R Paul Wilson On: The Unpredictable Genius of Vladimir Korzinin

Author: R. Paul Wilson

Gambling involves more than just taking risks for money. Players exist on a spectrum, ranging from hardcore gamblers who thrive on the thrill of chance to advantage players who take significant steps to reduce or reverse the odds against them.

Most players fall somewhere in the middle, often learning basic strategies to improve their chances. A very small percentage exist at the extremes: advantage players who devolve into outright cheaters, and reckless gamblers who repeatedly demonstrate that, ultimately, pure luck seems to conquer all.

Being cheated places us at an impossible disadvantage, but we can learn to escape or defeat these scenarios by observing how others have overcome outlandish odds, even in games that are technically “fair.” At the 2024 Triton Poker event in Monte Carlo, where expert players buy in for hundreds of thousands while a few “VIP” players are gifted seats in the tournament, a remarkable story unfolded that should make all of us question what just happened.

The Poker Miracle No One Saw Coming

Vladimir Korzinin is a mysterious character by all measures—apparently an Estonian amateur with no real poker experience—who was instantly nicknamed Santa and ‘Gambledor’ thanks to his age and long white beard. However, his reputation exceeded his caricature when Santa landed at the final table, scoring second place and millions of dollars in his first event. This ‘impossible outcome’ immediately repeated in the next poker tournament, where he won and doubled up to almost eight million euros!

The first question must be: did he cheat?

The answer, surprisingly, is that it’s possible he had a concealed advantage, but most likely, that advantage was either blind luck or a playing method that frustrated the experts. One blog post I read suggested he had used a device or that the cards were secretly marked; however, given the amount of scrutiny no doubt applied to the playing conditions in Monte Carlo and the hands I saw him win and lose, it’s more likely that Vladimir is the real Santa Claus and needed the money for his workshop up north.

Poker is often mistaken for a game of pure luck, but we now have millions of hours of play and billions of lines of statistics to prove that skill ultimately decides the long-term results of professional players. In the last two decades, the level of skill in the game has escalated to such a degree that professional players regularly come frighteningly close to ‘Game Theory Optimal’ decisions, where the mathematics of the game ultimately lead to better results over time.

This makes the game extremely difficult for average players (like myself) to survive in situations where the skill level is so high that our own limited abilities simply can’t compete. The solution, it seems, is to break away from the GTO objective, which even expert players need to work on, study (and sometimes receive illegal help) to maintain. Instead, one can simply fly by the seat of your pants, taking crazy and unpredictable chances that make you extremely dangerous at the table.

The Dark Art of Monte Hustling

Let’s take a step away from poker to analyze another "game" (that isn't actually a game), and see how it can be defeated by not playing along as expected: Three Card Monte.

By now, you should be well aware that Monte is a complete scam designed to manipulate unsuspecting individuals into betting all their money on a seemingly sure bet—only to lose it all. The sleight of hand required to accomplish this is fascinating to magicians, but actual Monte hustlers care more about psychological tricks that compel people to open their wallets.

Everything about a well-run Monte scam focuses on putting people onto well-worn tracks that lead to the same disappointing destination. However, when suckers don’t follow those tracks, the hustlers can quickly become frustrated as they run out of alibis (excuses) to avoid paying winning bets.

The simplest alibi is an over-bet from one of the shills (a player who is in on the scam) whenever the sucker ignores or fails to recognize the bait card. The Monte scam hustler simply says, “I have to take the bigger bet,” and dismisses the sucker’s choice. Another trick involves switching cards to avoid paying a rogue sucker, often combined with the over-bet to either convince the sucker that the winning card was where it was supposed to be or to suggest that the sucker would have won if they had simply bet more money.

This sounds complicated because, from the outside, it is complicated. However, when caught up in the game, these methods ultimately draw people into playing with confidence—after all, it is a confidence game—and that’s when they lose everything.

George Devol, author of *Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi*, played Monte for years and even stood up in court, played the judge (without cheating), and proved that it was a true game of chance. To my knowledge, no real Monte game has ever been played purely by chance; it’s always a scam. However, the scam can be frustrated by being completely unpredictable, and if luck is on your side, you might force the hustlers to abandon the game or pay you a small win just to get rid of you. The latter is extremely unlikely; however, your most likely outcome is simply to anger a gang of professional street criminals!

I once played against a couple of real teams in London by secretly marking the winning card (actually a leather disk) and always choosing the winner despite apparently not paying attention to the rest of the game. Every round, the hustler made some excuse or switched things around, but even when I reached out and grabbed the winner, I was told that doing so forfeited the bet! We filmed all of this and never used it on the TV show, but it proved that winning a Three Card Monte is impossible and it might be easier to squeeze blood from a stone.

Not so with poker, where the game is (or should be) fair. The other players, whether world champions or local heroes, are motivated to play to the end and can’t walk away in a tournament setting. This is important since a frustrating, unpredictable player is easy to avoid in cash games, whereas tournament structures can place those players anywhere forcing others to engage.

Vladimir seems to have ridden a wave of great poker luck, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t apply other reasoning to make his decisions. As most commentators agree, his unpredictable and non-traditional playing style might not be mathematically optimal, but in practical terms, it certainly set the cat among the pigeons at the highest level of the game.

The Moral of the Story Has Two Crucial Points

First, as gamblers against other players, we must realize that by playing the same way as more experienced opponents, we immediately offer them an advantage. Conversely, playing a less predictable strategy that leans more heavily on luck might pay off, even if you lose occasionally. Studying Vladimir’s biggest hands, his choices of whom to bet against based on comparative chip count may have been well-considered, though it would take a better player than I, with all the data, to find any kind of pattern.

Second, when in a situation where we might be manipulated, the ability to recognize where others want us to make certain choices is invaluable. We can test the veracity of many situations simply by doing nothing or appearing to take an alternate route while observing how the other party responds to that decision. For example, a fantastic strategy for exposing fake psychics—those who steal vast sums from unsuspecting clients—is to engage in a reading and agree with everything they say. This disrupts their game of twenty questions, which typically extracts valuable information from vulnerable individuals, and ultimately shuts down their entire charade.

Vladimir Korzinin played in a fair game with what should have been an enormous disadvantage but did so in such a fashion that it made “Gambledore” impossible to predict. While his opponents were not cheaters, they were so advanced in terms of skill and experience that Korzinin should have been carved up with the other amateurs; instead, he proved there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

So, in any game or situation where you sense you are at a disadvantage, consider how playing the way you are expected to might prove the cause of your downfall.