Young Players Take Over PDF Print E-mail
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From the Editor - June 2009
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Is youth taking over the poker world? Reading this month’s issue, you certainly can’t help but get that impression. All the kids who grew up with online poker and poker TV during their high school years are really flexing their muscles now, and accomplishing things at a far younger age than was ever thought possible not too long ago.

Take Andrew Feldman. Please! The London-area wunderkind famously logged a profit of more than half a million bucks in a single online session, and now he is Full Tilt’s newest Red Pro (see Catman’s story on him starting on page 24). Just 21 years old, he’s already had enough swings of fortune to last a lifetime.

Then there’s Constant Rijkenberg from Amsterdam. A 20-year-old economics student, he just won the biggest major tournament ever held in Europe, raking in €1,508,000 after beating a record field of 1177 players at EPT San Remo (see page 32). A millionaire, and he isn’t even old enough to play in the World Series.

You may also want to keep an eye on Tom Bentham, a high-stakes online player from London who is starting to make the live scene. Even though he looks barely old enough to shave and is the farthest thing from a household name, punters in the know made him an unexpected favourite in the recent heads-up championship at the Vic, and he did them right by going out and winning the thing (see page 38). After you read Barry Carter’s interview you will realise that Tom is a serious player who will be around for a long time to come.

One of the biggest events of the year is the $25,000 World Poker Tour Championship at Bellagio, and you guessed it, angelic-looking 21-year-old Yevgeniy Timoshenko – a Ukrainian now living on America’s West Coast – won the whole enchilada, becoming the youngest WPT world champ ever (page 52). That’s right, he’s just 21, but this is already his second major title – he won an Asian Poker Tour main event last year.

While some young players are getting a little ahead of themselves, hiring agents, etc. (see Barry’s Diary on page 64 for that gruesome story), most of the young winning players we’re featuring this month seem to have their heads on straight, take the game seriously and have what it takes to be with us for a long time to come. But time will tell if they are able to – as Chip Reese once said – “stand the test of time.”

 
 

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