Jason Somerville Shares His Thoughts On Poker In 2016

Jason Somerville has turned into one of the most popular poker players in the world today even though he has won just over $3.5 million in career prize money and is ranked 1,661 on the Global Poker Index.

Somerville has built a reputation for himself in the industry during the last 24 months for live streaming a number of his games and teaching the audience of how he starts with $50 and goes about making more than $10,000 by playing poker.

Somerville spends a lot of time playing online poker and has so far made more than $2 million.

He is currently a member of Team PokerStars and was once a part of the Ultimate Poker ambassador team. Somerville has a huge following on Twitch and has created a record for having the most number of viewers during a live streaming session.

The 28 year old New York poker pro recently shared his thoughts on the poker industry going into 2016 and what he expected the from the industry. He started with PokerStars and the controversy that is currently surrounding its VIP program which many poker players feel is completely unfair.

Somerville said he heard both sides of the argument and believes the players have a fair argument as the terms of the two year Supernova Elite plan was changed in the middle and believes that those points must be considered. He however made it clear that he is only an ambassador for PokerStars and has no influence in making any changes to those policies.

The poker pro stated that Twitch and other live streaming programs are going to gain a lot more momentum in 2016. In a statement, Somerville said

We’re getting pretty ridiculously huge audiences. 27,000 people watched the Stud Hi/Lo Final Table back in September. We had 37,000 people concurrently watching the $700 No Limit Final Table that I made during WCOOP in September. We’re seeing massive audiences that haven’t existed outside the top echelon of TV

He also stated that the push to legalize online poker in 2016 could face an uphill task as the Presidential Elections are scheduled for 2016 and online poker would take a backseat especially as RAWA has once again started to make the headlines. Somerville believes that states like California, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts might take a leaf out of New Jersey’s online poker regulations and speed up their process. Somerville stated that while the online poker market in New Jersey has slowed down, the regulation of the online poker industry has been very successful.