I don’t need to tell the readers of this magazine that when you’re deep into the poker world, you are going to hear, and use, the term “poker community” a lot. It is very common in poker forum parlance. We often express positions or ideas in terms of what effect we think they will have on “the poker community.”

I think the worst you can say about this term is that it sometimes comes off as a little too generic or all-inclusive. After all, the poker community is very diverse. But it’s also not an inaccurate term to use. The poker community that we all consider ourselves part of does behave like a community. We get together and talk about poker. We share stories and opinions. We relate to one another. In other words, our affinity for poker goes beyond merely playing it.

Two Plus Two is a core component of today’s poker community. In fact, when I think “poker community,” I usually think of Two Plus Two as if they’re synonymous. Other highly-trafficked forums, like PokerStrategy, are also important elements that deserve mention.

However, the poker community is just one segment of the broader poker public in America and in the rest of the world. This is an important distinction to make, and the community generally realizes this. We often acknowledge that there are poker-playing folk out there who are outside of our cultural herd, but we don’t always have a quick term to describe them (except occasionally “fish,” which I think is crude and unfair). Well, I think the poker public is a good term for it.

I like public versus community because I think “public” fittingly describes a large group of consumers without carrying the connotation of solidarity or collective self-awareness that community does.

I used to prefer the term poker-playing public, but I ended up dropping the playing because I thought it was too specific, and shut out what might be a large segment of people who don’t habitually play poker for whatever reason (can’t afford it, can’t find a game, don’t think they’re good enough, etc.) but still enjoy consuming poker in some form – say, watching it on TV.

The poker public therefore encompasses both poker players and non-poker-playing poker fans as well.

It may seem like I’m being nitty, but this stuff matters on a macro level when evaluating the poker economy and the poker industry. Since the poker public is probably much larger than the poker community, it is important that the poker public’s influence in shaping the culture and the business of poker at large be recognized and studied by anyone who has an interest.

Often times, the poker community is derisive or critical of the poker public. See for example the famous “lol Zynga” thread on Two Plus Two. I won’t deny that it’s hard not to find some of those comments amusing when you have an above average understanding of poker strategy. But still, it comes off as very elitist, and the poker community acts that way sometimes.

I recently saw the poker community be more respectful to the poker public over the minor controversy surrounding the name Ultimate Poker. Many people within the poker community seem genuinely appalled that the Fertitta-run online poker newcomer would name itself anything “Ultimate.” After all, doesn’t Ultimate Poker sound just like Ultimate Bet, the site that cheated us all?

The other side of this argument points out, correctly I believe, that most players outside of the poker community, are not as familiar with the scandals that Ultimate Bet was marred by, and therefore they will not be as put off by the sound of Ultimate Poker. Being annoyed by the name choice is a poker community problem. The poker public doesn’t care.

Dividing poker players into community and public is extremely important if you work in the online poker space, for example. I just came from an online gaming conference in San Francisco called GiGse (Global iGaming Summit & Expo). There are many such conferences year round where a bunch of people in the gambling industry get together and, as you would expect from any commercial trade show, try to figure out how to best monetize customers.

In the case of online poker, most of the time, these companies are valuing issues pertaining to the poker public more than they are valuing issues affecting the poker community. This is because the poker community is typically viewed as the better skilled poker playing contingent that beats fish off rooms and is basically pretty unwelcome because of it. Online poker rooms, it is said, would much rather listen to the needs of the recreational poker public.

I tried to interrupt this trend earlier this year, or at least introduce an alternative, when I assembled a panel of professional poker players to speak at the 2013 iGaming North America (iGNA) conference in Las Vegas, for a session specifically centered on the educated poker player’s point of view on the game and on the industry. My belief is that nobody knows online poker better than the players. When it’s not being dismissed as a hotbed of trolls, a forum like Two Plus Two is actually an enormously rich reservoir of highly sophisticated online poker insight. Any company that is aiming to develop an online poker product nowadays neglects the poker community’s precious perspective at its own risk.

While the poker players’ panel at iGNA was appreciated by many, some believed that the pros’ view was overrepresented, and that I had failed to sufficiently include the voice of the recreational player. Here we saw a manifestation of the “regs vs. recs” player model debate that pervades many iGaming industry circles.

While the poker ecology issues are sometimes a little complex for me to discuss, I don’t believe that the interests of the poker community must always be contradictory to those of the poker public, although that is occasionally the case. In addition, regular or skilled poker players should not be disqualified from opining on what they think makes a good, sustainable game. Quite the contrary, their experiences as gamers are unequaled, and they almost always start as recreational.

Conversely, it would be nice to see the educated poker community take better steps to respect the poker public, considering the well-being of the industry as a whole rests on as many players as possible continuing to play the game and having a good time doing it.

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