I think its more tied to ease of depositing than specific legislation. A recreational player is just that, recreational. They aren't comfortable using their checking account directly or going to use WU. If it isn't easy they would rather buy Zynga chips or pink tractors for Farmville. And, if sites know casuals won't deposit, why market to them directly, or step up like Party did and give fish $50 or $100 free every now and then? I do miss old Party's ability to market to the casual player, but for that to happen again, a new easy ewallet is required. One high functioning alcoholic who makes 100k/yr who plays 20 hours a week can easily support 2-3 grinders if he can just rebuy at 2AM in the morning.

Yeah you can't really disagree with that. Party Poker definitely knew how to market to the right crowd and that's what I loved the site so much. I mean, looking back, if that site was available in its '03 form today, people would bitch nonstop about it. But I have such nostalgia for it now. There is a real lack of good bonuses or promos out there today to draw people in. All the sites have those "deposit $500, get $500 free" promos but you have to generate like $3,000 in rake to cash those out these days. Party practically gave money away. Remember those "20% bonus up to $100, 5x raked hands to clear" bonuses?? They were practically free money. As far as I know Party did pretty well for itself.

I play 25/50 cap 1000 on stars. All day long I go up against all in for a thousand bucks ace 2 suited, 22, kq suited, ect. My question is how the hell can it get any easier?

I missed the Party Poker free money stage of online poker but i agree completely with this. For grinders (like myself) it really comes down to the amount of recreational players there are. Reaching that audience is key to online poker being beatable. However, a great deal of the recreational audience thinks that online poker is all luck/rigged/illegal/ect. Reaching this audience and making it easier to put money online and ensuring that online poker is legal is the key to ensuring online poker be beatable for years to come.

To answer the original question though, I think online poker is close to the same it was a couple years ago and should not get too much harder. Yes players get better, but good players leave also. I'm 21 and about to finish college and get a real job (sigh) That means one less grinder out their playing 15 tables on sngs.

What i forgot to include is that several regs are also moving on to other things, which means the 'good' players are leaving, hence the game gets easier to beat

Interesting.
I've never played the 20BB cap games but maybe I should try them.
Maybe they are easier than the regular deeper cash games because the real sharks don't like playing that shallow.

do I? the best part was they had 6 skins and you could snag the bonus on all of them (and so could your garden gnomes). And they didnt care if you depoed, played it, then took the money out and stuck it on another site. You could literally fold every hand at .1/.2 (which was the lowest they offered at the time) and make 40BBs/100.

But, by the time the UIGEA passed, they were already up to 20x raked hands, and the bonuses were getting a lot sparser (and they were getting a lot tougher on the skin sites so it was harder to have multiple accounts at once.)

<<< had a marco express fold bot.

Could be. The deep cash games are much more difficult.

Anyone who thinks the fish will dry up should head down to the local casino and play with the old guys who have been terrible at poker every week for 30-40 years, or for that matter the hoards sitting around the bj and roulette tables.

Around 5 years ago I was worried that the games would eventually be filled up with rakeback grinders from parts of the world where cost of living is low and you can make more grinding small stakes than you can as a engineer/teacher/prof/doctor, but that hasn't really happened.

IMO we're in for a long slow decline in profitability, probably with occasional bumps up from legislation etc..

Sadly, the only one I did was Empire. After a while they began to crack down on the multiple skins thing but man what a goldmine that was. As I recall the Intertops skins had a similar deal going on. Pacific used to just put free money in your account.

The Party bonuses definitely got very weird for a while. It used to be every month, just like that. Soon it was player-specific and nobody could figure out who got what. Sometimes you'd log in and it would just be like "we have just given you $50 free, just play 500 raked hands before you cash it out"

I laughed sooo hard!!!!!!

thanks for posting about it

lol wtf r u talking about

I think only the middle limits will get harder.....

the micros/low stakes and the higher limits will always be easier to play. I know it sounds weird, but there will always be people who don't give a sh*t about the change in their pocket (micros) and there will always be people who have a lot of money and just want to fk around and gamble off 2-3k in their free time, in the privacy of their own home (higher stakes).

just my 2c....anyone disagree?

While this is true, one thing legislation would do is make depositing easier. That was one of the points I made in my post. The recreational players will get bored waiting to deposit or simply not go through the steps required to make a deposit. Legislation in the US would solve that. The drunk guy coming home from the bar could deposit within 20 seconds(no matter how drunk he was) and be playing in less than a min.!

Again, I agree but if legislation were to pass wouldn't the "Online Poker is Rigged" crowd feel more comfortable that it was regulated? They would atleast give it a few more shots before crying "Online Poker is Rigged"!

These are valid points that to some degree legislation would help. The sites would still have to do there part and the legislation would have to be good. If there were huge fee's associated with the sites then that would cut into Bonus Programs and Advertising to the Recreational Players.

I think a lot hangs in the balance of future legislation. There will always be fish and pros, fish have gotten better since 2003, but they're still pretty bad.

If legislation comes in that makes it harder to deposit or withdraw, the game gets harder as we lose a large base of casual players. If legislation makes it easier to get money online, advertise, etc., we could see a large influx of casual players, similar to 2003.

[x] Great US public math education.
[x] Alcohol aids poker playing.
[x] More and More people with broadband every year worldwide.
[x] People are just smart and learn from mistakes.



No way you can beat poker next Thursday when the Party bonus codes get mailed out and they all work.

Plenty of sharks from countries with low wages waiting to take the place of western sharks...

Juk

What makes you think theyre not playing now?
this isnt nec. true. You could expect pretty tight controls on depositing and WDing if online poker were legalized.

I know a lot of players personally that do not play online because they deposited and lost and think its rigged(these are the players we would want to see traffic from LOL). These same players will most likely atleast give it a try if it was regulated. As I stated before, whether or not they stay any length of time is anyone's guess.

Why do you think it would be harder to deposit? Also, in the early post I said good US legislation which is key, IMO. Either way, I wouldn't expect it to be harder to deposit with legislation of any kind. The government is going to be taxing the money, so even they will want to make the deposits fairly easy. The Casino's, PPA, and US Government all benefit for the deposits to be quick and smooth. I do think we will see more accounts seized for colluding, multi-accounting, and bots. I would think that they would maintain a similar system as now(but tougher). The trouble comes when you try to withdraw. I don't see it in anyone's interest to make deposits tougher. In fact I'm sure the Casino's, PPA, and existing sites will lobby hard to make sure the deposit options are easy.

Maybe what the game really needs is some good looking super charismatic player to win the Main Event, who does loads of crazy stuff and showing off at the table which will bring high viewing figures on tv, just to see him play.

More pros on tv really need to get that if they act out (more of them like
Tony G and Mike Matusow for example) on tv its going to in the end bring more money in their pockets.

Credit card deposits will never be allowed with the "Family Values" crowd passing laws. You can't even buy lottery tickets with credit cards. Maybe not harder after legislation, but not easier either.

At least in my state (Idaho) this is not the case. It's just vendors only make 5-7% on there sale of lotto products & the CC flat/% fee severally cuts into to the profit (esp with the repeated purchases ticket scratchers seem to make).

I think it will get harder just because there will be a more varied mix of players per table. Now you have 80% TAGS and 20% LAGS....I think in a few years we'll start seeing something like 50% TAGS, 30% LAGS and 20% MANIACS (But good ones, that actually use EV when they play). I also see a passive trend developing, one that adapts to today's super aggro style of play....more limping pre just to get more EV against aggs, more slow playing/trapping, etc....

I have no idea.