Seeing into the future is not always fun.

Okay, I can't really tell fortunes. At least, not in the mystical,
Tarot card, reading palms way.

Mostly when I "predict" something, it is just by following a trend.
For instance, when I told everyone last year that 2005 would be "The
year of the Max," (regarding Max Pescatori), there was no magic
involved. I saw how he was running, hotter and hotter. He has the
stamina to travel around and play tons of events. He plays like there
is no tomorrow. Sheer volume of tournaments alone plays into his
success, as well as all of the other attributes he has. He simply has
what it takes, in many ways. So it doesn't take rocket science to
predict that as his results have climbed year after year, 2005 might
be his best year yet.

Okay, so when is fortune telling a depressing thing? When the future
doesn't look so bright.

I knew I was doomed almost from the moment I entered the "serious"
poker world.

Let's take a look at my past.

My Mom owned a travel agency in a suburb of St. Louis for a decade.
In 1993, many things conspired to work against the travel industry. A
recession and a flood. A big, major, "let's get rid of all of the
welfare trailer trash living by the river" flood. Oh, wait, that is
half of Missouri. LOL, but I digress...

Anyway, making money on booking travel became tough. This is not even
mentioning all of the other obstacles going on at the time. One of
them was a little monopoly called "Stations Casinos."

Stations is the redneck version of Harrah's. They bought some dive in
Vegas, off-strip (which at the time was virtual suicide) called The
Bingo Palace. They turned it into Palace Station. It sits as a
constant reminder of the beginning of Redneck Casinoland on Sahara.

Stations realized they could gobble up all of the trashy, redneck
casinos that didn't quite make it. They did so with haste.

They built a beautiful, redneck riviera on the banks of the Missouri
River across from St. Louis, in a little, welfare ridden suburb named
St. Charles. My hometown. Where men beat women and no one really
cares as long as the women keep giving head and dying of cancer due
to inbreeding or 50 years of smoking.

Ah, home! I escaped as fast as I could, but I still have the cancer
to prove I'm inbred.

(Many people ask me if I'm worried someone from St. Charles will
stumble onto my journal and read what I've said about them. Or that
someone in my family will find this and be offended by what I think
about them. No worries, my family calls me names all the time because
I "read." My brother brags frequently that he "hasn't read a book
since high school." They think I have some kind of mental disorder
because we don't have TV service in our house. So no, not only do I
not CARE what they think in good ole St. Charles, but even if I did,
I really doubt many of my inbred family would stumble across this
journal, since they are "so much more intelligent than me, having
figured out how to watch TV rather than read.")

Oh, but I love to go off on tangents, don't I? Probably some kind of
repression I had while having to grow up in Missouri, where men
should be heard, and women should be silent and barefoot, pregnant in
the kitchen with their 12th illegitimate child and smiling while they
collect that welfare to give to their "man."

So back to 1993. My Mom and her travel agency that went bust. One of
the reasons it went bust is because Stations Casinos built the barge,
used my Mom as their travel agency, then decided to make their own
travel arrangements, keeping the agency and commissions "in house,"
in order to make an extra grand or two per year for themselves (after
all, a grand means a lot in the redneck riviera).

They asked my Mom if she wanted to work for them. Eventually, they
sent her to dealer's school to deal pit games. The first day there,
they saw how personable she was (yes, we are complete opposites) and
asked her if she'd rather deal poker. They said the tips were better
and she had the personality to put up with poker players. She jumped
on that, being very overweight and hearing she could sit down during
her shifts.

Thus begins my life avoiding the poker biz.

Poker was nasty back then. My Mom got burned on the arm with cigars
and cigarettes because players didn't like the cards she dealt them.
She got drinks thrown in her face, slapped in the back of the head,
kicked under the table, spit on and called every name in the book.

It is no wonder I refused to get involved with poker players. She
always warned me against degenerate, full-time players and I listened
to this advice. Even I have my limits. I knew if I got too involved
with them, I'd end up in jail. She puts up with things I would never
tolerate in my life. But that is the Missouri mentality, and she did
her job well.

