Great question sir/madam moderator...

I guess we probably need to define "long-term career". For the sake of argument, I'm going to compare an online poker player to an employee that is in the workforce until retirement (55 years old for now but that age is increasing).

So do I think that someone can make a living playing poker online until retirement if they're in their early 20's now?

Yes I do...if and ONLY if 1 thing continues to happen for the next 30 to 35 years and another thing NEVER happens...for the next 30 to 35 years.

Before I get into these "things", I have to naturally assume that you are a solid, tight, aggressive player. You look for the easy games, you know how to get out of a bad game, you can admit when you're outclassed at the table and adjust your game or leave, you know how to lay it down when you're beat, you play the odds when they're clearly in your favor, you avoid the gray areas, you understand that your poker game extends beyond your current session...it's a life long event, you play within your bankroll, you track your play and are honest with yourself about how much you actually win and loose, you know bad beats will come and when they do you stay even keel and you're an expert at minimizing your loses while maximizing your wins.

That being said, what needs to CONTINUE happening for the next 30 to 35 years? New money and players coming to the game in droves, who think they TOO can make a living playing online poker or can just make some "extra" income. The main thing driving these new players to the game is the constant exposure they're currently seeing in the media and main stream. What are there like 8 or 9 poker events on cable TV every week? And didn't NBC (one of the big 3 networks) have poker along with a Heads-Up tournament? I live in a Texas city with a population of about 120,000 and 2 guys from our city won online events to qualify for the WSOP main event...it was the front page story in the newspaper ONLY because of the place that poker currently holds in the main stream. Both guys finished in the money and it made news on the local television station all because poker is the hot thing right now. I mean come on, I was in the grocery store on Friday and they were selling decent sets of poker chips in the potato chip isle (how's that for cross merchandising)!!! Anyone who's picked up a deck of cards now thinks "why not me?" and it's those people that the dedicated online player will make easy money on. Media and main stream exposure is the flame that lights the fuel (the fuel being the new players and new money). As long as the media and main stream flame stays hot, the online pro will do well. History proves that this won't continue though, especially for the next 30 years. It's like that new song on the radio and video music channels, they all play the hell out of it until people get tired of it, then it's onto the next song. Right now, poker is the new song and it's getting the hell played out of it right now...I don't think it can stand up to this for another 30 years. When it slows down, the media outlets will move onto the next big main stream thing (and there's always a next big thing) When this happens, the sharks will have to feed on each other to survive and even the best sharks will have a tough go at making a living online.

So what can NEVER happen for the next 30 to 35 years? Well everything has a life cycle and poker is at the height of that life cycle right now. This cycle will naturally (and gradually) decline over time but I've got to think that within the next 30 years something will happen to drastically accelerate the downward life cycle. It will probably be a major news outlet that will broadcast an expose that will shed an extremely unfavorable light on the online poker community. Why? Because the television ratings for that expose will be huge considering how popular online poker is right now. The underlying currents constantly talk about how cards are juiced and not as random and you would believe. If some reporter is able to prove this, have some interviews with insiders and so forth, that expose will signal the beginning of the end to online poker's life cycle. It doesn't matter that of the hundreds of online poker sites, the majority are square...if the media finds just one...the entire online poker community will be painted with the same negative brush. How quickly it spirals downward depends on how much the poker sites, in general, can withstand 20%-40% (or more) of it's players cashing out their accounts...I would bet most couldn't withstand that type of mass exodus. If this happens, sites will crash and burn left and right, leaving only the strongest sites to survive. But of course, as these sites crash and burn, they will create more stories of people who lost money because the site went dark...accelerating the downward cycle even faster.

So to sum it up...yes, I think a good player can make a long term career out of playing poker online provided there is new money and players constantly entering the game and as long as the whole house doesn't come crashing down because of a 60 Minutes expose on the "Fraud that is internet poker."...and this online poker utopia remains undisturbed for the next 30 to 35 years...but do you think that will really happen?

Again, great question sir/madam moderator...

Nate
"There's right, there's wrong and there's reality."