Online Gambling Running Out of Steam

dreamchaser writes "After a meteoric rise, online gambling companies appear to be taking a beating now with the loss of 33% in PartyGaming stock. Apparently the novelty is wearing off and no new players can be found. Why have you stopped playing?"

Comments

Lack of Suckers

[ackthpt]

With all the poker-bots and it being morally indefensible to allow suckers to keep their money, it stands to reason there is only a finite number of suckers, and even if there's a new one every minute, it takes suckers longer than a handfull of minutes to scrape togther enough money to get taken to the cleaners often enough to prop up such an industry.

My money's on the really big gambling:

• What I bought on eBay is what I actually get
• Living on top of a fault line
• Hope against evidence that the price of gas will actually go down with the increase in available crude (actual crude price increase in past year 66%, gasoline price increase over same period 132%, source BBC)
• One day my comic book collection may approach in sticker price value
• My donation to Katrina relief won't go into some fat-cat's pocket.

Besides, with the price of gas being so high who has money left to gamble?

Re:Lack of Suckers

[diamondmagic]

Funny thing is, Exxon Mobil just published their biggest profit EVER. High prices is, mostly, just speculation.

Re:Lack of Suckers

[GPLDAN]

How many people need to tell you what is happening before you catch on? Unlike the poor, uneducated masses that line the slot machines at many casinos, once a rat is seen online - people leave in droves. Information moves at the speed of light, and online casinos can turn from full to empty in minutes, not days. Nobody goes on benders or tilt online.

Wired splits the fucking scam right down the middle in their expose.

Re:Lack of Suckers

[covertbadger]

With all the poker-bots and it being morally indefensible to allow suckers to keep their money, it stands to reason there is only a finite number of suckers, and even if there's a new one every minute, it takes suckers longer than a handfull of minutes to scrape togther enough money to get taken to the cleaners often enough to prop up such an industry.

I still don't understand why online poker is so damn popular - any game where the odds can be calculated with any degree of accuracy is ideal fodder for bots, which can patiently calculate hands until the heat death of the universe. Unfortunately US gambling laws prevent Americans from using sports betting sites like http://www.betfair.com/, which matches up bets between users, and though there are plenty of bots there they can't fleece people like poker bots because it's impossible to work out accurate odds for, say, Liverpool coming back from 3-0 down at half time to win the Champion's League.

Re:Lack of Suckers

[TexVex]

As someone who has been playing online poker since 2002, I can tell you firsthand that Wired's article paints a stark picture that makes things seem worse than they actually are. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that online poker completely lacks bots and cheats. Cheating is a problem with practically all sports and games. People do collude at "brick and mortar" poker tables as well.

Just like card rooms and casinos strive to make their games safe, so do online card rooms strive to detect and eliminate the bots. Their efforts include analysis (some automated, some done by real people) of people's play to find evidence of cheating. They punish the cheaters and do what they can to make reparations to the victims.

There are also problems with credit card fraud in online poker. Someone makes a huge deposit at an online card room, then passes chips to a partner in a high stakes heads up game. Partner cashes out. Original depositor defrauds credit institution by claiming identity theft, and the bank is stuck in a sticky spot. That problem has caused so much trouble that many big banks refuse to allow many kinds of transfers of funds to gaming sites.

I quit dealing with Party Poker over two years ago, because I thought their policies were too invasive of privacy and too restrictive on some simple issues. I have since played PokerStars and UltimateBet, and most recently Full Tilt. I haven't noticed any shrinkage in recent months. PokerStars is the biggest of those three; they have weekly $215 buy-in tournaments that continuously seat 3,500 players or more (yes, the total prize pool always exceeds their $150,000 guaranteed minimum). Their annual World Championship of Online Poker, just getting started for this year, is already breaking all of the records it itself set last year.

Also, in the non-online poker world, the World Series of Poker Main Event was nearly three times as large this year as it was last year; they had to break the first day of play up over three days, having 1/3 of the field play their first day each day. Only after that was the field small enough that they could fit everyone in the convention center used for the tournament at the same time.

All indications point towards poker still growing, and online poker is at least stable. Maybe if Party Gaming stock is losing value, it's for some other reason. If they are actually losign players, then maybe it's because their players are moving elsewhere.

Re:Lack of Suckers

[hurfy]

Aye, I didn't see much of anything about players of profit. It mentioned one's growth slowed to 4% per MONTH. The other companies were only mentioned as per stock prices dropping quite a bit. I don't know what 4 bil pounds (it was pounds,no?) comes to, but it sounds like alot and a correction doesnt seem unreasonable.

