I notice you’re talking about market size, but not about marginal value to the median member of that market. I no longer play poker seriously, but I still know a number of pros and some authors/publishers/coaches that were reasonably successful. When you say:
if you’re a poker player and are actually trying to get better, that you should have some sort of poker software to study with
You’re making a few major errors. Assuming that very much of your potential audience is all that dedicated to getting better is one—poker survives on optimistic idiots, not on smart, patient, long-term thinkers. There are very few players who win consistently, and most of those don’t spend that much effort studying.
Assuming that studying is the main part of poker success is also a mistake. Most profit comes from identifying and exploiting opponent mistakes, not in optimizing your own play beyond a certain competence. It’s very hard, even for very good players, to formally model the kinds of mistakes they profit from, so very hard to imagine that software calculations help them improve their exploitative play.
Assuming that software is a critical part of studying is another, and that your paid software is the one people would choose even worse. There’s plenty of pretty decent free software and many reams of printed study material. And once you reach a certain level of competence, you get paid to study by actually playing hands and then reviewing hand histories (often with the aid of free software) afterward. The exception is live helpers (aka “cheats”) for online games—those that scrape the screen and sometimes even click buttons for you, based on shared player databases. I’m out of the current market, but these were big business a decade ago.
The nice thing is you have a built-in revenue method: if the software is really all that great, you should use it to make money at poker, rather than selling it to your opponents.
I agree that poker survives on optimistic idiots. My thoughts are that we can divide players up into three buckets: pros, somewhat serious players, and fish (“optimistic idiots”). Fish haven’t really spent any time ever trying to learn how to play the game. Or if they have, it’s only a book or two. Somewhat serious players have read a bunch of books and study/review hands maybe once a week or so. And pros are pros. I figured that the number of fish are in the millions, somewhat serious maybe 100k or so, and pros, maybe a few thousand. I say this because you seem to be dividing the population into pros and fish, whereas I add in the somewhat serious players.
I think the big mistake I made was that I assumed that these somewhat serious players all somewhat consistently use poker software. I know that the “optimistic idiots” clearly don’t, but I figured that the somewhat serious players do.
Assuming that studying is the main part of poker success is also a mistake. Most profit comes from identifying and exploiting opponent mistakes, not in optimizing your own play beyond a certain competence. It’s very hard, even for very good players, to formally model the kinds of mistakes they profit from, so very hard to imagine that software calculations help them improve their exploitative play.
I would disagree with that. I think software can really help you improve your exploitative play. This video is an example. Another example is looking at different flop textures and seeing which ones you’d generate enough folds on to profitably cbet.
There’s plenty of pretty decent free software
There are some free equity calculators, but they are limited. And from what I understand, there are no free range analysis tools like my Hit Calculator or Flopzilla, and range analysis tools are important for a lot of things, like getting a sense of how much fold equity you have.
I notice you’re talking about market size, but not about marginal value to the median member of that market. I no longer play poker seriously, but I still know a number of pros and some authors/publishers/coaches that were reasonably successful. When you say:
You’re making a few major errors. Assuming that very much of your potential audience is all that dedicated to getting better is one—poker survives on optimistic idiots, not on smart, patient, long-term thinkers. There are very few players who win consistently, and most of those don’t spend that much effort studying.
Assuming that studying is the main part of poker success is also a mistake. Most profit comes from identifying and exploiting opponent mistakes, not in optimizing your own play beyond a certain competence. It’s very hard, even for very good players, to formally model the kinds of mistakes they profit from, so very hard to imagine that software calculations help them improve their exploitative play.
Assuming that software is a critical part of studying is another, and that your paid software is the one people would choose even worse. There’s plenty of pretty decent free software and many reams of printed study material. And once you reach a certain level of competence, you get paid to study by actually playing hands and then reviewing hand histories (often with the aid of free software) afterward. The exception is live helpers (aka “cheats”) for online games—those that scrape the screen and sometimes even click buttons for you, based on shared player databases. I’m out of the current market, but these were big business a decade ago.
The nice thing is you have a built-in revenue method: if the software is really all that great, you should use it to make money at poker, rather than selling it to your opponents.
I agree that poker survives on optimistic idiots. My thoughts are that we can divide players up into three buckets: pros, somewhat serious players, and fish (“optimistic idiots”). Fish haven’t really spent any time ever trying to learn how to play the game. Or if they have, it’s only a book or two. Somewhat serious players have read a bunch of books and study/review hands maybe once a week or so. And pros are pros. I figured that the number of fish are in the millions, somewhat serious maybe 100k or so, and pros, maybe a few thousand. I say this because you seem to be dividing the population into pros and fish, whereas I add in the somewhat serious players.
I think the big mistake I made was that I assumed that these somewhat serious players all somewhat consistently use poker software. I know that the “optimistic idiots” clearly don’t, but I figured that the somewhat serious players do.
I would disagree with that. I think software can really help you improve your exploitative play. This video is an example. Another example is looking at different flop textures and seeing which ones you’d generate enough folds on to profitably cbet.
There are some free equity calculators, but they are limited. And from what I understand, there are no free range analysis tools like my Hit Calculator or Flopzilla, and range analysis tools are important for a lot of things, like getting a sense of how much fold equity you have.