Is there any reason why this online poker bidness might dry up? [Archive]

stlip

03-02-2005, 08:52 AM

The online hold'em boom will absolutely go bust.

People love to gamble, but they always need a new way to do it. That's because they love the rush of a win, but after playing the same game over many months or many years and racking up big losses they recognize that they are long-term losers and no longer feel the same rush from occasional success. New games can give them back that rush and so the crowd always moves on.

I've always kept my day job, but I was making a living back in the 70s in California card rooms where Lo-ball was the game. Then it became all pai-gow and hold'em.

Casinos couldn't add enough electronic slot machines in the 90s, until they overdid and suddenly a lot of players moved on to the next big thing video poker.

State lotterys always started out with scratch and win tickets, but then revenue would plateau and so they would bring in lotto drawings with escalating prizes to generate extra excitement. Then, predictably, revenue would plateau again and so they would step up the ad budget.

Hold'em online is the most perfect gambling product there has ever been. It's easy to do from anywhere any time, so the potential market of players is bigger than any other. The publicity has been beyond a marketer's dream; from Chris Moneymaker to all the televised tourneys, you couldn't have written a better script.

I'm still seeing higher numbers of players at peak times on Party, so we're still on the climb up to the top of the mountain, but my buddy list tells a different story. Six months ago when I put someone on my list I usually saw them again and I would often find myself deciding whether to sit at a table with Fish 1 or Fish 2 or Fish 3. Now I rarely find myself getting a second chance with any of my new favorite fish.

Time will tell where they'll all go next, and whether it will be a game you and I can beat or whether it'll be something where the only edge belongs to the house.

Hood

03-02-2005, 08:57 AM

[ QUOTE ]
People love to gamble, but they always need a new way to do it. That's because they love the rush of a win, but after playing the same game over many months or many years and racking up big losses they recognize that they are long-term losers and no longer feel the same rush from occasional success. New games can give them back that rush and so the crowd always moves on.

[/ QUOTE ]

What about new players? I think it's fair to say that a lot of fish don't hang around long (there's only so many times they'll reach for their CC), so I think it's obvious that hold'em doesn't keep many bad players occupied for a long time. But new players will keep coming in to Hold'em as long as poker and gambling are popular.

Hillbilly Cat

03-02-2005, 09:13 AM

It will definately dry up.

The main reason is that soon all these smart gamblers will realise that a career in IT is the perfect con job and you make loads more money doing pretty much sweet FA.

In the UK a typical IT contractor gets about £400-500 a day (thats about $900) for just putting your feet up on the desk, whittering in pointless meetings and drinking coffee..

Don't let them tell you it isn't so /images/graemlins/wink.gif

....

And you learn how to write bots I guess... lol

Hood

03-02-2005, 09:19 AM

Wow, I with I earned £10k/month in my UK IT job...

stlip

03-02-2005, 09:21 AM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
People love to gamble, but they always need a new way to do it. That's because they love the rush of a win, but after playing the same game over many months or many years and racking up big losses they recognize that they are long-term losers and no longer feel the same rush from occasional success. New games can give them back that rush and so the crowd always moves on.

[/ QUOTE ]

What about new players? I think it's fair to say that a lot of fish don't hang around long (there's only so many times they'll reach for their CC), so I think it's obvious that hold'em doesn't keep many bad players occupied for a long time. But new players will keep coming in to Hold'em as long as poker and gambling are popular.

[/ QUOTE ]

New players will go to whatever is the new thing. That's hold'em for now. As I said, I simply look at the number of players on party -- and I saw 77,000 the other day, when 60k used to be the biggest I saw -- and you can see that this trend is still in its growth phase.

But growth trends always come to an end, and some marketer will popularize the next big thing in a year or two or three, that's just the way it goes -- don't bet against it.

Hillbilly Cat

03-02-2005, 09:39 AM

Contracting dear boy, contracting.... oh, and get yourself a good accountant... flat 25% tax.... yummy.

/images/graemlins/smile.gif

yeau2

03-02-2005, 09:40 AM

I'm not sure I see it this way at all. Although it may dry up to a point, for many I think it may become just as ordinary as going to a casino and playing blackjack or slot machines, and possibly be as integrated into one's day as watching the evening news. Hold'em is too easy to play for people, its not like something difficult that is raging like shopping for beanie babys or collecting magic cards or watching the new season of Survivor. As Johnny Moss said "Hold'em is to stud what chess is to checkers". It an elegant game that people cant get enough of, its like Playstation2 for adults.

