Name: Something snappy and intriguing that will get a lot of clicks and ‘drive engagement.’
Age: Probably much younger than you.
Appearance: Better looking, too.
Do I detect a little resentment? Sorry, I can’t help it. Poker’s big content creators these days are all just so successful, with their top-level play, great hand analysis, beautiful home offices, and perfect hair.
If they’re such great poker players, why are they making videos online? Hmmm, I guess you’ve got a point. Mind you, the world of poker content is under threat and changing fast.
How so? For one thing, YouTube has been acting fast and loose with the ban hammer. Poker vloggers who have been active for years are suddenly receiving strikes on their accounts — some permanent, not always for obvious reasons, and rarely with the chance to explain themselves to an actual human.
Can’t they just talk to that ‘Al Gorithm’ guy who works there? Blessed be his name, but no. Anyway, there are more changes afoot, which means we could be ushering in a new golden age of poker content.
Hang on, didn’t you just say it was under threat? Yep. Things could be about to get a lot better — or much worse.
Well, that clears that up! What I mean is that the established format of poker vlogging, streams, and more is evolving. Fewer people are sitting down to simply break down hand histories, and those who can still pull it off — like Brad Owen or Mariano — are becoming increasingly rare. Instead, more folks are leaning on gimmicks.
Gimmicks? Like what? One guy — ‘Papa Poker’ — is traveling across the US in a Cannonball Run-style challenge, but he can’t leave a state until he cashes in a tournament there. Another, ‘520AceOfSpades’, has streamed every single day for more than two years. Then there’s Corey Eyring, who seems to put his entire net worth on the line every time he sits down.
Those are all vloggers. But what about the live streams? It's all turned up to 11 there, too. We’ve seen the record for biggest-ever pot broken not once but twice in the past few weeks, including Alex Foxen losing poker’s first televised eight-figure pot — an $11 million cooler.
This all sounds amazing! It is, but where do we go from here?
The moon? Don't even joke about it — we give it three years. And high-stakes games are great, but it’s still hard to beat those memorable characters from yesteryear, joking and teasing and bluffing each other on shows like High Stakes Poker and Poker After Dark.
Who else feels this way? Patrick Leonard, for one. The WSOP bracelet winner posted this week about the recent batch of poker streams, saying, ‘It just feels like something is missing.’ The answer he landed on was 'soul.' And it's easy to see what he means. When the players on High Stakes Poker got involved in huge pots, you could tell it really meant something to them. In some cases (cough, Jean-Robert Bellande, cough), perhaps too much.
So, is it getting better or worse? There's definitely more content.
That's not an answer to the question I asked... But it's still the correct one. And it's the same in any industry. The times they are a-changin'.
Do say: ‘What's up guys?'
Don’t say: 'Like, subscribe, and pray for my backers.'
