Sort of a poker related question (ish)

5starpool

Reading articles about some of the younger pros, I note that several of them have said that they got in to 'Magic' before they played poker, and they found the tactics, the ability to have to read players and what cards they might have, to be something in common between Magic and Poker, and there are also 'Magic' tournaments.

Can anyone enlighten me as to what this 'Magic' actually is? Maybe I am the only person here who doesn't know this, but I am guessing I am not. It is never explained in any of the articles.

Is it the same thing as 'Magic: The Gathering' which has it's own forum just above the poker one? If it is not this then what is it? I did a google search but Magic the Gathering was all that came up, so I admit it does seem likely that they are the same.

I know this isn't exactly a poker thread, but since it came about due to me reading about poker players I think this is the best place to get this question answered.

Has anyone here made a similiar transformation from Magic to Poker and do they agree that proficiency in one can give you a headstart in the other?

califano

Ive never heard of the magic before getting into poker thing but now youve mentioned it perhaps people will come out of the woodwork like they did in the meditation thread.

Mr E

I would imagine its card magic (sleight of hand, etc.)

Antonio Esfandiari started out in magic and moved to poker (he says that the magic didn't get him into poker, though)

5starpool

I would be surprised if it was that meaning of 'Magic'. Esfandiari is not one of the guys I was talking about.

ionapaul

Dom, I would assume that it is, indeed, 'Magic: The Gathering'. Never played it but I do know it takes the form of a head-to-head 'battle' between two players with different cards at their disposal. I think this is another game that the Scandies were really into (those damn nerds).

span

Yes it is "Magic the Gathering". Greg Reymer was a magic pro before becoming a Poker pro.

Glowingmind

There was an interview in a recent cardplayer with a young player who was going on about how he was one of the best Magic players before going to play poker. I just figured it was pokemon for people over 12

brianmc

span wrote:

Greg Reymer was a magic pro before becoming a Poker pro.

:eek:

Can somebody explain this to me?

He was a pro at a card game called "Magic: the gathering"??

Dub13

Maybe we should invite some of the Magic lads from the forum on boards over to the Poker forum to give us a debrief.Never know what we may learn,but it does not sound like something I would be into.

5starpool

I can honestly say that I would never have heard of this game if it were not for the fact that their forum is above the poker one in the dropdown lists.

Cheers for the replies lads.

niborm

This is definitely Magic: The Gathering being referred to. I believe David Williams was a pro Magic player before he turned to Poker.

Edit to add: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Williams_(card_player)

ollyk1

brianmc wrote:

:eek:

Can somebody explain this to me?

He was a pro at a card game called "Magic: the gathering"??

Any different then being a pro at a card game called "Texas Hold-em"??



I think a lot of pro poker players are ex-pro backgammon players - now thats a game I want to learn how to play because apparently its all about gambling and I love the gamble me!!

brianmc

5starpool wrote:

I can honestly say that I would never have heard of this game if it were not for the fact that their forum is above the poker one in the dropdown lists.

Cheers for the replies lads.

I've just visited "our neighbours" in the other forum and noticed the only other person browsing about was Halfbaked.

It seems a desolate and scary place over there.

Is there money involved in this game? How does one be a "pro"?

5starpool

brianmc wrote:

I've just visited "our neighbours" in the other forum and noticed the only other person browsing about was Halfbaked.

It seems a desolate and scary place over there.

Is there money involved in this game? How does one be a "pro"?

Post in there and see if you get an answer before you get attacked by the tumbleweed. Report back to me if you do get an answer like a good lad.

Dub13

brianmc wrote:

It seems a desolate and scary place over there.

I did not want to go over my self not alone anyway,far to many Wizards and magic potions for my liking.They also do a bit of fantasy role-playing.

RustySpoon

How many have clicked into the magic: the gathering forum after reading this thread?

<-- 1 for a start

Dub13

Pro Tour (Magic: The Gathering)

The Pro Tour (or PT) is the highest form of competitive play for the Magic: The Gathering collectible card game. It is a series of high payout tournaments held throughout the world and run by the Wizards of the Coast "Organized Play" section of the DCI, culminating in the Magic World Championships at the end of each season.

