I think it's gonna bring fish too. first not all streamer are good at all.
second if someone see a streamer play poker and see him win 2k in a night, that might be enough for him to deposit. not everyone will go all full study mode and destroy the micros. I bet most of them will take the ''twitch knowledge'' they acquired and use it very poorly.

I'm not saying youre wrong but I think this twitch thing could be good/neutral or bad it's very hard to say.

and lol at calling twitch worse than black friday. black friday / worldwide regulations are by so ****ing far the worst thing that happened in poker

lol, you are straight up moronic. Twitch isn't a learning tool. At all. It's like saying I can play "insert sport here" because I watched it on TV. Or there was a "coach's corner" afterwards on how to "do sport here".

You, as a player, still have to put in tons of hours to become good to great at the game. It's not like you read a book and you're instantly good. It doesn't work like that.

Will there be an online poker boom? What are we talking about? Back in 2003 boom? No. People were idiots then. But if online poker got regulated and allowed people to deposit within the united states of america, you will have a million new players who are ATROCIOUS. Just go play live for a few hours. Poker is still swimming with tons of fish.

Actually it couldn't be further from the truth. Twitch is part of the BILLION dollar gaming industry, and 20-30 yr olds are dropping thousands a month. People keep repeating that Twitch is just full of broke 15 year olds, and it is true there are tons of them there, but they also get older and when they can actually play poker that they saw that one time on Twitch they will have not remembered that awesome strat advice. There are also tons of young adults who do have incomes, and have historically spent thousands of it. The new wave of pay to pay games that have been coming out and advertised on tv are making a killing, just insane amounts of money.

I don't agree with Tim, but you, and many others are missing the point. If a fish learns to play a reasonable preflop range, which is perfectly feasible to do from watching a Twitcher, then it's suddenly really tough to make much money off them. We need people who lose at 50bb/100, a big density of people who lose at 6-7bb/100 isn't sufficient. This is necessary to beat the rake. It's not like watching sport, it's like watching a chess player not open with a4 or Nc3. It's pretty easy to dramatically decrease your loss rate with one or two changes in the beginning.

So I skimmed most of it but I read the start and the end and it seems people don't get that bad poker players doesn't equal money in the midstakes poker ecosystem. How many successful businessmen making 6 figures are watching twitch streams? And there's no trickle up effect making micros softer just means more regs are able to grind their way up. Morons dumping $100 at a time at 25nl aren't going to make midstakes any softer. The way to make it easier to make a living at poker is to attract people who will deposit thousands of dollars and play midstakes with it, not the video game fans in their parents' basement putting the money from their paper route into it.

Also people blaming black friday on poker getting tougher are having selective memory. Sure it wasn't great for poker but there were a ton of people who used to win and struggled to win before black friday. I haven't really played serious online poker in the last year or two but I logged some hands post-BF and I'm just not convinced that was a huge factor in games getting tougher. I just think more and more fish are realizing there's skill involved and either trying to improve or moving down/switching to live and there's continuing to be a stream of players whose intention is to make a living. Whether or not they succeed they're typically not going to lose enough to lose after rake and they're not going to be dumping enough money to actually help the midstakes poker ecosystem.

Another non-believer.

the us market was like 3x the closest market in terms of money lost, if not more. I can't remember exactly, but that used to be a search function on PTR. USA was the majority of the poker economy. Most fish, most regs, most bad regs, most slightly losing sne players, most everything.

I believe you to be horribly misguided on this thought.

It was at least 3x and if you factor in bodog which didnt import correctly on PTR, it would have been even more.

Americans are the only way to make poker good again for the average to bad reg.

An all french market would be good though, but euros always find a way to butt in and destroy the games(when the bots are not doing it for them).

Damn you ***** euros with your education, rational thoughts and desire to win.


Italians are pretty good too when other euros leave them alone. When bots are offline, you get 3-4 massive fish per table on italian sites but bots are only offline 4-5 hrs a day

It was necessary. Pay lower rake and see what is possible.

No one here actually cares how many people are playing, they only care how tough the games are. If there were 5 mega-whales playing 5knl every day and me I'd be insanely happy I wouldn't give a **** that the poker economy was close to 0. The only metric I'm using is my experience on the toughness of the 200-600nl 6m/fr nlhe games shortly before and after BF. In my experience it was a pretty steady decline ever since I started playing back in 2007. There were plenty of people getting real jobs/going broke/resorting to scamming before black friday I think people forget about that.

Indeed the games were getting harder before black friday, they get harder all the time, the game always evolves. Black Friday caused many of those rich business men to no longer deposit and play, destroying it even more. There is also a trickle up effect, as there always has been. Medium regs beat easier games, move up and lose, rinse repeat. Sometimes the good ones win and stay, this is how the game works. Obviously they don't contribute as much as rich whales, but it is still there.