Vegas beckoned her very quickly, and she transferred to Palace
Station.

At the time, poker was dying. The rooms in Vegas were closing slowly,
one by one, replacing the floor space with slots.

I can't comment about the number of players, both recreational and
full-time, because there is really no way of counting something like
that. As an example, though, take the attendance at the WSOP. Over
the years it had grown by leaps and bounds (certainly nothing like
the recent boom we've seen, but definite, big growth for the day).

From seven players who voted Moss as the ultimate winner, down to
three players duking it out, it rose during the 70's and 80's to
around 165 players in 1989. The 90's saw a downswing (not by sheer
numbers, but by overall population, and by the number of "gamblers"
coming to Vegas vs. players entering the WSOP). In 1995, they'd only
gotten up to about 230, and that was even after promising first place
a cool million. In 1999, they were staggering along at about 300.
They were still only paying the final table. And this was the poker
world's most popular event!

I remember that at one point, Vegas was down to about 11 poker rooms
remaining. My Mom worked at the Monte Carlo by that time. Although a
strip resort, she still spent many nights dead spreading until
management just gave up on a game and sent her home. She was lucky if
they had one Stud table going, 1-5 limit, at any given time. She used
to beg management to let her deal Blackjack, because poker was so
dead.

Around the turn of the millennium, poker slowly started making a
comeback. Some of it probably had to do with all of the money that
Americans had at that time. Gambling was more accepted. Casinos were
springing up all over the country, and the British were enjoying a
huge, successful TV poker show, called Late Night Poker. The colorful
personalities of Barny Boatman and Jesse May virtually guaranteed a
hit.

During this time, in my life, I was still grinding away at AOL, as
was Glenn. It was soon to be over, however, Steve Case having bitten
off more than he could chew, lying about the stock price and buying
Time Warner when he couldn't afford it.

When we realized we needed to get away from AOL or be fired, it was
pretty much too late to get other employment. Even low level tech
support type positions paying $12/hr. wouldn't touch us. We'd been
overpaid, were overqualified and undereducated. Not to mention that
hundreds of thousands of other out-of-work techies were looking for
employment.

So we turned to poker to fill up time in our lives. We didn't need
employment, although it seemed odd to be "retired" in our 30's. We
definitely needed something to do. We played a lot, sometimes 90
hours a week. We played cash games and both preferred Stud. We played
in Vegas and Atlantic City, mostly.

We liked AC better than Vegas. At the time, Vegas still tolerated a
LOT of dealer abuse, AC didn't. Trop had an easygoing quality. The
comps were good, the chairs were comfortable, the room was dimly lit,
the players were mostly playing for fun and relaxation, not to hit
each other over the head with their chairs if they lost a hand.

We stayed away from the Vegas poker community, although I did meet a
decent FT player named Dr. Al Schoonmaker at the Excalibur, playing
$2-6 spread limit Hold'em, which was the staple low-limit HE game in
Vegas at the time.

I didn't know him as Dr. Al, I just knew him as Al, a low-limit rock
grinder in Vegas, who liked the end seats, and put tons of cushions
on his chair. He was the first "decent" full-time player we met. He
did not invite us to the WPDG, which should tell you something about
how he felt about us, lol.

Following my Mother's advice, I stayed away from the scumbag poker
players. I didn't lend them money, I didn't give them a buy-in, I
didn't get involved in their lives. They were the bottom of the
barrel disgusting. Sort of like the scum I'd been avoiding in
Missouri all of my life, lol.

I also didn't play tournaments. Until I got a freeroll, that is. And
that would come back to haunt me, spending up years of my life trying
to reclaim the dead money I'd lost in tourney buy-in's, by playing
more lucrative cash games. Oy, vey.

Anyway, eventually we moved out to Arizona. And that is when poker
really boomed, and Stud began a quick descent into death.

Stud was already on it's way out. There are several reasons for this,
more than I could go into even if I wanted to. Someday I'll tackle
that subject. Stud died for some of the same reasons games like Pan
are dying. Not many people want to "work" anymore. The American
mindset is "how much can I get without working for it? Or at least
working as little as possible?"

