Quote:
Originally Posted by SpinMeRightRound
Well first of all, what is the minimum amount you believe a Westerner needs to make in order to play poker for a living? Assuming they're not living in their parents basement and they are actually having to pay bills/rent/food for themselves.
...
What is a livable wage/income is
NOT the first question to ask, unless you hold the environment and revenue models static. However living income is probably about the same amount as would a participant in
any other industry impacted by automation of that participant's input.
I could foresee a business model where a poker player could monetize playing activity beyond just winning chips in a game or tournament. Think of the social aspect of playing and how it can be entertaining and monetized.
If you limit "play poker for a living" to net wins from betting/playing within the game at the tables, you are too limited in your scope.
Conversely, if you rule out changes to the poker experience which impact bots heavily, but not rec players or actual human poker pros, you are too static in your view and miss a couple of key points.
Rec players have different demands than pro players, consider how market demands can change from a pro-centric, multi-tabling, yet bot-infested experience to a single table, highly social, bot excluding one.... more kin to live poker than what you see today.
The critical mass to turn a profit operating online poker was skewed upward around 2002, by catering to professional players' market demands.
Since then technology has made several huge advances of relevance;
(a) two (better hosting technology & lower cost and improved payment processing) were
good for lowering costs of boutique or smaller operations,
(b) the other
very bad for massive, environments open to efficient leveraging of bot exploitation,
(c) the development of "apps" to decentralize game hosting and reach into mobile markets, I am unsure it impacts a particular segment of players.