If or when us players can no longer play online poker ( for money ) what site's will most Europeans play or network,just trying to get some feedback as i am European myself.

Regards

I'd imagine the rooms that disallow American players won't have much of a change in volume or softness of games.

arent europeans the only ones who play ipoker and the like!

damm if no euopeans online surely poker will go away. its bad enuff wo americans.

it seems as if rooms give eurpoe dudes a ton of deposit and wd options not available to others. must be europe is a big market to them.

Well the games will get softer! ;-) I would assume all that will happen is that Stars and Full Tilt would have to become more Eurodonk friendly and run the better tourneys on our times for a change!

In all honesty though, i think the better European players, who avoid the tougher games at Stars and FT would probably move back to playing on the better software.

If Stars disallows American players once the country can no longer deposit money, it would make the games nice and soft.
Last thing anyone wants is all the losing American players to bust out for good, but you have thousands of the American sharks hanging around.

If Stars lets them stay and the games go to hell, I'll probably give ipoker a try or return to Party.

Some people say it is stupid to play on Stars or FT now, if you have the option of playing on non-American sites.

what am i missing.


you lose players so games get easier?

Because it's not as easy for US players to get money onto and off sites it means that the casual, 'soft' players don't bother and the US players still playing tend to be the better ones who know (or believe) they can make money consistently.

Take those away and the games will get softer.

For non-US sharks a clampdown on on-line poker by the US authorities would be the best thing that could happen (apart, perhaps from the removal of all US restrictions which would see a flood of US fish returning).

i dont see how a shrinking pool of players is good for anybuddy.

If post #7 doesn't make it clear to you then I doubt anything will.

But that's not what you asked. This is what you asked:

And qpw nailed it.

He only nailed it if his implied assumption is in fact correct, i.e. in the present state on the net American sharks hurt more the PS/FTP games than American fish help these games. If that were true, you would probably see PS traffic dropping, not rising, for obvious reasons.

+1

Juk

They also hurt other sites because Germans, Russians, etc don't want to play at Stars/FT when it's full of US sharks.

Juk

From everything I've seen, it's absolutely true. I can't speak for NL, but at FL I can find much softer tables on non-US friendly sites. From what I've seen and heard, I don't think it's much different for NL.

Don't forget, soft sites aren't the only things that attract players. I'm sure plenty of Euro sharks are attracted to Stars and FT by things like good software, good cs, and a larger player pool. It's hard to 16-table on many smaller sites. I think the tough games at Stars and FT are mostly created by the skewed American shark-fish ratio AND the attractiveness of their sites to the Euro multi-tablers.

All that being said, even though it's likely the complete loss of American players would result in fishier sites, I'd rather not see it. It would be bad for online poker overall, and there's already plenty of sites without Americans. Those sites might even become a little tougher if Stars and FT suddenly lost a large portion of their player base and some of the Euro multi-tablers started changing sites. Plus, I even like a few of the Americans I know through this forum.

I don't think anything's changing anytime soon anyway. If OP created this thread just because of the recent clarification/changes of banking rules because of the UIGEA, he's jumping the gun in a big way IMO.

party poker.

In order to compete with Ongame/Ipoker, Stars and Full Tilt
need to bump their reward/rakeback to attract eurodonks.

I used to play on Ipoker, but have spent the last few months multi tabling on stars. Ipoker is softer but the software is inferior.
How many tables can you currently play on Ipoker? Is it possible to stack or cascade them and have the table that requires attention to pop up? Also how does their bonus/reward scheme compare to that of stars?

To those saying that the games will get easier:

Do you not think the US sharks will find ways to deposit anyway (or move to canada or some ****)?

edit - thats a serious question btw (not rhetorical)

Indeed, but it seems a fair assumption.

Of course, the real assumptions are:

1) That those who take their poker more seriously will go to greater lengths to maintain their freedom to play.
2) That those who take their poker more seriously are better at it than those who don't.

I think assumption (1) is a dead certainty and assumption (2) is likely to be true in more cases than not.

Not really. The US is only one country. Although online poker seems to be contracting in the US in the world at large it's on the increase.

We can only hope for the best of all outcomes, i.e. Barack Obama starts to restore freedoms lost to US citizens under bush and US fish return to the pool.

Yes, but less of them will. The harder it gets, the more that will drop off. There are plenty of part-time sharks, and others who won't have the will and/or means to keep jumping through hoops.

Hopefully it's all a moot point.

It would be so awesome if the U.S. got rid of the UIGEA and fully legalized poker. I'm not American, but that would just be incredible with the likely flood of new players and new poker sites competing against each other with rakeback deals and bonuses!

How big is poker in the US for the casual players??

Would it be HUGE if the UIGEA was repealed? I know that a majority of Eurodonks are casual players, but its still really not that huge in these parts.

IMHO, if the US came back properly online, it would also draw in more people from around the world, simply with the influence the US has. On the flip side of that, if the US withdrew completely I think not only would Stars and full Tilt suffer, but so would the rest of us.

So, IMO, for the good of online poker and poker as a whole, we need to US back online ASAP.

They would get Eurodonk friendly if they relocated to within EU/ESS (Malta, Gibraltar, Cyprus etc) making themselves taxfree for basically all players in Euroland, not just brits + some others.

I don't understand why FT and PS owners don't do this. They would get a LOT of new customers. The first one who makes this (FT or PS) will make a lot of money. For example, I know lots of scandis who never ever sets foot in FT or PS because they are not taxfree. Most of them aren't even winning players.

Top US players will definitely find a way to continue playing. As you go down the ranks the % of players willing to make such a big lifestyle change in order to play on will drop very quickly. Anyone making <$50/hour will probably just go get a job rather than pack up and move country.

Unless there is some widely known loop hole, I don't think the Euro sites will see a massive influx of US nits at all.

Would you care to give some reasoning for that statement?

It seems contrary to the opinion of several who have provided reasoning why that would not be the case.

It would be nice to get a whole new school of fish on board but I think 'need' is overstating the case.