Nowhere did i see they were losing money or even customers, only that new people weren't joining in droves as before. Not like some astronomical growth rate is gonna go on forever. Pretty sure the number of internet users doesn't grow at 50%/year so at the rates they had (over 50%/year apparently) aren't you gonna run out of internet users at some point even if we all played and kept playing?

slashdot, the home of irrelevent recaps and run-on sentences :)

Re:Lack of Suckers

[javamann]

Here in California Shell tried to close a PROFITABLE refinery last year. Turns out it could make more money buy reducing the available gas/diesel supply (and charging more) than it could from the refinery. Luckly the state forced them to sell the refinery. The oil companies have found out when the power companies have found out, if you keep capacity close to demand you can charge what you want.

Re:Lack of Suckers

[Fareq]

This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't impossible for independent companies to build their own refineries.

I would like to build a refinery here in CA. I'm not much of a chemist, but I know a good business when I see one -- and a market such as this is ripe for new competition. If I could actually do such a thing, I could actually lower the average gas price a Californian pays while also making craploads of money.

For a while, anyway.

Re:Lack of Suckers

[anthony_dipierro]

People do collude at "brick and mortar" poker tables as well.

Yeah, but word gets out pretty quickly who those people are, and they can't just change their name and gather that reputation back (actually, once they know you know, they won't pull it on you, and it can actually be an advantage). At B&M casinos you see the same people all the time. If you see a new face, 9 times out of 10 they're a fish. Sure, there's always that 1 time out of 10, so you've gotta be careful (I don't play no-limit), but it really is a lot like that scene from Rounders where they play at the casino.

The biggest problem online probably isn't the outright cheats, though, and bots are consistent but they can be beaten (and as long as you're not playing against *all* bots, you don't even have to beat the bots anyway). My biggest beef with online poker is that it seems like all the good players are getting assistance from computers. The computers track your every move, they even have computers that lurk in games recording the actions of every player, without the computer actually playing. Online poker has thus become a different game - a good memory is no longer much of an advantage, and even if you're playing someone you've never played with before, they might very well have a history of nearly every hand you've played.

Re:Lack of Suckers

[Pulzar]

still don't understand why online poker is so damn popular - any game where the odds can be calculated with any degree of accuracy is ideal fodder for bots, which can patiently calculate hands until the heat death of the universe.

That's such a minor thing in poker that it really doesn't make a difference. A good player can estimate the odds and probabilities in a few seconds close enough to matter for most hands, and within a minute or so in others. It's actually putting a percentage next to possible hands for the opponent that the bot can't do well at all, and will therefor always lose to a good human player. In no-limit games against good players that's much more true than in limit games against a mediocre crowd, mind you, since big blunders will cost the bot less, and "statistically correct" plays will win more often than not in a large group of average players.

Re:Lack of Suckers

[grumpygrodyguy]

Funny thing is, Exxon Mobil just published their biggest profit EVER.

I'm much more amazed that people are surprized by this considering who's running this country.

Re:Lack of Suckers

[covertbadger]

You're right, but then if I was running a poker bot I wouldn't let it anywhere near the high stakes games with good players. I'd have it roaming the small-fry tables with casual players, and clean up on the margins. Even if it only makes a few percent profit by playing conservatively, if I run it 24hrs a day it'll soon add up, at the direct expense of the 'average' players.

For starters

[bigwavejas]

If they want me to play they're going to have to put the bugs back into the progy. We're talking back-to-back Royal Flushes and hitting the refresh button on the payout...doubling your money

Poker Poker Everywhere...

[Nerd Systems]

Online Poker was a cool fad when it came out, but they are right, it is beginning to lost it's steam. A big factor that also comes into play is the television coverage that poker tournaments have these days. Who wants to sit on a computer and play games, when you can go and play them for real?

Here in Houston, we have so many bars and lounges that host poker tournaments and the like, some of which have some very nice prizes for the winners, almost making the online world seem nowhere near as fun or productive. I am sure that everyone can explain to you what Texas Hold'em is by this time...

Looks like they need to find another fad to promote to the online community... and pray that TV doesn't steal the show once again...

Re:Poker Poker Everywhere...

[DDiabolical]

Online poker has so many advantages over live play that I couldn't even name them all. Fact is, poker has been around for a long time, it became popular on the web for a REASON (many of them). As for TV stealing the show, Poker on TV and Poker on the `Net can thank eachother for everything they have right now.

Maybe it's just this company

[gbulmash]

While Party-Gaming is having difficulties with retention and yield, it is quite possible that this is due to growing competition.

