It's pretty sad the ways in which
online poker has changed from the days when I first began playing online. (2007).
Back in 2007, 2008 I actually met quite a few players online & this while only playing mostly in micro & low buyins. I played in MANY leagues (soooo many of them back then). On weekends I could easily find myself in upwards of 20 games where you'd be competing against players you'd play against on a regular basis (the 'cash-added' prizepools helped obviously).
I was surprised when I went to play in a CC game on Stars a year or so ago and wasn't able to chat in observer chat. That felt strange for me. It was normal to go chat with your online friends after you'd been KO'd, cheer them on... rail them for awhile, etc. Without chat, you lose out on all of this stuff and for me this stuff is what made the game fun (... and the cash-added prizepools helped too... obviously).
In the regular MTT's online, you'd see MANY people railing games each night. Even in something like FTP's MidnightMadness (a $10 buyin, fast-structured tournament that went off at 00:00 EST, but paid out over $1,000 to 1st place), you would see 100's of observers chatting. And in the bigger games like FTOPS, $1k Monday, Super Tuesday, etc. the chat would just go crazy at times. (ie. DoyleRIP, vamoooooos, .. send me $5? etc etc, lol).
I found out about other leagues, games, etc. and invited others to ones I was playing in... all via the observer & game chat.
I even met some Fulltilt Pros & invited some of them in a Private Birthday tournament I held once on FTP. It also got me to a Live tournament where my partner was invited to play vs. Gavin Smith HeadsUP. We received free airfare, limo rides, Hotel (penthouse suite) for 3days and a buyin to a Live SNG with other pros. A dinner at some steakhouse (owned by another poker pro), a poker chipset (lol), tons of other stuff and this all came about from the chat on the online tables and most of it from the observer chat.
fwiw, Gavin was a super nice guy (RIP) & extremely generous!
I miss those days of online poker. Now about the only chat I'm in is on Twitch.. where the streamer pretends to give a sh1t about ya in hopes you keep on subscribing..... sigh. And while playing, I wouldn't have time to chat... now it's just playing like a robot.
It would be great to see poker come back more along the lines of how it used to be played when it was in the BOOM years online. You know... when it was like playing a game of poker. No Spins. No Hyper Extreme 100 chip stacks. All-in or Fold. 10bb stacks. Players playing with some program helping them on another computer (RTA), getting outted but then back playing in the limelight in the following week.
