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

[raze]

Great post - those are some interesting points.

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In fields where processing power weighs very heavily (math, for instance), academics peak very young (around 25). In fields, such as history, where accumulated knowledge weighs heavily, the peak occurs at age fifty or later.


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Do you think highly experienced poker players, who have playing over dozens of years, would be using at the poker table more of their mathematical processing power, or their accumulated experience (history?) of poker? Including other factors like physical conditioning, would age necessarily be a detriment as opposed to an asset to a poker player?

[Stinger88]

Very nice post Brandon. Unfortunately as a 19-year-old I am distracted from completely mastering the game by things such as college girls and alcohol, but I try my best [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[JJBuffone]

Good read. Thanks for this Brandon.

[NNNNOOOOONAN]

so what does Nick have to do with this?

is he like the closest anyone has come to "the whole package?"

[buzz_ly]

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It’s not surprising that the top online players tend to be much younger than the top live players. My guess is that the expected peak for a serious online player would be 24 or so, and the expected peak for a live player would be around 33.

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This is a backwards argument. The primary reason online players peak younger is that they reach their heights far more quickly than live players (as far as number of hands). They make a lot of money, burn out, move on.

To piggyback off what FWF says in the Sklansky thread. Create a series of complex hands. An online/live mix (the live hands would include physical reads). Field a group of the top 20 live players and then the top 20 online players and have a panel judge their individual critical analyses.

You're kidding yourself if you think it would be close.

[Pudge714]

Nice post.
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I think that online poker is much more processing-intensive than live poker and depends much less on accumulated knowledge (about behavioral tendencies, for example). It’s not surprising that the top online players tend to be much younger than the top live players. My guess is that the expected peak for a serious online player would be 24 or so, and the expected peak for a live player would be around 33. I would further expect the skills of the live player to fall off more slowly after the peak than the skills of the online player.

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I think young players success online is mainly due to demographic issues. I started playing online poker before I could set foot in a casino. A lot of people in older generations don't trust playing online or can't mechanically download the software, create an account, etc. I also think online players have a lot more knowledge in certain facets of the game because they play more hands. I think this is enough of a concern to reconsider whether live poker is more knowledge intensive.

[post1958]

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Nice post, but I think the lack of variance in chess and tennis makes the Kasparov/Federer analogies fairly meaningless. I think that's the real reason why there has never, and probably will never be a well-defined "best player" in poker.

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agree - and it's the lack of a luck element in chess and tennis that causes the lack of variance.

[Xaston]

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Perhaps someone will come along in poker and make our current beliefs about maximum win rates, ROI and variance look naive.

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he's already here, he's called themetetron

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A++

[homeboy604]

great post, thanks.

[a nonymous]

One of the most interesting posts I've read in a long time.