Did Alex Livingston coin the term Old Man Coffee?

Every poker room has an Old Man Coffee. The elderly player who has sat in the same seat for three hours, sipping his coffee, reading the newspaper and waiting for pocket aces is known by the abbreviation OMC. The term has been used for years in poker rooms and online forums. So who came up with it?

Appearing as a guest on the Table 1 Podcast with Art Parmann and Justin Young, Livingston said the term was entirely his own creation. According to him, the phrase dates back to around 2009. That is well before the deep runs that brought him 13th in the WSOP Main Event in 2013 and 3rd in 2019. Livingston said he was active on the Two Plus Two poker forums at the time and wrote a beginner's guide to live poker. The guide described different player types and profiles, and explained how to play against them. The goal was to help readers recognize their opponents at the table and develop the right approach against them. Among the types he described, the one that stuck most was OMC.

The term describes an elderly player who sits in low-limit cash games, plays a very narrow range of hands, and generally does not enter a pot without a strong hand. In Livingston's original description, this player wakes up at six in the morning, reads his newspaper, drinks his coffee, and heads to the casino to sit and wait for a single strong hand. He has no interest in complex bluffs or contesting every pot. When pocket aces arrive, he plays them, then goes back to his newspaper and hot coffee and repeats the same cycle.