Everyone gets into it for the chance to win money. Apart from the business men who are just bored and like the competition.

If I had one bit of advice for any main event winner it would be take the money and never come back.

not sure what doesn't make sense. the poker world is ruthless, relentlessly competitive, mostly populated by degenerates and scumbags. a very small amount of people can thrive in that environment, and those that do tend to become extremely cynical, detached and disconnected from reality. it's not something to introduce a nice 18 year old kid to.

As bad as some people may be who play poker, I can assure anyone that the elites who run the world are much more ruthless and cunning then any poker player can dream of being. Poker is the game of life and it isn't going to die. I plan on playing it the rest of my life. But anyone who bashes poker players like they are the scum of the earth really have no clue what goes on in the real world.

Just did this search 3 weeks ago.

good post jamie, i was typing out something similar but you worded this exactly how I was thinking

One of the worst comparisons ever.

Are you really going to make an analogy between a team that plays 162 games to get a shot at a playoff to then compete in the World Series, to some guy who buys an entry to one event and then gets lucky at a half dozen (or more) points along the way to winning?

Video is spot on.

Would definitely want to see more of this. Can u show the Y graph? How much in numbers has the interest sunk down to?

FYP. Just ask 13-time World Champion Phil Hellmuth.

As for the topic at hand, I find Hachem incredibly grating but I'll try to leave personalities out of it. Poker is a hell of a lot tougher than it used to be because of simple evolution. It's a really cool game which received huge exposure in the early 2000s and millions of people started playing it. Most of them were no good so they gave up. A small percentage were good so they kept playing and improving. Now it's really tough because the proportion of smart, good players is much higher.

It's very tempting to say "poker is dying because of [this thing I don't like]". Young players, HUDs, too much talk, not enough talk, whatever drum you want to bang. These things might not help but I don't think they are significant compared to the simple ratio of good vs bad players.

Bottom line is if you can only win when there are really bad players at the table so we have to do this, that and the other to keep them here then maybe you're no longer good enough to make money doing this. Accept it and move on. If you had a good run then be grateful for it. Hachem for one ran better than most. If not everyone. I sometimes wonder if he is the single player whose lifetime profit exceeds expectation by the very most.

I enjoyed the video. I think Joe has been a good ambassador of poker since he won.

nice one, a bit of reason he have!

So true and anyone who doesn't see it is in denial or in a decent game.

And find a quieter place for your interviews ffs.

Definitely agree with this. Pre 2003 I doubt there were as many fish around as even now but the best poker players still thrived. Now there are more people trying to take that money and truthfully a lot are not really as good as they think they are. I keep seeing people talking about reg infested tables. A lot of the regs I see are really not that good...and if you think they are then maybe you should try to get better. Using poker as a get rich quick profession may be over for a lot of folks but saying it is dying is hyperbole.

Easy profits get competed away,

Then legislation and macro economics

Then, maybe, just maybe, nerds scaring people away.

Booms in the following sports in the United States can be attributed not only to the greatness of a particular set of players but also to their larger than life personalities or back stories:

Basketball: Magic/Bird, Jordan
Tennis: McEnroe, Connors, Chris Everett
Baseball: Babe Ruth, McGwire/Sosa
Soccer: Pele and the New York Cosmos
Cycling: Lance Armstrong
NASCAR: Richard Petty
Short Track Speed Skating: Apollo Anton Ohno

I'm sure there are examples in Boxing, Football, Horse racing, and any other sport that has cycled through our popular culture. I imagine you'll find at least one of these games to not be worth a ****. If you don't, your list of entertaining sports is a lot shorter than mine.

One of Hachem's points is valid, and oft repeated by the older players that with the rise of great young players focused (rightfully) on winning cash the game has suffered. You play to win and money is the scoreboard. However, sitting there as Chris Ferguson clones and not Hellmuth, Scotty, Sammy Farha, Laak, Negreanu, or Esfandiari personalities, is boring for TV. The guys that used to rule the roost just needed a camera and you had compelling TV. These new guys need personality injections.

It's hard for some of you, but try to ignore the source. Regardless, a stupid person (Joe is not one) can be right sometimes, and a hypocrite sometimes should be taken as do as he says, but not as he does.

Here, no matter what you think of him, he's right.

Uh, all the people you listed were the very best or at least in the top tier of elite at their sport, so it's pretty lol to say that their popularity or the popularity of their respective sports were reliant on their personalities. I'm pretty sure it had a little bit more to do with them being awesome. I could be wrong about that, but I'm guessing that if Magic Johnson came off the bench and averaged 6 points a game that no one would give a **** about his larger than life personality or whatever.

