I was playing live the day before yesterday (in the UK), and this conversation started up. No, not by me lol.

Only the dealer knew what 2+2 was, no-one at the table had read a poker book or watched a training video, only one of them played online ($1.50 SNGs occasionally), and there was some kind of a morbid fascination when the sunday million was mentioned, in respect of how many entered and how long it might take to play out such an exceptional thing ...

If we were talking average, then I would have said 50% or 60%... but I said 20%.

20% of a population pool is not average. Think of a bell curve, top 20% of that bell curve would not be the average...

just sayin which is why I think my guesstimate isn't too far off. Especially in Asian culture where gambooling is very commonplace and part of the culture. And I'm not talking about them all jumping on to 200NL, but rather them all jumping on to 2NL, 5NL, and 10NL which should be well within the means of 20% of the Chinese population.

As far as India is concerned, you are right...

I thought I heard someone say gambling isn't legal there, but after some quick google fu I see they have online poker. So you are right on that score.

As far as China, I did some google fu and it seems that you have to do some work arounds in China to get outside of their blocks to play and that occasionally you will get blocked. Apparently there are some players from China that do play on a few sites but as far as I can tell, there aren't a lot. I dunno, I could be wrong

Will the games continue to get tougher? Yes, but not exponentially so. The biggest gains in knowledge have already happened.

Thanks to the information/technology explosion, regs have become stronger, and fish go broke more quickly than ever before. Due to the reg:fish ratio, winrates have naturally plummeted, variance has increased, and NLH poker is in terminal decline. It was fun while it lasted... and I should probably learn the rules of deuce to seven.

Just as a slight tangent, if you want to take advantage of the Chinese poker boom if it ever happens, I'd be learning PLO. If my local is anything to go by, the big Chinese businessman money is all in the big PLO games.

are there any sites you can actually play chinese poker on?

I think the games will primarily get tougher insofar as the fish pool will keep shrinking relative to the reg pool; I don't expect the average micro to lowstakes reg to get substantially better than they are now (possibly slightly to somewhat better).

I'm pretty sure the talk itt so far is about a boom from Chinese players playing NLHE/PLO etc.

As for Open Face Chinese poker, and the pineapple variant, yes there are both mobile apps and websites where you can play this game. For further info on OFC check the thread in the other forum I moderate, Draw & Other Poker.

thanks I was jw

Gambling is illegal in China. However, no one gives a f&ck if you would gamble online. Some sites get blocked, but if a site wants to, it would be pretty easy to get around this...
I think you are overestimating the disposable income of 99% of the chinese though..
Secondly, they won play nl2-5-10 cents... the people who have some kind of money would think this to low for them. They would play higher. A lot of my friends are recreational players. They all play nl50, nl100 or higher online as thats what they are used to from their live games...

IN your opinion,

do you see China getting a free and open internet anytime soon?

Do you think China will ever get to the point where they don't block access to poker sites?

And if so, how many Chinese people will visit online poker sites? Out of that Billion population, is it too far a stretch to say that 100,000 people will flock to online poker sites daily?

I dunno, I like to build math models, and I just find it hard to believe that out of 1 billion people that at least 100,000 of them wouldn't filter down to online poker sites if they were given easy and legal access...

*shrug*

I'd like to share your optimism, dgiharris. I, like you, missed the previous boom so it would be nice to see this happen. I am not going to question your numbers or speculation on the influx from the China market, but do you think those of us in the US would actually get to play against these guys? Right now, we could through sites like merge and Bovada if it happened today, but in 7 years, US regulation may be in full swing (or full ban ) and I doubt the US sites are going to open up to international play. Thoughts?

The whole thing is ****ed. I'm surprised at how many noobs are playing 5nl on bovada though. Where are they coming from!? Lot of them are also just nits who play fit or fold, or float a street or two then fold to three barreling.

Some of them are idiots who shove with nothing and tilt easily.

If only all villains were like this, poker would be easy.

You guys need to get a grip. I could tell you stories that would make you cry at worst and depress you at best. We'll never see anything like that again. Winning players hoping for a boom like that is similar to guys who've been playing for two weeks starting threads about their future plans of playing for a living; optimism with little grounding in reality.

Part of what made it what it was is because there weren't dozens of training sites and coaches dolling out advice. You had 2+2 and it was small. You had Moneymaker who won 2.5 mil on like $40, luckboxing two super-sats and then the ME to boot, talking about his riches on David Letterman, Leno and Good Morning America while plugging PokerStars, and the economy was very good.

