby, so being able to break even on a hobby isn’t bad at all, and making a few bucks an hour at a hobby is just gravy. Just so long as you recognize that it’s a hobby, and not a job.
This is an interesting question and is fairly strongly debated, but Party Poker pulled out right after the UIGEA and it was widely speculated at the time that Poker Stars and Full Tilt may follow soon. That didn’t happen as those sites found ways to work around the money transfer rules and their players were patient while that was worked out. Party likely decided that, as a publically traded company, they were better off going after the European market. They have hinted that they expect legal regulated poker in the US and intend to return when they don’t face the regulatory risk they currently face.
I also wanted to note that though you see heads up matches between top players it is often because one pro believes they have an advantage over that specific player. That gets a lot of attention, but that is not where most of the money comes from. The great majority of money won is indeed from players who may be winners at lower levels and take shots at higher levels. They are almost always creamed by the pros.
Interestingly the biggest winners online are rarely the players at the very highest limits. There are a number of completely unknown players who play up to twenty tables of low to mid limit games at once and make hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars a year with relatively low variance.
Yup, that’s what my poker-playing friend used to do while he was between jobs. He’d have 10 windows open at once and didn’t really follow the games closely. He mostly just folded all the time and only bet when he had killer odds, never giving a particular table or window more than a few seconds’ attention at a time.
He didn’t make “fuck you money”, but enough to pay the bills.
Someone sent me a PM regarding this thread, but they are set up not to be able to recieve PMs in their control panel. So to the player who asked what they could do to improve their game my answer is here, but feel free to follow up by PM.
Sure. The single best thing you can do is to read www.twoplustwo.com. Find the forum that is geared towards the limits you play and read and ask questions. They can sometimes be asses, but generally the discussion is helpful.
The second thing you can do is to subscribe to a video service like Cardrunners or one of the many similar sites. They typically have a pro narrate their thoughts as they play hands. As you follow their thinking you will begin to see them play hands differently from what you would do and start to understand timing and play patterns.
Finally I would think about using Poker Tracker software to track your play. It records every hand you ever play and gives you good objective information about how often you raise, call and fold in different positions. This can be vital. Say you raise AT from early position regularly. You may find that over time you are losing money doing that. You also may find that the frequency of how often you raise, call or fold needs to change. You will notice that other players can guide you better if they know your ‘stats’.
It all depends on how much time you want to invest, but just manage your bankroll carefully and stay at low limits until you are a consistent winner.
That is exactly how I viewed it, a hobby that made me a little money.