Are there any examples of poker players who continued to win through old age?

Erik Seidel?

no

define "OLD AGE"

Doyle Brunson?

I don't think so. Poker is a game of the mind (or in the case of an MTT player, endurance), so a player could reasonably continue a successful poker career into old age if they're still able to keep up with the game.

is this sarcasm?

This is ridiculous.......at 70 or 80 maybe.

I don't think the worlds stone cold best player can be over 42-43. but a top 100 player can be like 75. And if you're legitimately a top 1000 player you can make tons of money.

We dont stop playing because we get old, we get old because we stop playing. That's poker, folks.

poker =/ chess

Kid Poker (who just so happens to be getting older).

With chess players who arguably use the same mental faculties, but in a game where ability is much more quantifiable, there is some evidence and discussion that players reach their peak by 25. Something like 9/10 top 10 players are under 30

Difference is that poker players typically start later whereas chess kids start at 6

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Burt Boutin, I never seem to know where he's at.

As a chess player (USCF National Master), I can say that poker is much friendlier to older players than chess. In tournament chess, a single game lasts multiple hours and players must maintain consistent concentration and keep track of their plans and calculations throughout.

In poker (and particularly live cash game poker), an older player can pick his spots and rest during 70+% of the time they are not involved in the hand. And also individual hands rarely last more than 10 minutes, so there's less of an element of sustained pressure that's present in chess.

Yeah, cause eventually they die.

Otherwise, the idea is LOL. I've seen random local 80-year-old grinders outplaying the table.

running normal destroys poker careers. aging only ensures the variance will even out.

This is villain dependent. Johnny Moss is said to have become pretty horrible at poker in his old age, while Doyle was able to stay good well into his 70s.

I think part of the issue currently is that poker strategy/theory had evolved so much in the last 10 years with the vast experience people have gotten from playing online. Not a lot of old guys have kept up with that, so you don't see many older people who are really good these days.

Most of the best players in the world now are in their 20s or 30s. I think if we fast forward 40 years, a lot of these guys will still be crushers, although a handful may experience Moss-esque drop offs due to diminished mental faculties or whatever.

Aging (in the long run) will destroy Mt Everest. So yes.

I suppose most folks faculties will decline with age until their poker career is eventually over. It takes a lot more aging, however, than many other careers I can think of.

I think lack of environment/game change really takes a toll after 20-40+ years of grinding full time.

Getting older and stuck in old habits really seems to be the case for every player over the age of 40 that I play against.

Passion and enthusiasm really control your eagerness to learn while young, able to see such quick results and making lots of money just fuels the fire.

I don't think anyone 50+ is able to successfully travel the circuit events full time, which is almost equivalent to minor leagues of poker and be profitable over a year. (Including travel expenses)

Because you are less likely to bink something at 50 because you already binked twice at 25?

Not understanding variance destroys poker players careers.

Older players may struggle with MTTs as they may lack the levels of endurance held by players of the younger generation, Pierre Neuville being an obvious exception. The sheer length of time tournaments take, online or live, requires a significant amount of stamina, focus and dedication to reach the big money at the end. Given the average age of most final tables these days, I think we can surmise that younger players fair better than the older generation in that particular format.

I see no reason why older players can't play at a high level in most cash games. They have vast life experience to draw upon and as long as that is coupled with a sound understanding of poker in 2016, he/she will do just fine.

I think an obvious factor when it comes to playing at a consistent high level is the importance of online poker. Even playing on stars over the course of 1 year, you see the game evolve drastically. Analyzing their play through software and the huge amounts of hands they see leads to online players generally outperforming their live counterparts. Some elite live players can certainly overcome this due to their reading abilities, intuition and general understanding of poker theory. However it cannot be understated. Playing online allows your game to develop so much faster than logging a few hundred hands a week at a casino. The lack of basic fundamentals many live players have is astounding sometimes.

One of the most obvious examples I saw of this was when lots of posters and other players thought that 4 bet jamming 22 with 3 left in the wsop main event was not such a bad idea by Blumenfield with zero fold equity. All love and respect to the man himself and he played some pretty decent stuff throughout that FT and did amazingly well to achieve such a great result. However what actually shocked me was so many people agreeing with the play. It is one of the most basic spots you come across and many were shocked that the play was apparently so sub-optimal. Countless other examples exist that demonstrate the large gap in understanding of the fundamentals.

Until a worldwide player pool is reunited online, many players won't have access to the most important method when it comes to improving their game. I can assure you there is a significant difference between playing on Bovada/ACR/random euro sites vs playing on stars. The quality of play on stars is much better and will help players improve far quicker.

Enough derail though, ageing definitely has an impact on the stamina and focus levels of many players but not studying the game or not playing online is a far bigger leak than the fact that we all naturally age.

I don't know how many older players watch videos on runitonce, review their hand histories, play online or work with a coach. I know a plethora of younger players that do all of those things regularly though. My opinion may be slightly misinformed or biased because I just don't know enough older players to have a decent sample size. Yet just watching FTs full of younger players and seeing cash games online and live being dominated by the younger generation; it's quite obvious there is a clear discrepancy between their ability levels and that will only become exacerbated as poker continues to progress.

It's not just age, most live players learn by rote. Most of those who become winners develop playing styles that are basically plus ev but still have leaks because they never devote themselves to learning/analyzing their games. They just figured out most of what works and then the ones that actually quit their jobs and play full time almost always do it because of a huge heater way over their true EV.

So they quit their jobs thinking they'll crush forever and then bitch for years about never meeting their inflated expectations. But they don't change how they play, and become mediocre winning pros and as games get tougher, often even losing players.

I play with one guy in his late 30s who is on life tilt from losing $100k straight the last few months. The game has changed from when he won all his money, he can still slow the game down and use table chit chat to get good reads on what the fish hold, but that's apparently no longer enough to overcome playing ****ty starting hands in ****ty positions.

I myself got into playing poker full time because for a year I could win $100+/hour playing 40-80 drunk and blindfolded. It took a long time for my run-good to wear off (and a $100k+ downswing) and for me to realize my game still had lots of leaks.

Everyone has passion and enthusiasm when they start. Especially when you get that massive run of good luck that sucks you in and traps you in this game. Some of used that time to learn and get better, some of us just started coasting right away cause it was just too easy. Few of us continue to work at it.

Is anyone successful traveling the circuit other than huge lockboxes? Who has a big enough bankroll combined with enough positive expectation to cover huge yearly travel expenses, and fade three or four straight years of bad results?

The real big winners in poker are sitting on their ass in Macau, Vegas, and the Commerce, etc, living reasonable life styles to fade the variance in their super high stakes games.