Do you think tournaments have more of a future than cash, for the reasons listed?

more hilarious posts. less serious talk.

although nike on a poker table would pretty cool to me and they would love the opportunity to advertise that way I think.

We're doing all we can here. Still trying to surprise you guys occasionally by sneaking in good posts.

Why would online poker turn into esports? It's based on the gambling fish depositing right? It works like a food chain.... with the weakest depositors leaking money to all better players, with the weaker ones of those leaking to better players, and the weaker ones of those leaking to better at higher stakes, and on and on to the best players of that game format. So as long as there are gamblers/losing players depositing, online poker will exist similar to how it does now, and not in the point system you're describing. How can they throw down $100 or $5k and try to run it up with that point system? People will always want to gamble.

I think the market for esports players and recreational online poker players are somewhat separate and don't eat into each other at all. Someone who likes to gamble is not getting their fix from playing league of legends.

Why pokersites will stay behind the rake per hand model

You really expect an industry that is tailored around people making bad decisions to tone down their greed for sustainability? It is really far fetched to think any big player will come into the online poker market at the current legal situation in the biggest markets like the states and europe/russia and expect to come up with a significantly less lucrative system to make a longterm investment.
Amaya is the only large player in the past decade that even went with the risk of buying out the market leader and they are doing everything to make even more profit in less time to get their investment back.
Even with the current rake, a person that has the money to put in place such a new online poker company has more attractive ways to generate more profit with less risks.

Advertisement and Endorsement to bolster online poker

Poker especially online still has a stigma that keeps A-level endorsement and advertise from huge global companies away from it. Look at what companies sponsor the WSOP which is a long term brand which gets global exposure throughout the year with a huge peak in summer and now november (was the smartest thing those fellows ever did to move me ft to november, they are only doing a ****ty job of promoting the players and produce hype during the gap).
The mixed martial arts market is the closest to compare, having a pretty bad stigma too but it has grown and grown and now you even got companies like Rebook stepping in after Budweiser and Geico made commitments. It was pretty interesting to see that the UFC tried to push Poker as a way to attract more people, but that was a trainwreck. It does not get pushed by them any more and it was a huge chance for the poker market to attach to the biggest growing sport, for example offering UFC packages for tournaments or cooperate with them to host special events. None of that happened, instead the UFC aquired their own site and as it was US-based they could not pull much revenue and ultimately pulled the plug.
There are studies everywhere that adult males that watch sports can be attracted to gambling options including poker and that is sadly the biggest demographic for online poker that is still not fully developed though it has been the focus for pretty much every online poker site.

Most Poker sites are not making enough effort

To be honest poker sites are still printing money without attracting new players, the only brand that is pushing and pushing to keep on top with international tournament series, tv shows and large stables of embassadors/endorsed players is Pokerstars. As long as sites can sit back on a small player pool due to the rake they won't have the desperation to grow facing difficult competition. That is in my opinion the biggest problem in online poker, it is far to easy for pokersites to feast on their playerbase because there is no one that will actually lower the rake as long as they do not get significant growth to not lose margins.

The sad truth or tl;dr
As long as there is not another big player that can rival to Stars and offer better terms for the players nothing will change and no current site will make efforts to grow faster as long as that means to cut short term winnings.

Subbed for the wisdom and motivation. Especially the mental stuff as the strategy stuff is beyond me. I feel like I'm still a struggling micro reg because of horrendous mental patterns which I'm trying to change, using Tandler's book as well

And also love avocados, had no less than two today!

In a sense. I don't claim to be an expert on any of this, but twoplustwo seems like a good place to share controversial ideas and get controversial ideas back.

I think neither cash nor MTT's or SnG's are amazing for hyping poker, but tourneys are better than cash.

This is what we'll need, and this is what we'll get one day. And maybe that rival will be riot games, cause they know how to create amazing games, how to hype them, and how to set up decent infrastructure.

You'll crush if you love avocados.

Hey guys, back here for an update and some life strat.

I've been grinding a lot these last few days, maybe like 6h a day on average for the past 2 weeks. It's been pretty swingy and the first 7-9 days after being back on holiday were kinda tough as I was kinda rusty so lost some confidence and some mental game, along with some tactical play skills too. Last few days have been really good and I've actually been playing really well, and running very good too so that's always nice.

