[MicroBob]

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I posite, that the increase in the partial education of second rate players is actualy a positive EV occurence for the skilled player. this is because it gives the poorer players more confidence to put more $$ on the table without giving them the necessary skills to protect that money.

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completely agree.
most people who talk in terms of pot-odds, etc have no clue what they're talking about. The fact that they THINK they've got it all figured out is awesome.


Talked with an older guy who says he has the WPT shows on DVD and he can watch what's happening and make better plays than those guys every time.
The number of people who think this (while ignoring the fact that you DON'T get to see everyone else's cards when you're playing a hand) must be pretty high.

Everyone sees Gus Hansen bluff with 83o and thinks they can do it better and more convincingly than he does.
awesome!!!!


number of states where live gambling is legal AND booming now is signficantly more than 20-25 years ago (Mississippi, Louisiana, Indiana, Illinois, Foxwoods in CT, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minn, Wash, Colo, etc etc) and there is still no shortage of players for all the -EV games out there like roulette, slots, craps, etc etc.
Why we should believe that all the fish will run out of money in poker when they don't seem to in all the other games is beyond me.


Partypoker last night was around 78k players. Don't know if it has topped 80k players yet or not but it seems to be growing all the time.
Pokerstars was at 44k players last night. Just a couple monts ago I thought it was kinda neat that they were regularly higher than 25k players.


On the PPM IV cruise I was sitting next to some guy from Vancouver and he said they just got a poker-room up there.
I asked if it was really booming...he told me that a week ago he was there and the wait-list for the 4/8 game was almost 90 people long.


The WSOP last year had 2600 players. This year I think we're guessing 4k-5k or so. Just 5 years ago you likely never would have believed that even 1000 players was possible.


Was paging through Hellmuth's Bad Beats and stories book in the store...I think he says that the Bicycle's tournament had 31 players in 2001 and is several hundred now.


Even the PPM IV was at 740 players this year. Just 3 years ago they could barely break 100 I think.


And everyone who went on the cruise LOVED it...even those who didn't finish in the money will be likely to try to make it back next year I suspect.


NBC has their heads-up poker coverage starting next month and bringing back the TV advertising of online-poker sites to the american audience has helped a lot too.



It won't continue to grow at this exponential rate certainly. but to think that all the fish will just get tired of losing and will stop playing is nuts. Especially when one considers the nature of the game...every fish has their good run where they decide "ok...all i need to do is play like i was during that streak when I was winning." and they keep trying and trying.

Don't forget....poker is extremely popular with today's teenagers. It's not an old-person's game anymore.

All these 14-19 year-olds who are playing it at home WILL be playing it online and live....and many of them will be truly terrible having only learned how to play from how the guys do it on ESPN.


Our bigger problem might come in the form of some sort of legislation...but it's more and more widely accepted now so I'm not sure whether that is going to happen.
Even though I'm not terribly concerned about it I think this is a far greater danger to online-poker than the risk of all the fishies going broke.