While Twitch's Poker Partnership Lead Scott Ball was busy in Beverly Hills attending the 2015 American Poker Conference (APC) and accepting an award at the inaugural American Poker Awards (APA) for Poker Innovation of the Year, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) decided to explore the relationship between Amazon's streaming service and the poker industry.
'Twitch draws 100 million users each month to watch others play online games such as Minecraft and League of Legends,' the WSJ writes in an article titled Amazon's Twitch Site Bets on Poker. 'Now, it has begun broadcasting online poker players, including several sponsored professionals.'
According to the WSJ, Twitch's bet on online poker represents a great possibility for Amazon's service to increase its revenues by bringing a very specific and attractive demographic to the platform. 'Adding poker promises to bring Twitch more young, male users, a demographic coveted by advertiser,' the WSJ continues.
Talking to PokerNews right after the APA ceremony, Ball said that the relationship between Twitch and poker is part of a longterm plan that has already received a very positive reception from the site's community and from the poker industry.
'It has been a really great journey so far,' Ball said. 'It happened a lot quicker than anyone could have possibly predicted. It's been really great, and both communities have been super receptive and it's been a great journey so far.'
Ball explained how he believes that one of the biggest advantages of Twitch, together with the popularity of the platform and its easy interface, is how it seems to have something truly for everyone.
'The beautiful thing about Twitch is that every stream is going to be unique, that everyone on the platform is different.' Mentioning successful examples of poker streamers on the Twitch like Jason Somerville, Jaime Staples, and Randy 'Nanonoko' Lew, Ball went on to explain that 'the beauty of the platform is that anyone can stream, and anyone that's viewing can go find the one stream that they enjoy the most and they connect with.'
What Can Twitch and Poker Do for Each Other
Wall Street Poker Rules Online
'I can see advertisers and poker companies really buying into this,' said the managing director of Eilers Research, Adam Krejcik, to the WSJ. 'It's a very passionate group with disposable income.'
Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for The Poker Face of Wall Street at Amazon.com. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users. Our Exclusive Design. Fully Customized Large Planked Wood Sign. 2 sizes available starting at 2 ft. SORRY size 10' x 24' - Three planks (ON SALE for $79.95) is SOLD OUT for xmas 2019. Poker 'Wall Street, ' reads the sinister old gag, 'is a street with a river at one end and a graveyard at the other. 'This is striking, but incomplete. It omits the kindergarten in the middle.-Frederick Schwed, Jr., Where Are the Customers' Yachts? I Chapter One Liars Poker IT WAS sometime early in 1986, the first year of the decline of my.
Although the WSJ focuses its attention on the way online poker can provide Twitch (read: Amazon) with a good opportunity to widen its offer to advertisers, many believe that the streaming service could as well revolutionize the online poker industry in a way that is comparable only to the 'Moneymaker effect.'
The first one to speak about the advantages of bringing online poker to Twitch has been Somerville, who today runs poker's most popular channel on the platform and was recently named to Team PokerStars Pro thanks large in part to the hard work he has put in with building his brand through streaming. Somerville spent the last 18 months cultivating his audience by streaming his games and sharing priceless strategy advice with his viewers.
'I believe that poker live streams are still in the infancy status,' Somerville told PokerNews in an interview back in 2014. 'Organizations are quick to dismiss live streams as unimportant to anyone but the hardcore fans without realizing they doomed themselves from the start by building their show to be as unfriendly as possible to casual or recreational viewers.'
Popular for his results at the poker table almost as much as for the success of his Run It Up! live stream on YouTube and his streams on Twitch, Somerville seemed to have immediately understood the importance to use live streams to widen the reach of the game and attract new people to the game.
'I believe poker streams have been built sub-optimally from the ground up as a Frankensteinian amalgamation of what kinda worked in TV poker broadcasting and what kinda worked in poker training videos,' he said. 'Treating poker more like an e-sport, designing streams with the Internet viewer in mind, and embracing an element of entertainment may end up being responsible for a major shift in the poker world over the next few years.'
Only a few months later, while at a panel discussion organized during the 2015 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA), Somerville spoke again about live streams and explained that he believed these streams could become poker's 'next big thing.'
'We're in an interesting time in poker right now,' Somerville said. 'I don't think televised poker really evolved too much after the hole-card camera was introduced, especially in America. Poker players want to see four or five days of coverage and be engrained in the play as it goes. Meanwhile in America, the World Series of Poker [coverage] doesn't even start until Day 4 now!'
'I feel like poker's best fit is on the Internet where you can stream whatever you want, whenever you want, for as long as you want,' he said. 'And not only is it cheaper and more cost efficient, but it makes more sense for poker.'
Another key figure in the industry who seems to deeply support Somerville's views about Twitch and poker is the CEO of the Global Poker IndexAlexandre Dreyfus, who has recently inked a deal that will bring the upcoming Global Poker Masters on the platform as an officially promoted event.
'While the Internet changed everything in our life since 10 years, the way poker has been served to the media since 10 years hasn't changed,' Dreyfus told PokerNews. 'We have to be proactive and look for new channels and new platforms to reach new audiences.'