I also started playing some other sites than Pokerstars. I've been depositing on a ton of different sites across the globe, some Euro sites, some Asian sites, some african sites too although the action is kinda dry and even some arab sites which have a ton of action. Unfortunately I ran into some problems on the arab sites because my bank flagged the transactions and then the norwegian CIA came into my house asking all kinds of questions like "We see you've had some financial transactions with companies in the middle east and some of your skype conversions include sentences like "just bomb the turn"" Anyway I got cleared of all misunderstandings but now they have records of all my financial transactions and I'm in a bit of a pickle because their handing them over to the Finnish and Norwegian IRS so I might have to pay some taxes. I'm not sure on how I'm gonna handle the situation but there's a strong possibility I'm gna have to leave Europe for a while and lay low in Asia or South America for a bit.

I've realised some of you guys might be thinking "Who is this dr.fatcat, and does he even play poker ? does he make money ? Should i actually listen to his strats ? Does he even win flips ?" Well you guys don't need to worry because I come with a graph. The first rule of life as a poker player is always carry your yearly graph with you, so if someone doesn't believe that you make money from poker, you can pull out your graph and shove it in their face and say "see this bitch ? that's my yearly graph ! How you like me now ?"



and here's a session today where I won 3 flips in 30min :



So now that you guys know I'm legit as ballz, hopefully you can learn from some of the life strat I will post now. Oh btw I'm editing on my laptop now but I'm like 3-4k above EV in that graph. Just thought it was important to mention so you guys also know that I run good. I find it hilarious when I see coaches post a graph where their below EV. Why the **** would anyone want to get coaching from someone who runs bad ? The whole point is to be more like the coach. If you're learning from someone who runs bad, you're just gonna learn to run bad, no matter how much "strat" you learn.

"If you're not grinding, you're not making money" A wise man once said. That man is my grandfather. He once saw me watching some TV show or something and asked me if I was grinding. I said no I'm watching tv. He then explained to me that if I wasn't grinding, I wasn't making money.

"If you're not grinding, you're not making money". That truly is a powerful statement. It might seem simple, like duuuh, but really, it is a powerful statement. When you think about it, you gotta grind to make money. The problem is, a lot of the times, you're not grinding. Once i understood that concept, my life completely changed. From now on, I always carry a little checklist with me :

It asks first "are you grinding right now ?". This question comes first because if you consider yourself a poker player, whether it's professional, non-professional, or semi-professional, your priority really should be to be grinding, and it's what you should be doing most of the time.
If the answer is yes, then you can move to the follow up question "are you crushing ?" If the answer is yes again then you can keep grinding and dong what you're doing. If the answer is no, then you should quit and either have fun or do something "important"

If the answer to "are you grinding right now ?" is no, then the follow up question is "are you having fun ?" That's because your 2nd priority after grinding is to have fun, afterall, you gotta enjoy life and use your poker winnings to have fun. If the answer is yes, then keep doing what you're doing and having fun. If the answer is no, then move to the last question "are you doing something important ?"

This one is kinda tough. It's very subjective and very person dependent. For example, someone might think that showering is important. Personally I don't think so because if I don't shower I might smell bad but I'm not the one who notices the bad smell, it's other people, so really it's their problem, not mine.
Another example is when I was at the shopping mall the other day, I was walking around and there was an alarm on my phone reading "Read checklist". I have an alarm every 30min to make sure I'm either grinding, having fun, or doing something important. Anyway while in the mall I realised I wasn't grinding, and that I wasn't having fun. I initially went there to get a haircut but then I realised that getting a haircut isn't actually important, so I drove back home to grind (the checklist is like a loop, if you're not grinding or having fun or doing anything important, you have to get back to grinding).

So I would strongly suggest you guys always carry a checklist with you to make sure that you're doing one of those 3 things. Have an alarm on your phone so you can read the checklist often. Believe it or not it's really easy to find yourself just walking around or in a strip-club or something and realise that you're not grinding. I always panic for a few seconds but the checklist really helps me keep my life on track so I always know what I'm supposed to be doing.

FatCat post delivered 😆

Very nice one

Can't read you on whether you troll or speculate on riot. If it is speculation I would think they would get into another lucrative gaming venue and copy something big, I would see them come up with a rival to Hearthstone for example before they would branch out to something like online poker.

Pokerstars is already sponsoring e-sport-events too with their twitch campaign, saw them sponsor a bigger CS:GO pro tourney some days ago. I bet they will also be a big sponsor behind the vegas NHL expansion team, when it gets funded.

