A recent write-up on VIC describes Amaya – the new owner of PokerStars – as a high-quality and high-growth business. As a former professional poker player I have literally played millions of hands at PokerStars and I know firsthand how awesome they are compared to the competition. They have the best software, the best customer support and perhaps most important: they are reliable. Because of that (and being “flexible” in interpreting US laws) they have grown to be the biggest site, and I think it is unlikely that they will lose this position since running an online poker site is a business with strong networking effects and economies of scale.
As a poker player you want to play on the site where you can find the widest variety of games running at any time of the day. At the same time attracting new recreational players is one of the biggest expenses that new (and existing) sites incur, but as the biggest site you can spread your advertising costs over a larger number of customers. So I’m agreeing with a large part of the thesis that the author of the write-up summarizes as follows:
In what amounted to a back-door IPO for the dominant global player in online poker, The Rational Group—owner of PokerStars and FullTilt Poker—was acquired (closed August 1st, 2014) by Amaya, a B2B gaming solutions provider one-tenth its size. While the headline EBITDA multiple appears reasonable given online gaming comps, the true proforma profitability of the business is not widely understood: minimal taxes and CapEx means that virtually all of the EBITDA not consumed by interest becomes free cash flow. Given this, Amaya’s current $28 share price implies a 13x multiple on our estimates of 2015E FCF, which we view as very cheap for a company that dominates its global market (>60% of online cash poker games) and has been growing rapidly (PF 20% 3-yr revenue CAGR & PF 42% 3-year EBITDA CAGR). Moreover, we expect strong FCF growth to continue over the next several years through: (1) the addition of online casino games and sports betting to its poker brands; (2) organic growth of their existing offerings in this rapidly growing market; (3) balance-sheet deleveraging; and (4) expansion of their online poker brands into the US.
At the same time I also think that this thesis is horribly flawed, and the reason is simple: I don’t think online poker is a market with healthy long-term growth prospects. The question that the author fails to address is: what will happen to the business when the most popular poker variants are solved by the computer? This is not a question of if, but a question of when and there is a reason that people don’t play chess or backgammon online for money.
Earlier this year scientist announced that they have solved heads-up limit hold ’em. The most played poker variants are a lot more complex than that game, but years ago it was reasonable popular. While it wasn’t officially solved until this year no-one was playing it for significant amounts of money anymore because you would risk getting your ass kicked by someone who would be getting strategy advice from the computer. While no-limit – the most popular poker variant – is a lot harder than limit the computer is learning fast. PokerSnowie is a commercially available program that is already pretty capable and better than most humans.
I think there is a reasonable high probability that within five or ten years computer-assisted players will be too good and too widespread and that as a result PokerStars’ main business will collapse. Because of that risk I think it is foolish to pay a high multiple for the company.
Disclosure
No position in Amaya
That’s an interesting view that I hadn’t really considered relating to the growth of online poker. I had dismissed it as science fiction given the computing power necessary.
The Economist wrote this up a few weeks back:
“Whether computers will ever be able to solve other forms of poker remains doubtful. Merely removing the betting restrictions on HULHE, for instance, boosts the range of possibilities to 6.38×10^161, a figure so mind-bogglingly big that it far exceeds the number of subatomic particles in the observable universe. No amount of improvement in computer hardware will ever make such a problem tractable. The only hope is an enormous, and unlikely, conceptual breakthrough in how to attack the question.
There are, of course, poker-playing programs out there already that play more complicated versions of the game than HULHE. The best are better than most humans. But they, like chess-playing programs, do not actually solve the game in a mathematically rigorous sense. They just process more data that a human brain can cope with, and thus arrive at a better answer than most such brains can manage.”
I shouldn’t have written solved since it might indeed be that the game will never be formally solved, what I meant was that computers will become better than the best human players (like Chess). Becoming better than the best humans is a lot easier than solving the game.
What’s your view on poker in general? Don’t you think it is in secular decline? Would this be a good investment without the rise of AI(-assisted) players?
It’s too expensive for my tastes anyway.
Yes, a lot of PokerStars growth has been from taking market share from other players. But with >60% market share right now that opportunity is obviously getting smaller, and the total number of online poker players has been declining: see also the graph in this post: http://alphavulture.com/2013/02/23/austrian-economics-the-fed-created-the-poker-bubble/
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Yeah games are getting worse every year, and the number of fish are declining. Good players tend to not play each other too much, so that means fewer rake.
Also there was a pokerbot on the ipoker network that did like 2-3bb/100 over a huge sample with 6max NL?
Im hopeful that China will fuel another boom with a lot of easy money. But i dont like the odds of that.
Missed the story about the bot on the ipoker network. What stakes did it beat?
up to 5/10 NL.