Austin, TX Area Poker
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TampaKn1sh
3
10mo agoDoes anyone else feel like the player pool in austin is getting tougher?
Especially bomb pots, Felt like last year every bomb pot would go multiway , with people stacking off with total trash, but now it seems like people are tightening up big-time.
There's a number of factors at play
1. Post WSOP - plenty of players went to Vegas and lost a bunch of money. That leaves less weak players returning to the player pool until they replenish their funds
2. Economy - Everyone's feeling the pinch these days with all our grocery, utility, housing, etc. costs rising. This leaves less disposable income for people to put into playing poker, and the costs of playing continue to go up, meaning less fun recs and more grinders who are buying $500-1K in time at a time at discounts.
3. Austin Is A Tech Hub - And the tech center is experiencing significant layoffs. Plenty of action players with high-paying jobs are finding themselves without those jobs now, and not able to donate in the streets as much
4. Failure Of Clubs To Target Fun Local Recs - the clubs have done a tremendous job of building their brands within the poker enthusiast community. But that means they're attracting more skilled players and traveling grinders, making the games tougher. With 2+ million people in the Greater Austin Metro, very few people know poker is even available to them, even after a decade of it being available. They haven't expended the right efforts to attract and retain the fun local recreational players enough.
5. Game Structures - When you attract better players AND structure your games in ways that give those players extra edges (deeper buyins, unlimited straddles and match the stack) you are destroying your own poker economy. You are allowing the grinders to shred the few fun recs we have to ribbons. The recs don't get to win often enough in the cash games, then they stop coming. Now you're stuck with Klaus from Germany and Kangaroo Jack from Australia who have zero social skills and further make the games less appealing for the fun recs.
6. Tournament Structures - Unlimited re-entry, multi-day, multi-flight, multi-bag and top-heavy prize pools. All of these have made it that much harder for the recreational player to experience their dream of winning a tournament. The cards are literally stacked against them. They may bust Phil Ivey once, but if Ivey has unlimited lives, Joe Q Public ain't busting him five times. This results in more of the tournament prize pool money being funneled into the wrong pockets, the grinders. They're pulling that money out of your poker ecosystem for their life expenses. You need to flatten payouts, pay a larger percentage of the field and give the recs a fighting chance. A rec feels accomplished just cashing in a tournament, even if it's just 2x their buyin. Now they have money in their pockets, maybe they sit in a cash game, maybe they play another tournament. The money will recirculate in your poker economy far better than the current system.
I've had these talks before with leadership at many of the clubs, but they never listen. Let me win Powerball and I'll show em how it's done....
