For the most of you it seems, you've been around since the poker boom. I'm a young buck who plays 1-2 / 2-5, and big topic is how players are always getting better. Games aren't as easy as they once where....

My question is, will another poker boom every happen? What would it take...

I doubt it. You would have to be Nostradamus to know for sure of course.

A 'poker boom' would require another game that is hard to master popping up out of no where. In today's high tech world where information is so readily available I agree that it will be difficult to match the run that NL poker has had.

The entertainment value should always be there, but the boom 'survived' for so long due to a lack of information out there to the new player. The advent of TV and books .. and then streams ... was initially a great way for a Pro to make a few (a lot) of extra bucks and continue to bring in new blood. But once 'everyone' 24 and up got educated it's now pretty difficult to 'pick on' players unless they only reason that they haven't played was because they weren't allowed in the room due to age.

There was 2 different conversations on PokerGo about how the Pros keep trying to come up with different games for the Mix and a new game will be hot for about 2-3 months (maybe) and then be 'mastered' going forward. GL

If broad legalization of online poker occurs, there will be a poker resurgence. A broader pipeline iof new and recreational players will be opened, and the games will become softer (both live and online).

There will likely not ever be another boom like the early 2000's. Several factors combined to make that possible
1. Mystique of the game-Hold'em was transitioning from an arcane game that only pros played into something accessible to everyone. Movies like Rounders, and televised poker tournaments were helping that transition
2. Players at all levels-While there were some very good pros in the early 2000's, there was a lot larger poker middle and lower class. You could sit at a table and not be worried that 7 out of the 10 players were grinders with 50K+ live hands worth of experience. This made the game less difficult to get into
3. The dream-of course the Moneymaker effect let everyone think 'If him, why not me' and let everyone have the dream that there wasn't much to being a pro player, or even a winning amateur.
4. Pipeline-with so many online sites, it was easy, cheap, and non-intimidating to learn how to play hold'em.

So there was a desire to learn the game, a way for people to learn the game, easy ways for them to join the game, and an underlying dream that drove the whole process.

Poker has now matured such that even if the pipeline opens back up, the other factor that nurtured the boom are gone. Legalizing online poker again would definitely help, but the days of any schlub who reads supersystem becoming a winning player are long gone.

Agreed, the resurgence of online poker in the US would really be the only way. The ability to satellite tons of players into large live tournaments and bloat the prize pools and advertise the turn $xx into $xxxxxxxxxxxx (basically the Moneymaker effect) would be the only thing that could really make a large impact.

I could see there being somewhat of a boom if online poker gets explicitly legalized and regulated in the US on a national level. I think there would have to be a change of who is in charge in national politics before that happens.

Small plug.... you can do the Poker players alliance daily action plan each day to help... just google PPA Daily action plan its on facebook, just a few tweets and social media likes/shares, cant hurt!

It actually can.

People have finite emotional reserves and can reach a fatigue state where they basically run out of ****s to give. Tweets and likes and other low cost engagement activities take away time and emotion that could be spent on more productive endeavors.

To be fair, low cost engagement can also raise awareness where awareness is low. The net effect (positive minus negative) probably depends on what your engagement level would be otherwise. That is, if you weren't aware that people are trying to pass X legislation and would otherwise have done nothing, tweeting and liking is better than what you would have done. If you otherwise would have volunteered for a Congressional campaign but spent all your time on Facebook and Twitter, net negative.

One thing I noticed before and after Black Friday happened, the poker players I know all stopped playing online because it was impossible. But we were all online playing on FT and PS and making trips to the casino occasionally. I personally didnt have a lot of funding to put into poker so I stuck to 1/2NL.

After BF, the homegames picked up a bunch and the casino started getting a huge amount of traffic, especially the poker room. The poker room was jammed everyday I couldnt believe how many people came out of the woodwork because they wanted to play. Casinos offered more games and tourneys and changing up their "high hand" and "bad beat" jackpots.

Sometimes the waiting lists were so long that we couldnt even get a table. I can recall waiting for 3 hours or more and basically being forced to play different variation of poker or turning to the slots...

