In the old days you had a couple books…

Now you have people full on selling poker modules/classes, coaching, vloggers, software sell outs etc.

When did this all change?

I think mostly this makes the games harder but there is some credence to vloggers attracting new players or existing players to come out of the wood work.

It used to be so frowned upon to let industry secrets out for fear of games getting harder and “tapping” on the proverbial glass and making fish realize they are fish.

Now fish are referred to as recs.

It just seems like there’s so many fish oil salesmen out there.. you have the jonathon littles, Doug polls, s4y, RIO, crush live poker etc etc

They probably sell decent products. Like for some reason I trust Doug Polk and would consider buying what he’s selling. Jonathon little does some good breakdowns. Even berkey in attempts to sound smart even sounds smart once in awhile. I’m a fan of Bart Hanson too and watch his shows.

But it seems kinda bad to shake down the poker community w these products for a short term gain in sales but to hurt the eco system in the long term.

Coaching is also kinda fish oil salesmen esque..

I guess a good coach is worth it but isn’t there any ethical dilemma in making money off a player by not actually playing poker?

It seems kinda disingenuous to sell poker products instead of just playing poker to make money.

Then you have vloggers who kinda tap the glass w giving away some hand histories and breakdowns. They are the least offensive until they start shaking down people w patreon or selling hoodies. They’re probably +ev for poker like rampage has to be good for the game I don’t care what anyone says.

Finally software.. huds and rta are sold on this very site.. or at least I for on them is generally accepted.

So when did poker change?

What are peoples thoughts on this?

Poker changed when the internet was invented

This was a probably a hot take in 1980 when Doyle's SuperSystem started floating around the poker community but it's pretty chilly now.

So many of us for introduced in a meaningful way to poker with 2003 WSOP and hole can

Then poker was really good for a couple of years online as there were so many fish

Consistent losers either (didn't reload) or mak some rudimentary effort to improve their game

Honestly, tightening up your game a lot basically allows to rise above "fishdom"...and that killed the online games

B&M is all over the map but same phenomenon.... Much higher rakes.too.. But no multi-users, loserss may.see it as entertainment and super-easy to reload $$$$

Hole cam, I meant...

How was B&M poker prior to 2003?

I'm assuming horrible fish but very many of them

It seems like everyone who is relatively decent at poker and can make a living playing poker realizes how much variance there is. So naturally they look for another more stable revenue stream to supplement on the table income. But since many dont have other skills, one of the few things they can do is poker training, or courses, or coaching etc.

Perfect theory/explanation

It's pretty stressful/unhealthy playing huge hours (B&M esp.)

And you get a broadcast/publishing model where it's not massively Labour-intensive anyway

In the decades between this:

And this:

There wasn't one magic day, or month, or even year, that everything changed. Like most major shifts, it happened gradually.

Although really, nothing has truly changed in the last 15+ years, and likely much longer - it's just that, quite naturally, the tools have grown in quality and availability. There have always been books, I suspect there have always been people you could pay to coach, and there has been software since online poker started. Poker boomed, and so did the supply of tools. Poker slowed, but the best tools didn't disappear, and they just keep improving.

So it is, and always will be, with any competitive endeavor. Especially one where substantial money could be made after a relatively short learning curve/time.

Back in 2007 you had Cardrunners, Dueces Cracked etc - training materials have been ubiquitous since the poker boom. Nothing new.

Back then you had people living in a sick house in Thailand with all their poker friends.

There's been training material forever, but between much more experienced players making much more in-depth content, the advent of solvers giving more mathematically justified advice, and the rise of mobile phones making it easier to review/train material, the training material is light years better than it used to be. On the one hand, I do think this makes games much tougher, on the other hand, most players will not study that much and there will always be other important elements like psychology that you can't just study for.

the simple answer for why the material got created is it's prisoner's dilemma. You can assume that if you don't profit off of teaching poker, someone else eventually will, so it might as well be you.

Maybe this is a generational perspective, but the idea that we need to keep the masses ignorant to protect our edge just seems so... predatory.

Imagine trying to justify this logic without sounding evil in literally any other game, market, or ecosystem, other than poker.

If you want an edge, why not just get good?

He was "good" and thats his problem.

"good" is relative.

Businesses of all kinds routinely support and lobby for barriers to entry for newcomers to protect their edge. The idea that poker should be different to the rest of the economy seems strange to me.

Keeping the masses ignorant is literally how the world operates..

it’s completely standard in every industry to protect intellectual property as well using patents and such as barriers to entry.

Working in real estate for 15 years I can tell you poker isn’t even as close to predatory as real estate. I’ve literally seen developers “forget” multi-million dollar line items in a budget. The worst angles I’ve ever seen were in real estate.

The idea that protecting the game is predatory is pretty wild to me.

Blindly getting a coach is a stupid idea and before purchasing any services you should do your due diligence. I think this point is undebatable. There are good coaches and training materials out there but there are also really bad ones so finding the best for you is part of your time investment. Good coaches can explain where your biggest issues are and you can work together to fix them while making information easy to understand.

In my opinion a bigger problem is solvers and trainers being marketed to lower stakes/recreational players. I have seen guys shell out $100+ per month on trainers while playing 0.05/0.10 with the belief that solvers are the route to winning. I think these practices need to stop as the applicability to the stakes they are playing is minimal while being a high cost in comparison to their bankroll. Solvers have highly complex outputs and unless you are battling mid-high stakes I think your work with them should be at a minimum.

I hope this thread doesn’t come off as a complaint either.. I honestly think there are some huge benefits to Brad Owen and rampage putting out great vlogs.

I also think my game PLO is booming while NLHE is more solved. But I play NLHE sometimes and honestly the games aren’t dead in live settings. You have plenty of players open limping and donk leading to let you know right away how clueless they are.

The apps have some of the juiciest games ever.

There’s also more games available than ever before which to me actually makes the games easier since more table selecting can occur.

My biggest contention is I don’t like to see money come out of the ecosystem via fish oil salesmen who’s products may or may not work. It lessons the amount we can all win. It has compounding effects too, anyone taking money out of the ecosystem by not playing poker is going to realize why should I risk a 60-40 when I can just sit on the side lines and win 100% of the time.

Also if poker becomes like other industries where you have to go to college in order to be competent then poker would be just like any other industry and people will stop playing because why would anyone assume so much variance with so little upside? Wouldn’t people just go back to working real jobs at that point?

Solid post… and ya solvers and Rta are a huge problem in low stakes

Have you been in a coma for the last 14 years?

True lol..

So we finally got an answer 2007?

I was thinking more 2008-2015.. I suppose that’s when the changes started happening.

I’ll admit I’m a little bitter bc the couple times back in the early 2010s I tried to post stack picks on social media one guy at Parx berated me and said “do you also post the losing pics of the felt”

It stopped me from ever posting. I’m bitter bc I coulda have been the OG Trooper. Lmao.

The world changed on Sept 11 2001.... in more ways than we could ever imagine.

I have always thought tapping the glass meant berating the fish at the table for playing bad, not teaching fish how to play better.

High stakes players also realize they can't rely on rich whales to fund their entire ecosystem. They are on a high seaside cliff alone and need to raise the tide so other regs from lower stakes can attempt to join them.