The recession is affecting just about everyone. Jobs and money are becoming scarcer, and even poker isn’t immune. Online tournaments have seen decreasing numbers, World Poker Tour fields have been down more than 20 percent lately, and even cash game players aren’t getting as much action as they used to. Are poker pros – even the big names – being forced to hunker down like the rest of the world?
    We gathered up some of the top online and live players to find out just how the recession is impacting the poker economy and picked their brains about the future.

Erik Seidel
The economy is having a very noticeable effect on poker tournaments. The numbers in the U.S. are down across the board. The World Poker Tour has already lost the January $10,000 event at Borgata and I do expect the tournament circuit will scale down a bit. I don’t think there are too many industries that will
be unaffected by the downturn in the economy, and poker is no different. The amazing exception to that is the PCA event that PokerStars just ran in the Bahamas. Last year they had 1136 entries, with the entry fee $8000 and the first prize $2 million. This year, incredibly, they raised the entry to $10,000 and they managed to get 1347 players for the event. Another exception is over in Europe where the economy is also off, but poker is still growing.

Matt ‘mattg1983’ Graham
The profitability of poker has always relied on casual players dispersing easy money into the poker economy. Even the very best players in the world do not make money by being a little bit better than other good players. They make their money from the dead money that gets lost into the poker economy. The low and medium stakes games have not really been hurt at all, so thousands of bad players are donating money that filters to all levels of poker. Some of the bigger games are being hurt though. The super-rich guys are still playing and introducing money to the economy, but some of the more moderately wealthy guys are probably not putting as much money into poker. This group of people is made up of people involved in the stock market and business. This can be observed by looking at the field sizes in live events with buy-ins ranging from $2000 to $10,000. The smaller buy-in field sizes are still great. The economy isn’t keeping fish from playing the smaller tournaments, but there simply aren’t as many guys putting up the big money to play. My advice for poker pros is to swallow their pride and go play some of those smaller buy-in tournaments where there is still tons of money to be won. You are better off playing a $1000 tourney that you have a 100 percent ROI (return on investment), than a $5000 where you have a 10 percent ROI.

Matt ‘Allinat420’ Stout
The recent recession has definitely had a big impact on the poker economy. There has been a significant decline in attendance in live tournaments recently, and the dead money is usually the first to go. It seems like only the wealthiest of the amateur players are continuing to show up to all of the stops and play the main events. The rest haven’t been showing up at all or only at their local major tournament series. In turn, the field becomes more saturated with seasoned veterans, making it tougher and tougher for ‘touring pros’ to remain profitable. Many of my friends who play cash games say that the action has really been drying up across the country, too. Many players are turning to more international play, where the economies are fine and poker is just starting to boom.

Annie Duke
The economy has definitely affected poker. The online sites are flatlining and in tournament play, I predict entries will be down at WSOP this year. Gambling for a lot of people is a discretionary spend and that kind of spending is the first to go in a bad economy. When I was in Vegas for the Five Diamond (WPT at Bellagio) I noticed the casinos were definitely very empty, restaurants were half full and construction projects were halted or slowed down. It was actually somewhat depressing. You know if Vegas is experiencing that kind of downturn then
gambling in general must be down and that means poker is going to get in the fray. As it is, entries into WPT events are down and I expect to see the WSOP down significantly this year if the economy does not turn around, which I doubt it will.
    The online world is feeling it, too. This is normally a period of big growth for online sites as the winter months are when people tend to stay at home and play online more. But the online sites are flatlining right now, which is a bad sign since they should be growing during the fall and winter. If the sites are flatlining now, it is scary to think what will happen when seasonality sets in as we face the spring and summer months. No one, not even the big two, is immune.

