Was there ever live poker before the internet?

[Dementia]

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Lots of these online pros are going to have to get real jobs when they realize they can't multi table 5/10 limit holdem in a casino and actually make a living doing it.

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Yahtzee.

[steamboatin]

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Now you are sounding like a troll but I'll humor you one more time. Casino's may have failed where you live but here in LA - Los Angeles to the yokels - (where slots are not permitted btw) the local cardrooms were doing fine. They weren't up to the level of a Vegas casino and a few went under due to poor management but that had nothing to do with poker dying. It never did.

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Here is a perfect example of people from two very different markets who are both correct in their assertions. Neither is wrong for their market but both are completely wrong about the other's market.

Here in the Midwest, poker rooms were being closed and filled with slot machines. If I understand it correctly, casinos in California are not allowed to fill poker rooms up with slots. don't think for a second they wouldn't if they could because slots earn more per sqft than poker.

[pismeyer]

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Live poker was dying and poker rooms were closing because of their cost to the casino pre the online gaming boom. I am sorry but that's reality. You can look it up.

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Apparently you did, so where would I find this fact? I totally agree with Photoc - Live poker is alive and kicking very well. You can bow to Chris Moneymaker and all the other amateurs that have come into the pro circuit and have been on TV and won. IMO - Casino poker rooms will flourish for a long time, just about every casino in Las Vegas has a poker room or tables and/or are planning to remodel or add poker rooms or tables.

I really find it hard to believe that casino poker will just die out and everyone will play on-line...That's a rediculous assumption.

Best of luck to you, and see you at the tables [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[punkass]

When I first started going to the Taj in 2000, on weekends it was packed. Sure, there were no daily tournaments or single table tournaments then, but limit holdem and stud was flourishing.

Sure, now there are more mid and high limit players. There are more participants and demand for daily tournaments and single table tournaments. These may all subside. But doom of casinos? No.

Having said that, I do not think the Borgata will reach capacity.

[Mark Collins]

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Having said that, I do not think the Borgata will reach capacity.

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What do you get when you take half of Borgata's poker room, and combine it with the on-line poker ban?




Thanks,
Mark Collins

[DesertCat]

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It wasn't an online gaming boom. It was a poker boom.

If the 2003 WSOP and first WPT season consisted of a picture of a table surrounded by avatars of Phil Ivey and bikini girls, going "click click" as chips magically appeared in front of their seats, and a big sign that said CONGRATULATIONS!! at the end of every hand, you might have a point.

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Exactly. The difference between olden times and today is that big tournaments today are (and will continue to be) televised with hole cams. Millions of fish will say "what a horrible laydown, I knew he was bluffing" as the hole cam tells them the opponent had nothing. They'll continue to rush to their local casinos to demonstrate their dominance in B&M tournies and ring games.

[gary1523]

In different areas of country the answer will be different. California, the Gulf Coast, Atlantic City, Foxwoods, etc. etc. are all going to have a different percentage of increase of players do to the internet players moving to B&M play. And I wasn't a poker player in the 90's. But everything I have read about poker in Vegas in the 90's is that most casino's had no poker rooms and one's that did, even the MGM, closed them down from lack of business. Binion's, Mirage, Bellagio are the only one's I have heard had popular poker rooms in the late 1990's. Other players can add a few I am sure but nothing like the boom in poker in Vegas right now. I go to Vegas just to play poker several times a year and my talking to players in Vegas seems to leave me to the conclusion that 80% of them started on the internet and like me, would never have found the passion for it without the internet play available to them. Poker on TV and then the fluorishing of new poker players on the internet brought poker back to Vegas by several 100 percent bigger than it ever was before. Took the last few years to build it up to what it is today and would take years to slow it back down, but without the internet frenzy to feed it, I would expect the availablility of poker rooms in Vegas to diminish more and more as the years do go by. I just hope all players alike can find a way to unite and keep the internet poker not just alive, but flourishing!!!!!!

[PokerSlut]

[ QUOTE ]
Now you are sounding like a troll but I'll humor you one more time. Casino's may have failed where you live but here in LA - Los Angeles to the yokels - (where slots are not permitted btw) the local cardrooms were doing fine. They weren't up to the level of a Vegas casino and a few went under due to poor management but that had nothing to do with poker dying. It never did.

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Due to regulation, California card rooms are not allowed to offer slots or video poker, so they have much fewer options for separating money from the players. A counterpoint is the Indian-run casinos in CA. I can remember 4-5 years ago going to the casinos in Palm Springs and there being nothing but row after row of video poker machines and one or two blackjack tables. Same places now have poker rooms.

There has definitely been a synergistic effect between online and televised poker; people see the WSOP or WPT and want to play, so they go online and google "poker" and find several websites offering games. This in turn generates more entries to the big tournaments as online players compete in satellites and the like for seats, which increases the public interest in poker even more. It's a vicious self-reinforcing cycle that has been suddenly broken.

The number of players living near legal cardrooms in the US is extremely small compared to the number of players online. I don't know how much traffic will die down in local cardrooms as a direct result of this legislation, but I can almost guarantee the major tournament prize pools (and the casinos' toke) will drop substantially due to the loss of online qualifiers.

[sternroolz]

[ QUOTE ]
In different areas of country the answer will be different. California, the Gulf Coast, Atlantic City, Foxwoods, etc. etc. are all going to have a different percentage of increase of players do to the internet players moving to B&M play. And I wasn't a poker player in the 90's. But everything I have read about poker in Vegas in the 90's is that most casino's had no poker rooms and one's that did, even the MGM, closed them down from lack of business. Binion's, Mirage, Bellagio are the only one's I have heard had popular poker rooms in the late 1990's. Other players can add a few I am sure but nothing like the boom in poker in Vegas right now. I go to Vegas just to play poker several times a year and my talking to players in Vegas seems to leave me to the conclusion that 80% of them started on the internet and like me, would never have found the passion for it without the internet play available to them. Poker on TV and then the fluorishing of new poker players on the internet brought poker back to Vegas by several 100 percent bigger than it ever was before. Took the last few years to build it up to what it is today and would take years to slow it back down, but without the internet frenzy to feed it, I would expect the availablility of poker rooms in Vegas to diminish more and more as the years do go by. I just hope all players alike can find a way to unite and keep the internet poker not just alive, but flourishing!!!!!!

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You are correct that poker in the 90's was nothing like it is now in Vegas. However you are incorrect in the number of casinos that had poker rooms. The following had rooms in the mid 90's:

Stardust
Circus Circus
Orleans
Binions
El Cortez(ok, this one doesn't count so much)
Vegas World
Sahara
Riviera
Excalibur
Mirage
Harrahs
Flamingo
Rio
Palace Station
Boulder Station
Tropicana

And I am sure there are more.

The only reason a few rooms were closing is because some casino management saw how much slots were bringing in and they wanted the floor space for slots. In their mind, it was a waste to have people playing an unprofitable game(from the houses point of view). Now of course, it is mandatory because it draws people into the casino, whether the poker games themselves are profitable or not.

So you are very incorrect in your assumption that poker was dying in Vegas.

BTW, there used to be 2-3 hour waits at Mirage at that time. Saturday nights the place would be very hot just due to so many people in the room.

[Rottersod]

Not just a 2-3 hour wait at the mirage. Back in the early 90's I played at the trop and typically had to wait 2 hours just to get into a limit hold em game.