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The following is a conversation with Daniel Negrano, one of the greatest poker players of all time.
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I do listen to quite a bit of fiction.
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And now, dear friends, here s Daniel Negreanu.
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Everything everyone does at the poker table conveys information.
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So let me ask sort of the big overview question.
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What are the various sources of information that you project and others project at the table that convey information?
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Well, there s several different things.
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There s the ones that are conscious and then there s the ones that are subconscious, right?
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Like on the conscious level, it might be something someone says, right?
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You know, you ask them a question and they say, oh, you know, you shouldn t call me here.
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You should.
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So there s the verbal tells.
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There s also the more, you know, subconscious stuff, body posture.
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The eyes, the throat, the pulse, various things that are less controllable.
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I find I use a combination of both to try to gain information, but generally when I have somebody more comfortable, they give off more.
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Everyone has a different approach.
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Phil Ivey likes to intimidate.
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I go the other way.
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I want my opponents to be relaxed so that they ll give me more in that regard.
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So Phil Ivey likes to perturb the system, like mess with it to see what comes out.
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I think Phil has an aura about him where he wants you to know that he s watching you, be afraid, be uncomfortable, because when you re uncomfortable, I got you, right?
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And that s sort of his shtick where he, you know, and people do, like when you sit at a table with Phil Ivey, it s intimidating.
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He likes to rule by fear and you like to rule by, what is it, love?
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That s a really good way to put it.
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I never put it like that, but it makes a lot of sense.
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Yeah, you know, fear Phil Ivey, and then with me, it s fine, don t worry, I ll take your money, but you re gonna enjoy it, it s great.
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So that s what the talking at the table is about, is getting to be relaxed and get some of that gray area between the conscious and the subconscious to reveal something.
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There s that too and also just, you know, and this is just part of who I am anyway.
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Like I like to talk to people, but one of the byproducts is the more I know about you, the more I likely know about how you think about different situations, right?
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So what do you do for a living?
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Oh, I m a lawyer.
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I defend criminals.
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Okay.
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So this guy probably spends a lot of his time twisting the truth.
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He s trying to find, you know, and then, so then, you know, you already have a mindset of like this guy might be more likely to bluff or he s probably comfortable doing that.
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Very subtle things like that.
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And you start to pick up cues on what nervousness looks like for this person, what the nervousness communicates, all that kind of stuff.
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So we re talking about physical tells here.
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Yeah, physical tells is a secondary thing.
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I was more specifically like player profiling, right?
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And sort of understanding the type of mind that I m dealing with, right?
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So again, somebody who s a lawyer is used to trying, is fine with being deceptive as part of a game, right?
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Whereas maybe somebody is a Sunday school teacher.
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and they don t feel comfortable.
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Maybe they think bluffing might be dishonest, right?
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So they re less likely to try some shenanigans against you.
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And then the other thing too is what type of person is this in terms of their view on life, right?
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Are they positive?
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Do they feel like things go their way?
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Or they re not, right?
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There s those people that always, well, of course I lost.
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I always lose with this hand.
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And those types of people you can manipulate.
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Because when a card comes,
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that you don t have them beat, right?
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But you can pretend, because they ll believe it.
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They re like, of course you beat me.
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So you bet all your chips against them, knowing that you can scare them, because they already feel like they re gonna lose.
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The inherent, like the cynicism.
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Exactly.
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Cynicism is easier to play against, because you can convince them that their cards suck.
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Yeah, when somebody believes that they re a loser, or they re unlucky, right?
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And that bad things happen to them always, and they never catch a break, well, you know, you can just help them make it true.
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What do you think about the rounders Teddy KGB when he does the Oreo tell?
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Do players at the high level communicate that kind of stuff?
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Do you think it s realistic to be able to have a tell like this that s partially subconscious?
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So first of all, I love Brian Koppelman, who made the film.
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And I think what they were going for is something obvious to the general public, right?
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Like, okay, it s very clear, you know, he eats the cookie, he doesn t eat the cookie, and it means one or the other.
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At the highest levels, something that
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you know, blatant, you re not going to find, you re going to find a lot more subtle things, maybe with posture or, or timing or, you know, different things like that.
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But at the lower levels, you know, you know, you might see some, you might see, you know, with a lot of people when they re in a hand and they ve bet whether they drink water in the hand is going to tell you something, generally speaking.
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It s such an intimate part of the human experience that I feel like if you have food, you re going to reveal something about yourself through the way you eat.
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I feel like that s a dangerous thing to have at the table.
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Well, the thing is, generally speaking, people don t eat food in the middle of a hand.
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Like they re not going to bet and then just like grab a burger, right?
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What they will do, though...
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is, you know, they bet and it s up to you.
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And then they re whether they re, you know, uncomfortable or they do it unconsciously.
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They just want to do something to make themselves look relaxed or whatever.
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And, you know, they grab a water where they don t really need it in that moment, but they re trying to take your mind off of the situation.
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So they, in the movie, wanted to show a simplistic version of something that does happen, something that s visually sort of clear.
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Yeah, because I think one of the things Rounders got right is that it s a poker movie, right?
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But you don t have to be great at poker or really understand poker to enjoy the movie.
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And that, you know, Oreo cookie tale, like, everyone gets that.
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They re like, okay, that s simple.
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If he would have went with something more subtle, you know, like licking your lips or looking to the right, I think it might have been lost on the audience.
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And they didn t actually explicitly say that that was a tell, I don t think.
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They thought they did everything to let you know, right?
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With the music and slow motion and he s staring at it and he s like, aha.
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Yeah, but they didn t actually say, you know, this is an obvious tell.
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Like Matt Damon s character didn t talk.
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At the very end of it, you know, after he says, how the fuck did you lay that down?
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The monster, right?
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And he s like,
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He s like, you re not hungry?
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Not hungry, KGB?
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He s like, I can keep on, you know?
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So he sort of references it, and then he takes the cookies, he notices, he s like, ah, he got me, and he breaks the rack of cookies.
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Well, probably, if you had that kind of tell on him, you wouldn t, in Matt Damon s character, would not reveal.
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Well, he says in the movie.
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He says, normally, I wouldn t reveal a tell, but I don t have that much time.
