Home / Poker News September 2013 / The Poker Grapevine – Recreational Poker Players under Attack
The Poker Grapevine – Recreational Poker Players under Attack
Posted by: James Carter. - Mon, 2013-09-16 09:54
According to most online poker experts, recreational players represent the backbone of the industry, still, in this day and age, these guys seem to be trampled upon both online and offline. The phenomenon isn’t exactly a new one either. Phil Galfond has brought it up last January ringing an alarm bell in regards to the online aspect of the issue. He said back than that the online poker landscape had changed a lot and that most changes were for the worse unfortunately. According to Galfond, the edges in
online poker have ridiculously decreased and the chase for these edges has taken on a ridiculous dimension as well.
Rob Young, the owner of a Nottingham poker hall backed up Galfond on the issue. He said that tactics had taken hold in the business, which seemed aimed at driving recreational players away from the tables. While the grievances voiced by Galfond and Young were indeed fully justified, they were pretty much only aimed at the online poker scene, despite the fact that in live poker, the same issue has taken on an even more menacing magnitude.
Most of the high profile live event series like the WSOP, the EPT and the WPT are about large buy-in events. For the everyday Joe, events which cost at least $1k to enter are pretty much out of reach.
PartyPoker’s announcement regarding the new UK-based poker tour they’re launching was greeted with enthusiasm by the recreational crowd, until it dawned on them that the main events would be accumulator ones.
The truth is that accumulators and Re-entry rules are killing recreational player participation in live poker tournaments. As Mike Matusow so eloquently put it: no one is eager to play in a tournament where he may have to beat Phil Ivey 6 times in order to get anywhere…
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