The gambling industry got a nice story this week, as the main event of the World Series of Poker set a new record for total entries and the top prize of $12.1 million.
I love poker, and it’s undoubtedly great for the game that we have unprecedented interest in its crown jewel.
The news has also led people to declare breathlessly that POKER IS BACK and that we’re on the leading edge of a new poker boom in the United States.
I am here to tell you that’s not a thing for a couple of reasons.
First, I think people are misremembering how big the height of poker was in the aughts (2000s). Poker wasn’t as mainstream as sports betting is now, but it was everywhere. People were playing online in huge numbers, and celebrities helped make it cool. Poker was still kind of niche, but it had moments of cultural relevance and an audience that was absolutely huge.
The problem is you are never recapturing the magic of the original poker boom. The biggest thing standing in the way is the fact that we’re never going to have US-wide online poker again. I am not even going to couch that with a qualifier; it’s not happening; Black Friday in 2011 ended the salad days.
We currently have a small group of states that have legalized online poker, some of which allow for player pools to be shared across state lines. Yes, you still have offshore online poker, but we’re never going back to the days of PokerStars and Full Tilt.
It’s definitely a matter of the chicken and the egg. You need unencumbered nationwide online poker in the US for another poker boom; otherwise, it’s going to remain in its niche.
That doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate that more people are coming to Las Vegas to play in the world’s biggest poker tournament! The WSOP obviously captures something in the imagination; the dream of heading to Vegas to win life-changing money still has a place in poker players’ hearts and minds, and perhaps more so than it ever has. It’s also still a destination for poker players around the world, as evidenced by the very international nature of the entry list.
Related: There were people who presaged the death of sports betting in Nevada with the advent of legalized online sports betting elsewhere in the US. That idea was quickly debunked; people still love to come to Vegas to bet, and increasingly the share of bettors has moved online there.
The size of the WSOP main event doesn’t mean we’re going back to the day when poker is as big as it once was. A lot of people have never come to terms with that reality. Let’s just be happy people still like to play poker.
It’s important to remember casino poker and online poker are different games. You can’t multi-table or use solvers effectively at casino poker. I remember playing at Bike in LA around 2001. There were many discussions about online poker was it good or bad, did players enjoy it or hate it. One thing the Bike regs agreed on was all the poker cheats had disappeared from the LA card rooms to cheat online. I think Howard Lederer and Annie Duke killed the golden goose. Recreational players are no longer attracted to online poker. I don’t even known if rec players play much in casinos. The growth of WSOP shows final growth of grinders more than anything else I guess. But it would be interesting to see data.