the Magic card game

[Crosby]

As another mtger/poker pro, I figure I might as well chime in.

The first time I played holdem was also at a mtg pro tour (wow there's a lot of us for one OOT thread). My play was awful at first, frankly because the real money on the line intimidated me. Magic was more like a freeroll to me; for the poker players, basically I won satellites to get in to the big money tourneys constantly. Side gambling in mtg eventually cured me of this problem.

I agree with Rutang and others that there's a distinction between Mtg attracting and training the type of people who would be good enough to play poker professionally, and Mtg being a tool to improve a poker player's game. However, I still play Magic as well as other games such as backgammon and chess for more reasons than just to have a good time. For one, it's healthy to sometimes be able to play a similar game just for the love of it rather than to make money. This is a lot more financially prudent than burning poker energy playing smaller stakes. Also, perhaps it's just me, but playing only one game can really make one start to play on autopilot or get frustrated at the simplicity of it all. It's just human nature to want to do something different when you've done the same thing 2000 times, to try to unlock a new piece of the puzzle, but sometimes that's counterproductive. Whenever I'm not playing poker that well, I find that playing another game for a while until I excel again will energize my poker game.

FWIW, as far as the correlation between skill at Magic and poker, I don't know a single person who is very proficient at Magic that isn't at least sufficiently profitable at poker. I'd be shocked if the opposite didn't hold true, it's just a theory that goes unrealized because Magic is intimidating to learn.

One thing I've found particularly educational about playing Magic is the education on tells. In poker, although your opponent might be making the wrong play due to not seeing the layers of complication that exist, it's not exactly difficult to play the game. In Magic, there is so much information to process that it requires a ton of skill to play rapidly and with a poker face. One logs a ton of hours watching people think about their decisions in a very revealing fashion. If you can learn to not reveal information while playing Magic, poker is a breeze.

For those that haven't played, it's a really fun game. I would argue it has benefits to a poker player, and it makes a great gambling game over drinks with your friends.

[bxb]

I used to be a master magician back when I could dominate JSS's. I don't think that a lot of specific magic skills are useful in poker, but magic players are usually fairly analytical in their decision making processes which helps in poker.

The problem with magic is that the game changes so fast that if you don't stay with it there is a significant re-entry barrier of having to learn many new sets. In poker you can take a few months off and pick it up again playing the same game. But on the other hand poker has more potential to get old.