I sometimes wonder how long this game would survive.

Any thoughts on this?

It's been around since before cars .. and I suspect that 'card games' will be around when cars are able to fly as well.

IMO technology has the best chance to ruin it .. the elimination of actual cards/people from the game will lead to distrust and reduction of player pool. GL

Poker will still be alive, NLHE will probably be dead though

You may be right. It is important to remember that poker and no limit hold ‘em are NOT one and the same. NLHE is just a subset of poker. Poker has been around for centuries; NLHE has only really been popular for 20 years or so. I strongly suspect that some form of poker will still be around, at least as long as people and money are around.

And do you think that studying NLH is helpful to other style of pokers as well?

I started to learn NLH but afraid that it might disappeared beyond history and all my times spent on studying NLH is useless.

So what are you going to study now that will help you in a future that you don't know when it will happen or what game will 'take over'?

Unless you are a 'higher' roller the masses are (still) playing NLH, so that is where beginners should go. You could take a look at PLO but that takes a bigger bankroll due to the wider variance .. and you need a sustainable player pool to keep the games going.

Any form of study will transfer to other poker variants if not just for the 'ladder logic' it takes to get through a hand. There will always be variables that change from game to game and experience is always first and foremost.

Only you can decide what your brain can handle. In most cases it's better to learn Checkers before Chess .. and most people never move on to Chess, so you need to be where the majority of the chips are to be won IMO. GL

Why do you say this?
Most people who learn poker for the first time start by playing nlh.

Just based on historical precedent. NLHE has only been popular for a relatively short time, basically since the WSOP Main Event has been televised. Prior to that, limit hold ‘em was much more prevalent. Prior to that, stud, and before that five card draw were the most prevalent games. Why would you expect that the current most popular game will be so forever?

I was looking more from the angle that the level of research that's been done on NLHE will make the game unplayable for a profit, similar to what you see in some subformats outside of the complete micros (e.g. STTs) and in other games completely (e.g. backgammon), but your point also is valid

Because this is a recent development. Since we're speculating about 28 years from now, lets look back 20+ years.

Before the 2003 poker boom, you couldn't find a NL cash game in casinos outside of the times there was a major tournament running.

To this day, at Foxwoods, the two highest stakes games that run regularly are 75-150 Stud and 100-200 fixed limit mixed games (Stud8, O8, 2-7 Triple Draw, Badugi, etc.)

I don´t think any game that gets so dissected, studied, with so many tools developed and, very likely, being developed to constantly give us new insights, will be profitable at any realistic "make a living" stakes.

Was rewatching Star Trek TNG the other day (late 80's/early 90's), and a common theme was Riker and other senior officers playing a poker game (not NLH btw), and taking it very seriously. Being a good poker player was very well regarded in the "future". Other shows non poker related from different eras show the game was well regarded. I believe it will still be in the future.

Edit: Being an officer in a spaceship travelling across the galaxy way better than being stuck on earth playing a silly card game

Tournament poker will likely be alive. NLH, PLO, LHE, 5CPLO, those are GTO studied, while the rest are not popular and can't say there is any money, but a solid book can go a long way in playing such in cash and tourneys while being nothing much in those other games. I can imagine people buying in NLH tournaments still a long time, including in 2050.

The people who started to play when there was still easy money around are still around, while the later generations are not interested as much anymore. The games might get easier somewhere when the old timers are gone, as it can be mostly a semi-recreational for the new players. The current new players play mostly no-bluff game; the old timers played just the opposite, as poker was about a bluff more than it is today. The newer players have a mechanical robotic solid style, not leaving much chance for people moving up, and the higher limit games will become less and less.

Hard to see cash NLH disappearing, even if I don't play it anymore, as it is so popular, the last 20 years or so. And new games were tried by Stars, so not seeing something new coming outside the action moving more in tourneys, especially when players start to be more and more recreational. In tourneys, one can pick it fast or slow and all kinds, and NLH and maybe PLO will be still around there in 2050.

Likely players are simply better and the cash games will keep running. Not that it is what I see smart to do these days for a new player, but they are there pretty strongly. Maybe the mid and high limits will start to run less and less often.

If I started again, it would be maybe just a small-time hobby and I would play tourneys; likely NLH tourneys; not sure what kind of but it depends also on what time one has available and if one can play live also, having dreams of such tourneys, and there are live cash games also.

You can see Pokernews, it is about tourneys mainly. The tourneys are viewed more tolerantly by the politics, and the cash rake is quite high in many countries because they take a cut in taxes and the players need to pay more or less of it. It is less of a problem in bigger tourneys, especially.

So, cash will stay, but likely less mid and high limit higher action, and it takes a long time to learn to become good enough and 90%+ will not get to their aims any time soon; the 50-year-olds are probably pretty good already, now and then, and that's what you will be playing against in mid-limit and lower (they don't play as often nor have taken it as seriously).

I tend to think NLHE will survive as compared to limit the poorer player has much more chance. In limit with 100bbs each a bad player has no meaningful chance against an AI playing perfect GTO. In NL with a two word strategy(all in every hand) they are underdogs but win roughly 30ish%. Hard to find a game where a 3 year old knowing only two words is only a 7-3 dog to the best player in the world.

Who buys in with 100bb at limit lol

100 bb = 50 big bets (assuming bb=big blinds), which is high, but not unknown. I've played 4/8 limit and seen players sit with $00. Rare, sure.

Normal is 25 big bets which is 50 bb.

What's odd is talking about GTO in LHE since bet sizes are predetermined. I can't imagine why I wouldn't play an exploitative style at the limits I play.

I think 2050 will be the next big poker boom. We will have to wait and see how it plays out.

I tend to disagree, not because anything you said is wrong, but because many bad players will not see it that way. IMO, NLHE is only the predominant form of poker because the current poker boom stems from the WSOP main event TV broadcasts, and that is the form of poker in that event. Anyone watching those broadcasts who thinks “that looks fun, and I could probably do that and win some money” is

A. Probably delusional
B. Looking to play the game he saw on TV.

What they are not thinking is “Gee I have a better chance of winning this type of game than I would if I played limit (or some other format).” In fact, a true beginner who actually has a choice, which in many areas there is no choice, might look at a NL table vs a limit table and think “I am probably going to lose, but I will lose a lot less and be able to play longer on the money I have if I play the limit game.”

Think of it this way: essentially everybody is a bad blackjack player, and has no chance of winning long term. There still are a lot more blackjack players than poker players though. The ability to win long term just does not enter into most people’s thought processes. I am sure that is true of beginning poker players — they are just looking for another gambling game.