Online Poker Will Never Be Harder Than It Is Right Now

I posted a new blog on the state of the online poker games and I thought it may be of interest to the folks here at Cardschat. I have been meaning to write a blog along these lines for some time now and I thought it might make for some interesting discussion, as well, hopefully it can be informative in some ways to those who are playing online poker for a living or are considering doing so. I get a little ranty at times so apologies if you don't like those parts, but hopefully it should be insightful if nothing else. To the mods, if it is more desirable for me to copy paste the blog and remove the link, I can do it or of course feel free to do it as well. I am not sure how posts like these are usually done over here. Every forum can be a little different.

http://www.dustyschmidt.net/2010/04/...-is-right-now/

That was a very interesting read, even for someone like me that would never dream of making a living off online poker. I liked your rants, they weren't too long at all, more like a 'new rules' in the middle of your observations.

This sounds extremely interesting and I would love to read it, so I'm just subscribing to this now to read it later. I have an advanced law test in about 9 hours that I really need to study for. Its 3am so I should probably sleep, but I took one of those 5 hour energy things for the first time in my life tonight. I will admit that I had my doubts about them, but well.....its 3am and I'm still awake.

Edit: I couldn't wait. I decided it wasn't that long (thats what she said) so I read it right away. Such a great read. I didn't realize that so many players at the top were regs and were just fighting against each other. I've always wondered what legalizing poker in the US would do. It seems to me that most of the people who would play are already playing. I guess I never really thought that legalizing it would add that many more players. Maybe we'll just have to wait and see?

Very interesting post, thanks.

Did you know that paying income tax is not an actual law? There are ways to get away with not paying the IRS money that they think should belong to them.

Schools are funded by local taxes, roads are funded by tax on gas, ect. So I wouldn't feel guilty refusing to pay.. Of course this was videos and documents I read in 2007, not sure if they actually made it a law by now..

YouTube- NO INCOME TAX LAW FORMER "IRS" AGENT JOE BANNISTER PART 1

"THE LAW THAT NEVER WAS"
http://www.thelawthatneverwas.com/new/home.asp

Thankfully i am just a social player but one who 'attempts' to make a few $$ but I am a mtt player more than a cash game person

I also though have found it much more difficult these days to scratch some winnings and as you say there are so many 'pros' these days its hard work.

I myself never have used HUD although am getting more and more tempted as I see players multi tabling 15+ on stakes as low as $2.20 which would be impossible i feel to return a +EV without HUD playing that amount of games.

From TAG a few years ago to LAG recently I have tried to keep in touch and now find simple ABC poker the easiest if I play a bit of volume and although my ROI has dropped I am showing better $$ but as a social player it removes the challenge, the cut and thrust and the joy of the game which I had quite a while ago.

Poker online I feel has reached a plateau atm and with the current financial uncertainity in the world more people are playing the smaller higher variance games looking for the big hit and the larger buy ins $50 plus are becoming 'overstocked' with regs making it tougher.

game selection is crucial i feel now and atm I am still searching for 'that' game to relight my fire and allow me to return to the delightful days a few years ago where one licked your lips at the onset of the days play.

hopefully sooner rather than later ..........................................

Don pay it; see what happens

Interesting read - though I'm only a recreational player loving his job (and earning quite a bit at it too fwiw).

I really don't get how you can - in the same post - argue both

• games are really tough right now and it's a shame really.
• people should grind SNE on Pokerstars and even if they breakeven they win $100k/year.

One of the main reason games are hard is that the regs multi-table while the fishes don't, and that makes the reg/fish ratio much higher at the tables than in the player pool. So regs trade money back and forth and the site profits. If regs were limited to a lot smaller amount of tables than now, the games would be much better and regs would profit more, sites less.

Pokerstars allowing people to 24 table is disastrous for the games.

A definition of irony: one of the longest-serving coaches at one of the biggest online coaching sites, venting about the number of regular players who are now very good at poker.

