HS/College or new grads: How big is poker among young people?

[El Diablo]

This is directed to the younger 2+2ers.

I'm trying to get an idea of how big poker is nowadays in high school and college, and among young graduates.

Here on 2+2 we read all the time about kids winning/losing 100k+ in a session before they can legally drink, and tons of stories about tourney scores in the hundreds of thousands or even over a million. But is that sort of stuff known about and talked about a lot at schools?

If I were to go to your high school or college:

a) What percentage of people play poker sometimes / regularly, like once a week or more /all the time, every day or almost every day / etc?
b) What percentage of people play at limits where they are regularly winning/losing over $100/$1,000/$10,000 per session?
c) How many kids in your school are making over $100,000 per year at poker?
d) How much do the people who don't play poker know about how much people are making?
e) Does the party crowd play poker? Do athletes play poker? Is it "cool" to play poker?

No need to answer these like a quiz, that's not the point, just write whatever you think the "state of poker" is among your peers. What I'm trying to get a feel of is how common it is to play poker, what kinds of limits are "normal" games, what the perception is of poker players, etc.

[ImsaKidd]

I would say a fair number of guys play poker casually, maybe 30-40%.

I know of 2 other serious online players at my school of 10,000 students, one of them might be pulling down 100k, not sure. We'll say 2/10k students making 100k/year.

Probably 6 or 7 playing at limits where they can be +- 1k/session.

I try not to tell people how much I make, although I told one other friend and word sort of spread. Oops! I get a lot of questions when people see my 8 tabling on 2 screens as well. I try to be vague, but its hard if they look at stacks or whatever- "OMG IS THAT REAL MONEY?"

No clue on the "cool" factor.

Blah, just read the end of your post, I answered it like a quiz anyway [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[Thats_So_Gay]

God to be 18 again and discover both poker and 2+2...that would be so sweet. Add all the horny 14-18 year old hot chicks and life would be insane.

[LBJ]

I'm an 18 year old who'll graduate HS in a couple weeks. I've played online for a couple years so I can probably give you a good answer to your question.

a) In my HS, there is a decent subset of people who play regularly. I used to play with them all the time (think once a weekend), but took up partying and such and now don't play with them as much (don't play online anymore either). They still play once or twice a week. In general, though, there is a very large amount of people who play, and the group I mentioned is only the hardcore players. Almost all the guys know how to play, have played, and are semi-decent, but few are really good.

b) Maybe one in the whole school (I know almost everyone of the 600+ in my class, but maybe I don't know about someone)

c) 0... If you need to ask this question then I think you overrate the amount of people that actually have a large amount of success playing online. Maybe in college that will change, but in HS there is none even close. To give a good view, I would guess that there are maybe 2 or 3 people in my class who have made around $15,000. On the other hand I know probably 25 people who have lost around $100 (through transfers from me or others, AFFILIATE BONUS !! [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img])

d) People have big mouths. My closest friends used to tell people I played online, I discouraged them from doing so because I hate when people try to freeload on me/ask for $50 loan etc. and pretty much I just wanted to be a normal kid...

e) Party crowd - When bored or screwing around on a Sunday afternoon.
Athletes do, and to tell the truth I can't think of one subset of people that DON'T play, besides the goths and such.

Overall, poker USED to be a lot bigger than it is now, but that may just be because my friends used to play more around soph. year but eventually got into partying. Tournaments were usually around $20, could get up to $50ish when playing with poker fans...

[guids]

Im 24, a semi-recent grad. Poker si not as popular, it used to be you couldnt talk to 3 people and not be invited to at least a game. most of the poker games have evolved into guys just partying and using it as an excuse to get away from the wives. There are very few "pros" that I know irl, sometimes you will hear a guy at a party that plays online for a living but it is very rare, and almost non existent anymore.

[Kimbell175113]

A lot of guys' brothers' roommates' have won a donkament and cashed out some money, if you listen to the talk, but I'm continually surprised by the lack of knowledge or awareness.

FWIW, I go to Purdue (i.e. everyone around me is an engineer), so you'd think people would be more aware of mathematical stuff, but when it relates to gambling, people r dumb.

