Hello!

I have many times thought about how its going to be if China and India start to play online poker. Chinas economy is growing fast. I red that their growing middleclass is as big as USA:s entire population. But I guess they have hard restrictions on gambling etc?

China and India together have 2,5 billion ppl together of our worlds soon about 7 billion population.

Im thinking about if online poker will explode in those countrys and for example Chinas middleclass (as big as the whole population of USA) will start to play alot of online poker. If China in about 10-20 years will get free access to internet and so on. More freedom. We will probably have some (ALOT?) fish to catch in the beginning then?!

I want to hear what all you think about this and what you already know. I dont know anything.

Cheers
Johan

Maybe they are already playing online?!

Population of countries listed from top to bottom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... population

Pitcairn Islands have 50 in their population

I meet more and more players from China at iPoker rooms. Most of them are nice fishes

I do see the occasional player from China, do not remember any from India.

Cliff

They won't stay fishes for long. All the world of warcraft chinese gold-sellers will switch to poker and factories of poker players will spring up playing Outstanding Poker and suck the West dry.

widgewilliams

widgewilliams wrote:They won't stay fishes for long. All the world of warcraft chinese gold-sellers will switch to poker and factories of poker players will spring up playing Outstanding Poker and suck the West dry.

Hehehehe

My only experience of chinese players is pretty bad actually...

I know there are a ring of them on stars colluding in the low/mid stakes double or nothing games, and also a few months ago something was bought up regarding them playing some kind of game like triple draw or something on stars, somehow exploiting the VIP system

Hi,

I would like to respond to this topic, I have been travelling through China recently and I cannot imagine that playing poker online would be legal there. However I've been to Macau, which is referred to as 'the Las Vegas of the east'. Every weekend loads and loads of Chinese and Hong Kong people come to gamble there. I played poker there for two nights. The interesting thing is that many Chinese players use a lot of bluff in their game. I think it's part of their system, they believe in change of luck and that kind of thing. I had some very interesting sessions, and was able to catch some of these bluffers. You got to be prepared to invest some money though, because the lowest tables were almost 2.5 US Dollar big blind (which is way higher than the usual 50NL games I play online). It was very exciting playing at these levels and taking down a couple of pots round about 300 US dollar. The Macau-experience gave me some insight in Chinese culture and style of play. If the Chinese were to play online massively I think their gambling instincts would give a substantial boost to the online poker scene. I don't see it happening shortly, but that's more my hunch.

ps dont get me wrong, I have encountered Chinese TAG as well, Im just saying there's a rather large amount of bluffers

cheers, Erik

Hi Erik!

Wonderful to hear about your experience in Macau!
Must have been really fun. Your experience strengthen my thoughts about geting the biggest boost at poker that there can ever be when China get into the online poker.

Here is a link to a forum where some chinese ppl talk about if they can play online poker.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/57/po ... na-295575/

Its from 2007 but I think its still the same today. I quote a chinese poster:

"It is illegal here but some sites are accessible. They are blocked through the Chinese firewall. I play from home here in mainland China on UB, Full Tilt and Absolute. Pokerstars and Pokerroom are blocked. I don't think it is monitored since you are using your software to connect and it would be difficult for them to monitor this. Also, many nice hotels have VPN connections which bypass the Chinese firewall completely. The best situation would be to subscribe to a VPN service on your own. This would bypass the firewall and cannot be monitored by the government. You can subscribe to a personal VPN service very cheap now. Do a Google search and you should get a lot of hits on this. "


Its hard to say. But if the goverment is loosening up abit. I guess we will have the biggest poker boost that can ever be to come right at us. I hope they dont come with a game of their own.

I say it again.

China population 1,339,230,000
India population 1,184,724,000
USA population 309,992,000
Russia 141,950,000 (Starting to be alot russians?)

I think those numbers are insane. And if u think about China and their fastest growing middleclass, as big as USAs whole population and if they would get free internet..... BOOOM!

Johan