In New York City online sportsbooks like DraftKings and FanDuel fought hard for licenses and their reward was NYC taking 51% of their gross revenue. The highest tax on online books in the US. I have no idea what they would grab from online poker. The betting market is so lucrative there that books were willing to give up 51% of the gross.

In the first 31 days of mobile sports betting legalization, New York took in $1.98 billion in bets, an all-time record for any state.

But as sportsbooks worry about profitability, there’s a legitimate question as to whether the state — with a 51% tax rate on gross revenue — is fool’s gold.

Sportsbooks took in $138.5 million on that nearly $2 billion in bets and New York takes more than half of that — and it gets even worse.

Any promotional dollars or free bets are also taxed at the 51% rate, a fact that recently became public.

“Every business needs a chance to make a profit,” Jason Robins, CEO of DraftKings, whose company’s stock was getting pounded on Friday off concerns about future profitability, told Action Network. “New York’s tax rates make it hard to make money versus other markets with lower tax rates.”

In the first 30 days of mobile sports betting in New York, DraftKings says it acquired 300,000 users, which is 2.3 times the average of the adoption in the first 30 days in other states on a population adjusted basis.

DraftKings currently has 23% of the New York mobile betting market.

But absolute numbers aren’t good enough. Robins said if things don’t change at some point, what New York is charging will be passed along to the consumer.

https://www.actionnetwork.com/legal-...x-rate-concern

I doubt it. If anything they will help each other out.

I've personally seen poker whales get hit hard enough by sports betting that they now only play low stakes poker.

I've also seen the same thing happen to a few breakeven/small-winning players.

Anyone with a job or a business with cashflow can find a buyin for a small game. The same is not true for games big enough for a skilled player to win good money.

Sports betting won't kill poker, but it might kill off most pro poker players by destroying their "habitat."

You guys forget what made poker? Texas Hold Em and the Final Table. Daniel Negreanu, Phill Hellmouth and Moneymaker ... They killed FTP/Stars/UB because it interfered with state sanctioned gambling. Grannie goes to the quickstop and spends 100 bucks on scratch offs now instead of depositing on a website and blowing it off to you. Or the 19 year old kid who thinks he's going to go to the World Series of Poker after reading Super System and gambling $45 to $500 on!

The Stars of Poker, the increased player count every year. Poker had some downturns anyways but taking it away from the Average Joe's Hand is just brutal!

I know guys that have made tens of millions in legal state sanctioned gambling. The Education Lottery is doing great things for our Education(kids are dumber than ever)... The Sharks of Poker should of got into Congress or invested in Campaigns ... Poker probably will be a fringe game again as it always was!

2018 and 2019 WSOP ME’s trailed only 2006 for entries, and 2017 is the 5th most. Only Covid slowed what was a growing, not declining, Main Event.

Apologies if I am wrong but maybe there is a reason I feel the way I do since poker is mostly illegal(or just a grey area) in my country on-line and you can only play in casinos. Last time I turned on the World Series of Poker I enjoyed it thoroughly but I had thought I had seen a decline. I am happy it's increasing, I imagine that's Foreign Traffic though?

Slight correction- NY state is taking 51 percent not NYC

I don't know if sports betting has killed poker, but I think it's dampened the motivation of brick and mortar establishments and state governments to expand poker. I believe a lot of states would be much happier legalizing sports betting than trying to do something like legalizing online poker in their jurisdiction.

For both casinos and governments, I think sports betting is viewed as a higher ROI with less effort or overhead. Sports betting will reach a higher percentage of the population, which in turn will create more revenue; whether it be more overall business for the casinos or more tax revenue for the state. Plus I think governments would see it as much easier to institute sports betting at already established B&M establishments than to create an online poker infrastructure nearly from scratch, and all the man power associated with continual oversight of said infrastructure.

Freemasonry has killed poker. Just like it helped it rise to popularity, it has sunken it back to obscurity.

Actually it is worse than that. When the US shut down poker stars (and others) on 4/15/2011, I was outraged. Fortunately I had all my funds on PokerStars because I couldn't get on the rake back deal on Full Tilt. Got all my money back in about a week. So no big financial loss, but what about my rights? (laugh) I joined that poker association (what a joke). I also contacted the ACLU. (another waste of time).

Most Americans didn't know that poker was essentially legal and then wasn't. And they didn't care at all. They were not outraged that I could no longer play poker on line for real money. It will never be 1/1000000000 the issue the gun lobby/NRA deal is .

Get over it. Play live.

This is completely true.
Todays online NL 1/2 might play at the same 'toughness level' as 2003's NL 5/10 or in some cases, 10/20.
Even donks in local card rooms these days know theory fundamentals. Totally different from donks 15 years ago, never mind 25.

The poker boom was a gravy train that was fun while it lasted but several factors combined to bring it to an end and it is not coming back to that same level of reach anytime soon.

You severely underestimate how soft 5/10 and 10/20 nl were online back then.

You're absolutely correct the boom is long over. They could legalize it tomorrow for the entire country and it will be nothing like what we had back then.

I was there for it, it was... soft.
Online was harder than B&M, but it was still way, way soft.
A typical 1/2 winner today- armed with the contemporary base of knowledge and access to improved theory- would've been right up there with the best of them, back then.

Its sort of like watching UFC 1 and 2 and comparing it to the UFC of today. Its just laughably different.

