There is no doubt that live tournament poker is in the midst of a youth-movement that was given a huge exclamation point when then 18- year-old Annette Obrestad won the first World Series of Poker main event to be held outside the U.S. earlier this month. With her victory, she became the youngest out of a handful of very young players who have had a good year.
Thanks to an international live poker explosion, fueled by PokerStars, the WSOP, and the World Poker Tour, there are now many opportunities for players younger than 21 to play in big buy-in tournaments and prove their ilk. And they are plowing through good-sized fields to do so.
In January, the final table of the WPT PokerStars Caribbean Adventure had only one player over the age of 25. Ryan Daut, 23, won the event; Isaac Haxton, 21, was the runner-up; Robert Ford, 22, finished third; Robert Mizrachi, 28, finished fourth; Jonathan Little, 22, finished fifth; and Frank Rusnack, 25, finished sixth.
WSOP Europe main event's final table included Obrestad, John Tabatabai, 22, Oyvind Riisen, 22, and Johannes Korsar, 20. The European Poker Tour Barcelona event was won by a 25-year-old, and its final table featured two young American players, Greg Dyer (third) and Adam Junglen (sixth), who were 20 and 19, at the time.
The EPT Grand Final, which also took place earlier this year, featured a 22-year-old, as well as Soren Kongsgaard, a 19-year-old player from Denmark.
Throw in 19-year-old Jimmy Fricke's second-place finish at this year's Aussie Millions, and the year turns historical.
There's no doubt that these young players are good. They have collectively seen millions of hands playing on the Internet and have established networks to help each other learn. And never before in the history of mankind has poker knowledge been so easily accessible. There are hundreds of young players who are seizing the day.
But don't count out the old guys yet, they seem to shine with consistency. The top four spots on Card Player's Player of the Year leader board are occupied by players that could, in the right sentence, be called grizzled.
David Pham, 40, is at the top, followed by Bill Edler, 42, J.C. Tran, 30, and Tom Schneider, 47. Jonathan Little is the youngest player in the top 10, with the average age being 35 (Ted Lawson slightly spoils the curve by being 52).
Last year, Michael Mizrachi became the youngest person to win the POY prize at the age of 25. Two 21-year-olds ended 2006 in the top 10 (Jeff Madsen and Shannon Shorr), with the average age being 29.
Since 2000, the average age of the best 10 POY players peeked at 45 in 2003, when older players Jim Meehan, T.J. Cloutier, and Charlie Shoten had good years. Cloutier won the POY prize a year before, in 2002, at the age of 62, when John Juanda, at the age of 31, was the runner-up. The average age of 2002 was 37.
The first player to crack the top 10 under the age of 30 was Phil Ivey, who did it in 2002 at the age of 26. Scott Fischman then did it at the age of 23 in 2004, and in 2005 and 2006, four players in their 20s cracked the top 10. This year, Little, Jared Hamby, 25, and Scott Clements, 26, are the only ones there.
With so many good players of all ages in the game, it will be interesting to see which generation has the most successful players. Only time, and many, many more tournaments, will tell.