A game that requires intense concentration for long periods of time
is fading in America. Like reading, Americans would rather get
their "higher education" by watching "books on TV." You know,
movies!!! I truly knew America had become a doomed society when I
heard people saying many times in the past few years, "You know, that
movie they made into a book..." Then listing a classic, lol. The
illiteracy of Missouri has spread like a cancer throughout the rest
of the country.

But this has had an impact on poker, too. Why play "that game where I
have to memorize all of the cards and look at everyone's board" when
they can play "that two card game where I don't have to memorize
anything, look at anyone's board, study their faces, or figure out
where I might be in the hand, when I can just look at the community
cards, figure out the best possible hand and proceed from there?"
That's America. Why work when you can just step out in front of a
car, sue for five million dollars and "get it for free?" We had many
five million dollar cases of stubbed toes tripping up the stairs at
AOL.

So that was the death of Stud in a nutshell. Who wants to work? No
one in America, that is for sure.

And how does this tie itself into the painful ability to tell the
future? Well, I've known for a long time that poker is becoming
synonymous with one game: Texas Hold'em.

I remember sitting around at the 2004 WSOP. I was watching Ted play
the HORSE event. I was on the bleachers not far from his table, and
he would come over and chat with me in between playable hands.

A guy sitting next to me asked me what the players were doing, he
couldn't understand why they were being dealt more than two cards,
and why some of them were face up. He was clearly perplexed. He asked
if this was some kind of qualfiying event for "real poker."

I tried to explain to him what HORSE was, and what was going on. He
said, "You mean, not all poker is Texas Hold'em?" He went on to
exclaim the doomed statement I've heard over and over again in the
past 18 months, like a neverending nightmare in my head, "I
thought 'poker' was Texas Hold'em!"

That statement has come back to haunt my dreams time and again.

Why should it bother me so much? Who cares if poker is all-hold'em,
all the time? I mean, it's easy, it's simple, it's a cakewalk. I
should just sit back, shut my trap and make all of the money that I
can while it lasts. A simple way to get rich, sort of like working
for AOL during the technology boom, or throwing my toddler out in
front of passing cars and then suing for five million dollars like
the welfare parents in East St. Louis (can't you tell how much I love
my heritage?).

Because I CAN see the future, that is why.

And believe me, as much as I love Stud games and Omaha games, if
poker were reduced to just one of those games, I'd be singing the
same song right now.

Reducing poker to one game is not guaranteeing its success in the
future. It's guaranteeing its failure. I've said it for years, and I
won't stop saying it now. When the "boom" is over, nothing will push
poker over the cliff faster than if we keep insisting poker is ONE
game. Because there will be nothing to fall back on. We must keep the
other games alive. There has to be something "more" in order to
assure the success of poker.

I don't believe that when this boom is over that poker will ever fade
back into the obscurity of the late nineties, please don't
misunderstand me, but there has to be a peak, and then a fall of
sorts. I don't want that fall to be worse than it has to be. I want
there to be something for players to fall back on. If we kill these
games, what will be left?

Right now it is simple and easy to be a poker specialist. Specialize
in one game, one limit. Specialists can succeed in either tournaments
or cash games, depending on their playing style. They can succeed by
playing either limit Hold'em, or no-limit HE. It's simple and easy.

How simple and easy will it be in five years? These same new Hold'em
millionaires will be declaring bankruptcy. Kind of tough to pay for
that new Hummer when you find the Hold'em games drying up and
becoming tough again. The mortgage on that new mansion will be mighty
high when you can't beat even 20/40 and have absolutely NOTHING ELSE
in your repertoire.

Now, if and when the fish dry up somewhat, when they realize they
cannot win (long-term), and go back to Blackjack or other house
games, how easy do you think your little Hold'em fishpond will be?
How long do you think cash NLHE will last?

