Ive been playing poker since 03. Mostly NLH. Played thru poker boom and bust. Now it seems that most of the people who survived are people who adapted to todays game (always making the GTO move. IE playing like a bot).

Most of the rec players who dumped money on the regular over the years are broke now. Its a much different game today.

Are we ever going to have that poker boom atmosphere again? Or is everyone going to make the optimal play and only lose to coolers. Because if its the latter, then it really does come down to luck.

Please discuss. This is a serious question to see what people think. Would especially like to hear from people who have played for 15 years+

Black Friday changed the game more than the increase in available tools.

Open up the entire US of A to the same pieces of online felt..... and you are back in business...... albeit with a few more sharks. (My opinion..... live casino play is still a profitable place to play)

If everyone played like a bot, casinos win at the end, you better spend your time on barcarat instead

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Not sure if that's true. I feel like the evolution of tools and training sites was one of the main reasons why poker was on the way down already before BF happened.

I kinda agree I may have overstepped. But I do believe strongly that if the online game is flooded with "rich" noobs (allow all USA to all sites)....... live casino and online poker will become much more profitable.

No one is playing like a bot, in fact it's not humanly possible to play GTO.
There are still plenty of bad players around.

New players are constantly coming into poker, this game takes a while to learn and to build the experience required to get good at it, so these new players will loose money when they start.

Rec players don't go broke from playing poker, they get their money somewhere else and then play poker for fun.

Yes poker is harder than it was 10 years ago.
It's stil very beatable.


If poker ever gets at a point where people are so good it's no longer profitable to play.
Then all the good players will quit because there is no money, making the games profitable again.

Alot of Pros from moneymaker era are broke now like Gus Hansen etc. Its impossible for everyone to play GTO but 80-90% of people that survive in this game must adapt to that type of style. The rest are just rich people with money to blow who would rather play in private games with celebs and just a couple pros.

This game has gotten significantly harder to beat, theres no denying that. Beatable, yes. But AS beatable as it was before? Definitely not.

That being said, I never claimed to be a pro. Just a long time rec player who has noticed the fun factor go way down in this game. Particularly NLHE.

The lure of this game was that anyone could win on any day. It doesnt seem much like that anymore. Most of the big pots you see in live high limit cash game steams are legit coolers.

Anywho, just my two cents. Wanted to see what ya'll thought

basically nobody has an edge unless there is a massive whale, hence the games don't run. already happened with stt's

what you are finding unfun, op, is the quality of play, not the "style" new players are playing. If anything, GTO should appear to be more fun to play against, since it involves significantly more bluffing than any human regular had until recently and is, overall, looser than humans. However, the fact that players are simply much better than they were back in the day means that recreational players lose much faster and without prolonged upswings

That last part you said. Thats my point. How can more recs be incentivized to play the game again?

Im all for outskilling your opponent but at the end of the day alot of matches will be decided by coolers if everyone plays optimally.

Look at Negreanu vs Polk. Negreanu should have won alot more races and all ins vs Polk. But luck favored polk many more times than negreanu. Not to take away anything from Polk. He is a master at heads up. But I dont think Negreanu went in there without studying polk and having terrific coaching.

How can this game become more rec friendly again?

Its a question I've asked myself for many years now just watching the majority evolve into monotonous robots.

You automatically have an edge if you forced them to drink on table and there are naked female players or dealer #justsaying haha

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It's tough to get good at poker and people don't go to casinos to fold cards. I don't see the lower levels ever getting too hard to beat relatively easily.

Reading all these things you're writing makes me think that you're just looking for excuses not to do the work and get good at poker.

Yes, you're right, you won't win at poker anymore if you don't put in the work.

No, you're wrong, people are not that good at poker and there are still huge edges, especially in low and mid stakes.

No one is playing GTO or even close to it, as I said before.

If you no longer enjoy the game because people are now playing "robotic" like you said, then stop playing the game.
But if you put in the work, you will find ways to beat these robotic players, they are making tons and tons of mistakes that you can take advantage of.

Again, I think you're just looking for excuses not to put in the work.
And that's ok, you don't have to study poker if that's not what you enjoy.
You don't have to play poker if you no longer like the game in the way it has evolved.

But don't come in here claiming that people are GTO bots, because they're not.
The large majority of poker players are still terrible and don't do much studying.

At the lowest stakes, even the best players who are winning are terrible from what I've seen and heard.

Been playing 15 years as rec player bud. Read and studied many reputable books and been a profitable player for last 9 years straight. 70% PLO 30% NLHE

Just pointing out how things are much different than back in the day. Nothing wrong with that.

I dont think I'll ever quit playing. But it sure isnt as fun as it used to be. My goal in posting this thread wasnt to knock the current state of the game. It was to see what other people think of what the game is today hence me asking for people's input.

