Wake up call

https://www.cardschat.com/news/neva...-on-year-despite-wsop-colossus-turn-out-12096

The message is clear. The momentum is at the best stagnant.
The $64,000 question is is how do you expand upon the success poker has had in the last decade and shift the curve to the upside.

Everyone in marketing knows that in the life cycle of any product the hardest task is to reverse a negative upwards cycle.

Any thoughts on how poker, both online and live can return to it's glory days?

EDIT: This got really frikin long.

It's quite hard really. Not a very easy question to answer.

From my point of view, there a few things that sparked this decline. After MoneyMaker you have the poker boom, everyone wants to play poker, because some unknown dude just earned more in one tournament than most people did in one or more years!!

Now poker is seen as an easy way to make easy money. You have people from all around the world turning to tables because international media made this look like it's easy to be a millionaire. These people are so convinced that they are the best (as we all were at some point) that they don't want to have limits set on the bet sizing, and no limit tables start appearing everywhere.

However, things like this don't last very long. Eventually people start studying the game, strategies start coming out. The game itself responds to every strategy and demands for a new strategy, a new way of thinking. It stops being that easy. Now the game starts requiring study.
What happens to those who don't study? Well, nothing, at first. Maybe they keep winning, maybe they keep losing... For a while. But eventually, especially over all these years after Chris, things balance out. People start losing money, and losing it consistently. Recreational players who were there to "have a good time" are now losing to regulars that know what they are doing. People who saw poker as a cheaper blackjack and would just call bets to see if they got lucky are being smashed by aggressive players that punish them.

People start losing money that should be easy to win.

The easiest solution is to give up, and, one by one, they start doing that. It just keeps getting worse as times roll by. For every recreational player that joins the game today, at least two leave because they got tired of losing.

What do we do to turn this around? In my opinion, another spark. We need to restart the process. We need to repeat the same Big Bang that happened last time. We need international media coverage that shows poker as this easy way to have easy money again.

I don't know about other countries, but in portugal you don't see any poker news on national channels. We have RTP, SIC, and TVI, the 3 major TV channels that are seen by anyone in the country or travelling abroad that wishes to tune in for national events. From all these, only SIC covers poker on the news, and it's always the same story:
"Today we talk about Susan. Susan was a very bright and innocent lady, without a trace of imperfection. Then she found poker. She now became broke, totally useless to society, is a drug addict, and went to jail. Good job Susan. Everyone is proud of you."
Ironically this channel is the same one that covers poker tournaments... At 2 am.

Portugal and Europe in general took another big step (that everyone was scared of at first) that demands that any online poker room gets licensed and pays taxes. It takes some of that "Poker players don't contribute to society. Poker is not a job. etc" edge off.

Some coverage on why poker is a game of skill and not luck would be fine too.

Eventually though, poker will never die. What will happen is that people will just switch games. A few years from now everyone will be playing Omaha, simply because they aren't that many strategy on Omaha yet, or people don't know about them. Or most likely someone will come up with what at first will look like a ridiculous variation of Hold'em nobody even knows how to play, but if it gets big enough, the word starts to spread "Look, we found this new game. It's exciting, easy money, and nobody can break or study it yet".

And the cycle repeats.

Lost.
Thanks for the response.
I am assuming you are from Portugal and from what I see this is a growth area.
It is nice when the government gets on board and usually the reason is because they can tax it but that is not the issue but in that might be the solution to a declining player base.
Right or wrong, smart or not so smart, most people like to gamble. To feel the thrill of the river card or the roulette ball falling into place and poker does provide the illusion of being in control.
So maybe the question in the area of marketing is in what countries should we be spending our marketing dollars or euros or rupees?

fubarcdn said:

Right or wrong, smart or not so smart, most people like to gamble. To feel the thrill of the river card or the roulette ball falling into place and poker does provide the illusion of being in control.
So maybe the question in the area of marketing is in what countries should we be spending our marketing dollars or euros or rupees?

Click to expand...

