Monday, October 16, 2006

I am frickin Nostradamus (online poker is illegal thread)

If you read my blog for a while (yeah, right), remember this gem?

Point? well, let me digress a bit and make another one. Party Poker is going to ruin everything. When they took their poker site public, they added the pressure of growth revenues. That caused the company to look for more ways to generate growth (income). They introduced blackjack and side bets. And that's gambling. Its not game play based on skill, its plain gambling. And it marks the beginning of the end. Soon we will see the negative backlash that comes with gambling, then regulation based on the lost tax revenues, and then decline of ease of online play, then when the boom ends, the brick casinos start to offer less card room space.

These things swing like pendulums and if you don’t believe it, then you're simply too young to have seen it all before.


That was November 13th, 2005. It took 11 months for it to come true, but I still think that was the turning point. And its why Full Tilt lost its bid to have poker regulated as a separate entity from other gambling.

So, the landscape is changing and just as having poker as a hobby was beginning to wane for many. I already expected that the WSOP next year would NOT hit 10,000 players as many are saying. Now, it seems we start to find the ceiling. Just like the stand-up comedy boom in the 80s, or the MAGIC card playing in the 90s. Whatever it is, it peaks and then finds a regular audience. I would not be surprised if the WSOP is less than 8000 players next summer, would you?? Really?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find that the WSOP ME is less than 8000 next year.

And, it's probably not a bad thing - not exactly a good but not a bad thing.

My only hope is this: poker will be legalized,regulated and taxed like many other vices/forms of gambling are.

mookie99 said...

Thanks for making it out to The Mookie last night.