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Like, I ve got to rattle him some way.
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So that was one way to do that.
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How hard is it to do that to, in a KGB accent, to lay down a monster in those situations?
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In general, how hard is it to lay down a really strong hand, just psychologically?
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Yeah, no, I mean, I think it s incredibly difficult for the vast majority of people.
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You know, part of what makes professionals really, really good is recognizing a situation
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That s very, very dangerous and they need to, you know, jump ship.
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Like what happens to a lot of players is you get married to a hand.
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Let s say you have pocket aces, which is the best possible hand, right?
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But the board runs out where it s seven, eight, nine, and then there s a Jack and then there s a six.
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It s like you have a great hand to start, but you don t anymore.
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So one of the difficult things for the average player is.
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you know, once they ve put money in, cutting their losses and saying, okay, let s move on to the next hand.
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It s very, very difficult thing for a lot of people.
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At every stage of like pre-flop, all the way through, be able to just make a decision at that moment.
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So yeah, essentially not being attached.
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Okay, I ve already put in $40,000 in this pot.
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and this guy s bet another 20.
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Well, I mean, I gotta get my 40 back, right?
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Except, you know, in some cases, you have to reassess individually this situation and realize, all right, well, this is a bad investment, so I gotta cut my losses.
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By the way, I should mention that you have an incredible YouTube channel where you explain a lot of stuff.
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You do a podcast, you do a lot of really awesome stuff.
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My probably favorite thing that you ve done is your MasterClass that people should definitely check out, masterclass.com slash Lux.
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Yeah, there you go.
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No, but it really is one of my favorite master class courses, but also just a great introduction overview of poker.
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It s great for people like me who are beginners, essentially.
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But it s probably really good for intermediate people, too.
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I mean, there s a lot of really good detail there.
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Anyway, what are hand ranges, and how do you begin to estimate the range of hands that your opponents have?
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So I actually, speaking to YouTube, I did a video on specifically this.
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I m familiar with Rangers.
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And essentially, you know, back in my day, the old days, we didn t talk about poker that way.
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We re like, I think he s got this, or I think he s got that, right?
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Nobody thought of like the range of hands a player can have.
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So I guess the best example is imagine like all the potential hands as being a part of a grid, right?
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So the first player to act, they could have any one of those hands.
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right?
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Anyone randomly dealt, right?
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But let s say now that that player raised to $3,000.
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Okay, well, you can eliminate now from this grid a whole bunch of hands that this player can no longer have because if they had a two and a three, they wouldn t do that.
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So you can say, okay, he probably has a big pair.
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He has ace-king.
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You ve narrowed the range of hands down, right?
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Now, through every action on the flop, on the turn, and on the river, based on the decisions they make, you narrow it down even further.
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So the range of hands is the entirety of all the possibilities that this player you believe could have.
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And sometimes they fool you, or they have a hand that you don t expect them to have in their range.
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And maybe a little bit unorthodox, doing some things you don t expect to throw you off.
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But a range is essentially all the possibilities.
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And it narrows.
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Before the flop, it s endless.
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Player raises, OK, it s minimized.
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Now player bets the flop, OK, it s minimized further.
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And then by the river, you can narrow down
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the entire range to, you know, just maybe even a few hands.
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Is it always shrinking or is there sort of, as you get surprised, I mean, it s always just an estimate.
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So does it ever expand based on sort of chaotic, unpredicted, surprising behavior of the players?
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It really should never expand.
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The range of hands should always get smaller, right?
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Like again, we start with the full scope and then you should factor in like, okay, these are all the possible hands you can have on the flop now, right?
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We can t have new hands on the turn.
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And if you get to that point where you think, oh, well maybe he has this hand, then you sort of misjudged his range prior.
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So you re not thinking clearly.
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It should always shrink from the full scope to, you know, hopefully just a couple.
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SPEAKER_00
Well, in that video you also talk about, it used to be that you would play your hand, but now you re playing a range, you re representing a range, you re not even just playing your hand.
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So, what does it mean to represent a certain range?
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Yeah, so that s another big thing that s different about poker from my day to today is that back in our day, we would put people on one hand.
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I m like, you probably have king nine or you have jacks or something like that.
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Now, people are cognizant of the idea that you could have an entire range of hands.
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Then you ask yourself in situations, all right, I know what I have but what I could have in his mind, right?
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or my opponent s mind is any one of these hands.
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What would I do with the entirety of these hands?
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And so a lot of people that are trying to play optimally, you know, game theory optimal, they think in terms of what their range of hands would do rather than their very specific hand.
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So is bluffing in that context essentially misrepresenting the range of hands that you have?
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Is that how you think about it?
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Not exactly, so an optimal range, like if I bet the river, if I m playing game theory optimal, a portion of my range is going to be, I have it, I got the best hand, and a portion of my range is gonna be bluffs, and they ll be balanced.
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So in theory, no matter what you do, no matter what you do, if you call or you fold, in theory,
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It s just you re printing a zero, as we say.
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You re not gaining or losing any EV if you were to do it that way.
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What s EV?
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EV is expected value, right?
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So every play that you make, it either is going to, in the long run, make you some money or it s just a losing play.
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And as a professional, you try to make the fewest amount of minus EV plays you can.
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And the only reason you would make these minus EV plays is potentially if you were trying to set up your opponent for something later.
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So I might make some minus EV plays so that I can exploit you later.
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So you re building up a player profile that s false in some way.
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I m going to plant seeds in your mind so that I can exploit them later.
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SPEAKER_00
So for example, why would players show a big bluff?
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What would be the reason for that?
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They show a big bluff so that you know they re capable of it.
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But maybe in their mind, they re never gonna do that again.
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But now they think, you know, he bluffed me last time, maybe he s doing it again.
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But that s what we call like a leveling war.
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because you can go back and forth with whether or not, okay, this guy might know that.
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He showed a bluff because he s never gonna bluff me again.
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So that s where it gets a little.
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SPEAKER_01
So that s a little bit different, when we re talking about hand ranges, that s different than building up a mental model of what your opponents think of you.
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and what your opponents think that you think of them, and so on and so forth, are you trying to construct those kinds of meta models?
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And is that separate from the hand ranges?
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They go hand in hand, right?
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So in a given situation, right, my range has this many value hands and this many bluffs, okay?
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So in theory, if I wanna be balanced, you know, this is my range and this is what it looks like.
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I ll bet this 50% of the time, bet this 50% of the time.
1
SPEAKER_00
However, if I know that you,
1
SPEAKER_00
think that I bluff too much, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Then I m not gonna bluff as much.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m gonna start, instead of betting these hands that I would 50-50, now what I ll do is I ll do like 70-30, where I m basically value betting most of the time against you.
1
SPEAKER_00
Or vice versa, if I know you always fold because you think I have it, I m gonna veer the other way.
1
SPEAKER_00
And instead of bluffing 50%, I ll bluff 70, 80% of the time to take advantage of your perception of me.
1
SPEAKER_01
So to be successful, do you have to construct a solid model of all the players in the game?
1
SPEAKER_01
Or can you ignore them?
1
SPEAKER_00
I think it s really important.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like when I play, I have in my phone, I have a player profile of everyone that I play with whenever I pick up, whether it s physical tells or tendencies they like to, you know, that they have.
1
SPEAKER_00
And overall, that s just gonna, you know, that s gonna allow you to exploit more, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
So like, if I played with somebody I ve never played before, I m probably just going to play optimally, or at least as optimal as I know how, until I start to, you know, gain some information on that player so that I can start to exploit them.
1
SPEAKER_01
So what s the, when you say optimally, what does optimally mean versus, so game theory, optimal versus exploitative.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
So that s like sort of the big debate in poker.
1
SPEAKER_00
We call it for short, GTO, Game Theory Optimal versus Exploitative Play.
1
SPEAKER_00
So GTO, Game Theory Optimal, is the idea that I m going to set up my play so that no matter what you do, you cannot exploit me.
1
SPEAKER_00
So essentially, that s playing rock, paper, scissors, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
And throwing 33% of each every time, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Nothing you do can beat that.
1
SPEAKER_00
Nothing.
1
SPEAKER_00
You ll never be able to beat that, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Exploitative play is starting to notice that, okay, well, you know what?
1
SPEAKER_00
This guy loves rock.
1
SPEAKER_00
He loves playing rock.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I m going to go paper a little more.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I m going to take advantage of him.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I won t be through.
1
SPEAKER_00
But now all of a sudden when I do that, I m no longer playing optimal.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because if you knew that I was making that adjustment, now you can exploit me.
1
SPEAKER_00
So that s where the sort of what we call the leveling war happens.
1
SPEAKER_00
where people veer from the optimal line of, okay, 33% each for each one, you can t beat that, but you also can t win with that either.
1
SPEAKER_01
So you re always trying to be at the cutting, at the leading edge of suboptimal play.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you re going back and forth.
1
SPEAKER_00
And listen, at the highest levels, like online, that these guys play, they re trying to play pretty close to game theory optimal.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because it s very difficult to do, first of all.
1
SPEAKER_00
No human being will ever be able to compute at the level that computers can.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s just never going to happen.
1
SPEAKER_00
So that s where the human mind has to come into play and say, all right, well, if I was playing against a robot, I would do X, but I m not.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m playing against you, so I have to adjust.
1
SPEAKER_01
So does Game Theory Optimal only look at the betting and the hands in the current hand, or does it look at the history?
1
SPEAKER_01
So if you were to play optimally, optimally, would you need to look at the history of the individual players, or just every hand is taken afresh?
1
SPEAKER_00
See, that s why I love playing exploitatively for the most part, because with GTO, anything that s happened in the past has no bearing on this situation.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s simply based on what is the optimal play in a vacuum in this spot.
1
SPEAKER_00
Whereas exploitatively, okay, this guy bluffs way too much in these spots.
1
SPEAKER_00
So now I can make an adjustment and call more, you know, based on past information.
1
SPEAKER_00
GTO doesn t take into account history at all.
1
SPEAKER_01
So like in a tournament, how quickly can you construct a player profile that you ve never played before?
1
SPEAKER_00
Depends on the level of the buy-in really, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
So the higher the buy-in, generally speaking, you can assume if they re professionals, that they re going to have pretty similar profiles because, you know, everyone s playing, you know, if you re playing this game well, it looks similar, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
At the lower levels, you know, playing say in 1000 or $1,500 buy-in or less, you know, within a
1
SPEAKER_00
half an hour or an hour.
1
SPEAKER_00
I have an idea of, all right, just by seeing how some players played a few hands that, you know, so here s the thing with poker, it s like I can see one clue of what he did and it tells me so much about what he ll do in a vast number of scenarios.
1
SPEAKER_01
And you re saying at the high level, people don t give too many clues.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean- Well, at the highest level, people are so much more similar in terms of their style of play.
1
SPEAKER_01
They try to find some kind of balance between the GTO and the- And now with all that we ve seen on TV, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Like people get to watch streams and whatever.
1
SPEAKER_00
So you get to watch all the top players play.
1
SPEAKER_00
So if you wanna learn how to play better, guess what you do?
1
SPEAKER_00
You copy what they re doing, essentially.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, oh, he s only raising this much.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m gonna do the same.
1
SPEAKER_00
They re betting this much.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m gonna do the same.
1
SPEAKER_00
But as a result, what you end up having is sort of, you know, everyone deciding, like, I guess it s similar in chess with openings, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
People figure out, okay, this is an opening, this is what you do.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that s it, you know, and then everyone s similar to that.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then you have, of course, the outliers who try to do things a little differently and confuse people.
1
SPEAKER_01
It seems like the outliers, like we talked offline, that Magnus, in order to win, Magnus Carlsen, has to play suboptimally in the openings to take his opponents out of the comfort zone so he can play what he calls pure chess as quickly as possible, which is just both short and deep calculations, purely you re looking at the board versus memorized openings and memorized lines.
1
SPEAKER_01
Is it the case that
1
SPEAKER_01
The best poker players are the ones that are able to, at the right time, play really suboptimally or really unorthodox.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Specifically, there s one guy who last year sort of took the poker world by storm, and his name is Michael Adamo.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he was doing things, like I said, you know, most of the top pros play very similarly with the way that they, you know, construct ranges and their bet sizing and all these kind of things.
