Lowering rake is only a short term solution. Without new -ev players depositing money into the poker ecosystem the western pro cant survive. Lower rake can only slow down the process of the death of the western pro. Regardless of rake if nobodys depositing money anymore where does your profit come from?

Poker just isnt as popular as it once was. To have 6 figure+ winners you need to have 6figure+ losers. There was a time when there was alot of people willing to invest money lose it and redeposit to learn or just for fun. Nowadays those people are playing DFS or moved onto a game where they don't have to be a master of the craft to succeed in.

Right now the top % of regs can feed off the bottom % regs and the occasional fish and still profit. Eventually the lower % of regs will quit since regs wont keep depositing forever and this will lower the food chain on down. This has a domino effect having more low limit "pros" which in turn makes the game even less fun for new players.

If you want poker to be profitable 5 years from now it needs a way to reach and be fun to new players like it did in the past. Without new players the game will die.

Thats not necessarily true. The problem is there r just too many pros compared to teh golden times. Its big dif if u share fish with 100 pros at ur level or with 1000. Fish amount is pretty much same as it was back in the days (obv a bit lower) but teh amount of regs is higher than ever and tis is unlikely to change bc when one western guy busts and quits 3 new belarussian replace him.

I've been dissapointedly reading this forum for the last two weeks but this may be the best post I have read in that time. Flawless.

Poker is no where near as popular as it used to be. Pokers a game on the decline. The % of new players getting into poker to the rest of the field gets lower and lower every year. The majority of people playing live and online are people who have been playing the game for years. There was a time where you would sit at a table and there would be multiple complete noobs to the game.

Maybe its not one person depositing and losing a 100k to make a pros 100k profit a year. It could be 10 depositing 10k each(plus rake) Regardless the money needs to be deposited on the sites for pros to make money. Once the money stops being deposited what youre left with is pros playing pros. 2+2ers in general dont deposit much.

Ike,

so why exactly did you never make any videos? I am pretty sure you had a fantastic offer from a coaching site. Let me guess that you didn't want to share your knowledge with others to lower your own winrate or let others catch up.

I even know that some DC guys would not make any PLO 6max, not to mention HU videos because the games were too good back then to destroy by giving out strategy. I think sauce said he will not make any PLO videos (untill he decides to quit the game). Look at how Jeans and Durian out of sudden are making videos, clearly they are planning their post poker future.

Some nosebleeds guys also very stricly only coached people who were not talented enough to climb the stakes high enough to endanger their own games.

All that started to happen after everyone realised how CR, DC, Leggo, etc killed holdem and part of PLO.

As you can see now, nobody is coaching 2-7TD or mixed games. Not many are playing it, but perhaps people are trying to protect their winnings from other regulars?

I am suprised that no one mentioned pokerstrategy. Back in the days they were huge and they recruted literally milions of players to play.
they would give you 50$ for a start and teach you how to play. They would encourage people to play scummy strategy so they would make more money.

It wasn't because of the cardrunners etc. but because of the super affiliates like pokerstrategy.

The whole system was flawed where poker rooms introduced rev share model where affiliates would get a % from rake generated by a player.
Suddenly recruiting and creating new regs become 10x more profitable than recruiting new recreational players.

The only poker rooms that still grow and get bigger and bigger are rooms like 888 or bodog/bovada because rather than focusing on grinders/high rakes they focus on recreational players.
It is simple like that.

Rakeback, volume based loyality programs were just a ridiculous idea just in 2006+ when they were introdcued no one really was aware of the long term consequences.

I don't know where you get this idea that the games stayed about the same from 2005-2009. I've been playing for a living since 2004 and IMO it couldn't be further from the truth. When I started playing, all the money was in LHE. HSNL barely existed. I switched from LHE to NL at the end of 2006, probably a year later than I should have, because LHE games were drying up and NL was booming. NL games got much tougher between 2005 and 2009.

It probably wasn't a bad choice for most of them. A lot of people have made a lot of money in the poker instruction business.

I seriously doubt this. Videos aren't even a very good way to learn anything beyond basics. There are a million reasons games got tougher: HUDs, analysis software, private coaching, books, etc. The single biggest reason is simply that tens of millions of hands of high stakes no lmiit have been played, people have stumbled on increasingly strong strategies mainly by trial and error, the best players have been rewarded with success and other people have imitated their play.

If you think more professional poker players making less money each is morally bad in a way that is analogous to polluting the oceans, there's probably not a lot of point in having this argument. We have irreconcilably different ideas of what people should care about.

I actually did make some videos back in 2007-2008. There are a lot of reasons I haven't since, but you're right that one of them is a concern it will negatively impact my bottom line.

If you think this somehow refutes what I'm saying, you're missing the point.

For some people it is a financially rational choice to make videos. Others might be costing themselves money but choose to do it anyway. In either case, it's crazy to think they have any obligation not to do it.

