The Poker Bus

Article on the business of poker

Pokernews.com recently wrote an article about the business of poker and the direction it’s headed. If you haven’t read it already take a look at it. The article does a good job analyzing the current state of poker, but it doesn’t really go on to say what how it’s going to change and what it will take to succeed.

I definitely agree that people have had enough live poker. It won’t die out completely but it’s going to slow down a lot. The WPT, who specializes in televised poker, hasn’t made a profit in the four years it has been around, so what chance do smaller companies reporting smaller tournaments have?

As for online poker, this doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. Last week 5500 people entered in the big Sunday tournament on pokerstars compared to 3300 just two months ago. Cash games and smaller tournaments both live and online continue to grow as well.

If you started an online poker room 5 years ago when it was risky and nobody thought of it before you’d probably be either a millionare or a billionare today. The same rules are still in effect. You need to come up with a new concept and take risks to be successful. PokerShare was a great example of this. They came up with a new idea and the poker room exploded into popularity. Unfortunately they were booted off the network because they were taking to much business away from ultimate bet.

Good customer support helps a lot also. It sounds so easy but there are hundreds of small skins of poker rooms offering the standard 20% deposit bonuses, $100 freerolls for promotions, and have customer support that never respond to your emails. Answer your damn emails!

The one thing I don’t like is how the pokernews.com article compares poker today as the 7th inning of a baseball game because that would mean poker’s almost over. Millions of people across the world are playing poker and its growth still isn’t slowing down. If it ever does, it would take years for it to fade away. You’re not going to log on one day and see 80,000 people playing and then log on the next day to see 4000… (unless congress passes this bill tomorrow)