How much has amateur poker grown in the last years?

Question

I may be doing a short documentary on amateur poker and am wondering how fast it has grown and if anyone has any somewhat evidence somewhere of how its growing (example: how many bars/resturants in the country are having poker nights...). Im trying to focus on the amateur 'home-grown' feel of people getting together to play the game.

Answer 1

If you look at Vegas you will see that a lot of casinos have been putting poker rooms back into there Establishments. Caesar palace took there poker room out over ten years ago because slots, and blackjack made more money for them, but now that poker is back they put it back in. And just look on t.v and you will see a bunch of shows that feature poker. 10 years ago if you said Phil Helmuth no one outside of the poker world would not know who he was, but now everyone knows who theses players are.

Answer 2

the real growth % wise was from 2003 to 2006. When Chris Moneymaker won the WSOP main event the explosion was on.

I still think poker is growing but as a percentage not nearly as rapid as it was.

As far as evidence: When Moneymaker won it there was a 839 person feild. The year before him was 631. In '04 the feild was 2,576, '05 was 5,619, in '06 8,773.

As a increase from 02 to 03 a 32% more people where in it... then 03 to 04 more than 3 times as many people!!! then it more than doubled from 04 to 05. then 05 to 06 there was about 64% more.

However many think this years feild maybe smaller with less internet gambling sites allowing american players and thus less internet/satellite qualifiers.

Answer 3

It's everywhere, poker had exploded the past few years. Like D. Brunson said: "People finally see that poker is one of the best game there is!" And you can see that it really start to touch the rest of the world, Europe, Australia..... It's getting big!

If you talk to people, like doing an online survey for example......You are going to find your answers there.

Take care