Does anyone actually think that online poker is trending in the right direction?
Every site has reduced traffic and guarantees.
Unless the Americans get back on I think online poker will be dead in 5 years.

We are at a low peak, but its not going much lower imo.
Also guarantees are always down during summer.

But we definetly need some innovation for online poker, something new. Like the bounty builders a few years ago or Zoom/Rush.

The recent ideas from Pokerstars with Power Up Poker, NL 6+, NL Showtime, Fusion are honestly not the best.
They also need to bring back Battle of the Planets (SNG Leaderboards), Monthly MTT Leaderboards.

Right now PartyPoker & Natural8 are making bigger steps towards innovation for online poker than Pokerstars.

So we have to wait and see.

None of the states that legalized online poker allow you to play against the world. It's gone for good, barring some miracle federal legislation.

Be happy you can still play at all.

Ya since Black Friday and the decline of Full Tilt, things have never been the same.

There was a point in time where the Sunday Warm Up was 100k+ to first.

when rake keeps getting raised it's natural to see the weaker players win less frequently and the better players study and look for thinner edges where they didn't before.. ^^ i remember $1 rebuy having 10k+ up top and the $3r having 20k

KQs used to show a profit too.

That would be true if the entire planet lived in the United States (then they'll brag about freedom), which is forunatelly not the case

I was mainly replying to the third sentence of the OP about Americans getting back on.

just like poker players have to adjust, so do poker rooms.
pokerstars obv makes a lot of reg-unfriendly moves but other rooms have to adjust and learn from those big mistakes.

same as in every industry, the market will show... new rooms have to create attention (higher GTD prices, new games, new designs etc).

There will come a time when pokerstars is the myspace of poker. But a game that lives from the edge built of human adjustment, cant be dead that easy.

It's dead. There's one site running high stakes cash and most players are sitting out.

GG

Imo the problem is that its the first time that you have all the world splitted , you have USA alone, you have Portugal, France, Spanish in other pool (legal), and you have rest of the world with a lot of countries that cant play or paused to move to the legal side. At the same time, you have party poker that its better day after day and can catch more and more players from pokerstars.
For me the solution is legalize more and more countries and try to move all countries to the legal pool (try to introduce usa too). We need pokerstars and partypoker to put pressure on governments because players have no voice.
And another think is, the pool could be bigger if all players move to Pokerstars FR.ES.PT, because if you live in brasil or russia you can play on that pool, but all of Portugal players, France, and spanish cant play on Pokerstars.com.

Blame the French and Spanish governments, not Stars.

I wonder players who was affect by black friday are glad it happen. Life after poker is better than grinding online for me. Pretty boring grinding online cash full of eastern regs who are solid as f.

I'm broke. Life is dead.

Huh. Seems I've missed quite a lot

Yes you sure did. Is there someway to get a notification 5 years from now? I wanna see poker being dead in 5 years comes to refutation.