Live Streaming Pros And Cons for Poker Players

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Saturday, November 18th, 2017 | Written by Charles Washington

In the 1970s, poker exploded in popularity after tournament promoters and organizers started airing major tournaments on Television. This was then taken to a whole new level during the late 1990s and early 2000s when the World Poker Tour (WPT) and World Series of Poker (WSOP) partnered up with leading sports channel ESPN to broadcast tournaments to audiences based in the US and UK.

This coincided with the introduction of hole cam technology to make the game more interesting to viewers by allowing them to see what cards the players were holding, and how they were playing the game. Since then, the industry has continued to evolve, particularly in terms of broadcasting poker tournaments, with live streaming now the main way people chose to watch the game.

The Pros and Cons of Live Streaming Poker

There are many live streaming platforms out there enabling poker players and tournament organizers to reach global audiences, with Twitch the most popular streaming service for the industry. While younger poker players are much more willing to use live streaming these days, there are, however, some players that have turned their back on the technology. There are several reasons for this, and today we’ll be looking at some of the pros and cons of live streaming for poker players.

Global Branding

Poker tournament organizers and individual players are increasingly broadcasting their action via live streaming, providing poker enthusiasts based around the globe instant access to their action. This means relatively unknown poker players are now able to build up their own personal brands and following without having to rely on third party channels. Meanwhile, poker players must first actively engage with their followers in order to become successful live streamers, which subsequently helps them to build reputations and attract sponsorship deals more easily.

It must be noted, though, that not every poker player wants the way they play the game to be known publicly, and consequently many poker players maysimply choose to keep a low profile, and avoid live streaming all together.

Learning Online

When live streaming sessions, poker players are later able to retrieve and reply footage from their games, as well as see the hands of their opponents. This in turn makes live streaming an invaluable online learning tool which gives them a first-hand view of how their competitors plays the game, thus allowing them to improve as players.

Nevertheless, there are also many players who aren’t interesting in watching their past sessions because it can be too time consuming and take up too much of their personal time.

Free Strategy Sessions

If you want to succeed at poker you must evolve as a player, improve your strategy and be willing to learn from your mistakes. A potential benefit of live streaming is that some players and commentators will sometimes offer their opinions via live streaming broadcasts. This then enables players to profit from their expertise by later watching specific play-by-play advice from the experts

On the flip side, some poker players have trouble accepting constructive criticism, especially as the experts are often outspoken and uncompromising in sharing their opinions. This then leads some players to take things too personally, often making for an unpleasant or negative experience.

Conclusion

Live streaming continues to grow in standing, and will only become more popular as the technology becomes even more advanced. In the meantime, live streaming will continue to help build an even larger global audience for the game, while drawing in new players keen to learn more about playing poker by watching these live streams. Those players who aren’t willing to embrace live streaming, however, will be missing out on a great opportunity to grow their careers, and are also likely to fall further and further behind their peers.