I started playing poker back when 2p2 was still a puppy and good players simply didn't discuss strategy with bad players. And they CERTAINLY didn't talk about hands at the table!

Now, I hear guys talking strategy within earshot of bad players all the time. It's as if they think, "I'm so good I don't care if people know this or that, I'll STILL beat them!". In some cases, they're right.

I think it's mostly ego. They want people to know how good they are. And I agree. They have ruined the games.

It takes way more time and talent to achieve a high level of competence at chess, golf, esports, or school than it does to achieve high-level competence at no limit hold 'em. The financial incentives for competence at all those activities are also less linear and less robust than for no limit hold 'em.

I realize the above statement risks moving the thread down a pointless tangent. However, the apples-to-oranges comparisons that you and apokerplayer are making are equally fruitless.

Do you have a family? What % of your bad ass crew have families? What % of your bad ass crew do you ever think will have a family?

Also, here's why many people make vids... for the respect

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fztMoHhQY0

It's almost all ego. They actually want people to know how smart they are rather than making sure the fish have fun and winning money.

Oh wow you're better than some middle aged business guy who plays poker to blow off steam you're such a genius!

Respect of who? Math nerds with no common sense who chase away bad players.Great. You can buy a lot with their meaningless respect.

The lack of the US market is so much greater than anything else, you state it yourself using the MM comparison earlier in a way. And now all the other factors are showing their impact since the massive market is gone, (btw add rakeback to your list.)

It's amazing right?

Well many have left for other things (forex, DFS, live poker).

Angry blacksmith in the Middle Ages: "I'm so pissed off how some of these blacksmiths are sharing how to blacksmith with beginner-level blacksmiths and the hoi polloi. Don't they know that if we just kept all the blacksmithing information secret, us blacksmiths would make so much more money? We would have a complete monopoly on blacksmithing and keep everyone in the dark about how to blacksmith. What is wrong with people?"

Sure, it's not as easy to print money as it was when people were completely clueless about how to play poker. That's obviously kind of a bummer if you play professionally, but you should recognize it was always just a temporary circumstance. In the big scheme of things, wasting time complaining about this is pointless and silly, as there was never any way to stop it. Nor do I believe it is a desirable thing to stop it.

To answer the OP, though, here's an explanation of why people give out this information:

Average players, who are still better than most players, start to have a hard time beating the game like they once did. They are motivated to share what they know and try to monetize it. This in turn makes the games harder.

As the games get harder, better players, who weren't motivated before, are now more motivated to share what they know, because the edges have shrunk. This in turn makes the games harder.

This in turn creates a situation where even better players, who probably would not have been motivated to share what they know years ago, now find themselves in tougher games and now more motivated to share what they know for economic gain.

All of the people who make this decision are probably aware that it's not as if their knowledge is super-advanced. It's more like: I have a small edge that will be interesting to the average player and I might as well monetize this before my edge disappears.

Some people seem to be acting as if these guys were giving away amazing, ground-breaking information, but in reality it's more the case that these people realized that it wouldn't be long before this information got out in one form or another, so they realized they might as well be the ones to give it. They were probably also motivated by games being tougher and wanting to establish some passive income. It was an incremental process that made sense to the individual participants each step of the way. That's how specialized knowledge often becomes widely shared I think. I sound kind of pedantic and stating-the-obvious now so I'll stop talking.

I totally disagree with the US govt being the biggest reason online has went to **** if you are outside of the US. Get rid of bots,software,mass mutitabling (will never happen obviously) and the games would be phenomenal.

And those people (myself included dabbling in dfs and live poker going from maybe 2% of my play 7-8 years ago to probably 80% now) didn't leave for those things for any reason in most cases other than edges getting smaller and smaller which doesn't refute my point at all about casinos increasing their edge while poker players have decreased their's.

I recognized it a long time ago that it was absurd for a 24 year old to print insane amounts of money playing a stupid game online so I saved most of my money. That doesn't change the main point of this thread which is that people who made videos for peanuts are fools and that sites should ban these players, especially onces who don't edit out other player's screen names.

Great online games being a temporary circumstances and people being stupid and short sighted, making games worse in the long run are both true.
I get why Galfond would start a training site to print money. I get why people would mass multitable even though in the long run it makes everyone less money as it's a prisoner's dilemma situation. I don't understand people who share tons of strategy in videos for beer money.

stars and probably other sites have their own training schools where team members make videos which don't censor other players names

https://mobile.pokerschoolonline.com...anonoko-Part-4

etc

and forums like 2p2 aren't much different when people are posting (free) information which obviously improves others games and makes games tougher. if you ever posted strategy here or elsewhere it's not much different (arguably worse as it's free and more people could potentially read and improve)


games getting tougher is inevitable. the amount of work most people need to put in for the money they can earn is really low compared to most other things (also education isn't necessary etc).
esp in countries with low wages or jobs available, people are willing to work damn hard even for low wages, let alone the possibilities in poker. as word spreads how profitable poker is, more ppl join, it gets more competitive etc.

people have such a sense of entitlement when it comes to poker, why are you owed soft/easy games? poker is still (for now) relatively easy money compared to almost any reasonable "real life" job again especially considering education requirements (or lack thereof). I mean you can learn some basics, click some buttons on the Internet and make say 25/hr (easily more but this as an example) where ppl in a lot of countries are happy to make 5/HR etc)

This thread is ridiculous and full of clueless morons.

