Where do you is Poker in 5 years?

I'd guess regulated all over EU and prob legal in US too.

Doubt US will play with international player pool, if they would, think a second boom is possible, but on a smaller scale than it was before.

Still even if US won't share the player pool, current US grinders can go back home which should soften the games a bit here. And some better EU regs might go to US too.

Biggest problem - botting may break the profitability of online NL for simple humans, but with regulation all over the place it may be considered illegal which should lower the amount of botting.

Games will obv advance further regardless and sooner or later online NL should become unbeatable for simple folks like me, but in 5 years time I'm still somewhat optimistic about the state of games.

sorry if this comes across stupid, but what exactly is botting?

thanks,

"Botting" refers to bots, programs that play for you basically. Even though most of them can be exploited, there were quite a lot of bots that made big profits at microstakes by playing a lot of hands at many tables.

Originally posted by bogstratos
"Botting" refers to bots, programs that play for you basically. Even though most of them can be exploited, there were quite a lot of bots that made big profits at microstakes by playing a lot of hands at many tables.

"were"..does that mean they're not there anymore, or still are?

I understand obviously they're programmed to make sound mathematical decisions, but wouldn't they be quite easy to play against?

It's interesting though, and I didn't know about it.

Back to the original point of the thread though, I hope that the market doesn't become to saturated (unless by fishes ofc) cos I'm planning to make some money ♦

Not microstakes but midstakes up to NL1k. So no, bots aren't easy to exploit. Anyway, let's not get into botting talks too much. Google "Svenska Spel botring" or "botting at ongame" if you're interested to see their capabilities.

Also notice how Svenska Spel handled it once it was uncovered, this gives me hope that regulated market could give us some more safety.

Highly regulated...
It will be regulated at the state level and playing online will only be legal in the state if the online casino has either offices in the state or a land based casino in the states.

The US is not concerned about fraud, its about taxes and keeping US citizens earning and spending their cash in the country. At this rate online poker can topple the entire US economy if it is legalized and continues to grow the way it did in the past...