The Future of Poker... Dec 2006 onwards

[bigbb33]

Hi guys: long post, but I'd appreciate it if you would read and respond to it.

edit: Please please answer honestly, I know that we are all biased towards poker continuing to grow/laws being repealed and and the games getting softer or even staying the same, but I want the cold hard facts.

I hope this post is in the right forum - it has to do with the future of poker, which is highly influenced by legislation, so I think it is. If it isn't, hopefully a mod can move it to a forum where it will receive better responses.

My question is this: What is the future of poker as a potential for earnings, say in the next year? What about 2-3 years, or 5 years?

What decides 'potential for earnings' is two things: one, being able to play (legality) and two, difficulty of the games relative to the stakes. I live in Canada, so I'm pretty sure it will be legal to play online for the next 5 years at least (please correct me if I'm wrong on that), but what about the difficulty of the games?

In a year from now, what do you people expect the difficulty of the 1/2 NL games to be, relative to today? What about in 3 years? What about for 2/4 and 3/6?

There are of course many factors that affect the difficulty of the games, but the largest is the amount of people playing - more people, more available money, and the less skilled on average the players will be. I guess the US legislation controls this a lot, so is it likely to be repealed in some way that allows the US casual players to return, and will they? What sort of timetable is reasonable to expect for a repeal of the legislation? Or is poker just a fad in which the casual players and the TV shows will disappear or be greatly reduced (for a lack of interest) in the next few years? This greatly scares me, and if you could explain why you think so or don't think poker is a fad, please respond.

To get down to the reasons I ask this, I'm interested in playing poker as a job (I'm a student, so it would be to pay for tuition/fun stuff, not as a career..yet). This isn't a thread about 'can I do it' or whatever: Let's just assume that today I can beat 1/2NL. And the earnings that I receive from beating this stake at say 5 bb/100 are enough for me -> I'm just worried about the future potential of the game.

Whether or not I can actually beat 1/2 or whatever is irrelevant to this thread -> assume I can. It will take me some effort to get there (because I'm not at that level now), so the entire reason for this post comes up. I'm willing to invest energy/studying into achieving this level, but I just want to make sure that the earnings I receive from it won't recede greatly in the future.

So guys, what do you expect the difficulty of the games (say 1/2 to 3/6) to be be like (compared to today) in a year from now, or 3 years, or 5 years from now?

Thanks a lot, I know it was a long post,
bigbb33

[ChexNFX]

Not to be a dick, because you obviously spent some time on your post, but...how the hell can any of us know what poker will be like in 1/3/5 years?! We don't even know whats going to be finalized with this piece of [censored] legislation in the coming months.

[Sniper]

The quick and dirty answer is that there are now several major sites where only non-US customers can play. Go play on Party, and you won't have to worry about what happens to the US customers.

As for difficulty, you should expect that over time, your average opponent will increase in skill.