I had a fascinating little encounter with Canadiana the other day.
I play low/medium stakes poker, and was playing some $10/$20 limit in Brantford a few weeks ago. A small, wiry man in his sixties or seventies sat to my right. I’d been playing for a few hours and was up, feeling pretty good, so I kept an eye on this new interloper.
To my fascination, he pulled out some documents, one a notebook, and started furiously writing in them, even as he posted his first bet and played cards. I couldn’t help but see, as his books were just two feet from my face. One of the notebooks appeared to be an absolutely Byzantine, ultra-confusing matrix that somehow tracked the tendencies of the various players in the casino (which would be valuable information, if you knew what to record and had enough of a data sample.) A few people amusedly asked him about it, and he claimed to know the fundamental stats for several of the folks at the table, rattling off VPIP numbers and whatnot.
The other document in his hands was a typewritten thesis, perhaps 30-40 pages in length, entitled something like “Can Poker Player Tendencies Be Tracked Using Observable Statistical Tendencies” or something like that. The author was none other than John Turmel. I asked if he was the man himself, and he happily said he was and shook my hand, asking me where I’d heard of him. I told him I’d read his material on Usenet back in the day and, anyway, I read a lot of news.
To say he was quite a character would be an understatement. He was much smaller than I thought he’d be - he looks like he’s lost some weight, in a good way. He talks, incessantly and happily.
Turmel has a long history of gambling associations, prides himself on his numbers skills, and was the only guy at the table keeping stats on other players, so it amuses me to report that he is an absolutely atrocious poker player. He was playing three quarters of his hands, cold-calling, rarely raising and generally doing everything you expect from a dreadful player. I cheerily helped him out with his matrix by giving him my name and playing tendencies, figuring that it made no difference, and it didn’t; he’s one of the worst players I’ve ever seen play $10/$20. I didn’t play with him long and I’m not Doyle Brunson but I assure you he was just terrible. If I could play with nine John Turmels every time I played, I would quit my job, play poker for a living, and retire in four years.
The sense I got from him is that he is not quite crazy, but manic, I guess would be the word. He was jumpy and fidgety and seemed scatterbrained. I was struck by the impression that he was a man with a high IQ but some sort of ADD that kept him from quite harnessing it. His convoluted matrix of alleged player profiles was, I am utterly certain, complete balderdash; I am sure he thought it meant something when he wrote stuff down and then forgot what it all meant later. It LOOKED like something a crazy man would write, the densely pencilled ravings of a lunatic’s diary.
For all that, he didn’t otherwise look mad. He seemed healthy, was nicely dressed and presented, was pleasant to sit at the table with, and seemed happy as a clam. I had to go about an hour later - a shame, given how enthusiastically he was giving away his money; I had already taken some and was sure I could take more.
It was a very interesting meeting.