1
SPEAKER_00
He was doing some crazy things that nobody else was doing.
1
SPEAKER_00
So he studied sort of a different form of poker, and it was unorthodox, and it throws people off, because he s in his comfort zone with these bet sizes and different things, whereas everyone else, they re not well studied in those spots.
1
SPEAKER_00
So as a result of him being unorthodox, he became like a monster and very difficult to play against, because he really knew what he was doing with it.
1
SPEAKER_01
And tournament or cash games?
1
SPEAKER_00
It was tournaments, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
He was crushing tournaments.
1
SPEAKER_00
He was going against the norm in terms of what is like, you know, this is what you should do as a poker player in this spot.
1
SPEAKER_00
He wasn t doing that.
1
SPEAKER_00
He was doing what he thought was best and he was doing things outside the norm that, again, in a vacuum, you could look at that and you go, that s incorrect.
1
SPEAKER_00
That he should not do.
1
SPEAKER_00
That is a clear cut mistake.
1
SPEAKER_00
Even, you know, the solvers or the computers or game theory would say, this is wrong, what he s doing.
1
SPEAKER_00
But it s not wrong if he s doing it in a way that he s exploiting other players  tendencies.
1
SPEAKER_00
So for example, with him, say he s playing far too aggressively, okay?
1
SPEAKER_00
That s not good unless your opponents are playing way too passively.
1
SPEAKER_00
So if your opponents are playing passively, the answer is to be more aggressive with them.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that s, I think, one of the biggest advantages he had was he was willing to do that.
1
SPEAKER_01
So big pots, bluffing.
1
SPEAKER_01
Huge.
1
SPEAKER_00
So in a spot where somebody would make it a thousand, he s making it 22,000.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like what?
1
SPEAKER_00
What is this?
1
SPEAKER_00
This makes no sense.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then people kind of know he has nothing, but they re too afraid to call him on it.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, and then sometimes what happens is this is where the leveling comes in.
1
SPEAKER_00
You re like, man, this guy s crazy.
1
SPEAKER_00
He s bluffing like nuts.
1
SPEAKER_00
Then he bets the 22,000 and you say, ah, I m taking my stand.
1
SPEAKER_00
I call.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then he shows you like, you know, four of a kind or something like that.
1
SPEAKER_00
So he gets people out of their comfort zone.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I really enjoy watching him play.
1
SPEAKER_00
He s probably my favorite player to watch today.
1
SPEAKER_01
Watching a guy like that, what aspect of his play have you been able to incorporate into your own?
1
SPEAKER_01
Like, what do you learn from that?
1
SPEAKER_01
Because you re constantly learning, you re constantly adjusting.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, no, and I love it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And as I said, so I think a lot of players sort of come to the same conclusions about this is how you play the spot, but he doesn t.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I love watching and thinking in terms of like why he s doing this.
1
SPEAKER_00
And one specific thing, for example, is
1
SPEAKER_00
he s willing to really go for it.
1
SPEAKER_00
So in a spot where let s say he bets 2,000, he knows he ll get you to call 2,000, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
But he wants it all.
1
SPEAKER_00
He wants it all.
1
SPEAKER_00
So he says, you know what?
1
SPEAKER_00
I ll give up the 2,000, that s guaranteed, and I ll bet 50,000.
1
SPEAKER_00
And maybe if you call that, now, you know, so listen, you lose the 2,000 seven, eight times, but if I get called for the 50 just once, you know, I m profiting from that.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it also sets the,
1
SPEAKER_00
the template for you to really sort of be a player that people are afraid to play against.
1
SPEAKER_00
He knocked me out in a tournament very early on in a huge event, and he was so far ahead.
1
SPEAKER_00
He was one step ahead of my thought process in hand, and he did something that makes no sense whatsoever.
1
SPEAKER_00
I looked it up on the computer.
1
SPEAKER_00
Huge mistake, if you will, but not a mistake because he was taking advantage of my tendency.
1
SPEAKER_01
Do you remember the cars?
1
SPEAKER_01
Is there an example?
1
SPEAKER_00
I remember the whole thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
I remember it like it was yesterday.
1
SPEAKER_01
Can you take it like through an example hand that really demonstrates it?
1
SPEAKER_00
So I ll explain the hand here So I I m on the button and I have ace King just a very good hand and I raise and he calls from the big blind The flop is nine seven five.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I have nothing really here.
1
SPEAKER_00
He checks.
1
SPEAKER_00
I check behind the turn cards an ace and
1
SPEAKER_00
He checks.
1
SPEAKER_00
I bet half the pot.
1
SPEAKER_00
There were 6,000 in there.
1
SPEAKER_00
I bet 3,000.
1
SPEAKER_00
Now this is not a typical thing you see people do but he raised me to 36,000.
1
SPEAKER_00
Massive raise.
1
SPEAKER_00
Bigger than the size of the pot.
1
SPEAKER_00
What was the flop again?
1
975.
1
SPEAKER_00
Turn an ace.
1
SPEAKER_01
What is he representing exactly?
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, he could have a straight.
1
SPEAKER_00
He could have three of a kind.
1
SPEAKER_00
He could have aces up.
1
SPEAKER_00
He could have a whole bunch of hands.
1
SPEAKER_00
So he check raises me big to 36,000.
1
SPEAKER_00
I call the bet.
1
SPEAKER_00
So now there s something like 75,000.
1
SPEAKER_00
The river is a five.
1
SPEAKER_00
So the board pairs.
1
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_00
He thinks for a while and he bets all of it, which is three times the pot.
1
SPEAKER_00
He bets $225,000.
1
SPEAKER_00
There s only $75,000 now, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
And in theory, he should never, ever have a hand that can do that, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
So it confused me and I was like, okay, well, this guy is aggressive.
1
SPEAKER_00
He likes to bluff and all this kind of stuff.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I made the call with the ace-king and he turned over 6-8.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we had a straight.
1
SPEAKER_00
But here s the thing, in theory, that river card is bad for him.
1
SPEAKER_00
When I call the turn, I have, a lot of the time, three of a kind, two pair that just made a full house.