Pro Tours are invite-only tournaments. The winner is awarded more than $20,000 for his victory. Pro Tours also award Pro Points which give various benefits to players and are used to calculate the Pro Player of the Year Race.

brianmc

Dub13 wrote:

The winner is awarded more than $20,000 for his victory.

:eek:

$20,000 on the turn of a card! That's scandalous!

Dub13

brianmc wrote:

$20,000 on the turn of a card! That's scandalous!

Magic is pure Gambling simple as.

HalfBaked

brianmc wrote:

I've just visited "our neighbours" in the other forum and noticed the only other person browsing about was Halfbaked.

It seems a desolate and scary place over there.

Is there money involved in this game? How does one be a "pro"?

It looks like the kind of game where the rules of bridge, a green uno card and a get out of jail card is the nuts......

Dub13

HalfBaked wrote:

It looks like the kind of game where the rules of bridge, a green uno card and a get out of jail card is the nuts......

It looks like a game my 3 year old plays when she overturns her jigsaw onto the floor and just starts flinging pieces around the room.

jtsuited

googled it, and what i found was scary. Very very scary.

i'm pretty sure there are some people who post here who have a history in the game, but are afraid to admit it having seen our ignorance of this strange world.

sendic

OP: it refers to magic:the gathering. not now as big as it once was. I remember reading an article in a poker mag about a current poker pro who was an ex magic:the gathering pro and got into poker because the money in magic was dwindling. it was probably the williams guy niborm posted about.

back in the day i played a little bit of magic, amp and dev would be the best sources about it seeing as how they were involved in running the biggest gaming convention in the country. at these conventions roleplaying games, board games and card games such as magic were played. im not sure if magic tournaments for cash were ever played in dublin, but there certainly were qualifiers for the european tour held there.

basically in magic:the gathering you buy and collect cards. i only played briefly and its a long time ago so this may not be 100% correct. from your collection of cards you assemble a deck with which to play an opponent "heads up". (multi player games also exist). each players deck was shuffled before the game so you couldnt set your deck. basically there were two kinds of cards, land, which gave you power, and "spells" which allowed you to attack your opponent, build up your defense, counteract an opponents spell, etc.
each player would start off with a set number of life points. i think each player dealt 5 cards each face up initally. on each subsequent round another card was dealt up from each players deck.
so for example if i had a "spell" that required 5 "lands" to use and that would inflict X life points of damage on my opponent, once i had the required number of lands available i could cast that spell and damage my opponent. the aim of the game being to reduce your opponent to 0 life points.

the other interesting thing about the game was the crazy amounts of buying/selling and trading of cards that went on.

im sure a magic expert will refute a lot of that, its been about 11 years since i played so im a bit hazy.

yes, i am a nerd.

brianmc

sendic wrote:

yes, i am a nerd.

Yes. A nerd called sendic. Tell us about that John. Where did your username come from?

5starpool

brianmc wrote:

Yes. A nerd called sendic. Tell us about that John. Where did your username come from?

/me steeples fingers in an anticipatory fashion.

sendic

brianmc wrote:

Yes. A nerd called sendic. Tell us about that John. Where did your username come from?

how many years have you been waiting to use that? that's cold man, real cold.

brianmc

sendic wrote:

how many years have you been waiting to use that? that's cold man, real cold.

Hey, we're all friends here. I just thought it was an interesting and perhaps even relevant ( :eek: ) question.

sendic

relevant, yeah right.

back in the mid 90s i used the name of a character from a roleplaying game as my userid on my first email account. ive used it ever since for random accounts. hardly earth shattering.

5starpool

I was hoping it was relating to this (from google):

Raul Sendic International Brigade
Base of Operation: France; Uruguay

Founding Philosophy: Raul Sendic International Brigade is the name of a group that claimed responsibility for the 1974 assassination in France of Colonel Ramon Trabal, military attaché and former head of Uruguayan military intelligence.

The group takes its name from Raul Sendic Antonaccio, a prominent Uruguayan leftist and founder of the Tupamaros, a guerilla movement named after a famous South American revolutionary. In the group’s claim of responsibility for the murder of Trabal, an anonymous caller to Agence France-Presse identified himself as a member of the group and said the attack was in response to Trabal’s “bestiality in repression of combatants and revolutionaries like Raul Sendic and his companions of Tupamaro national liberation movement.”

