An Unprecedented Time: Teenagers and Poker

[The B]

Jurollo,

online poker can be (not IS) a very lucrative outlet for young teenagers, but this phenomenon does not apply to the masses...the number of online teenagers devoting hours to multi-tabling online can't be higher than the number of teenagers participating in other extraciricular activities


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How many of said prodigies can we suppose will make the most of their winnings?

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when I think we should be asking, "how many prodigies will actually win with some sort of consistency?"


you're only young once, you never get those precious years back...that enjoyment that comes with being a teenager does not include sitting behind 2 flat screen monitors grinding while the years you'll miss the most pass you by...

[traz]

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you're only young once, you never get those precious years back...that enjoyment that comes with being a teenager does not include sitting behind 2 flat screen monitors grinding

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speak for yourself sir!

[Gildwulf]

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you're only young once, you never get those precious years back...that enjoyment that comes with being a teenager does not include sitting behind 2 flat screen monitors grinding

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do you think people like grimmstarr et. al would be out tree-climbing and living life to its fullest if they didn't play poker? The people who gravitate towards poker in the first place are the ones who would be playing (more) videogames instead.

I know when I was in highschool in suburbia all we basically did was watch movies, play video games, smoke up, drink a bit, etc.

[jtown1010]

I would think selling drugs would be the only fair comparison. It seems so much more common for a teenager to become a self-made millionaire through poker than anything other than drug dealing, or baseball, basketball and soccer. The athletes should be a fair comparison as well, since only the top .0001% of them make millions, which is probably pretty close to the amount of millionaire teenage poker players.

[xxThe_Lebowskixx]

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I would think selling drugs would be the only fair comparison. It seems so much more common for a teenager to become a self-made millionaire through poker than anything other than drug dealing, or baseball, basketball and soccer. The athletes should be a fair comparison as well, since only the top .0001% of them make millions, which is probably pretty close to the amount of millionaire teenage poker players.

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a serious difference here is that just about anyone who aced their math SATS could make a lot of money playing poker. most people never pick it up because they are scared of risk or never fully understand it, but i'm guessing anyone who graduates with a degree in electrical engineering could be a winning player. its much harder to make it in pro sports than it is in pro poker.

[raptor517]

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I would think selling drugs would be the only fair comparison. It seems so much more common for a teenager to become a self-made millionaire through poker than anything other than drug dealing, or baseball, basketball and soccer. The athletes should be a fair comparison as well, since only the top .0001% of them make millions, which is probably pretty close to the amount of millionaire teenage poker players.

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id be willing to bet that you can count the number of teenage self made millionaire drug dealers on 1 hand, probably even 1 finger, if that at all.

[Hume]

There's probably more rich teenagers from Premier League alone than from poker. OTOH, there's a lot of young kids swinging significant money up/down even if they're break-even or losing players.

[revlis87]

As someone who knows some of the teenage young poker players personally and others by word of mouth from the ones I do know I will say the following. A lot of the "balla" stuff has really calmed down in the last 6 months or year. People spent wildly when they made the first 100 k or whatever it was but once the reality of decreased earning potential (relative to the party days, etc) and taxes and all that stuff took hold, a lot of us have started to think long term. I'm not sure how many of us really are investing well - but most if not all of the players I know who have been around for 2-3 years are semi-intelligent with their money and are thinking about the future. In a sense, natural selection has already rid the poker world of a lot of the real degens who ran up big bankrolls and the rest of us are learning slowly but surely about the opportunity we had.

I remember I was in Paris for the WPT in summer 2006 and an old, friendly live poker pro who I think has been around for awhile told me something along the lines of "kid, you have the whole world in your hand. don't [censored] it up." It's stuck with me for a long time.

[jfish]

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you're only young once, you never get those precious years back...that enjoyment that comes with being a teenager does not include sitting behind 2 flat screen monitors grinding

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speak for yourself sir!

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i enjoy playing online poker too.

[Ship Ship McGipp]

It's a [censored] up thing, that's for sure.

Zee is a pessimist, but let's be realistic. If you are good enough to beat 5-10 and 10-20 online, you are going to be able to make a quarter of a million dollars a year for the rest of your life if you put the effort into it (in some form of poker). If that takes 30 hours a weak as opposed to 15, well, sh!t happens.

They'll be another boom. I'm sure that I'll make a million dollars one year, even if it's ten or twenty years from now, at only online cash games, and not tournaments. I'm sure a boom from Asia, or some other area of the world, or a rebirth from legalization in the U.S. is in the works. Patience and hard work on your poker game will keep you at the top of your profession.

Marginal edges will matter more than ever before, and the cream will rise the the top- it will be the same as any other profession.

Back to how it is now, I'm sure I'll do something else with my life, even if it's just coach basketball or open a business, but I can't imagine truly working for someone else.

As it is, just having 6 figures put away is such an enormous edge on our peers. If nothing else, even if I get a real job, I'm already 100% sure I can retire when I'm 40. That's some cool [censored], very few people will have that opporunity (possibly more now than 20 years ago, but still a small % of the population).

It's amazing the swings that happen, the amount of money that we win, the material things that we can buy- those things should be put in perspective.