Poker: A History OF Receding Horizons

Dan ‘Jungleman12’ Cates may be overjoyed to have received his long-lost money back from Full Tilt Poker, but his experience playing online appears to have been severely tarnished after announcing that internet poker rooms are much less professional than he once believed, and that the entire online poker industry is in the process of dying.
“Online poker action will continue to decrease further. My win rate has gone down by about 25 to 30% since Black Friday happened and that’s largely due to there being so much less action. I’m not saying poker will die right not, but I think eventually it will happen,” explained Dan Cates, obviously not convinced about the long-term viability of online poker in the US.
Interestingly, Cate’s views echoes those of 2005 WSOP Main Event winner Joe Hachem, who last month complained that poker was headed for a major downswing. In the Aussie’s case, the 47 year-old poker pro blamed some of his fellow WSOP ME winners, including Jamie Gold (2006) and Jerry Yang (2007) for “destroying the legacy of the world champ” and not doing enough to promote the game to a wider audience.
Not long after Hachem’s comments, Poker Hall of Famer Mike Sexton, quickly backed up the Aussie’s views, stating that over the past few years poker has failed to gain further popularity because recent WSOP World Champions have prefered to take the money whilst shirking the limelight, which hasn’t help promote and grow the game.
Interestingly, last week calvinayre.com posted an article entitled “The Popularity Of Poker Is Receding” in which, like Cates, it argues that integrity and trust in online poker was seriously damaged after Black Friday. Nevertheless, the article doesn’t see the situation as any more positive in land-based poker rooms either, with its author, Lee Davy, writing:
“The brick and mortar casinos couldn’t care less for the poker players. They are at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to the ecology of making money. But for every tilted poker player there is a roulette wheel smiling and poking its tongue out of the corner of its mouth. Come and give me a kiss. They were never short of kisses.”
Highlighting Davy’s point, Las Vegas has seen at least eight poker rooms shut over the past two years, while the situation is echoed throughout other major US states. Whether poker is just experiencing a short-term dip in popularity, or whether the trend is part of a long-term downwards spiral should become clearer in the not so distant future, especially with the USA’s three regulated internet poker markets posting their regular monthly revenue results.