Quote:
Originally Posted by Army Eye
I don't have any names for you, but if he literally couldn't get action then that answers a pretty large question and would be worth noting in a story about the guy's life and gaming career. I've heard Ungar couldn't get a game of gin rummy a million times but never heard that about Magriel?
i'm not a backgammon expert by any stretch but from what I've read about it and Magriel all of the high stakes games dried up decades ago. Basically there is no luck (or maybe next to no luck?) involved so you're basically drawing stone dead in a match to someone much better than you unlike poker.Which kind of sucks if you're as smart as Magriel was and the best in the world at something but can't make any money off of it.
This also explains why he was grinding really low stakes no limit games in tiny local Vegas casinos.
It's possible he had a pit problem but I highly doubt someone as smart and mathamatically oriented as him would dump in the pits.
He could play backgammon blind folded with his back to the board and smoke good players- memorizing the entire board and how it changed on each move.
For someone like him counting cards in blackjack would be about as hard as chewing gum- and to top it off he could have played for a couple of decades when everything in Vegas was single and double deck with great rules and deep pen.
RIP Paul.
Last edited by borg23; 03-07-2018 at 05:53 PM.