[raptor517]

in my high school.. there was a group of about 10 people or so that played regularly, but we played like .25-.50 cent NL, and big winner was like 100 bucks. eventually i found a poker club that spread 3-6 limit and 1-2 pot limit. i guess i was 16 or so, junior year. i made like 1300 my first night there, so that was prob biggest win anyone in my high school had. we all kept playing until graduation, and sometimes towards the end of my senior year a few of us started playing online.

first year of college, there was a good number of ppl that played in a 1-2 NL game, usually buying in for 50-100 bucks. i still played at that club against old degens, and was starting to play online more and more. i didnt really know anyone that played seriously other than mario (deuce2high). we both dropped out togehter when we had a combined 10k roll, got an apartment, and started the grind. at this point, i dont think there were many ppl making 100k a year at tcu. one was my old roomate in vegas, he was about a senior, and was playing upwards of 300-600 limit, but mainly grinding 30-60 games. i thought he was a god. also, gavin was still at tcu, or maybe just recently dropped out, and he had already had some tourney success. i certainly didnt make 100k that first year after dropping out, so there were 2 ppl that i know of.

over the next year or so, i met a couple other people, mario and i started making some bank, etc. empiremaker2 came to tcu, so i met him and we played a bit, this was back when he had 20k and played 5-10 tho. at this point i was doing the frat thing, so was partying pretty much every night and only playing poker like 1-2 days a week, usually not putting in many hours. i was pretty much busto but managed to run good on the last money i had in party before i dropped out for the second time.

as far as party crowd in general, most frats at my school would have a decent number of ppl gettin together for 10-20 dollar games or whatever, and occasionally a few ppl that have run up some money, played as high as 10-20 or 25-50 NL, and gone busto. no one that i know of really has had any huge success, and the ones that i do know all dropped out. my other roomate after living with mario, travestyfund, he dropped out too after having success, even tho his lazy ass only has 18 hours left. also, em2 ended up xferring to another school, then dropped out from there.

athletes.. generally dont have a lot of time on their hands between mandatory study time and workouts. i knew a few guys that played football and basketball, but htey played really small for like 2-3 hours a week. as far as it being cool to play poker, its not really 'cool' but its not uncool either. its just something some people do that not too many have success with. any large amount of success generally creates envy by people who suck and blame riggedness.

no1 has any idea other than my close friends how much money i have made or how much can be made in poker, and even those still probably dont know too well. most college age kids think its rigged or all luck, or just pure gambling and running good.

to be fair, my knowledge is a couple years outdated, but i would probably guess that currently, less than 1/1000 college kids are making anywhere NEAR 100k a year, much less 50k a year. its probably closer to 1/5000 for the 100k mark, maybe even lower i cant say for sure. certainly an interesting thing to think about, as im curious to read some of the other responses.

[beeyjay]

Having just graduated from a huge state school and now working with other people my age, I feel that the number of people playing poker is very very small.

Based on what I have seen across a wide variety of groups of friends from high school, college, and work and their friends from wherever else they have them - I would put the number of people who play regularly at 5% or less. This includes weekly $5 buyin tourneys and up.

At college there were some games where one might win or lose $20-$30 per night and I know some other 2+2ers went to my school including one who plays (or played in...I dont really keep up) the biggest games on FTP for a while but the vast majority of people I know or have met have never won or lost $500 lifetime playing poker.

Playing poker is not a "cool" thing. Some frats have small games, but the majority of people making any legit money from it have never been considered cool or at the very least have some inner nerd in them.

We just had a poker tournament at work as a fun activity and it was crazy how many people had no idea what was going on. I'm not talking like wow these people are poor players. I'm talking wow these people don't know what a blind is.

The next time you are in a class/meeting whatever and think about the actuality of playing poker with those people, I think you would realize this is the norm.

[El Diablo]

All,

"Overall, poker USED to be a lot bigger than it is now"

"Poker si not as popular"

I'm really curious how many of you agree with those types of comments re: the popularity of poker among HS/college students.

If that is really true, then the current unprecedented number of people playing things like 100/200+NL could end up really drying up the games a lot faster than anyone expects.

[beeyjay]

el d,

I would agree with those statements. My feeling is that it peaked 1-1.5 years ago.

That was when some of my friends who had seen me playing for years but never played got chipsets for xmas and played, my sister who was in high school was playing with her friends and it seemed everybody at least knew of Celebrity Poker Showdown even if they didn't watch poker on tv.

edit to say I was also mid-late college at that point and now I'm out and live/work around slightly older people so that could have some impact, but I don't think I'm that out of touch yet.