IMHO it is because the core demo for poker is mid-late thirties dudes and the amount of people in that demo (especially given the job/ stock market the last 10 years) that have a couple of k to blow on their hobby is still strong...poker doesn't attract young people anymore...still going to be good the next 5-10 years though IMO

A Snickers bar might well be considered massive for playing a 1/2 cent game.

Online poker is legal in several states. It is anything but booming. So ... no to what you just said.

I have to know, why did you choose to use a comma after the 3rd word of your post. You clearly don't give 2 ****s about punctuation yet you used a single comma. Why? What was your thinking? I need to know.

No there wouldn't- not even close.
Players are much better than 15 years ago, technology has advanced so much to where online poker has so much more cheating, software etc than was possible 15 years ago.Poker apps didn't exist 15 years ago either. There is way less gamble in any of these games for anyone wants to actually gamble and there are much better other options to actually gamble be it poker sports or online casinos. As someone else mentioned the legal sites are far from thriving- they were for a few months when covid hit and that's it. Poker on tv is boring as **** with a bunch of anti social robots playing basically the same strategy and tanking every hand and there are way more options to watch content than there were when ESPN started showing poker all of the time.

Having a bigger pool of shitty games isn't bringing in people to gamble which is what you need for good sustainable games.
The poker boom is long over and never coming back. Live will always be pretty good , online (at least cash games) will continue to get worse and worse for many reasons.

How is sports betting doing lately?

For players? Great! Not as awesome as it was a year ago but free money is every where.

For books? Not so good. They have been giving away so much free money trying to get players that they have huge losses.

For players? Terrible. Most sites have altered their current bonuses to a "risk free bet" which means they will give you a chance to bet whatever you deposit. If you lose, they give you a chance to make a wager of the same value. If you win that, you win only the profit. So basically it's just inducing action (no one should be betting their entire account on their first bet) and giving you a chance at possibly having 80% (if you bet normal markets, not ML) of your original deposit. The US sites have significantly worse lines and the "industry standard" -110 juice is not offered anywhere. It is at least 30$ minimum (-115, -115) everywhere you look and it is generally worse. The early-cashout offers that they advertise are fairly predatory, and the ease of depositing into an over-juiced system that an amateur player has close to ero chance of beating has tons of people wasting their extra cash.

For books? There was an initial L for companies like Caesar's who offered large cash-match bonuses but those have all but disappeared. Draftkings has a moderately halfassed VIP system and offers people free bets and incentives, but most books are raking in $ hand over fist. You will occasionally see articles that say "BOOKS TOOK A MONUMENTAL LOSS ON (X EVENT) or "PUNTERS TOOK THE BOOKS TO THE CLEANERS THIS WEEKEND". This is marketing. When they finally take a large L, it is free advertising for them to publicize it and attract more customers.

Since the US government and gaming commission has long been for-profit, there is little oversight to the juice being charged so it is basically a free-for-all and the stereotype of the angry-because-they-lost-money sportsbettor means that it is pretty hard for anyone to conceivably gain public empathy to push these companies towards fair business practices. There are maybe 1,000 ppl worldwide who can beat -105 juice longterm and they would have to be monitoring the markets full-time, and experts (or ex-pros) in the sport that they are watching. A deep understanding of human behavior and psychology would probably be important and they'd need to invest the time to watch a ton of matches/games every week. They would then also have to be extremely disciplined and betting unit sizes that would actually give them a liveable profit (this is an issue since most books will limit winners). Add in also that the US takes a huge chunk of your earnings (something like 40%). So now you're paying (in the US) ~20% of a unit to the books on every breakeven pairing (going 1-1) and if you manage to win at a high clip your earnings are being limited and you're paying 40% of them to the gov't. It's a hot mess for anyone doing this longterm.

Bookmaking is a near-perfect system since they can ultimately ban large-winners and create problems for winning accounts (simply flagging someone as a problem gambler or claiming ID verification issues leaves them in a spot where they have to go through a long and drawn out appeals process with a gaming commission that is not on their side, and to make matters more transparent it is clearly written in the TOS that the books reserve the right to deny bonuses and play to professionals). It is also one of the things that people always insist they are beating. If someone actually does post a winning year, their first reaction is generally to realize how much juice they're paying and how much they actually should have won had they been given a remotely fair shake. I acknowledge the initial goldrush of bonuses but books have likely never posted a losing year since they were invented and likely will not.

1) Are you really complaining that sites that are not giving enough of a sign up bonus? It's literally free money.

2) -110/-110 is the US standard. I can't speak to a random small state that has two books but here in Michigan and every other big state -110 is everywhere.

3) Yes the early cashout option is bad for player who do not know what they are doing. Just like 99% of everything else in casino.


But you are generally correct that the sites are bad for random people because they are going to lose and lose big. But this is twoplustwo where we (well most of us...) are actually trying to win at gambling and there are tons & tons of profitable legal online gambling opportunities in the US right now.

Bingo. At least you aren't getting limited/banned if you're a consistent winning poker player.

Something something hold my beer something GG Poker, evidently.

The only true threat to bookmakers is large scale pari-mutuel sports betting, likely govt run. It allows wagering for the most thin as well as the biggest markets, and it requires literally no brain whatsoever to operate. Guaranteed profit, which suits the govt perfectly. Basically the 21st century lottery.

National legal online poker is just an eventuality. It's moving slowly and the stumbling block is the government of each state.