I play .01/.02 cents online.
Every player is a nit with PFR of under 10.
Any decent hand I ever raise with, I always only end up getting the blinds.

Where are these games at? I just left a .2/.5 where the players all fold/3bet/4bet/then I have to tighten up ...

On Pacific Poker and Bodog pre UIGEA you could play super tight open from 6x to 10x in 5/10 nl and you'd get 3-5 callers 9 handed easily .
Then there were the random Sefat53 Gimmenutz types who would open to 300 with pure trash several times an orbit.

Then you should raise with all sorts of non-decent hands and massively profit from stealing the blinds alone...

Players got better, stars got rid of the rakeback and stars also introduced spin and gos where the fish donk off their bankroll in 5 seconds making it impossible for the regs to win consistently now so all the fish are broke and have moved on to Fortnite and the regs have moved on to Bitcoin

Wrong.

Players got better, yet they still use software to help. More software too. Hmmm. Weird

Spin n gos get fish to donk off their bankroll in 5 seconds, yet vegas slot numbers are at record levels. Weird again

It’s impossible to win consistently for regs in todays environment, yet the win rates on wsop.com tournaments for the top 100 players, look like cash game graphs…weird

What’s happening to poker isn’t death, its a negotiated reduction in fairness between greedy backers and desperate/bad at their job tournament directors, who error on the side of laziness and self preservation while constantly attempting almost nothing new.

“To change is to improve. To change often is to perfect. To not change at all, is how poker tournament directors operate post 2016”


Re entry and late reg only benefit backers, backed, and bastards. Beyond changing gameplay completely, they reduce the edge on the novice player so substantially, that every tournament series in the world adopted it, probably to curb the bitching/complaining of participants with unrealistic expectations of themselves and their win rates

Someone mentioned this so I’ll answer, but re entry and late reg are connected because long term, very few would register a single entry freezeout with 8 big blinds right before late reg closes. These two together create a perfect disaster for the game we once loved

Whats happening is simply a select small group of individuals destroying everything in the game for selfish greed. Almost like everything else going on in the world. Crazy if you really think about

@ theman200050

If I'm wrong then why hasn't a single player made it to high stakes in the last 8 years and why is traffic on Pokerstars down 60 percent in the last 2 years.

I'm looking at the Pokerstars EU lobby right now and there are three 2.50/5.00 regular cash no limit hold em cash games running at two o clock in the day on a Saturday and 500 zoom isn't even running.

500 bucks isn't even a months rent lol. Poker is dead.

The hyper sit and go lobby is a ghost town.

There's a few nits playing 2 NL to 200 NL. That's it.

Anyone paying any attention to the rate of artificial intelligence development the last 20 years should have realized online poker was always going to be doomed soon anyway. There's simply no way to effectively stop bots and real time assistance and once the algorithms/computing power gets there, computers will always destroy humans at turn based strategy games.

A lot of the fish did get distracted by sports for sure, and a lot of who would be 19 year old poker savants are crypto savants instead. Poker has always had this weird venn diagram of gambling like sports and craps on one side, and skill/competition games like Starcraft and day trading on the other, and brings those crowds together.

The #1 thing that keeps poker alive is the livestreams and things like PokerGo. Honestly as someone who loves poker, I was much more pessimistic about its future but I'm pleasantly surprised to the extent which after flaming out of mainstream consciousness, it's revitalized itself into a more steadily growing niche. But yeah, WSOP entries keep growing, high stakes poker is back on the air after a decade, poker survived COVID and is in a better spot than I expected.

Online, was always doomed. People talk about the heyday but even that wasnt quite as heyday as long as people think. From 2004 to 2009 the games already were much tougher, already all the pros had HUDs and were bumhunting etc. Yeah by 2022 standards 2009 was still soft but I still think in terms of difficulty for newer players, 2009 was closer to 2022 than it was to 2004.

By far the most important thing for poker these days is youtube, twitch, social media. Ask a young player their favorite player you will hear a lot of Garrett Adelstein. Despite the Mike Postle fiasco, on the whole if you care about growing poker the livestreams are the #1 that will help it grow.

Even though a lot of donks go broke in sports now instead, I think for the mystique of poker where some bright young kid can be analytical and stay one mind level ahead of everyone else, that mystique lives in crypto / NFT now. Stocks and options a little bit, but those are still pretty stiff and traditional with too much traditional competition.

NFT trading has the right mix of analytical/math skills, psychological skills, degeneracy, and potential to make a ton of money that I think is spiritually closest to online poker in 2004.

But pokers been around a long time and I think focusing on its niche audience is working out well. Everyone wants the ease of the 2003 party poker and are just in denial thinking that something like that could ever come back. Agree with many others who pointed out that it will never happen, ever.

lol, a "massive profit" to be made by stealing $.01/.02 blinds.

You planning on buying a Snickers bar with your cash out ?

Tournament poker has been booming for like 7 years+ straight, cash games maybe a dif story

Sports betting is more mainstream. It's never been easier to move money online. I don't think it so much has to do with popularity, but rather access to online poker. If poker became legalized tomorrow there would absolutely been another boom. Draftkings would surely create their own site or buy an existing one.

This is an intersting point. I used to watch Youtube poker back around 2012 or so?
The popular poker stars were Dwan, Helmuth, Negraneau, Ivey, Mike M, Antonio, etc.

Are there a new crop of poker heros? Or the same stale group from 15 years ago?