This is how poker has always worked, it just started evolving faster (like literally everything else) because of the internet. 2003 was a pretty unique event but the games haven't been better since the moneymaker boom. The games will never be better than the largest economy in the world deciding to learn poker all at the same time. It is impossible. They were in a (natural) perpetual decline from that point on.

Its a fact that the US was the largest driving factor behind the online poker economy and that black friday ABRUPTLY ended that so I am not sure how you can blame anything else for the present situation.

This is ignoring that the online poker economy was never sustainable in the first place

See I just don't think you have a grasp on how the poker economy works if you think this is the case. When moving up, most people bumhunt more than usual, cut tables, and really focus. There's also 2 pretty huge factors you're ignoring:

1. to be a net positive to the economy a player has to lose before rake, and in order to allow players to win they need to lose enough before rake to make up for the rake of the other players as well.
2. especially today, most people who are beating a lower limit enough to make a living from it are going to be winners the next level up too. There are very few players beating 100nl for a decent clip that would lose before rake at 200nl, particularly given that when they move up they'll play less tables and bumhunt a little more.

the funny thing is that Tim Stone is a known seat scripter, which is far more harmful to the poker economy than twitch

agree with zach.

some circumstantial stuff: fatdan finished up sne abroad before switching to live and killed just killed 600nl at a ridiculous rate at the end of 2011. he was hardly a crusher before that.

i did the reverse. played live for a bit (which really opened up my eyes to spots i was losing a ton of value), and my winrate was much much higher when i made my return. i made 200k in 6 months of play in 2012 before quitting in 2013 (was on fewer tables, but higher stakes and winrate)

jrock has done jrock things always and forever (veeeeeeeeeery slight decrease in winrate 2008-2011 and 2014-2015)

People complain about twitch somehow no one thinks about bots. We had even in 2011 I think (can't recall Internet post properly) bots that were destroying mid and highstakes games. You are naive if you think that it hasn't got worse since then. You would be impress how much better the games would get everywhere if the bots were gone.

Only Stars are fighting with bots and even they have problems. The rest of the networks just don't care/don't have resources.
Imagine that you have a winning even small stakes bot. In countries like Russia,Ukraine,Belarus it is very easy to buy fake identities. suddenly you can replicate your bot into like 30-40 players at least and create a bot farm. It's already been happening for many years.

Sites uniting in fight with the bots and hiring some stats savvy players and games would be at least 2012 if not better. The reality is that either they don't care or actively support bot play (Ipoker comes to mind)

All players don't do this though. Weaker players move up too, probably more frequently than regs because of poor br strategy. They sometimes go on heaters when they deposit, jump up to too high a level, and bust. In thinking about it though, you could just group those players in with the business types who deposit and dump at mid stakes.

That won't happen, every single time i post about bots every single possible reg comes around and tells me to shut up and that bots dont exists when half+ the winning players are bots on every site(and most likely stars too)

Ive only read a few posts and it seems to be a mixed bunch on the topic. I have watched a few Twitch feeds from some knowns AND unknowns, and I don't really see it being bad for the game. So a new player might get a few tips, but I doubt any new player or bad player is improving so dramatically from watching a feed. I also agree that it might bring new players in the game in the long run. which is always good.

If you don't like Twitch, then are you against coaching sites? Personal coaches? Strategy books? Any other learning tool? It isn't any different. If a player REALLY WANTS to learn and be better, then he will find a way and use all the tools available. Adding Twitch is just another option out there among MANY options to learn and get better at the game. I think itll bring in more bad players and those that want to give it a shot, then players who are going to put 100% dedication into it and become strong. It isn't going to hurt the game anymore or any less, and this concern is overblown IMO.

This mentality unfortunately is what is really killing poker. Twitch and other mediums, whether you feel they educate more people about ranges/hand strengths etc are actually bringing back some popularity back to the game. It's not all young gamers either, but even so, that is a large demographic that will deposit and take shots, and who knows...maybe even fall in love with the game and get better? There shouldn't be anything wrong with new players finding their passion for poker and getting better and to suggest otherwise just perpetuates the stereotypical selfish attitude of a lot poker players.

Staples said something today about this that was spot on, he said we can't grow the game by keeping it a secret. Like I have posted previously, everyone underestimates the power of tilt and how new players don't exercise proper BR management. Those two powerful truths plus a big influx of new players born out of Twitch equals more dead money in the poker-ecosystem which is obviously good for the regs but ultimately poker as a whole benefits simply from a larger pool of people all around the world playing.

SPR was as destructive to peoples winrates as anything else and it came from a book

Also its mostly tournaments on Twitch, we all love Tourney players in our cash games...

That's a sound argument. I'm assuming you have personal experience with forgetting how to divide being the key to poker success.

You should write a book!

Do you guys realize how much it takes to be good at poker?