Live cardrooms cracking down on Vloggers?
Filming yourself in live poker rooms may be prohibited in a lot of casinos, as some YouTube broadcasters are finding.
In a very short space of time poker has seen a growing trend of Vloggers (Video Bloggers) on YouTube. As well as popular shows like Joe Ingram's Poker Life Podcast and Doug Polk's channel, there has also been a number of players video blogging their life, including live play.
Jaime Staples, Jake Cody, Andrew Neeme and TheTrooper97 being four such accounts that have attracted a lot of attention this year.
Now, however, it seems several live card rooms are taking exception to poker players filming their action while sat at the table. Planet Hollywood, Caesars and the MGM in Las Vegas are all reported to have told Vloggers to stop filming.
It is not completely out of place for casinos to prohibit camera equipment in the gaming area, but it is nowhere near as enforced as it used to be because every smartphone has a high quality camera built in these days. The potential for cheating is always there, especially when it takes seconds to live stream a game on a site like Periscope.
The specific reasons for the crackdown are not yet known but there is perhaps a privacy element to it, given the other players at the table are potentially being exposed. There is also a basic etiquette issue at play as not everybody finds being filmed while playing enjoyable.
Polk is no snitch
YouTube star Doug Polk was surprisingly caught up in this debate this week. Last month he questioned whether live recording was against casino rules and this week had to defend himself against insinuations that it was him who had reported the Vloggers to the casinos.
To clear up this rumor going around some of the youtube channels, I did not call all of the Vegas Cardrooms to "Snitch" on the Vloggers
— gN Doug Polk (@DougPolkPoker) December 6, 2016
With camera equipment becoming increasing better, cheaper and easy to conceal, plus it being incredibly easy to broadcast your life online, it would seem this is going to be a much talked about issue for poker in 2017 and beyond.
Do you think cameras should be banned at the poker table? Do you watch the poker Vlogs? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below:
