Reasons to Watch Live-Streamed Poker Games

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A few years ago, some people believe that live-streamed poker events would never catch on. They assumed that people would get bored with them and tune out. The opposite has happened with many events.

Rather than tune out, many people follow live-streamed poker events religiously. There are several reasons for this. Today, we will give you some of the best reasons to watch live-streamed poker events. These can be anything from live-streamed poker cash games to tournaments like the World Series of Poker Main Event.

You Get a Better Idea of How People Play

One grip from serious poker players regarding pre-edited poker programs is that you only see the big hands of a tournament. Often, these highlights don’t tell a proper story as to how a player grew a stack or was able to play trash hands for profit.

When you can watch a match in its entirety, you can see how a player grows his image during a session. You see which hands go to showdown, which players he or she can attack at will, and even when they bluff at the wrong time. You get a better idea of how a player plays, which is much more interesting than watching multiple all-in hands.

Poker Analysis is Fantastic on Live Streams

Pre-edited poker shows like the WSOP on ESPN are created for entertainment only. They don’t worry about educating players or going in-depth. The shows are for casual poker fans.

Live streams are more for hardcore poker fans and serious players. As such, the analysis has to be superior to what you see from Lon and Norm. Some of the game’s top minds are used to commentate during live streams and their insight adds an extra element to the broadcast that casual fans will never appreciate.

Fan Interaction

For some live streams, such as those on Twitch or Youtube, you will often have live chat interaction from other views. You don’t have this type of fan interaction on ESPN TV or PokerGO. This fan interaction is sometimes more entertaining than the poker.

The commentators, and sometimes even the players, can join in with the fans to answer questions, give opinions, or make fun of the fans when they act up. Of course, the reactions after big moments are also classic and worth the price of admission.

Poker Players Can Learn a Lot in Live Streams

Couple the ability to see all hands along with the analysis from broadcasters, and viewers can learn a lot about playing poker from watching live streams. I can tell you that I learned a great deal about playing heads-up NL Hold’em by watching the Daniel Negreanu – Doug Polk grudge match. The analysis during and after the matches was invaluable and helped improve my heads-up game.

This is something we’ve heard a lot from fans of live-streamed poker programs. There’s so much you can learn about playing poker from watching these shows. You can learn multiple styles of poker, multiple strategies, and even what not to do in various scenarios. Some people use live streams as a form of poker coaching. Streams can be a great learning tool where you can learn about poker from some of the game’s greatest minds. Better still, you will spend a lot less money on watching live-streams than you will by signing up for poker coaching programs.

You Can Come Back and Watch Again Anytime

One of the greatest advantages of watching live streams is that you don’t have to wait for a future broadcast to rewatch the program. In most cases, the live stream will be available to rewatch immediately after the program completes. Other times, you might have to wait a few minutes.

For programs like the WSOP on ESPN or the World Poker Tour, you might have to wait a week or more to rewatch the program. If there is something you want to see again, just reload the program and fast forward to where you want to watch. It’s 24-7 poker programming available anywhere.