A Tale of Two Years …
There’s been no year like 2020 in recent memory. The past 5 decades have seen numerous disasters, coups, wars, and famines, but nothing prepared the world for the Covid-19 pandemic. The word “unprecedented” is over used in modern parlance, but unless you are over 100 years old, 2020 is as “unprecedented” as they come.
For someone in the poker industry, it’s been a ride. Charles Dickens started “A Tale of Two Cities” with “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” and there may be no better quote for the way 2020 went for poker people. On the one hand, when live poker ground to a halt in March, industry people from players, through dealers and floor staff, to live reporters and results databases saw large chunks of their income disappear. On the other hand, the online poker game was as juicy as it’s ever been, at least since the original poker boom.
I’m a small player in the industry in a variety of ways. I do live/online reporting for PokerNews, I stream Unibet tournaments on Twitch as MotherShip Poker, and I do social media work for poker brands, but I’m mostly a niche player no matter which area you focus on.
2020 has been a complete mixed bag. I covered my last live tournament in late Feb, and played my last live event in early March. Since then, there’s been nothing but online poker in my life, but that hasn’t been wholly negative.
In 2019, a significant portion of my income came from live reporting. I reported on tournaments in Winnipeg, Calgary, and Saskatoon, and in early 2020, I was looking forward to a big year with several high profile tournaments on my schedule.
I was in Heathrow Airport on March 10th waiting for my flight back to Canada after spending a week in Dublin covering the Unibet Open, and another week making my way to London for the UK Tour event the following weekend, when I saw the UK talking about locking down. To be honest, I thought it was an over-reaction, but it was beginning to be clear that this was a “game-changing” spot.
I got home to Canada after being mildly amused by the woman sitting next to me on the flight wiping everything down with alcohol wipes and got through the airport easily. I was subject to almost no screening, and was in my car on the way home very quickly.
It wasn’t until I looked on the Alberta government website a few days after I returned that I learned the flight I was on had exposure for all seats. I did all the proper isolation procedures and never developed symptoms, but it was a pretty clear indication to me that the problem was more serious than I originally thought.
Almost immediately, the live poker scene closed down. My sponsor, Unibet, was the first to move their marquee live series, the Unibet Open, online, but every other online operator soon followed suit, moving big live series to the online felt. For industry people who relied on the live game for their income, it was a devastating blow.
But online players saw a boon in many cases. Field sizes, and prize pools increased as people who had nothing else to do jumped onto the virtual felt. That meant many online grinders had great years even while their live compatriots were suffering.
For myself, straddling the two worlds was a strange experience. On the one hand, the loss of live events seriously impacted my ability to work in 2020. On the other hand, the increased volume online added both online reporting as more live events moved online, as well as a solid ROI for my own play.
I’m sure 2020 has been harder for many others than it has been for me. I am lucky to be in a position to play and stream online poker, and I‘ve been lucky to be able to make a living from live reporting, But 2020 has been a challenge for most everyone involved in poker.
For me, the online streets in 2020 were superb. When I began my stream in late 2018, my initial goal was to freeroll a bankroll from zero and satellite into a Unibet Open event. I didn’t make it as a player, but as noted above, I did manage to get to Unibet Open Dublin as a reporter. When 2020 began, I was playing a bankroll of about €300, and my goal was to end 2020 with €1000 in my bankroll.
I hit that €1000 goal in late September, and kept on going, finishing 2020 with just over €1400, and a maximum bankroll of €1491. Average buy-ins went from about €1.50 at the start of 2020 to over €6 by the end, and my ROI over the year comes in at just under 25% with €4,459.85 spent on poker in 2020 and €5,571.34 won.
I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to stream poker, and that was especially true in 2020. In a year when many people struggled to adapt to lock downs and restricted social engagements, Twitch streamers like myself had a built in community to fall back on for support and camaraderie. And, of course, we were already “working from home.”
I’m looking forward to an equally amazing 2021. My goals for the coming year are mostly related to my stream. I’d like to finish 2021 with a bankroll of at least €5000, which should be doable if I can maintain a similar ROI to 2020.
I’d also like to see an increase in my Twitch viewership. In January of 2020, I was streaming to an average of 11 viewers, but by December, that was up to an average of 17. By the end of 2021, I’d like to see that number hit at least 25.
I’ll also be looking to monetize my stream a bit more in 2021, out of necessity more than desire. To date, the stream has largely been a labour of love with little monetary return to me outside of my poker winnings, which have all been rolled back into playing bigger games. But with revenue streams from live poker and other sources drying up during a very strange 2020, the time I spend working on the stream will need to start contributing to my income.
In order to get a start on that, I’m rolling out my TipJar for the start of 2021. My technomage and Chief Engineer on the MotherShip, Moofee, has put together a nice, simple interface to allow donations directly to me in Canadian dollars at https://tipjar.cool/@elron66/. Additionally, subscriptions to my channel at twitch.tv/elron66 are always appreciated.
The look of the MotherShip is also destined to change early in 2021. I’ve been working on a new layout with new graphics and a custom animation to start my stream. Along with the new look, I’ll be putting together some MotherShip merchandise that will be available to purchase, and I’ll be giving away merch with contests on stream, as well as a reward for subscriptions and donations.
2020 has been a challenging year for the entire world, and I’ve been luckier than many to still have some work and a community of wonderful people on Twitch to help me through it. 2021 still has many challenges in store for us, but there’s hope that by the end of the year, some things may have returned to “normal”. Here’s hoping your 2021 is as good as it can be!