It doesn't take much to kill the profitability of games completely. Imagine what would happen if overnight the rake and fee's were doubled... There would be almost no winners at all in the low/mid limit games (the high limit games, where rake is less of a factor, will always survive because of "whales"). A lot of pros in western countries will have to stop playing then, as there edge will just be to small to make a living from (who wants to multitable poker for $5/hour?).

A 3.5 BB/100 6-max LHE player who has his gross profit cut in half will become breakeven (this has already been witnessed by alot of LHE players). A 9% ROI SNG player who has his gross profit cut in half will also become breakeven.

The simple fact is that because the rake is so high; any cut in gross profit has a much greater effect on the player's winrate. Both the values quoted above are for the top few LHE/SNG players and for mediocre players, even a 20% cut in gross profit could push them over the edge.

I just think that if that if you want to really hurt them then there are ways you can which will do far more (1000's of times more) damage than this - for example: your could spread the word to every big news organization in the hope that they print bad publicity, but then there is very a good chance that you will mortally hurt the profitability of online poker in the process. Is it really worth it?

I for one will quickly leave poker when it becomes obvious that it's unprofitable and by then I probably won't care who the sites are run by and other issues will be more important to me.

Juk

...and thus the games will become good again. It's a cycle, like many things in life. It's happened many times already, but on a smaller scale than what you're describing.

I don't think you can assume this. What you are suggesting is that if the western pros suddenly decide to leave tomorrow it's just gonna start to oscillate like the classic "Foxes and Rabbits" predator-prey model:



For this to happen then you have to assume that the toughness of the games has already converged and I think that the last few years have shown that no obvious convergence has happened and the games have progressively got tougher and tougher since the donkfests of 2003.

Also, if/when most western pros can no longer make a decent living from the games then it doesn't necessarily mean that pros from places with a much lower cost of living can't. Two good examples of this are: the recent "Chinese gold farming" problem in games like WoW and the proliferation of freelance Indian "rent-a-coder" types massively undercutting western coders.

Interestingly the "Chinese gold farming" problem doesn't seem to have converged to an "oscillating model" either. It appears that it was much more like the USA "gold rush" (no joke intended... lol) where the ones who got their first made plenty, but then the market got more and more overcrowded until it started to become unprofitable for all but the ones who can live off incredibly tiny amounts.

Juk

Meh. Well you know a lot more about that than I do of course. You definitely have a point in that case. There is no doubt a HUD would be public very quickly.

I don't really see this as an issue at all.

The point isn't neccessarily to make it impossible, or even very difficult, to play at AP/UB for those who chose to do so.

The point is for the poker community to take a stance and cut support for AP/UB. 2+2 have already done so - if the major players in the poker software market take the same stance it will both raise awareness and send a strong and united message from the majority of the poker community.

Bump for the end of the honeymoon.