“Want to go to the casino?”

“LMAO, yea sure let’s go”

And so begins one of many casino trips with Mango and S2J. Part of me wanted to go to satisfy a long-lost love for poker, a game that I haven’t really played much ever since Black Friday, when a plethora of websites could no longer host US players. I wouldn’t call myself the best, but I was a winning player over a decent sample size, culminating in well over $10,000 in net winnings. However, I didn’t really go for the allure of winnings or even the competitive thrill of outplaying my opponent with a soul-read. I was more interested in observing Mango, a player that has shown to be the best in a highly competitive game, to see how his skills would transfer over to another game.

Out of everyone, Mango intrigues me the most. Mango was depicted as “the natural” in the Documentary, creating an enigma for people who analyze him. Most people are used to the Mew2King approach of meticulously breaking down options for common solutions- something that Mango would describe as “lame” and “nerdy.” Instead of going for optimal combos, Mango prefers his own way of punishing with less consistent combos and more stylish reads. How does a person with such stubborn ideals as Mango become the best at Melee? The mystery is further deepened when you hear him relate stories such as his high school career, in which he slacked off, skipped class, and cheated off his classmates to pass. Mango does not think in terms of precise frames or percentages. He’s not doing lab experiments to see when an up-smash from Fox kills a Peach on Dreamland. He doesn’t do targeted training sessions. He just plays and “feels” the game.

Poker, a game that relies heavily on game theory, equity, odds, and percentages, did not seem like a game that Mango could thrive in, especially in an era where people are using tools such as Flopzilla and Pokerstove that makes 20GX look pedestrian. Yet, when we look at Mango’s play in Melee, it’s anything but optimal, but heck it works and he looks stylish when doing so. Given that, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Mango’s favorite poker players included the likes of Sam Farha and Tom Dwan, two aggressive players that love to make risky plays all of the time. To be honest, I was a little scared when Mango began his casino escapades. In Melee, experimenting leads to some losses that are inconsequential. In poker, making crucial mistakes and sub-optimal plays lead to losing thousands of dollars.

My early sessions with Mango strangely met every one of my imagined expectations of how he’d play. Mango was a player that relied on ballsy reads and unrelenting aggression on very marginal situations. Sounds familiar? For every time he made an amazing call on a player’s exact hand, he would stubbornly try to outplay his opponents even when they had monster hands. Of course, no matter how good you are, there are certain situations where you cut your losses and throw out the white flag – something that Mango hates doing in any situation.

On certain days Mango played amazing, sans some very questionable plays like calling his entire stack of $300 on a flush draw against what seemed like a very expected monster two pair or better hand from his opponent. These calls would lead to some conversations after.

“Why did you call $300 to win $300 on a flush draw? It’s already the turn and you have 1 card left to hit your flush. You have about an 18% shot to win.”

Of course, using these terms made zero sense to him, so I rephrased it.

“You know how you try to up-smash Armada when you have nearly no chance of hitting it and then you get killed? That’s how you played this hand.”

Even then Mango would tell me how he “understood” what I was saying in theory, but he would need to be beat out of bad habits to learn. It made me a little worried, but at the same time, the same structure of learning seemed to work rather well for him in Melee where he would learn what to do and what not to do quickly whereas the general population seems to be stuck on telegraphed approaches, bad shield grabs, and awful patterns.

I didn’t end up going on every poker trip with Mango, but we would talk regularly about hands and some of his recent breakthroughs, one of which that many never end up learning even after years of experience.

“Dude Tafo, ever since I stopped playing dumb hands for $10-15 preflop, I’ve been playing so much better.”

If you’re unfamiliar with general poker strategy, calling with marginal hands when someone else has already raised pre-flop is literally throwing money away. The satisfaction of catching a nice straight draw or hitting a random two pair is tempting, but it’s a losing play due to how infrequently it happens, almost similar to how Melee players are drawn to moves such as Marth’s F-smash or Peach’s D-smash because it works against weaker players and once in a while draws heavy returns even against strong players.

And every time I make another trip with Mango to the casino, I’m amazed by the tidbits he gets from playing more hands. I could criticize him for making outlandish plays, fundamental errors, or for the fact that he will probably never open up a simulator to study numbers. Yet, how can I criticize him when he learns the game faster than players that study theory?

He’s not a book-learner. He’s not going to tell you that a move has a specific negative frame advantage on shield. He’s experiential by nature. Perhaps this has hindered his process in 2015 for Melee where he’s been criticized for not implementing optimal techniques. Yet, it’s not the first time that we thought Mango’s gameplay was “outdated.” In fact, Mango’s never been quite known for using “cutting-edge” technology with his Falco and Fox. It’s not to say he’s adverse to implementing new techniques, but he needs to feel out the properties of the moves, rather than having people tell him to do ____ because they say it’s good. It may be a while before he fully implements shield-dropping or invincible ledge-dashing, techniques that his rivals are perfecting and it’s easy to criticize his reluctance, but as history has shown for nearly a decade, he’s been successful in his career doing it his way, the Mango way.