Hi, I have read and heard various things about the toughness of games increasing all the time.

What opinions do you guys have on this? Can you forsee a period of time in the future where it is no longer profitable for many of us to play for a living?

Thanks

TGS

translation..this guy sucks!

Absolutely. The amount of just unbelievably good instruction available at cardrunners, 2+2, etc is growing at an exponential rate.

What is most interesting is what will be the impact of the new Harrington cash books. The HOH series had a massive impact on tournament poker because the books aren't abstract at all; they hold your hand and tell you what to do when, which is unlike any other poker literature out there. I think this will plug leaks in tons of mediocre players' games.

edit- What we need is more aggressive marketing, especially in foreign markets. If poker was to explode in another country at the level it did in America, I think we could see another boom of uberfish.

I see it getting easier when the online bill is repealed and online poker is regulated. It will make it easier and moderate players will return when it's not so hard anymore. Remember a lot of states do not have any casinos at all and online poker is their only recourse.

They can get a whole lot harder, the more people come into the poker pool the more variations of play. Seems like nobody plays any form of "standard" poker anymore. I was playing in tourney the other day and guy in first position raises with 35 of hearts.......I had kings reraised and a guy behind me reraised then another guy called then the first guy that had 35s the initial raiser calls all these large raises and flop comes 35J.......knocks KK out QQ out and TT..... with a lousy 35 he should have folded to begin with but thats the variance in play you get nowadays and the more stupid you play seems the bigger your stack.

you should've had JJ imo

bbv is the other way

Actually I have noticed that people suck more balls than ever!

omg I know what you mean. If people started playing better cards I might have a chance at making money. Instead they play crap like this. If poker gits any harder I might have to quit.

First post :P

I like how you start your post by saying games are getting a whole lot harder, then use someone calling a 4-bet UTG with 35 as your evidence for this.

Also, OMG RERAISE ALL-IN WITH KINGS THERE, SRSLY WTF?!?!

EDIT: also, just noticed every post you've ever made has to do with your kings getting cracked. nh.

multiqft

op this should answer your question. just because the tools to become a decent poker player are out there doesn't mean people are going to use them. This guy is on twoplustwo and instead of maybe reading hand historys in the tournament section he's in nvg making absolutely no sense

QFT

Scott Baio, your avatar is amazing

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well im pretty sure it was stinger in one of his videos that said todays 5/10 online games plays like the 25/50 games of 2 or 3 years ago. If the online bill doesnt get fixed, maybe the 5/10 games of today will be the 1/2 games in 2 years. And if that happens, we can say goodbye to $100+/hr grinding online.

I have discussed this with several friends lately. In my opinion, the cash games are much tougher than they used to be. Of course, the change in sites might have a lot to do with it. In 2005 and 2006, I played exclusively on Party Poker. In 2007, I had to switch to Full Tilt.

As far as tournament poker is concerned, I believe there are still plenty of donkeys out there. Although, that may be a distorted opinion because my tournament game has improved quite a bit in the past three months.

I don't foresee a world in which 90% of the people who play poker are great at it. There are enough dollars and people in the world that I think there will continue to be a lot of new people starting to play for years to come.

While the thought of complete poker morons reading these forums does scare me a little bit, it's not the end of the world. It's not like I expect my game to remain constant as theirs skyrockets. I plan to continue improving my own game. If I am able to do that, I don't see any reason why I can't stay ahead of someone who started playing poker seriously three years later than I did and discovered 2+2 two years after I did.

The games are definitely tougher but there's still profit to be made. I may be terrible at table selection, but I usually see 1-2 fish max per table in the SSNL cash games on FT at any given time. I don't know specifics, but I only hope that FT and Stars are trying to attract new markets with the upmost importance so we can have a new dawn of something similar to the Party era.

Fish will ALWAYS be around. I have friends who don't put money online because it is difficult to do so. Most of these same friends think they are at the same skill level as me...which is insane.

I am no pro as I play 50NL, but compared to my friends, I have read over 20 poker books, belong to Cardrunners and I put in at least 10k hands a month online (and I have won 12 out of the last 14 months). They do none of this...thus they are not even in the same league as me...but they believe that they are...and that is all we ever need.

Once (if ever) it is easier to put money online and ppl no longer think it is illegal to play poker online...the games will be so fishy you will think its 2003 on Party.

Yes they will continue to get harder IMO. When I look at the average pot and saw flop% on the low-limit games on Stars lately, it's obvious the games have gotten much tighter already. Nowadays you've got 10 people on a waiting list for the one full-ring 100NL table with >32% seeing the flop. Used to be these games were easy to find. The avg pot sizes are smaller too, people are better at getting away from hands. In the Party heyday I remember you could just shove with KK and watch 99 and AQ call you for their entire stack. Not anymore.

Not to say you can't still win, but it will be more difficult. The games have gotten tighter already, and I see no reason to think they won't continue to get tighter in the future. Except for a few degenerates, the truly crappy players get sick of losing money and find a new hobby. So the edge a good player has over the average opponent will get smaller.

This probably applies more to NL100 and above. At NL25 it's still easy to find people who love to bluff off their stack because they saw it on tv once.

fyp

IMO they games may get a little tougher but there should always be a pool of fish that can support the stronger players. They can publish a gazillion books/sites to teach people to how to play but they cant teach them the discipline to do it for any length of time. There will always be losers.

yoga

The games will get harder as more and more players come into the pool, especially in the cash games, however there will still be money to be made, Tilt factor, bankroll mgmt. will become more and more important, in a couple of year everyone will be using tracker and ace hud, will have stats upon stats on players yet you will always have the donkey who tilts off 6 buy ins at every level,

Don't play if it's too tough for you.

I look forward to the day when poker sites tap into the huge Asian market and we have a new flood of donkeys into the game.