Reminiscing

Over the last two days I've spent a little time going over some of my blog entries from 2008 (and fixing some of the HHs associated which were broken due to a now defunct converter). When you look back at the ecosystem that is online poker and how it was three years ago compared to today, it really is night and day. Outside of few specific moments (see: Black Friday), the change has been gradual, yet it really hasn't happened all that slowly.

Obviously, the games today are significantly tougher to beat. I was (relative to my current self) terrible in 2008 yet had no problem crushing the games. Additionally, game selection is now very hard for a mass multitabler. In 2008, and even through much of 2009, it was easy to get 24 decent tables of small stakes full ring action open on Pokerstars within minutes of starting a session. Today, at all but peak times 24 quality tables can be very difficult to impossible to find, and to maintain them requires constant lobby attention. This made putting in volume a heck of a lot easier back in the day, as you'd have 24 tables open almost right away and if a game died finding a replacement was easy. It's still a little scary to think that I put in 150-200k months back then while working a 40 hour week at my 9-5 though.

It sure would be awesome for another poker boom to occur at some point in the next few years. Regulation in the US, done right, could lead to one, though my feeling is that even if US fish find a way back into the market, it might only add another year or two to the lifespan of the online grinder. I'll certainly be riding the wave as an online pro for another year or two, but it definitely seems as though every dollar I earn today I had a work a hell of a lot harder for compared to 2008 or 2009.