Online poker player numbers are currently growing at rate of 24% per year. However in this article we will speculate on why online poker might die some time in future, and why it might happen. Some of these might even sound like doomsday scenarios, but still they are all somewhat possible. In a few days we will publish an article about the ways to fight these scenarios and stop them from happening. Read the from here: How to stop online poker from dying
1. Too tough poker games
Less than a year ago every major online poker site had lot of big NL games running.
At Full Tilt Poker there were lot of high stakes no limit holdem tables running around the clock. At first the $100/$200nl and bigger 6 max games stopped running because people began feeling like they didn’t have edge in those games in the tough line ups that they usually had. Lot of these people who felt like they had no edge anymore began sitting down in the headsup tables and refusing to play anyone except the absolute weakest players. When the noticed that no weaker players would sit down in the headsup tables they gave up even waiting.
Now you can see the same thing happening even in the $10/$20 games. We wonder if some time soon the same thing happens even in the $2/$4 and smaller games.
The biggest reason for the tougher games is that there is lot more good ways to get poker strategy information than there were just 5 years ago.
2. Poker Legalization
Online poker is currently legal in almost every western country. Even though some laws such as UIGEA have been created to make it harder to deposit money to online poker sites, very few countries are actually trying to actively stop their citizens from playing online poker. However even if just couple big countries such as Germany or United Kingdom began blocking players from playing online poker it would be a major blow for the whole online poker industry.
3. Media stops being interested in poker
It is even somewhat surprising how much media attention poker has gotten in the last few years. However, you can already see the interest declining in some countries that were first to be hit by the online poker boom. For an example in USA there are lot less positive articles about poker and poker players than there were couple years ago. When media stops being interested in poker the steady stream of new people finding online poker will certainly slow down.
The new players are clearly the livelihood of online poker as every single day lot of players quit online poker for good for various reasons. One of the biggest reasons why the media attention might decline is simply that majority of the people who win major live poker tournaments are young online poker players, who admittedly don’t have the same type of aura than for an example Daniel Negreanu or Phil Ivey.
4. Poker sites run out of new markets
One of the biggest reasons for the increase of the online poker player numbers has been that there sites have been able to conquer new countries and bring new breed of people from them to online poker tables. However, currently the lasts two major countries left to be conquered by online poker sites are India and China. Yes, both are booming economies, but there is no guarantee that the people in those countries are interested in playing online poker. Also especially in China the legal status of online poker is somewhat unclear. As well as even though there is lot of very wealthy people in those countries, they are also full of people who have never even used internet.
5. Bots
The biggest scare scenario that most winning poker players have is that computer programmed bots become better poker players than humans. It has already been proven that some computer programs can play winning poker in headsup limit holdem games. No limit holdem is quite a bit more complex than limit holdem, but still lot of people fear that already in couple years there might be computer programs that are able to beat the no limit holdem games.
