Quote:
Originally Posted by cianosheehan
It is never a good thing to have a large amount of fish leave the pool either. Even if the games do get marginally better, it is still a bad thing having a large proportion of the worlds playing population blocked out.
Well, we've been through that above. Most of the US fish left long ago because it was made difficult to get money onto the sites. There may be an odd few who jump through hoops to keep depositing.
Quote:
Poker, from a European perspective, is still an American game. People associate it with Vegas etc.
I think that's a well out of date view. When it was associated with the US it was more as a result of westerns (of which genre which vastly more films and TV has been made than anything featuring LV).
Now, most of the major poker sites are European (and none are US) and the playing pool appears as a homogenous international melee.
Quote:
It becomes harder to position if suddenly America doesn't play any more. Not saying it would die off, but it would force a shift in the global perspective of what poker is.
I think you seriously underestimate the abstraction level at which on-line poker players operate. Poker is a game of cards, not a substitute for a foreign holiday.
Quote:
With the closure of the US market, the whole industry would have to tighten its belt at least for a while to see how this effects them.
Not really. For one thing the 'whole industry' does not allow US players anyway. It might cause some players to leave non-US friendly sites in search of fishier pools but by and large it would just cause a drop in profits for the US friendly sites. However, as these operations are easily scalable that would not really be a problem for anyone other than the site investors who would see a reduced return (possibly only temporarily as worldwide, poker is still on the up).