Veteran New York Post sportswriter and resident curmudgeon Phil Mushnick has a bone to pick with the World Series of Poker (WSOP).

Or more specifially, with the folks who make the rules for the WSOP.

Mushnick says there are too many young people–men actually, since women players at the WSOP are about as scarce as penny slot machines on the Las Vegas Strip.

“Clearly, predictably, televised Texas hold ‘em rooms are tracking younger and younger, lots of fresh college dropouts grinding it out, the survivors among those who crashed and burned or simply washed out in pursuit of a career as a professional poker player,” Mushnick wrote in his Friday New York Post Column.

“You have to be 21 to play in the annual World Series of Poker, which began in 1968. But not until recent years did IDs become necessary. One of the final table players in last year’s WSOP, an ESPN property, was 22. This year, Poughkeepsie’s Hevad Khan returns as a seasoned vet.

“In 2006, Jeff Madsen became a TV poker star at the age of 21, becoming the youngest to win a WSOP event,”

Mushnick continued. “The year before, college dropout Eric Froelich held that distinction. He was 21, too, but a few weeks older than Madsen. Last June, Steve Billirakis, 21 years, 11 days old, became the youngest U.S. event winner.

“How’s that for a low-straight draw? The youngest-to-win record at the WSOP has been broken three times in the last three years. Must be the new conditioning programs. This doesn’t merely reflect a trend, but an epidemic.”

“The next time you’re in a casino, check out the newly enlarged poker rooms, see how many barely legals are spending their days and nights chasing pots so that they can chase another. And for every young big winner, there are how many young big losers? Hundreds? Thousands?”

Mushnick went on: “I know a kid who was more than two years out of college before he got his first job. Finally broke, he’d been pursuing a career as a poker pro. “He’s hardly alone, but he’s lucky to have lost only two years of his life to the turn of a card. But those stories, and much worse, aren’t told in the player profiles seen and heard within televised poker shows.

“A few years ago high school kids in my neighborhood stopped playing ball after school and started playing poker. By the time they graduated, some had never thought or sought to socialize beyond poker. Friday and Saturday nights were for playing poker.”

Hmmmm…..Phil Mushnick has always been a “Chicken Little”-type reporter—you know, “The sky is falling,” everything bad that can possibly happen is going to happen.

In the past he has railed against pro athletes wearing black as part of their uniforms, because some gang members also wear that color, and that could be seen as endorsing or promoting gangs.

He’s also against kids buying expensive basketball sneakers such as those endorsed by Michael Jordan, because kids can’t really afford the pricey shoes, and when they do, they’re usually stolen by bigger kids who often inflict violent harm to get them.

And, of course, according to the Mush, sports handicappers are crooks and television infomercials are scams.

But whining about legal-aged 21-year-olds playing poker in a Vegas tourney? The gambling age in Vegas has been 21 forever, and not just for poker but for all gambling, such a roulette, blackjack, craps, keno and sports betting.

Wait until Mushnick finds out about London, England-based World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE), held for the first time last year and now an annual event, held a few weeks after the Las Vegas-based WSOP.

Since the legal gambling age in England, as well as in most of the rest of Europe, is just 18, not 21 like the U.S., Phil will be at best offended and at worst shocked, when he learns plenty of 18-year-olds will play in the upcoming WSOPE, as they did last year.

And something else for Mushnick to wring his hands about: If he is disturbed at increasingly younger 21-year-olds winning WSOP championships, wait til he finds out the winner of the inaugural WSOPE Main Event in 2007 was a teenage girl from Norway named Annette Obrestad.

She was all of 18 years old.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.)