I think there are a ton of gamers that play online poker that are going to now split their time with Starcraft 2. I doubt there is any way to track the actual figures but I would think it could effect online poker atleast a few % over the next year. It is going to be one of the biggest computer games of all time and have a huge multiplayer following that plays on battle.net. Lots of players that used to play Starcraft professionally are now professional poker players. I dont think that professional poker players will switch to being professional Starcraft 2 players (very few will), but I do expect many players in their free time to play Starcraft 2 when they would have been playing poker.

I play online poker professionally and I know that SC2 is going to end up costing me lots of money in wasted time, but I cant help myself - the game is too damn fun. The good news is most of the SC players are pretty good poker players so having them spend time playing SC2 rather than online poker is not a bad thing for the games.


Cliffs: I believe Starcraft 2 will have a noticeable effect on online poker numbers (1-5%)

If they are professionals then it's a good thing for my bottom line

USA and EU represent a very small minority of proffesional StarCraft players, the majority being based in Korea. Additionally the majority of money for proffesional StarCraft is over in Korea.

StarCraft was released in early 1998, people have had over 12 years to practice the game. Top players practice an average of 8hours a day, infact the teams they represent usually demand they play at minimum 7-8 hours of solid practice each day. Not one proffesional poker player will move from poker to StarCraft, there is less money in StarCraft and it is near impossible to get anywhere near to a top player.

It is fun though, I'll give you that.

I can confirm that I am a small loser online and will be playing starcraft 2 for a while instead : )

Many people from USA and EU have moved to Korea to play Starcraft professionally. Giving the release date and the math of how long it is from now since 1998 is irrelevant. OP said that a small %(1-5) would be affected by the release of Starcraft 2(not Starcraft which you noted has been practiced by many for 12+ years) I agree with the OP and feel you are incorrect.

who/what is starcraft2?

Its a MMORPG, like World of Warcraft.

what is an MMORPG?

its a RTS, not a MMORPG, nubs

its not like WOW. its more like war3.. real tile strategy game. if world of starcraft is ever made i will quit life to play it lol

if we did lose players they would be more likely to be solid heavy volume grinders. so...**** em

i dont mean to flame, but can you name any outside of elky?

i stand corrected in advance if so

kick in the face to millions of people right there.

I contributed to this by playing SC2 all day today.

Grrr, Rainkhan, Rekrul and all those LP grinders.
a lot were semipros, taking a lot of their time (which was good for poker).

Release of SC2=good for poker.