Unfortunately you can't stop people from being annoying nerds. And yeah, it does suck that you have button clicking nerds sitting at every table down to 5 cent levels. But what can you do about it? Nothing.

And about the legacy of world champion thing. It's a joke anyway. Poker players ARE NOT athletes. The WSOP is a bingo tournament.

pokers death point is when people are playing perfectly.

cardrunners built the coffin, and every training site, coaching session, or even know-it-all talking strategy at the table has been a nail in it since.

It's the bingo aspect that gives amateurs a chance at winning. You can literally play awful poker and still become a millionaire, have a bracelet and your 5 minutes of fame. That's why people play tournament poker, luck CAN beat skill.

Hachem is being a little hard on the past champions though. It's like asking people who win the lottery to be great ambassadors for the lottery, the WSOP is the lottery. If you didn't win money for playing poker nobody would play, I know 100% I would not. The amateurs that have won the Main Event have done far more for poker than any pro's have. Integrity of the game may not be the same sure, but everything evolves. Without Moneymaker winning the Main Event I would not be typing on this forum right now.

He's just a sentimental old man who always sees things as better back in "his day".

There are infinitely more players in any of these sports who were among the best at their field and who brought no new viewers to the table because they were boring as hell to watch. It's no different than poker, and the poster here is not lol, they're absolutely right. No one outside of the mainstream poker world is tuning in to see Dominik Panka or Ole Schemion (?) win poker tournaments on an EPT stream. Nothing against those two guys at all. But what Hachem is saying has some validity. IF poker wants to attract a mainstream audience it's going to do it with guys like Esfandiari going on UFC broadcasts and pimping Ultimate Poker. It's with stars like GSP schilling for 888 poker on every other commercial that runs for poker in Canada, or Nadal promoting Stars. It's with Poker Stars coming up with events like the "Shark Cage" and featuring Jason Alexander and Jennifer Tilly. Hell, I first discovered poker 10+ years ago watching Dave Foley on Celebrity Poker Showdown late at night. To attract new players to the game there is an element of showmanship, competition, and entertainment that needs to be there to draw people in. Berating fish, sitting around with headphones and sunglasses on, and talking about correct 4-betting ranges does none of those things. I'll bring up a clip of Tony G or Hellmuth for entertainment value on youtube if I'm trying to get someone interested in poker any day of the week.

Feel free to start naming top tier athletes that don't bring viewership to their sports, because I'm pretty sure that the best players are the biggest draws in everything. Look up jersey sales and you'll notice that all the most popular players just happen to also be the best players. I guess it's just a coincidence that all those guys have larger than life personalities.

Any sport or game where there isn't this direct correlation is one that people don't care about, and any amount of gimmickry will only prop them up for so long. Anyone that wants new people to find poker interesting should hope and focus on poker actually being interesting instead of trying to prop it up with complete amateurs trying to be clowns.

Wow, I so strongly disagree. I think the point he's making isn't that the popularity was based solely on their personality, but their personality reinforced the excitement they brought to their respective sports. In his examples, not all of those players were exciting personalities, but they had good stories. Lebron has a good story. Peyton Manning has a good story. They help to market their sports through their stories/personalities, and the fact that they are marketable is what drives the interest. Moneymaker, Hellmuth, Ivey, Negreanu, etc. are marketable. A 23 yr-old that got into poker playing with friends and dropped out of college to 20-table and put in max volume is not marketable. Watch any poker show, and half of the player profiles they do are of people who have an interesting story - not the players with chips.

There's a reason that stars like Scottie Pippen, John Stockton, Randy Johnson, despite all being in the HOF or future HOFs of their sports, are not more popular - they're not as marketable. Hell, look at Anna Kournikova. Look at Mario Lemieux. He is arguably the best comparison to Gretzky (who can't walk a step without being noticed), and I couldn't even tell you what he looks like.

Here's what is wrong with poker today.

Scottie Pippen was the second best player on his team. John Stockton never won a championship. Lebron James is the best basketball player alive. Peyton Manning (arguably) is/was the best football player alive. Anna Kournikova wasn't popular because of her personality. NHL Finals on NBC was beaten out by Build a Better Burger.

Edit: I'm pretty sure that quite a lot of people tuned in to see Stockton, Pippen, and Randy Johnson also...