Dub13

This must be the most of topic thread we have had in the poker forum for some time,but its interesting.

brianmc

sendic wrote:

relevant, yeah right.

back in the mid 90s i used the name of a character from a roleplaying game as my userid on my first email account. ive used it ever since for random accounts. hardly earth shattering.

I could ask what type of character etc etc... but I'm happy for now.

luckylucky

Highstakes online pro and now notoriously banned from partypoker and pokerstars for playing under multiple identities at same time Justin Bonomo poker alias ZeeJustin was also a magic pro before turning to Poker so there does seem something to this game that gives people a little something at least to bring to a poker game, then again I guess if we really want to expand our poker mindsets by trying out new games - I bet for the vast majority of the boardies here including me there are numerous variations of poker to learn that no doubt would do just that for us.

hotspur

I suppose I'm in a good position to answer this as I have played Magic:The Gathering for about 10 years and have played all over the world on the Pro Tour of it.

Essentially Magic is like a mixture of poker and chess. It was the first collectible card game created back in 1993, a collectible card game is one in which you buy packs of cards like baseball cards in America except that the cards can be strategically combined into a deck for 1 on 1 play against opponents. Magic has a fantasy flavour to it in terms of card names and artwork but the game itself is pure strategy and as such is actually a far better and more difficult and creative game than either poker or chess. It is played by millions around the world. You each have a 60 card deck which you have put together yourself from a potential pool of thousands of cards at home, and you draw 7 cards from the randomly shuffled deck at the beginning and take turns in drawing 1 card then playing out cards representing creatures (like chess pieces) and attacking your opponent's 20 life to try to get them to zero. Reading players for what cards they are holding in their hand is a benefical skill to have, but correctly analysing very complex board positions and anticipating opponents' plays are key elements which are similar to poker.

Not only has Magic been the best possible training ground for many of the young poker hotshots in the world today but in my opinion Magic is a fundamental cause of the current poker boom. The age group for Magic is from around 12-30. When they introduced the Pro Tour you had teenagers flying around the world playing in tournaments with a quarter of a million in prizemoney - and not only did you not have to put up your own money to play them you even got your flights to the country paid for if you won a qualifier tournament in your own country.

This resulted in a generation of teenagers who spent all their time playing a strategic card game (Magic is more immersive than even poker) in which if they were good they could earn money and travel the world. The abilities which are necessary for success at multiday Magic tournaments are exactly the same as those for multiday poker tournaments. These former Magic tournament players have been playing high level, competitive, grueling card tournaments since they were 16, poker tournaments are completely natural to them. When Rounders woke us up to poker there was this huge ready made market of young card players who were accustomed to using their ability to play cards for money.

Also the specific intellectual and analytical skills which make a top Magic player are also some of the ones which make a top poker player, although extra characterisitcs are needed when gambling with your own money.

As such former Magic players dominate poker games all around the world, far more than you will ever hear about because they crush the online games. many of them like Jordan Berkowitz (the WCOOP Champ) are still too young to legally play in America. Some Magic pros that spring to mind in the poker world are Dave Williams (the Swedish guy who was at the same final table in WSOP 2004 was a Magic pro too), Noah Boeken (interestingly both Williams and Boeken were card cheats on the Magic pro tour), speaking of cheating Zeejustin too, Thomas "Thunder" Keller, the youngest ever WSOP braclet winner (and now 2 time winner) EFRO Erich Froelich and innumerable Americans and Scandies who have made fortunes from online poker (btw Raymer was not a Magic pro), oh and the creater of this site a certain Mr Murphy used to play Magic as a hobby. If you want to read the prototypical example of the transformation then Jon Finkel (who was the top Magic pro for years) has had a book written about him and his move into poker, MIT blackjack card counting (made millions) and sports betting, it's called "Johnny Magic and the Card Shark Kids".

At the end of the day the top Magic players were the top players because they were intellectually brilliant and practised very hard, and this is why they have moved almost to a man into poker where these traits can earn them good money very easily. The best under 30 poker player I know in Ireland is a former top Magic player who plays online cash poker full time but you don't know him because he doesn't bother playing the live scene. The next time you get crushed in a higher level cash game online by some 20 year old with ease, the little b*stard is probably a Magic player, to them poker is like Magic just far far easier!

luckylucky

Very very interesting hotspur... I have certainly got more intrigued than ever... do you think then it would be worthwhile for poker players to take up Magic if they were looking to expand their repetoire or is it more the case that they would be better off looking to play other forms of poker?