Now I'm not saying fish will keep losing, but I think the issue may be that everyone (as has already begun happening) will improve there game slightly making games more difficult to beat. Playing for a living is now 10 times as easy to do as in the past, but still requires an emotional journey that I don't think most are ready for (I am one that isn't).

As for trying it, I think that's the best bet. You can always return to the working world, tough as it will be.

Oluwafemi

03-02-2005, 10:32 AM

[ QUOTE ]
I ask because I'm playing full-time...very soon.

Bots taking over the rooms?
Bad players dropping out of the boom so that ROI's significantly drop?
Etc...

Any reason why I should be concerned?

Thanks in advance.

[/ QUOTE ]

i'll take Government Legislation for $1000, Alex.

lorinda

03-02-2005, 11:48 AM

My zoo post yesterday (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=inet&Number=1831832&Forum= All_Forums&Words=%2Bpro&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Main =1831832&Search=true&where=bodysub&Name=22&dateran ge=1&newerval=1&newertype=w&olderval=&oldertype=&b odyprev=#Post1831832)

Basically, you should expect the unexpected.

Make sure you can at least kind of beat ring games, be sure to be able to beat all breeds of SNG as well as you can beat Party, and don't tilt when something happens to your main source of income.
Yesterday probably killed 5% of new internet professionals when it should have created 5% more.

Lori

ColdestCall

03-02-2005, 01:07 PM

Online poker is not going to dry up any time soon, IMO. I believe we are still in the early stages of the boom, and explosive growth will continue for at least a couple of years before the "bust," and, by that time, it will be so big that post "bust" it will still be bigger than it is today. As Lorinda mentions, your game will have to constantly evolve to keep up with changing circumstances, but a person of reasonable intelligence and above average discipline will be able to make a living at online poker for some time to come (and people of exceptional intelligence and discipline will be able to make a very good living).

voltron87b

03-02-2005, 01:19 PM

It is too early to tell whether online poker will "dry up" and what level the online poker economy will stabilize at. It depends on several factors:

1. Legal. Will the US Government crack down on these sites or inhibit financial transactions?

2. Bots/ Inegrity.

3. Too many pros with pokertracker. If there are less pros, the games will be easier. This has nothing to do with how many fish there are, it has everything to do with how many good players there are. I think many sites/limits will eventually become mostly pros with pokertracker beating the crap out of each other. 15/30 in specific. Low limits and 22 SNGs are not in danger in this respect.

All in all it is impossible to tell where things will go. If you are in your 20s I cannot think of a stupider thing to do than go pro playing online poker and letting that be in the olny source of income/mental asset you have. You have 50+ years left, and you don't want to play poker for all of them. It is one thing to get a degree, job, etc, and support yourself for a period playing poker but it is another altogether to drop what you are doing just because poker is great right now. Poker is not a long term solution. I think when people are making estimates of how good things will be they are not looking far enough into the future, 10-15 years.

byronkincaid

03-02-2005, 01:28 PM

yeah nobody plays blackjack, roulette or craps anymore do they.

Bigwig

03-02-2005, 02:56 PM

I'm just confused on what to do. I'm big on freedom, and the money is right. I suppose it's the fear of making a mistake and having my income dry up by outside sources. Then waddling back to the working world with a big hole in my resume.

I have a request. Would any full-time pro mind talking to me on the phone for twenty minutes sometime? It would be a great help. Thanks.

1C5

03-02-2005, 03:06 PM

Well how old are you and what was your last "job"?

Bigwig

03-02-2005, 03:14 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Well how old are you and what was your last "job"?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm 31 and I'm a financial planner.

ColdestCall

03-02-2005, 03:32 PM

I've got a good friend who is around 34, and has been a highly successful gambler for years...he's thinking of becoming a financial planner.

I'm actually not kidding btw, and I'm telling you this so you will consider the serious burnout factor involved in playing poker professionally. The friend I'm talking about is a real good player, who easily makes a living playing poker, and is just plain sick of it. So bear in mind that even if you are successful, you may get awfully tired of playing thousands of hands of poker every day after a few years, and then you will have that big hole in your resume you're talking about....

Then again, most jobs are pretty boring, so it is strongly debatable whether or not playing poker that you are sick of for 8 hours a day is all that much worse than doing anything else you are sick of (unless you can't play well when you are sick of it - that could be a problem). Just something else to think about.

