seems to me that to speculate on whether someone has a debilitating mental disorder based on pretty much nothing at all is, in a word, ******ed.

Thank fk for that!

at the end of the first part derek is meeting simon baron-cohen the cousin of sacha "borat" baron cohen. hes one of the leading scientist in his field. sick family iyam

and thanks for the link.

http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/...lip?id=4378047
The surfer Clay Marzo.


Autistic kid makes gives Kelly Slater nightmares, so no... Autism doesn't stop anyone from getting insanely good in the one (usually) thing they focus at.

First Blackjack, now poker?!? What's left for us...hockey?!?

If someone has been dignosed as being on the autism spectrum it can mean a variety of different developmental delays as well as the posibility that they do have the ability to excell at certain activities - most autistic people are not savants but function, with some early intervention, like everyone else in society. Autism is not ******ation- they are 2 different conditions. That said- Eastgate, from what I've seen on TV, -it is possible that he may be "on the spectrum". But in the end does it really matter? IMO there are alot of pros with much more severe and profound personallity disorders

I can count down a 6 deck shoe and tell you which card is missing, you don't have to be a genius, just good at math. Hint: It doesn't actually mean memorizing each card you come across although I'm sure there are savants that can do that.

Eastgate is a winning poker player, every main event winner is a luckbox in some terms, but the kid can play.

Also lol at medical diagnosis from ESPN in a game where people TRY to minimize emotions.

I don't think you'd be a favorite to do this with a lot of practice.

Your argument is invalid. DUCY?

a normal human brain has a system of "deleting" "unnecessary" information, so when you look at a picture you only remember a few "important" details. some autistic people dont have that, so they just end up remembering the whole thing.
the reason this system exists is to not overload the brain. thats why some autistic people cant handle new environments etc because it overloads their brains.
im not a big expert but this is a pretty decent general explanation of this phenomenal

As other posters have implied autism is a diagnosis that presents itself on a very wide spectrum. Males are 4 times more likely than females to be diagnosed with this disorder. Some of the most debilitating outcomes of the diagnosis include motor, and language learning difficulties. On the severe end of the spectrum, a person diagnosed with autism may have difficulty engaging in daily self care activities (i.e. bathing, dressing, feeding, etc.) requiring assistance to perform such tasks. There seems to be a correlation, that a person diagnosed with autism, will also have some sensory processing difficulties as well, making learning more difficult compared to the norm, thus setting obstacles in daily life, learning, and establishing strong social relationships. On the end of the spectrum (i.e Aspergers/high functioning), individuals diagnosed with mildly, or high functioning autism, at first glance typically look normal. Understanding social situations, and "acting" accordingly, is one the biggest challenges for people diagnosed with high functioning autism. A person with autism does not register and process socials cues such as facial features, and body gestures, as the norm would.

Unfortunately this is just the tip of the iceberg. The etiology of autism is unknown. There's speculation that it may be due to the ecological containments, and genetic implications (*a study in Europe suggests fathers over the age of 40 are more likely to have a child with austim). There is no "cure". Currently, it is believed early intervention, with a combination of stimulation, play, occupational, physical, speech and language therapy is the most effective treatment method. Often, an overlooked component, is the family dynamic; helping families, and caretakers truly understand and cope with the challenges and realities of having a child with autism.

Suggesting Peter Eastgate as mildly autistic is interesting. It can explain his rather stoic response when he won the ME as well as his usual demeanor at the table. However, if I'm not mistaken, I did see him crack a smile or two during the NBC heads up. If he is autistic, I would like to know what his personal challenges have been throughout his life, and how he has learned how to cope with them.

I apologize for this rant. I just find it personally disheartening when people jest about others with mental and social disorders.

Debilitating it clearly isn't in his case. So it's supposed to be wrong that he might be autistic? He's clearly a poker savant, autistic or not.

i'm gonna hijack and say figuring out which card is missing should be pretty easy.

13 cards so
1+2+3...13=x

6 decks is 6x keep a running count and subtract 6x from your count and you know what card is missing. i guess you'd have to keep 4 more running counts to figure out which suit also but it's not nearly as hard as it seems

You'd be able to tell if it was between 2-6, 7-9, or 10-a but would you be able to know which exact card it was?

Thats not how hes counting.

i'm pretty sure he was a winning online player. your post is way worse than his.

Why should he be autistic. He just acted shy, and obivously was not comfortable speaking english. He do however act completely normal in danish.

The difficulty of it mostly depends on how much time you are allotted between each card and how much time you have at the very end. With a few weeks of practice and some memory tactics, I think there's plenty of people on here who could do this assuming the cards are not flipped immediately after each other and there's a half hour at the very end for the person to think about the last card.

I'm assuming that Stu was able to figure out the last card by virtually just glancing as the cards in the 6-deck were flipped over, one by one without pause. That is much much harder and is probably due to innate ability.

God damn it, I want there to be something wrong with me, so I have something to blame.

Is there a medical condition for somebody who's really smart and outgoing and funny, but basically ****s everything up and never succeeds at anything?

Kind of like the opposite of autism?

Surely any winning player deserves some amount of respect, and according to him, he WAS a full time cash player before winning the ME.

I also think it's fair to say there's a difference between a donating fish and guy who's nervous about playing with big-names for large sums on TV. Eastgate wasn't exactly handing his money away on HSP, was he? Was he even loser for the session?

Hey, Kinish is has aspergers. John Turturro -- "Had himself diagnosed with Asperger's Disorder after seeing the independent film "Billy The Kid."

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001806/bio

very well said

Unless I'm being ******ed and overlooking something this should be pretty easy if you're halfway good at mental arithmetic. If you assign a number to each card and work out in advance what the total would be over 6 decks you should be able to deduce the remaining card as the difference between your tally and that total.

That's not to say Ungar didn't in fact memorize each card on the fly as they were being flipped. If that is the case he absolutely was some kind of savant.

Don't you only need two counts? One for the number. Then assign the suits numbers 1-4 and do a count for them. Unless I'm missing something this seems easy.