Episode #126: Poker boom over?

Bloomberg News photo

MAIN TOPIC

Chris calls in from Foxwoods and the World Poker Tour's World Poker Finals with a startling conclusion: Is the poker boom over? Click here to listen to the show.

Chris says the mood at the event is different than in the past, the number of spectators is way down and the number of entrants has trailed off a tad. Certainly, this is one small piece of the larger discussion, but it's something to think about. Scott poses an interesting, er, "captivating," question: So what if the boom is over? Of course, Ante Up! grew and continues to feed off poker interest, but maybe it's time for a natural market correction, where the worst shows fail, the worst books don't sell and the only quasi-interested players move on to another hobby. What do you think?

OTHER TOPICS

AIPS: Second-to-last event of the year is at 9 p.m. Thursday. Come get your banana! For details, click here.

Gambling bust: WSOP "divisional" champ (darn sloppy media!) Paul McKinney was pinched in a Tennessee poker game raid. They even took his pills.

Phil Ivey's one and only tip: The elusive Tiger Woods of Poker (aren't you glad that silly name has faded away?) finally offers up a tip for FullTilt players, and Scott loves it: Phil says read about poker all you want, watch all the poker you want, listen to all the poker you want, but when you're at the table, play your own game. Ahhhh, music to Scott's ears. Chris, of course, was sorta unimpressed.

This is ... "exhilarating!" Longtime listener and frequent e-mailer Mary "The Opus" offers Scott a "inspiring" list of synonyms for "interesting."

Vinny can play hockey ...: but can he play cards? Scott will find out in Monday's Vincent Lecavalier Charity Poker Tournament at the Hard Rock in Tampa.

Tampa Bay Poker Replay: Scott reviews the Hard Rock in Tampa. Bottom line - 24/7 is a great thing.

HAND OF THE WEEK

Engstrok becomes a member of the HOTW's Three-Timers Club (you know what that means everyone - send us some HOTWs!) with a hand where he can't bet a monster.

In a $5.50 45-person SNG on PokerStars, he's dealt Jc-7h in the BB of Level I. The button had min-raised, and our hero calls, as do four others. The flop comes Js-7s-Ah. It's checked around, and the turn is a beautiful Jd. Our hero bets out a tiny 60, which is min-raised by the button (an appropriately named JiveTurkey7). Engstrock just calls, and checks the river 4s. JiveTurkey bets 120, engstrock calls and loses to A-J. Ouch.

It's almost impossible to put Jive on A-J here (who would let four players get a free turn card with flush and straight draws on board?!?!), but alas, anything is possible in low-level online tournaments. The good thing for engstrock: He lost as little money as is humanely possible here.

NEXT WEEK'S SHOW

Chris' interviews from Foxwoods, plus Jean-Robert Bellande!

- SCOTT

Comments

[Michael Paul]

I can't wait to hear what Fun Bobby has to say about his BFF Courtney! :-)

Regarding poker popularity, is the spectator attendance at a tournament really a good indicator of popularity? I agree that the TV shows being reduced is probably a good indicator but I've had about as much interest in watching a tournament as I do in watching my grass grow. Poker is boring enough when you're playing and not doing much but watching it..........I just can't get too excited about that.

Great show again guys.

Chris, I hope you find a way to keep those throat oysters down because I think you were trying to dislodge about a dozen during the show.

Michael

[Erwin Blonk]

My thoughts are:
- the numbers will go down, will remain higher than before the boom
- those that keep playing will play more than NLHE
- quality will go up somewhat
- there'll be enough dead money left
- the law will back down a bit
- Ante Up! will see AIPS 10 in 2015, around which time we'll celebrate episode 500
- President Cosenza will declare RNG induced bad beats illegal
- Minister of Foreign Affairs Long will have repaired relations with Canada after his last visit
- General Blonk will have made Greenland into the 51st state
- Minister Gambit of RCG Affairs has it all sorted out
- Minister of Culture Fasso makes Stud part of the curriculum in high schools and makes a law against playing it with antes
- being cold-decked is legal in Canada only
- a renegade by the name of Zooks is rounding up all the donks and no one knows where they are
- We all have a lot of fun and look back at the previous 100 years and laugh about what silly gits we were trying to bomb each other out of existence

[SickBrain80]

Resently they aired the Full Tilt European Million Challenge over here. Phil Ivey was part of it, and he did an interview!!!

Before the game started, they discussed, how they would teach amateur players the game.

Ivey said: Amateur players should get into micro stakes games, and try to see every hand they can (possible any two cards) and then on the flop they should figure out a way to win the pot, and figure out where they stand.

So they can get a feel for the game, and how the card-combinations play. Also in micro stakes they won´t get broke.

[daedalus]

One data point but it supports the larger trend that WPT's business model is not a model for long term success. A portion of the 19-35 year old audiences will move away from WPT to the next shiny object over time. If that doesn't hurt WPT it will be the players they bankrupt long term. A WPT player is essentially putting down $10K for the main events and getting back his share of $9.5K. This works when there are many fish to push the expected value up but over time this model is broke. Limpscomb is milking this for all he can short term.

[BlackCatt]

I have a slightly different theory on the popularity of poker going down.

What if the popularity of poker has plateaued or the rate of increase has tapered off (not decreased)? The fact is that right now there are more options than ever to both play poker as well as watch poker as a spectator. So my theory is that the growth isn't over as much as there is more saturation as the increase in supply is outpacing the increase in demand.

Simple scenerio (made up numbers just for the example):
2005:
Number of serious poker players - 5000
Number of "major" tourny's - 10
Avg. # of serious players per major
tourny - 500
Poker based TV shows - 2
2006:
Number of serious poker players - 7500
Number of "major" tourny's - 20
Avg. # of serious players per major tourny - 375
Poker based TV shows = 4
2007:
Number of serious poker players - 11500
Number of "major" tourny's - 40
Avg. # of serious players per major tourny - 282
Poker based TV shows = 8

So from the example above the rate of serious poker players (poker enthusiasts) is steadily growing at a rate of 50% per year. While the rates of the major tourny's and TV shows is growing at 100% per year. This causes the Avg. # of serious playsers per major tourny to decrease. There are just more options of major tourny's to play and what to watch, so the market is being saturated in such a scenerio.

I have no proof that this is what we are experiencing right now but just a alternative view of what Chris may have been witnessing.

[Michelle from Tampa]

Like I said in an earlier comment, who cares if the poker "boom" is over? Now that the fad-addicts are out, just means more poker opportunities for us. ;)

[A]

Everywhere except USA poker is more popular than ever. All poker networks that were supposed to die when they lose american customers are still alive. And most of them have their profits and customer numbers rising.

So why is poker getting less popular in USA and more popular in rest of the world? I think answer is easy. Because USA passed law making it hard to play. I don't think poker boom is over. It is just starting in some parts of world. In USA it is down because of the law.

For average watcher it makes big difference whether he is watching poker on TV and thinking how he can use all those pro players moves online or watch poker on TV and curse that he can't play online any more. Of course people don't want to watch poker that much since it just reminds them of stupid law.

Fix the law and I think casino poker and poker shows would quickly hit all time high.