Good read, but give me $40k a year from poker and I would be a very happy man.

I suppose when you are used to bringing in the big bucks it soon pinches when you can't crack 7 figures.

I think it would help if the US opened up again, I assume there are moves to open it up again for tax dollars since the banks screwed everything up?

I have to disagree that people will look back and see this as the "hardest times" in poker.

Using a sports analogy, name a sport where, if the modern competitor was able to go back in time, he would struggle to do as well as he does in his own time.

The modern competitor always has the benefits of better training methods, better access to information, greater understanding of underlying principles etc etc.

This greater inderstanding is a result of standing on the shoulders of giants. Future competitors will always look back and think that if only they could go back in time knowing what they know now they would destroy the competition.

For this reason I dont think online poker is harder than it ever will be in the future.

The only caveat is that when US law catches up with the rest of the world there will be a sudden influx of bad players and yes the games will be easier but unless Americans are genetically dumber than the rest of the world this will be a temporary blip on the poker scene because they will learn and learn faster then the people before them because of the shoulders of giants principle. Some of these players will be remain bad but some will become great. I think that within a couple of years the player pool would contain the same ratio of fish to decent regs as it did before the US legalised online poker. The player pool will be bigger but the ratios will return to what they are now.

Of course as each day passes the standard raises fractionally.

You will look back in 10 years time and wonder how players (in 10 years time) even manage to get going because the standard will be so much higher than it is now. In fact if you cast your mind back to when you began, how much has the standard changed in that time? Would you like to be just starting out now?

good article, I like it.

I think it's a tough call on whether or not poker will get tougher. The interesting thing about the game is that as it gets more popular, it will inevitably get softer. It's impossible to predict such things; look at the Moneymaker effect. The invention of the hole card cam and the satellite tournaments and the impact of an Everyman winning the WSOP was incredible and it's still making it's presence felt today.

Who knows what the next step will be; maybe there will be a Babe Ruth of poker who is so prolific and charismatic that they will sweep in a new era of popularity. Maybe it will be a celebrity winning the WSOP, like Mats Sundin or Wil Wheaton or Shannon Elizabeth or Tobey Maguire.

I certainly think that the increased TV exposure of Tom Dwan is going to usher in a lot of bad players. Dwan plays a ballsy, high variance style that is basically very alluring but practically impossible to master. Trying to 3-barrel bluff on KQT boards isn't going to be profitable for anyone over the long haul!

I don't think its very likely that many pros are going to find good jobs in other industries.

Considering the negative way poker is generally looked on in society I think that most pros will find it very difficult to find well paid jobs in anything other than the gambling industry, and certainly not 6 figure salaries.

Some pros will have a good career they had before they began poker they can go back to but a lot just started playing poker professionally very young and aern't qualified for much else.

I hope they do legalise it soon because I think this will make the games a lot softer. I guess its likely to happen because the government need the tax revenue

What limit at low stakes and how many tables multitabling do you suggest playing to make $100k a year just in rewards because that seems a hell of a lot of rake to generate at small stakes?
I just had a look at the bonuses available and it looks like you'd need between 1 and 2 million VPP.

If you want to take this to a social-forum thread, I can patiently debunk every argument you have along these lines.

http://evans-legal.com/dan/tpfaq.html is a good place to start if you want to truly learn about the subject.

Tax Protesting etc is utter drivel despite what research throws up.

One question and one question only to anyone who claims its possible.

Knowing what you know, do you personally withhold tax?

There is a big difference between the theory and the practice on this.

In theory if you refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of a court's jurisdiction over you, you cannot be tired.

In practice the court wont recognise your claim and try you anyway.

Exactly. The amount of resources available for players who really want to get better have never been more abundant. Of course, the US Gov deserves much of the blame for the state of poker today, but the player who sold out their strats for a quick buck have to share some of that blame.