Best of luck if you try this, and my best advice would be to shoot for the very top of the profession if you do - never stop working on your game and trying to get better no matter how much success you are having until you are beating the Big Game regularly - and then work at it even harder!

Bigwig

03-02-2005, 04:25 PM

Ha! Well, I'm sick of financial planning.

Certainly, burnout is a concern. I've considered scaling back my practice to just my top clients. I would make about 50% the income, but be able to work 25% of the schedule. This way, if I decide poker isn't the way to go in 3 years, I can just rededicate myself to my old business. I'll have some rebuilding to do, but of course poker could always supplement my income until then.

I still keep thinking about one thing, though. I've got one life, and while playing poker isn't something extraordinary like being an actor or PGA professional, it sure as hell sounds a lot cooler than financial planner to me if someone were writing my life story.

ColdestCall

03-02-2005, 04:35 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Ha! Well, I'm sick of financial planning.

Certainly, burnout is a concern. I've considered scaling back my practice to just my top clients. I would make about 50% the income, but be able to work 25% of the schedule. This way, if I decide poker isn't the way to go in 3 years, I can just rededicate myself to my old business. I'll have some rebuilding to do, but of course poker could always supplement my income until then.

I still keep thinking about one thing, though. I've got one life, and while playing poker isn't something extraordinary like being an actor or PGA professional, it sure as hell sounds a lot cooler than financial planner to me if someone were writing my life story.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, the scaling back thing sounds like a nice hedge and may very well be the way to go, at least at first. As far as your life story goes, I'll agree that "professional poker player" SOUNDS a lot cooler, but how cool is the reality, really, particularly if you are grinding out SNG's. You spend eight hours or more a day, by yourself, sitting staring at computer monitors with 8 or more games of hold em going on at once, clicking, clicking, clicking, clicking, win some, lose some, push, fold, check, raise, blah blah blah - how long is it going to take until it all becomes a meaningless blur? I can remember how cool I thought it was to be a professional blackjack player until I was one, and boy did I grow to HATE the game of blackjack in a hurry (although the fat comped suites, bottles of Dom, and 4 AM filet and lobster tail snacks were still pretty cool - tough to ever get tired of those...) The only way I can imagine the REALITY of being a professional poker player as being anything but incredibly boring and tedious after a while is if you somehow become one of the top players and are on Tour, traveling the world and playing high stakes hold em. Or maybe you love the game so much that you just will never grow tired of it, in which case, more power to you!

Bigwig

03-02-2005, 04:58 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Ha! Well, I'm sick of financial planning.

Certainly, burnout is a concern. I've considered scaling back my practice to just my top clients. I would make about 50% the income, but be able to work 25% of the schedule. This way, if I decide poker isn't the way to go in 3 years, I can just rededicate myself to my old business. I'll have some rebuilding to do, but of course poker could always supplement my income until then.

I still keep thinking about one thing, though. I've got one life, and while playing poker isn't something extraordinary like being an actor or PGA professional, it sure as hell sounds a lot cooler than financial planner to me if someone were writing my life story.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, the scaling back thing sounds like a nice hedge and may very well be the way to go, at least at first. As far as your life story goes, I'll agree that "professional poker player" SOUNDS a lot cooler, but how cool is the reality, really, particularly if you are grinding out SNG's. You spend eight hours or more a day, by yourself, sitting staring at computer monitors with 8 or more games of hold em going on at once, clicking, clicking, clicking, clicking, win some, lose some, push, fold, check, raise, blah blah blah - how long is it going to take until it all becomes a meaningless blur? I can remember how cool I thought it was to be a professional blackjack player until I was one, and boy did I grow to HATE the game of blackjack in a hurry (although the fat comped suites, bottles of Dom, and 4 AM filet and lobster tail snacks were still pretty cool - tough to ever get tired of those...) The only way I can imagine the REALITY of being a professional poker player as being anything but incredibly boring and tedious after a while is if you somehow become one of the top players and are on Tour, traveling the world and playing high stakes hold em. Or maybe you love the game so much that you just will never grow tired of it, in which case, more power to you!

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, I've thought of that. But I'm making my decision based on 30 hours of play a week, which allows quite a bit of leeway. And I do plan on taking 'business trips' to Vegas and AC. Also, I watch TV, have some drinks, talk on the phone, and read while I play. I don't feel like I'm 'grinding.' I feel relaxed.

