I've heard from many people over the last few years that this is just a short term explosion caused by Moneymaker, and to a lesser extent, Raymer being unknowns and winning the world championship.

I do believe that Moneymaker helped start this poker boom, many people before he won might have liked playing poker with friends once a week, but never really got serious about it til they saw someone who had never read from a poker book and never went to a tournament event win a few million.

But thats not really the point I am trying to get at here, what I am trying to say is that even though they started this poker "boom", I don't think it's as much of a phase as alot of people assume it to be.

I flipped thru the channels this morning, and saw commercials for Yu Gi Oh and Duel Monsters, and similar games like that that children as young as 7 are addicted to.

When I worked at Wal-Mart a few years back, one of the things that Loss Prevention had alot of shrinkage with was the Yu Gi Oh cards. And that was a few years ago, and those types of games are still very popular to our youth.

Even before Yu Gi Oh and the like came about, there was a game called Magic: The Gathering that alot of teens and young adults were into. Granted, I never got into any of these games, so I really don't know much about them outside of them being a strategy card game, but I think there is a direct correlation between games like Magic and Yu Gi Oh and Poker.

I think a good example of someone who came to poker from one of these card games would be Poker Pro David Williams, who before poker played Magic: The Gathering, and even keeps a Magic: The Gathering card as his image on pokerstars.

I believe that once these young children start growing up, they will eventually migrate from games such as Yu Gi Oh and move onto games like Hold Em. Perhaps by the time they get older, Pineapple is the new hot thing, or some other variation of poker, but I have no doubt in my mind that for years to come, there will be a steady influx of new players coming into the game. And when there are new players coming in, there is a good mix of sharks and fish, which makes me assume that the waters are not going to be as sharky as some people believe they might be. Will the games be more challenging? Perhaps, but I think that a good player will still be able to feast on the chummy waters 10 years from now.

Thoughts, comments, flames?