Re: Just how young (and why) are the top players online?
I'm 42, came in with the boom, never played poker before, but have been playing daily since. I learned from scratch, multi-tabling from day one, and winning. Same experience as the rest of you. Reading books, lurking on forums like this, playing and gaining skill. I play marathon sessions (from this past Fri night through Mon about noon straight with one 6 hour break and the occassional smoke break).
There is nothing about any of this that is particularly hard. Real careers are harder. You don't have to be a genius to beat most players. You don't need any particular computer savvy or manual dexterity to multi-table. Powers of concentration are not among the attributes that wain with age (see Georg Solti).
As has been mentioned, the reason more 40-somethings are not doing what I am doing is because they are already doing something better. 4-6 years invested in college, and another 15-20 invested in a career means the 40-somethings have no incentives to drop what they are doing and take up a poker career. Consider that no one starts out playing 1-2k. You start out at 1-2 dollars. Why would a senior manager in a Fortune 500 company drop his career to play 1-2 hold'em?
And as has been mentioned, most 40-somethings have more to consider than their own welfare (i.e. family). Gambling with your family's future is not appealing, especially when the sole purpose is to satisfy some adolescent predilection for game-playing.
In my case, I'm single and my job sucked. Once poker winnings outpaced my wages it was c'ya. I'll never make it to nosebleed (I didn't take this up because I wanted to work hard), but I don't see any reason why a middle-aged person couldn't. They don't exist because there aren't any trying.
P.S.- PA had been coming over the top of DB all night and DB was looking for a place to take a stand. It was 3 handed and he opened with a pp and got raised. He simply said if you have a bigger pair then nh but otherwise I'm ready to gamble. It's all situational.
P.P.S.- Above poster is correct. People in their 40s never heard of marijuana when growing up. (Oh man)
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