Call me a skeptic, but I'm from the Mason Malmuth school of poker,
which says that NLHE cannot sustain itself as a cash game forever. He
said it in the 80's, and his prediction came true. NLHE was virtually
non-existent until the poker boom revived it as a cash game. Having
the Internet didn't hurt matters, nor did having caps on the maximum
buy-in, but if you really think that there will be millions of
unlimited fish that will keep cash NLHE games soft and juicy forever,
you are living in a dream world. The poker boom will peak. The poker
boom will start to fade somewhat, and the fish will realize that NLHE
is not the way to keep their money around longest. They WILL return
to limit Hold'em. If 20 years of history doesn't prove anything to
you, I don't think what I will say here will convince you either, but
do your own research and you'll find out the truth. Nothing that good
lasts forever.

I, like Mason, predict that limit Hold'em will be the future staple
in cash games. No mystical fortune telling here, I have lots of
history to back up this claim.

So what will keep fish coming into the poker room rather than just
the pit after the boom is over? Maybe some variety, instead of ALL
HOLD'EM, ALL THE TIME? Do you know any fish who ONLY play Blackjack
when they go to a casino? I don't. Not "regular" fish anyway. Sure,
the once a year guy, maybe, but not the fish who come once a month or
so to Vegas, Foxwoods or Atlantic City. They play some BJ, play Pai
Gow, roll the dice, maybe check out Spanish 21. The place bets on
Roulette. They do NOT spend around 250 hours on a casino floor per
year playing ONE pit game only. And as interesting as poker itself is
(compared to pit games), they will NOT spend all of their time and
money playing one poker game, either. Not if they have an IQ above
80, that is.

The trend that I see these days in poker is that players who have
been around for more than six months or a year are suddenly
asking, "What else is there?" They are already sick of ALL HOLD'EM,
ALL THE TIME.

Not surprising. Full-time, it can be a huge grind. A job, not fun.
Real work, not relaxing. Yes, even Hold'em, lol.

When we were on the cruise, the staff was pushing the whole ALL
HOLD'EM, ALL THE TIME, theory of poker. If anyone asked the board
about other games, they got mocked and laughed at. If anyone
approached the floorpeople about other games they were made fun of.
This mostly kept them silenced, because one thing that most people
hate is to be made a fool of.

Fortunately, I experience that everyday of my life. So I'm not
affected by being laughed at. Just look at me, for God's sake, and
you'll start laughing. Like Glenn says, "You're always willing to
make a complete fool out of yourself in public at any given time..."
Dat's me! Your friendly, neighborhood scapegoat. Okay, so I'm not so
friendly...

I finally started pushing alternate games. And lo and behold, what
did I find?

1) Many people had asked about other games than Hold'em
2) All had been told they were the "only ones" who wanted to play non-
HE
3) All had been laughed at or mocked
4) Almost all of the board people refused to put a non-HE interest
list up
5) Many indicated they were "sick" of ALL HOLD'EM, ALL THE TIME

And so what happened? Well, we DID get other games going. We DID
start a low-limit HORSE game the day after I gave a small, free HORSE
lesson up in the Lido. We started it regardless of the fact that
almost everyone was laughing at us and putting us down (even the
dealers, one who came to the table and said we were the ones "playing
that STUPID game").

At one point a floorman said to another that he'd offer me 10:1 odds
that we'd NEVER get a mixed game going. Unfortunately, I didn't hear
him (he said it out of my hearing, because anyone who said anything
like that within my earshot would have gotten a whole load of my
wrath, and I would have reported it immediately to Jan & Linda). I
didn't get to collect on my 10:1.

Because we DID get a game going, and almost immediately. And guess
what? It filled up within about 30 minutes of the time we got it
started (virtually completely by word-of-mouth, since we couldn't get
the board to even WRITE IT DOWN!).

It not only started, then filled, but we had a LIST for almost two
full days and nights!

And the one common theme we heard as people sat down to take their
places?

"Thank God you finally got this started. I've been asking about it
since the beginning of the cruise. I'm so sick of playing ALL
HOLD'EM, ALL THE TIME!"

So you want to kill the virtually endless fishpond of easy money that
has been coming your way for the past three years?

Easy. Keep insisting poker is only one game. ALL HOLD'EM, ALL THE
TIME!

Felicia :)