The Americans Have Gone, But...

So, yeah, a few months ago the US Government flexed its muscles on behalf of the US gaming industry and chased all the Americans away from Poker Stars. In many ways that's a Bad Thing: America's a big country full of comparatively well-off people many of whom liked to dabble at poker online despite the fact that they were more or less useless. It was just a bit of fun and they were willing to take their losses in order to experience the occasional thrill of a winning night. Find yourself with four or five such hobbyists at your table and you were in for a profitable evening. (Even better were the players inspired by the WSOP; they'd learnt their basic strategy by watching edited highlights of a no-limit tournament and now they tried to apply it at a $5-$10 limit cash-game. Result: complete carnage.)

Their place seems to have been taken by Eastern Europeans. Eastern Europe - especially Russia - has arrived online over the last few years. In some ways that's a Good Thing: it means the tables are almost as full as before and I don't have to play in the middle of the night to get a half-way decent game.

But there are drawbacks too. Sure, there are just as many gambling-mad fools in Europe as in America, but they don't tend to play poker because the game has no deep well of tradition on this side of the Atlantic. Instead, they're all on the blackjack and roulette tables at online casinos, or betting on how many corners CSK Moscow will concede in the second half. So, on average, the European players who wind up at poker sites are only there because they know a bit about the game. It's not a laugh for them; they're intent on making money.

That's especially unfortunate when you consider that the purchasing power of the dollar is about fifteen times that of the rouble. So you might find it hard to care about losses at a $0.50c-$1 table, but for Ivan it's as if he's playing at an $8-$16 table. Add in the ability to play ten tables at the same time and you start to see why Russians can earn serious amounts of money playing at what are considered "beginners' tables" in the West. Net result: you can and do get professional poker players at micro tables. Not only that, but (I suspect) you get professional poker syndicates as well.

That's bad news for me, but it's not terminal. For a start, the pros are the exception rather than the rule. There's still plenty of dead money around at micro levels (it gets significantly tougher, however, once you reach the $2-$4 game). Plus, because they tend to take a multi-table approach, the serious guys usually play an ABC game: they're mechanical. This works well enough to grind out a healthy profit from the donkeys and the drunks but it prevents them (usually) from steamrollering over the likes of me - which they could probably do if they set their minds to it.

For now, then, I'm confident of building my bankroll through the micro levels. The real trouble will come in a few months time when I start approaching low-level games. That's when I'll have some tough decisions to make.