1
SPEAKER_00
So he was risking that.
1
SPEAKER_00
And the reason he did it was because he thought I would perceive him to be bluffing a lot.
1
SPEAKER_00
So he just went for it, and it worked.
1
SPEAKER_00
He was able to double up right away and knock me out of the tournament like an hour in.
1
SPEAKER_01
Do you think he thought you might fold?
1
SPEAKER_00
I think it came down to this, it s as simple as this.
1
SPEAKER_00
he was cognizant of his image as being a wild aggressive luffer, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
And he was fully taking advantage of me knowing that my tendency in these spots is to be curious and I want to call and I want to see it.
1
SPEAKER_00
So he was fully taking advantage of the fact that he thought I would call too often because otherwise, his play makes no sense.
1
SPEAKER_00
A small bet, a medium-sized bet, those make sense.
1
SPEAKER_00
But the bet that he made
1
SPEAKER_00
in theory is indefensible.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s just like clearly a mistake.
1
SPEAKER_00
But that s why poker is so fascinating because he makes this play and it wasn t a mistake.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was above the rim is what it was.
1
SPEAKER_01
Do you think he put you on ace something?
1
SPEAKER_00
I think exactly what he thought I had.
1
SPEAKER_00
Was ace king or something like that.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh, that is so fun.
1
SPEAKER_01
That is so fun that the two players at such a high level were able to mess with each other s mind.
1
SPEAKER_01
How old is he?
1
SPEAKER_01
Is he young?
1
SPEAKER_00
He s in his 20s, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
I feel like that takes a lot of guts to take risks like that.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, that s what s great about him.
1
SPEAKER_00
He s certainly never accused of not having the guts to put it in.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that s scary to play against, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
The easiest opponent to play against is one who s just straightforward, passive, you know, not wild and crazy.
1
SPEAKER_00
Playing against him, he s gonna put you in the blender, as we say.
1
SPEAKER_01
How can you control what you re perceived as representing?
1
SPEAKER_01
What hand you re perceived of as representing?
1
SPEAKER_01
So if the game of modern poker is others are representing certain hands through the information they convey, and you re representing a certain hand range, sorry, through your play, how can you control that?
1
SPEAKER_01
Or is that not, is that the wrong way to think about it?
1
SPEAKER_01
bluffing and bet sizing and all of that kind of stuff, essentially controlling what others perceive as the hand range you have?
1
SPEAKER_00
Ultimately, in terms of like controlling people s perception of you, you can t fully control it, but you can do things to sway it, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
As I said earlier, showing bluffs and things like that, you know, leads your opponent to think maybe you do this more often than you re supposed to or whatever the case may be.
1
SPEAKER_00
But in terms of like controlling, you know,
1
SPEAKER_00
what your opponent can think about your hands in certain spots.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t really think it equates that way.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think what people do when they re playing a hand is they think in terms of, all right, what does my range look like here?
1
SPEAKER_00
So my range has value.
1
SPEAKER_00
So you look at the actual hand you have secondarily.
1
SPEAKER_00
So you say, OK, well, I could have this.
1
SPEAKER_00
I could have this.
1
SPEAKER_00
I actually have this.
1
SPEAKER_00
But I could have all these hands.
1
SPEAKER_00
So my opponent, if he s thinking on a high level, he knows I could have all these hands.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I have this one.
1
SPEAKER_00
So what do I do with this one in the bigger scope of things?
1
SPEAKER_01
I guess I m trying to understand, if your betting isn t a bet, pre-flop, your bet, doesn t that narrow the hand ranges?
1
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t matter what you have, it narrows the... Absolutely.
1
SPEAKER_01
And if you bet big...
1
SPEAKER_01
combined with the perception of you at the table, doesn t that represent a hand range?
1
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
1
SPEAKER_01
So like you can, with betting essentially control what people estimate you to have.
1
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
1
SPEAKER_00
So that makes it, so yeah, so that s true.
1
SPEAKER_00
So for example, one of the most extreme examples is we have, there s spots where there s a bet that s considered polarizing, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
So,
1
SPEAKER_00
Let s say there s a thousand in the pot and you bet 10,000, which is crazy big, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
That s saying one of two things.
1
SPEAKER_00
I either have the absolute best possible hand or absolutely nothing.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because any of the hands in the middle, I wouldn t do that with.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I m essentially telling you when I bet that, I m like, I either got it or, you know, I got, I don t have a mediocre hand, like just a pair of nines or a pair of tens.
1
SPEAKER_00
I have a royal flush or have nine high.
1
SPEAKER_00
So with my bet sizing, I can control how my opponent is perceiving what my range is going to be.
1
SPEAKER_00
So for example, you know, similarly, if I bet small, right, well, that could be a lot of hands, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
That could represent a big part of my range.
1
SPEAKER_01
The bigger the bet, the narrower the range.
1
SPEAKER_00
The more polarized it is.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
How far could you get without looking at your cards, do you think?
1
SPEAKER_01
How well could you do?
1
SPEAKER_00
It depends on who I m playing with, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
So if I was playing in a tournament with mediocre or weak players, I think I could probably do pretty well.
1
SPEAKER_01
But even like world class?
1
SPEAKER_00
World class, I don t think you d have much of a chance, really.
1
SPEAKER_01
The question is trying to get at how important is it the actual hands you have versus the hands you re representing.
1
SPEAKER_00
Right.
1
SPEAKER_00
So that s the question of essentially, if you re not looking at your hand preflop, you re basically giving up a fundamental advantage, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Where you re going to be playing way suboptimally in terms of your hand
2
SPEAKER_00
selection, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Because if you don t look at your hand, you might have a 2 and a 3.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s not good but now you re playing it.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you ve invested whatever, 2,000, 3,000 bucks with absolute garbage and it s very difficult to climb that hill, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
So it s much better to actually look at your cards and go, okay, I ll throw in the 2 and 3 and I ll play the Ace King.
2
SPEAKER_01
Speaking of garbage, you ve said that 10-7 is your favorite poker hand to play.
2
SPEAKER_01
Is that still the case and what aspect of it is that you enjoy?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so it s one of those viewer discretion is advised, like 10-7.