True, most people do enjoy gambling. And poker is one of the few games that gives them a sense of having more control. They are not playing against the house, they are playing against other people just like them, people that can actually lose and have no advantage over them (if we put knowledge and strategy aside).

That's an interesting question I was thinking something along the lines of getting media (especially news) interested in poker as a kind of sport that people can study, I don't exactly agree with paying what should be free journalism and say "Here, have 1000 bucks and talk about us". How, otherwise, could we get them interested, I have no clue, I was just spitting out my idea.

But if that's the question, then I'd go for countries with a big population and preferably that have the power to reach to international audiences. Russia, States, brasil. If you can get 10.000 people or more from those countries interested in poker, then great. If the fuss is so big that news spread to other countries, awesome.

On the other hand, I realize that efforts have been made towards this end in the past and eventually they got into a decline. If that's the case and media can't bring people back to tables, then I guess we need to let Hold'em die and prepare ourselves for a new game and new strategies down the road. Of course, advertising the game in the Internet, blogs, family, friends, college, schools, etc. and get every people into it, especially with newer generations (remember it's not illegal for people under 18 to play, it's just not allowed that they play for money or online) would be a major step too to prevent this.

EDIT: Added some details, cleaned up some mistakes.

In a previous post you talked about Russia. I wanna say that online poker in Russia is banned by law. I am from Russia, but at the same time playing poker. I like to play, but I would rather a recreational player and play mostly freerolls.
As for the return of the former glory of poker, it seems to me that fame is not so faded. Another thing that stopped the influx of new players, and this can be a problem for online poker. All major potential poker players have already tried, and the main source of replenishment became the young people who have only heard about poker. pokerstars, for example, has made the right move, starting promo with the definition of poker IQ. This action is just designed for young people.
Overall, I think poker has reached a stable state of the market at the moment are mainly divided between the major poker rooms, and the influx of newcomers will mainly be due to the young.

fubarcdn said:

Any thoughts on how poker, both online and live can return to it's glory days?

Click to expand...

Turn the clock back pre: Black Friday?

StuffBarnaul said:

In a previous post you talked about Russia. I wanna say that online poker in Russia is banned by law. I am from Russia, but at the same time playing poker. I like to play, but I would rather a recreational player and play mostly freerolls.

Click to expand...

What? Sorry for the off-topic, but this is new. Russia is by far the country I mostly see at micros.

I agree with your points though, targeting marketing at the youth is the way to go. However we need to care about the social dogma around poker as well. For example, I have tons of friends who, although over 18, can't play at home because their parents wouldn't let them. I see tons of people as far as their early-20s playing in coffee shops because they aren't allowed to play at home.

Poker Orifice said:

Turn the clock back pre: Black Friday?

Click to expand...

I'd love to see a graph of online player traffic year-by-year from say 2000. I suspect we'd see the game was already in decline prior to so-called Black Friday. I'm basing this on all of the "where are the fish" and "everyone is solid" threads from back in the day.


Cheers!

StuffBarnaul said:

In a previous post you talked about Russia. I wanna say that online poker in Russia is banned by law. I am from Russia, but at the same time playing poker. I like to play, but I would rather a recreational player and play mostly freerolls.
As for the return of the former glory of poker, it seems to me that fame is not so faded. Another thing that stopped the influx of new players, and this can be a problem for online poker. All major potential poker players have already tried, and the main source of replenishment became the young people who have only heard about poker. PokerStars, for example, has made the right move, starting promo with the definition of poker IQ. This action is just designed for young people.
Overall, I think poker has reached a stable state of the market at the moment are mainly divided between the major poker rooms, and the influx of newcomers will mainly be due to the young.

Click to expand...

I did not know that online poker is banned in Russia.
From the number of Russians I see on the tables there must be a lot of people breaking the law.
What is the penalty if you are charged in Russia playing online poker?

I think the answer is government federal regulation and a poker reality show. The public can't seem to get enough of those. Pawnstars or American picker but, about poker. Most casual people in the USA quite after black Friday because they know its somewhat illegal to play online.