Bad News... just got the email

[General Sal]

Well, BigBetPoker.com is suspending operations on Monday. You can still play for free though. I"m only sad, because it was the first freeroll I'd ever won.

Who's next to go down?

[JohnnyCache]

I'm almost dubious of buying in on a site right now, because I think there is a bubble that's gonna break in the online gaming market right now. . .

[Golden Holden]

Hey Johny, just curious. Why do you think a bubble is about to burst? Online cardrooms have been doing pretty good overall in the last year.

[JohnnyCache]

I shouldn't have said "right now" . . . I think it will be about 18 months. . . This is long, but since you asked:

I work in TV. TV (any media, actually) popularity runs in a textbook cycle. . . . Elite, popular, played . . .First the elite, and I mean the style elite . . . your media junkies, the bowling-shirt-and-black-glasses early adaptors, take the new thing and run with it ... then you start to see it on the news or in the ratings, and someone cashes in on it . . . then the other net's rip them off, there is a glut, followed by a crash. Right now poker is moving from elite to popular . . . for a while it was just on ESPN2 once in a while, now it's getting popular, with Celebrity Poker, WPT, Lucky, Vegas, The Cooler, Ocean's 11, Ocean's Twelve . . .right now the industry is very poker aware . . . it's proto-hip right now, just starting to be inserted into the hip schedules of the hip people on shows . . . I've noticed three or four shows where the cast was just kind of inconspicuously playing poker during the "hanging out" scenes of a sitcom . . . like they always had a poker night, but they just now decided to introduce it to the show? And lots of Poker shows and Vegas clones are a'brewing . . .the cycle takes a year or two and then it gets real Darwinian . . . good examples of this would be cop shows in the 80s, talk shows and investigative news shows in the early 90s, "gritty" cop shows and reality shows recently. . .and it applies to other things, not just TV. . . this is the pattern of any societal adaption, slang, clothes, etc. . . science of hipness. . .

This will be pronounced for poker because the object of the fad is skill/chance based, and can have very pronouced results . . .you can win or lose a lot quick, in other words. . . and not just a 'look' or a 'feel' . . . anyone can try poker, so the fad interest will get everyone to *try* it . . . but of course they won't all stay, 'cause they are mostly fish . . .

That doens't mean it's a bad time to be a poker player or poker fan . . . it means recognition, lots of fish, and there will be some permanent growth . . . at the end of the boom, there's always more then at the start . . . imagine a modified bell curve where the right side of the line ends about one third down the left slope . . . only the people at the top of the bell get bit, the latest of adaptors, cause the market is healthier after the boom, just not as good as the peak. People that bought in at the peak. . . they end up buying high and selling low . . . you want to be in the second quarter of the upslope, as an ad man or a producer . . . still hip but on the way up . . . minimize risk but still grow .. . just like stock market, or poker . . .

There are a LOT of online rooms opening and their isn't much to set them out . . . we as players will be fine, unless we have a ton of winnings sitting on some site that folds, but a lot of the business ppl opening poker sights are going to ride a curve. . .

Although my personal open draw on poker as a craze . . . I think it's got big international appeal because of the Vegas/Wild West interest, it's very American, but in the good Cowboy way not in the bad Industrial Oligarchist way . . . and the online rooms allow 'furanahs" to get games and learn to play . . .

Of course all of this is sketch based on a very quick read of society and my industry . . . a lot could make it wiggle either way, like one of the poker shows being well produced or marketed and being a super big hit . . . or one of them being a disaster . . .

But quick reads are what we do here . . .