Every poker player has a unique story to tell, so believe me when I say that I was thrilled to see a 5-time Grammy Award winner walking around the poker room looking where to play.
The famous American music composer known for creating theme music for many popular TV shows, the creator of probably the best-known sound effect in the world appearing in Law & Order, and music producer Mike Post definitely has a story to tell.
I had to use this opportunity to talk to Mike and learn more about his journey, not just as a music producer and composer but as a poker player as well, and he was kind enough to sit down for a quick chat.
Mike Post Beginnings in Poker
If you think for a second that Mike Post is someone new at the poker table, you would be highly mistaken. He was introduced to the game by his grandmother when he was only ten years old when the entire family gathered around the dinner table on Sundays to play some card games.
“You already know how to play canasta, you have good basic math skills, so it would be good for you to play poker said my grandmother, and we began playing for pennies every Sunday,” Mike shared. “I loved beating the adults, and I was fascinated by the game.”
Fast forward a couple of decades into the future, and you can find Mike playing five-card stud and five-card lowball in California. “I played quite consistently as a young man in, in some of the early casinos in Gardena, and it was so much fun.”
After he became a famous music producer, he could have gotten into pretty much any game. Mike explained that he deliberately tried to avoid it.
“If I wanted to take advantage of that fame, I could easily do that but I don't. I stay away from all that celebrity stuff. I live my life kind of low-key and sort of below the radar. And you know, I'm the most fortunate person ever.”
“That’s because I have all the good parts of fame and notoriety and none of the bad parts. Nobody recognizes me, nobody knows me, except my friends and family and a few odd people who are really obsessed with credits on TV.”
Mike Post explained his approach to this and that using his legal name separately from his alias turned out to be a great decision in the end and helped him “hide” from unwanted attention.
Funny Stories from WSOP and Beyond
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Playing under the alias definitely helps avoid some eyeballs, but even that is not a bulletproof method.
“Two or three years ago I am playing in WSOP Main Event day 2, and I sit down to play with my legal name written on the piece of paper. A guy sits down next to me and he's got a T-shirt on with a guitar player who happens to be my friend named Robben Ford. I look at the T-shirt and think whether I should say anything? Should I? So, I say to this guy, Robben Ford is a great player, and he says with a very thick accent, I made him. I said, are you from Brazil? He goes, I am. I'm a guitar player, but now I mostly do music for video games and television. Okay. I said, music for TV.”
“I don't say anything for a minute, and then I ask if he has done any TV shows I would know the name of. He said, did you ever watch the first and second seasons of Narcos? I said, right, so your name is Bromfman. He goes, How do you know?”
“I slide over the piece of paper with my legal name on it, and he goes – I'm sorry, that doesn't mean anything to me. I said take the “il” off the surname and forget the first name. He goes, you're not Mike Post, are you? I said I am. He goes, what are the odds that two composers that do music for TV get a random draw for day two from thousands of players.”
This was just one of many fun stories Mike shared. You can clearly see how much fun he was having in games at Commerce Casino and other places while playing poker, just based on the way he was talking about it.
When asked about parallels between poker and music, Mike confirmed that being a composer and music producer helped him unlock creativity, which is very relevant in poker, along with the actual strategy of playing the game.
“You study, you study, you study, and then you let all the study and all the numbers inform your feelings. You know, we all read the same books and learn the same plays. Most of the time, you do play predictably, but then once in a while, you come out of the weeds with suited connectors or suited gappers and crack those pocket kings.”
“If you live just on that, you're going to go broke, right? But if you do this sometime in the right moments, this is how you become unpredictable. To me, the creativity comes with the unpredictability.”
Playing Poker Online at ClubWPT
To my surprise, Mike said that as much as he loves playing live poker, he actually plays more online and opens ClubWPT almost every single day to play some hands and clear his head.
It appears that playing there is not a bad way to clear your head since Mike won a satellite to $10k WPT World Championship event in Las Vegas, and this is where we are having this conversation.
“I love playing online. These games at ClubWPT are way loser than you can imagine so it is very exploitable. Of course, the variance is going to be much higher and you going to see some hands that you never should see, so you have to shift gears a bit and adjust.”
“Life was so good to me, and because I play poker at a level that's never a financial event to me, there is no difference whether you measure success by points or by actual winnings. Am I learning? Am I improving? Am I playing disciplined? Am I playing creatively? “that's what matters to me, shared Mike. “The two words that I live by are discipline and creativity.”
While poker is clearly the game Mike enjoys, he also shared that he plays it for different reasons than just getting an adrenaline rush.
“I've been on television. I've stood in front of a 120-piece orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl with a baton in my hand conducting. I've produced Dolly Parton, the first Kenny Rogers, all of the Ronnie Milsap, among many other performers. I've enjoyed life at the top of my music field. I've seen a lot of excitement. As a kid, I played on records for the most famous people in the world, and to me, all the things that maybe would excite somebody else a little bit more are a bit less meaningful from an excitement standpoint. To me, what matters is character, kindness, discipline, and creativity. That's what matters to me.”
“As for poker, I just want to play well. You're going to win, you're going to lose, and the wheels are going to turn. Nothing beats running well, but playing well is more important than winning to me.”
This really transitions to his personal life. As Mike said himself, he was in the “supposedly the dirtiest business in the world” and had never been sued, never been deposed, never put his name on someone else's music, nor ever badmouthed another person in my field to get to someplace.
“How you get there sometimes is more important than where you get to. It is important what you see when you look in the mirror and whether you can say to yourself that you've done a good job.”
Mike kept smiling during all of these stories and told them with so much passion that you can’t do anything else than dive yourself into all of his positivity and keep smiling along.
“I got my aviation life. I got my family life. I got my sports life. I got my poker life, and I got my music life. You'll never sit with anybody more fortunate,“ said Mike Post. “I'm 80 years old, I'm still healthy, I'm in a good marriage, and I've got a good family, and that's what matters the most.”
I felt really inspired by this conversation and went on with my day with newfound energy and a big smile on my face. If I am able to look in the mirror when I turn 80 and say those same words as I heard from Mike Post today, I will consider myself extremely lucky.
