[Al_Capone_Junior]

There will always be exploitable action in cardrooms, I agree. There will probably always be some action in no limit cash games, but this specific niche is much more limited than others. I think that a certain critical point will eventually be reached where the the balance between loose money and the ever increasing rake will make the games unbeatable. This will happen faster in areas with fewer incoming new players.

I have seen small no limit games where I don't believe any of the players could beat the rake. Of course if I'm playing in one of these, I'm outta there in short order.

Companies like harrahs, where greed is never enough, exacerbate the problem. They will take a good room that's making millions every year, showing a tremendous profit far beyond their costs, and jack up the rake even more. No matter that the rest of vegas (or the world) charges less, they still want more. No matter that they drive customers into other rooms, they're content to screw the ones they have left for the extra. Since they will have fewer games for the same overall profit, some idiot will note that they saved 0.2% in minimum wage labor costs and declare this to be a good thing. There is no spreadsheet showing the peripheral spending of poker players, so the significant extra money they're sending directly to the competition will never be missed.

Excessively high rake will discourage all players sooner, not just no limit. That extra buck will take another buy-in off the table every few hours, thus the game will break sooner. I don't know why people are so eager to take a perfectly good, highly profitable business and run their own customers into the ground. The fact is that poker is a low risk, high profit business, but the amount of money that can be made from poker is limited. You just can't take a room that's making millions and make billions, it's impossible. My guess is that this fact has never occurred to the upper management morons who are doing everything they can to ruin poker.

As far as no limit cash games go, it won't bother me very much at all when something else becomes more popular. I find no limit boring. My strengths are not fully utilized like they are in a good horse game. Plus it just gets old when you've got nothing but lima beans for breakfast, lunch, and dinner 24/7/365.

Al