The economy at large is doing great. The S&P 500 is up 20% in the past year. Emerging markets are up 28%. European markets are up 25%. Today Japanese markets hit a 21 year high and overall world markets are at an all-time high. Bitcoin is close to an all-time high. This year US home prices have risen to a point that hasn't been seen since 2006. The unemployment rate in the US has been going down fairly steadily from it's 10% peak in October of 2009 to 4.2% in September of 2017.

Fact is the poker economy was in much better shape back in 2008/2009 when the US and world economies were in terrible shape.

GG is correct that poker is heavily reliant on new players to feed money into the economy. The number of new players (in the US at least) has been on a great decline since black friday. There is no doubt that the games are tougher today than they were even a few years ago. Midstakes games have been drying up all over the country and that only makes the low stakes games even worse.

That's not to say that poker necessarily has to continue to decline. There is a possibility that it could gain popularity, but I certainly wouldn't hold out hope that the floodgates will open back up because of some sort of moneymaker type effect.

The stock market being up has more to do with the trillions im central bank liquidity injections + billions in corporate share buybacks and less to do with how the economy as a whole is actually doing. We are far more likely to see a recession, market correction and decline in home values over the next 18-24 months than we are to continue on this 8 years and counting unabated march higher.

+1

I find poker getting easier because I am improving faster than my competition.

Again, I won't go so far as saying the skill ceiling of poker is capped like it is in tic-tac-toe / etc., but I do find it a little hard to believe this (at least, in some conditions). In a lot of structures (my guess is you play in deeper structure game, so this might not necessarily apply), it doesn't take that much effort for the bottomdwellers skill level to catch up significantly to the frontrunners (thus obliterating the huge skill difference where the majority of profit is made), with not much room to go after that, to make it much more difficult to beat in a raked environment.

But that's just the way I've always looked at things; not everyone agrees.

GcluelessNLnoobG

The best NLHE heads up poker bots can now crush the best humans, maybe at something like 15BB/100. And I imagine the ceiling is lower heads up than full-ring (well maybe like 6-max, but FR games tend to often be that), and the ceiling is going to remain high when we're trying to maximize wins against very exploitable opponents...

I wouldn't doubt that something like 25-30BB/hour (long term/actual expectation) is technically possible at a lot of LLSNL games, and will remain possible, but not something that any of us will actually ever achieve.

My point is, just as chess and Go have a huge amount of granularity in skill level, so does poker, and the ceiling in terms of what is possible is likely much higher than we'd like to admit to ourselves.

Hey all im curious about this. Let say a top nl player plays 2/5 or 5/10nl. Let say its someone just like trickett, polk, mercier or one of those big names. Lets say they make a huge prop bet to make it worth it to them.


What would you think their winrate would be over 2000 hours? Because 10bb seems to be the top echelon its seems but some people mention it could be 15bb for the top of top world class players in 2/5. Also i watched some live at the bike and it seems like garrett and andy are clearly one of the to players there. Would you say guys like trickett, polk, mercier would probably all have 15bb/hr at 2/5? Im guessing it probably would be 10bb/hr at 5/10nl? Would guys like that absolutely wreck the competition at the 5/10nl games in vegas if they decided to play it?

Well, since basically no one is doing that (right?), then isn't this point moot?

That's like saying all we have to do to be the best 100m sprinter in the world is run 9.4s consistently (gee, why didn't I think of that?). It's perhaps humanly possible, but you ain't never going to do it.

Gtakesme9.4stogetoutoftheblocksG

I dont think they would have alot bigger winrate than the best names and say regs at live at the bike. Players like Adelstein is world class NL cash players.They also have countless hours and well builded up reads on their villains through the years, that money cant buy.

Also Polk have been caught spewing at the Aria 5/10 games on couple of occassions I actually think the big hotshots like the guys you mention maybe would have trouble of having the patience,discipline and consistency to blast off the winrates over a 2000 hour sample at 2/5 or even 5/10. The skillset needed for smaller stakes and the dynamics/how the games play is also totally different from nosebleeds and higher stakes of course, so i woudnt think they would crush it for any absurd winrate over a big sample. The prop bet needs to be insanely big for these guys to not run into motivation problems over a 2000 hour stretch imo.

I know a few people who can beat a 2/5 1K cap for much more than 10bb/hr. Sometimes a better measure of a live game is effective stack size and not the blind. Seems like you're asking what win-rate can actually be attained by man & there's no real answer to that. Win rate is based on your competition and your current image, so it's always in flux. If the top 9 players play at the same table, it's likely only the house wins long term. But, for the fun of guesstimating, I think Ivy can beat an average 5/T game for like $145/hr.