2
SPEAKER_00
I ve just noticed throughout my life, you know, it s a tendency thing that I ve been lucky with it.
2
SPEAKER_00
So that s just sort of, but it s not like I m going to look at 10-7 and go, Oh wow, you know, I m going to call an all in or anything like that.
2
SPEAKER_00
I ll play it in situations where it makes sense, but you know, it s rare because it s not a very good hand.
2
SPEAKER_01
But is there.
2
SPEAKER_01
some aspect of belief in the magic of this hand manifests quality of play?
2
SPEAKER_00
Or is that a little woo-woo?
2
SPEAKER_00
So here s the thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
Poker players, some have said it s unlucky to be superstitious, but we re all a little bit superstitious.
2
SPEAKER_00
a little bit, you know?
2
SPEAKER_00
And so, I don t know, maybe it is a case where when I have 10-7, I feel somehow energetically that, you know, I m more likely to catch something, which may actually make me more apt to be aggressive and confident in the hand.
2
SPEAKER_00
But you really shouldn t let yourself do that.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like, you re not supposed to fall in love with any specific hands.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but uncertainty is ruthless.
2
SPEAKER_01
The fact that it s a game of statistics, it can be too painful for the human psychology, so maybe you have to hold on to certain superstitions.
2
SPEAKER_01
Because, you know, I mean, there s a cold absurdity to the fact that you can play extremely well and still lose.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, actually, this year, you ve played the, what is it, 50 days of World Series of Poker, and it seems like, at least from the perspective of me looking at it through the internet, it seems like there s a lot of hands that you were like 70, 30, 80, 20,
2
SPEAKER_01
all in hands that you just did not, were not going your way.
2
SPEAKER_01
That can sort of break you mentally.
2
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
One of the hardest things, especially about playing, because the cash games and tournaments are different.
2
SPEAKER_00
One of the most difficult things about, you know, being a tournament player is resilience because more often than not, like, so if there s a tournament with thousand people,
2
SPEAKER_00
to win the tournament, you have to get all of the chips.
2
SPEAKER_00
That means there s one winner and 999 losers.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it s very rare that you actually like win all the chips.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you re essentially at some point in every tournament you play, gonna deal with like really bad luck and disappointment.
2
SPEAKER_00
And sometimes those streaks can have you question yourself and be introspective about, okay, so I think I m 47 now.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think I ve gotten better as time went on between distinguishing, okay, am I losing right now because of bad luck?
2
SPEAKER_00
or is it fundamentally decisions I m making are not very good, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s one of the hardest things for anyone who plays poker to get to, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Why am I losing?
2
SPEAKER_00
Am I losing because of my opponents being better, I m not playing well, or am I losing just because of luck?
2
SPEAKER_00
And because there s so much variance in poker, a lot of players can be confused on both sides of the coin.
2
SPEAKER_00
One guy s winning and he thinks he s great, he s really not.
2
SPEAKER_00
Wait till the cards break even, as we say.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think there s a lot of parallels to life as well.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you get screwed over and over, it s hard to know if you re doing something wrong or if it s just bad luck.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think they did a study, I remember there was like a study, it was supposed to be related to gambling, but it was mice and they put them in a little maze and they d go down these three tubes and they d go down this one tube and there d be cheese, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
And then they d go down again, cheese.
2
SPEAKER_00
Three times in a row, there was cheese there, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
The next time, there was an electric shock there, not cheese.
2
SPEAKER_00
The mouse went to get zapped, he got zapped.
2
SPEAKER_00
Came back, he kept going back to get zapped until he died.
2
SPEAKER_00
He kept going because he found cheese there.
2
SPEAKER_00
He has won there.
2
SPEAKER_00
So he continued to go chase that win despite it being now all of a sudden not worthwhile till he died.
2
SPEAKER_00
And essentially what they said was that is essentially how they compared it to the gambling brain and how people think about gambling.
2
SPEAKER_01
You re chasing the winds.
2
SPEAKER_01
You learn too much.
2
SPEAKER_01
You sort of overgeneralize the lessons learned from the times you ve won.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, like beginner s luck can be detrimental.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you have some early luck and you believe that this is just the way it s supposed to be forever, you know, it can put you in a delusional state.
2
SPEAKER_00
where you feel like, I m just great.
2
SPEAKER_00
But no, you re not.
2
SPEAKER_00
You were just lucky in the beginning.
2
SPEAKER_01
I actually played poker once in Vegas.
2
SPEAKER_01
It wasn t a tournament, but it was a kind of tournament-like style.
2
SPEAKER_01
I already forgot what it was.
2
SPEAKER_01
But what I do remember is I had four of a kind.
2
SPEAKER_01
So the last hand I ve ever played
2
SPEAKER_01
in poker was I got a four of a kind, and there was a couple of others with really strong hands, so everybody went all in, and I think you get some kind of bonus for getting four of a kind.
2
SPEAKER_00
Bad beat jackpot you were playing in.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so something like this.
2
SPEAKER_01
I apologize if I don t know the details, but I just remember winning a lot of money, and I walked away from the table.
2
SPEAKER_01
I said, I m not playing poker again.
2
SPEAKER_01
This is great.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m gonna hit it up top, because I started to feel like this is your, I started to think, even though I haven t really played poker at all, that I m good, and that was a really dangerous feeling.
2
SPEAKER_01
And everybody was really mad for walking away from the table.
2
SPEAKER_00
One of the other things that I think is interesting about poker too is good is relative, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
So you could be the seventh best player in the whole world, like literally seventh best player.
2
SPEAKER_00
But if you re playing with the other six, you re the sucker.
2
SPEAKER_00
You are the worst player in the game, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
So there s a lot of players who
2
SPEAKER_00
For example, like the Dan Blazerians of the world, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
He s not a top level player like, you know, these guys you see on TV but he probably makes more money than they do because he plays with people that are far below his skill level.
2
SPEAKER_00
So part of the skill of being a poker player is finding situations where you re profitable, you know, regardless of your skill level.
2
SPEAKER_01
Another connection to life.
2
SPEAKER_01
Do you think Dan Belzerian is telling the truth about having made, what is it, $50, $100 million, just a huge amount of money playing poker?