Or maybe it would be an enjoyable game to take up solely for it's own sake - or would it not suit a thirty-odd year old like me?

Be interested to hear your thoughts on it.

hotspur

It won't improve your poker game as this stage it's more that the young players were weaned on strategic card play so that it became second nature by the time they hit adulthood. It's a young man's game really and it is dying out in Ireland, although the suckers who make it still fly players to the Pro tour, myself and 2 friends were on the piss in South Carolina for a week last month ostensibly playing a Pro Tour! But it is fun and if you want to check it out then I think it can be bought in Subcity on exchequer street, but some for you and someone to play against, tell them you are new to it and buy 2 Starter packs with the rules inside and a couple of booster packs of cards each.

luckylucky

hotspur wrote:

It won't improve your poker game as this stage it's more that the young players were weaned on strategic card play so that it became second nature by the time they hit adulthood. It's a young man's game really and it is dying out in Ireland, although the suckers who make it still fly players to the Pro tour, myself and 2 friends were on the piss in South Carolina for a week last month ostensibly playing a Pro Tour! But it is fun and if you want to check it out then I think it can be bought in Subcity on exchequer street, but some for you and someone to play against, tell them you are new to it and buy 2 Starter packs with the rules inside and a couple of booster packs of cards each.

LOL Well I'm well overdue a trip to Baile Atha Cliath, been 3 years almost - but I think flying over just to buy a starter pack for this magic could be a bit excessive

Anyways all very interesting - might get around to having a look at this game at some point though out of pure curiosity now.

cilldara

For those interrested in hearing more about the links between Magic: The Gathering and Poker, check out "Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids" by David Kushner.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jonny-Magic-Card-Shark-Kids/dp/0434016071/sr=8-1/qid=1157061968/ref=sr_1_1/026-4600620-7255610?ie=UTF8&s=gateway

NickyOD

I'm very good at making things disappear..... especially pizza and beer.

DeVore

Been playing since Beta. That will nothing to most of you but its a long time ago.

Boards has a big selection of faked Magic cards that we occasionally use for repetitive muppets. Currently its offline but this also explains something about it: http://wiki.boards.ie/wiki/Category:Boards:_The_Gathering
These are fakes that we thought were apt and funny... hopefully they will be back because some of them could be put to great use in here!

Several mates of mine made very very good money for a year or two being Magic pros.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. (God rest you Hunter! )

DeV.

carrigeen

NickyOD wrote:

I'm very good at making things disappear..... especially pizza and beer.

you forgot to mention chips nicky:p

Shortstack

YuGiOh is very similar to Magic but aimed at even younger players. I used to sell YuGiOh cards in my games shops and learnt the game so I could run tournaments for the kids. This was all before I started playing poker. We have 6 or 7 years before these maniacs take over the poker world. It was quite scary how 4-10 year olds could work out the strategies and card combo's.

nicnicnic

WoW saw the article in card player and was fairly confused by it even more confused now.

Top trumps now there's a game

MrPillowTalk

nicnicnic wrote:

WoW saw the article in card player and was fairly confused by it even more confused now.

Top trumps now there's a game

There is actually strategy to top trumps I used to be a killer top trumps player was the only thing in school I was ever good at.

nicnicnic

MrPillowTalk wrote:

There is actually strategy to top trumps I used to be a killer top trumps player was the only thing in school I was ever good at.
/QUOTE]

pillowhead you wanna mix it up with me at the trumps I bury u:D , I'm just the bomb at it. Used to work in Hasbro when at college and played for 5 hours a night.:rolleyes:

MrPillowTalk

nicnicnic wrote:

MrPillowTalk wrote:

There is actually strategy to top trumps I used to be a killer top trumps player was the only thing in school I was ever good at.
/QUOTE]

pillowhead you wanna mix it up with me at the trumps I bury u:D , I'm just the bomb at it. Used to work in Hasbro when at college and played for 5 hours a night.:rolleyes:

you will definately bury me last time I played I was also swapping premier league stickers lol

nicnicnic

I still swap those, actually I've got three Duff already for this season if anyone got a Fowler pm me