Twitch is a live video streaming platform which has taken the poker world by storm. With playthroughs of poker sessions with narration compatibility, it can revolutionise the way poker is learnt. The world over poker players are now streaming their poker grinds on Twitch and narrating how and what they did alongside. It is not only a mode of dispelling information to other poker players who are viewers but also for asking feedback on their game play.
While international players are now using it for varying purposes, Twitch seems to have caught on with the Indian audience as well. Arsh Grover, bigggtymer for the poker community had a streaming of his poker session on Sunday, 15th March 2015 which rose so much in popularity that it was ranking #1 on Twitch for Poker. It perhaps was one of the first such streamings and a good example for others to follow.
OPN caught up with Arsh to understand the Twitch bug and how he thinks it can help.
Q1 – Twitch seems to have taken the poker world by storm but for India it is a first? Do you think this is the first twitch streaming in India?
Ans- Twitch is definitely taking the poker world by storm. No one had imagined it would become such a huge thing when Jcarver was the only person who streamed poker 18-20 months ago. Twitch Poker has got a lot of attention the past couple of months and the fact that Jcarver got signed up by pokerstars is a pretty big deal. Yes, I’m pretty confident this was the first twitch poker stream from India.
Q2 Why did you think of twitch streaming? How do you think this is useful, both to you and the users?
Ans- I think twitch streaming is a really good platform for people to learn from other players, learn different playstyles all free of cost. I’ve been watching twitch for a couple of months now and I’m pretty confident that It has helped my game a ton. Broadcasters get to interact with people and have some fun while grinding which I feel is not that bad.
Q4 How do you plan a twitch streaming? What is the kind of time delay do you keep in streaming?
Ans- When you are streaming “Poker” on twitch and not a game like Call of Duty you need to take into account that players who you are playing with can see your hole cards if they are watching your stream. To avoid that streamers need to keep atleast a 4-5 Minute Delay on their stream which goes upto even 10-12 Minutes if your streaming something like the Super Tuesday as Timebanks for your opponents are longer. I didn’t have any time delay on my stream as this was my first trial stream and (OBS) Open Broadcast Software doesn’t have a time delay option for the Macintosh version. As I grind on my IMac I’ll have to figure a way around it. When I wen’t deep in any tourney I just decided to hide my whole cards for that specific tourney to not get sniped.
Q5 How was the Sunday million streaming? Did you plan it specifically for the big 9th anniv one?
Ans-It was a pretty good stream, I didn’t stream the Sunday Million but I played a few other Sunday Major’s and some Biggers/Hotters on the stream. Since my stream is not perfectly setup yet, I wanted to focus on the Sunday Million and I decided to turn it off.
Q6 Do you plan to continue using twitch? Do you think it’s about to revolutionise poker learning?
Ans- Yes, I do enjoy twitching and watching other streams and have been in this small community for a while. I think it’s pretty good for people to learn and it is also attracting new people who don’t know much about poker. They get attracted by the game when they see players winning thousands of $$ online and I think twitch might bring the next poker mini boom.
Q7 How do manage to concentrate on your play while narrating on twitch? Also do you multi table while streaming?
Ans- I think it doesn’t take much of your concentration away if your used to playing 16-20 tables, twitching and playing 8-12 tables isn’t much of a hassle.
Q8 Were you able to check your viewers demographics? What were the numbers? How many were from India and how many from other countries?
Ans- I don’t think there is an option to check the viewers demographics on twitch but If I had to take a guess, 10-15% viewers were from India.