'We want to be where the audience is. Our audience is online and on Twitch, and that's why we are going to use this great and innovative platform to bring our initiatives to a new public,' Dreyfus continued.
And if the WSJ believes that by adding online poker to Twitch's offer Amazon can offer to its advertisers the keys to a rich and promising market, the French entrepreneur believes that the relation between the service and the game has something for poker too.
'Twitch and its 100 million visitors per month globally is definitively one of our key strategic partners for our new initiatives,' Dreyfus went on to explain. 'Over 80 percent of their visitors are 18 years old or older, and this means that you have 80 percent of 100 million visitors that are potentially interested in poker.'
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A simplified version of Scopa contributed by Dan Beebe - not to be confused with the poker variant Wall Street.
The goal of Wall Street is to win the most points by gaining Investors, gathering Preferred Stock, and Common Stock, and by making 'Takeovers.'
Players and Cards
Wall Street may be played by 2, 3, or 4 players. Each player plays individually, i.e., there are no partnerships. The play goes clockwise around the table. A standard pack of cards is used, with the 7s, Jacks, Queens, and Jokers removed, leaving 40 cards. Each card is worth its face value during the play, except for the kings which are called 'Investors' and which are worth 7 during the play. The diamond cards (excluding the diamond Investor) are called 'Preferred Stock.' The rest of the cards (excluding the 4 Investors) are called 'Common Stock.'
The Deal
Choose a dealer, who then shuffles the cards. The dealer's left hand opponent then cuts the deck. The Dealer deals three cards face down to each player, moving clockwise around the table. The Dealer then deals four cards, face up, onto the middle of the table. If there are more than two 10's in the middle, the cards are thrown in and a new deal takes place.
The Play
The player to the dealer's left plays first, and the turn to play passes clockwise, until all of the cards in the players' hands have been played. A turn consists of playing one card face up to the table, which may capture one or more table cards. In the event of a capture, both the played card and the captured card(s) are taken and stored face down next to the player in his 'Fund.' If there is no capture, the played card remains face up on the table. In either case, the turn then passes to the next player.
If the value of the card played matches that of the table card, then the table card is captured and put into the player's Fund. If the card played matches more than one table card, then only one of the matching table cards is captured and placed in the Fund, and the player must choose which. If the card played does not match any table card, but its capture value is equal to the sum of the captured cards' values, then the set of cards is captured and placed in the Fund. If the capture value of the card played does not match any table card or sum of table cards, then there is no capture and the played card remains face up on the table.
There is no obligation to play a card which makes a capture. If a player has more than one card in his hand, he may choose to play a card which does not capture anything and simply add that card to the table. If the played card does make a capture, the captured cards must be taken. If a card matches both a single card and a sum of cards, the single card must be taken, not the group.
After each player has played all 3 cards in his hand, that round is over, and the dealer deals three more cards to each player. In the final round, after all the cards from the players' hands have been played, the last player who made a capture also takes any face up cards remaining on the table.
The Scoring
Wall Street Poker Rules
There are three points available to be won on each deal:
Wall Street Poker Rules Games
- The Investors. A point is won by whichever player takes the plurality of the 4 Investors (i.e. more investors than any other single player). If there is no plurality (two or more players tie for most investors), this point is not awarded.
- The Preferred Stock. A point is won by whichever player takes the plurality of the Preferred Stock (the diamonds, excluding the diamond Investor, which leaves 9 cards). If there is no plurality, this point is not awarded.
- The Common Stock. A point is won by whichever player takes the plurality of the 27 Common Stock cards. If there is no plurality, this point is not awarded.
The Takeover
In addition to the points mentioned above, you also win a point for each Takeover. You score a Takeover when you play a card which captures all of the table cards, leaving the table empty. The capturing card is placed face up in the Fund, so that the number of Takeovers can easily be seen when the scoring is done at the end of the play. Taking the last cards from the table at the end of a hand never counts as a Takeover, even if the last card played by the dealer does actually capture all the remaining table cards.
Winning the Game
The first player to win 10 or more points at the end of a hand wins. If two or more players win 10 points in the same hand, the player with the most points wins. If they are equal, those two players play another hand to determine the winner (and the other player(s) do not play in this extra round).
Strategy
Although the game is similar to Scopa, the point system changes the strategy needed to win. A player should count the investors and preferred/diamond stock and common stock as they are taken. Once a majority of any category is taken, there is no value in trying to capture those cards during the play. Thus, a savvy player will be aware once 5 diamond cards have been taken, and focus on capturing common cards or investors, allowing the less skilled player to take the remaining diamonds. As such, remembering which cards have been captured is much more important than in Scopa, where cards count toward different points (i.e., capturing the 7 of diamonds in Scopa counts as a point by itself, and contributes toward getting the prime point, the diamonds point, and the point for most cards). In Wall Street, there is no point for gaining the diamond Investor, so no single card has pre-eminent value, thus reducing slightly the extent to which luck affects the game.