The article was interesting, however like others here, I don't feel that poker is going to get easier. It may actually get harder as new people with new ideas discover new ways to play the game.
I also don't feel that legalising it in the U.S. will really change the game all that much. Of course being Canadian I'm not sure how valid my viewpoint is.
I think the key things that will change poker online will come from the competition between sites and how regular players can use that to their advantage.

I think Rush poker will bring in a lot of fish. Even better, it might turn some regs into fish.

But in the meantime, I guess you just have to hang in there.

I really don't see why the US "not" being allowed to play online poker has an effect on the game and how hard it is today, we are all still playing right? Where there is a will there is a way and we are all still depositing and playing online.

I agree with where Stu is going with this.....today's games are harder because poker players are becoming more smart and educating themselves with the game more. We are taking the information that is out there and molding our game into a style that works for us.

Don't take this the wrong way Dusty, and I hope I can explain this the correct way...... Poker is a business, the business has many "side ventures" such as training sites, books, software ect. If we look back and ask ourselves, why is the game of poker seem more hard today? Maybe we should look at it like this: Because the top pro's and the people that have a winning strategy are sharing this information with others and helping them become winning players. Think about it... Say you are a player that crushes the 1/2NL game, you have a great winning strategy and share that with 10 people that you train. Those 10 people become winning players, that is 10 less people that your potentiality going to profit from. They coach 10 others, ect ect....

When the "Poker Boom" first started it was full of people looking to make a buck because it looked easy on TV. The winning players saw this and found out it was a great way for them to make money as well by charging these newbies with coaching, training, ect. Now these newbies are becoming coaches and continue to share their details.....

Also to elaborate on the multi-table topic..... You have a guy sitting at 24 tables it does take away from the fish that are out there.

I'm sure when you first started Dusty you could play 4 tables and make the money you make today off of 24 tables...... The game has changed, people are taking the time to learn it and that makes it difficult.

There are a lot of would be recreational players who are not playing because they either think it is illegal or it is too much trouble to deposit. Once it is officially legalized we will be flooded with new players -who don't know how to play yet.

True! Very true!

I did try and adress that.

There are a lot of recreational players in Europe who do play.

So yes if/when the US allows online poker there will be an initial flood but within a couple of years the ratio of fish to decent players returns to what it is now because some of those fish will leave poker all together; it was just a craze. Some will continue but not really achieve much. Some will go on to be great players and of course there will be a continual cycle of new players giving it a go. However the ratios should settle down to what they are now after the initial influx.

Like I said, Americans have to be just genetically worse at poker than the rest of the world for the ratios not to end up back where they were. If (I'm making up numbers here) in Europe the ratio of decent players to fish is 1:50 then I would expect that to be mirrored in the US once they get up to speed.

So the player pool increases and there is a, say 2 year sweet spot where the majority of US players suck. but after that time I dont see that the bigger player pool really changes anything because the ratio of fish to shark returns to its current level.

The huge majority of players will never be able to beat 200nl+ online whatever the amount of training they get. It also requires a brain...

The primary problem for most true fish (I'm making a distinction in my mind between a fish who thinks he is good and keeps redepositing vs. a donkey who just wants to gamble and treat it like a roulette table for a few spins) is not poker knowledge, although that is a problem. It's discipline. I'm reminded of something said in one of the Golden Threads: If you make the right decision 95% of the time and the wrong one 5% of the time even when you know better, you are not a good player.

We are in a giant catch 22 because of this, I think.

Online poker has created a situation where a good player can actually approach a "mathematically perfect" game without wanting to kill himself while he waits for his spots, and though HUDs are certainly a tool that facilitates this multi tabling is the real culprit.

Huds are only really required when you are playing such a gigantic player pool all at once and so quickly that you need the detailed information to give you the edge to play such quantity.

If folks couldn't multitable it would be far harder to have the discipline needed to play a mathematically perfect game.

But when 90%+ (before you refute that number which I pulled from my buttocks consider that every good player player is more like 10+ players and every fish is just 1) of the players at a given stake are doing a reasonably good job then NL holdem becomes the wrong game.

