Texas Poker: 1 billion dollars in business

People like to see the little fish beat the big shark story. November 7, in the first stage of the 2013 World Series of Poker tournaments (Poker Tour, WPT), the best known star player, Chinese-American David Qiu (David Chiu, a friend called him old Qiu) was quietly out of the tournament, The day before the game, he was signing a book for hundreds of enthusiastic fans. WPT and World Series (Series of Poker, WSOP) are the most important events in the Texas Poker game. Texas hold Hold (Texas Hold ' em poker) is a public card game for players that is now popular worldwide because of its strong skills.

Old Qiu was not discouraged by this. He said in a calm tone: "This is a very common event, a single game in the occasional luck, the good or bad will make a difference in the results." "It is true that other players, such as Johnny Chan, Maria Ho and last year's WPT China Station champions Rai Jonghua, have also been eliminated," he said. After the 6-day game, the 5 players remaining at the final table of the 1008 contestants are all unknown new faces who will be awarded the final position during the WPT South Korea station in December to carve out a hefty millions of yuan bonus.

In such large competitions, well-known professional players will attract the special attention of opponents, stimulate them to take the initiative to risk. If you take a gamble on one hand, you lose the most, but the result may be to kill a celebrity. At the same time, as the blind line in this knockout period rises every once in a while, the overly cautious professional players are also faced with the possibility of being "washed" by their chips. With a little reduction in chips, the difficulty of the comeback will become more and more difficult. Blind refers to the rules before the licensing turns to cast chips to ensure that each game has a certain basic chips, to prevent someone consumed time without betting. For example, usually said 10/20 innings, refers to the small blind position players must invest 10 yuan chips, the big blind must cast 20 yuan.

This is the second time in the WPT China Station, he is always an insignificant "uncle" dress up, love to wear light-colored casual T-shirts, and Hong Kong gambling film in the performance of the casino hawker no ties. His evaluation of the mainland players is "generally more fierce style, if the competition abroad, may not be too good results, because most foreign players have a lot of experience accumulation, they are more accurate." He won six in the main and peripheral races of WSOP and WPT, including the championship and 3.38 million-dollar bonuses in the sixth season of the WPT Championship in 2008.

High bonuses are the most exciting part of the game. In 1989, when old Qiu sent out to a poker club, a player gave him a 16 dollar chip as a tip, a colourful plastic wafer that could be a direct cause of his career change from a restaurant owner. "The Chinese people's thinking is particularly suitable for playing poker, from childhood reading of the" Kingdoms of the ", playing mahjong, have a lot of similar tactics and tactics training. "When I was a child deaf in my left ear, Qiu was accustomed to observing people's expressions to judge his behavior, which helped him become familiar with the game and became the local hooping of the United States." At that time, the United States is in the popular seven Stud, Les (Razz), de flutter this kind of play or non-mainstream.

In 1996, Qiu used his vacation time to Las Vegas to attend the wsop――, which is usually held during the main race, and will host a number of peripheral games for players to participate in, as well as a variety of institutional and personal cash bureaus. He won his first WSOP tournament gold bracelet and nearly 400,000 dollar bonuses in the peripheral games he attended. The following year he moved from Denver to Los Angeles to formally start a professional poker career. The competition took up only a fraction of his time, and after ten years he almost shine to the club to attend the cash Bureau, starting 11 o'clock noon and returning home after 8-10 hours. His poker mentality is also constantly adjusting, and at first, he felt that he was going to "play cards", and that he had been "working" in recent years.

At this point, the German flutter has grown into a conservative estimate of 1 billion dollars in the industry, the beneficiaries include not only professional players, but also tournament organizers, gaming websites, television and internet production companies, brokerage firms and sponsors. For example, WSOP and WPT are large gaming companies. Online games are more and more rapid, 2003 years amateur Chris Monimek through the online game to participate in the WSOP competition, he eventually won the main game online and won 1 million dollars in huge bonuses, so that online Texas poker hot up. However, he is a handful of traditional people who are not interested in online poker, he insists on playing spot cash bureaus and competitions, and he spends almost one months in a game where he spends more than 10,000 dollars on a variety of registrations in June, when the WSOP is held in Las Vegas.

