FULL TILT POKER BLOG

#292 – End of the Boy Wonder

Posted by Editor | Filed under Uncategorized

It’s taking me some time to realize it but my days as the Boy Wonder are over, and they ain’t coming back. My 49th birthday is less than 2 weeks away – December 14 if you want to mark your calendars – and though I definitely don’t feel old, spending as much time as I do playing poker online makes me realize that I am.

It was unavoidable I guess. I never played poker growing up and even now have played under a dozen home games in my life. My first time in a poker room was at the Mirage as a pup of 32. After playing avidly (with the nearest game more than 1,500 miles away) for 3 years, my commitment stalled. A friend rekindled the fire in 2003 when I was 44. I played just one event in the 2004 WSOP and just one in 2005. I’ve played – ever – just one WSPT event, back in 2005.

No spring Chicken, I.

This is unfamiliar terrain. It’s been more than 8 years since I’ve been inside a courtroom but for a long time, my legal career went a long way toward defining my sense of self. And I was always The Kid there.

I was on a law school faculty when I was 26. I started my own law firm when I was 29. The firm was very successful and played a role in a number of high profile cases during the Nineties (my thirties). I took a hundred depositions of CEOs, corporate officers and directors, and Wall Street advisors of big public companies. The attorneys opposing me in these depositions and in court hearings were some of the best in the country. I don’t ever remember taking a deposition of someone younger than me, or facing an attorney younger than me. These sprawling class actions were brought by several firms and some of our biggest fights were with other plaintiffs’ lawyers. The principals of these firms – and, later, even their up-and-coming bulldogs – were older than me.

I retired from practicing law when I was forty, again playing the role of The Kid. One of the reasons I retired was to spend more time with my kids. Having become a father for the first time at 30, I was older than most of the moms and dads I ran into, especially because I was 38 when Valerie was born.

I also started doing new things, and I was, as a rookie, older than most people doing them (or at least doing them well). I was in my late thirties when I published my first magazine article and 41 when my first book was published. Although writing is a pretty solitary pursuit, it occasionally dawns on me that I’m doing with other writers, publishers, editors, and agents who are generally younger than me.

And blogging? I’m ancient compared to most other people who write about poker on the internet.

Then there’s playing online. I hardly ever know much about the identities of my opponents, but when people type in the chat box, they reveal things. Not to say that the typers are representative but there’s a good chance that I’m double the average age of the people I’ve played against. In any event, there are a large, large, LARGE number of poker players in their early twenties or younger.

It took awhile for this to dawn on me, both because I’m new at being The Old Guy and because I haven’t until recently thought about the age of my opponents. I know some things that these younger players tend not to know. I don’t doubt for a moment that someone 21 can be more skilled than someone 48. Some of the most skilled players on the internet are far, far younger than me.

But there is wisdom that comes with age, even in online poker. There is at least one thing that’s glaringly obvious to me, yet completely hidden from a huge number players in their early twenties, even – sometimes ESPECIALLY – the winning ones.

I’ll try to post what I learned sometime later tonight or on Monday.

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