I think its fair to say that the overall standard of the average NLH player has risen.
Its no suprise, there endless amounts of information out there now of how to play well if you want to learn.
There's always some who jump in and play without having much idea of what their doing, we all probably did the same!
Nobody can play perfect GTO but you can memorise the most important situations which gives you an advantage over players who cant be bothered to put the work in.
Its just another disincentive for noob's to continue playing, even experienced players who play as a sideline will see GTO as a barrier to continue.

In general I agree with Yeodan here.

I think you're "having less fun" because the games are harder and you're winning less. As Yeodan said, GTO play is substantially more bluffy and prone to putting a lot of chips in than human play is (and even moreso than human play used to be), which from a raw sense should be *more* entertaining and interesting than playing against straightforward abc players. Granted, it can also be frustrating to play against.

Also, GTO has so many mixed frequencies that it's extremely weird to call it "robotic" as a rec -- sometimes GTO play will call, fold, and raise in a spot *with the same hand.* That doesn't seem robotic (in the abc straightforward sense) at all. It seems dynamic and unpredictable.

Fact is poker is harder, people play better, and if you aren't keeping up with the field then you are winning less often and losing more often than you did in the past...and that's not fun. Or maybe after so many years of playing poker you just find the game less thrilling than you used to, but you misidentify this as something having changed with the game, when really it's something that's changed with you.

Suffice to say that even the best of the best are still a ways off from playing gto poker, and certainly playing lowstakes online or any stakes live you aren't running into anyone coming close to emulating gto strat.

How fun the game is depends entirely on what you're looking for as fun right? For some people playing in the most challenging game they can afford that pushes them to improve as much as they can is fun. Some people would rather get drunk and make jokes in a game where everybody is gambling on gut and doesn't know how to calculate pot odds. Hell a ton of people at 1/2 tables are there because they're uncomfortable socializing anywhere else.

Overall I assume the populations skill level has increased since previous years, and games on average have shifted towards more serious, tougher games, but especially at the lower stakes you can always find a game that fits what you're looking for. The higher stakes games it's probably a little worse but most people don't play those games anyway.

I would say the bigger problem are skilled players, or people who are trying to become skilled that are unfriendly. Dead silence with headphones in, or only speaking to berate people is probably bad for the game, mostly.

The problem with more people being great (than rather just good) is that anyone trying out poker will be driven off quickly.

The appeal of poker to the casual player is (or better: was) that they could play, get lucky sometimes, get unlucky sometimes, delude themselves that today the luck of the cards wasn't just on their side...and in the end have many fun sessions while overall and slowly losing all their money.

Operative word being: 'slowly' and 'having fun sessions'

Today with people at the table that'll just rip the money off of you with non-stop (near)optimal moves the incentive to come back is basically nil*

"You can shear a sheep..." and all that. However the predators are just locked into a mutual, infinite death spiral of being the one who just shears that tiny bit faster than the next one, which just ends up not shearing but skinning.

*Which is, funnily enough, the exact same argument that supports the controversial 'more rake is better' argument aimed at making the low level games unprofitable for pros so that new players have time to get sucked into the fascination of poker instead of getting insta-fleeced and getting zero fun out of it.

The sheep analogy is fine, but rather than shearing them, the general thing is to nuke the planet from orbit instead

THANK YOU. Finally someone gets it. You may have explained it better than me.

Those new and rec players are very important to the poker eco system.

Ive played poker thru many ups and downs in my life and will always have a love for the game.

Just hoping its glory days will come back.

Maybe after all the GTO robots go broke getting coolered and paying rake.

We shall see.

The so called “predators” didn’t grow up on a sheep farm and couldn’t care less if they skin the sheep because they never intended on being in the shearing business for the rest of their lives.

I’m sure there are plenty of old school live players who never want to do anything else in their life. But I highly doubt there’s a single GTO wiz who wants to depend on online poker income ten years down the road.

While this sounds all pretty and stuff, it's simply not true.

Variance is so huge and rec players play so little volume that there will always be plenty of bad players running good.

Beginner players will be OK at the lower levels if the entire USA opens up to online sites.

Honestly, how many sharks will be swimming in the .01/.02... or even the .05/.10 pool? 25NL will have a few really good players; but cmon, there will be plenty of tables available for the learners among us.

And... as in 2003-2011.... the stupid Yanks that think online 100NL is the same as casino live play at 1/2NL will still pop in every once in a while. THAT was an awful lot of the bread and butter for the online "pros". We would even see the same action at 200NL.

As long as technology gets better at finding the bot-farms..... the lower levels online will be a good place to learn.

"If everyone plays like a GTO bot" is an enormous and impossible "if", because poker is insanely complex. Not everyone can be a grandmaster in Chess nor the equivalent in NLHE, so it will always be possible to have an edge. Even among GM's there are significant edges.

There aren't great players at stakes where people "trying out poker" are playing.

Exploitative play skins the sheep more than GTO does.

This is a great argument!