Is Poker Dead?

[TableTiger1]

Hey all - been awhile.

I have started playing again a bit and the games on cake seem almost nonexistent. Like 2K players peak. So I started browsing 2+2 and it looks like france and italy are legalizing poker in a very protectionist way?

Whats the word these days?

[YouGotPLOwned]

your late.

[scuter]

Oh that ship has long sailed.

There is some twitching and stuff going on but death throes will always drag out shit and make it ugly unless you put it down and out of it's misery. It would be the merciful and humane thing to do.

France and Italy moves aren't protectionist. They're just being painted that way by a corrupt industry. You'd probably have to truly realise how fucked up the entire e-gaming industry is to realise they're regulating to protect their citizens, not their economy. It's the good kind of regulation. The needed kind. Like not selling cigarettes to minors or Alprazolam OTC @ 7/11.

Anyone who's not criminal can get a license. You can bet your sexuality that any gaming company or article that criticises the shit or tries to paint it as protectionist is criminal scum.

Malta is European Union. White-Listed by the UK for gaming licenses. The LGA and Alderney are considered the two 'toughest' online gaming regulators. lolz.

This is Lotteries and Gaming Authority Malta in action. Their response to my complaint that Strykke Casino claims they sent me 1500 Euro which never actually showed:



hmm. I wasn't sure how to take that considering I was looking at this at the same time:



So I informed the LGA who they licensed - perhaps it was cheeky of me to refer them to their own website but I didn't know how else to make the argument.

2 months? nothing. Strykke scams on.

---------

Alderney is even worse. Good luck getting a reply email, even a ludicrous one like the above.

This industry makes Sodom and Gomorrah appear puritan. And if you think online poker is somehow different from online casino / sports, I assure you e-gaming....is e-gaming. And as poker continues to die, you're going to get a lot more Eurolinx's and TUSK's and rooms folding under the pressure of being asked to account for all the floating $ that's *supposed* to represent players' balances for all these years [and I suspect people are going to be oh-so-surprised! to discover the $ had long since been...diverted to x y or z] - it's a joke house of cards and it's going to come down in the next few years.

And it's gonna get hella ugly when it does.

[Bosox1]

The poker boom is over (ldo). You can still play against fish at tournaments at local casinos but usually the blind structure is so insane that it's a shove fest an hour in anyway. As with any boom, an industry sprang up around it to try to make money off of it. And make money they have. Piles and piles of it. They've take so much money out of the poker community it's crazy. I guess the moral of the story is that the house always wins, even in games of skill?

[Pok 7's]

Meh the rake probably didn't kill online poker, although it certainly didn't help it either. The first big blow was when everyone thought "online poker is illegal". Then it became a pain in the ass to get money online by the time everything got into place that made it somewhat easier to get money at least in the casual donaters pretty much wrote off that form of entertainment. I mean who wants to jump through hoops when, on average you were depositing all the time anyway? So average donk says "fuck it I don't know what's going on, besides I was losing all the time anyway. Fuck it, it was fun while it lasted".

After that the only people who (at least in the states) were able to move money were folks on 4 and other poker forums. Well the majority of those players still playing generally at least have a clue as to what to do. So now you have people who know basic strategy + playing often against each other and some occasional folks from other countries. Combine that with a dozen training sites, plus personal coaches and the majority of people playing even NL25 at that point would be the same people crushing mid stakes and higher back in the Party Poker days.

Since then the US economy blows goat, unemployment is sky high, everyones investments went to shit and it's happening elsewhere as well. So basically the food supply (which would be the "feeder fish") died off And the whole ecosystem became a different system all together. Now everyone left basically knows about ranges, merging, etc etc and the only ones playing seriously are the ones looking to "one up" other regulars. Whereas before people were basically using it as fairly easy money by fleecing clueless players who had a bit of extra cash to toss around.


imo

[low dough]

I would say "Down, but not out"

The attendance figures for the WSOP Main Event this year (7319) is second only to the highest ever (2006 main event).
http://www.wsop.com/tournaments/entrants.asp?grid=764&tid=10878

Online poker may never be like it was during the past, but I am not going to believe it is entirely 'dead'.

[TableTiger1]

Anybody on here still actively playing?

[Antneye]

Anybody on here still actively playing?

I still play the same as always. Games are fine.

What's dead is this site, not poker.

[Kuso]

players only and sportsbook and a few others moved from cake to merge. this was not good for cake. merge is still tiny.

on sites like stars and ftp, plo players up to 200 tend to have massive leaks. PLO players at 5/10 are exploitable with some work and skill. definitely not party days, but a good player can still make a decent hourly. great for a hobby or a part-time job. probably not so great for the masses of mediocre players who turned "pro" a few years back.

personally, I think poker will actually be better than the party days at some point in the future, but it's hard to say how many years away that is. I wouldn't hold my breath. I wouldn't be surprised if crash's children earn some decent spending money while at berkeley by playing online poker.

the sad part, imo, is that the affiliate boom will probably not be allowed to happen again... at least not in poker.

[TableTiger1]

So is Cake pretty much done at this point?

Can I play on merge as a US citizen?

[Kuso]

cake is ok, but not as good as it once was. that happens when you take away a lot of sports bettors. merge is us-friendly.

that being said, stars and FTP have improved their skill at getting donators to deposit -- not sure why you would need to go to a minor site.

[crash]

cake is ok, but not as good as it once was. that happens when you take away a lot of sports bettors. merge is us-friendly.

that being said, stars and FTP have improved their skill at getting donators to deposit -- not sure why you would need to go to a minor site.

Because merge is ridiculously good?