The delay in streaming poker, whatever it may be 4-5 mins, makes the viewer/streamer relationship just awful. Imagine starting a dialogue in chat and waiting 5 minutes for the streamer to reply each and every time you chat something. I stream and trust me its terrible for the viewers. The goal is to figure out a way to stream in real time so you can interact with your live viewer chat. I'm exploring what can be done to solve this issue and I would love any input anyone may have.

Right now my idea is to simply cover up all the pertinent information, so it basically looks like a replayer table with actual player names covered, tourney info at the top and chat covered. This would make it difficult to find someone, particularly if your screen name was covered also. Bigger sites like Stars you could do a player name search and possibly narrow it down, but I'm a US player and really only have ACR, Ignition and Carbon, so let's focus on them.

What we need is to talk with a stream sniper to see how they would gather the info to track down or find that particular mtt table. If all info was essentially covered I would think this would be difficult and maybe not worth the time. Although you could tell an approximate time a mtt started by what the blinds are at now, you could backtrack and come up with a ballpark start time.

It's different on a smaller site like ACR because there are less mtt's thus making it easier to narrow down. This may be the ultimate problem. There is also another issue, most viewers will want to know the payouts if you are running deep, this could be matched up fairly quickly between 2-3 lobbys than narrowed down to specific table by chip size, so what do we do about that?

I can't think of a whole lot of other info a non malicious viewer would like, this is why I am asking for advice and opinions. Thanks

What do you expect? Someone to lay down $10k a day in buy-ins, allow opponents to see their moves in real-time, and still chat with everyone in real-time?

Have you considered streaming replays of tournaments you did well in, rather than try to play a few tables, carry on conversation with chat, and win (that most streamers do)?

Also you cold have a defined time/day to stream rather than start and go until ... you bust out

I think you are overreacting big time. Ods that someone manages to get seat with you and know that you are a streamer must be very small. Or do you really think that people are constantly checking from twitch that if someone is streming the table you are playing at? Unless you are playing hs. The audience for those sites is like 50 viewers at best.

Streamers can still chat in real time... it’s what I would do.

Also have open the stream to see what they are seeing as well.

Yes you can’t talk in real time to them, but you can chat.

LOL, I'm expecting to hide the table information so opponents do not see the moves, and the point is to be able to still chat with everyone in real time, yes...I'm not sure we are on the same page here

The point is to be able to stream poker in real time and interact with your chat in real time, you can play as many tables as you want, that is irrelevant.

I'm hoping that this is the case, but you have to ask yourself, EVERY streamer streams with a delay on their channel, they do this because of the paranoia of getting sniped. If it wasn't an issue, or may not be an issue some wouldn't do this, but it is standard to now. The problem isn't just your viewers, it's anyone who is playing that could check streams and snipe them, so your viewership count doesn't matter.

Streamers Can't chat in real time with a delay which every streamer has implemented so they don't get sniped. Chatting and multi tabling is out of the question, that would be incredibly difficult. I'm not sure what you are proposing...

I've seen a few streams where the stream is (almost) live, and the hole cards are covered by an overlay (to prevent sniping). While this can be annoying for casual viewers, the streamer can use the pokersite's hand replayer to replay any interesting hands and answer questions about them.

That is an option but I would think that would be annoying for all viewers. The point is to watch me play poker in real time, the excitement of seeing if I hit that flop hard or miss in real time and chatting about it. Going over the hands later would be more of a study time to me, the moment has passed by then...

How do they snipe you then if they are not watching the stream? Obv viewrship matters. The bigger you are the bigger the chances getting sniped are.

Just stream with the delay because people are used to chat. Esp if you are a smaller streamer then you don't even miss any questions.

My point is a sniper doesn't necessarily need to be hanging out in your chat to snipe the cards, he can open an "incognito window" and not even be recognized as being a viewer and check multiple streams for the game he is playing.

You are saying stream with a delay? I'm trying to solve that problem of streaming without a delay at all...

Can't you just pinpoint the player by their stack size?

how would you do that if you didn't know what tourney they are playing in? or see any screen names?

https://imgur.com/a/aMMv1uT

This is so you can see what I have come up with so far as far as hiding the info of the table, tourney, players, etc. This should be fine, although it's not pretty.

The next bit of info any viewer of poker would want to know are, obvs, what are the payouts? What's up top? Giving out this info would be rather easy to match up and find, so I'm trying to come up with a solution to this, 1 idea was to only let paying subs have this info, that may deter 90% of snipers, but still some may sub just for the info to track down the table especially if you are playing for a decent amount of money. Any ideas on this?

Sorry, didn't realise you suggested hiding the tourney details also. If you know the tourney, you can just look through the player list, and find the exact stack size, no?

You could, sure, that's why I'm suggesting to place an overlay over that info, see my pic in the prior post

LOL!!!!!!! Just imagine if you did all of this and only still had 3 viewers. I don't think viewers are craving no delay this bad when they're playing their own tournaments! Average hand takes about 1:40m + 30s/60s/120s/180s timebank depending on site and tournament. 3.5m was the old standard, but now 5 minutes is the minimum for regular, and 8 minutes should be the standard for high roller tournaments.

Doesn't matter if I only had 1 viewer, right now viewers have no choice, they must wait 5 minutes for a response from the streamer. It's super annoying if you want to say anything other than "gl today". If you want to immerse with the streamer and hang out, you simply can't. We already know how long timebanks are and what the current delays are in streaming as I mentioned in OP.

I'm not a sniper but if I were I wouldn't hang in the chat. I would just watch the stream sniping you. You don't need incognito for that. You believe that the sniper creates twitch account using the fe acr alias and chat with you while sniping? Seems kind of dumb imo.

Only game to stream without delay and getting sniped is probaly those ignition zoom games.

Yes it doesn't matter how they get the information, if they are watching the stream they come up in a viewer list, if they don't want to be known at all then incognito, whatever, that doesn't really matter, what matters is we hide the information so they cannot look up or find the table, or at least make it not worthwhile.

I did a stream last night when I got deep in 3 mtt's and I used my overlay as seen above in the attached pic, again not pretty and we can call it in beta but it seemed to work. Its always difficult but i didn't notice any aggro play in my direction, so maybe it will work.

The other issue is that all poker viewers are now somewhat trained to type in chat and wait 3-5 minutes for every response from strimmer. I do know that my normal viewers liked chatting with me in real time, but as always we need a larger sample size, lol

imo, the lower stakes you play and the less viewership you have, the shorter your delay should be. i currently have a 90s delay on my stream. sure someone could stream snipe me, but its still a long enough delay that its going to make it hard.

if you stream, getting sniped is the risk you take, how you deal with that is up to you, and if playing and winning is more important to you than streaming and you cant figure out how to stream without impacting your primary goal of playing and winning, then dont stream. easy

Can someone layout a bullet point "streaming for dummies" check list please. I am having trouble getting my stream off the ground and Im about a second away from smashing everything into a million pieces lol.


I have obs/twitch

Thanks in advance

-Setup monitor capture in obs
-Set delay in obs
-Put stream key in obs
-Click "go live"