The attitude that we should only welcome new players to the game if they're guaranteed to drop money into the economy but never cash out, is what is will do the game harm.

Twitch will introduce the game to people who may never have otherwise encountered it and 'maybe' aid in making them slightly competent players. The fear mongering in here is hilarious.

So, you're saying it's time to close the doors, no new players?

FWIW, I've been in and out of various Skype groups, while there are plenty of older players who will just never improve that much, there are or were already plenty of ~18-23 year olds who were vastly improving before twitch.

As for it ruining livelihoods etc., the regs of the current day need to improve, the self admitted bum hunter that started the thread doesn't play against the regs of today or of the last few years. What right does he have to a livelihood through poker when he doesn't even try to play against anyone but the weakest? Serious question.

Your saying that we should stop everyone from trying poker cause they have the tools to potentially become regs?

The main problem is there is no new money being brought into the poker economy, money filters up the stakes feeding everyone in its way up.

The advancement of software (Huds, seating scripts, bots etc) is whats killing the game but there is very little sites can do about it. If you believe twitch kids depositing money on the site you play on at a higher skill level is whats killing the game then more fool you.

I feel like Twitch is a huge chance to get new people into the game.

Do these new players have a higher chance to succeed at poker than people that come to the game because of commercials during UFC or NASCAR? Of course they do. But that doesn't mean that most of them will crush or whatever.

That said, I highly doubt anyone who played poker seriously 5 years ago would say the games haven't changed drastically. For various reasons, not a single one of the guys I knew through playing small to midstakes FR on Stars back in the day is still playing seriously.

It's not only about the money, yeah shortterm those 40k are a lot. But presumably you will be able to work your job till your 60+, with increasing salary and Benefits. In poker it's unlikely that you will be able to do it for more than 10 more years and you will most likely go towards 60k/year instead of climbing like in an other job.
Poker brings a lot of headaches as well, Downswings,legislation decrease in the fish/reg ratio etc. , you can see the op fears that Twitch will ruin poker further.

So if you plan ahead for 40 years you can make it 40k/year is > 100k year once you reach a certain age. I'd say that age is somwhere in your mid twenties. Keep in mind I'm not talking average Joe from the street. I'm talking about some regs with ambitions in life that are above average intelligence and hardworkers.

As far as Streams go, I like to play LoL and watch streams as well there, I definitely have improved from watching streams and climbed to the Top1% but then again there is a lot of people that copy streamers. They try to copy their playstyle and just fail miserably. In poker it will probably the same, streamer played 87s and 3barreled that board I should do that too.

a wise man once said "an egg for all is an egg for none".

The problem isn't that these guys are going to become solid regs, it's that they're going to stop being fishy enough to sustain tables, especially at the microstakes.

Let's do some maths.

At 50NL lifetime I have raked 8.5bb/100 on Stars. That means, every hundred hands, 51bb/100 is raked at a 50NL table, assuming other people pay something similar to me. Thus, for a single fish to sustain a table of 5 equally skilled regs (i.e. for them to break even), the fish needs to lose at 51bb/100 post-rake or 42.5bb/100 pre-rake. Even if we assume they're all supernova and thus gaining ~3.5bb/100 in rb, the fish needs to lose at 25bb/100 pre-rake or 33.5bb/100 post-rake.

It's actually very easy to find a strategy which doesn't lose that badly. For instance, a strategy of folding every hand loses at roughly 25bb/100 both pre- and post-rake on a 6max table. This strategy is patently absurd. Even if a fish changes from playing 40/16 to 24/19, even if they remain completely terrible postflop, as a result of seeing an okay player stream, it's unlikely that it's possible for them to sustain a table at 50NL.

The numbers at 100NL, assuming the regs have supernova rakeback, look something like them losing at 20bb/100 pre-rake or 26.5bb/100 post rake. At 200NL, again assuming supernova, it's something like 15bb/100 pre-rake or 19.5bb/100 post rake. Clearly, as one moves up and starts paying less rake in bb/100, a table can be sustained from better and better players, and at 200NL that 24/19 player who is completely terrible postflop is probably enough. However, by 200NL you have problems like practically never being able to get your fair share of jesus seats unless you script, or you start tables and are lucky.

