Is Poker Finished?

I was checking out some newspapers over the weekend for some interesting poker articles and I came across this article from the New York Post that pretty much said poker is done. I know that these come across all the time and the naysayers are far and few between. This article makes its judgement on the fact that there are professional poker players (Daniel Negreanu, Scotty Nguyen, Phil Hellmuth) starring in a Pepsi Ad. The theory on poker is that this sport is an underground movement and the author of this article states that "once underground movements gain mass acceptance, it typically signifies the beginning of the end". I'm not so sure I believe this statement at all, especially when I am in the midst of an online PokerParty and there are forty thousand other players havin a PokerParty at the same time. You know what I mean! That is just the players online from one site. Sure poker became a huge hit, but I don't think that it is necessarily true to believe that poker is finished because Pepsi inserted three poker players into a commercial. That's a bit drastic!

Now there were some good points in this newsprint that showed a decline in the number of viewers that are actively watching poker. Here is a couple of excerpts showing this:

"The audience for Bravo's "Celebrity Poker Showdown" has fallen to an average of 134,000 viewers this year from a high of 364,000 viewers in 2003, according to Nielsen Media Research."

"ESPN's "Poker" has lost 193,000 viewers in the two years it been on the air. And the Travel Channel's marquee "World Series of Poker" has seen its average audience drop to 464,000 this year from a peak of 583,000 in 2004."

Obviously the writer should proof read his work a bit as he would know that the World Poker Tour is the program that is on the Travel Channel. There is a bit of a decline in the numbers per say, but also when these shows first came on air this is all the poker we had the opportunity to watch. Nowadays there are so many different poker tournaments to watch that it is tough to keep up with them all. I would still say that poker is on the up, and this writer did not look at all the facts before making this judgement. Will poker eventually decline or fade out? I'm sure it will as does most things, but that doesn't mean it is going to fall off the planet. Look at the number of entries into the Main Event of the World Series of Poker, and you tell me there is a decline. Thank you very much.

This blog is brought to you by the partypoker bonus code 20BR