For example, while PartyPoker is well known, PokerStars seems to be coming up fast. They advertise heavily on poker shows, moreso than PartyPoker it seems. Additionally, a visit to both sites generated a pop-up at PartyPoker on the opening page (yes, let's annoy potential clients), but not at PokerStars. I haven't tried the PartyPoker software in quite some time, but when it came time to choose I found PokerStars a more pleasant interface in which to waste time on play money games.

BUT, and this is very important, poker has been enjoying a popularity surge lately, especially Texas Hold-em. The number of poker shows on TV (even cable) a decade ago could have been counted on the fingers of one knee. Maybe there'd be something late night on ESPN 2, sandwiched in between Powder Puff BMX and Curling. Now you have poker shows on Travel channel, Bravo, InHD, and more. It's quite possible that, gasp, poker is a fad, and as more and more people realize they really suck at it, the fad is receding. Perhaps the money is going back to sports betting, going back to more traditional casino gaming (blackjack, roulette), or perhaps it's going to pay for $3 a gallon gasoline.

I definitely wouldn't take this article as an indicator of industry troubles as a whole, but it would be useful as a warning to watch for shifts in consumer gaming patterns across the industry.

Re:Maybe it's just this company

[semibluff]

I agree. I'm an avid player on multiple sites, and here's the why I think Party's user base is shrinking: * First, and most important, they have the highest percentage rake in the industry - taking it out in $0.50 intervals. Everyone else take out $1.00 intervals. A $30 pot on Party costs you $1.50. Everywhere else it's $1.00. The smart players realize this and move elsewhere. Even brick and mortar casinos in Vegas and AC don't charge that. * Party's interface is very clunky compared to others like Paradise and Fulltilt * Party does almost nothing for their users. Paradise has a million dollar freeroll going on right now. Fulltilt rewards you for knocking a pro out of tournament (and they have lots of freerolls). What's party got? I deposit bonus that makes you play an absurd amount of hands within 1 week to get it...(the others trickle in the deposit bonuses, so they can still be earned if you don't meet the total hands within the specified time...and the other give you months , not a week...) * Party doesn't have customer service that speaks English that a mere mortal can understand. (That's a big spoiler for many folks.) There's dozens more, but these are probably the most important reasons. For those of you who say the industry is shrinking, you should definetly look around. A year ago Paradise averaged around 50000 players a night, now they are around 12,000. Fulltilt was at about zero, now they are around 5000. I don't think the industry is shrinking, I just think there's more competition, and Party's not really competing...

Re:Maybe it's just this company

[dubiousmike]

I play no limit holdem at least 3 times a week, cash games with about 300 in chips on the table at a given point. I go to Foxwoods when I get a chance and am up about 3K over the past three months.

ONLINE POKER IS BULLSHIT

I think playing against people you can't see, especially with most people playing free chips is bullshit. They have no concept of what they are betting. 90% of everyone out there who plays online absolutely destroys any advice you could get from a book. I don't do local free tournaments either. All of it destroys your ability to play for real money. I have a couple of friends qho still play online with real money. They do ok. But when they play with real people, they suck. Ever notice when you play online, almost every hand has someone sucking out? (sucking out is when someone with crappy cards stays in and wins when you had a great hand all along.)

Poker is great, but poker with live humans, cigar smoke and liquor is WAY WAY better. People are still playing, just not in a dark room alone.

Re:Maybe it's just this company

[wmspringer]

Poker is great, but poker with live humans, cigar smoke and liquor is WAY WAY better.

Actually, one of the main reasons I play poker online is to AVOID the smoke :-p

Re:Maybe it's just this company

[angle_slam]

I think playing against people you can't see, especially with most people playing free chips is bullshit.

What does that mean? Play money tables are crap, agreed. You don't learn anything there and no one plays like that in real life. But real money tables are more real.

Ever notice when you play online, almost every hand has someone sucking out? (sucking out is when someone with crappy cards stays in and wins when you had a great hand all along.)

First, that may be true in play money tables. But generally false on real money tables. There is much less bluffing on real money tables. I was just playing at the $0.02 tables. Even at stakes that low, people wouldn't chase bad cards in the face of a 2 cent bet.

Second, even if true, that presents a good opportunity to make money. If a donkey always calls with 72 against AA, yes, you'll occassionally lose when the flop is 772. But, much more often, the AA will hold up against the 72.

Because gambling is ...

[waynegoode]

Perhaps people finally realized that gambling is a tax on greed and poor math skills.

Re:Because gambling is ...

[ranton]

You didnt understand what the GP post meant regarding the skill involved in Poker. Poker is different from most gambling because you are not playing against the dealer, you are playing against the other players. In almost any form of gambling you will eventually lose money because the odds are set by the casino. But the only thing you have to beat in online poker is the rake.

