Has Poker Reached a Tipping Point? (Part 2)

In part 1 of this series I talked about what the Tipping Point in poker means, and when the tipping point in poker occurred: In this part, the conclusion, I’ll give you the reasons why it occurred.

There needs to be a certain number of bad players -”Feeders”-for each winning player

When I talk about bad players I’m not referring to casual players who play for fun, I’m talking about the hardcore lifers, who are either ABC to the bone, have leaks in their game, or perhaps tilt quite often. It’s these players that are the feeders, not for the best poker players -the best poker players will win regardless of the competition– but for the solid poker players: Let me explain this with an example:

If you were to look at an average $10/$20 Limit Holdem game in the year 2000 you would probably see two or three pretty solid players, four or five “Feeders”, and a couple of loose-cannons just spewing chips to anyone and everyone. It’s the “Feeders” job to help vacuum up the chips from the loose-cannons, because the solid players know that money is staying in the poker world, and they will eventually relieve the “Feeders” from the burden of so many chips -maybe not this session, but the “Feeders” will be there day after day.

If you look at a $10/$20 game now you’ll see similarities: probably two or three solid players, and a couple loose-cannons, but the difference is the “Feeders” are better, and harder for the solid players to take advantage of. They’re still taking chips off the bad players and then eventually losing those chips to the good players, but now it takes much longer, and the longer it takes the more the rake wins and the solid players lose!

Having been in the poker world for a while the “Feeders” were always easy to spot: These were slight losers/break-even/slight winners who were able to clean up on the weekends and then lose all or most of that money during the week. If they just stuck to the loose action on the weekends they would have been solid winners, instead they overestimated their ability and would tangle with the solid players throughout the week -throughout the week in these days there were only a dozen tables going, so there were more solid players at each table, sometimes I wouldn’t even sit down the games were so tight.

In 2000 the “Feeders” didn’t have any recourse, they probably already read a handful of poker books, but there were no other outlets for them to turn to: In 2010 this is definitely not the case. The problem is, the “Feeders” have closed the gap on the solid players, and now it’s the solid players who have no outlet to improve, they’ve peaked.

So, now instead of two or three players making a living off the $10/$20 game, there is one player -whoever was the best of the solid players-while the other solid players are now just slight winners -bearing more of a resemblance to a “Feeder”– who have either tilted away their profits (see the next part on why this happens) or just play part-time now.

The gap between the best players and the worst players has shrunk dramatically

For all of these reasons, the gap between bad players and good players has shrunk dramatically. Players have seen their huge edges shrivel up into merely miniscule ones: An outcome which leads to bigger swings, less profits, and out-and-out havoc on your game: Which of course leads to tilt and even less of an advantage -possibly a disadvantage-and even worse results!

So now we are faced with poker world that looks like this: A small group of exceptional poker players, another small group of mid-level pros, then a huge group of break-even types who feed the rake, and finally the always present group of horrendous players.