“It’s a tough economy, so we wanted to make sure our poker players were getting the most value,”
If that's what it takes to get more starting chips and extra levels at the WSOP this year then I'm all for it.
It looks like the $1500 events will be starting with $4500 chips now, as supposed to $3000. I think the added levels will have the biggest impact though. If they add a 75/150 level the early stages of the smaller events will allow for a lot more play, especially when players are starting with an extra 1500 chips. As the events get deeper there should be more chips in play, which can only be good news. I'm sure they will still be a bit of a crapshoot, but it's a step in the right direction. It remains to be seen how much longer it will take to finish he events however, those going deep in weekend $1500 event are probably in for some long hours at the tables.
The Main Event will start with 30,000 chips this year instead of the 20k stacks players have started with for the lest few years. I'm sure this is partly because they need to have a consistent dollar value (3x) for tournament chips (otherwise you could potentially take chips from an event where you get more for your buy-in) but should also have some interesting implications for what is already a deep starting stack.
It should make it even funnier when people stack off with top pair on the flop this year. With 300 BB's that's going to take some doing.
Showing posts with label Poker Economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poker Economy. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Friday, November 14, 2008
The Poker Economy
The Poker Economy
I have never really thought about how the poker economy until the last couple of months. I always just saw a system of people depositing $100 on a Friday night, donking it off in whatever SNG's or cash games they saw fit with the money filtering through to the winning players (and some others who eventually lose it) and the rake takes it cut. The winning players move up, maybe some cash a bit out, maybe some of the players at the higher levels take some of the money off them and move up, and so on.
Tournament wise I think you have to assume that your average winner of the Sunday million or an FTOPS event doesn't plough the $200k back into the poker economy. It seems likely such is the same for the mid/high stakes grinders too. I think this system is reasonably sustainable, as long as there is a steady supply of people doing the initial depositing and some maniac open shoving every third hand on a Friday night at $2/$4.
So it's interesting to see how things are changing at the moment. Someone told me last week that cash game traffic was actually up at Stars and FTP over the last few weeks. I thought that was a little strange give than they are currently struggling to make some of their more aggressive guarantees at the moment. However, it would appear that at least some of this traffic is coming from other sites where the games are drying up, as I found out this weekend. There has almost always been decent traffic at Cake and Party for the limits I play ($200NL/ $400NL) at the weekend, but that seems to have slowed a bit recently, and with less decent table selection options available, I found my self playing cash at Stars for the first time in ages.
On the positive side, there still seems to be plenty of action online. It feels a bit like early post UIGEA with nobody really knowing what effect it will have on the player pool. The games may be marginally tougher but for now at least, I think the industry is going to be fine. It will be interesting to see what happens other the coming months as people discover that this financial storm may be a little harder to weather than people suspected.
Now of course we have the confirmation/finalisation of UIGEA to fret about. I think the banks currently have a bit more to worry about that spending money on systems to implement the changes made my a pretty open-for-interpretation law, but that’s just the way I see it. The reality is it could be worse, and the harder it is to deposit the less liquidity there will be in the games, so they are bound to get tougher.
Certainly an interesting time for online poker. And only time, as we are all fully aware, will tell.
I have never really thought about how the poker economy until the last couple of months. I always just saw a system of people depositing $100 on a Friday night, donking it off in whatever SNG's or cash games they saw fit with the money filtering through to the winning players (and some others who eventually lose it) and the rake takes it cut. The winning players move up, maybe some cash a bit out, maybe some of the players at the higher levels take some of the money off them and move up, and so on.
Tournament wise I think you have to assume that your average winner of the Sunday million or an FTOPS event doesn't plough the $200k back into the poker economy. It seems likely such is the same for the mid/high stakes grinders too. I think this system is reasonably sustainable, as long as there is a steady supply of people doing the initial depositing and some maniac open shoving every third hand on a Friday night at $2/$4.
So it's interesting to see how things are changing at the moment. Someone told me last week that cash game traffic was actually up at Stars and FTP over the last few weeks. I thought that was a little strange give than they are currently struggling to make some of their more aggressive guarantees at the moment. However, it would appear that at least some of this traffic is coming from other sites where the games are drying up, as I found out this weekend. There has almost always been decent traffic at Cake and Party for the limits I play ($200NL/ $400NL) at the weekend, but that seems to have slowed a bit recently, and with less decent table selection options available, I found my self playing cash at Stars for the first time in ages.
On the positive side, there still seems to be plenty of action online. It feels a bit like early post UIGEA with nobody really knowing what effect it will have on the player pool. The games may be marginally tougher but for now at least, I think the industry is going to be fine. It will be interesting to see what happens other the coming months as people discover that this financial storm may be a little harder to weather than people suspected.
Now of course we have the confirmation/finalisation of UIGEA to fret about. I think the banks currently have a bit more to worry about that spending money on systems to implement the changes made my a pretty open-for-interpretation law, but that’s just the way I see it. The reality is it could be worse, and the harder it is to deposit the less liquidity there will be in the games, so they are bound to get tougher.
Certainly an interesting time for online poker. And only time, as we are all fully aware, will tell.
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