Category: Poker

It’s been a long time since I have visited the poker room at Casino Copenhagen due to the current corona virus situation. The casino has secured the poker room to protect the players from infection and I missed the regular players, so I decided to mask up and go there. It was very nice to enter the well known relaxed atmosphere and meet the regular poker players, that were present, but I quickly was given the sad message, that one of the regular poker players had passed away during the last weeks.

I meet Amir V. at the poker tables in the summer of 2017, where I decided to try my online poker skills at a live poker table. According to my poker player notes, I had my first personal chat with him in the fall of 2017, where I learned about his history and his extra ordinary kind personality. He had Iranian background, was the founder of a succesful Persian carpet business and had played poker for more than 15 years.

His play style was the well known nit style, which describes a player, who only plays premium hands and usually in a passive way. While this style might not be the most profitable style, it is a more safe approach, that can work well against the drunk and recreational players, that will often get seated at a casino, finish their drinks and bluff their entire stack off. Let me put it this way: I was scared, when he actually raised preflop. He would mostly limp premium hands as strong as QQ+ and AK preflop. He would also limp suited premiums, that could make a royal straight flush, because it would give him the casino royal flush jackpot. He would even try to signal such hands with a huge smile, while he hoped, that I would not have a hand and raise the pot.

Amir was an honest man with a good heart. He would reserve seats for me. Sometimes even coffee. He always offered a deal, that we shared a part of the royal flush jackpot with each other. A good deal, because he would play his royal flush draws even though not having the correct odds. When playing heads-up, he would sometimes say, that I should just fold my hand, because I could not win. A tough message, when you have a hand as strong as a set, which could earn you thousands at a casino. And that is exactly, how my last time and hand against Amir was: I lost all-in with a lower set against Amir’s top set. He had limped pocket jacks preflop, which I failed to recognize, when trying to test his line and work my hand reading. I could not give up my hand and had to pay the price. Amir did not like to win this way.

Amir never won his royal flush jackpot. I am sad, that I never had a chance to say goodbye and I will miss him greatly. Rest in peace, Amir.

When you play poker, it is important, that you know, how your opponent play, so you can apply the most optimal line or strategy. Every player is different, but it helps, if you group them into more well defined player types and develop a strategy for each player type. This is also called player profiling.

If you color code your opponents by player type at the poker tables, then you can quickly identify the player type and determine the correct action versus that specific player type. It also encourages you to regularly check their statistics and change the color code, when you notice, that they have improved, or, that your lower sample size has indicated a wrong player type. The color coding can also help you to better position yourself in relation to the other players.

I like to color code poker players by player type and also associate each color by a name of an operating system, that matches the player style. This comes from my background, working with computers. I have seen other players use other, and funny, associations. Whatever helps you to accurately identify the player types and apply the optimal strategy at the tables.

I like to associate the passive fish with a user of Windows 3.11, which was an unstable system for the recreational users. The aggressive fish uses Windows 95, which was also an unstable system, but for the more sporadic and gaming users. Nits uses MS-DOS, which was a tight, stable, but limited system. The weak TAG uses Mac OS, which is a calm and stable system for the stubborn user, but has many obvious flaws. The TAG uses RedHat, which is a solid and stable Linux based system for the experienced user, but with a few oddities from the past. The SLAG uses FreeBSD, which is a rock solid, stable and advanced Unix-like system for the highly experienced user. The LAG uses NetBSD, which is like FreeBSD and in the BSD family, but for the even more experienced user.

What can you do, when the things, you do, no matter how well, just goes horribly wrong? When you feel, that you are playing poker against the worst players in the world, but they just crush your aces and kings like its nothing? How do you manage the frustration, anger and entitlement tilt? Well. You should naturally leave and study your game, variance and poker. These bad beats and downswings is a natural part of variance in poker and life in general. Aces and kings will lose to a worse hand 5 out of 4 times. It will rain on your parade from time to time.

Meanwhile it helps to look at others suffer from the same devastating bad beats. You are not alone. A quick search might give you one of the most hilarious sources for that: The PokerStars suckout stepchild Magic, who plays online poker at PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and other poker networks under the player names “magic612” and “LUCKSAC915”. He screencasts, produces and publishes hilarious videos about his aces donk ass whiping, brokeback mountain pocket kings, doom switches, bait rigged beats and two pair scams on BlogTV and YouTube, that are themed as “The suckout zone” and has slogans, such as “Where donks are kings” and “PokerStars is a scam”.

It is unknown, whether he is purely joking, but it does sound like, that he is serious and really feel, that he is more unlucky, than he should be. He blames the random number generators, bad players and the card room owners for his bad beats. He is never seen studying expected value of his actions nor variance and bankroll management plan, which indicates, that he is ignoring the fact, that he will lose and go through downswings from time to time – like everybody else.

Does anyone know the real name or identity of Magic, who plays online poker at PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker under the player names “magic612” and “LUCKSAC915”?