Was gonna say I saw some ike vids uploaded on youtube a while back. They were pretty decent actually (imho from his play), but did not go into any depth whatsoever about ranges/maths and was just playing single hands.

I suspect most vids/strat discussion back then was along those lines and it's only recently that people cared about what hero's range looks like in some spot vs villain's range etc etc.

+1

I must be misunderstanding you. I have a hard time believing so many SS/MS pros are spending time and money just to learn the basics.

The poker training site industry is deceptively uninformative. The most common format is a video of some guy playing with commentary, and that is almost certainly not the best way to learn. However it's much more enjoyable to watch than other formats, and the pro's like to do it cause they don't have to give very much away. So you see the majority of video's being live play videos, instead of more instructive CRev or range discussion. I have found on RIO that most of the guys who do CRev do it really badly, they seem to have decided that they might as well get paid to learn how to use the program.

More on point though is that you reach a level where you are familiar with a whole array of different strategies, it's the specifics of them that will help you improve. So watching Sauce have a donking range in one spot or a c/r range in another without showing the frequencies or real nitty gritty details just isn't very useful. I don't want to see 2% of x players flop c/r strategy, and 3% of his bb play, and 1% of his btn play, it would a much better learning tool if I was shown 100% of his flop c/r strategy.

Boom. Nailed it.

888, bodog bovada, maybe unibet, grow because they focus on recs. 888 also as the higher rake, bonuses ... also epn gives bonuses and is relatively fishy .... Revolution was and at least some of the time is, fishy and offer monthly bonuses, but also rb and hud, good software ... Party has half thevips, higher rake than stars and one table max option at nlh but they have not grown because they sort of kicked out most regs who have the last 10 or so years played at stars instead, that is what, like 10 or 20 times biggers, or the next biggest are were ipoker, ongame, party, ftp w some 10k players maybe, and stars w 100k maybe. So, its not better to serve the recs if u can get almost all of them, but if u cant and have a worse software, worse vip, worse rske, regs not intetested enough, then its an idea to serve recs.

Usa players, many other players cant play at stars, bodog gets regs also then as they like fish. Fish might get broke as fast as the costs.

Party has the one table idea, serving both. I would like a four tabling per limit cap at stars. Two at zoom and making zoom more easily clear and playable as normal table where the option just is fast folding, and it not be the main button. But thats because zoom is next to perfect, only notes making isnt as before when the opponent disappears. I have had the idea that zoom should stay as play as many hands per hour as u want but zoom is too good to be kept like that and why would one play zoom when ring games would be better. Better to play four ring games and the two on zoom, at the same time and all problems solved. There are also the one limit higher and lower as ante one can play at the same time. Seems good for all then.

Which is greater ?

The total sum of $ spent on all poker education (books/video/one on one/coaching sites etc)

Or

the total $$$ earned as a result of that poker education?

I'm surprised competition hasn't led to lower rakes. I don't see why a company couldn't offer 1% rake. It seems they would make a killing and put the other companies out of business. Or am I being naive?

Thanks for the detailed reply. From reading the comments on rio, I did notice that some pros (like gg'n) are unwilling to give their whole range since they play for a living but only want to discuss specific spots. I presume the sharpest viewers should be able to conceptualise and develop their own strategy from what the tidbits they have watched but that probably represents a very small number of players.

The money made from horrible horrible regs living off rakeback that try to follow the new "fold 30% in blinds" strat is higher than both of those.

IMO training videos are not that dangerous for most. As most people who can learn on their own will learn from them but the rest are just getting mindphucked into spewing even more than usual. It just sucks that the clever one get a ton better instead of just a bit better by themselves.

obviously this does not apply to 400+ but it does apply to the most popular limits

I would hazard a guess that most people who paid for poker training sites are losing players lifetime.

better question

which is greater?

the total amt that will be cashed out from stars in 2014

Or

the total amt stars will rake by the end of Q2

95% of the poker playing population is losing players so you're probably right.

I still dont understand why its always stars players whining about rake

@ 100 euros i pay 9.5bb in rake
@ 200 euros i pay 9bb in rake

My winrates are still well above 3 playing a decent lot of tables

Yes i hate the rake but you can always play better or move down

I would guess that 20% (or more) of these so called poker coaches making videos can't even beat the rake at the limit they are coaching at.

Hm, I find this guess interesting. What data did you base this conclusion on?

This is going back some time when PTR and profit data was available and I admit is subject to a small sample. But I did look up a reasonable number of coaches (maybe 15 or 20) and was surprised to see that hardly any were crushing the games, let alone doing well.

Having said that though, I do think there is some merit for a break even $400NL coach teaching a $50NL player to improve. As the coach does clearly play better Poker generally speaking.

My point with coaches is to do your own work on your own game. Paying subscriptions and watching videos is easy. Buying Poker Oracle, PT4 and doing the work yourself is much harder and much more rewarding imo. There is also good books out there that can teach you how to number crunch so you can do it yourself.