If you can win more money from your opponents than the casinos rakes in on each hand, then you WILL make money at poker. There are plenty of people who make a living off of poker. I know of two friends who are paying their way through college with online poker (one still gets over half of the money from student loans). I dont make that much money, but I havent ever had a stretch of more than a couple days where I havent increased my money online.

You CAN make money from playing poker, it is not gambling in the sense that you can beat the system in poker. You just have to have some skill, and a bank roll big enough to absorb losses from a few bad beats.

Re:Because gambling is ...

[Skater]

My boss gambles. She's not greedy and she has excellent math skills...in fact, she's a statistician! She knows exactly what the odds are.

So why does she gamble? Because she enjoys it. And she frequently wins enough to pay for her trips to Vegas and such.

How much do you spend on your hobbies every year? Gambling, at least for her, and probably for a lot of people, is just another hobby, and we all know that any hobby can be very expensive. I probably spend more money each year on my hobbies - with NO hope of financial return - then she spends on gambling.

Why have I stopped playing?

[14erCleaner]

Um...because I never started?

Because I'm not innumerate?

Re:Why have I stopped playing?

[dgatwood]

And for those who are unlucky enough to become addicted to gambling, all three laws apply. That's the problem with gambling. Nickel games in your friend's den notwithstanding, it tends to prey upon people who can't help themselves....

Re:Why have I stopped playing?

[bnenning]

See my earlier comment about denial... it's easy to convince yourself that you can beat the game, but the odds are very, very slim that you'll even break even

Once again, this is not the case with poker. Smart players will make money on average. Of course they can still easily go broke by playing at stakes too high for their skill or bankroll.

World of Warcraft

[pirula]

the title says it all.

One Reason

[tktk]

Why have you stopped playing?

Maybe because the regular players have gone broke?

Re:One Reason

[xao gypsie]

or they didn't have money to start with. personally, i love to play poker, especially texas hold 'em. but i am also just at the poverty line as a grad student, which means it would be fairly irresponsible for me to spend what little extra money I have on that rather than taking my wife to the movies or something (also a rare occurence).

Re:One Reason

[Sheik Yerbouti]

Poor married grad student? man you do like to gamble.

I never started playing.

[faedle]

For starters, part of the "gambling experience" for me is physically going to a noisy, crowded casino and taking in the atmosphere. It's like going to an amusement park: the ride just isn't fun unless you're strapped to the seat.

Plus, at home, I don't get scantily-clad babes serving me free drinks, and the infrequent comp from the casino host isn't a bad thing either.

Online gambling appeals to the pros, perhaps. Which is exactly why I don't want to play there. I'd rather be taken by the house at Blackjack in Vegas.. at least there I get to sit in a pretty building.

Re:I never started playing.

[telstar]

Plus, at home, I don't get scantily-clad babes serving me free drinks

Don't you mean scantily-clad ancient crones serving free water with a hint of color that might be booze (at least, you hope is some kind of booze because water really shouldn't be that color)?

"Trent, the beautiful babies don't work the midnight to six shift on a Wednesday. This is like the skank shift."

Mike
"Swingers"

Re:I never started playing.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I've never cared for gambling in either form. In a building, it involves tacky lights, usually tacky architecture (though the non-gambling floors of The Venitian is cool) and so on. Online, there's the issue of trust, how does a user know the program isn't cheating them? Actually, there's a point about the computer machines in Vegas, but Nevada tries to prevent that.

I Only Gamble Inside Casinos

[GecKo213]

There's just a different feeling going to a Casino vs gambling at home. All of the drinks are free (As in Beer, lots of beer!) and so ar the Cigars if you gamble long enough. Besides, online gambling to me at least has the Shady, can I really win at this because who's governing a small island in the pacific's website to make sure I even have a chance, vybe. Gambling inside casinos is the only place I want to Gamble. Besides, it woudl be too easy to get COmpletely addicted if I could plug in to the Internet and gamble my life away.

Gambling down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trust.

That's why it's down. I'm not talking about trusting your online casino of choice, or trusting that you will receive your money from your payment processor. I'm talking about trusting your fellow players.

The big money in online poker isn't from reading a book and playing off of statistics charts and pot odds. It's not in learning to read into your counterparts bets. It's in cheating.

Not the hack-the-server-to-see-everyone's-cards cheating, or reverse engineering their randomization algorithms. It's in playing 6 players on a 10-hand table and having everyone know what everyone else has.

The odds on your pocket jacks suddenly go way down once you know one of your other players has a jack. Also, you are able to control the table much more effectively with many people acting as one. Joe-sixpack might call you for $10 with his board pair, but he is much less likely if it's going to cost him $40. Also, when you know you have the winning cards, you can milk the rest of the players by raising once around the table and raising after your targets have called.

