He showed as much in one particularly tense hand when, after the final communal card hit the table, he found himself staring at a measly pair of fours-the lowest pair on the board. You can’t bluff at a chessboard, but you can at a card table.Īnd it turns out that Carlsen is pretty good at reading that too.
While chess is a game of perfect information, because both players can see each other’s pieces, Texas Hold’em comes with an asymmetry because two of each players’ cards are hidden from their opponents.
Rather than spend months preparing for a single match and trying to predict whether his opponent will deploy the London System or the Sveshnikov Sicilian defense, he was throwing chips on a table, trash-talking his opponents and occasionally showing that the mind of the highest-rated chess player in history can also wrap itself around Texas Hold’em.Ĭarlsen played last week in the Hustler Casino Live Creator Poker Night, a man-bun perched atop his head, displaying how skills he never had to apply to chess were critical to his budding card-playing career.