The INTERNET has been the critical change as it has with so many things including forum software like you're using now to voice your displeasure. So if you want to whine about poker being difficult take a sabbatical and go back to the early 90s before you even knew what it was or weren't born yet...and suck at poker like you probably do or would have with anything else

maybe i'll go make some train videos for a couple hundred bucks like a ****ing ****** instead

I laughed.

Well said.

If you were smart, you'd found one instead...

At least that would have a good upside.

also lol@ myself for "train videos"

Absolute rubbish. Making $10/hour in a real life job is far, far easier than making $10/hour at online poker. You're telling me that flipping burgers in McDonald's is harder than grinding out $10/hour in games full of mass-multitabling nits? Hahaha, oh boy, you really have no idea.

And in poker, not only do you have to stay at least equal level to the competition in order to make the same amount of money, your income is also consistently being eroded by inflation. So that's 2 forces working against you already.

So if it's so easy to make $25/hour, why aren't more people doing it?

Not really. People pay more money for a chocolate bar than they did 10 years ago, why wouldn't they deposit more $ to play poker?

Awful analogy. Blacksmithing isn't a competitive activity that people bet against each other for money. It is a skill that contributes to the GDP and overall welfare of an economy, and it benefits the whole of society if people are more skilled at it.

It sure as **** does not benefit anyone if people are more skilled at poker. All it does is decrease edges and means that everyone has to work harder for less money. The video-makers earn a few hundred dollars, perhaps even a few thousand dollars, at beginning. But this then costs them many hundreds of thousands of dollars in later years due to tougher games, people being more educated etc. The only ones who truly benefit are the poker sites themselves, who rake more.

Let me ask you this: why do we not see any public discussion of mid/high stakes strategy on 2+2 anymore? Why is every reg playing 100nl+ now reluctant to openly discuss strategy on 2+2? Because they have (finally) realised what a stupid idea it is to educate people.

Because incomes in the real world rise in line with inflation.

And people aren't depositing more to play poker. Net deposits are shrinking and have been shrinking for several years now.

Having a well known losingplayer making some fun vids is abit different than having toptier players go in depth on solvers etc

When was the last time you saw a good strategy answer on 2+2?

Games getting tougher is inevitable. But there is no need to speed up process and make it exponential.


The latest solver video epedemic is the best example. That software should be banned from the getgo and if it isnt banned and u wanna use it or code one yourself. BUT MAKING VIDEOS HOW TO USE SOLVERS AND EXPLAIN THEM INDEPTH ALL OVER RIO SERVES ABSOLUTELY ZERO PURPOSE and it blows my mind over and over again how guys like hose123 or gogolshose can be so smart and so incredibly stupid at the same time

lol yeah i have no idea..
your specific example really depends on who you ask, there are plenty of games that are incredibly easy to make 10/h and that's from your own home whilst you can watch YouTube listen to music or do whatever.
plus you are talking about first world, plenty of countries people are happy to do hard labour for $5h or less. not to mention in plenty of countries people aren't so lucky to be able to get even min wage jobs if they want.

also I was more talking about higher stakes. even in most first world countries, and way more so in non-fw, making say 50/h or 100k (40h weeks) takes years of education, solid grades and even then it isn't a given. it's getting harder due to competition (way more so than training sites, lol) but honestly it's much "easier" to do it with poker. not to mention many countries you aren't taxed.

guys with masters or phds in math/science/computer science etc in many countries try yes to but can't find a job for 100k/yr with tonnes of education, some study fees etc, these guys can put a fraction of that work in and make plenty in poker and often more if they work really hard

poker players have it pretty good, it's only tough compared to what it used to be. the guys of 5 years ago look back on the party days where ppl just print sitting any 10/20-25/50 table, the ppl of today look back at 5 years ago. honestly I (or a lot of players) could teach someone to make solid hourly within a few months with enough time given, some of which would have no chance of making that in their everyday life based on education/country situation. if you work hard there's no chance the work you put in is even close to university hours

stop with the entitlement and stop blaming training sites.


the point was mostly in "real life" to make a solid income, unless you're lucky/born rich/business minded you're generally going to need to study for years to get a degree, which involves fees and obviously time, then you get a job with taxes. the prospect of how much money you "could" make in poker vs. time spent relatively speaking, especially if you factor in benefits like flexible hours and so on, is very appealing to a wide range of people. granted, not even close to all of them wil make it, but a lot will and as more people hear about it and get into it, games get tougher and more competitive

point of me posting that link was ONLY to show that stars can't/won't ban video makers since they are releasing some themselves.
why should solvers be banned lol? I feel so many regs have this massive unwarranted sense of entitlement. it's the world of games. technology gets better, games get tougher as science develops. you think chess masters say chess programs (for study, not in game use obv) should be banned?

"if"/when poker gets solved, it'll be basically be over. deal with it


***just so we're clear, I'm not saying I am "for" training sites, if I could press a button and they're all gone then I probably would do it. but hating on the sites or producers for making games tougher in most cases is just finding something to blame. better off using that energy to work on your game

IMO OP is seriously overestimating the value of training sites. Most of them are useless. Thing is not all instructors are consistent long-term winners, and a lot of them don't have talent for teaching eg. how to explain advanced concepts to nonpros.

I admit a few training sites are really good, but in most cases people are paying a lot of money for mediocre advice