That's not to say that Twitch is necessarily a bad thing. The necessary premises in Tim's argument are something like a) bad players will watch out for strategies being used on Twitch streams; b) they will learn from these strategies; c) they won't dump a ton of money as a result of being introduced to poker before they're good enough to no longer sustain tables; d) they wouldn't have improved, if they were to improve, from other sources. Clearly, every single one of these is challengable.

Personally, I don't agree with Tim on his conclusion; I disagree with points b and d in particular. He's probably right about training sites, but the argument against training sites applies equally to those against seating scripts and other software. The problem is that you can't prevent training sites from existing, and while they do exist, rational actors will be justified in producing training videos; and yet this will deplete the 'resources' of the poker economy as a whole - it's the tragedy of the commons. It's worse for people like Tim and vinivici than others because they (possibly) rely on poker to a greater extent - because they've been playing professionally so long, it's left them with a big CV gap, and thus they're more reliant on being able to survive within poker.

tl;dr: The argument for Twitch being bad is coherent but wrong; we can't stop people educating but there are other things which are bad for the games which can be stopped.

But is an egg for none, an egg for one?

I think that this post says a lot imo what is really? the adverse? problem? that regs?/pro? have with?/against? twitch.

Twitch produces?/brings? young and fit?/smart? players to the sites that can grind hard and long with a certain strategy?/game? that is hard to beat and difficult/hard to make money/profit against and make the regs?/pros? work harder for their money/income/extra income.

Or am i wrong?

I myself think that playing poker on-line for someone that just wants to play some games for fun is boring and dull and absolutely no fun at all. Because the regs/pro[people that solely play poker for there income] play a system/strategy a cold, boring mathematical game. That's makes them money, and the "game" the spirit of poker so to say is gone imo. And as a recreational player there is only loosing, and all the moves, bluffs, and moves that makes the game FUN!!, are all mathematically eliminated, even as low as the 2/5 cents levels.

No for me there is only live cash game poker, and i am playing live poker since i was 16 years old, when "the old man"as we called him learned me the game of 5 card draw, that was the most popular game here in Holland in the early 80s.
And i was sold for life, the excitement/tension of sitting on a table with men from all levels of society, looking in their eyes, looking at there posture, looking for anything that could give me a edge/advantage so i could win/take their money.
With either a bluff[the most rewarding feeling of all] or a stone cold winner, or just knowing that they where bluffing.
Either way all these thing and many more, that makes playing live cash games so much more fun for me.
So much more exciting then on- line poker.
And hey on-line poker is for many, many people a great thing, in relation too that many people have a better life, make more money then the ever could with a job, or make very welcome/needed extra income with on-line poker.
And i think that is great and i am happy that they can.
But for me it is boring, and hey i play some tourneys/cash game or sng now and then[but i have to play at least 3 at a time to keep me interested/focused], and have some fun, but after a hour[in cash and sng for sure] i start too loose interest, and i can't help it, no matter what stakes i play, and i payed for that knowledge i can assure you. lol

But i think on-line poker is beatable?/profitable? if you take the time, and do the work to study hard and watch videos on sites like twitch.
And maybe 90%? is learning the same systems/strategy's?.
So it is going to be a matter of who grinds the hardest, who puts in the most hours, who plays the most hands, because the knowledge is out there right?

And i meant no offense to anyone, it just how i think/wondered about it when i saw this topic, and i can be wrong about this, since i have little knowledge/experience about on-line poker, but i was just curious if i am[partly] right about it in other peoples experience/opinions, that's all.

ROFL, great response.

TimStone's sentiment is correct about the sky falling, but not for the reason he thinks.

The sky is "tumbling" rather than falling because of:

1) Rake
2) Segregated player pools
3) Lack of a US market

These things are way more important than Twitch.

Tournament poker in general is getting tougher, but it makes it more enjoyable in the interesting kind of way opposed to the fun you get knocking out 4 fishes with bad hands preflop holding Ak suited or something.

It will stimulate people to register and to sit, which is good. Haters are just scared, you can just go play deep cash games and no amount of twitch streaming is going **** you there, its just all these <15bb spots in mtts which are very standard, stream viewers are getting a free education there.

It reminds me of an old proverb.

Twitch is merely leading the horses to water. Just having access to all the knowledge isn't enough, you have to want to use it and have the actual drive to study.

