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It's just part of a natural cycle. Poker, even at it's hottest, still represents significantly less profit per square foot than slots, or any pit game. The expense of remodeling to downsize poker rooms in order to give the space to more profitable games is trivial compared to the profits that reallocation of the square footage offers. Look for a lot more downsizing.

The poker boom peaked and moved into decline before the current economic mess asserted itself. As the economy goes south, we can all look for the decline of poker to accelerate.

I believe, when poker finds it's new bottom, it will still be bigger than it was before the boom, but there was no way we were going to see it continue on the path it was on. When the cool people find something new and hot, most of society follows. Once they have, though, the cool people, who don't want to be doing what everyone else is doing, find something new, and the followers do what they do ...... follow. How many "Live Strong" bracelets have you seen lately? What you're left with after the hipsters move on are the people who came to poker as part of that pack of followers, but fell in love with the game.

Now, operating efficiency is the name of the game. At the height of the boom, anyone could make money spreading poker. Now, with less players, making a profit requires good management and planning. There is still plenty of money to be made at poker, but we are going to see the operators who cannot adapt to the current marketplace wither and die. That's just marketing 101.

The 4 stages of a product's lifestyle

1. Impact

2. Explosibe Growth

3. Consolidation

4. Decline

Right now, we're in Consolidation, and moving towards Decline.

As dealers, all we can do is hone our skills to make sure we're among the best in the cardroom, be reliable, timely, and professional, and watch for opportunities to move to operations which we believe are the ones who will survive Consolidation and thrive in the inevitable period of Decline that is coming.