Stars went from 2000 players to like 20K in less than a month, overtaking Party and it exploded from there that following year. To think you can open shove AA in a 100NL game and get called by KTo and J4s again is really reaching. I remember watching a Stoxtrader hand history review video from a Euro site with unlimited raises HU with him having quad tens on the river and kept getting reraised in a 100/200 limit game until his opponent got felted (something like 12 raises). Uber-tilt, trying to rep, who knows, but he didn't have much of anything.

Those days are gone forever. Even if China exploded, they're not going to play like that. The info is out there and easily accessible. The economy isn't rising, the lowest stakes aren't 2/4 limit or 50NL, and the poker secret is known.

That's why God invented live poker...

Poker today is a vastly different game than what it was 10 years ago(from what ive seen, i have no clue but it would be my guess). Give it 10 more years and it will evolve further.

It's like having a web design company that makes crappy websites which make your eyes bleed that sold a bunch of them long time ago and hopes that crappy websites are going to become popular again.

Either become better or get run over.

Crap analogy because it implies there isn't an actual point which is the best you can be. As poker moves to the point where everyone is playing perfectly there is less you can win.

it means you can be the "best" if you are better than your competition, or competition is non existent. if everyone is playing perfectly then you actually lose because of the rake.

the best players now probably wont be the best if they suddenly went 10 years ahead in time but they would totally crush everyone 10 ago

Could that ever happen?

I'm probably a horrible player compared to you, and I'm better than several players at the micros. I'm doing my level best to get better, but I highly doubt that I'll ever become "perfect," and I'm pretty serious about getting better poker.

There's tons of players who just play for fun, or are psychotic aggro fish who spew for fun. I don't see them ever becoming GTO.

Basically I think the best I can be isn't going to be as good as the best someone else could be, and vice versa.

first person has missed the point of what i said.

second person, there's a difference between attempting to get better and actually having a solution of how to play perfectly. Even if learning to play perfectly isn't possible the fact that you know computers can play perfectly against you kind of kills the online market. Especially when it'll just get flooded by bots.

your point was kind of vague so maybe i misunderstood whatever you tried to say.. my point is there will always be better lines and counters which always leaves room to improve even for the best players..

I think there is an interesting angle on the "new golden age of poker" once china enters the market that hasn't been considered.

Think of the peak games being played by macau businessmen - 7.5k/15k to $12.5k/$25k USD. Much bigger than public (sure there might be some massive private games among billionaires or w/e) western cash games. The macau big game has run almost continually 24/7 for the last several years. With that game at the top, there will be games running all the way down to $0.01/$0.02 or possibly even lower.

When the peak is much higher, the pyramid is much wider. What I mean is that there will be many more potential fish than presently are in the western (read: non-chinese/indian) market. These huge games are indicative of a much larger potential player pool by an order of magnitude.

Yeah, if you add 100K players from the general public, a ton of those will be donators, even while the best of them will end up making money at the nosebleeds.

In poker money flows up the pyramid not down. So an enormous increase of players at the bottom will likely lead to an increase at the top - with stakes and game frequency increasing at the nosebleeds - however an increase at the top does not necessarily mean a trickle down to the bottom. Think of it this way, how does a few rich businessmen dropping $10mill to nosebleed crushers improve the games a 10NL grinder plays? Those nosebleed crushers are not going to proceed to drop down in stakes and lose it all to micro players. On the other hand a huge increase in micro players means a lot more of them shot taking and playing higher so the money can find its way up the food chain.

You are seriously letting your own personal bias impair your judgement.

Why is it that 2+2ers can't help but think everyone is like us? Seriously, have you seen the public? Have you ever seen Jay Walking on Jay Leno.

You can walk up to the average person worldwide and ask them average questions:

"Is there gravity on the moon?"
"Which planet is closer to Earth: Jupiter, Saturn, or Neptune?"
"What is the capital of Australia?"
"What is the biggest mammal on the planet?"

and the average person gets most of those questions wrong.

And you actually think the "average" person flocking to an online poker site actually takes the time to study, watch training videos, or subscribe to 2+2 or Deuces Cracked?

You are smoking Crystal Meth.

The average person thinks of poker as little different than blackjack or roulette-- You gotta get lucky to win. And even if they do believe skill is involved then they will believe in their innate talents, magical guts, and god given abilities long long LONG before they believe that they actually have to study

I take it you've never really talked to fish. Talk to a fish about studying poker. Fish take pride in NOT studying poker. Hell, in fact, they will often STOP studying the second they run into something that counters their fishy logic and how they believe the game is played.