My thoughts on Gabe's thoughts on Josh's post

[elindauer]

Ha ha. Ok, seriously now.

There is a common belief that the games must get tougher and tougher forever. This belief seems to be based on two thoughts:

1. fish get busted and stop playing, making the game tougher
2. players get better as they gain experience, making the game tougher


However, as any casino owner can tell you, there are two powerful counters to these arguments. They are:

1. New people are born. They start out sucking at poker.
2. Bad players keep getting paid, adding more dead money to the pool


To make the point, casinos have been around for a long time. Every argument that suggests that poker will just get harder and harder to beat can be used to suggest that the casino's edge in blackjack should get worse and worse as time goes on. The game is no doubt much better understood now than it was 30 years ago.

But you know what? Walk into any casino and you will find a bunch of morons still donking it up. Sure, some players have gotten better, but the casinos are still killing the game, despite being at an inherent rules disadvantage.


I'm hedging my bets in poker as a career, because I concede that maybe one day the bots will settle in and the game won't be beatable. However, there is the distinct possibility that online poker will not only survive but actually flourish with dead money, just the way casinos continue to flourish every year. People just like to gamble.


So yeah, continue to work on your game. Great. But let's not get to dramatic about how we'll all have to adapt or see our winrates drop to zero. That's probably not the case.

my 2 cents.
eric