Justin Young: All right, guys. Welcome back to Table One Podcast. Co-host Art Parman, other co-host Justin Young, and very special guest today, Mike Thorp
Art Parmann: Wait, you have a last name? I thought your first name was Crazy.
Mike Thorpe: Well, everyone knows me as “Crazy Mike,” to be honest, I bet 90% of the people that I interact with have no idea what my last name is.
Art Parmann: Is Ed Thorp your father? (Editor – a famous financier and mathematics professor who mathematically proved that card counting gives an advantage in blackjack)
Mike Thorpe: The guy that did the blackjack? No. But my dad's name is actually Ed Thorp, but it's not the same guy that wrote the book. He was a pilot and so forth. And he's my dad, but old now. Hedge funds, but not that famous.
Justin Young: How did you get the nickname Crazy Mike?
Mike Thorpe: Sure. I didn’t name myself. Of course, you can’t ever have a nickname that’s never named yourself. So, when I was in the military in San Diego, I played at VA Hos Casino and I ran into a bunch of limit Hold'em players, which was the game back then in the early 2000s, like 2001, 2002, 2003. That was what was played online mostly, like on Paradise Poker, Planet Poker, and then the beginning of Empire Poker, which was a sub of Party Poker. Limit Hold'em was pretty much the only thing that was played online. And No Limit wasn’t really that.
So there was an $8/$16 limit hold'em game, and I played with a bunch of other Mikes, and there was like a Mike L, there was like a Surf Mike, there was Crazy Mike, there were a few other Mikes, and Chris Vitch, also known as DeathDonkey, named me Crazy Mike because he also lived in San Diego and we were close back when he lived in La Jolla and I lived on board a naval ship, a destroyer, and then I would go out when we were in port to the casinos and play limit hold'em.
So, I was fun and I guess I had a lot of energy, you know, I had to get out of the the military structure. I had to actually go out and be me. So I was rambunctious. I’d run around the room, yell like a hyena, you know, just have fun. And that’s how the moniker Crazy Mike began. And then it stuck. And I think I’ve kind of lived up to it consistently for the last 20 years.
Exactly. So no, I think that in poker, I love to have fun. I love to be eccentric. My whole crazy, you know, persona or façade, I guess you would say, is pretty good. But when I’m outside of the poker world or outside of the casino, I’m actually just pretty normal, to be completely honest with you.
Justin Young: I mean, normal might be a stretch, Mike. I’m not gonna lie. Like, we’ve gone out to plenty of lunches and stuff like that. It’s normal to me.
How did you get into poker?
Mike Thorpe: But I mean, when you think of No Limit Hold'em, especially when you think public cash games, you think of people that have worked hard on like the sims and the solvers and the experience and the hands and going up and bankroll management and what your hourly is and all this. And I have never lived by that ever, which maybe I should have, but too late now.
But that’s just the public scene. I make sure that I have a private game where I don’t actually have to deal with any of those type of people. I can just kind of boot them out and play with what I like to call... I like to play with retards. So, I like to play with people that are completely 100% fun, rich, wear a cowboy hat, are not at all good at poker. I like to play with people that I think are kind of on my same page when it comes to just wanting to have a good atmosphere—not people that take it too seriously, nitty, anything like that.
So, I like to play exclusively with fun players, I think we call them, or recreational players in the mix game world. That's extremely hard to get, because it's such a small niche. But I found them, and I'm pretty happy with it. I'm pretty happy with it.
Justin Young: Let's go back to the days before you knew those words. How did you get started in poker?
Mike Thorpe: So yeah, I grew up in Spokane, Washington, and in Washington state it's kind of different from other states because they let you gamble when you're 18. So you can gamble in public card rooms at 18. All they had was blackjack and poker and other things, and the table games never really interested me. It was just poker that interested me from a young age.
So when I turned 18, I think on my birthday, I went to a casino called Northern Quest Casino, which was our Indian casino in Spokane. There was only one back then. Now there’s more than one, but there was one back then. And I played, I believe, $3/$6 limit Hold’em in 2001. In January of 2001, that was my 21st birthday.
I played. I enjoyed it. I loved the game. And yeah, I was hooked. I worked at Sears at the time, selling big screen TVs on commission. I loved sales, and then I would play poker on the side. My senior year of high school, I was more into working and gambling. Sorry, Mom.
So instead of taking the traditional path of going to university, going to school, I chose to join the military when I was 18. And then I went to boot camp, and I thought I was just gonna sail the world, play online poker, enjoy myself. And then 9/11 happened, and the whole world changed in boot camp. September 11th happened, and then all of a sudden, the whole world changed.
