Rizen’s Comments On Poker

January 6, 2009

Eric Lynch (Rizen) recent appeared on one of the online poker rooms that are out there and wrote an article regarding the future of poker. For those of you who follow him it turned out to be a very fascinating take on the status of poker today. He talked a little about his background and how he has only been a poker player for three years now, but that he started at the beginning of what is now known as the “poker boom.”

He talked somewhat about the influence of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, or UIGEA, and how it compiled with lower television ratings for poker added to ensuring that the game did not receive the amount of growth that many had predicted for it. He also talked about the presence of the economy on poker, and that all of these things tie into creating or destroying the various aspects of the game.

But Rizen really was not in a place to talk about the negatives, he wanted to discuss all of the positives of poker. He talked about the amount of talent that is currently out there and available and how with the kinds of education out there today that the game has gotten stronger and more complex. He said that although online poker may not have grown as much as it should have, live poker grew exponentially instead.

He also talked about how poker seemed to be on its way back. He said that before 2007 it seemed that the number of poker players interested in playing the tournaments was dropping, but now they saw an increase in the number of those players that were interested in playing. He said that the numbers for poker players had increased, leading to a major increase in prize pools for the games as well.