[shockdaworld]

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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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Nate, Your posts have been a great help to everyone and I appreciate all the work you've done. You will not spend a dollar of your newly withdrawn party money if we happen to be in the same area at any time in the near future.

I disagree with these predictions though, and was wondering if you could elaborate on them any further. I would like to get into further detail, however I have been trying to 'cope' with all the recent developments and am going to the bar. Basically I don't believe enough 'recreational players' will be involved in the short term, within the next 6 months say. Not enough recreational players in comparison to good players anyways.