Last year I made some very bold predictions, and all-in-all I have to say I did pretty well. However, we are all poker players here, and we all know this could easily just be a case of the Jason Mercier “run-good”, so I’m back for 2013 with a whole new set of predictions. After recapping last year’s predictions in Part 1 let’s see what I have in store for 2013…

At least a dozen states will pass online poker bills

Nevada is already in the “yes” column, and it appears that at New Jersey might be the first to join them in early 2013. Considering all of the states that have been whispered to have online poker legislation at least in the works (Massachusetts, Delaware, California, and Idaho all come to mind) I wouldn’t be at all surprised if at least a dozen states have passed online poker legislation by the end of 2013 –now whether or not these states have any type of online poker infrastructure is a different matter altogether.

Déjà vu, there will be two Triple Crown winners crowned in 2013

Obviously this looks a lot like last year’s prediction, so let me go a step farther and actually name the three players I think will most accomplish the feat: Dominik Nitsche (who needs an EPT win), Andrey Pateychuk (who needs a WSOP win), and Roberto Romanello (who needs a WSOP win).

A major poker tour will contract/fold

Let’s be realistic here, every year a number of poker tours are launched into an already saturated market, and attendance has been plummeting in recent years. Much like the market for winning poker players has become supersaturated so has the number of tours competing for these players –which they do by making the same mistake online poker rooms did for so long: Catering to the pros and not the amateurs.

So not only do you have APT, ANZPT, LAPT, UKIPT, GUKPT, EPT, WSOPC, HPT, WPT, WPT Regional and National, MSPT, ISPT, and a dozen other acronyms for players to choose from, but you have these tournaments catering to pros with specialized events and slow structures.

While I don’t expect the EPT or WPT to close up shop I could very well imagine the WSOPC contracting, or even one of the smaller, but still recognizable) poker tours folding.

US poker players are going to be very unhappy with their Full Tilt settlements

Still waiting… And unfortunately when the wait is over I can envision Full Tilt Poker players from the US very unhappy with the settlement or the settlement process. It’s likely that only a small percentage of players will even go through the hassle of the remission process, and my feeling is that the government (and the chosen payment processor by proxy) will try to squeeze them for every nickel.

Several prominent poker players will fall on hard times

Let’s face it, poker is no longer offering every player who reads a few books and buys PokerTracker a guaranteed income. We’ve already seen some of poker’s biggest earners like Erick Lindgren fall on hard times from their habits, and now we are starting to see that everything wasn’t quite so rosy for some other “name” pros like Dutch Boyd and Joe Sebok.

It’s scary when people I felt were doing well in the game talk about leaving poker entirely, and as the game becomes more and more of a solvable math problem and the average player is no longer well “below-average” it’s going to be harder and harder for players to make a living at the poker tables. So, don’t be surprised when you read about more players like Joe Sebok (know pressing grapes for wine) and Dutch Boyd (who is willing to wash dishes for a paycheck) in 2013.

Tags: Acronyms, Amateurs, Attendance, Bold Predictions, Dozen States, EPT, GUKPT, Hpt, Ispt, Mercier, Mistake, Nitsche, Online Poker, Poker Legislation, poker players, Poker Rooms, Romanello, Triple Crown Winners, Winning Poker, WSOP

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 27th, 2012 at 11:22 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.