Hi there,
Im a newbie. Personally I am really enjoying the heads up battles that have been popping up this year. What impact, if any, do you think these have on the growth of game? Good, bad, negligible?

I think at the very least it makes for drama, people pick sides, etc. It drives a lot of engagement from what I've seen.
Many thanks.

Didn't you open a thread about this allready few weeks ago?

Negligible because I don't think the general population knows much, if anything, about them and for poker to grow we need more interest by the general population.

It's a retention-vs-acquisition thing. Reminds me a little of private giving, such as booster clubs in college athletics or donor support for museums, etc. One objective is getting new people to start giving for the first time, and the other key is getting existing donors to raise their levels of support.

To extend that analogy back to the topic at hand, a surge in heads-up challenges or tournament events will almost only to do the latter. It won't drive new players to poker, but it could rekindle waning interest in the game from those already around it. I know it did for me — I feel like I followed poker more during the first Galfond challenge and the Negreanu-Polk match than I had since pre-BF days.

On a wider scale, this is how I feel about something like PokerGo. It probably does next to nothing in terms of bringing new people to poker, but maybe it can trigger something in the most casual of fan/player to get more into it. (Oddly, the Mike Postle saga did this for me, which is especially weird since my poker room is Stones.)

One drawback of the heads-up challenges, at least in the live brick-and-mortar world, is that it's almost impossible for a Joe Average rec to emulate the actual format. Someone seeing full-ring or six-max poker on PokerGo might decide to pay a visit to his/her local card room. That same person watching HU can't likely go to that joint and arrange for such a game. So at most, they have to seek it out online, which isn't a real-money option for many people in the U.S.

TL;DR - the recent trend for heads-up challenges might result in a slight bump, but never a boom.

I did. Very odd to copy paste the bulk of what I wrote. Didn't even take me out to dinner first

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...-poker-1792732