Poker's MindWiz
Jim Karol is human encyclopedia. There is nothing, it seems, that Karol, "The Psychic Madman," doesn't know. Ask him a question that would leave most people baffled and Karol will have an answer within seconds. For example, he has memorized every zip code in the country. And he can tell you where any of the 90,000 zip codes are in the blink of an eye. Pick a zip code, any zip code and Karol will place it. 10023? That's right in the heart of Manhattan. 20016? Washington, D.C.
"I'm kind of like Rocky Balboa mixed with Rain Man," Karol said. His muscles are all mental, but they are exceptional.
The zip codes are only the tip of Karol's Mount Everest of knowledge. The sheer volume of things he knows is simply incredible. He memorized the Scrabble dictionary along with every member of the baseball, basketball, and football halls of fame. He also knows every country and capital in the world. The arsenal is never-ending and now Karol has decided to devote hi copious mental resources to poker. Instead of amazing corporate groups and college students with his mind tricks and amazing powers of recall, Karol is going to go head-to-head with some of the sharpest minds in the world, pro poker players.
"I always kept low-key or underground as a poker player because I'm an entertainer," Karol said. "But I'm thinking about coming out of the closet and doing this." He has planned to make his pro poker debut in April 2005 at the Bellagio tournament and join the circuit. Karol was unstaked however, and, given his hectic schedule of conferences and appearances, will need to postpone his Vegas debut. "I'm going to call myself the Mad Man of Cards," he said. Like established pro players, Karol has already memorized the odds. Like everything else in his mental repertoire, they are now on instant recall.
"What are the odds of getting pocket aces? 220 to 1," he said. "That's really tough when you really think about it, so if you have a pair of pocket kings, look around the table."
Karol said that he has been playing poker 30 some years, since he was a kid growing up outside of Philadelphia. In those days, he said, his brother, sister, parents, aunt, and a neighbor would play Friday night games like "Follow the Queen" and "Chicago," for pennies. When it was dealer's choice and Karol's turn came around, he said, he always chose Texas Hold'em. He now knows some 100 card games, but is hoping his early loyalty to the game will pay off when he plays it for higher stakes than he ever could have imagined as a child.
While cards are Karol's profession, he still loves the games for their own sake. He and his wife, Lynn, and four children play poker in their basement in Clinton, New York. And Karol doesn't always win. He said that when he plays at home, he will give any of the kids who can beat him $50.
But on the pro circuit, Karol now worries that his mental powers, which are often combined with his remarkable intuition to seem eerily like mind-reading, will make other players think he is cheating. "I'm not a cheater," he said. "But I do have an advantage." Karol stresses that he is an entertainer and is going into poker to broaden his repertoire, and as he said, "liven up the party". Despite his warehouses of knowledge, he is friendly and down-to-earth, with a shining bald head and a ready smile. Karol said he would "feel bad if I were lucky enough to win.
The luck of the draw, or the flop, Karol said, will balance out his advantages. "You always have a slight advantage but nothing's ever guaranteed with cards because you never know what could come up," he said. "There's still that large element of luck, no matter how much you know and how good you are, there's always that element of luck.