Of course it can't be anything BUT tedious after a while, but I'm not sure what job isn't.

Scuba Chuck

03-02-2005, 05:41 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Ha! Well, I'm sick of financial planning.

Certainly, burnout is a concern. I've considered scaling back my practice to just my top clients. I would make about 50% the income, but be able to work 25% of the schedule. This way, if I decide poker isn't the way to go in 3 years, I can just rededicate myself to my old business. I'll have some rebuilding to do, but of course poker could always supplement my income until then.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is the correct line for you. You're already halfway out of your job already (think about this.)

I am a financial planner as well. I just fired 70% of my clients in January. I will still have 80% of my income. BTW, I suspect your client base is probably similar to these numbers than the ones you wrote above (50% the income). Furthermore, I set a $250,000 minimum asset size for a new account. I don't know what your avg client size is, but you will need to continue to take on new clients, so be very exclusive.

Second of all, I suspect your exasperation with your current profession has more to do with our environment, than anything else. There's just so many client questions these days.

I think you said that you were an independent once. Something that I have considered in order to devote more time to poker. IMO, you should be able to provide client service to your top clients with 20 hours of work per week, and the remainder of your working time could be devoted to poker. You'll still be working 50 hours a week though. Furthermore, I assume you have aspirations to become a solid MTT player (perhaps this is me talking, and not you), and the free time is what you need to reach your goals.

Once you accept this, you will begin to do better at both jobs. At least, it did for me.

1C5

03-02-2005, 06:21 PM

Good discussion here. I am a little younger than you guys here (I just graduated with my MBA) but really thought I wanted to be a short term stock trader when I graduated. How neat I thought. Work from home, no boss, take time off when I want, etc.

But just in the mean time before I was set to move across the country for training playing poker part time has really turned me off of the idea of sitting in front of a computer screen all day. (And I like poker so I would probably have been playing at night so really it would be sitting in front of a computer all day and at night also.

So just like that, cancelled the plans to move, looking into getting something where I am not stuck behind a computer all day and then playing poker for fun once in a while.

Pro poker player sounds neat as does stock trader but I can't see myself having fun doing that for years and years...

ColdestCall

03-03-2005, 10:43 AM

[ QUOTE ]
IMO, you should be able to provide client service to your top clients with 20 hours of work per week, and the remainder of your working time could be devoted to poker.

[/ QUOTE ]

20 Hours a week??!! C'mon Scuba, you're working way too hard. Buy some spiders, sell some upside OEX Jan 06 calls, and tell these whiny clients to shut up and stop bothering you, and check back with you in a year, 'cause you got more important stuff to do. Like winning the WSOP.....

rabbitlover

03-03-2005, 10:49 AM

Is there anyone here who "knows" they have played against a bot?

Scuba Chuck

03-03-2005, 02:25 PM

I didn't want to go into this that deep, but here I go.

The one thing you fail to realize is the state of our economy. Money right now is "free." If you doubt this, look at how you can get a house. A good friend of mine recently bought a house, put nothing down, and got 3% back (WTF?) Or, how you can buy a couch from the 'furniture barn' with nothing down and no interest/payments until 2009. Or, the fact that people are willing to pay $4 for a cup of coffee (goodness!)

As this well dries up, there will be less money 'floating' around. As money is valued more, there will be more tight pocketed people out there.

Alan Greenspan (genius or lieunatict?) is currently tightening the money supply (admittedly - slow). Could/will this have an effect on our economy? Job growth is marginal already, and corporate america is more focused on cleaning up balance sheets than acquiring new employees. There are a lot of similarities to our economy to the Japanese economy of the early nineties, or the US economy in the late 60s, early 70s.

Just a thought.

ColdestCall

03-03-2005, 03:14 PM

Ahh, but Scuba you forget a very important thing about gambling....

When the economy is booming, and people are flush, everyone "gambles like it's 1999."

When the economy sucks, everyone finds money to gamble anyway, because they feel so bad about their miserable lives that they are hoping to make the "big score."

The gamble train keeps rolling along, and it will not be stopped or even slowed by Greenspan tightening M1 or whatever....Who the hell is Greenspan anyway - he don't play no steenkin hold em!

Scuba Chuck

03-03-2005, 03:34 PM

There's only one thing I know for sure that you're wrong about, Coldcall.

[ QUOTE ]
Greenspan... - he don't play no steenkin hold em!