It depends a huge amount on the game. And just because they're skilled at beating other good players doesn't necessarily mean that they will be as skilled at exploiting LLSNL players and having the highest expectation in those games. I think a real crusher (who has probably long since moved on from LLSNL) can expect 15BB/hour at a lot/most games as long as they're playing their A game - and once they've had a chance to study it and understand player tendencies in those specific games and if they have mostly stacks of at least 100BB, preferably 200BB. Note: as winrate EV increases, I think so does variance. There are certainly spots where 2.5x pot bluffs are probably best against certain players and with certain dynamics present, but most of us aren't going to risk a huge amount for a relatively small amount of gain in EV.

Some games with whales I think are beaten by crushers easily for over 20BB/hour.

But as Petrucci mentioned, most players don't maintain their A+ game EV because of tendency to spew, etc.

+1

Also, for the record, have we seen anything remotely close to a 20bb/hr winrate over a non-trivial sample size posted in this thread? People already toss around 10bb/hr winrates like halloween candy (with very little posted evidence of this), so you'll have to excuse me if I'm a little skeptical (especially at low stakes low BI high rake games).

GcluelesswinratenoobG

Not a moot point at all because the whole point is that, while no one is doing that right now, we can do that in the future. This shows we're really not that close to the ceiling. So as the general populations skill increases, sk can ours. People will study the a.i. and learn from it

So then all we have to do is be like a computer?

You're not convincing me much.

Ggoodlucktousallthen,imoG

Not sure if you're joking or not at this point but ya. Not far fetched at all to suggest we can learn from a.i...hence piosolver etc (popular game theory software that people currently use to get better all the time).

Maybe one day the a.i. will end up teaching us all that the only thing that matters in poker is stack size & SPR...

Are you saying the economy is worse now than it was in 2009? Please expand on your thoughts. The fact is people have been making money hand over fist for the past 8 years. What happens over the next 24 months is irrelevant to what has been happening over the past few years in the poker economy which has seen a dramatic decline. I hate to break it to you, but it's not because people don't have money. People have lots of money. They are simply choosing to spend it on different forms of entertainment.

I'm not going to pretend I understand how poker A.I. works, but my guess would be it revolves around things that ~all humans are incapable of doing.

GcluelessAInoobG

A small, minuscule portion of the population has been making money hand over fist for the past 8 years. You can actually trace the trend back to the late 70's. But to focus on present day, taking the CA housing market for example, it's nearly impossible for average people to afford homes in cities. I mean, the average home price in Compton, CA is ~375k. The average (not mean) income in LA is ~60k/yr. Not hard to see that this isn't sustainable.

Anecdotally, it definitely does not seem to me like people today have more disposable income than they did before 2008. And I think statistics/graphs generally show the same theme that's been going on for a while - the wealthiest few percent get wealthier while everyone else is getting squeezed.... If those increases had been more evenly spread throughout the population, I think poker games would be doing better and would be more profitable.

Me stating 20BB/hr is simply based on my intuition about what the winrate distribution likely looks like. I.e., the people in the top 99.9% or 99.99% are going to be doing much better than are really visible here. Also, being capable of winning 20BB/hr does not necessarily mean a choice is made to win 20BB/hr -- I know I for one sometimes do things i am fully aware are -EV (occasionally straddling UTG when I'm doing well, posting a missed blind UTG+1, calling raises pre that can't possibly be +EV, etc).

So you're saying that all we have to do is be the best player per every 10,000 players / play ~perfect as A.I. would do / etc.? Is that a reasonable goal for most?

Ggee,easypeasy,whydidn'tIthinkofthat?G

The fact is that the economy is in the best spot it had been in since the financial crisis. The underlying fundamentals look quite good. When unemployment was up near 10% the poker economy was booming. Today with unemployment cut in half live poker is hurting.

Anecdotally, the economy here in Dallas has been great. Oil took a huge hit and Dallas didn't miss a beat. Poker at the casino is nowhere near where it once was though. Even dealers are feeling the pain as more sophisticated players means lower tips.

Vegas economy has been booming but games there are the worst they've been in the last 5 years at least.

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A friend of mine is recently without work. He believes there's a winning strategy to roulette (despite me explaining to him over and over again he's going to lose long term). He's been playing more poker recently...

I imagine that when people are suddenly losing jobs, there's a lag before that hits the poker economy... Loss of income is balanced out by extra free time and the thought that gambling is a good idea after job loss (as long as they have some savings, etc, to back them up). Similarly, if the economy is doing as well as you say, I think there will be a lag before people feel confident putting money on a poker table.

I don't mean to sound all gloom and doom. The low stakes game are still plenty beatable and the players are still awful. There has been a significant contraction at mid stakes level though and it appears the low stakes games have been impacted to some extent.

It should go without saying that the poker community was quite spoiled with super soft games the previous decade+ and so some contraction should not be unexpected.

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