[phish]

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I missed the "golden age" of the PP 15-30 where everyone agreed it was a ridiculously soft game, and i always used to be a little ticked that i missed out on that cash mine. What i realized over the last few months, is that poker is a game of adapting. Yes we all know this, but think about just how important it really is. Think about how differently you play in the 15, 20, and 30 games now relative to how you used to play at $1-$2. You natrually adapted your game so you could survive and flourish at the next level. Right now, any 2+2er who focuses exclusively on improving their game and does not concern themselves with the play of others will improve at a rate far faster than their opponents.

This means that your hourly expectation can still be going up while your competition is improving, and this is something a lot of people fail to think about. I think this will continue to be true for quite a while. I don't mean to sound harsh here, but i fear that too many people on these baords give themselves an easy way out by attritbuting difficulties to the improvement of their competition. Yes of course this is a factor, but it's not one you can control. By always doing your best to adapt to the current state of the games, regardless of what they, you have the best chance of maximizing your earn.

Now, what i just said is common knowledge to many of you on this board, so i'm sorry i had to bore you with it. This post might be better suited for Small Stakes where more people have yet to adapt this mindset. However, there was some discussion in Josh's thread about difficult the games might be in X months, etc... so i thought this might have some relevance here. There will a point in the future where people's potential hourly earn is not as high. But who cares about when that is? When it happens, it will happen. And even then, i sure we can all live off A LOT less than we are making now. Just some thoughts thrown together...feel free to conradict me or ignore this post becuase nothing i said is new.

Gabe

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I disagree with one of the main tenets of your post. You seem to believe that there is no 'limit' to the skill level that one can achieve, and hence can, thru diligence and study, always remain two step above your competition.
I believe this is false. I believe that there is a limit to how well one can play, and if all your opponents play close to this limit, then you can never achieve much of an edge over them.
To illustrate what I mean, let's use the extreme example of tic tac toe. Against a 3 year old, you may have an edge and win 2/3 of your games. But it doesn't take much to learn to play that game optimally to the point where no one can win. Now poker is a much more complex game and so it takes a lot longer and much more effort to get close to an optimal level. But this optimal level DOES exist and hence will act as a barrier against maintaining a constant edge over your opponents no matter how good they get.
Are the best players today close to that edge? I don't know. But I do think that there are players today, that no matter how good you get, you will never make much, if any, money off of them long term.
And if you really analyze it, you will find that the VAST majority of your profits come from the really BAD players, not from the good or even mediocre players. (Of course good ring game players may be really BAD short-handed or just total suckers HU)
So I think the question of will it ever dry up is not an academic question. Hopefully, there will always be a fresh supply of fish to replace those who bust out. But always be aware that your earning potential comes much more from these fish than by trying to stay too steps ahead of the next best player in your game.