This.

In the last 5 years, new poker rooms have popped up in major metro locals.

MD/DC

Boston/New England

More charity and bar leagues.

Existing hot spots like Socal, Bay area, Vegas, NewOrleans/Biloxi seem to be about the same.

I was surprised to see Tulalip seems to have lost it's poker mojo, but not sure what to make of that situation.

IMO, PLO has killed or is killing the 5/5NL and up games.

The smaller games seem fine.

This too. In my medium sized economy area, If my goal was to play the biggest game offered every night, I would be learning PLO. The big action rich whales have taken to this game. It doesnt always run, but when it does, its the biggest game in town.

You will also want to play the bigger tournaments when you can. Live tournies are one area that continued to grow even post boom.

I don't think there will ever be another boom. 15 years ago the average skill level was so incredibly low, it was much easier for a beginner to get his foot in the door and start winning often enough to make themselves believe they have a clue than it is today. Plus the games have undoubtedly become more boring, with far less action in general, so that doesn't help either when it comes to enticing the rookies to keep playing this fun new game they just discovered.

+1 to the degens going to PLO.

I think cash NLHE is slowly dying but will never go away for good. Also not mentioned yet is the wannabe baller hoodie kids intimidating and berating new players, they have no idea how bad it is for the game. For me it got to the point where I was berated or disrespected half the time I went to the casino. As a potential drunk idiot fish at the table it isn't welcoming. I hardly ever play live anymore, it isn't fun. I think that's the natural order of things, when resources get scarce and everyone's winrate keeps going down people get snappy and poker becomes less fun. PLO is a lot more fun imo.

Without the equivalent of a Moneymaker or boom in online poker to inject new fish, it stands to reason that the earnings distribution of poker players will settle to resemble that of musicians or artists: many making a subsistence wage or less (doing it for love of the game), a few careerists, and fewer still who are rock stars.

Unfortunately plenty of the old guard are clueless as well. Just recently saw a thread where a guy justified slow rolling the nuts in a llsnl hand to induce tilt with the justification of "in 20+ years I've never seen anyone rack up because they got their feelings hurt". It's unreal how oblivious some people who take money out of games are to the big picture and it's not just the 23 year olds in hoodies. The 45 year old pro 1/3'er is prob worse than the hoodie crowd imo.

Summed up pretty well. Despite the games being still relatively soft from 1/2(1/3) - 2/5, rec players aren't moving up the stakes throughout the years in accordance to inflation.

The only way for cash pros to really survive in the very long term is to continually climb the stakes, which is clearly not ideal in a scenario when the recs are sedentary at the stakes they've always played at.

I don't think poker would become any less of a side-gig in the near or late future. Plenty of fish from 1/3-2/5 to continue to be profitable at a decent rate.

There has been more and more actions across the states to legalize online poker. Additionally, for online pros today, most of them exploit extremely soft private clubs in notably China or Australia. This is the reliving of the golden era for PLO pros, with the rising popularity of private clubs.

Including the revival of cash-outs often proving impossible.

ive been playing stricky 1/3nl for the past 8 years and while the games arent dying or ever going to die they still arent anywhere near as good as when i first started 8 years ago. theres still plenty of money to be made but it just doesnt come as easy as it used too. theres still really bad players but a decent percentage of those really bad ones have turned into only bad players not making near as costly mistakes as in the past. they hit their flush on the river and get bet into years ago they jam any flush now they only call and jam the 2 nuts or better.

it used to be your 200bb deep and a really bad player has an overpair and you flop a set your getting his stack everytime now its only sometimes as theyve learned to pot control and dear i say fold their aces. yeah you can still play in amazing games but you have to table select when years ago almost every low limit game was great. low stakes will never be dead but the games sure as hell have gotten way worse and i dont see the majority of these games getting any better

Another factor not yet mentioned is the trend of formerly higher stakes players moving down to lower games: ie, 5-10 now playing 2-5 and 2-5 playing 1-3. I frequent a large room in Vegas and definitely see this trend.

I have no evidence to support this but I also feel that the widening income inequality gap is leaving less and less of the population with disposable income.

So I only have a year of poker experience so I guess my thoughts may be completely wrong, but if you think about it from an economics perspective, 7 years ago they shut down online poker and that caused an influx of pros to live cash, and shrunk the amount of newcomers entering poker, injuring the market for winning regs.

If they bring back online poker which is slowly happening, poker will come back to tv when Pokerstars and other online sites want to advertise on tv.

Then poker will be the hot game to play and instead of dropping a couple thousand at blackjack or roulette like a lot of people do every night at casinos they can bring that money to poker, and a smaller boom can happen.

I only minored in economics so this is all probably bull**** but hey it’s nice to be optimistic

This is the biggest difference between the height of the boom and now I'm my opinion. There's still just as much, if not more interest in poker. There are definitely way more places to play poker legally in the US now than there were then. People on average just have way less money as the gap between the affluent and everyone else continues to widen.

