[Blarg]

I'm extremely optimistic about the future of poker, even online poker, but I'm still really stunned Ed Miller's book book could do this well -- shooting well into the Amazon Top 100.

Besides all the t.v. coverage poker is getting lately, I think it comes down to poker really being a quintessentially American game. Even though there are centuries of moral stricture against gambling in the mostly Christian American background, almost everyone is at least a little curious about it. Curious right through the outlawing of poker in private or public games and the association it has with a world of negative things it doesn't necessarily have to have much to do with.

You don't have to be good-looking, rich, young, in good shape, dress well, have a good haircut, a good education, a good job, a certain accent, be of royal blood, or even not be a total jerk to play it. Everyone can take a shot, and almost as many shots as he wants to. And lots of people find a level of play where they frankly don't care if they lose every day for years. I don't see how you could ever get poker out of of the American bloodstream. There's just too much about it that's central to the way Americans like to think about themselves.

Lots of people suggest that we beware the religious nuts and political opportunists who can try to make a stand against internet gambling either to please local or national gambling interests, or just to seem, at very low risk, like they're really doing something in office and are worth paying attention to. The days of internet gambling may well be drawing to a close, some say.

But the internet is growing, too, not closing down. You can't put the genie back in the bottle, and the U.S. doesn't control the entire internet.

As advanced communications become closer to the norm for more and more countries, look at what kind of exposure internet gambling can still attain. Look at the Chinese, for instance. Hong Kong chief executives are seen going to the racetracks every day; in their culture, gambling isn't "un-Christian" or thought of as particularly immoral, either. It's commonplace. Now, in mainland China, some people won't have internet for 100 years perhaps, but China is growing explosively and so its its wealth; it's poised to be one of the key powers of this century. A country with few moral strictures against gambling, over a billion strong, coming into more and more money and probably less and less control over time as at least some limited forms of capitalism expand there, seeking to catch up with the prosperity and lifestyle perks that seem to have passed it by so much in the last century is bound to adopt many of the more fun and showy American customs.

China, India, Europe, Russia, Southeast Asia -- American culture, it's music, movies, hairstyles and clothing, food and cars, are all very attractive to enormous swaths of populations there. There are literally billions of potential poker players out there.

You don't have to, or you won't have to, speak English eventually to play poker online.

I see a world or more and more people better and better connected, perhaps even richer and richer(who knows), more and more interested in western and specifically American ideas and pastimes, as an incredibly rich source of future gamblers of all types.

I find it hard to think of poker as a comparatively provincial, local game that will remain so despite a brief flare-up of popularity. It seems to be exploding in popularity and dragging itself further from the negative associations it has been burdened with and likely may never be burdened with again. Like beer through prohibition, it's just part of our culture. And there are cultures with people by the billions which have never had those negative associations in the first place.

So, I find it hard to believe that the world becoming more connected and American culture continuing its dominating spread throughout the planet, as well as poker's break-out into broad popular acceptance here in America, are factors that won't insure the growth of internet poker, and live poker, throughout the planet this next century. Unless somebody hits the wrong button and we're plunged into a new dark age or something.

Yet I sure hear a lot on these forums to the contrary.

I can't see any reason to cut back my confidence in internet and live poker's future.