I see no other pokersite even attempting to aggressively pursue new customer streams from online gamers or sports fans, only the english sites do it, but they are mainly sport-bookies and run poker as a side income to their outrageous juice intakes.

I could speculate on this topic for hours and it is interesting to see who has the balls to challenge stars first. Once again speculation, but I only see a legislated and opened to international players US-market as the trigger for some big player to show up. But we will see!

I always say I will have a week long fiesta on the day you can play with US-players on any site you want again and I think the US-players are dreaming exactly the same.

There are already poker clubs in the US doing this. They charge $10 for the day. The only expense is tipping the dealers. I wonder what would happen if you opened one of these clubs in vegas.

Finally!
What i am doing right now is simply assuming that the way i see things is true. Poker is like esports. Poker can be hyped like League of Legends. Poker is not a game of luck, and can be taken out of the gambling context.
In my mind, all this can be true. And i am wondering:
What if Riot games was unbiased towards poker, and what if they did put all their expertise towards hyping poker? What would they come up with?
What would they change? You're right, they aren't, and the won't, and they won't and they won't. But what if they would? What would the result look like?

This thread is truly some next level ish! Well done Sirs, well done!

There is a lot of speculation inside of that market but the main question is Pro's perspective... Who is the main target? will be profitable? Income?
First i think poker needs to jump to another category, from fortune & chance to skill category. I believe this will be long-term work for the next 10 years.

riot is majority owned by tencent based in Shenzen which means 0 chance gambling is going to be on the agenda

even if it was riot is no the greatest at managing things. They makes mistakes and fix them but still make tons of mistakes

also say blizzard does a poker version of hearthstone, it blows up.

Thats not good for the professional player. Theres no money in esports except for the people on the very top and even then its very little. I would say there 2-300 people in the world that make a good living from professional league of legends outside of riot employees.

Bjergson made less than 7 figures last year. Hes the most famous player in the biggest game and in the richest region and he made less than 7 figures. esports is no good for the professional.

I tend to disagree, there is a lot of money in esports not only for the pro players, ask the model designer for Valve games like Dota 2, the youtube content creators, the streamers, etc etc.
The pros are payed for bringing in the masses, but the revenue from the immense growth does not only go to the pros.

Simon, your positive dreamy creativity is awesome, but it makes it hard sometimes to judge wether you are stating an opinion or a wish. I think you would really enjoy this twitter account: https://twitter.com/boredelonmusk . I do, and I am more of a sceptic realist kinda person that misses out on some fun to be balanced. So you should have a creative field day with this one.

That twitter account is really nice. I call your ice-tea and raise you a red bull:http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/

Anyway, you're mistaking my attitude ever so slightly. I do not care whether riot games ever get involved, and i am not waiting for a "big player" to miraculously appear out of nowhere.
Rather, i put myself in charge of the project, and imagine that i am working for riot games, and that i have their resources. Now, what would i do with poker? What kind of advice would they give me? What would poker become, and who would be the target crowd?

It's a mind game, and my goal is to detach poker from casinos and gambling, and find its potential in other areas. You can do that even if you're pessimistic and realistic. You really just gotta be able to dream a little.

supsup guys, tuning in for a little update here.

One of my worst nightmares turned real. I've been felling a little ill these last few days and my balls have been itchy for a while now, so it's fair to say there's a strong chance I caught the herp. It kinda sucks and it's the poker equivalent of a 20bi downswing imo. Anyways I'm a positive guy so I always try to be optimistic. The good news about getting the herp is that there is no cure. No cure means no treatment, means no need to go to the doctor.

Because of the herp I've been unable to really grind these last few days which sucks, but hey that's life. I do need to re-think my life strategy because getting the herp isn't just runbad, it's also about bad play. I need to work on a few things I think.

Anyway I don't really have much else to say unfortunately, and don't have much energy right now so I'll post some better **** soon. I wanted to say something about the e-sports thing but it's all a little too complicated for me. I did use to crush CS 1.5 back in the day but I tried playing some CS:GO last year and got my ass kicked so I think my e-sports days are over, maybe a good thing since there's no way I could play a computer game for 80h/week.

My Balls are sometimes a little itchy too, but I don't think I have the herps...

Sometimes balls-gto just tells you to wash..

How you know it's exactly herps? Did your "grindbuddy" have it too? :P