This is what I thought reading Tim's OP.

Will Twitch be good or bad for poker longterm? Who knows for certain but in balance I think it's good if the sites know how to promote it.

Are the software tools that Tim uses on a daily basis to compete against only the worst of the worst? Yes, those I'm certain are bad for poker. Not bad for Tim, but bad for Poker.

Yup, so long as poker is being promoted in a positive light - I think it's good overall.

/ End Thread

What fantasy world do you guys live in that more people is bad? Ya, some might be good, but the majority won't be. Is keeping the game closed to newcomers really your idea of a good poker economy? There has to be new fish brought in at some point, it's not like the current fish have a never ending bankroll.

This is a big opportunity to bring in a large amount of young people. Oh noes, its young dudes, they'll figure it out and crush!!! Whelp, what other demographic would it be? I am baffled by people thinking this is the end of poker. For every decent player spawned by twitch, there will be 20 bad ones. They are gravitating towards tourney watching, you know, the "loldonkaments" you guys always talk about. Then some will move to cash and then you will have prime fun players.


Twitch is a huge opportunity for the poker community.

POKER IS OVER threads are getting so freakin tired.

They are written from the view point that its only ok if certain players want to improve and use whats available for them to get better. It is ok for YOU to gain information, but when things get too complicated (huds) or the playing field evens out (consumption of info, application of concepts), the POKER IS OVER people cry and whine.

Very few people play poker with the intent to just never improve and just constantly punt money. Even the biggest fish loser who has never read a book in his life is not going to the casino or depositing online while proclaiming "Gee, it's gonna be totally rad when I blow through $2k tonight. I don't care about getting better, I just wanna load up and make mistakes all night."

Use the information that you find useful, apply it in your game, or gtfo. Actually don't gtfo. Please keep playing. Plenty of us have no problem with better competition and any player worth a damn probably enjoys it. Competition is the essence of virtually any game. Its like POKER IS OVER people just expect people to want to suck at poker and enjoy it while maintaining a monopoly on get better.

Learning and getting better is a huge reason why people enjoy poker. If only the POKER IS OVER crowds was allowed to improve and get better and everyone else was just dumping money to them, I doubt they would have a game for very long.

If you can't use information, tools and concepts as well as your new twitch watching, hud using opponent then you are the actual fish. All of this is now a poker skill in 2015, just like BRM is a skill.

Sink or swim in 2015.

Also obvious that POKER IS OVER crowd has never sat down to play live <2/5. Especially if you go at the right times of night during peak tourist hours or during the series. You really have to work hard to to screw up your prospects at peak hour live cash weather its in Las Vegas or not.

Simply, the online poker coaching subscription churn is very high. Most of these players lost a lot, found poker training, spent more, and continued to lose. Poker training sites extended their life cycles.

Teh sad thing is u might actually believe that.

Its about teh same as when dominik kofert claimed that they brought in so many "recreationals". Strangely all i saw/see is people from east europe playing 25/20 with a 10% 3bet and 0-3bb/100 making 2k a month living life with an avg wage of 500/m

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

Twitch might attract some of those oil princes from Dubai to start playing high stakes. I know I've heard about them making 10k donations to some big streamers from time to time.

At least Jason Somerville is the face of twitch poker and not some nit. I'd like to see some new player try to play like he does.

This is not even close to true, don't know why you think it is. As others have pointed out, the gaming industry is a BILLION dollar industry. Have you see commercials recently advertising phone games and such? A lot of those games are pay to play, kids and adults are dropping thousands on these a month. They are actually supposed to be very addictive and built to have the same feelings and responses as gambling, triggering people to drop tons of money on them. Same with games like counter strike and dota.

did it extend their life cycles because they started losing less or because they played with newfound confidence? or do some fall in cat a and others in cat b?

i would speculate its impact on fish who remain losing players while using it is a wash between those 2 factors, and meanwhile fish who stop losing or regs who become better regs is an overwhelmingly bad thing.

from 2008-2013 a lot fewer fish are limping, a lot more are stealing and restealing. whether they are learning via training sites or monkey see monkey do, i don't know.

basically, having people's winrates and playing styles converge definitely keeps more people playing, but it's also bad for those who are getting tremendous downward pressure on their hourly, which is the point of OP. it also forces vicious seat scripting and bumhunting to find the remaining players who are big spots, some who are self aware enough to realize they are being hunted.

I don't know why everyone is against getting more young people and college kids in the games. If you are in university you obviously have some money to splash around with. It might not be 4 or 5 figures to drop but its enough. I had plenty of friends in college back in the day that were stone fish, myself included that would always be depositing here and there. Poker economy needs all it can get and I think twitch is good in the long run.

It is dumb that all these regs are streaming with the belief they will be signed by pokerstars just cuz somerville and staples did. I think it more falls into everyone wants attention and to show off a little.

