the Magic card game
 

i was reading david williams wikipedia page and noticed he used to be a magic pro, and i remembered seeing some posts about an ugly jewish kid who does good in poker who also started off with magic. anybody know what it is about this game that relates to poker? from what ive read its a complex strategy game even though the pictures/ story of it are kinda gay. i play the bodog $5 super turbo sngs for fun, i have a good job but id like to get better at poker. i like strategy games and figure if this game can give me a better understanding of poker, it might be worth the shot. just wanted to know if any ooters had any experience with this or have some suggestions, etc..

Re: the Magic card game
 

lol. that is all

Re: the Magic card game
 

I still run events for Wizards of the Coast.

The game involves a lot of math and a lot of game theory. I don't know if it's going to help you poker game, but it will help your brainpower as a whole.

Ray

Re: the Magic card game
 

Once I saw Chan smell an orange. And he won the Main event twice. I need to smell more oranges imo

Re: the Magic card game
 

are your parents siblings?

Re: the Magic card game
 

Current ME champ did a lot of praying to God at the final table.

Note to self; find religion with the most Gods and during next tourney start praying wildly in every direction

Re: the Magic card game
 

I used to play, and I still have love for the game.

That said, I don't think it'd help your poker and I'd advise against it for that and many other reasons.

Re: the Magic card game
 

OP,

Noah is going to make fun of you

Re: the Magic card game
 

I played competitively a long time ago. I think about getting back into it from time to time but the amount of money and time i would need to spend to get back to where i was at just doesn't make sense for me right now.

Re: the Magic card game
 

lol at thingking i give a rats ass what anonymous people over a forum say about me, im obviously asking cuz i know nothing about it. i wasnt asking if i should imitate what other ME winners have done like pray and sniff oranges and crap lol. but just like learning different forms of poker can improve your game, maybe learning from another card game can improve it. im not in highschool anymore so i dont care what others think about me, already have a booty call/ moving to gf status and my jobs pretty good. kimbell thanks for the honest response, raypowers said it would help getting smarter and thats the sort of thing i was hoping for.

Re: the Magic card game
 

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OP,

Noah is going to make fun of you

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just noah?

Re: the Magic card game
 

Don't play magic the gathering. David Williams did and now he's playing poker for a living and acts in porn movies. Who would ever want THAT?

Re: the Magic card game
 

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im not in highschool anymore so i dont care what others think about me, already have a booty call/ moving to gf status

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Why would you mess up a perfectly good booty call by turning her into a girlfriend?

A friend of a friend co-founded WoTC and I think had a hand in the development of the game. It's worth noting that prior to that he paid his way through college via his poker winnings at B&Ms so between him and David Williams I would guess there's a pretty useful correlation between those two things.

Re: the Magic card game
 

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kimbell thanks for the honest response, raypowers said it would help getting smarter and thats the sort of thing i was hoping for.

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It will help as a mental exercise, no doubt about that. The math is a different kind than that in poker. Poker you have to be good at estimating %ages that are infinitely complex; magic you have to be exact, because usually things are close, but for the most part it's only one or two steps past straight linear equations (how many turns you have left given how much damage per attack, and what possible changes can occur in the next few turns).

It's obviously less boring than that, and I'm glad I learned the game and its strategies, but it's like 4High said: whenever I think about starting again, I realize that it may not be worth it to get into practice, and I would hate to do it and just be average.

edit: more, cause I am bored. Remember when you just started playing poker and you didn't know what you were doing, how looking back, at the time you didn't even know the correct way to think about poker? When you start playing magic you will be like that for a long time, as the game (for me, at least) is more complex on the rules level and it takes a long time to figure out the right way to think, to figure out what actions correspond to an increased chance of winning. Maybe it'd be better for someone who learned poker first, but probably not that much.

Re: the Magic card game
 

just read some [censored] books and stop posting in OOT

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i saw somewhere that you can play online no way am i gonna waste time going to conventions or clubs to play it. and i wouldnt go so far as to really get into the game, just try it out, all id be doin is missing out on some sngs.

tuq, im starting to really like her, even after i nut i still like her, plus we get along pretty well and her older sis is cool with me. but all this is for another thread im not gonna make.

