Having just gone through my fortieth birthday, I would have to say that I would definitely fall into the category of “old school” these days. Online poker has got significantly tougher and that applies to all poker games. The new young breed of online poker players are savvy with regards to technological software and its application!
It took me ages to learn how to use software like Poker Office and Poker Crusher although to be fair, I had been playing for a good few years before these things even came out. But the young online poker players of today and by this I am talking about the serious professionals are not only very smart with regard the nuances of the game but the best of them are very highly qualified mathematically or they have some serious background in statistics.
This in my mind gives them a serious edge in any online poker game for one simple reason, the older people who had these same qualifications years ago were not going into online poker simply because it didn’t exist. There were no opportunities to use their knowledge playing poker and why should they, when the profit potential of playing live poker down at your local cardroom was hardly going to keep you in the life of luxury.
But these new kids are leaving College and University with degrees that are highly pertinent to online poker. Also they have no emotional baggage as well and that is an absolutely massive plus point. Any player who is more than thirty years of age has probably already got a family and a mortgage and bills.
They have probably known some sort of financial hardship or they are already in a situation where they cannot afford to take meaningful risks. It is no coincidence that the best online players of today are mainly under thirty years of age and are well educated.
They may not be the sharpest brains in the world in certain other areas but they have high qualifications in statistics, probability and mathematics. They also have the University methods and ethos with regards to systems analysis and problem solving that the older generation simply do not have and they learn how to play poker in totally different ways to the old school players. Also by the time you are into your thirties, your life and goals are set in certain ways and without even realising it, your overall risk profile changes along with it.
It is this attitude to risk that defines if someone can actually make a substantial amount of money playing poker. If you are lucky enough to be able to find someone who will stake you or offer you some sort of sponsorship deal then you may just find yourself in poker nirvana.
This is why it isn’t automatically a route to success starting out at the small limits and trying to build your way up. You will encounter better players and bigger swings and those swings may be for amounts of money that you are just mentally not prepared to accept.
Online poker really is a young mans game these days but that isn’t because these young kids are better poker players or smarter people than their older adversaries. They merely have qualities that are highly pertinent to playing successful online poker and that is something that may or may not change with the passing of time.
Carl “The Dean” Sampson
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