that's not true at all. there are probably MILLIONS of US players. before the casino industry destroyed
US poker, there were dozens of poker sites up, and there would be 10s of THOUSANDs of players on pokerstars at any given time between hundreds of play money rooms, tournaments and freerolls and cash tables too.
if
online poker were re-legalized in the US, there would be tons of US players back online.
in the last SMALL town i lived in, there were THREE card houses going with people playing $20 or more sit and goes. one had well over 50 people going at it when i popped in and the smaller one i played at a few times until i noticed the cards were marked had between 20 and 40 players on a given day.
poker is VERY popular. that's why there are so many cable shows on it, and there used to be a poker after dark show on network TV too.
US players aren't playing as much now because i'm sure a lot of them don't even know there are still places you can play. i know you can't play at 888 and tiger after wasting my time there. that would discourage people trying to play after 2-3 sites all refuse to let them play.
i seem to remember
poker stars having hundreds of thousands of members back in the day. it used to be a huge site
just here in town, the rec center had a poker tournament, for fun only, and we had about 20 players. that was just by word of mouth among probably no more than a couple hundred people. i won BTW and got a trophy and a teeshirt. sadly, i guess the management there never really liked the idea and it's unlikely to happen again even though it was linked to a canned goods drive. it was a lot of fun, except for the part where an early KOed drunk player decided to play freakin' AC/DC on his phone i wanted to stomp so freakin' bad.