They used to ban people from streaming poker on twitch.tv. I'm glad they changed their policy.

the structure of gaming community has changed a lot recently, i believe that there are a lot of them with some money to spare - which is shown by millions made in microtransactions and subs by gaming companies.

Awesome.

The problem almost all Gamers are under the Age of 21. If the Legal Age to play Poker in the U.S was 18 this would have a better chance of bringing in new players

That's actually not true, the ESA (Entertainment Software Association - trade group for games) reports 39% of gamers are age 36+. 32% between 18-35. Would be nice they parsed the data to include 21+.

http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2014.pdf

False. 62% of the gamers in the US is above the age of 21. I'm inclined to think your argument is valid in regards to people who watch twitch.

yeah, but in most countries legal age is 18 (everywhere in europe, afaik), and you must realize that almost all of online poker is happening outside of US at the moment.

actually you are right ill back your argument up with facts lol… my bad for assuming http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/29/ga...-on-a-console/

also found some articles that say the average age of twitch viewers is 21 http://www.fastcompany.com/3025010/f...s-viewed-per-m

I wonder if there has been a change of policy at twitch, I believe previously you weren't allowed to stream poker there.

I think this trend is somewhere from good to great for poker. Twitch is well beyond only americans and whether those people have $$$ to spend on poker at this exact moment in time doesn't really matter that much. If new players like it, they will find a way (good or bad) to get some money to play with. I imagine streaming will become more and more popular and hopefully it starts to become a thing people do more of, which in turn will hopefully help get poker out there to more and more people.

A few people said that they don't think it can be good for poker but it certainly cannot be bad. Xxxxx number of people will now be exposed to it, whereas in the past none of these people might have ever found out anything about it. I would like to think 19 year old Steve is out there watching Jcarvers streams over a period of time, falls in love with poker and in a few years starts making real money deposits when he makes some extra money but without his initial attraction to Jcarver/twitch poker streams he spends that money on something else (dreams ftw)

good for the game

Honestly, poker is dying a death. Anything is good right now. Twitch is a new avenue. Really you need to make poker appeal to a youtube audience though. While a lot are too young now you might at least get people talking about the game again. You only need to know of someone who makes a lot of money playing poker to get people interested.

Jason must not like his hair because he wears a hat in literally every pic.

I've been watching my fair share of HEX ( an online TCG similar to Magic the Gathering ) on Twitch over the last couple of months.

At times I've wondered whether Poker could be a success on Twitch. Great to see JS making it happen. He seems to be a great guy, I'm looking forward to following his Twitch adventures.

Btw, to the people saying that gamers have no money to gamble. There were several people buying the 10K USD pledge for the HEX TCG Kickstarter, which basically buys you virtual cards.

the amount of money they drop on CS:GO skins and LoL/DOTA2 skins, I know I've dropped 200 bucks and I'm casual as ****.

In regards to how good the stream/twitch will be for poker I'm not really sure. Can only help it, though?

Just like to add myself to the list of fans of Jason Somerville. The guy gives a half hour video out every day in which he plays reasonable stakes and very articulately and interesting describes his thought process. The guy really knows how to play midstakes poker well (and high stakes also if his results are anything to go by) and when I'm playing these days I often think 'Hmm... What did JCarver say about a situation like this?' as much as I think about what I've learned from books/experience/this forum etc.

I've found his RunItUp series to be a really excellent learning tool.

I've thought about this before but two things
1) its only fun for a viewer if you could see the streamers hole cards
2) if he's doing this live why can't i just sit him hu at the table he's streaming at and have twitch open at the same time

he was doing it on a 3minute delay

1) He basically records it live most of the time then let's the viewers see it a day or two later; you do see the hole cards.

2) When he's doing a live stream on Twitch he has a 3 minute delay.

When can we expect to see our boy ChicagoJoey making the switch to Twitch?!

this is spot on imo

Poker dying a death is the same as you dying a death.

Think about that.

There are a ton of gamers on Twitch (streamers and viewers) who spend hundreds for virtual items in games indicating there is a market there for them to use their disposable income also on poker. However, the vast majority of those on Twitch spend their money on LoL, Diablo, Dota2 etc. and some other major games most of which are very sociable encouraging teamwork and playing with friends. Poker is very antisocial, discourages teamwork and playing with friends, so to expect a huge influx of people to deposit $20 for poker instead of buying the latest whoever-the-**** to play with and impress their friends I think is stretching it. Also, gamers especially for the games most highlighted by Twitch are grinders to the maximum.

But good luck to all involved I really hope it blows up, maybe the adults funding the kids on there will see poker being played and that's how it blows up who knows, but we hope for the best.

Just watched some of a couple of his videos. I think they are really good. I think there's enough strategy to make it appealing to players as a learning tool even if he never really gives away a whole lot, but it's definitely accesible for the lesser experienced person or someone that is completely new to poker. It would be a complete fail if he was using a HUD and was often saying things like "ok so we're going to defend in position against a 14% 3-bet range here because bla bla bla." He's more like "this guy is real aggressive and folding is boring so flop please dealer." He does a really good job of making it funny and he basically is talking the entire time. This is the sort of thing that is good for poker, the only problem is that a lot of his audience is likely american and there's not really anywhere for them to play, but hopefully it reaches enough of an audience world wide to attract new players to the game.

I've watched jcarvers for a little but not as many as joeys but i think jc got a right good mix between strat / general talk and doesn't go too deep into gto/ range merging etc.

I think joeys stance on no strat on podcasts is a little condescending to avg viewers as if to say we know all the best plays etc and not gonna tell you jus because we had to learn and were doing it for free.

I think good content podcasts are rare and joeys and jcarvers are the better ones and i think joey should relax his strict "no strat at any costs" on his pod casts as i think jus little bits of comments would def add to them. They don't have to go into deep detail about every hand but sometimes jus little bits of input would be better that than as i said before the seemingly condescending attitude - oh its strat - nothing shall be said anymore on this segment move onto non strat speak.