Professional Poker Players & The Economy

I had an interesting conversation with The Consigliere a few days ago, about professional poker.  It seems that professionals are starting to come down to lower limits in order to find the “fish,” or bad players.  As the economy has worsened, the bad players aren’t risking as much money, and staying at lower limit tables, instead of venturing to the higher limits like they used to.

It isn’t as profitable to play with other good players; in order to make money you want to play with poor players – it seems obvious, but to a professional, selecting the right table is important.  So as the economy has sunk, so have the bad players, to lower limit tables.  And like good anglers, the professional players have started to follow the bad players to the lower limit tables.

This can have an unfortunate side-effect for people like me, who are trying to build a bankroll and become better players.  It’s unlikely that this will have much of an effect on $3/$6, but possibly at $8/$16 and $10/$20 where I intend to spend more time in the future.

The side-effect is that it might chase off bad players.  One of the reasons there are so many bad players at $3/$6 is because they win often enough to want to return.  If a bad player always loses, they won’t return.  But if they win even a little bit, they are encouraged to come back.  You never want to absolutely CRUSH the bad players.  They need to win every now and then.  I know it sounds cold, but that’s how it is.

My friend believes that no-limit poker isn’t sustainable because bad players are punished too much; they can lose everything easier than they can in limit, and more frequently.  He believes that eventually it’ll only be good players at the no-limit tables, and therefore not profitable enough to play.  This might be why I met up with other professionals in Las Vegas playing low stakes no-limit poker.  There’s always tourists who want to try their hand at no-limit Texas Hold’em, to experience what they watch on TV.  And there are always professionals waiting to give them their wish.  Then again, if there are no tourists, where do the professionals go?