Before and after 2003, the travel American students will return to China, nearly four or five years is a common. The new World of the Texas Poker industry in China has also attracted WSOP, WPT and the domestic companies and the Government to organize the tour, WPT China Station is jointly sponsored by the joint public company and the Sanya style bureau. Because of policy restrictions, such as poker competition can not get live TV, the Real club operation is also in the fuzzy space, Germany flutter in China, there is no professionalization and legalization, at present there is no more accurate estimation of industrial volume.

But we can see the development momentum of German-bashing industry in China. Under the line de Flutter club has been in the cities everywhere, online games are fast growing, and the company, which focuses on the Texas poker online game, was listed on the Hong Kong stock Exchange in mid-November, with a prospectus showing that more than 90% of the company's $500 million trillion income last year came from "German flutter".

Overseas players such as Lao Qiu are also gaining new business opportunities in China. Two years ago, the old Qiu officially became the joint public game's product "The poker World" the spokesperson, and participated in introducing some foreign institutions, well-known players return to cooperate, the competition. He also founded "David Poker Elite School" to develop poker management experts. As a result, he has become more willing to confront the media and business organizations than he used to, and he hopes to reverse the stereotype of German bashing, "You can't just be lucky, it's largely controlled by technology." So it's a rational sport or game. Now a lot of business people and corporate executives like to play in their spare time, he has also been specially invited to teach the CEO, on the one hand, teaching fans to play cards, on the other hand to play a key card strategy, "in the game, the player needs to be in a short period of time to follow up or give up judgment, Having a comprehensive understanding of the situation around you and assessing your own risks and rewards is a similar place for entrepreneurs to make decisions.

In this game, he cautions, a player must be aware of his or her purpose and set a stop, "you have to be rational, you become a gambler." The real difference between a professional player and an amateur player is that the more games you play, the higher the percentage of the professional player wins. That is to say, the occasional hand, a victory is only temporary super level play or a piece of dog luck, and the long-term effective actuarial won the winning, is the gold-plated professional players.

China does not yet have a publicly available professional player like Mr. Qiu. Rai Jonghua, who won the title of WPT China last year, wanted to develop the road to a professional player because there is not enough room to support a professional player in the country. In addition to two or three large formal poker tournaments with national approvals, Germany's flutter and development is still to be professionalized and standardized.

In the last two or three years, "private poker players" who have earned their living by playing Germany have emerged, anonymous Chinese player Q revealed that there are at least dozens of such players in the metropolitan area such as Beijing and Shanghai, one of which is to participate in online competitions, and the master can even open 12 games on several computer screens for 12 innings. After gaining points, players can exchange and redeem points on their own, and the other is to participate in the offline Cash Bureau, which usually has "bureau head" to find venues, hire a dealer and summon players. The head draws a certain amount of money from the winner as a "pumping". Q I heard Beijing's cash office two years ago in Toronto "very big", and "fish" a lot (refers to the game poor players), she flew back to the domestic water Test Cash Bureau, from the blind 25/50 to 5000/10000 of the Bureau are involved in a good month, she can even win more than 1 million yuan per month. To do so, she must be as savvy as a stock-investment manager who knows how to do "money management" and "Risk Control".

Q will also encounter a variety of "local": for example, Beijing has "bureau head" will secretly let the licensing staff in troubled waters more water pumping; some innings raise the limit of the pumping of each inning; sometimes she suffers a deadbeat loser, and an undercover player needs to keep a low profile, "People know you play well and don't play or watch out for you."

No matter what, Q felt that the two years of the mainland's German-bashing players are almost "geometric growth", and constantly have new players come in, do not worry about the number of "fish".