Poker is still thriving
I have played for 5 years now, started out playing 7 card stud and quickly went over to texas holdem nl
I am not addicted to persay but I love playing it and for a while I was slightly addicted to the money I made from it
Now I work instead of playing... I never went beyond an average hourly pay of $22 which is only half of what I get for programming which is around $46/hour.
However I did play over 300.000 hands and do have some nice statistics on my play, it's a fun fun game but buy pokertracker so you can see exactly how much you earn and how many hours it have taken you. And for the first month of serious trying you will probably just lose.
I played 9 tables at the same time NL$50 6 Max.
The guy I started to play poker with put a whole other effort into and played very very much and is in Vegas right now.
he has won around $400.000 on playing NL$1000 - 8 tables at the time. over two million hands.
It takes time but if you have a good head, lots of determanation and never ever play without having AT LEAST 30 buyins it is possible to get to the top.
so when I play NL50 I have to have $1500 in my account. Bankroll management it's called for those who gives a shit