People need to let it go that the glory days are long gone and move on instead of blaming twitch or training sites etc.

We just need more sticky rice type heroes on twitch

It's math. It's data. There is nothing to "believe." I am a founder of a major online poker training site, I have access to data. It's 2+2 =4, sorry you don't believe it.

Most fall into both. We called it "the golden ticket", many thought just a subscription alone would equal winning play. It doesn't, you have to put the work in.

lol @ twitch is full of sharp kids that will instantly become GTO machines
lol @ no money on twitch, everyone's poor

Most important thing to remember about Twitch is that it is an entertainment webiste!!!
I've always seen Twitch as the TV for young people who stay primarily on the Internet. And I don't have a TV for more than 5 years.

There is no world in which introducting new people to online poker is bad for the game, It just doesn't exist. Period.

I feel like the only people who feel like OP are the ones that play online poker for 5+ years and are used to slap their dick around while playing.

Twitch is an amazing thing for poker especially with the fact that it is growing super fast and it is branching out of gaming as well. (streaming music festivals, etc.)

The argument that its good in short term and bad in long term is so dumb considering the fact that long term is doomed anyway and its not doomed, because people are very smart and everyone is becoming a poker god, but because of the softwares that are getting developed consistently. Software is what will kill the game eventually, not genius people playing the game.

Anyone who thinks that pros showing a glimpse of the dream to people who like to spend their time and money on entertainment is a bad thing for the game should seriously reconsider their life choices.

lol @ you thinking anyone said this or seriously believes it.

Was broadcasting soccer on TV bad for soccer?

Well there was a mass suicide because of the boredom. Helped the population problem, hurt soccer.

Depends for who. For example, how is it going to be good for midstakes regular if another estonian picks up the game? There will be almost 0 estonian fish who donk off at midstakes since average wage is quite low and there are HUGE incentives for bustos to become good, and some might become regulars who take money out of poker.

It could be even argued that it's not true for only midstakes, but to all regulars. Few years ago Estonia was a winning country according to PTR. Even if it's not true today, there is no way Estonia loses money pre-rake.

So how is it exactly good for professional players if another estonian picks up poker?

I agree with you, BUT, the online sites love them HUDS. Why? With a HUD you can play more tables concurrently. More tables equals more deals. More deals equals more rake. They will never get rid of HUDs. QED

Bovada is hudless, and has a table limit. So your statement is not true. I do think the most important thing is people assuming twitchers have no money, which is way off.

I don't think it's reasonable to ban HUDs on all sites. Using a HUD is fun and it's one of the things which makes online poker more fun than live poker to me, even if I end up playing against a lot of nits.

The solution to this horrible dilemma might be highly edited, selected hand-replay Twitch videos that encourage sub-optimum play. Don't show negative consequences, only non-stop internet poker "fun".

Scantily clad women, drinking, laughing, calling big bets all the way to the river and getting the miracle card. "Take that mother****ers"

What I said is that its never bad to introduce a new player to the game. Obviouly if I decide to pick a random person on the street and tell him: "Hey, I will teach you how to win at online poker." and then proceed to educate him on strategy and all aspects of the game then yes, its likely that person will not be good for poker.

To answer your question, there might be different reasons that Estonia used(?) to be a winning country, here are a few of them If I have to speculate:

1) very small country so only handful of people playing
2) most likely the sucessful players from Estonia know/help eachother
3) results extremely skewed because of a a few Estonian players that are winning a lot of money combined with not many estonian players in the first place

How fast do you think someone who cant afford to deposit/lose any significant amount of money can start from scratch and turn into a sucessuful online poker player? Overcome all emotional aspects of the game (tilt, etc), learn strategy and build a bankroll at the same time on the high rake micro stakes with no private coach to guide him?


You can make an argument "How is it good to introduce the MIT students to the game?" Well probably MIT students have better things to do than getting into a script seating war for the Jesus seat in order to win a couple of thousands bucks?


Introducing new masses of people to the game cant be a bad thing, its only a bad thing if the person introducing them also offers sigificant amount of help along the way and Im pretty sure streaming on Twitch is no where near private coaching or anything of that sort.

Just to mention, I have seen people tip streamers $1000 before, it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable that some of these people might donk around at poker a little thanks to twitch.

Who has the best and most entertaining Twitch stream? From the little I have seen, it has been absolute garbage that just puts me to sleep.

Just to counter this point in particular, I'm a student at Oxford, which, while a slightly different profile to MIT, is undoubtedly in the 'elite universities' category. I'm a winning SSNL regular, so it's not exactly unheard of for people in that category to take poker very seriously. I also know very few people in the university who play online, and those that do play online take it very seriously. Students at top universities tend to have a competitive edge and want to be good at everything they do, especially mental games; I think the attraction of poker to them would be a mental challenge rather than gambling, and thus they're unlikely to stay as poor players for long.