2
SPEAKER_00
Considering what I know about the private games and the types of players who play in these private games and the stakes that they play, I absolutely believe Dan has made, I don t know how many millions, whether it s 50, whatever, but it wouldn t surprise me.
2
SPEAKER_00
that if you play in these games within a year or, you know, you find the right businessman who has way too much Bitcoin money, you know, and, you know, in one night you take him for 20 million.
2
SPEAKER_00
I absolutely could see it.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t see any reason why.
2
SPEAKER_00
Listen, where he got his money initially, you know, that s up to interpretation from his father or whatever, but what, but has he made a bunch of money playing poker?
2
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely.
2
SPEAKER_00
No question.
2
SPEAKER_01
Do you feel like as somebody who loves the game, do you think there s something almost ethically wrong in playing people much worse than you?
2
SPEAKER_00
So yeah, that s a good question because part of the reason I played poker and wanted to become professional was I wanted to make my mother proud, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
And I don t think she would be proud of me taking Grandma Betty s last $5 down the street, sending her broke and taking her pension check.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I play at the highest stakes against people who can afford it.
2
SPEAKER_00
They know who I am.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m not a hustler.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m not pretending I m bad at poker to squeeze in.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was thinking about this just yesterday because I played in a game that
2
SPEAKER_00
if I played that sort of role where a lot of guys do pros that sort of play down their skill level, pretend they re just one of the guys, these guys can make 20, $30 million in a year.
2
SPEAKER_00
Legitimately, like I believe that like, if I did that, if I said, you know what, I m gonna go down that path, get into these games in LA, you know, and travel and do all this kind of stuff, I can make 20 million a year, but it feels a little greasy, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t like to kiss anyone s ass.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t like to ask it for anyone for a favor or things like that.
2
SPEAKER_00
So, but, but yeah, like,
2
SPEAKER_00
I feel, listen, a rich guy who wants to sit down with a million bucks and get drunk and lose it, I have no empathy for that.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m like, I don t have any moral qualms with that.
2
SPEAKER_01
So if Grandma Betty is a billionaire.
2
SPEAKER_00
Take him and send it, send it, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, absolutely, why not?
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, let me ask you about a tough period of your recent life.
2
SPEAKER_01
You had a rough, like we mentioned, World Series of Poker, losing $1.1 million over 48 days.
2
SPEAKER_01
What were you going through mentally during that?
2
SPEAKER_00
So here s the thing, you know, I do, like you said, I do a YouTube vlog every day.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I kind of share my thoughts and listen, I can edit that thing and keep out the bad stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I think it s more authentic and genuine to show people the actual struggles and the pain that I go through, you know, without it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I d say the one thing I m most proud of throughout the entire thing is the resilience, because there are moments you see me where I m broken.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m just like, I can t take it.
2
SPEAKER_00
I broke a selfie stick this year.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like I was filming it because, you know, I do for my vlog, I smash the stick through it in the corner.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right.
2
SPEAKER_00
Just that was my like,
2
SPEAKER_00
hit rock bottom moment and then I put the camera on me and I was like all right I let people see it but mentally it was very difficult because there was a feeling of hopelessness where
2
SPEAKER_00
I was making good decisions.
2
SPEAKER_00
I genuinely felt like I m playing really, really well.
2
SPEAKER_00
But every time my money went in, my opponent s money went in, and say I was 60%, 70%, 80% for about a two-week stretch, I lost every one of those.
2
SPEAKER_00
And you start to wonder, you re like, man, I can t win if I never win in these spots.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it was difficult.
2
SPEAKER_00
Luckily, I have 20-odd years of experience in how to deal with it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so, as I said, I wake up the next day ready to go.
2
SPEAKER_00
So as if nothing happened.
2
SPEAKER_00
To a certain degree, obviously, you know, the more it happens in the higher buy-ins, like the one where I broke the selfie stick, I lost 500,000 in that tournament, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
And it was like the last card, it was painful.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think you lost.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that was great, that video.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think he lost 53.
2
SPEAKER_01
What led up to the selfie stick gate?
2
SPEAKER_01
Like what, you just lost your shit for a like a hundred milliseconds.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like it was very brief.
2
SPEAKER_01
You re just like what the world wasn t making any sense.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like how am I, do I keep losing kind of thing?
2
SPEAKER_01
How did you, why did you lose your shit?
2
SPEAKER_00
You should never really think like this, but part of me felt like I deserve to win this hand, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
So part of me was like, listen, I ve lost so many in the last two weeks.
2
SPEAKER_00
All right, let the poker gods be kind to me right now and let me win this.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it looked good.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was in a great situation on the flop, great situation on the turn.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m about to be a competitor.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m going to be a contender in this tournament to win a big prize pool and turn the whole thing around.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s all there for the taking.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then boom, the last card, it just
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, it was a couple of weeks of frustration in the moment of filming that I just had, you know, sort of a visceral reaction, you know, and I smacked the selfie stick.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then, like, I see a corner.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s safe.
2
SPEAKER_00
I threw the selfie stick on the ground.
2
SPEAKER_00
And, of course, social media blows up about how, you know, it was a violent act.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s like, have you never watched sports?
2
SPEAKER_00
Have you never seen a guy on the golf course smack his club or throw their helmet?
2
SPEAKER_00
There s a guy, Justin Bonomo, who s a poker player, and he s super, for lack of a better word, offended by everything.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he was equating my throwing a stick on the ground to violence against women, domestic abuse, and the idea that this makes women feel unsafe to play poker.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so that was kind of a running joke for the last two weeks, where every time I sat at a table, the guys would be like,
2
SPEAKER_00
I feel unsafe.
2
SPEAKER_00
I feel unsafe.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Can you take me through the hand?
2
SPEAKER_01
Do you remember what the hand was?
2
SPEAKER_01
Like what was the – Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it was a player on the button raised.
2
SPEAKER_00
David Peters, very aggressive player.
2
SPEAKER_00
He went all in from the blind and I had a pair of pocket 10s.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I went with my 10s and he had queen 10 of spades.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I was good.
2
SPEAKER_00
I have way the best hand.
