The Life Cycle of a Poker Player (and my thoughts on live vs online)

[Zetack]

Pseudo-science! I love it. Seriously, to take a few poorly understood scientific factoids and try to extrapolate anything serous out of it with regards to poker is not particularly meaningful. More a case of garbage in, garbage out. Although it did make for an interesting read, so not entirely a wasted effort.

As to the thought that we may see a Kasparof of poker, or perhaps a tiger woods, or federer, it isn't very likely. The main problem is that the edge in poker is simply too small. Say a player came along who was a 10% better player than the next best player in the world. That's a massive improvement, and probably unrealistic. But even so, that doesn't directly translate to 10% better results. That increase in skill probably translates to a fraction of a percent increase in results over the competition. And that's simply not enough to give us a recognizable kasparov or Federer.

Also, if the player is so much better, isn't it possible that his game selection skills are better as well? That he doesn't need the ego stroking from playing the best and instead plays in the most profitable games? And thus rarely, if ever, playing the best (albeit inferior to him) players in the world, we would never recognize him as the best player?

Also, given that poker is a gambling game, it is highly unlikely you'll see large numbers of kids pushed into it, and learning and breathing poker from the time they're five as you do in sports and even chess. So you just aren't going to get that kind of development.

Finally a querry. Is the player that Brandon refers to, who plans to quit when a crop of better players comes along really making a wise choice? At the end of the day, as long as there are fish in the pool, poker doesn't require you to be the best. Unlike tennis, or golf, or whatever, in order to be wildly successful, you do not have to face off against the top players in the world...