I eventually put poker on hold and the slots kind of took over because it was giving me more stimulation than poker.

So internet poker went into a black hole, and caused brick and mortar to blow up again.

While I'm ranting I mightas well answer the OP directly.

Another poker boom in the near future is very unlikely IMO. In addition to the criteria that SpewingIsMyMove listed above, one key criteria is that for a boom to happen, market penetration has to be low. For example, Coke isn't going to boom, because basically everyone on the planet who wants to drink Coke drinks Coke already. Poker boomed in part because society transitioned from a place where like 20% of the population knew about it to 80% in the space of 5 years. That only happens once a generation.

And that people know about poker already is NOT good news for another reason - for many people, that interaction they had was negative. Kids stole from their parents to play. College students dropped out of school to play. Despite what any court says, poker is perceived as gambling. And gambling is perceived to ruin lives. (As a side note poker IS gambling and gambling DOES ruin many lives but for this rant only the perception matters.)

If you want another poker boom, first, you're gonna have to wait for a bunch of socially conservative people to die off (or at least become socially isolated enough so that their opinions get ignored).

Secondly, the whole image of poker has to change. And I'll make no secret of my dislike of the PPA for their failure to address this aspect - parading a bunch of 20-somethings around telling people how Black Friday affected their livelihood was one of the worst things that poker advocates could have done. It just reinforced all the negative stereotypes the public has about poker. "Great!" you can hear people yell at their TVs, "Go get a real job, snowflake!"

My suggestion for changing the face of poker? Stop putting 20-somethings holding up bricks of $100s. Reframe poker as the All-American Family Man game. Meet Joe American, he works 8 hours a day and reads his kids a bedtime story, who the **** is the federal government to tell him he can't fire off a few pennies into cyberspace after his kids fall asleep? Meet Bill American, he and his college buddies used to have Tuesday night poker games, now they live across the country, why the **** is it so hard with modern technology for them to keep having their Tuesday nights together?

Finally, I think poker players need to change. The massive influx of new palyers 15 years ago led to an astounding number of mediocre poker players today who feel increasing pressure to bleed every last bit from the only people they can beat - the truly ignorant. You see it all over this forum, people more than willing to ruin a recreational player's night for a few hundred bucks. 15 years ago when there was a new player every night, burning bridges like that was sustainable. In 2017? You get a new player a ... month?

I don't expect that a huge number of poker players will change. Instead, they just have to get crushed hard enough so they quit. The unfriendliest people aren't top pros, anyway. So games will get tougher, tough players will move down, and crush the mediocre players. And over time, poker will return to a state where a bunch of people haven't heard about it and thw time will be ripe for a new boom.

Probably not nationally, but I think small booms can happen locally if a local casino utilizes the same strategy that local retailers utilize to bring customers in - marketing. In this case, obviously marketing targetted to new players, like free lessons and a variety of new player promos. Seems like about the only way to me.

As stated above, there's lots of reasons that online poker isn't coming back to the boom era level of interest. One thing I'll add is that the internet is a completely different place today compared to 15 years ago. At that time, there were very few outlets to allow people to interact online. There was no Facebook, Twitter, etc. Poker was about it, other than porn. There was little regulation because nobody had considered that it would be something they would need to regulate. Today there's lots of other choices and a teenager today looking to make it big would be into his or her Youtube channel or looking to crush Fantasy sports.

The second factor is that there was a tremendous amount of stimulus due to sites feeding off their deposits. That went into advertising and paying their "pros" who often would degen it away. We're all going to be wiser about that going forward.

That said, no-limit hold 'em as the "recognized" poker game has lasted about 15 years. That's not bad compare to Pokemon Go, for example.

Good post. Short sighted nerds also ruined poker and are still ruining poker. The type who show up to their local high stakes game (typically a 5/5 or 5/10 game) wearing sweats, talking about fish, and playing online poker on their tablets while they play the live game.

It's incredible how short sighted this mentality is. Do they ever consider things from the fish perspective????

