I think as long as these long-shot amateurs (Varkonyi, Moneymaker, Hachem, and to an extent Raymer, who wasn't as amateur as the others) keep winning the WSOP main event, there will always be people looking and saying, "I can do that."

As long as that continues, there will be fish in the tank.

This may not make much sense to the "kids"....BUT 25 (ahem-or 30) years ago, in a 5 card draw lo ball game, there were usually 2 guys calling 2 raises cold, drawing 2 cards when I had the joker...

The poker bubble will not last forever, but the fish never die...Quit worrying about it....

In general, I cannot imagine the poker world being any easier than it is right now, but there is always room at the top (not that I am there yet!!!)

and the second floor is pretty plush.

Nice post Monk...I don't agree though

As a "poker professional," it's my job to stay one step ahead of my opponents. It's true if the tables become tighter I win less money, possibly a lot less, but I still win in the long run. I have more "winning" experience and more "winning" poker education behind me then almost all of my opponents.. As long as I keep that up I'll be bringing in money.


an analogy:
If you watch a table of the 10 best players in the world... #1 and #2 are still gonna bring in the money over the long term. They are better then their opponents, even though their opponents are top ten in the world.




I do agree with you that the next 5 years are key. This is the time to build your bankroll, this is the easiest time to win money. If you want to be a big pro, the time is now.

Yeah, I guess what I was meaning was not that the game will "die" so to speak and become automatically unprofitable, of course, logically, someone has to be winning somewhere... However, I do think the bubble will burst in the next 5-10 years and poker will become a whole lot less profitable and harder to sustain a big winrate at - the increased public domain knowledge of strategy (thanks to sites like this, books, and the general increased profile of poker as a competition of skill) will still be around for those who want to access it, but the glut of new players with limited clue how to play will dry to a slow trickle, I think. There'll still be the gambling high-rollers, and still new players at the very lowest levels, but I think in the middle and low-middle levels (where the vast majority of us play) the game will get harder and harder. Indeed, I think we're already seeing this pattern to some extent.

Since I started playing "seriously" (by seriously, I don't mean "being a winning player", which has been the case for me for like 6 or 7 years, but I mean "playing with a more professional attitude" in reasonable-sized games), say the last 2 or 2.5 years, the standard of online poker in general has got slightly tougher. I'm pretty convinced of this. The areas of most profit, new opportunities if you like, to find the real terrible games, seem to be new sites or sites introducing new games (for instance, when Cryptologic released NLHE and PLO games, after running limit for a couple of years, back last March, the standard of play was truly, truly abysmal - I mean a LOT worse than Party). Thankfully, as long as sites are still offering generous bonuses I think people at the low-mid levels will be able to keep making a crust.

I'm pretty confident I'll still be a solid winning player in a couple of years time, though whether I could maintain the same rate at the tables I currently play I don't know. So, in summary, what I mean is that the bubble WILL burst, but the better players will still be at the top taking everyone else's money. Good news for us I hope!

Monk
xxxxx

i personally think the naysayers are way off base. a few reasons:

- there can be great information available, but it doesn't mean that people are able to comprehend it completely or implement it well. furthermore, there are a lot of contextual variables that inform strategy to a large extent. these variables (and combinations thereof) are so numerous that is almost meaningless to catalogue them. you can only talk about them in abstraction, but very few people can learn well from abstractions. think of Harrington on Hold 'em -- two big books that really just scratch the surface of what it is to be a winning tournament player. Plenty of people will be able to play ABC HoH and do OK, but the people who understand the underlying principles of the books will slaughter these ABC players.

- there is a lot of positive reinforcement of suboptimal play in poker. people will do something that wins them money in the short term, and they start to think that it a goldmine. they don't really understand why it is that they made money in the first place. was it variance? was it the specific context? was it optimal play? most people chalk it up to the latter, while the first two variables probably contributed much more to the win. this false reinforcement will keep poker profitable indefinitely.

- on another related note, even if people know proper strategy, very few are able and willing to implement it (e.g., it's boring, they have adhd, etc.). also, people play pker for many different reasons, and winning money and/or playing an optimal game is often not one of them. i think some people (esp. losing LAGs) play poker to boost their ego. it works -- sometimes. others play poker (and play craps or whatever) to get "the big kill". they want to be able to go to work on monday and talk about how they stole this $x pot from some guy with a runner-runner that he KNEW would hit. of course, this guy doesn't mention the buttload of money he lost trying to hit that hand, but that doesn't matter to him. the brother of a friend of mine is JUST like this. anyway, there are varied psychological reasons people play poker (most unstated or unknown), and winning money is often not at the top the list for most people.

- being able to interpret data from sources like PTO and PAhud is not an easy skill to master. you can get templates that may have some effectiveness, but being able to use the data in a specific context is what separates the men from the boys (so to speak).

- if, by some miracle, a majority of people learn to play tight, games will cease to be profitable for these players. they will quit playing or loosen up. imho, bonuses and bonus whores are the main contributors to tightness -- not people who want to play "properly". in fact, these weak-tight strategies are sub-optimal for the games they play in. need proof? go to BW and read about how many people are break even or lose money on most of there whoring exploits. i completely believe that the bonus well will run dry for the weak-tight folks who give no action. they will be targeted as players that the site does NOT want to have. some good examples, the multipoker 20x bonuses (pretty useless unless you are a winning player) and the party targeted bonuses. i think that these kinds of "bonuses" are the wave of the future. the bonuses will become rewards for players who contribute rake and add value with respect to contrinuting to making "good" (i.e., loose) games.

- i think that both poker sites and b&m cardrooms will be willing to pay to make games more exciting. for example, i think that a card room would be very wise to pay someone like MK to be a prop player (or taken care of in some way). he loosens up games (or at least seems to do so) and makes poker fun. people will line up for sites/games like this. need proof? look at the waiting list for a table at which a TW challenge is taking place. the one i saw was nothing sort of amazing. anyway, there is huge upside potential for sites and poker rooms that maintain loose games (or at least ones that appear to be so).

- there will always be an edge to those who make the effort to find a good game. this can be in terms of site selection, game selection, stakes selection, and/or table selection. bobby's comment about the lowball games in CA are a good example.

fwiw, i make the above claims based on my previous experience as a teacher and as a learning theory hobbyist. your mileage may vary.

[edited for extension and spelling]

long live poker... read the post about the AC trip.

How many times do you see a player make a bad decision, a stupid decision, a totally ridiculous decision, and then claim they KNOW how to play? How many times do you see two players chatting and both of them are completely clueless? They might be studying, but they aren't learning. It's all good, they say.

CJ