I'm in Michigan and since our Governor, Whitmer, signed the online gambling law, it's generating a tremendous amount of revenue for the budget. If there's one thing that all states and politicians like, it's more money.

https://www.playmichigan.com/online-casino/revenue/

Aside from being regulated, if you're not happy with the site's response to your concern or the result of their investigation, MCGB will get involved. You can file the complaint and submit it online or by regular mail, if you choose.

If you'll notice on the complaint form link, this includes "when collusion is suspected or when an authorized participant is disruptive or abusive".

https://www.michigan.gov/mgcb

https://igamingcomplaint.mgcb.state.mi.us/index.html

15 years too late
Who cares.

The people who play poker or sports bet online in Michigan care.

The state of Michigan cares for its nice new revenue stream too.

A real "nice new revenue stream" of about 325 million per year with 67 billion dollars in spending, roughly 0.5%. This is just taking the raw numbers counting receipts as free money. But it is almost half the annual marijuana use tax collections. If we could just add in prostitution and bootlegging, we could be right back in the roaring twenties. All other taxes could be repealed.

325 million isn't a lot of money? I'd disagree with that assessment. That's 325 million more than states without legal gambling are getting. Additionally, that revenue stream will continue to grow. As you may know, Michigan joined the interstate compact a few months back and will be revenue sharing among multiple states.

In Michigan, Marijuana tax collection is another thing that's good for the state and like online gambling sites, it's bringing in revenue that states where it's illegal aren't getting. Outside of that, you're also allowed to grow a number of plants yourself, for personal consumption. You do realize that prohibition ended decades ago, right? Additionally, you're allowed to make your own beer and wine for personal consumption too. As far as prostitution, I'm all for licensing and taxing that as well. It's legal and regulated in a number of European countries and the U.S. could do the same.

The bottom line is that multiple revenue streams are good for the budget of every state.

As you may have noticed, the topic of this thread is related to online gambling, so try to stay on topic, instead of trying to derail it..

Regulators have made it consistently harder to get money onto online poker sites and recs have cumulatively grown a distrust of the online poker platforms.

Live poker is well. I might even say thriving.

People just don't like feeling like the deck is stacked against them.

Are you maybe talking about illegal online poker sites? Because I’m in PA where it’s legal and it takes maybe 4 clicks and 25 seconds to deposit money which appears in your account instantaneously. Cashing out is also surprisingly easy and instant.

I agree that people are generally wary of online poker, and as they should be, especially given how rampant cheating is.

Sports, the most rigged thing you can bet on and we crying bout RNG lmao.

Well, "Home means Nevada" ...... (except substitute drink comps for bootlegging in the description).

agreed. live is thriving. online will get worse and worse with improving technology. bad players getting TORCHED while also getting ZERO gamble from their opponents gets old for them quick.

This also depends on the country I believe. In Germany and UK there are monthly deposit limits in place, presumably to protect the gambling addicts... This of course is bad for the professionals.

But I agree that local governments adopting anti-poker policy such as segregation of player pools, removing rakeback, increased rake etc. is the main reason online poker is dying. (talking about pokerstars mainly)

I am certain without interference from politics online games would be as profitable as ever. Particularely the games hard to solve like MTTs and to a certain degree SNGs (non-HU).

I'm saying 325 million is chump change for state budget, and the actual new revenue received is less than that anyway. Programs for licensing, compliance, assistance for problem gamblers, etc, get a slice. And the gambling, marijuana, tobacco, liquor markets, etc are roughly substitute goods so the money is just shifting around. Regulated online gambling is not bringing anywhere near that number to the state's bottom line. I could be wrong, I didn't research all the numbers, but I highly doubt the state net revenue is changed significantly considering all vice taxes as a whole. I should have included lottery as well.

Edit: and specifically my original comment was directed at this statement, "The state of Michigan cares for its nice new revenue stream too." which is simply untrue. Tax revenue from sports betting and poker are a drop in the bucket.

I'd say "riggable" (if that's a word) rather than "rigged," but indeed, it's something I think about when it comes to the lower rungs of sports. Sure, the saga of the 1919 Chicago White Sox almost can't happen again because the gargantuan salaries makes it unlikely any key player from a major U.S. professional sports league would risk their livelihood for a few extra bones from gamblers.

But how about sports without that built-in safeguard? The NCAA is "strict" about not allowing student-athletes, coaches and athletics staff participate in sports gambling, but "strict" only means the punishment will generally be strict. It would be like having a stiff fine for speeding on the highway, but then never putting law enforcement out there with their radar guns. As someone who worked in that field for 25 years, I can tell you it would have been easy to circumvent. Getting a bunch of athletes involved a la the Boston College point-shaving scandal? Okay, that's tougher. On the other hand, knowing an athlete's injury status, or when he goes ineligible, or in the last two years, knowing they would be sidelined due to COVID quarantine – we constantly knew this stuff.

Add to this concern betting markets like Euro basketball, beach volleyball, whatever – athletes in these areas don't make so much that the temptation is eliminated.

I moonlight as an official scorer with the local Triple-A baseball team. This year, we were given new instructions on how to handle any changes to scoring decisions (hit vs. error, earned vs. unearned runs, etc.). Put simply, we are to first notify the "stringer," the person who enters info into the live Gameday platform. Then only after it went in do we announce to the media or any internal P.A. system. The fear, they say, is that someone in the room could use that info to get in on some bet. I'll admit not knowing this world, but I guess there are daily props you can make about an individual's hits or earned runs allowed or whatever.

Anyway, agree with your overall thing: there is a sense of distrust when it comes to online poker or casino games, and understandably so. Yet no one thinks twice about putting a bet down on sports, when it seems that one is quite prone for shenanigans.