Have sat at the table with loud mouthed cliquey regs not only using excessive poker jargon but openly using the term 'fish'. Unbelievable. Three months on, I think one of those two guys (the louder one) is busto. He still keeps coming to the room but I only see him railing/ BS-ing with regs, not actually playing.

That's certainly true, but there are also a lot of players who were never in for the long run. Why would somebody in 2017 worry about poker in 2020 if they have no interest in playing beyond 2019 anyway?

Whenever somebody complained to me that players like me were bad for the game because we coached and also provided information for free, my answer was: I never claimed to care about the long term health of the game. I am trying to make some money now and don't plan on still playing for a living in 3 years. Do you think a McDonalds cashier cares for the long term future of the fastfood industry?

Fundamentally, providing information for free doesn't necessarily hurt the long term health of the game of poker. Static players (that is, people who don't intend to improve) frequently assume it does because they see poker skill on a scale of 1 to 10 (and almost always they will rank themselves a 9 or 10). The more 5s versus 4s or 8s vs 7s, the smaller their edge and they can't survive. Dynamic players understand that there's no upper limit. They think poker skill runs 1 to 1,000,000, and the best players in the world may be 20 or 30 now but that goes up over time. Two good players can easily start an arms race which decimates the field.

Of course if you are a jerk about it, you can also hurt the table by giving advice (like giving advice at the table).

So your point is a non-sequiteur, that is, even if you had every intention of playing for a living long term, giving out free advice can be totally consistent with it. Specifically, at higher stakes, pros may depend on bringing people up to a certain skill level - it's not the 1s and 2s that are the fish, it's the 9s and 10s who may even beat the lower level games.

I think the cashier analogy is apt, but you've described it wrong - in your example the cashier is trying hard, not a slacker. That is, it'd be like a store manager that is yelling at a cashier for teaching his coworkers how to be better cashiers. Most people would (correctly) perceive the manager to be the one in the wrong, not the cashier.

Not like before. It would take legalizing online poker nationwide. I still don't see it happening like before. The mainstream has gotten over it.

I'm not sure what this is referring to. We're talking about Live Casino right? The $40NLHE game at Commerce Casino has the dumbest people and worst competition I have ever seen in my life, for anything. And It was never a hard game.

What makes it loose is the fact that it's a $1-2NLHE game you should be able to buy in for $200. So these pots end up being like $80-$120+ pots and you end up having a bunch of people shoving with nothing over pot odds. Except they don't think about "pot odds" it's more like, "I already have $5 in the pot, might as well shove $35."

The $300 table max PLO8 also at Commerce is a MUCH tougher game.

The stereotype about online players clamming up live is absolutely true.

Last time I was at Commerce I exploded at these group of 21 year olds wearing PokerStars shirts taking as long as they were to act. I finally became one of those old people screaming for floor all the time.

ONLINE THEIR CLICKING BUTTONS! HERE THEY TAKE SO ****ING LONG TO ACT!

Pool rooms sprang up everywhere after The Hustler, then again after The Color of Money, over 20 years later. So:

1. Make Rounders sequel (it's been about 20 years, can you believe it?)

2. ???

3. Profit!

EDIT TO ADD: You could even compeletely rip off the Color of Money formula! Matt Damon has been out of the game for years; stumbles over young hot-shot prodigy; teaches him the ropes, gets frustrated by kid dancing around the table after winning pots; cool music throughout; who says no?

I am in the UK so ymmv.

I think there could be another poker boom easily. Very few people play poker regularly, single figures percentages, maybe 1%. Pokerstars has 100k entries at peak hours, thats probably around 25k actual players. Out of a potential player pool of billions. There is a lot of scope for growth. Legalisation in the US is probably a prerequisite and the ending of local pools such as Italy, Spain etc. But the vast majority of people have never played poker seriously and the increased gamification of online offerings is designed to appeal to this segment. It could happen.

And while we're at it, let Moneymaker win another WSOP main event with those token sunglasses bluffing Sam Farha yet again, let everyone satellite in through PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, and televise a heads up HORSE cash game between Phil Ivey and fish Tom Dwan out of that hole he's hiding in!

YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!