Is poker a young professional's game?
The last six champions have been professionals under 25. Barry Carter asks if older players and amateurs have a chance in the Main Event any more?
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| Ryan Riess |
Congratulations to 23-year-old Ryan Riess on becoming our latest champion.
Nothing against Ryan personally, but when the event got short handed I was really hoping Jay Farber would do it. I know very little of the final few players, but it feels like poker would have really benefited from another amateur winning the Main Event. Farber seemed a colourful character and would have certainly made for an interesting champ.
However, for the sixth time in a row, we have had a professional player in his early twenties take down the big one. Since the November Nine was introduced it seems that the Main Event is a young man's game.
Our last six champions were Peter Eastgate (21), Joe Cada (21), Jonathan Duhamel (23), Pius Heinz (22), Greg Merson (24), and now Riess (23).
Most athletes peak around age 26; it seems in poker being under 25 is the age to be.
A young demographic
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| Greg Merson |
Of course, the biggest reason that all our recent Main Event champions were under 25 was because they are the largest part of poker's demographic. The typical poker player these days is a 23-year-old white male. It is not just the winners - the average age of the final table is usually in the mid-twenties.
Since the poker boom and the advent of online poker, the demographic has changed from older men in casinos to young men online. Players like Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey, and Phil Hellmuth - who all started at a young age - were the exception, not the rule, before the boom.
Online poker became cool in the early 2000s and attracted lots of young guys as a viable alternative to getting a job. In fact I'd be shocked if most of the last six champions didn't turn pro straight out of college and never really had a full-time "real job".
Then there is the sheer amount of practice young online players can accumulate in a short space of time. Not only do online players play thousands a hands a day, they also tend to have few responsibilities, meaning they can devote themselves to the game much more than someone in their thirties with a full-time job and children.
The last few years really have been the first where we have seen players emerge who have known nothing else but poker. Not like accountant Chris Moneymaker, patent attorney Greg Raymer, chiropractor Joe Hachem, television producer Jamie Gold, or social worker Jerry Yang. The odds are seemingly stacked against an amateur winning the Main Event because of the amount of table time young players are able to accumulate.
Risk aversion
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| Jonathan Duhamel and Pius Heinz |
Finally there is perhaps the issue of risk aversion. It is a simple fact that we all become much more risk averse as we get older. This is in large part because we usually have so much more to lose - a career, a reputation, a family, a home - the older we get.
If a 22-year-old poker pro busts out on the bubble of the Main Event, it probably won't mean a great deal to them in the grand scheme of things. If the same thing happens to a 37-year-old office manager with a daughter, wife and a mortgage, it becomes much harder for that player to forget the real world value of the money.
I'm not saying that we will never see an older player or an amateur win the big one again, far from it. I for one thought 36-year-old-pro JC Tran was going to walk it this year and you only have to look at the landmark year Daniel Negreanu has had to prove that players in their 30s and 40s are still able to dominate the game.
It's just that for several reasons this game really favours young online poker players and they are always going to make up most of the field. We will see older players winning the Main Event again, probably when we see this same generation of players become 30+, at which point I imagine the standard of the best players will be even scarier than it is right now.
Sadly, however, for the same reasons I think it is highly unlikely we will get another true amateur winning the Main Event. Moneymaker seemed unlikely in 2003, ten years on a repeat of that seems almost impossible.
