How to Start a Poker Boom? We Need Anya Taylor-Joy!
GipsyTeam
Yesterday, 14:57
Businessman Dustin Iannotti has taken Twitter by storm with an angry rebuke to Hustler streams and popular poker content in general, and has also explained how to attract millions of new players.
Last weekend, entrepreneur and poker enthusiast Dustin Iannotti wrote the most popular poker Twitter post of the year (so far).
I'm about to alienate the entire poker industry with what I'm going to say.
But someone needs to point out that we've been telling the wrong story for 20 years.
The evidence is undeniable. The solution is uncomfortable.
The poker content industry is creatively bankrupt and
I'm done pretending otherwise.
While other games turn niche audiences into a global phenomenon, we're recycling formulas for the same shrinking pool of viewers.
Wrestling is scripted. Chess is silent. Golf is slow.
All three are Netflix sensations worth hundreds of millions.
Poker—where people literally risk their life savings while engaging in psychological warfare—can barely crack 250K YouTube views.
This shouldn't be possible. But it is.
The Queen's Gambit made more people care about chess in 8 weeks than poker content has made people care about poker in 8 years.
In just the first month after The Queen's Gambit was released on Netflix, the series was watched by 62 million accounts
Chess set sales: +1000% New online players: +5 MILLION Chess school applications: DOUBLED
From a FICTIONAL story about a game where two people sit in complete silence staring down at a board and occasionally move tiny wooden objects. Have we already forgotten? Twenty years ago, poker exploded because of a story. Not a hand.
A nobody accountant with a perfect last name…
Facing off against a guy whose picture belongs in the dictionary next to "poker player"...
An unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth...
The coolest, coldest motherfucker ripped straight out of a Scorsese movie.
And the underdog prevails.
THAT'S storytelling. THAT'S what captivated millions.
Then we lost our way.
Poker suffered a decade-long drought after Black Friday. TV coverage dried up. Online sites vanished overnight. The industry was on life support. What brought it back? Not strategy videos. Not hand breakdowns.
It was personalities. Stories. Characters. Influencers who understood that poker without people is just math.
We've been here before. We know what works. Yet we're drifting back into the same trap.
While poker content creators play musical chairs, recycling the same 250,000 existing YouTube viewers, Formula 1 converted 20 million non-fans into rabid followers.
99% of gambling content is created for the 1% who already play.
While sites battle over the same shrinking player pool, they're ignoring the 300M potential fans hungry for real human drama.
Netflix's Behind-the-Scenes Formula 1 Docuseries Drive to Survive Becomes Hit, Racing's Popularity Soars in the US
What do Formula 1, chess, and professional wrestling have that poker doesn't?
It's not bigger audiences. It's not more drama.
It's one specific storytelling approach that poker content creators actively avoid:
They focus on PEOPLE first, activity second.
They build CHARACTERS, not just champions.
They create EMOTION, not just education.
Meanwhile, poker sites pour millions into new features and UI improvements, while investing next to nothing in original, impactful content.
They'd rather spend $3M optimizing their lobby than $1M on a story that could bring in a million new players.
Short-term metrics over long-term vision. Quick conversions over cultural relevance. Features over feelings.
Everyone criticizes Daniel Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth – But they are in the arena, trying different things to actively participate in growing the game.
Name someone who’s done more to bring new fans to poker…I’ll wait. narrative, not just a set of distributions. Psychology. Not sessions, but coherent stories.
Meanwhile, we've convinced ourselves that a stream's 37th close-up of some math wizard calling a 3-bet with J7 suited is "revolutionary content."
Even the shows considered "industry standard" – Hustler Casino Live and High Stakes Poker – make the same fundamental error:
Selecting hands based on POT SIZE rather than NARRATIVE VALUE. High stakes should be part of the storytelling – not the ONLY story.
We need to be the change we want to see in poker storytelling.
I'm putting these principles into practice through my work on Alan Keating's channel.
Not to self-promote. But to prove it can be done.
We're crafting narrative arcs across multiple hands. We're revealing the psychological warfare. We're turning poker sessions into cinematic experiences.
The future belongs to storytellers who understand that gambling at high stakes is dramatic CONTEXT, not compelling CONTENT by itself.
I'm tired of hearing "When is Rounders 2 coming out?"
We don't need Rounders 2.
We need creators and businesses with a stake in this beautiful game to come together and make content that breaks beyond anything Rounders ever did.
We need to aim higher than recycling nostalgia. We need to create NEW classics.
The role of Rounders in popularizing poker in the United States is difficult to overestimate; the film is still considered a cult classic.
Here's what happens if we succeed:
Poker becomes cultural currency again.
New players flood into the game.
Sites and casinos thrive with fresh blood.
A generation of storytellers finds their canvas.
And if we fail?
We continue the slow, uncomfortable decline. We keep talking to the same shrinking audience. We become chess before The Queen's Gambit – a niche game for a dedicated few.
And for the executives reading this thread right now, calculating ROI:
While your competitors chase micro-conversions, imagine owning the next cultural sensation.
Imagine poker's Drive to Survive moment – 20M new fans, 53% viewership increases.
The long-term math isn't complicated. The courage to be first is rare.
We've spent 20 years showing cards. It's time to show character.
We've spent two decades explaining how to play. Now let's show why people NEED to watch.
The storytelling must finally match the stakes.
Poker content needs an entirely new narrative.
I plan to write it.
This is a call to the entire industry to join me.
Challenge yourself. Challenge the status quo.
We need to move at the speed of attention. Or the attention will disappear.
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The tweet, as they say, flew in – almost 420,000 views and fifty comments. Feedback was given by dozens of famous players: Dustin was praised by Kevin Martin, Liv Boeree , Maria Ho, Garrett Adelstein, Jason Koon, Faraz Jaka and many others (even Jamie Gold!)
Hustler stream owner Ryan Feldman responded in detail:
Good stuff. Everything you’re saying is spot on. I think the characters are there. We just don’t have ESPN and the major networks these days putting poker on a huge pedestal + we don’t have the big Full Tilt/PokerStars money to invest in players like we used to. There’s also a ton more content these days. Everyone wants a piece of the content pie. So the average fan is numb to it because everything is so saturated. With that said, in terms of promoting characters to grow it mainstream — if we can get a big player like Netflix or Hulu to invest in poker content, we can promote the back stories the same way F1/tennis/chess/wrestling did. I’ve been in those meetings and it’s not easy for whatever reason. There’s still this stigma out there that poker is some bad thing. A lot of celebs don’t want their names attached to it and don’t want to be seen gambling/losing money. We need to figure out how to get over that hump.
PokerGo being the defacto monopoly on poker content has completely killed any chance of another poker boom and has harmed poker growth more than any other single factor.
Max Silver
In the comments, Max was asked why he was so unhappy with the service – after all, the shows are high-quality?
"Its all produced fantastically," Silver sighed. "Nick and Ali are peanut butter and chocolate in my ears, it’s also behind a paywall meaning that only die hard fans will ever see it, the barrier to entry to anyone vaguely interested is too high to cross."
Many agreed with Max, but some commentators reminded that YouTube is full of free content (including on the PokerGO channel), and the main enemy of poker is still the American government. One of them wrote:
We need online poker legalized in the US. Look at ESPN sucking sports bettors dry with all the marketing. Imagine if online poker got 10% of the attention sports betting has.
Max didn't answer. He must have imagined it and lost the power of speech.
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