Quote:
Originally Posted by SpinMeRightRound
10-14 years ago, we had guys like Dwan, Galfond, Haxton, nanonoko, isildur, jungleman etc. depositing $50-$100, starting at the micros, rising all the way up to mid-high stakes. These guys were naturally talented, intelligent, gifted, with a strong work ethic and got to the top of their field through a mixture of all these things.
This just doesn't seem to happen anymore. Yes, we have regulation which has affected a lot of countries. But most of Europe, Canada, Asia and South America are still part of the global player pool - that's a lot of countries, and just by the law of probabilities, you'd expect there to be at least some gifted young people who pick up poker and rise up the stakes quickly.
Besides, countries like USA, Italy, Spain, France can still play poker. So there's nothing stopping an intelligent person depositing and grinding up the stakes.
Yes, poker is a lot tougher now. But so is every competitive field, yet new talent rises to the top every year in sport, music etc. to replace the old talent. Not true for poker. The players at high stakes are the same faces who climbed up the stakes years ago. There are no young prodigies who have recently risen to the top - this is rather worrying.
Yes, poker does not get the mainstream media attention it once did. But many competitive fields don't. This shouldn't stop a young, intelligent, motivated person discovering poker and grinding up the stakes.
Why don't we see this happening anymore?
If poker skill isn't realized until the long run, then how can short term results (just a few years for an 18 year old player) showcase talent? What we see mostly is variance in action: Isildur running from micro to nosebleeds, huge crash and burns by former 'great' players, etc. The difference between then and now is there was a whole lot of totally dead money flying around then and there isn't anymore, so std. devs and variance is way more constrained than it used to be, and big skill differences way less likely to exist by the time someone is 18. Poker is almost all luck in the short run; looking at lifetime winnings of people who have been playing for millions of hands is the only way to tell if someone is actually a winner, not by how fast they move from micro to nosebleeds (and then lose it all). In that sense I would say that nanonoko was almost certainly a strong winning player in his day, and he was even doubly smart because no one knew about him until very late in the boom. If you do have an edge, you'd be a complete idiot to bring attention to yourself for it. Similarly, those douchebags who thought it was a good idea to make a little extra side-cash from coaching and running training sites? Ya those guys proved themselves to be doubly ******ed. Why in the hell would you destroy your own game? You can shear a sheep a million times and skin him only once. Well these guys taught the sheep how to be wolves. Now you can join a training site, practice mimicry, and don't even need to think about the game at all. You just run by a HUD and slightly lose like everyone else and the poker sites are the ones with the biggest bb/100. Tl;dr, the best players have always been the ones you've never heard of.
Last edited by DoOrDoNot; 04-13-2018 at 07:33 PM.