So then we were at war, and then short story was, I went to the schools and got educated for my job, and then I was stationed in San Diego, which I picked, which was an amazing port to pick. That’s lucky. From 2001 to 2007, I was in the Navy playing limit Hold’em and online poker, you know, pre-Black Friday, almost every day. A lot of fun.
Maybe that’s why I am like I am. Because you have to have military discipline. You have to wake up at a certain time. You know, you have to go out, you have deployments and jobs, and you have to be told orders by your superiors. Now I’m giving the orders.
Justin Young: You say you chose the military. Like, was that just always going to be the thing, or in your head were you like, "With the military, I know I’m going to have some downtime, I get to play poker"?
Mike Thorpe: So I couldn’t afford a private school, and I don’t think my grades would have, to be honest, got me into anything other than like a state school. So it was either that or I can join something. You know, my grandpa was in the military. He was in the Navy. My dad was in the Air Force. So he did a career as a pilot.
Justin Young: I want to go back to when you were in the service or whatever. Like, how often are you playing?
Mike Thorpe: So how the Navy worked, just to give you a quick synopsis (way more complicated than this), but you’re in port for approximately 6 months at a time. When you’re in port in San Diego, the ship is in port. It’s just moored to a pier. It’s parked.
So then you basically do your work preparing for your next deployment when you go out to sea, like the Straits of Hormuz or you go off the shores of Iraq or Afghanistan during that time, and things like that. That’s what you prepare for. You paint and do maintenance and drills and you know, all sorts of stuff just to prepare for the next deployment.
So when you’re in port, I lived on the ship for half of my time. So you also have what’s called duty. So every six days you have to stay on the ship for 24 hours. Everyone on the ship does. So you have six different sections, and then you have to stay on the ship.
Yeah, like 250, 300 people. So, 60 people approximately each day of work. You work from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, like a normal workday, and then you get weekends off. But every sixth day, you have to stay on the ship for 24 hours. When I was on duty, those were the early days of wireless broadband. So I had to get creative. It was super hard to get a signal inside the ship with all that steel. But I figured out a way. I rigged something together to get enough reception to play online poker. I played on Ultimate Bet, Full Tilt, PokerStars… all of them. And I loved it.
Justin Young: So what made you decide to get out of the military? What was that last year like?
Mike Thorpe: So in the Navy, you either do four years or six, depending on your track. I picked something called the Advanced Electronics Computer Field (AECF) and that required six years because they sent me to school for two years first. Basically, I learned about transistors, resistors, circuit boards… how to be an electronics technician or fire controlman.
You do what’s called A-school and C-school and learn everything you need before you hit the fleet. Because of that training, my contract was six years. So I was in from 2001 to 2007.
Art Parmann: And you get paid during all of that, right?
Mike Thorpe: Yeah, you’re always paid in the military. Free school, free housing, healthcare, food, everything.
Justin Young: Just got to risk dying for your country.
Mike Thorpe: Honestly, it was pretty safe on a ship. I don’t want to downplay the service, but I wasn’t out there on the front lines. There was tension at times, but nothing too crazy.
Justin Young: So, what was your like bankroll management or bankroll like objective like while you're in the military for all this?
Mike Thorpe: I'm glad you asked that question. There was no bankroll management. There was just I make money, I gamble it, and just have fun and enjoy myself. There was no real goal.
During the time I was in the military, during the last two years, I was pretty good at heads-up limit Hold’em. So that was kind of my niche, is I was making a lot of money playing heads-up limit Hold’em online, mostly at like $5/$10, $10/$20, and basically for 2 years, 3 years, I never had a losing month. I was good at it.
The one time I was with Marco Johnson, and the one time I played 20/40 or 40/80 limit Hold’em, we were grinding the hell out of it, and we were beating the machine too.
600 of your dollars, 600 of the computer dollars, and you win the hand, then it triggers a jackpot. And then the person would have to come over and then put in the code and all that, but it would keep stealing the button from us.
But Marco’s like, “This is just bullshit,” because we just noticed it. We should have noticed it a lot earlier, I mean, to be honest. And Aria has no idea what the hell is going on or whatever. And he thought it was completely unfair.
So we called the Nevada Gaming Control Board and I didn’t know that was actually someone that you could call. He called them. So they came and they took a report and they have no clue what’s going on either. They're like, “Button? It looks like it’s fine.” And so they did all that, and then Aria shut down the machine and checked the thing. And then like a few days later they said, “No, this is fine. No big deal,” and they didn’t rule in Marco’s favor.
And the end result was, nothing happened. They turned the machine off for a day or two inside the high-limit area in Aria. And then they turned it back on. And yeah— game over. We’re playing $10/$20 now, not $20/$40.