The game is entirely different and there are numerous other rulesets and strategies you can employ when you have more knowledge about the cards on the table than other people.

Sure, a "good" poker player can beat a bot or a statistical player any day of the week. However, the best player out there can't beat an entire table sharing information and playing for the same goal. Yes, the online casinos try and detect this collusion and generally the worst they do is ban players from playing together at the same table. I'm sure many Slashdoters can figure out how you get around any type of detection the casinos can through out.

I know I did.

Re:Gambling down?

[badmammajamma]

Yep, that's the reason for me. It's so trivially easy to cheat these online games without breaking any laws or having any chance of getting busted even if it were illegal that it's a fucking joke. Granted, most of the tables you go to won't be loaded with cheat teams but it only takes a small number to keep you in the red. Plus, over time there will be more of this as people get a clue. Some of the more clever people can even do this by themselves without the help of friends.

Anyone putting money into online poker is either a sucker or a cheater.

Re:Gambling down?

[Anonymous Coward]

[I'm the grand-parent AC]

When you're talking about bots, I'm sure that there are many poker bots at the sub-dollar tables, however they are mostly people who paid their $29.99 for the win-money-while-you-sleep poker bot from the latest spam e-mail. They aren't sophisticated enough to cause you any harm, and you should be able to beat them easier than an average player. They most definitely won't be colluding.

What we do differently than the bots is that we're all good at poker. We're not going to and play by a chart, but we all sat down and read the books and learned the game. We regularly practice solo to get better, and we know how to "not be stupid". Of course we have all the pot odds calculated and the percentages for each hand available to us when the cards are dealt and after every bet, but again, we don't play on those religiously. We know when to try and bet up to knock someone out, and when to try and milk every chip on the table. That's what people need to be afraid of, not your everyday poker bot.

As far as the other tables go, it's funny you mention the 5/10 tables. One of the things we regularly do with our accounts is "go lose $100" (inside joke: to keep the filters on our side, we'll "go lose $100" on a 2/4 or a 5/10 table on the accounts from time to time. Whenever someone does something stupid, we'll tell them to "Go lose $100"... strange looks are always abound when we say it in front of girlfriends/relatives who don't know the rest of the story.) However, we also practice new techniques (non-poker) and servers on the low limit tables as well. I don't think we've ever played at anything less than 1/2, but anything below 5/10 is not worth playing in general because the players who play below 5/10 play significantly different than the players that play above.

Tournament tables should be perfectly safe. We've never tried to play tournaments, mostly because there is no way to make sure that we end up at the same table.

Re:Gambling down?

[krunk4ever]

yep, with programs such as WinHoldem, it makes cheating a lot easier!

it even has a link for Detection Avoidance advice.

from this article: , one poker bot feature is Team Mode: Flick on Team mode and you can collude with other humans running WinHoldEm at the table.

Because I'm Always Buying

[FearTheFrail]

Because I have played poker with PartyGaming on our usual poker night, once a week for the past six months, and not once has it offered to buy the pretzels and beer.

SPYWARE

[paradizelost]

I never have done online gambling. I have had to fix HUNDREDS of pc's where the morons on the pc's did and had lots of spyware. Many of these took format/reload to completely fixed. the average bill for the systems that weren't formatted was about $120.

nothing to worry about

[circletimessquare]

the only thing that would keep someone from gambling is intelligence

luckily, there is a permanent shortage of that in the world, so online gambling has a rosy future

Re:nothing to worry about

[horza]

the only thing that would keep someone from gambling is intelligence

luckily, there is a permanent shortage of that in the world, so online gambling has a rosy future

It's worth pointing out that poker, unlike blackjack or roulette where you play against the house, is purely against other players. The poker house takes a percentage called the 'rake'. You only have to be marginally above average to compensate for this. Competing players don't have unlimited pockets unlike a casino, also eliminating this advantage.

As for lacking intelligence, those that invest in real estate are similarly short sighted. Even more of a gamble as they have to make up for stamp duty and capital gains tax. And those that deal in stock and shares of currency dealings are equally foolish.

Your cliche may have held up a few of decades ago, when you took up a professions early in your teenage years and then were guaranteed the same job until your retirement, but in today's world learning to manage risk is a vital skill. Those that don't learn will hang on to your dogma but will then bemoan the fact that their (rapidly diminishing) state pension isn't enough to support them. Sorry to be blunt but being in the position myself I have to be honest. Online poker has taught me so much about risk management that my education failed to do. It's an important life skill.

Phillip.

Maybe it's the Robots?

[dshaw858]

Apparently the novelty is wearing off and no new players can be found. Why have you stopped playing?

