Despite what many people think, video game competitions are not new. They are not a product of the 2000s when Internet access became widespread around the globe. The history of this sphere dates back to 1972, when students at Stanford University were invited to partake in a tournament on Spacewar, which was developed ten years prior, written on a DEC PDP-1 minicomputer at MIT. Two years before this event, a group of gamblers organized a competition at the Binion’s Horseshoe at different types of poker variations called the World Series of Poker, more famously referred to under its acronym, the WSOP. It is now a global phenomenon, with its annual Main Event drawing over ten thousand competitors to Nevada’s most populous city.
Thus, eSports and high-stakes legal competitive poker were born around the same time. On the surface, they seem to inhabit different realms, as card gambling primarily happens at casino tables and involves steely-eyed stares of players who try to peer into each other’s souls. In contrast, eSports gaming nowadays occurs in arenas on stages, where massive screens display the in-game action, the reflexes, and intricate strategies of competitors. These days, cards too can get enjoyed in front of a computer, via online poker tournaments, ones that draw millions of participants and spectators.
That said, events from contests like the World Series of Poker, the World Poker Tour, or the European Poker Tour, where two players are pitted against each other in a public setting, best mimic what goes on in premium eSports tournaments. Below, we explore the similarities between these two domains.
Contest Structure & Skill-Based Gameplay
Many are unfamiliar with the world’s most famous card game and may think it is skill-based. It gets offered at casinos, so does that not mean this game is one where chance has the final say? No. While luck plays a factor in poker outcomes, the game requires expertise for continuous success, and the law recognizes this, which is why different legal standards apply to poker in the US and other countries, and different ones apply to casino gaming. For example, California is a US state with multiple poker rooms, but it has no gaming legislation and no commercial casinos.
Accordingly, poker is skill-based, where strategic thinking is paramount. Its competitions share a core foundation with eSports ones. They have structured formats that follow a clear progression. Players buy in, compete through escalating blinds, and aim to outlast opponents to reach the final table. The formats can differ from tournament to tournament, but for the most part, they are as described. In eSports, events like the Dota 2 International, one of the sphere’s most attention-grabbing, feature qualifiers, group stages, and knockout rounds, culminating in a grand final.
In both arenas, consistency and adaptability are key, and they have extraordinarily high skill ceilings, as poker players and gamers spend years honing their ability to reach the top, which they can only get to if they read opponents, calculate odds, and manage risk.
Mental Resilience & Mind Games
Focus is critical in almost any endeavor, but it is of the utmost importance in playing video games competitively and in poker, as competitors in these two worlds strive to outthink their opponents in high-stakes environments. Managing stress is also an indispensable skill in eSports and poker.
Psychological warfare is quite overt in card gambling, as players use tells, table talk, and bet sizing to manipulate. Since playing video games in competition is not a face-to-face endeavor, less psychology is involved. Nonetheless, some games allow this, especially strategy ones, as in these, competitors can feign tactics to bait opponents into overcommitting.
Mental resilience is equally critical in both. Poker tournaments can last days, with sessions stretching over many hours, and players face constant variance. An inability to stay emotionally stable can be even a top player’s downfall, regardless of how good he actually is. Esports players face similar challenges in multi-day tournaments. That is why top teams employ sports psychologists, who do their best to help players cope with pressure.
Global Reach & Spectator Appeal
Poker is not considered an activity that draws people in to view it, as its prime allure is the potential to win money in games. Thus, logic dictates that people would not get overly excited about seeing someone else take home pots worth thousands, if not millions. Yet, no matter how counterintuitive this is, for some reason, they do, and in the 2000s, amidst the poker boom, around 615,000 people tuned into ESPN to watch the WSOP Main Event on average.
Going by TwitchMetrics, the Internet’s most famed streaming platform is home to many poker content creators, like Daniel Petertsen, who rake in over one hundred thousand hours watched per month easily. TritonPoker, a high-stakes set of tournaments, has over one hundred thousand Twitch followers and several thousand viewers per event.
As with poker, one would think people would not get so excited to observe others play video games, but nothing could be further from the truth. In 2024, Riot Games reported that the Legends World Championship that took place that year peaked at over 18 million concurrent viewers. It seems both realms do a great job of presenting themselves as spectacles, and their high-stakes nature pulls people in.