When I transitioned from heads-up limit Hold'em, because no one would play me anymore and I just kind of got bored of it, to learning mixed games... most people, as you talked about bankroll management and responsibility, I think they’d start small. Like maybe $20/$40 or $15/$30, or there were $10/$20 games back then.
Yeah, I’m sure I played some of those. But I started at $300/$600.
Justin Young: But was this a consistent game that was going, or was this someone’s game that they kind of put together every day?
Mike Thorpe : I wasn’t hosting the game. I wasn’t calling people. There was no group chat. It was organic. There were lists. You’d put your name on a list, I think, and you'd just show up and be able to play. I don’t think I’ve ever waited to play, ever, in a mixed game. Shocking.
I would’ve let me play too. But I’m just trying to remember how it actually went down logistically. I think we showed up around 2 or 3 p.m. in Ivey’s Room, and we’d play. We had a set mix of games. Anyone was allowed in.
I played a lot with a lot of the superstars today who were just coming up. We played with Scott Seiver, Justin Young, Michael Binger back then, John Monnet, Todd Brunson. Doyle was in there.
Well yes, but now it’s like they’re either completely broke, or they’re playing 3,000/6,000. There's nothing in the middle. It's just either one direction or the other.
Mixed games are such a small niche community. In Vegas right now, there’s probably fewer than 200 active mixed game players. I’d say fewer than a thousand globally who play $80/$160 and higher. No-limit Hold'em, you guys have the whole world. You’ve got millions. Tens of thousands at least.
People see two cards on TV, and then they want to take a shot.
That’s great. Try explaining Badacey to some billionaire guy that wants to play with us. We’ll be in Bobby’s Room, and there's a no-limit game going on nearby. Rich people walk in, and I’ll try to get them to sit with us. And sometimes we get them. But then we start saying words like Badugi and Big O, or that we're playing double board PLO five-card, or Razz, and it freaks them out. It makes people intimidated.
On the bright side, Hold'em is kind of the gateway drug, right? You get the two cards, you learn how betting works, the blinds, and then the salesman shows up.
Once you go mixed games, you’re never going back. I’ll be honest with everyone watching, if you play high-stakes no-limit Hold'em, or even PLO, once you learn how to play Deuce-to-Seven Triple Draw and Badugi, which are the foundational games for mixed rotation, you can pretty much learn everything else. And it’s way more fun than playing the same game over and over again.
And what’s also fun is that, in the mixed game community at least, I don’t think you guys have this at all, we have what we call “breakdowns.”
Everyone gets tilted, frustrated, whatever... and they break down. Massive tilt. They either insta-quit, throw chips, snap, yell, scream.
Why the Las Vegas Private Games Exist
You want to know why private games exist in Las Vegas? There is one reason private games exist in Las Vegas. One guy.
Ryan Miller.
He caused the biggest transformation, the biggest wealth transfer, from rich people to private game runners in Vegas history over the last 10 years.
You can thank Ryan Miller. Shout out to Ryan Miller.
He's the reason private games exist. I'll tell you the story.
At Aria, he wanted to play a 200/400 mixed game. They didn’t want to play. He called his casino host, used his reward card, tried to get into the game. His host got him in, and they all quit.
The next day, Aria created a “reserve game.” They doubled or tripled the rake. That was their genius idea: pay more rake to play an exclusive game. They called it a “reserve” game instead of a “private” game. Same thing. You pay higher rake to choose who you play with. That reserve game started in mix, then moved into no-limit Hold'em and PLO. Once Aria did it, Wynn followed, then Bellagio. Now everyone does it. All because of one person.
In one way, it’s good poker went private. In another, it sucks. For people who spend hours and days and years with solvers, simulations, strategy work.
Now, to make money in a poker game, you have to be personable, likable. You need charisma. You need to add value. Even if you’re totally emotionless or a social misfit, there’s still a place. Usually it's banking. Lending money to players who need it. That’s your value.
Tournament poker, they have to let you in. That’s why a lot of the people who couldn’t cut it in fun games, because they’re not social, or just born a little different, gravitated to tournaments. They’re welcome there. And they’ve shined.
There are a lot of people who just don’t belong in fun atmospheres. They treat poker like work. You know what I’m saying?
If you run a private game and you’re good at it, it’s extremely hard to do that on a consistent basis. The organizing of it, there's a lot of politics to it. There's a lot of dynamics. Everyone thinks they deserve a seat.
I run a private game. Shout out to my own game. I have a 200/400 mix game at Bellagio in Bobby's room. Okay. We play five days a week. I want to skip over all this "Text me, call me" you know, whatever. If you think that you want to have fun and you qualify and want to come, come on down.
Crazy Mike has been making several appearances at Phenom Poker's mixed games tables in the last month. If you want to join him (or are already playing in the room), don't miss our new rakeback promotion.
