Risk Taking And Age

red is for risk

red is for risk

It does seem the more risk you take is related to age. I was recently in a game where those you played a solid game folding when they weren’t in the lead and very rarely went all in tended to get to the final table. Those who took risk and made moves all seemed to be knocked out early.

The ones that played solidly were all late 30’s plus and never took risk unless they were completely short stacked. Those who took the risk were generally in their 20’s. Yet when you see the bigger games (the game i was in was £30 entry), say a WSOP tournament you will undoubtedly see a young person who will win the big events, why?

My theory is that there is a tipping point that tournaments such as a WSOP will attract a large amount of risky people who got lucky in their home town/country. So they are more likely to take a chance on winning a big tournament. The pub games will attract aggressive players who maybe loose but on the whole most people will want to conserve their money unless pushed or maneuvered into taking chips from the aggressive risk taker.

So age and risk taking is related that most of the winners of all the big tournaments have been on the young side. This goes to prove that poker is a skill game and not a bingo game.