There was a story, what, a week ago(?) about how people are writing scripts and programs to play these online poker sites for real money, against real people... maybe people are just getting tired of getting owned by a small executable? I don't know, maybe not, but I'm sure that has something to do with it.

Oh, and school's starting up, so wannabe-pro college students don't have enough time anymore to play poker all day. Again, just speculation.

- dshaw

Trust, Trend and Truth

[curtisk]

Trust: it's not only whether or not you can trust the site/service that hosts the games, but you also have to trust ALOT of anonymous players. At any given table, any number of players can be communicating their hands to each other, tilting the pot and the stakes heavily in their favor. Sure, there's some software out there that tries to catch those scenarios, based on the action and betting patterns, but it can't possibly catch half of it.

Trend: Poker in particular is very trendy, and like all trends, it will pass, some will stay, but most will go.

Truth: At some point you will realize that you are not the next incarnation of Chris Moneymaker and never will be. No easy path for you to riches and fame. If you really love playing, you'll probably stick it out over the long term and may "make it" at some point, but most people today want the quick fix and lose interest if their fortunes don't come quick enough. That and the realization that it takes ALOT of time of your day if you are attempting to be "profitable" playing online. Again, think its an easy fix, then reality and truth set in.

And if you play "play money" games and freeroll tourneys, LOL, thats not real on so many levels.

Re:Trust, Trend and Truth

[jshazen]

...you also have to trust ALOT of anonymous players. At any given table, any number of players can be communicating their hands to each other, tilting the pot and the stakes heavily in their favor.

That's why I mostly play multi-table tournaments. Players are assigned randomly to tens (sometimes hundreds) of tables. There's no way a colluding group can be big enough to have more than one or two players per table.

I stopped playing because...

[craXORjack]

My pokerbot started stinking up the house smoking those big stoagies, staying up for days at a time, using my credit cards on porn sites, having hookers come to the house, and drinking up all my liquor. Things just got out of hand.

Who stopped playing?

[UM_Maverick]

Sure, Party Poker's revenue is down, but they still get 40,000+ players at a time. There's gotta be another 50 sites out there, too - none of them are as big as party, but they're out there. Ultimatebet, Pokerroom.com, Paradise Poker, Pacific Poker, Interpoker, etc, etc, etc...

People talk a lot about bots, but if they're out there, they suck. I play up to 2/4 limit Hold 'em, and 1-2 NL Hold 'em, as well as Omaha hi/lo, and I'm a consistent winner (I track every session I play). I play 6-8 hours a week, usually while the wife is watching dawson's creek, or some other equally girly dvd. We get to sit together, each doing something we enjoy, and I clear anywhere from $400 - $800 a month.

In short: people still play, decent players win, and (from what I've read), the bots are really, really bad.

Stock Market

[theNote]

This is the problem with companies going public that shouldn't.
The stock market is all about growth, not profit.
Have a compay that makes 100 billion trillion dollars a year?
Great, but next year you will have to make 200 billion trillion or else your stock will tank. Its not just about being profitable, stock is all about growth. If not you better pay one hell of a dividend.

Re:Stock Market

[Detritus]

A large part of the valuation of many stocks is the expectation that revenues and profits will increase over time. Take away that growth, and the stock price will be much lower. If the profits aren't being invested in expansion, they should be returned to the stockholders in the form of dividends, not stashed in the bank.

When I look at stock prices, most of them seem to be overpriced, bid up by investors who have unrealistic expectations of future growth and profits. Everyone expects their horse to be the winner.

It's a bad bet from the start

[H_Fisher]

Why have you stopped playing?

I never started - online gambling, that is. I live in North Carolina, where draconian laws prohibit gambling (even private poker games and sports pools - as our newspapers helpfully remind us every time a major sports tournament is upcoming). So I gamble when I travel, because I love to play blackjack and craps. I've won a little bit of money here and there over the years - $50-100 at a time, nothing major, and it's fun because I know how to play sensibly.

However, we do have one casino, of sorts, in NC - on the Cherokee reservation in the western part of the state. But I have never gone there and I never will, for the same reason I will never gamble online.

Because instead of standard table games - with real cards, actual dice, etc. - there are only computers and video-poker style games at Cherokee. And as much as I love technology, I don't trust it for gambling. At. All. There are just too many possibilities to manipulate the outcome.

Granted, anyone can learn to cheat at dealing cards; there are ways to make loaded dice and fixed slot machines (I don't play slots either). But the big, legal brick-and-mortar casinos around the country, with standard table games, have a bigger measure of responsibilty. You can still lose your ass playing there.

