If Ninja Can Do 1/100th For Poker That He Did For Video Games We Are In For A Huge Boom

^^^ 1 play = 1 sick kid gets medicine.

Ninja is probably the most responsible person for the "video game boom". Once he started gaining mainstream success from streaming Fortnite, the floodgates opened. Drake started playing with Ninja, the Fortnite dances were everywhere, and Ninja had billboards in Times Square. All from playing god dang video games. 

But now it appears Ninja is turning his attention to a new venture...Poker.

This is huge. The more Ninja plays poker, tweets about poker, streams poker, the better it is for all of us. Much like when Chris Moneymaker burst onto the scene 2 decades ago and started what is called "the poker boom", Ninja has the power to do the same. He is a mega-influencer: he says jump and his legions of fans as how high and where they can give their money while jumping. And right now he is tweeting more about poker than any other person with 6.7 million Twitter followers ever has.

Of course there is one MAJOR difference between now and the Moneymaker era- online poker is still, somehow, largely unavailable in the United States. It is regulated in only 5 states- NJ, Nevada, Delaware, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. And the player pools in each state don't even all play against each other, though that seems to be changing.

Regardless of all the hurdles, Ninja getting involved in the poker world is still huge for the game. Getting younger folks interested in poker the same way we got interested in it back in 2013 helps replenish the ecosystem and get new blood and money into the game. Some will play and hate it, others, especially coming from the video game world, will thrive. It's an absolute shame they can't log in to PokerStars or w/e like we did back in the day and grind up a bankroll, but live poker still exists and is thriving.

The WSOP kicks off in less than a week. I'm super stoked, even though I'm not going out til the end of June. I love following the WSOP and seeing old and new friends make runs for life changing money. On this week's episode of the podcast me and Mintzy go over some of our WSOP plans, as well as answer some DMs, Jake's wedding review, and more.

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