L
Leatherass
DTB Coach
Silver Level
I have to disagree that people will look back and see this as the "hardest times" in poker.
Using a sports analogy, name a sport where, if the modern competitor was able to go back in time, he would struggle to do as well as he does in his own time.
The modern competitor always has the benefits of better training methods, better access to information, greater understanding of underlying principles etc etc.
This greater inderstanding is a result of standing on the shoulders of giants. Future competitors will always look back and think that if only they could go back in time knowing what they know now they would destroy the competition.
For this reason I dont think online poker is harder than it ever will be in the future.
The only caveat is that when US law catches up with the rest of the world there will be a sudden influx of bad players and yes the games will be easier but unless Americans are genetically dumber than the rest of the world this will be a temporary blip on the poker scene because they will learn and learn faster then the people before them because of the shoulders of giants principle. Some of these players will be remain bad but some will become great. I think that within a couple of years the player pool would contain the same ratio of fish to decent regs as it did before the US legalised online poker. The player pool will be bigger but the ratios will return to what they are now.
Of course as each day passes the standard raises fractionally.
You will look back in 10 years time and wonder how players (in 10 years time) even manage to get going because the standard will be so much higher than it is now. In fact if you cast your mind back to when you began, how much has the standard changed in that time? Would you like to be just starting out now?
I agree with you, but I think there are two separate debates here. I have no doubt players will get better and better until the end of time. But I would like to think of this as a low point in people's ability to make money. Basically the pro to casual player ratio has gotten so high that there isn't enough money to go around unless you are one of the total whales that makes money off of the pros.
If the ratio kept getting higher and higher, then there would be not enough money to even live off of, and therefore a shift in the market would be forced to occur.