I couldn't reach anything when I tried to get to the following training sites: vtpoker, tellskitchen, and deepstacksuniversity. Vtpoker had some good material by Negreanu and Somerville, well formatted in short videos. Tellskitchen had incredible material on tells based on TV clips. Deepstack University had material formatted in short chunks with a quiz format. The content wasn't that great, but it had excellent presentation compared to the typical unrehearsed Camtasia stuff.

Is RIO forcing everyone else out of business, like Walmart and Amazon? How many other video sites have gone under? Why have these sites just vanished with their videos no longer available?

Never heard of those sites but if they were paid content and weren't getting good coaches it makes sense that better sites with good coaches are the ones making money.

If they were free content, someone has to pay the $$$ to host the site and keep stuff going so they probably got tired of lighting money on fire

These were all paid sites. VTPoker had Negreanu and Somerville and not much else. TellsKitchen had one author, but excellent specialized material. DeepstackUniversity had a slick format, but not that many good authors.

PokerSavvyPlus is another one I can't find anymore.

RIO didn't force these sites under. Cardrunners/DC/Leggo were all great at one time and more companies joined during their reign.

The issue is that the video market has retracted a lot. Staking programs effectively replace a lot of the value that video content provided, since many good, large staking programs have full time coaches doing 1 on 1, group sessions + the video archives.

Twitch may have some impact too, as some of the video purchasing segment was more of the casual/passive variety and twitch fills that need for free.

In any case, as someone who has been involved in all of these businesses, the market has just shifted. Video down, software up, staking up.

RIO is widely considered the best around currently, but it's a mistake to think they are forcing others under. It's like saying the NYT is forcing other American newspapers out of business.

And all of them were terrible for poker.

I Think bf has a lot to do with it, a lot of top pros from dc and cr were from america and didnt move to other places as well as the demand been lower in the us

grinderschool is out too

i think cr and upswing have value, the problem w cr is that the communitty is really dead
dc is really bad these days

as the game gets more solved, vid sites provide less value - more about what you're doing in the lab

(also what chicagory said)

That was the first video/coaching site I ever used, but I think it shut down a longggg time ago.

Cardrunners and to a lesser extent stox dominated the market for years and made it pretty tough for the smaller sites I think.

Great point.

Yeh, there are also a lot of free videos on youtube, like 70 or so Doug Polk rehearsed 8-25 minute videos.

It is sort of weird with PokerSavvyPlus, as it was one of the best sites at one time, but was only around for a few years.

I was sort of disappointed, not so much that the sites went under, as you couldn't access the videos. VTPoker had some amazing slickly produced videos by Negreanu and Somerville. The rest of their authors were not that good. I can sort of see why it didn't take off.

Sort of true the comment about Upswing. I would never have imagined that VTPoker and PokerSavvyPlus would disappear so quickly. I agree that CR and DC have gone downhill.

pokersavvyplus shut down like the week after BF IIRC, citing an anticipated lack of interest from American players going forward I believe.

ChicagoRy nailed it. The market for poker videos has pretty much paralleled interest in poker as a whole, peaking just before Black Friday. Loads of players, sites, affiliates, and publishers got out of the game when it stopped being profitable for them.


https://www.google.co.uk/trends/expl...poker%20videos

^^ really interesting graph