[bobbyi]

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I don't think no limit games will "dry up" in due time; haven't they been around since the 70s or earlier?

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No, not really. About 5 years ago, when I was in college and learning to play, I would go down to Foxwoods very often. There were never any NL games. Out of the dozens of times I went there, maybe two or three times they got a 5/5 pot limit game (there was no such thing as a "capped buyin" and average stack size would be several thousand dollars). The majority of the poker room (and all the big games) was limit stud and the rest was limit holdem and there was usually one table of limit omaha/8. Sometimes there would be a big mixed game (e.g., 300/600 HOSE).

I played in Atlantic City and Vegas while in college and didn't see any NL. When I played in clubs in New York, there was again a 5/5 PL, but no NL. Really, you only saw NL in tournaments (and side games around big tournaments, I think) and there were a very small number of other games scattered around the US. When I started playing online, there was no NL (or tournaments) at all and really no demand for it because those were such niche games.

This was after Rounders came out, so it is not that. That movie did fuel a ton of interest in poker, but everyone coming in would play limit. It wasn't until the WPT stuff and the rise of capped buyin NL games (I think before this there was one game for a while at Lucky Chances, but that was the only one I know of in the US) that you started seeing people play NL (again, this is not counting tournaments).