My experience in my area:

- at the height of things, we had 7 rooms all with 8+ tables, all offering multiple games / stakes / tourneys
- we're now down to 4 rooms, most with less tables and game options than before
- our room (an actual room) at one time had 8 tables, Limit and No Limit, different stakes for each, and morning and nighttime tourneys every day; our room is no longer an actual room (stuck in the corner of the casino between slot machines), is down to 5 tables, and now offers pretty much only 1/3 NL (no other games, no tourneys, and no other stakes 99% of the time)
- like all other rooms that have survived, the rake has gone up (for us $1 per year each of the last 3 years, with no reason to suggest this won't be an annual thing)
- like most rooms ~15 years after the boom, it is 99% reg infested (not that the regs aren't beatable, but it ain't your 2005 line-up)

From my viewpoint poker is fairly obviously dying a slow death in almost every single way imaginable. Yes, games are still beatable (in 2018 I shipped my best rec year in 5 years albeit for a very modest winrate of ~7 bbs/hr). People in the big poker markets with the big poker rooms likely won't experience this as much, but for the rest of us that play it the smaller markets / dinky rooms, enjoy it while it lasts, imo.

G7cardstudusedtobeathing25yearsago;howsthatholding upnowadays?G

Thanks for the interesting discussion guys; lots of great points.

I do think that pro I spoke with is a wee bit biased as his full-time income for many years is poker, and he's seeing his income dwindle even though he's still continually working on his game, so he might be legitimately thinking this grind isn't worth it anymore. From what I see though and what I've read here, yes poker has declined since the boom, but I don't see it dying out for a very long time. Major tournaments are still drawing in record numbers, and while the games are tougher and probably harder to grind out a living income on, the game of poker is still healthy.

I agree that deciding to become a full-time poker pro at 18 or 21 with zero other life experience is a terrible idea! Even if you make it and become super successful at this game, do you really want to spend your whole life doing this 1 thing? That's a pretty miserable life I think. Not to mention how difficult it is to grind up a bankroll from the lowest stakes while paying for living expenses. And also how many peoples' lives turn into total disasters when they put all their eggs in the poker basket but don't make it?

But if you have another successful career already and can set aside a decent poker bankroll from your non-poker savings such that you don't risk financial ruin even if you fail at poker, then yea, why not take a shot and make poker a nice 2nd weekend job or even full-time retirement job after you finish a normal career?

I'm only 30 now but I'm set to retire with a life-long pension in my early 40's =D

The military works you hard, but they give some pretty good perks once you've done your time!

I mean, your larger point is well taken, but I can tell you as a former academic, I know a LOT of people who have dedicated their life to doing 1 thing, and they are probably all very happy with their careers--much more so than I am, I'm sure.

Better make sure you will always love that 1 thing then!

I like being the jack of all trades, master of none. But yes, I suppose if you can confidently say "I want to do _____ to the highest level I can possibly reach and spend my entire life working on that" then sure, you probably have no regrets starting at 18 and giving it your 100%.

I think that's hella risky though, both because you still can't be sure that you'll succeed, and people and interests change a lot from young adulthood.

The difference between poker and most other things, though, is that 10 years of poker makes it pretty tough to get a decent job doing something else. If you decide after 10 years that academia isn't for you, you'll probably land on your feet.

Thank you very much for your service. Hope to see you at the tables and best of luck in all that you do (unless we're playing a pot, ).

He thinks poker is dying bc his cardroom can't get a 2/5 game going every day? That's totally ludicrous. My local rooms have a min. of 3 1K max 2/5's every day. If it was dying, I would be looking for a job.

I'm just glad I got out of professional poker when I did. Nobody can play it for a living and be happy right now. It's just a game and it's best to think of it that way. If you can make a few bucks out of it, great, but it is essentially dead as a full time job for the vast majority of people.


I guess I'm one of those people who made a living at it for awhile in it's heyday but can now make more in the real world rn and be much happier overall

You hit it right on spot. Most pro's should def. get a job. It's the top pro's that are going to survive. There's more to the game than trying to stack fish with sets vs tptk. A lot of the people I see who play every day are not gonna survive past 6 mo.

If you can make 150K plus in the real world and are comfortable sitting in an office or a cubicle from 9 to 5 taking orders from people you dont like then go for it.

I didn’t play back in the good old days and I can’t predict the future but live poker is still super soft. I’m sure the games have gotten worse but if this guy has been playing since 2010 and he is isn’t crushing now then it’s because he hasn’t been working very hard. Median household income in the U.S. is $60,000, if you play 2000 hours and play competent ABC tag you should be able to achieve that.

No; poker is dead. End of discussion.