Please, you're welcome to stop playing poker at any time if it's gotten too tough for you. Twitch is great fun to watch and learn from.

Poker isn't going to get any easier for anyone, ever.

I welcome the day that TimStone gets weeded out.

OP took the completely pessimistic road and didn't even consider any positives that could arise from Twitch. I award you no points and may god have mercy on your soul.

I'm a bit surprised you feel this way.

"all i see is 1000s of new, hungry and highly motivated regulars. "

You're basically saying its dangerous for people to be made aware that its possible to make good money playing poker, which is silly and inherently comes from a fearful scarcity mindstate. It's what made this game successful in the first place. Yes, a non 0% of the people exposed to poker via twitch will, OVER TIME, become good regulars. For one, the % is probably much lower than you seem to think it is. Two, it takes a lot of time and effort for those 1000's of people to actually become v. good regs, and even within a field of v. good regs, even better regs are STILL able to generate very good winrates. Yes, of the people that put hard work in and remain dedicated over time, some will become competitors for the money you're making in this game. Some will end up doing it better than you. If they earned it, they deserve it. Poker is a very fair game. You say it doesn't generate 45/15's. Perhaps you need to work on generating significant edges vs the 25/20's, because preflop stats converging to within a "standard" does not mean said players travel through the postflop decision trees anywhere near optimally : )
People (granted, few) still show 6bb+ winrates in the toughest online games vs the toughest online regs. Most regs will not become top 10% regs inherently. The ones that do, deserve it. You should be thrilled at there being more regs that are completely inexperienced in the vast majority of situations willing to battle you at the stakes you play.

Russian computer science wizards creating v. strong solutions and making them efficiently accessible is a bigger threat than a group of people mostly staring at chat and facecam on twitch. I honestly feel good that I'm letting more actual human beings know they can get in this game, put in effort, and do well in it before it's time is up, which is coming soon enough, and definitely not primarily due to twitch.

Here's an excerpt from a Marlow post from 9 years ago:

"There's a great concept in educational psychology/philosophy that is directly related to this issue. It is called the "zone of proximal development." Basically, the "zone" is the mental place that is outside of a person's expertise, but close enough that it's within his or her grasp. What's important to note here is that if a player isn't ready (or in this "zone"), then they won't be able to learn the skill. It's just too far beyond what they are already capable of. However, if a person is ready, they can obtain the new skills with good instruction and lots of practice."

Twitch should, and will, get a much more significant amount of people excited about/interested in poker than the amount of godregs it spawns. And the godregs it spawns deserve to be godregs. If a sicko starcraft player puts the time and effort in, salute him.

Still love you Tim. I understand where you're coming from, but I really don't think it's accurate, and will happily debate this further. Now, for balance:

I love this post.

Without deposits coming in to a poker site the site eventually dies after whatever money in it is chopped up. Anything that brings in new deposits is a good thing. Any other concerns the OP has is at best secondary to that fact.

POTY

think about the huge broadcasts twitch does for the popular games. all those viewers arent magically good at those games. for example they might get 100k LoL viewers but they are probably mostly massive LoL fish

I like the post thats says 100K a year aint nothing, DAMN I WANT NOTHING

I don't think it's the end of days. But I've said before, the last thing poker needs is a bunch of young gamers willing to grind 12 hours a day playing poker. Sure, they won't be experts right away, but they are already experts at sitting in front of a computer and grinding a game all day everyday. It will have negative long term consequences for online poker. Live poker will always be soft though.

Some people have never been poor.

A good player at my local casino was commenting on something he saw or watched where the idea that 80/90% of ways to play hands are fairly standard but it's the other 10% of spots what separate good/bad players.

Even if the new players joining the poker scene watch top pros in these spots they'll never be able to apply to become crushers straight off.

Ur deluded thinking newbs will become seasoned grinders cos they watched bigdogpck5 3bet with air otb cos mp was opening wide a lot.

Anything that gets ppl into poker and more importantly depositing on sites will help the poker scene grow and thrive . Nobody depositing will cause it to die slowly but def eventually .

ty
Yours is one of those few streams I do watch kutgw

Disagree.

We live in a time where tons of free information is already out there including tons of training videos all over the place including youtube.

Just from people watching others play alone won't make someone good. It sure can help them but if they don't implement things properly when they play or understand why so and so is doing this in a certain spot it can actually have a negative effect on people.

