Why Do Kids Dominate the World Series of Poker Championship?

The facts are painfully clear. The average age of this year’s “November Nine” is 26, and the last two champions were even younger. Peter Eastgate was 22, and Joe Cada was 21.

The old-timers naturally resent being displaced as “kings of the hill,” but similar takeovers occur frequently in many places. They are most understandable in sports, because young people are stronger and faster, but they also happen in competitions such as investing, business, and war.

In addition to resenting the kids’ success, the old-timers are confused by it. It used to take many years to become a top player. How did these kids become so good so quickly?

There are at least four reasons. Kids naturally have three advantages: fearlessness, endurance, and flexibility. And unusual circumstances have created a fourth advantage that kids rarely have — more and better experience than most older players.

Fearlessness

We all know that many young players, especially the tournament aces, are fearlessly aggressive. They raise, reraise, and shove in their stacks with much weaker cards than older and “wiser” players.

Kids tend to be fearless everywhere. They drive faster and more carelessly. They do crazy stunts on skateboards, skis, bicycles, and motorcycles. They run up debts that they can’t repay. They abruptly quit jobs, start businesses, and move to new states or countries. They even get married impulsively.

Their parents and teachers try to “talk sense” to them, but they won’t listen. They aren’t afraid, and they want to take chances. It makes them feel more alive, more unique, more powerful. They may even sneer at more timid (or sensible) people.

Without their fearlessness, most wars couldn’t be won. Old men plan grand strategies. Older, seasoned battlefield commanders give the day-to-day orders, but kids do most of the fighting, and nearly all of the dying.

In the World Series of Poker main event and any other no-limit hold’em tournament with a huge field, fearlessness is almost as necessary as it is in wars. When you’re playing against thousands of aggressive opponents, you simply can’t win with a survivalist strategy. As Amir Vahedi (who was not young) once put it, “In order to live, you must be willing to die.”

Endurance

The main event is an endurance contest. You have to stay focused for many hours a day for several days. Most older people just can’t do it; they get tired and careless. If you lose your focus for a moment and make a mistake, you can be wiped out.

Of course, younger people are not immune to fatigue, but they can resist it much better. As the days pass, everyone’s game deteriorates, but their games decline more slowly. When they approach the final table, older players may be exhausted, while the kids are still fairly sharp.

Flexibility

Kids have always been more flexible than older people. They aren’t afraid to make mistakes, and their minds are more open and less “cluttered.” So, they try out new techniques. If they work, great; if not, oh well. An open, uncluttered mind is essential in any rapidly changing field. All of poker is constantly evolving, and the main event is changing particularly rapidly.

Physics is, also. I remember reading something written by a Nobel Prize-winning physicist (I think it was C.N. Yang). He said that in the next few years, great things would be done in physics, but he wouldn’t do them. He was too old, and knew too much.

Whenever a new idea entered his head, he would immediately see why it wouldn’t work. He predicted that the breakthroughs would come from younger people, and he gave Newton and Einstein as examples. They did their most original work when they were very young.

Kids’ natural flexibility fits perfectly with the recent development of learning tools such as hand-tracking software, videos, and simulations. Kids quickly master and apply them, while many old-timers don’t even try to use them. They may think they don’t need them, or they don’t understand them, or they don’t play online (which is the only place to use some tools).

The main event is so different from most forms of poker that it requires fundamentally different strategies. I don’t know what those strategies are, and they probably change from year to year. But, as the ages of the November Nine and the two most recent champions clearly demonstrate, “same old, same old” isn’t working. You’ve got to gamble with new strategies, and kids are much more willing and able to do so.

Experience

In most competitions, the older players’ greater experience gives them an edge. In fact, it is often their primary advantage. They no longer have that edge in the main event. In fact, many kids have played in far more tournaments with huge fields than the top live-tournament pros.

Hardly any live-tournament players have entered many tournaments with huge fields. They can’t, because there aren’t enough opportunities. Some kids have played hundreds of these tournaments online, including ones with more entrants than the main event. They may even play two or three in a single day.

And most of their opponents in these huge tournaments are other kids. They therefore have much more experience against huge fields of young players than the older players do. That experience combines with their natural advantages to give them an enormous edge.

The Frustration Will Continue

Many top tournament players are frustrated because young “nobodies” keep winning the main event. Well, they had better learn to live with it, because a top live-tournament player may never win another one. Future main events will have thousands of kids, and some of them will be so tough that most or even all future champions will probably be 20-something nobodies.

Dr. Schoonmaker ([email protected]) coaches only on psychology issues, such as controlling impulses, coping with losing streaks, going on tilt, and planning your self-development. He is David Sklansky’s co-author for DUCY? and the sole author of four poker psychology books.