But those casinos depend on their reputations to survive; in my experience, if you think there's a problem or an inconsistancy with a game, you can have it addressed immediately and thoroughly.

Try that with a gaming website based on a Pacific island.

Not enough serious pro players

[tepp]

Because most people play poker for the social aspects. Yes, there are "pro" poker players who play to win, but most guys are just playing it to have fun with their friends, while talking shop over a cold beer, with a bowl of chips and dip at hand, and the wives out of sight for a few hours. The winner walks away with maybe 40$ at the end of the night, but has to host the next poker party... and thus the cycle continues.

Most people don't want to play poker for high stakes - they don't have the money to stay in the very high games, and they don't really want to loose it all in one game. They just want to play for the fun of it, and doing it with little drawn cartoon avatars isn't nearly as entertaining as doing it with your best buds.

Once the novelty wore off, those who actually want to play online poker are very few....

It would be ironic ...

[Tx]

It would be ironic if all the gamblers stopped playing poker so they could bet their poker money on partygaming.com stocks instead :).

I've been playing 2 years

[ctwxman]

I deposited $250 at Pokerstars in August 2003. I play nearly every day. My wife does as well. We don't have a fortune or even a small fortune... but we still have our $250 and a profit. During these two years Pokerstars has made thousands off our playing, but not from us. Our secret is only playing in small sit 'n go tournaments. It is very easy for the casinos to keep track of collusion in these. Because you need money in the bank, it is not easy to quickly change names, so players who play too many of these together stick out like a sore thumb. All the games I've played online have made me a much better player at brick and mortar casinos. I've played tens of thousands of hands at Pokerstars - a lifetime of hands - in two years. When I'm playing live, it's as if I can see through the other player's cards.

82% Revanue Growth

[Rhett]

Party Poker just posted 82% revanue growth, and over 100% revanue growth in their poker devision (they also do online slots, etc.) in their latest earnings report. They merely meantioned that their growth can't continue to double every few months forever as it has been doing. PartyPoker is the best in the business, and they aren't going to fizzle out any time soon. And there will be no shortage of players unless people are forced to stop.

"Why have you stopped playing?"

[switcha]

Duh. I ran out of money.

Two words, bots and spam

[Karellen !-P]

Last month, my photoblog has received about 5000 comment and referral spam from that industry. I don't even read Wil Weaton anymore because he keeps reminding me of those morons.

Because...

[Greyfox]

I can go to a nearby casino, buy in to a tournament for $30 or $40 and play for long enough to get comped for some food and drink and meet some hot poker babes. Or I can go to a free bar tournament within a few miles from my house almsot any night of the week, play some cards, have a beer and meet some hot poker babes. There are some good looking women playing this game! And unlike the Internet, most of them won't turn out to have a penis!

I could see possibly playing a $5 tournament or two online on a down night, but for the most part I'd really rather go hang out with real human beings. And as an added bonus, when you play an offline tournament you don't have to deal with the prepubescent dweebies that seem to hang out on the online poker rooms.

Re:I don't gamble

[geniusj]

Don't forget "boats" in some states (Mississippi, Indiana, maybe others)

Re:No Lack of Suckers

[Rirath.com]

If you're going to mention AOL and n00bs, you may want to avoid the use of "ppl".

people. It's three more characters, saving a mere 9 keystrokes out of the nearly 400 you already used to type that post.

Stock relates to what?

[herk]

I've been making a killing at online poker for about 14 months now. Most of my time is spent at Party affiliates, probably about 85%. There continue to be more people online playing just as poorly as at any time in the last year. Bots are not a problem, collusion is not a problem, online poker sites cheating you is not a problem. Frankly these fear mongering threads are frustrating for us because if anything is interfering with this industry, it's dumbasses spreading around propeganda about how online poker is rigged, legions of bots await you to take your every last dime, and everyone else is a cheater.

(a) Poker sites are not out to cheat you. They're making a fortune by raking every pot, why jeopardize it by cheating as well? Why are focused and dedicated players able to beat the game consistently?

(b) Poker bots are not a problem. There are no known profitable bots, winholdem is a joke, and it's best success stories are almost surely less effective than a good human player. If there are massively successful bots out there, nobody knows about them. Poker remains a game of incomplete information which involves a great deal of finesse and instinct. Coding this into a bot is NOT trivial, and while I don't doubt that it would be possible to write one to post mild profits at the lowest limits, it won't pose a threat to a reasonably competant player. A bot will not know what you hold, will be just as easy to fool or extract money from as people, perhaps even more so once you can isolate and understand it's behavior. Bots are the last thing on my mind at the table.