A lot of people want to go back and blame sites like Cardrunners but it's quite silly because if they didn't branch of to having some of the best cash game players in the world (at that time) doing videos for money then someone else would have came along and done the same thing. I use CR for an example because I used to read all the time people saying "Damn that Taylor Caby for making this info public" but someone would have and made money off of it if CR didn't grab the market first.

If anything Twitch will bring in some other people into poker and when they start out most likely they will struggle at first for a while trying to play like the guys they love to watch the most on Twitch so they are additional money feeding into the poker ecosystem.

Even for NVG this is about as bitchy a thread as they come and apparently the OP has taken a bunch out of the poker community. Laughable really. Grow a pair ffs.


+1 to Gordon Ramsey etc post. That was good.

What does being "poor" have to do with it? If you consider yourself smart and already made money poker, you have to think longterm. Yes 100k is a lot for a 20 year old, but for a 27 year old 100k really isn't that much anymore when you got a decent education and live in a highly developed country.

The average startingsalary for somebody with a Bachelors Degree in Computer-Science, is like 60k/year. If he is really good it's gonna be a lot more and the difference to poker is that it will increase rather than decrease. Also you got jobsecurity and your job has more prestige.

You guys toss around "you can't beat the game gfy" posts without realizing that it's going to happen to you too eventually. I used to make a 100k+/year living off of poker. Now, I can't beat the game anymore. Is that supposed to make me feel bad about myself?

I recognized that I can't make a quality living off of poker anymore so I quit the game before I lost back any significant part of my savings and got a job. And I actually feel more fulfilled now than I have from poker in a very long time. I have had a few poker friends that held on way too long trying to recreate the magic after the game had passed them by. I'm glad I realized I wasn't a winning player anymore and made out with the money I'd saved from cards.

Not being able to beat the game only means that it's time to transition into something else. Whether you win or lose I think it's important to not let poker define you as a person.

Of course you have to take all of this with a grain of salt. I can't make a living at poker anymore so I'm probably an idiot

I grew up in a relatively poor rural area. 100k/yr for a household is a dream for anyone from there, let alone 100k/yr individual. It just seems a little out of touch with reality when someone says "100k/yr isn't much." It's a lot, no matter how smart you are. Consider yourself pretty lucky if you consider it "not a lot."

OP you made a mistake here. This thread is counterproductive to your goal of having softer games. All you're doing is demotivating dead money. The regs will continue to grind regardless of this thread.

First off, if you told me I could make 100k/year working 30-50 hours/week and work 'til I'm 60 I'd book that in a heartbeat. I think nearly everyone I know would as well.

Second, "job prestige" is different for everyone, as is how they want to conduct their day-to-day. For me (and for now, until I can no longer do it or feel the trade off isn't worth it) I'll take less money (with the opportunity to make more) playing poker vis-a-vis a soul crushing commute and office job.

WRT free coaching on twitch. No matter how many hours of twitch streams you watch, it wont prepare you emotionally for going on downswings, mind****ing yourself into thinking youre playing bad, leveling, running deep in huge tournies, playing huge pots, etc. If youre emotionally unable to handle these things, you'll never be a great player. Doesn't matter how much coaching you get..

Well I wasn't talking about somebody living in a poor rural area. I was talking that some Regs might've quit the game because they got other ambitions(They might already have some savings from poker). Let's be honest being a professional pokerplayer is just not "cool" when you reach a certain age. If you got ambitions and consider yourself smart,you can make more than 100k/year or you can make 100k/year having a normal not frowned upon job + have jobsecurity.

Ofc you have to work for that as well, you gotta study and get good grades. I know a lot of people who are 27ish and make a ton of money and I certainly am confident enough to know that I can do that too.

You're projecting.

That may be half true. But even engineers and computer science majors don't make 100k/yr until they have a lot of experience and are very good. Or they have connections. It's not really that simple to just jump from 100k/yr in poker to 100k/yr in the tech industry.

Ofc not, but like I said poker isn't longterm either. You'll have 100k shortterm and then maybe poker is gone because people got sick of it and some other game is on the rise. Maybe legislation stops you from playing or like op is crying about games just got tough.

So maybe you earn 100k for ten more years, but what then? New job ? Yeah good luck with no jobexperience and trying to tell your future employee what you did the last 10 years. I come from an immigrant family, if you consider yourself smart got ambitions and are a hardworker there will be a way. I certainly know some pokerplayers who were making a lot, that quit the game to focus on their studies.

I agree poker isn't good long term. But **** the long term. I play poker because I like to play poker and I don't like working a real job. The money is extra. Anyone who gets into poker purely for the money these days is going to be sorely disappointed. But that's not much different than anything in life.