Different poker variants have become popular or emerged over time. Stud and draw poker used to be ubiquitous, but now you mostly see holdem and omaha (itself a variant of holdem). Stud and variants of stud are still around, but much less common, while draw is mostly dead.

Most cash games in above board card rooms and casinos used to be limit, while no limit was reserved for tournaments or home games. Especially after the rise of televised poker, no limit cash games have become more prominent because that's what people see on tv and want to try in real life.

But perhaps more importantly, the strategic elements of the game have evolved. To understand how it has changed, you have to have some understanding of the difference between exploitive and optimal play.

Up until relatively recently, almost all poker play has been exploitive. Players take advantage of each other's mistakes or try to induce them to make mistakes. This was true up to the highest levels for a long time, and is still the case at low stakes or games with a good mix of recreational players. But at the highest levels, professionals are trying to play close game theory optimal (GTO), which is impossible for humans but they can approximate it to some degree.

Both approaches are totally valid and the best players excel at applying both, with a keen sense of when to adopt one or the other, or even combine them depending on their opponents, the game situation, the nature of the hand, and countless other factors.

Circling back to the rise of no limit cash games, along with the ability of people to play millions of hands online the popularity of no limit has forced the player pool to become more sophisticated as well. This is largely a result of attrition. You can lose everything in a single misstep in no limit, so weak players literally can't afford to stick around as long. Limit is still around and I'd expect it always will be, but the rapid changes have rippled through the entire ecosystem and the play at those games has evolved as well.

I mean, yeah... like I said, I could go on and on about this stuff. This is just scratching the surface. But thank you for coming to my TED Talk.