Is Online Poker A Dead Man Walking?

Poker, especially online poker needs to undergo a revolutionary shift to survive.

Part 3 of my look into the second wave of US sportsbooks (Part 1 and Part 2) will have to wait until next week because I have to talk about online poker.

The game that brought me into this crazy gambling universe in the late 1990s is going through an existential crisis, and I need to get some things off my chest.

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The superuser scandal at GG Poker has amplified the community’s frustration at what it believes is the rampant use of bots. And then there are the ongoing debates over solvers and, of course, the typical chatter around more traditional cheating methods like hole-card sharing and multi-accounting.

It’s getting to the point where the poker community must look at itself in the mirror and ask some difficult questions about online poker’s survival.

Alun Bowden posted a poll on the subject, asking when online poker would be declared dead. With more than 200 votes, a majority believes the online version of poker will meet its demise before 2030. According to Bowden, it’s a combination of all the above factors that are destroying the game.

As longtime poker pro Matt Glantz put it, we have to deal with reality. The online poker world we want isn’t the one we have or can get.

Poker pro and WPT commentator Tony Dunst also had some questions about the prospects for the next generation of poker players.

Another pro, Alex Foxen, expressed his significant concerns with the state of online poker as trust has been eroded.

But Live Poker Is Thriving

As I’ve talked about in the past, live poker tournaments are booming, but if you talk to anyone who’s been around for a while, you’re likely to hear how poker has been slowly dying since April 15, 2011, or some might argue as far back as October 13, 2006 - the dates of Black Friday and UIGEA.

There are several reasons for that negative prognosis, but before I delve into those reasons and any potential fixes, I want to clarify that I’m not talking about low-stakes live games, at least not yet.

Those games are generally wild and lively, as are mid-stakes games on the weekends. But, and this is the crucial bit, that used to be the case with most mid-stakes games and high-stakes games on the weekends, and apropos to this discussion, online poker. The issues facing poker are cascading down the stakes and will soon overtake the low-stakes tables.

What are the issues? From my point of view, poker has three terminal, interconnected problems – some external structural issues will also need to be solved.

#1: Poker has a skill gap problem.

The game is increasingly becoming solved, where anyone with a decent amount of knowledge has a massive edge over those without. The learning curve is increasingly steep. More and more players are using perfect strategy, and the typical newcomer is sitting down in a game, not with players on a similar step in their journey, but with a bunch of solid players (or bots) using tools that further inflate their edge.

That really comes into play toward the top of the funnel, as new players, especially online, are chewed up and spit in short order without receiving anything resembling an enjoyable experience. That’s going to keep people away from the online tables altogether. As Dunst said, the path to becoming even a middling poker player is virtually impassable [insert Gandalf, “you shall not pass!” meme].