U certainly live up to your name. Tell us more?

I don't know about a good living but a money making hobby is still there to be had in this game. Obviously it all depends on what you define as a money making hobby but I know Zoom 10NL can be beaten for a decent hobby/ poor paying Western Job. I assume 25NL and 50NL zoom can too as I have watched the hands shown on Stars and the play by the losing players look atrocious. The days of making 25 an hour on auto pilot are over that is for sure but the game can still be beaten.

It's pretty easy to say that poker is dead when Poker Stars and Party are only available in one state out of 50. In a few years I'm hoping that things return to the pre-2007 environment. There should be a lot of sites to play on and a ton of recreational players to play with. If I didn't live in NY state, I would probably get onto Bovada. Apparently the games are pretty good. The fact that you can still make money in the current environment means that poker should be pretty awesome when it's fully legalized.

Everyone on here seems to think they're as good as the top online pros and thus the game is dying /nobody can make money

You need to include "in the USA" or "for American players like me," otherwise you come across as someone who believes the rest of the World to be irrelevant. We are talking about poker the World over here, and while the US market is a sizeable portion of that market, it is only a portion of it. Of course, as a US resident you are more interested in what goes on there, but some of you guys really come across as thinking it is the only place that matters. It would be like European or South American players coming across as thinking BF was irrelevant.

We are talking about World Poker here.

Sorry to pick on you specifically as there are other posts ITT with the same vibe.

agreed. I live in US and have been guilty of making US centric comments at times. We are absolutely talking about worldwide poker market of which US is only a part (small part for online, currently)

Also although this thread is talking about online poker, its hard to talk about "poker" without talking about overall poker market including B&M.

I would love to see some data on total number of entrants in the various live poker tours around the world. EPT, WPT National, WPT Regional, WSOP, WSOPC, APPT, LAPT, etc etc.

My intuition is the total number of entrants in the $US500-US$3000 events continue to expand. Here in the U.S there are multiple large field tournaments with huge prize pools just about anytime. Many of these are starting to overlap yet fields are still very strong.

regarding online, I've seen some post the pokerscout graphs as evidence in the decay of the game. While the revenue decline is true and irrefutable, I believe its has less to do with customer demand, or games getting tougher , and has moreto do with closed euro markets leading to horrible liquidity and ecosystems, complicated by overtaxing in some markets, France, for example.

just my two cents. I just want my Sunday Milly back. 8Milly guarantee??? are you kidding me?

It's definitely not dead; there are still massive edges to be had in the game. However, we should all hope there's a positive change soon, whether that being the US market opening or whatever.

Games are tougher and there's less fish, but still more than beatable. It's just that you can't sit around on your ass being a lazy bum playing 3 hours a day, expecting to beat it at 15bb/100h anymore. You have to actually work for it and approach it as a job.

Online poker is alive and well and living in New Jersey.

I think you'd have to be a lot more specific when you say things like "there are still massive edges to be had". Where? At what stakes? What kind of ROI are you talking about? Tables played? Win-rate/Hour.

Because to be honest, for a rec player that plays small stakes MTT's and SnG's on Stars there just isn't a giant pool of fish out there anymore. Sure, there are plenty of bad players, don't get me wrong. But there are also TONS of regs playing those games and you're not going to roll over people to FT's in those games without a lot of variance. The days when no one knew shoving ranges, 3 and 4-betting strategies, and at least basic ICM concepts are over. Even the most recreational fish generally can find out more basic strat reading any free online site, or watching a Gripsed.com video than most regs had in their arsenal 10 years ago.

I've seen the monthly earnings posted here for 180-man top, pro grinders, and the drops have been gradual, but steady over the last 5 years. Guys that used to make $20K/month on autopilot are lucky to clear 8-10K/month at the $2.50 180 mans now with an ROI of 15-25%. And that's for the TOP players. What do you think your average rec player jumping into those games is going to clear? They're lucky (me included) to break even nowadays in small stakes games given rake and variance.

And for all the people who post here saying stuff like "lol, it's all about your attitude. The game is as beatable as ever." Well, clearly that's delusional and not supported by win rates, declining roi, and an increasingly tougher player base. At the end of the day there is a trade off when that equation no longer makes sense for the vast majority of rec players. I've been there. Hired a top coach. Read the strategy guides. Put in the volume in my off time. And if I were to grind out 180 man's I think I'm probably capable of an 8-15% ROI. Between rake and variance even if I did that 8 hours a day on 12-tables, which doesn't sound like a lot of fun, I wouldn't come close to earning what I do in my regular job. I'm sure in some countries where the cost of living is a lot lower, or when you're younger and a few grand a month is a significant income that's still an option. Which is probably why the game is thriving in developing countries like Latin America, but stagnating in Europe, North America, and Australia/NZ, where the cost of living is so much higher.

