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  #21  
Old 10-01-2007, 03:19 PM
ZeeJustin ZeeJustin is offline
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Default Re: An Unprecedented Time: Teenagers and Poker

I think a lot of people will have amazing stories to tell ten years from now, and not much else - many professional poker players included.

A lot of players will have debts and drug addictions that will take years to recover from.

Very few will be able to sustain the comfortable living that they are enjoying now.

It is possible that the success will be prolonged with legislation, or legalization in Asian countries, but even then, the games will dry up again.
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  #22  
Old 10-01-2007, 05:48 PM
SEABEAST SEABEAST is offline
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Default Re: An Unprecedented Time: Teenagers and Poker

[ QUOTE ]
My uncle made it rich trading commodities back in the momentum days, he was 19 when he made his first $100 000.

Athletes in sport also do pretty well.

[/ QUOTE ]

yeah but those are the guys at the top of the heap. some guy who is on a competitive c grade basketball team doesn't make [censored], whereas 15 year old 200NLers can pull in 15-20K a month without even really being that good at all.
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  #23  
Old 10-01-2007, 05:58 PM
iron81 iron81 is offline
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Default Re: An Unprecedented Time: Teenagers and Poker

[ QUOTE ]
yeah but those are the guys at the top of the heap. some guy who is on a competitive c grade basketball team doesn't make [censored], whereas 15 year old 200NLers can pull in 15-20K a month without even really being that good at all.

[/ QUOTE ]
lol no. "Not very good" = losing player, guaranteed.
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  #24  
Old 10-01-2007, 06:03 PM
gobbomom gobbomom is offline
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Default Re: An Unprecedented Time: Teenagers and Poker

[ QUOTE ]
I think a lot of people will have amazing stories to tell ten years from now, and not much else - many professional poker players included.

A lot of players will have debts and drug addictions that will take years to recover from.

Very few will be able to sustain the comfortable living that they are enjoying now.

It is possible that the success will be prolonged with legislation, or legalization in Asian countries, but even then, the games will dry up again.

[/ QUOTE ]


I think this is exactly right, and it makes me sad. I also have concerns about the psychological impact of the lifestyles and habits that are being formulated during these young adult years.
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  #25  
Old 10-01-2007, 06:21 PM
SEABEAST SEABEAST is offline
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Default Re: An Unprecedented Time: Teenagers and Poker

[ QUOTE ]

lol no. "Not very good" = losing player, guaranteed.

[/ QUOTE ]

ok, by not very good i meant in comparison to a truly great player, like how i made the sports analogy. some guy who is a solid c grade athlete doesn't make anything, whereas a solid c grade poker player easily makes 6 figures/yr. of course he still has to be better than the other c grade players but he gets to that level by just caring about the game more than the other c grade players, he doesn't need any god given talent.

and my overall point was that you can't really compare athletes/stockbrokers making a lot of money at a relatively young age to the poker phenomenon, because poker is a lot less exclusive. the potential societal effect isn't really cos of the couple of hundred guys at the top making millions. it's more to do with the 50,000 guys noone has ever heard of winning and then donating back considerable 5 figure sums often before they have ever had a fulltime job (or had sex!), and what a bizarre situation that really is.
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  #26  
Old 10-01-2007, 06:32 PM
yad yad is offline
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Default Re: An Unprecedented Time: Teenagers and Poker

seabeast,
poker actually isn't a lot less exclusive than becoming a stockbroker/hotshot young lawyer/etc. Sure, the path to the top is less "traditional" in the sense of going to good name-brand schools, etc. But it's really relatively few folks. There are probably far fewer than 50,000 young folks making 6 figures playing poker. Even if you grant that there are, 50,000 people worldwide is way less than the number of people who make $150k+ before the age of 25. My sister for example just graduated law school, did well but not spectacular, and will be making $200k next year at the age of 24. She is not all that uncommon -- certainly there are far far more than 50,000 folks in the world who achieve this sort of success. Poker is just a drop in the bucket.
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  #27  
Old 10-01-2007, 06:43 PM
SEABEAST SEABEAST is offline
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Default Re: An Unprecedented Time: Teenagers and Poker

i can see your point for sure, but 24 after graduation and initiation to the real world is different to 15-18 and not being able to wait to be legal in vegas so you can go and dump money being a balla with all the other cool kids.

i don't even mean that "omg people are making so much money and going to be so rich". i mean that they have access to so much and are taking it for granted and throwing it away, and it won't last forever and is really a bizarre situation.

like with the 200NL thing, i didnt mean half decent 200NL grinders actually ARE sitting there making 6 figures a year. just that they easily COULD be, without even needing any sort of intellectual brilliance, just the discipline to not piss it away... and that collectively the majority of us will look back on the situation and think w t f
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  #28  
Old 10-02-2007, 12:23 AM
xxThe_Lebowskixx xxThe_Lebowskixx is offline
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Default Re: An Unprecedented Time: Teenagers and Poker

"My sister for example just graduated law school, did well but not spectacular, and will be making $200k next year at the age of 24."

how do you graduate law school at 24? thats kool though, everyone talks about lawyers being unemployed.
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  #29  
Old 10-02-2007, 12:28 AM
xxThe_Lebowskixx xxThe_Lebowskixx is offline
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Default Re: An Unprecedented Time: Teenagers and Poker

[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]
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.
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  #30  
Old 10-02-2007, 12:32 AM
revlis87 revlis87 is offline
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Default Re: An Unprecedented Time: Teenagers and Poker

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.
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