I'm a younger pro so I'm curious to see if I will be SOL in 25 years. Lol.

Its probably impossible to predict that far in to the future. The games seem busy enough all over the country, but millenialls aren't as big of gamblers as prior generations, so I think there is a chance the game fades away back into obscurity.

What's your take?

It won't shrink to nothing but I don't think we've reached equilibrium yet.

Not enough people will want to gamble on poker some time in the future?

Would the first time since poker was invented.

But then, there are a lot of "firsts" these days.

Does this mean you think we are still in a boom?

Chess is almost a solved game but people still play it. Blackjack IS solved and it still makes money for the casino. Poker will be around forever. Only thing that will change will be the popular game. It used to be Stud, now it's Hold'Em, and I'm thinking PLO will get bigger in the future.

Of course it can disappear. I haven't seen Faro spread in a long time. And if you specifically mean NLHE, it nearly disappeared in the 1970s through the 1990s. If the casinos invented a game where you could be +EV against your opponents with skill while they made a profit, you could see everyone drop poker.

It isn't likely to happen, but that's different than it can't happen.

Do you think live casino poker is shrinking? I think on a global scale, but even just in the US alone, it is expanding actually with all the new rooms and casinos. It is shrinking in the places and cities that previously benefited from their oligopolies. Could be wrong though, I don't have any data, and it's hard to collect probably.
25yrs tf? Who knows, even some of the professions OP might consider as an alternative might not be around then. My best guess, it will still be around in some form but neither NL nor PLO will have a large market share anymore. It will be about how good you are to adapt to new trends, just like in any other business

Chess is a good example, but for a very different reason.

While lots of people enjoy to play chess, almost nobody does it for real money. That’s the main reason so many players with a chess background went into poker. I was on a chess team in my teens.

That’s one thing that’s often overlooked in conversations about the future of poker. Professionals not only need others to play, they also need to play for significant amounts of money. And that’s the area where we are already over the top imo. Especially online, where players started out at $0.5/$1 ten years ago and now the vast majority of the action is at $0.05/$0.1 and below.

Live poker follows a similar trend. When I first came to Vegas during the WSOP, the smallest events where $1000 or $1500. If you look at today’s numbers, most of the huge events outside the ME are lower than that. Lots of casinos that had 2/5 cash games in the past are mostly 1/2 or 1/3 these days, even on the weekends.

So while I agree that poker getting closer to solved won’t kill the game, I think the number of people who want to play for significant amounts of money will decrease.

nobody plays chess for money and bj while solved isn't exactly easily playable for hours on end if you're counting well enough to be playing a winning game.

Of course the difference b/w poker and bj is in bj losing players are still getting constant action. Casinos, unlike a lot of winning poker players don't try to suck the fun out of the game or berate their customers when they're winning.

As for the op-there is no way anyone knows what live poker will look like in 5 years let alone 25 years.

Think about how much poker has changed from 1993 until now...
Maybe in 10 years everyone will be playing plo, maybe they'll be playing short deck or some game that hasn't even been invented yet.

You would need to ask Nostradamus to get the answer to that one. The "boom" brought in a lot of folks who likely would have never taken up the game otherwise. Many of these folks have faded away, but there are a lot of other folks who keep at it as a regular hobby.
My main casino experience is limited to only Indiana and Ohio rooms , but I see scads of older players 30-up. There is a smaller % these days of young types and women, at least where I play. Maybe we are in a very long decline , or maybe poker has simply found its niche , much more popular than pre boom but with not much likelihood for growth.

Its already very tough to find a 5/10 game that runs more than once in a while. Its basically impossible to find a room that runs 5/10 often enough to play it full time anywhere other than L.A.

The stakes people are playing are creeping lower and lower. My room almost never runs 5/10 any more. 2 years ago it ran constantly. Lots of guys I played 2/5 with over the past 3 years are gone or are playing 1/2 now.

So, while I dont think poker will ever die, I do think at some point it will become much tougher for an actual poker pro to make a living. Stakes keep creeping lower. Rake creeps higher. Inflation creeps higher which effectively makes the stakes even lower.

Poker will probably be around a long time and can be a great supplement to your regular job income for good players. Playing it to help pay for college or vacations is great, butIf I was in my 20s the last thing I would do would be to play poker for a living expecting it to be my long term career.

20+ years and counting, PLO, Game of the Future.

Tournament poker has been seeing record 'entries' for almost 3 years now ...
1) Players can now re-enter pretty much at any venue, possibly firing 6 bullets at one ME.
2) Players are migrating to tournaments from cash?
3) Players are more willing to travel when the prize pool is 'worth' it?
4) Players have more disposable income?

I've seen some numbers fall off in the Midwest post WSOP for some of the casino $120-500 events so we'll see if that's a trend.

Whereas I think cash has slipped a bit in the same time frame. Home games are 'everywhere' so that definitely affects casino numbers. I was amazed in Pittsburgh that they had eleven 1/3 tables running with no hint of a higher stake table starting on a Saturday night.

We have a new casino in Michigan and they've been able to run at least 1/2 PLO every day for almost 30 days now with 5/10 PLO on weekends with 20 or more on the starting list at 6PM Fridays. That could be a trend or a short-lived run when bankrolls start to see a swing.