@KidFernandes: Good post but I don't think anyone is saying the games are as beatable as ever. I think everyone accepts that they are a lot harder.

I don't know anything about MTT's or SnG's tbh but there are definite edges in cash games, especially HU. No human is exempt from the tilt phenomenon and there will always be a few 6 max regs on tilt who will take HU shots when they have little clue how to play HU. Even a lot of HU regs in the mid stakes and below have leaks that can be exploited. There are also HU regs who will tilt their way into 6 max games and do some solid dumping. I myself am sometimes one of these. I'm sure 6 max regs could point out other edges in these games. Obviously I'm painting broad strokes here and not going into what I see as specific reg leaks in the games I play, but there are leaks there. No one is playing perfect, ya know.

here is your problem ^. sites pay players to hunt down buffaloes in masses. they lay the railroad tracks and they sell the rifles.

Dead as a Monroe doornail dodo

Poker is in "UnDead" Mode.
Walking Dead keep coming...

Ppl don't make 8-10k a month playing 180s, i'm talking 8s and 15s let alone 2.5s lol.

Giving a bump.. Interesting chat..

Personally i played more from 2009-2013 and made the most last year... I preferred the years without US players.. But now we are stuck with the boring and reasonably competent eastern euros... All the games seem so standardised and everyone is sucking slowly off the few fish available.
Last year I dreaded the thought of the sick US players coming back but now I have changed my mind and would like to see what happens... I hope they get back on the main sites and shake it up..

If we get federal legislation (or 25-30 states joined up), there will be a second boom in America.

i still have very high hopes for state-run games. i live in PA, we are second only to vegas in gambling revenue and people are optimistic here regarding online games.

all those idiots going to the casino and playing 100-dollars-a-hand blackjack are just gonna be begging to play me in a husng. i just know it.

That's hilarious. I could teach anyone who breaths a strategy that would make them unbeatable after rake at Stars $1/2 HULHE if you gave me 5 hours.

Online poker may not be dead but it is approaching imminent collapse. Rake is the main factor, resulting in huge competitive pressures which are ultimately destructive. It's why I can make a statement like the one above and mean it, and no one who is half serious will call me out on it.

That's pretty damn bad.

It's a great metagame strategy to tell everyone that poker's dead; it decreases the number of people trying to play poker seriously.

Amirite?

from a usa perspective, let former regs think the games are dead and move on. just helps improve the regs to fish ratio. And not to mention, so many former usa regs have stopped playing or working on their games since bf. for the people who have continued to work on their game, this is excellent news and i dont think i need to explain why.

I wish PStars were to drop rake taken for long term profitability a bit (both NLH and PLO games, I know plo is in worse condition, esp at smaller stakes, but NLH isn't fantastic rake wise for SSNL-MSNL either)
I guess that wont happen since ppl are too greedy (quite similar to how most governments work and approach their citizens, everyone on top just wants to fill their pockets asap)
Oh well, lets soak up as much $ as we still can in few years, and move on to something else. im ok with that plan, I got my degree, hopefully I can make use to it once greed kills online games

I started seriously playing around 2011 and have had no problem doing well even with the **** sites the US has to offer. Looking at a graph showing huge downtrends is a terrible way to go about forming an opinion on this subject. How can you realistically judge the pulse of online poker when the biggest market in the world can't even play? (Or so probably 90% of American's think) If you look at the graph it starts dropping around the time it became VERY difficult to deposit in the US.

If the US bans online poker forever sure, call it dead, but until then it's a little early imo. If the US ends up US only it may continue dying around the world, but will thrive here in the states. Even in the hay day of online poker traffic wise there were tons of people who refused to play because of the questionable legality.

Oh look. Another moron that thinks the US IS the world.

Oh, look, another moron not capable of reading something without making assumptions.

In case you weren't aware, the US is the biggest online poker market in this world you speak of and its absence (or lack of deposit ability or it being a legal gray area) effect everyone else in the world in a major way.

Considering we have the biggest player pool and most fish it only makes sense games on ROW sites got harder as Americans dropped out of the pool for various reasons beyond their control. Now sites like Stars have all the best US players still playing with none of the fish. ( you know, because fish don't VPN and a huge amount of US regs do)

I wouldn't go as far as to say that poker is 'dead'

but it's definitely in a coma