The world according to Bluff Europe's new blogger extraordinaire...

The world according to Bluff Europe's new blogger extraordinaire...

Thursday, 4 February 2010

Is poker on the slide? As the great Randy Newman says, "I could be wrong now, but I don't think so".

Hello to all my loyal readers at BluffEurope.com. This is the first of my new blog series, so here’s hoping it goes down a storm and we can become the greatest site in the world ever.


This past week or so the poker world has been full of news that proves the massive popularity of poker. Since 2006 when the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was first announced, every scaremonger on every poker forum has been stating that poker is dying.


Well, certainly we’ve seen a drop in numbers. Jamie Gold’s 2006 victory in the WSOP Main Event for $12,000,000 is unlikely to be surpassed, but the 2008 and 2009 Main Events saw hefty fields and two young men take home lots of money.


To see that poker is by no means dying, one must merely look at the online game – PokerStars just hosted a Sunday Million with almost 20,000 competitors buying in for $216 and creating a tournament where the top six players received at least $100,000.


Compare that to 2002 when the WCoOP first began – the Main Event drew a prize pool of just $238,000. Now that’s a weekly first prize at the Sunday Million. Hell, the fact that the Sunday Million is now a $1,500,000 guaranteed tournament should tell you something.


Meanwhile in the cash game scene we’ve witnessed two seven-figure pots on Full Tilt Poker as well as a variety of $750k+ beasts thanks to Isildur1. So is poker dying? Hell no. What do you think? Post your thoughts in this thread in our forums.


Thanks for reading


I’ll be back with you on Friday.


MPerry, Bluff Europe’s artistic genius.



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