Where is the money coming from in high stakes poker?

[Danenania]

Housewives, construction workers, pro athletes, and ben affleck.

[BZ_Zorro]

There are 7.5 millionaires in America. If 0.1% (1 in 1000) of them plays high stakes poker, that's a pool of 7500 fish playing high stakes poker. At $5000 each...you get the picture. Some multi millionaire whales can dump several hundred K very easily. A billionaire/100s of millions whale can (and do) dump a mil without breaking a sweat. This money gets passed around and keeps a lot of high stakes players well fed.

These are very conservative estimates BTW, and there is no reason why people making say 70K a year wouldn't play high stakes from time to time. Add to that people taking shots from lower levels, and you got your fish.

[Brainwalter]

[ QUOTE ]
There are 7.5 millionaires in America.

[/ QUOTE ]

Who's the half millionaire?

[BZ_Zorro]

lol...7.5 million millionaires.

[GoCubsGo]

I think I just found where the money is coming from...

[Orpheus]

In online poker, there is proably another source: casino and cardroom players.

Since B&Ms have more expenses per seat-hour (and in the case of casinos, expect a higher return), it isn't cost-effective for most of them to offer much less than a 3/6 or 5/10 (There have been more low tables in some venues in recent years, to bring in more 'poker boom'/TV players).

Players who are accustomed to playing 5/10 aren't going to get much excitement or satisfaction from playing 1/10 their usual stake, even if 5/10 is the lowest regularly run game at their usual room, but in amny ways, online .50/1 can be as tough or tougher (faster pace, almost no physical tells, a larger pool of unknown players, more players with many thousand games under their belt. etc.)

Personally, I don't play B&Ms enough to be entitled to an opinion, but I see why there might be a big adjustment, and I've certainly heard "online poker MUST be rigged" arguments from self-styled (semi)pros who can't beat .50/1

When a B&M 5/10 player (with all due respect, a (near)bottom level in a casino) sits down at a online 5/10 game (a fairly advanced level), they are likely to be fish. Even if they are fairly good, they will have significant adjustments to make. Yet they usually believe that they have a significant advantage due to their "extensive" "real poker" experience -- not realizing that a four-tabling online player can rack almost a week's worth of weekend evening B&M games in a single hour (or a year's worth in under a week), and that so-called "real-world poker" isn't superior to online -- at best, it's merely different. Online players won't lay down their good hands out of respect or trembling fear of the B&M "regular". Many eagerly welcome such players.

Poker is streaky enough to allow a player to make sizeable donation, convinced that they are "due". They may win enough sessions to convince them to keep playing/contributing at their accustomed level, off and on, for years. We've had a few threads discussing how early win streaks can be the worst thing for a new online player.

I mean no disrespect to B&M players. No matter who you are, or what game you play, making appropriate adjustments is one of the fundamental challenges of poker (right up there with discipline, reads, and poker knowledge). This is just a special case where even the *need* to adjust can be well camouflaged.

Many B&M players are quite good online, but even they acknowledge that MOST B&M players are +EV for a skilled opponent in their accustomed B&M setting. How could such players NOT be at a disadvantage online?

[elena_elphie]

That's definately true. I was wondering where the online 15-30 fish came from, until I heard a bunch of the Commerce 20-40 fish talk about playing the Party 15-30 game. Even though the Party 15 game is orders of magnitude tougher than the Commerce 20 game, somehow they didn't even seem to notice this!

[Al Schoonmaker]

Andy Beal is unquestionably a very intelligent businessman.

But he was the biggest poker fish in history, even though he played very well.

THE critical decision in poker is game selection. If you play against better players, you will CERTAINLY lose over the long term.

He played against the best in the world and lost over $10,000,000. That makes him the biggest fish of all time.

Regards,

Al

[skaboomizzy]

Al,

Don't you think the "Andy played well" party line from Doyle and the other Big Game players may be just a continuation of Doyle's story in SuperSystem 1? Namely, don't make the big fish feel bad, or you'll kill your action. Isn't it just slightly possible that Doyle and Todd are telling Andy "Hey, good playing kid" when in reality they're just fattening him up nice for the next time he's got $20M burning in his pocket?

[Voltron87]

[ QUOTE ]
Andy Beal is unquestionably a very intelligent businessman.

But he was the biggest poker fish in history, even though he played very well.

THE critical decision in poker is game selection. If you play against better players, you will CERTAINLY lose over the long term.

He played against the best in the world and lost over $10,000,000. That makes him the biggest fish of all time.

Regards,

Al

[/ QUOTE ]

Is it really that simple? Didn't Beal almost bust the pros bankroll?