Having only been a poker professional for three years now after starting to play the game in 2003 right at the beginning of the "poker boom," I was very fortunate to have been able to ride most of the meteoric rise that the game experienced from 2003 until 2006. Unfortunately, in recent years we’ve seen things such as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), lower television ratings for poker, and an overall downturn in the economy cut into the growth of this great game. Now don’t worry, this column has nothing to do with the death of poker or a downturn for the game. I’m not normally one to speculate on where the game is going, but there is no denying that its growth has slowed, the existing playing pool has gotten a lot more talented through the abundant forms of education out there, and with the downturn in the economy, fewer new players have discretionary income to put into poker. That being said, not all is doom and gloom. In 2007, I started to take notice of things slowing down as some of the online fields started to shrink, but more importantly, many of the World Series of Poker events ...