After Steve O’Dwyer played as a guest in a University society game (and won), we ask why hasn’t more been done to promote the game to students?
At the end of last month, Steve O’Dwyer went straight from winning $1.1 million at the Triton in Monte Carlo to winning €100 as a special guest at a Dublin City University Poker Society.
His attendance (as one of the biggest winners in poker) was a tremendous gesture. Even better he donated his winnings back to the society.
This was not the first time he played a University game, he came 5th in a Galway University tournament last month also.
He is one of the players who has shyed away from the limelight despite his remarkable resume. Despite that, gestures like these make him, for me, one of the great ambassadors of the game. He clearly did this because he loved the game and he was a nice guy, and this to me is worth more than many of the ‘influencer’ type ambassadors who command a lot of attention, without perhaps much substance.
An underserved market
Another reason why I love this gesture from O’Dwyer is because I believe that the poker industry has chronically ignored two markets – pub poker and student poker.
These are two markets with lots of numbers, both of which have perhaps been ignored because neither of them has huge sums to spend on poker.
Student poker, however, won’t always be that way. Students have very little money to spend on poker now, but when they hit the world of work in theory they should earn more than those who didn’t go to University. I appreciate the reality of life is that is not always the case for a lot of students.
We should do more to promote University poker societies. These are very intelligent enthusiastic minds we want in the game. They don’t have the money right now to become VIPs (that’s what micro stakes are for) but they do have the time to dedicate to the game.
The boom years were dominated by college students who discovered the game when sign up bonuses were generous and huge sums could be made. We can never replicate those days, but online poker rooms should take the long view and see them as an investment for the future.
Did you play poker as part of a student society? Let us know in the comments: