The Poker Bubble has popped Part 1

While many people will say that poker has evolved over the past decade I prefer to say the game has changed, and I’m not entirely certain the change has been for the better. Gone are the days when poker games were populated with players that needed the basic mechanics of game-play explained to them; in today’s modern poker world even the newest player seems to understand three-betting, continuation bets, and polarizing bets.

On the surface this just seems like a natural progression in knowledge, but this progression may in fact have ruined poker. While the game will never be “solved” it’s moving more towards high-level chess, where skilled practitioners are locked in a sort of dance where they all make correct decisions: When my opponent does x, I do y, and if he responds with a, I’ll then do b. Poker has gone from a game where the best players had a decent edge over slightly skilled practitioners, who in turn would decimate unskilled players. Now the makeup of the poker ecology is a game where the gap between the best players and slightly skilled players has shrunk, and where there are very few unskilled players to feast on.

Measured on a scale of 1-100, with a 90 being a small- to mid-stakes grinder and a 100 being the best players in the world, this basic knowledge puts a player at a 75 or an 80 almost immediately. There is such a difference in a player who has read a poker book or two and a player whose only exposure is dealer’s choice home games that just having a rudimentary understanding of starting hands and position narrows the gap substantially between a winning grinder and a new player.

So what has caused this change? A lot has happened to be honest, and there are many contributing factors, but the main factor is computers. The Internet and computing power has allowed players to learn the game, run simulations, and disseminate information so easily that the learning curve for a new poker player can now be measured in weeks instead of months or years. In today’s world there is no excuse for ignorance when it comes to the skillfulness of poker or knowledge of the game’s basic strategies; the information you need to bed a competent poker player is simply a mouse click away and is absolutely free.

A “Fish” in today’s poker world –someone who folds their blinds too often and plays relatively ABC poker– would probably be a winning player a decade ago, the game has changed that much! 10 years ago you could win by simply knowing the strategies of poker and letting your opponents make mistakes, but this isn’t the case anymore and it’s really too bad, as the game has lost a lot of its appeal to casual players who simply don’t feel like being a “poker pro’s” meal ticket.

In Part 2 of this series I’ll talk about some of the negative changes that have contributed to the poker bubble of the mid-2000’s bursting, and how the poker community might be able to set the clock back and bring in new players who aren’t interested in becoming winning poker players.