[/ QUOTE ]

ColdestCall

03-03-2005, 04:07 PM

[ QUOTE ]
There's only one thing I know for sure that you're wrong about, Coldcall.

[ QUOTE ]
Greenspan... - he don't play no steenkin hold em!

[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

Allright fine. I'll make the challenge right here and now.

Greenspan, I will take you down, 20k HU freeze out, NL Hold Em. Your time and place. Bring it, old man!

Bigwig

03-03-2005, 04:11 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
There's only one thing I know for sure that you're wrong about, Coldcall.

[ QUOTE ]
Greenspan... - he don't play no steenkin hold em!

[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

Allright fine. I'll make the challenge right here and now.

Greenspan, I will take you down, 20k HU freeze out, NL Hold Em. Your time and place. Bring it, old man!

[/ QUOTE ]

You should take more from that Keynesian idiot.

Scuba Chuck

03-03-2005, 04:42 PM

[ QUOTE ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There's only one thing I know for sure that you're wrong about, Coldcall.

Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Greenspan... - he don't play no steenkin hold em!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Allright fine. I'll make the challenge right here and now.

Greenspan, I will take you down, 20k HU freeze out, NL Hold Em. Your time and place. Bring it, old man!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You should take more from that Keynesian idiot.

[/ QUOTE ]

You aren't going to take much from Keynes, except for what you can pull from his cold dead hands.

Bigwig

03-03-2005, 04:59 PM

[ QUOTE ]
except for what you can pull from his cold dead hands.

[/ QUOTE ]

Egocentric, illogical, anti-capitalist economic theory?

ColdestCall

03-03-2005, 05:03 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
except for what you can pull from his cold dead hands.

[/ QUOTE ]

Egocentric, illogical, anti-capitalist economic theory?

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh my. Didn't mean to get this started. I'll retract my Greenspan challenge.

(but really, Alan, if you happen to be reading this, it's still good....and for substantially more....)

Bigwig

03-03-2005, 05:05 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
except for what you can pull from his cold dead hands.

[/ QUOTE ]

Egocentric, illogical, anti-capitalist economic theory?

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh my. Didn't mean to get this started. I'll retract my Greenspan challenge.

(but really, Alan, if you happen to be reading this, it's still good....and for substantially more....)

[/ QUOTE ]

Ha!

I'm just making a joke.

My Party name is vonMises. That should be enough to tell the well read about what I think of Keynes and Greenspan.

But that's a discussion for another website. I'm not carrying that garbage over to here, heh.

Scuba Chuck

03-03-2005, 05:48 PM

[ QUOTE ]
vonMises.

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you a gold bug?

Scuba Chuck

03-03-2005, 05:52 PM

Never read about this guy before, but he's right up my alley.

The classical economists, especially David Ricardo, had seen that an increase in the supply of money causes prices to rise. But Mises showed that prices can increase faster or slower than the money supply, the amount and speed of price increases depending on people's desire to hold cash. He also argued that because prices increase only relative to one another, monetary inflation brings about redistribution of wealth, from savers and earners to banks and government and its connected interest groups.

Even more damaging are the business cycles of booms and busts that monetary inflation causes. In broad outline, when government inflates, it lowers the interest rate below the proper market level, which depends on saving. The artificially low interest rate misleads businesses into making uneconomic investments and creates an inflationary boom. When the credit expansion slows or stops, investment errors are revealed and bankruptcies and unemployment result. Central banks like the Federal Reserve will inevitably create the business cycle.

What is to be done to stop the cycle? Mises argued that because money originated as a market commodity, not by government edict or social contract, it should be returned to the market. Banking should be treated as any other industry in a market economy, and be subject to competition. The currency ought to be tied to gold, its originating commodity, through free convertibility

Bigwig

03-03-2005, 06:12 PM

If you enjoy Mises' writing, try Murray Rothbard and Hans Hermann-Hoppe. My favorites. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

adanthar

03-03-2005, 07:47 PM

[ QUOTE ]
What is to be done to stop the cycle? Mises argued that because money originated as a market commodity, not by government edict or social contract, it should be returned to the market. Banking should be treated as any other industry in a market economy, and be subject to competition. The currency ought to be tied to gold, its originating commodity, through free convertibility

[/ QUOTE ]

Gold standard arguments sound great until you realize that you are going to proceed to give control of your entire monetary policy to South Africa. Do you see why?