The things people point to as symptoms of the death knell of an industry are usually short sighted. The big thing in poker has been to say that the boom is over and the easy money is going away. I think it was the AP that just ran an article about how Wal-Mart and other retailers are heavily discounting their poker chip sets this year, and how that's obvious the end of the road for poker. Of course Wal-Mart and other retailers also heavily discount their clothing following the holiday season, and I don't see anyone saying that the clothing boom is just a fad and 2006 will be the year of the nude. It all depends on how you define boom. If anything except 300% growth is not a boom, then yes, it's over. But it's not over, because the opposite of a boom is a bust, and poker has definitely not come close to busting. Pokerstars and many other online poker sites are reporting record numbers, though ratings may have slipped on TV, but that's due to oversaturation, splitting the attention of enthusiasts between too many choices. The chip sets? most everyone who wanted a cheap piece of crap plastic set has bought one. Real poker players want good chips which places like Wal-Mart aren't likely to carry. And even those real players probably already have chips by now. But what does continous buying chips have to do with playing poker? I only need one set, and that will last me forever (unless Charlie eats them). As long as people were buying chips, that meant that there were less than the maximum potential buying chips, and some people who might have played hadn't yet done so. Now that the chip sets are down in sales, that tells me that poker is at the absolute peak. No longer on the way up, but certainly not yet going down. And even if it does go down, it will still be far bigger than 2 or 3 years ago, and will be for many years yet. And kids will still go to college and learn the game there and give me their parents' money.