Well above 90% of people who find poker this way and stumble across training material are going to go "what the hell is a range?" or "this is too complicated" or "$19.99? not worth it" or "this book is dumb, why would I bet that much with just one pair" or "I don't need this stuff, I came in 3rd place in a tournament once" or "huh this is exactly the opposite of how I play... it's probably wrong" or "this author's a fraud he doesn't even have 100k in tournament winnings"

For those who play live, just think of how often you hear fishy regs pepper their fishy talk with poker jargon. They know the jargon because they see the TV analysis (which isn't perfect but is usually at least sensible) or read a magazine article, but they don't actually get anything else out of those sources which should be quite educational.

In fact I think it's even better than that. The poker boom made everyone think they could play. Twitch is making everyone think they can learn, and that's an even bigger lie.

There's a reason why most of the streams are mtts, sngs or lowstakes cash games. You rarely see anyone playing higher than 200nl on stars. Maybe there are a few from the USA but that may be because they have a deal to promote the poker room, or the games there are softer idk.

I guess MTT edges will get smaller and the bottom line for beating online poker gets higher due to twitch, but it's nothing to majorly worry about since the info is already out there. You can no longer win at mtts with higher than 10$ bi by just following push/fold charts anyway, and for the absolute micros (1$ mtts), it doesn't matter at all how much info is out there.

I would be pretty worried if someone like Kanu gave up poker and decided to stream coaching sessions on twitch, greatly increasing the speed that midstakes regs improve (and so on with a domino effect), but this is very unlikely to happen due to the risk/reward for an individual of Kanu's ability to do something like that.

You are all getting levelled. Fullring bumhunter with a seating script complaining that the games are getting harder, come on.

As Joe Tall pointed out the real problem is government segregation. Pokerstars recently banned 30 countries from playing on their site. Most of you didn't care because who gives a f about Bangladesh really? Your country might be the next Bangladesh so enjoy it while you still can.

You're drawing conclusions way too soon. You're also forgetting how much spare time the average Twitch viewer probably has to consume

Tim, you want other people to deposit and bring in to the game. How about you deposit and lose some money yourself?

Still trying to get past the fact it was Tim Stone who started this thread.

OP is right. More traffic would be good perhaps if there was no rake, but POKER IS NOT ZERO-SUM GAME, rake is HUGE. Micro- and small-stakes (and soon enough, midstakes also) professionals don't need -5bb players which the Twitch crowd is AT BEST going to be. They need huge droolers, older people who aren't good at Internets or businessmen who just don't care, not young competitive males who don't have much disposable income.

Obviously someone like Ike and jungleman doesn't care and they're not affected. Rake at their stakes is nothing, and they are too far ahead skill-wise and even if they weren't, -5bb loser at their stakes is possibly goldmine.

But if poker on Twitch gets popular, micro- and small stakes professionals are going to get screwed right off the bat and eventually midstakes players aswell.

Pretty accurate post.

Twitch is the best thing ever happend to stars bc longterm it gonna decrease edges further. So its not really a surprise they sign one streamer after another

[spoiler]kind rgds from teh TimStone[/spoiler]

snitch viewers aren't the demo we want.

yeah there's a ton of 14 year old kids spamming chat like an idiot, but they're not depositing any time soon, and when they do, they'll probably be a lot more mature. if jason somerville gets 10,000 viewers, there's bound to be 100 that have the potential to be real sharp.

basically, while snitch will clearly bring in more players, you need a lot of fish to deposit 200 dollars 5x a year and play a few 27 tourneys and shortstack 100nl for 1000 hands to make up for even just a few kids who become regulars.

my personal experiences playing online and live have formed my opinions on the problems of propagating strategy from 2 obvious trends:
1. more and more regs not being able to cut it, replaced by better, smarter, more aggro, and often younger regs (i played 12/9 in 2008 and 20/16 in 2013 with effectively the same hourly)
2. most of the strong players in south florida casinos are in their 20s and 30s. if you were to use 20/30 = reg and 40+ = fish as a heuristic, that'd be relatively accurate. of the people in their 20s/30s who are fishy, literally none of them have ever looked like the snitching type or the watching training videos for fun type. they usually look like a drug dealer (florida casinos ftw!)

in short, we want "THE BUSINESSMAN", who values $20 and $1000 effectively the same way, and just wants to unwind at 5/10 while drinking a scotch.

I don't think you've spent a lot of time on Twitch or in a Twitch chat...

noone cares about live poker, that game will be forever profitable.

@vivi

Did somebody call a wambulance?

This also accurately describes the level of effort and compensation most players expect in an increasingly competitive profession.

Preach it!!!