Re: the Magic card game
 

thats not all david williams did before poker(he did porn).

Re: the Magic card game
 

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thats not all david williams did before poker(he did porn).

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lol, abrupt parenthetical really did it for me

Re: the Magic card game
 

People who play a lot of competitive "thinking" games learn a lot of game theory and that translates to other games.

Re: the Magic card game
 

Yep. Paul Phillips played scrabble, random surly old dude was a chess champ, and they had a segment on John Murphy playing Magic sometime during the 2004 WSOP that I remember. Plus all the backgammon players from Europe.

Re: the Magic card game
 

Magic as a game is much more complicated than poker, but there are similarities, you use math and knowing your opponent can matter too. I don't think it would make much sense to start playing Magic now to improve your poker game...just play poker and get better at it. People who played Magic first seem to do well at poker but it takes much longer to become decent at magic than it does with poker. I played magic before I knew anything about poker, and by the time I was good I just thought differently about things and I think it helped me to learn poker much faster.

Re: the Magic card game
 

A ton of the former magic pros play Poker now. Chris Pikula (Invitational winner) posts around 2p2 a bit.

Re: the Magic card game
 

[ QUOTE ]
i was reading david williams wikipedia page and noticed he used to be a magic pro, and i remembered seeing some posts about anugly jewish kid who does good in poker who also started off with magic.anybody know what it is about this game that relates to poker? from what ive read its a complex strategy game even though the pictures/ story of it are kinda gay. i play the bodog $5 super turbo sngs for fun, i have a good job but id like to get better at poker. i like strategy games and figure if this game can give me a better understanding of poker, it might be worth the shot. just wanted to know if any ooters had any experience with this or have some suggestions, etc..

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http://images.poquer-red.com/noticias/minieri-magic.jpg

Re: the Magic card game
 

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it would help getting smarter and thats the sort of thing i was hoping for.

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Ah, I see now. I totally agree with you. You need to get smarter

Re: the Magic card game
 

I'm just glad the thread went this long without the Berkowitz pic.

Re: the Magic card game
 

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I'm just glad the thread went this long without the Berkowitz pic.

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dude what's wrong with you, all those pics are fantastic

Re: the Magic card game
 

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I'm just glad the thread went this long without the Berkowitz pic.

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dude what's wrong with you, all those pics are fantastic

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...yeah, you're right

http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/62/683gs2.jpg

Re: the Magic card game
 

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Current ME champ did a lot of praying to God at the final table.

Note to self; find religion with the most Gods and during next tourney start praying wildly in every direction

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No, false reasoning... The Magic card game has been played successfully by many poker pros and touted as a strategy game with many similar lines of thinking. There is a very real chance that it may in fact relate to and/or improve his poker game based on the evidence and testimony of others. This is decidedly not the case for the orange and for praying. I hope you see the error of your posts.

Re: the Magic card game
 

sigh don't start. it's more like, people who had already been competitive for years got into poker and had a head start because of the logical thinking involved. also they had people to sweat/discuss with because they were already friends IRL.

starting to play isn't gonna do anything for you wrt poker.

Re: the Magic card game
 

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The Magic card game has been played successfully by many poker pros and touted as a strategy game with many similar lines of thinking.

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Name one player at the final table who constantly prayed to God and didnt win. Ah, didnt think so. Case closed.

Dear Heavenly Father, please show these poker Heathens the error of their ways. Please work your divine plan threw me and show them the nuts. PS. Ship it

Oh, and Magic did nothing to improve their game that wouldnt have learned playing anything else competativly. Play Chess. Scrabble. Kerplunk. Its not then game of magic that made them better. Some people have a natural talent for games. The like to compete, they work they're ass of to get better, they study, they good reasoning skills. Magic didnt make them better poker players, it was just the game they focused their abilities on first.

Unless being a Magic player would let you summon a troll to smite annoying players like Hevad Khan. Then I might learn too.

Re: the Magic card game
 

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Oh, and Magic did nothing to improve their game that wouldnt have learned playing anything else competativly.