Jeremy ‘Chipsteela’ Menard
I honestly would say that it’s helped poker and will continue to bring more people to the game. I think people are more desperately seeking alternate means to make money, and once
you add that to the fact that the World Series just came on television, I think it’s actually going to increase online poker traffic. They see the fact that anyone can play and win plus the convenience that you can play from home on your computer, and I think this is a recipe for bigger fields of inexperienced players who will be great for the game. Lately I have noticed a slight increase in tournament field sizes, and I think this trend will continue.

Taylor ‘Green Plastic’ Caby
I think the poor economy has definitely had an impact on what some people call the ‘poker eco-nomy’. The biggest thing I have noticed is that some of the more casual players – who can typically be losing players in high-stakes games – seem to be playing a bit less. It seems that some people are cutting back on their poker budget even if they have the money to burn.
    Everyone is scared about what might happen with the economy in 2009, but to be honest I’m pretty optimistic overall. I think the fact that poker is still becoming more popular in Europe and South America should hopefully balance out the fact that some segment of the market isn’t playing as much as it used to.

Vivek ‘psyduck’ Rajkumar
The economy has impacted tournament fields all across the U.S. With the exception of some East Coast series, field sizes are down anywhere from 10 to 50 percent. There are fewer amateur players playing satellites trying to hit a huge score, and all the winning pros are still travelling to many series, skewing the pro-to-amateur ratio. Outside of the U.S., though, fields are becoming bigger and bigger, which is awesome, so if you’re lucky enough to be able to fly out on your dime or win qualifiers, then you are in for a treat.

Greg Raymer
The large majority of poker players enjoy relatively low limit games. As such, as long as they still have their job, they will probably still be playing poker, both live and online. However, it appears that this economic crisis will be getting worse before it gets better, so I would expect that we will start to see a big impact on the poker industry. As of yet, however, it has not had an impact on my events within the poker world, and since I spend so little time in Las Vegas and Southern California, the ‘capitals’ of American poker, I am not yet seeing the day-to-day impact. So much of my time is spent internationally, playing in PokerStars’ various foreign poker tours, that I don’t know the U.S. poker scene as well as many other pros.

Noah ‘fourUhaters’ Schwartz
A lot of money is drying up. As far as what’s happening, I think especially live a lot of players these days are backed and there are a lot of deals in place, but now with the money supply tightening up I think that some people have been retracting that money because they don’t have as much discretionary income. I think fewer players are now being backed so I think that’s why you have seen some drops in tournament fields. It hasn’t
really fully kicked in yet because we just really started hitting this.
    The PCA was crazy, though. Every year you just see it grow exponentially, which is kind of amazing, but it just goes to show you that there is growth online. For the bigger live $10,000 events it seems to be declining, which is like an inverse curve.
    Obama is stepping into office and I think the economy is going to turn, but I think it’s going to take a little time. Barney Frank has a good relationship with Obama, so maybe they can get something in motion to get the UIGEA repealed. That will enable online sites to run big satellites for WPT and other events. Then the amount of growth will be astronomical. Then I think you will get sponsors like Coke coming in and wanting to be involved. Right now it’s a gray area and they don’t want to be involved if it’s not clearly legal.

Phil ‘OMGClayAiken’ Galfond
I haven’t noticed any difference yet and I don’t think that it will affect poker as much as people might think because I have been told the gambling industry is one of the industries that doesn’t suffer as much in an economic downturn. Also, if it does affect it I think it will take a long time before the effects show in the high-stakes games. I think it will start to affect the micro-stakes, with fewer people putting $50 online, and eventually we will see that trickle up to the high-stakes games, but I think it will be awhile.

Adam ‘Roothlus’ Levy
I do think the WPT has had somewhat smaller fields. How-ever, 20 percent is nothing too dramatic and it is still way better than what it was four years ago. I do think it’s because people who are getting hit the hardest from the economy are the bigwigs who used to throw $10,000 around like it was pocket change. Overall, online poker seems to remain the same, if not slightly better. As the average employee gets laid off, some might take more risks with their severance packages while they are looking for new jobs.

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