I know why there are so few long-term winners at poker

[sweetjazz]

[ QUOTE ]
What's this business about the games getting tougher?

It's bunk, and I'll explain why.

Fish can learn odds. Fish can learn TAG. Fish can learn to lay down hands. Fish can learn all of these wonderful things.
Winning players can learn to adjust and exploit said fish.

That is why the games will never really get tougher for the true winner, they will simply require adjustment.

This is the reason why only %5 of players are lifetime winners.

[/ QUOTE ]

There's some truth to this, but you are also ignoring something obvious. When a fish makes fewer mistakes, there is less money to take from him. Yes, most players when they first learn to play tight before the flop, for example, still make a lot of mistakes and can be profitable for a good player to play against. But they are much less profitable when they were making the same postflop mistakes with a much worse range of starting hands.

HE is a hard game to master, but it's actually pretty easy to play so that others can't beat for much more than the rake. So they still profit off of you, but with a variance that is so high that making a living off this improved fish is no longer feasible. And it's a little tougher but not exactly requiring an IQ of 120 to play so that others can't beat you for more than the rake at all.

That said, failure to adjust and adapt does lead to the downfall of people who might otherwise have the potential to be lifetime winners.