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Counting the "outs" you have to win a game by a certain turn(magic)/street(poker) in order to determine your winning chances is an element relevant to both games. Although I'm sure there are undoubtedly more, I hope you see why I don't have to find any more to prove your statement wrong.

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sigh don't start. it's more like, people who had already been competitive for years got into poker and had a head start because of the logical thinking involved. also they had people to sweat/discuss with because they were already friends IRL.

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I agree. Taking up Magic now probably won't help with poker, just play more poker instead. Incidentally, drafting (a method of playing with few cards) Magic from time to time is pretty fun, but constructed takes waaaaay too much time and money.

Re: the Magic card game
 

Magic is certainly a more skill oriented game in terms that luck plays a much lesser role and big names win tournaments with great consistency.

Its really more of a chess game with a little luck factor involved. Pictures instead of pawns, everyone can choose their own pictures to have in their army and you get dealt a random set of pictures from your army every time you start a new game. The rest is really just chess [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

But there is a lot less money involved in MTG, and you need to be a truly amazing player to make a living comparable to MSNL grinders. There is also much less fish in the games.

Re: the Magic card game
 

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There is also much less fish in the games.

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Good point.

Re: the Magic card game
 

I played one time at a comic book store. I'll never do that again. I was so repulsed at how nerdy and spazy everyone was, I left after my first game.

Re: the Magic card game
 

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Oh, and Magic did nothing to improve their game that wouldnt have learned playing anything else competativly. Play Chess. Scrabble. Kerplunk. Its not then game of magic that made them better.

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You're wrong. I've played both. There are much stronger correlations between poker and Magic than there are with chess or Scrabble.

HINT: It's got to do with hand-reading and calculating odds. Chess has neither of those, Scrabble has a little but to a much lesser degree. I'm guessing a lot of people who share this viewpoint of yours just haven't played Magic at a high enough level.

Re: the Magic card game
 

my primary circle of friends and I are all old magic pros/players who are now pro poker players, and there are tons of us. Hanging out at the WSOP was like a reunion of old magic pros...

Learning Magic probably won't help your poker game that much. There are a lot of reasons old MTG pros do well at poker, and few of them correlate to it helping a poker pro improve their game.

1. Magic does improve your poker skills. Hand reading, applying math concepts to a game, general game theory.

2. MTG pros are people who were predisposed to the skillset that makes for a good poker player. When the poker boom happened, it was a natural transition.

3. MTG pros grew up playing competitive games for money that is significant to them, and learning how to cope with the pressure and all that comes with that when you are a teenager leads you to head start in the poker world.

4. MTG pros learned how to improve their game through group dialogue and many other techniques that are far more unfamiliar to non MTG players.

5. MTG pros had a pre-existing network of gaming friends to learn poker with.

6. competitive magic players who were successful owed a lot of that success to the ability to adapt quickly to a changing game. This is very, very helpful in the internet age where the poker dynamic shifts regularly. (B&M, internet poker, multitabling, pokertracker analysis, HUDs, etc)

Personally, my first experience with Texas Hold Em was playing with other MTG Pros at a Pro Tour event.

Re: the Magic card game
 

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my primary circle of friends and I are all old magic pros/players who are now pro poker players, and there are tons of us. Hanging out at the WSOP was like a reunion of old magic pros...

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Who? I hung out with a lot of old magic pros past two WSOPs.



[/ QUOTE ] Personally, my first experience with Texas Hold Em was playing with other MTG Pros at a Pro Tour event.

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Same with me.

Re: the Magic card game
 

it is really unsurprising that people who are good at one card game (m:tg) are good at another card game (poker).

when i was young, I played the card game based on the star wars movies (sw:ccg) and went to the world championships of that. it was fun - but expensive.


you can spend your time paying money to play a card game, or you can spend your time being paid to play a card game. i prefer the latter.

Re: the Magic card game
 

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Personally, my first experience with Texas Hold Em was playing with other MTG Pros at a Pro Tour event.

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Same with me.

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Same here.

Re: the Magic card game
 

Does anyone still play? Anyone play online? I was never interested in playing online until i found out if you want you can exchange your online cards for real ones within 4 years of purchase which is pretty cool. I read the online community is pretty small though with only 2-4k playing online at most times.