Since its inception in the late 1990’s, the game of online poker evolved dramatically. A typical online poker table included five massive fish swapping money at the table and then one player who sat and waited for good hands, who would eventually take them to the cleaners. Compared to today, the tables were extremely soft and any skilled player would make their fortune. This era of online poker is often referred to as the ‘Party Poker Days’ because most of the action took place on Party Poker.
Since then, the popularity of the game grew when people heard of the large sums of money being made by players and the realisation that they too could make money from it. Like any sport, or even any form of betting, it was competitive. Players started to study the game through websites, online forums, poker books and traditional teaching methods.
As more and more players flocked to take up the game, it saw the start of the poker boom. More and more online poker rooms opened and players generally started devoting a lot of time to learning and studying the game because of the serious money involved. Using the various online poker resources available at the time, players learned by reading poker strategy, posting poker hand histories and discussing poker theory. These methods are still used today and are still effective poker training tools.
New Entrant To The Scene
In 2005, we saw the brainchild of Taylor Caby, a successful online poker high stakes player come to the forefront of the poker industry. Caby developed a website called CardRunners, which aimed to revolutionise poker training as it was known at the time. The thing that separated Cardruners from all other online poker training sites was the new poker teaching medium – Poker Training Videos. Essentially CardRunners provided subscribers with a number of high stakes online poker coaches who would make videos of themselves playing online poker and record their comments and thought processes surrounding each hand.
This poker training method was an instant hit. Players who joined the poker training site became better poker players and made significant amounts of money. The website grew with the addition of more poker coaches and therefore more poker players joined to become better at poker. Today CardRunners is still operating with over 10,000 subscribers and hold the biggest market share in online poker training.
Success Of Video Training
The success of CardRunners saw a massive increase in competition from new poker training sites in 2007. Sites like DeucesCracked, Pokersavvy Plus and Stox Poker all came on the scene with a host of big name coaches and training videos. This trend continued with more and more training sites appearing all the time.
Faced with a wealth of options, players looked at the various training sites and picked the site they liked best and the one that suited their poker needs. Oftentimes players had multiple subscriptions at a time and watched the videos produced by several coaches on different sites.
It was rare that the costs of poker training sites were questioned due to the valuable knowledge that would be acquired and the money earning potential in that knowledge. A subscription to a poker training site was always seen as an investment that would more than pay for itself, but despite all this the costs of training sites have reduced significantly today due to the competition in the market.
Today, the poker training site market is very saturated which is great news for the poker player. Players can avail of top quality poker training with low prices due to the competition. It is thought that we will see more mergers in amongst poker training sites in the future, like that of CardRunners and Stox Poker. Some of the newer poker training sites have moved to specialise in various disciplines of the game, such as Poker Pwnage, SitnGoGrinders and HUSNGs. These sites offer lower cost poker training because they are only dedicated to one discipline of poker. The bigger poker training sites like Bluefire Poker, Deuces Cracked, CardRunners and PokerSavvy Plus are more expensive as they cover more disciplines of the game and generally have higher profile coaching line-ups.