Dusty compared playing NLHE to LHE because of the skilled player base. And it makes sense. The real reason to play NLHE has been removed from the game, or quite diluted. You NEED players who are willing to put giant amounts in the pot at the wrong time, and there just aren't as many. So NLHE becomes folding and flipping for stacks against players who have a decent idea about their equity. Coin flipping might be more profitable as long as there is no rake.

Online multitabling hudbot types love to make fun of some of the older live pros, but I have always felt it was misplaced lol'ing as they are two different kinds of players.

There is a reason the highest level cash players LOVE things like DEEP stacks, straddles and antes. They know that it forces players out of the safe shallow end of this purified, stylized game and back into poker.

I for one think multitabling and huds are terrible for the game.

But there is no way Tilt or Stars is ever gonna not let people multitable is there?

I agree with you, but I think there are two separate debates here. I have no doubt players will get better and better until the end of time. But I would like to think of this as a low point in people's ability to make money. Basically the pro to casual player ratio has gotten so high that there isn't enough money to go around unless you are one of the total whales that makes money off of the pros.

If the ratio kept getting higher and higher, then there would be not enough money to even live off of, and therefore a shift in the market would be forced to occur.

There will always be new players and superusers.

LOL

You are exactly right. I can not debate that

Don't forget predation.

It must be horrible for a ring game fish in this day and age. (and this is coming from someone who is definitely a fish at many limits) As soon as you sit down, you've got a waitlist of sharks waiting to tear you apart. This means the fish lose faster than they normally would, and many who would have stuck around end up quitting altogether.

This is why I think Rush Poker might help things. Random seating is good for the fish, as they are less likely to be on a table full of sharks (depending on ratios), and it also "spreads the fish around" for all the players to get a piece. I hope they never increase the amount of Rush tables you can play, and I'd actually like it if they reduced it to 1 or 2 at a given stake.

You are totally right about poker training. There is no question that it has been maybe the largest contributor to how difficult the games are today. The thing is, whether people liked it or not, it was going to exist because there is such a big market for it and there would always be people willing to share their strategy for risk free money.

With respect to poker in the USA and you saying "if there is a will, there is a way", you are totally right. IF there is a will, there is a way. But certainly you can agree that it is not the best marketing strategy to tell your customers, "if there is a will, there is a way." Also, if you talk to most Americans they are under the impression online poker is illegal. So waht we have now is a product where it is difficult to obtain that most people think is illegal. Sounds a lot like marijuana. Can you imagine how many more people would smoke pot if you could just buy it on every street corner like alcohol, vs having to grow it yourself or buy it through a connection like it is right now? That is pretty much the best analogy I can come up with.

Very good analogy. This kind of situation only filters out the most casual of poker players or pot smokers. The difference being, these casual poker players are the ones feeding the most money into the system.

One factor is that as the profits get slimmer and players start thinking about leaving, poker sites start cutting the rake and giving more promotions/better deals.

I don't think thats true. I expect the ratio of fish to good players to always be higher in America than other countries because the game is much more popular there and also on tv a lot. This means there are much more casual and recreational players than elsewhere.

I think if online poker is legalised there will always be a higher ratio of fish to sharks amongst american online players than there is right now unless the game dips in popularity.

This just made my day!

Very good analogy! And I agree, training was going to come, it is risk free money and in theory does help the game. Just because I'm coaching somebody and they are becoming a good player does not mean that they will be a good player in the end. They could be the rich guy that wants to learn in his mind, but his heart doesn't and he is the guy that will make us the most profit.

I feel that online poker will soon be legal, my only fear is that we will not like the regulations that the government puts into place! Could be the best worst thing to happen to us US players.

Good points Crummy. They screw most things up so why would this be any different? They will probably do something ridiculous like limits people's deposits to like $50 a day and/or try and impose a 50% tax on every deposit. If something like that ever happened then I truly would leave the country.