(c) Collusion is a problem, but it's ridiculusly easy to detect. Groups of people constantly signing on together, playing the same tables, leaving together, that's just a start. You can only do that for a very short time. Then tack on even simplistic collusion detection to find trends of raises that are simply to build up pots, odd behavior outside of that players normal reaction in that situation, even a computer science undergrad could code relatively effective detection for this. Poker sites have every reason to try and protect their players from this, and they do, see point (a). Collusion certainly does take place, most likely in the higher limits where it's more worthwhile, but it's going to be extremely difficult to pull off for any sustained amount of time. I've seen poker sites effort to prevent it first hand, collusion is NOT something I worry about.

Why Party's stock is down I have no idea. Does this necessarily correlate to their profits? Their attendance? Their new signups? The games certainly aren't drying up, that much I can vouch for.

Article's conclusion is incorrect.

[schwah]

I've been playing online poker professionally for around 2 years now. I've worked my bankroll to the point where I can play and beat the biggest games offered. I spend about half my waking hours playing poker or involved in the poker scene, so I feel like I'm speaking with some authority here.

Online poker is growing faster than ever. While party gaming's stock has taken a recent hit, that does not at all reflect the growth of the entire industry. Sites such as Pokerstars, Bodog poker, and Full Tilt Poker have all doubled or tripled their average traffic over the past six months. Party poker is continuing to grow, though not at the same speed it once was. This is mostly due to better marketing from their competitors such as Pokerstars, and the fact that Party poker is offering an inferior product.

Online poker will eventually reach it's peak and start to decline. But it's not there yet. And in my opinion, it won't be for a few more years at the very least.

I find all the comments about poker bots and widespread collusion laughable. Collusion may exist in the lower limits, but rarely goes for long without detection. I'm confident that it's somewhere between extremely rare and nonexistant in the big games, because frankly, if it weren't, there is no way I would be able to make anywhere near as much money as I do. It is easy to blame losses on a "rigged site" or "cheaters", but the fact is online poker is a secure, fair, game. And I, as well as several of my friends, have made a ton of money at it. All without poker bots :)

Parent is spot on.

[tshak]

It constantly amazes me how quick people are to post theories about why they think online poker is on the down. None of these people have obviously spent much more time than reading the headline to come up with these "+5 insightful" theories. As the parent poster correctly points out, the only thing slowing down is Party Poker's growth, not online poker in general. The poker craze is so big, dozens of sites, many endorsed by big named professionals, have entered the market. The market has become more competitive, and Party Poker is not the only trusted name in town anymore.

Why I stopped...

[piecewise]

I played about a month ago... Turned $200 into $15 into $500. So I was happy. It was fun. The problem? Although it was mighty quick to deposit and give them money, it took 20 days to GET my money. I had to confirm my account, send a photo ID, call them and verify via phone, and then wait a 5 day "penalty period" (read: try to get you to keep playing), and then 3 days for the actual transfer and another day to clear. Give me a break. It's just not worth it. Consumers value liquidity -- especially if times get tough or if you're in a rush to contribute to the Red Cross. I used vegasred, by the way..

Wil Weaton and Poker alienation

[miller60]

Wil Weaton figured out that a lot of his long-time readers feel the same way about his poker posts, and recently moved all his poker blogging to CardSquad, the Weblogs Inc. poker blog.

And yes, the poker comment spam is out of control. It's all driven by botnets. My blogs periodically get hit by these crapfloods, and you see the exact same comment or trackback sent to 25 posts from 20 different IP addresses in a couple minutes. Not hard to figure out ... just a pain to defend and clean up.

Re:No Lack of Suckers

[karzan]

But isn't it actually faster to type words that involve multiple fingers than the same finger? If you are touch typing at a reasonable speed (at least say 80-100wpm), then hitting a key 3 times with the same finger is much slower than hitting 3 keys with 3 different fingers, because when one finger is hitting the key, the next finger can be on its way down, so you get 'hit-hit-hit' rather than 'hit-raise-hit-raise-hit'. So a word that uses multiple fingers should be much easier if you're a decent typist.

(we can maybe guess that maybe this means that AOL users have not learned how to type properly)

As for underscores, they're really quite easy to type once you get used to it because you learn where the - key is and hit it just as quickly as any other. You could argue that it would be better to name variables like 'ThisIsAVariable' (Microsoft style), but then you are hitting the same number of keys--still hitting the shift key and another key at the same time--so it doesn't save any time unless you are not accustomed to the finger positioning of the - key (which you will be if you use it often enough).

Drop in stock price != fewer people playing

[AugstWest]

Come on people, stock performance often has NOTHING to do with the actual performance of a product. Growth gcould be exponential, and stock prices can drop through the floor, especially right now, with stockholders being extremely skittish.