Where did all these Players come from? Certainly some are now the loss from the casino they were playing at, but the numbers are a lot higher than I expected them to be.

Back to the question at hand ... I think it's tough for 'any' new Player right now because poker players are getting smarter and some of the best Players are 'stuck' at the lower stakes due to lack of games running any higher. Younger/new players either don't feel welcome or don't like the feeling of getting crushed (by Dad or Grandma) and thus don't come back and try to get better. There are easier ways to get excitement (and make some cash perhaps) than in a casino.

As long as the baby boomers are stilling getting around .. and the numbers increase into 'retirement' each year ... we will have cash poker. I think it should be 'fine' for the next 8-12 years and then we'll see where the market is at.

Heed the comment above about what a 'realistic' income might be for a cash Pro. The opportunities for a DNegs lifestyle will be fewer. The opportunities to turn $200-500 profit sessions will still be there. Is that enough for you?

What's the first thing we tell new Players? "Can't use your phone at the table!" "Really, you're taking away my phone? Mom tried that ..." GL

The tail end of it, yes.

This is a good point.
I played a decent amount of 5/10 nl at borgata from 2005-2009 or so.back then in a random weeknight there would be 3-5 5/10 nl games and the games were amazing.

Now I don't play nl at all but Ive been there on Friday or Saturday nights when there are just 1 or even 0 5/10 nl games.

Even the bigger PLO games don't run as often as they did just a year or two ago

so true

absolutely this.



Hard to say of McDondalds will be around in 25 years. Poker as an industry seems like it will continue on with trends up and down. Playing poker as a job is a different question.

What Mike says makes pretty good sense

In the future all restaurants will be McDonald's.

Some solid replies in this thread.

A couple of things to address:

One thing I'm not so sure about is PLO game of the future. The ratio of NL to PLO games spread in casinos is vastly in favor of NL. In Vegas the ratio may be 60 to 1, if you account for all of the properties running games. I feel like if the game was going to take off it would have done so by now. It seems like people have been calling it "the game of the future" since 2013. But it certainly attracts the most dgens fwiw.


Also, in the future, it may be that a pro may only be able to sustain a living by living in a few high destination areas. Vegas games are very hit or miss, but one positive thing I can say about Vegas is that it probably has the highest percentage of younger players,and even female players. Lots of younger Euros, Israelis, Indian and Chinese tourists come in and donk away their $ during the late night hours. Not to mention casual players on business trips or on vacation. In 20 years time, Vegas, LA, DC and South Florida may be the only places where there is enough fishy action for a pro to sustain a living. It could even be a smaller pool than that, where it's just Vegas and LA.

I'm not willing to give up yet. But I agree with Mike Starr that it's risky to make poker a career choice...

games overall might be 60-1 nl.
but games at stakes worth playing for a pro are not close to 60-1.
nl still dominates but the gap is way closer than even 2-3 years ago.

while i usually like to rain on the parade when it comes to convos about the viability of poker as an income source long term, i'm actually fairly optimistic on this one.

here's the deal. poker games, or something similar to them, will always exist in some shape or form. a poker game is essentially a meeting point of people who want to wager against one another in card game. people who want to do that will always exist where there is money.

now, does that mean you'll have an action NLHE game at your chosen stakes running at your local card room till the end of time? of course not.

the game is in a constant state of change, and over long periods of time, those changes add up to tectonic shifts, like the explosive takeover of the NL variant of hold'em in the early 2000s after decades of limit.

many factors influence the real but exaggerated perception of NLHE games "drying up" or becoming too nitty, including economic downturns and the slow progress of the general community in understanding how to play less poorly.

but overlay is still and will always be available where there is money. you just have to be ready and able to adapt with the game.

wrt PLO, i think it's one of the greatest advantage plays for pros right now (judging externally, since i'm only learning that game). i think the reason it hasn't and possibly never will become as ubiquitous as NL is it's too soul crushing for rec players. PLO is a great game for degenerate gamblers (hence why i think it's great for pros). but it will probably always be a secondary game in terms of availability. the equities run too close.

preflop equities run close
that's why i HATE plo games that have a table of a bunch of animals that just pot repot repot pre and lead to 4 way all ins pre, bloated pots etc
A lot of pros disagree with me but edges in that game are way smaller than edges in games where donks make massive post flop mistakes

That's every PLO game Ive played in or watched.

Casinos do ok taking a 1% edge on huge baccarat action. It's similar. Plus the nl games where people just hand over the money at significant stakes aren't exactly growing on trees. There are worse ways to make money than having 30% getting 3 to 1.

Most young people don't have a lot of expendable cash to play poker. I agree with the comment that poker will be fine as long as the baby boomer generation is alive. But unlike baby boomers, when kids born after 2000 are middle-aged they aren't going to play poker. They were raised on video games that are a thousand times more fun and more addicting.

Plus live events will become more and more rare as virtual reality takes over, so going to a casino to play a card game will be antiquated. But virtual reality poker will be plagued with cheating the same way online poker is today.

Think about the opportunity cost of not making enough money when you are young. If you are able to make enough to save a good % that money will grow exponentially over the years. It's a mistake to choose poker if you could do something else that will allow you to be financially free and then play all the poker you want with no stress when you are older.