[schwza]

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Nate,

A couple of days ago you said you would be surprised if you were still playing online poker in a year. Has your opinion really changed that much given what we're able to gather from today's announcements?

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I've said this to a couple of people offline, but there are basically three phases here.

1) Next 4-6 weeks: complete chaos as players read and react to the moves and move money around to new sites. It may be hard for the games to reach "critical mass", especially the mid-high LHE games that I prefer. There may be some odd, tilty, expolitable game textures here and there, but generally things will be rough. I do expect some crazy bonus offers, though.

2) 6 weeks-9 months. Things settle down as traffic gravitates to new market leaders. I think FullTilt will pretty clearly be one of these, as will PokerStars if they remain in the game. In my opinion the games will be tougher and earn rates per hour will be somewhere between 40-80% of what they would ordinarily be for expert players.

3. 9 months+. Depends on three things: (1) what happens with the banking regulations; (2) the extent of enforcement actions by the Department of Justice; (3) the willingness/ability of poker sites to advertise. I think there are scenarios in which the games are at full strength in 12-18 months and scenarios in which they're almost unplayable.

As for me personally, I don't know what I'll do, but I'll probably do what the rest of you do.

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this is the most optimistic and trustworthy analysis i've seen. if i could keep making 40-80% of what i'm making now and i wouldn't have to move to belize that'd be great.