[Sciolist]

[ QUOTE ]
Also, I think that top chess players are better at chess than basically anyone is at anything, and I don't think poker will be that way any time soon.

[/ QUOTE ]
I agree with this completely too. If you look at the effort and complexity of thought required to be at the top of chess, or perhaps something like maths (or any science), it's so far from what we do right now that it doesn't even bear comparison.

However, it's highly unlikely that there will be (m)any more huge improvements of play in poker, it'll probably just be a series of small adjustments. I say this because there are already a large number of smart people working on the game and we're fairly close to solving a few forms: Think ICM, think headsup limit. Adding things in that we don't already - wider use of sophisticated analysis, better fitness, better directed learning - I don't think they'll shift the poker landscape all that far.

Thus everyone will get closer and closer in skill level and the rake will become a bigger and bigger factor. Who cares if I'm 1% better than you if neither of us can beat the rake any more? Whoever is amongst the best in five years will be better than whoever is best now, but if they came back to our games today they'd not win more than 10 or 20% more than people do today.

Even now, rake is typically about 5ptbb/100 at SSNL, which is the same as the good win rates. I think that the gap between the best players and the new players will become big enough that the new players won't come in to the games fast enough to stop them becoming too tough to beat.