We lost Paul yesterday. Nolan Dalla wrote up an excellent article on him: http://www.nolandalla.com/remembering-paul-magriel/

I played a lot of low limit hold'em with him at the Orleans right after it opened and exchanged phone numbers. Always an interesting character. He will be missed.

Just played with Quack Quack late last year. RIP

Always looked forward to his stories of the old days. Very fascinating man.

Inventor of Dan Harrington's "M" stack concept.

RIP X-22. Quack quack!

Sorry to hear, friendly enough odd duck. Too bad.

That sucks.
Here. Here.

You wouldn’t have known about Paul’s mastery of other games by looking at him in his later years, which were mostly spent grinding low-stakes poker games in Las Vegas, with the occasional tournament cash here and there. He rarely talked about his life before poker. The last time I saw Paul was a month ago. He was playing in a $70 buy-in nightly tournament at the Orleans.

Cynics might have gazed upon Paul, seen his wrinkled pants barely hanging around his waist, observed his distracting facial tics, and be very hard-pressed to imagine this same man was once a gaming giant who regularly dressed in tuxedos, dined at the world’s finest restaurants, and always flew first-class.

Indeed, Paul seemed to become what many old poker players become in the late autumn of their years, broken down men who long ago forfeited their riches and glory to old age and the creeping hands of all human clocks, their lost triumphs now long past in the rearview mirror of life, invisible to the casual eye.

Damn, that's really sad. What happened to the big money he made from backgammon?

I remember him felting me at both binions and a backgammon club in NYC , he was always cool, and basically a god amongst the NYC backgammon crews in the mid 90's.

RIP

RIP Paul (X-22). Always such a quirky, kind and likable guy, who was far more intelligent than he would ever let on.

expenses , taxes , women, etc etc etc

R.i.p.

His appearances on the ESPN poker broadcasts during the boom were very memorable. Had some real personality to go with his brains, a rare trait among successful poker players.

RIP.

RIP

Strange he did't die on february 2nd 2022

And did he just stop playing backgammon? Even if he blew all of his money on poker or in the pit, seems like he's so good he could replenish with the backgammon.

who was going to play him for money?

Great eulogy, RIP quack quack.

Quack Quack. RIP

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.

He wore two Swatch watches, one on each wrist. They were small (female or child size) watches. I thought it was weird yet actually cool.

My guess is that he may have lost the bankroll in medical expenses. He seemed sickly as of last year.

He told me Phil Gordon didn't write the Little Gold Book of Poker but wrote the ones before it. He also told me Negreanu and Annie Duke were mortal enemies, and that Chris Ferguson was innocent in the matter of Full Tilt.

His invention of "M" strategy and Dan Harrington sharing it in HoH won me a house playing Poker. RIP Paul Magriel

I was very surprised one night, maybe 6-8 years ago, when he sat down at the 1/2 game I was playing in at Bally's. I wasn't sitting near him, so I didn't really get a chance to talk to him. Fascinating brush with greatness, huh?

If Phil calls you a maniac it's a compliment, quack, quack!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUF7UqftIzc

Hi Everyone:

I didn't know Paul Magriel but I do know that his book on backgammon, which has the title of Backgammon, is considered a breakthrough book at a level that you hardly ever seen in the field of games. I also know that both Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie thought very highly of him and his analytical abilities. I'm sure he'll be missed by those who knew him well.

Best wishes,
Mason

i met paul when he first came out to vegas and played in the mid higher stakes poker games. then he was more so called normal and played very well. he was one of the nicest people you could ever meet and always respected others and their thoughts. he listened to people when he knew the answer already and never started any arguments.
later he became more amusing and everyone always liked paul for who he was. he wrote the premier backgammon book at the time and knew more about poker than most of the pro's. paul didnt care about money, but making things exciting was more of his interest.
people like paul made poker history and improved the fun in the game to make poker what it is today. lets hope more people make things fun for others as well.

I have a friend who loved to watch all the early WPT and WSOP broadcasts, but moved on and forgot about poker after a while. He knows I still play poker, so when he’d see me, he’d ask about quack-quack. That seems to be what stuck in his mind about the poker boom after all these years. It’s true, the game needs to be fun to be popular, and personalities and characters are what made it fun. Paul Magriel helped the game.