2
SPEAKER_00
The flop was like king 9-3, one spade.
2
SPEAKER_00
Turn was like the eight of spades, so now he has a flush draw, and the river was another spade.
2
SPEAKER_00
So he caught spade, spade, and he made a flush.
2
SPEAKER_01
Wow, but statistically, you were winning the whole time.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I was winning up until the last card.
2
SPEAKER_01
What did he go all in on?
2
SPEAKER_01
Was it a bluff?
2
SPEAKER_00
He made what s considered like a pretty standard play in modern poker where, you know, a guy raised and he was just trying to pick up, you know, what was there.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he ran into a hand in the big blind and, you know, he got lucky.
2
SPEAKER_01
So what was the throughout the strategy of preparation, the strategy of play?
2
SPEAKER_01
So you re playing so many days.
2
SPEAKER_01
Are you trying to ignore the results and stick to a particular strategy?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes, for the most part, you know, what I m trying to do is like, if I formulate a strategy for the whole seven weeks, because there s a very, there s a varying degree of buy-ins to like, you have small ones like 1500, then you got like $250,000 buy-in.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I map out
2
SPEAKER_00
the seven weeks and write, I ll give a little bit of mental energy to the 1500, which means I ll be on my phone.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m not gonna, I don t care as much about this one, but the 250K fully engaged, fully focused, you know, up against obviously the higher, the buying, you know, super top competition.
2
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, as far as strategy goes, focusing on each day, playing the best I can, not the result.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like, cause if you focus on the result, you re, you re focusing in the wrong place.
2
SPEAKER_00
Your focus should be on the decisions you actually make.
2
SPEAKER_00
And if you re making good decisions consistently, you have to continue to do that.
2
SPEAKER_00
The frustrating part is this, with poker, unlike chess or other things, making the best possible decision doesn t mean you win.
2
SPEAKER_00
Often you lose, you don t in chess.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, Magnus Carlsen has also talked about that there s some,
2
SPEAKER_01
non-deterministic thing about chess, too, given the limited cognitive capacity of the human mind.
2
SPEAKER_01
So he says that the World Championship should have 20, 30, 40, 50 games, not the few that they have.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s too low of a sample.
2
SPEAKER_01
So in that sense, the high stakes poker tournaments are too low sample.
2
SPEAKER_00
Sure, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, when you think of the World Series of Poker, so as you said, I lost about 1 million, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
In one tournament, that was 500,000.
2
SPEAKER_00
So then, you know, like a few others here of high buying tournaments.
2
SPEAKER_00
So the sample or the amount was, you know, 40, 50 total tournaments with, you know, high variance.
2
SPEAKER_00
And if you don t run well or do well in the highest buy-ins, you know, you re going to have a losing summer.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you did a podcast on the mental game a few years ago, and that s just something you really care about.
2
SPEAKER_01
So what aspects of the mental game in poker is most difficult to master?
2
SPEAKER_00
I think the most difficult thing for people is self-awareness, right, and resilience.
2
SPEAKER_00
Self-awareness to know, okay, so, you know, again, is it, am I not doing as well as I could be because of luck, or is there things that I can learn?
2
SPEAKER_00
And I always look to mistakes as opportunities, I really do.
2
SPEAKER_00
When I make a mistake in a poker hand, right, call it a breakdown or whatever,
2
SPEAKER_00
That s where breakthroughs happen.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m like, oh, you know what I could have done here?
2
SPEAKER_00
I could have done this and that would have been really good and I m going to do that going forward.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I think like with anything, you know, when you start out playing golf, like your goal is to just hit the ball, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Then you try to hit it in the air.
2
SPEAKER_00
Then you re trying to hit it straight.
2
SPEAKER_00
Then you re trying to hit it on the green.
2
SPEAKER_00
Then you re trying to hit it closer to the green to the point where the pros get where, you know, they re so finite.
2
SPEAKER_00
They re trying to hit it 63 yards and spin it back three yards.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s imperfect.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like they don t hit the perfect shot because the perfect shot for them is it goes in, but they try and make the mistakes smaller and smaller and smaller.
2
SPEAKER_00
Poker is the same.
2
SPEAKER_00
We all make mistakes consistently.
2
SPEAKER_00
The goal is to minimize, especially the big ones.
2
SPEAKER_01
What was the lowest point for you psychologically?
2
SPEAKER_01
In poker in general, actually.
2
SPEAKER_01
Maybe it was this year, maybe it was in general.
2
SPEAKER_01
Do you remember there was times in your life, speaking of resilience, that were extremely difficult to you mentally?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so early on, as basically as a teenager, I was playing Toronto, and then in my early 20s, I m like, I m going to Vegas, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
And I thought I was the best.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m like 21 years old, I m like, check me out, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Show up with $3,000, 24 hours later, money s gone.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I remember the moment vividly.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was at the Binion s Horseshoe, it was about three in the morning.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was playing with seven other people.
2
SPEAKER_00
I lost my last chips.
2
SPEAKER_00
I went to the bathroom, washed up,
2
SPEAKER_00
got out, they all left.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it was like a moment where I realized like, okay, in Toronto, I was the big fish.
2
SPEAKER_00
But here, they were playing because of me.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was the sucker.
2
SPEAKER_00
I remembered every one of their faces.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then I remember not having enough money to get back to budget suites where I was staying.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I walked.
2
SPEAKER_00
I didn t, you know, I walked.
2
SPEAKER_00
And in that moment, I was thinking about like, is this something that I ll be able to do?
2
SPEAKER_00
Am I good enough?
2
SPEAKER_00
you know, what am I gonna do now?
2
SPEAKER_00
I m in Vegas, I don t know anybody and I have no money, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
So that was certainly like what felt like a low point walking back behind Paradise and Twain, which is not a great part of town.
2
SPEAKER_01
Where did you find the strength to answer yes to that question that you can still do good?
2
SPEAKER_00
I think this has been sort of a pattern in my life where in the evening after it happens, I don t have it.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t have that feeling of hope or resilience, if you will.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m allowing myself to experience despair, which is exactly where I m at.
2
SPEAKER_00
But then a good night s sleep, wake up the next morning, and just within me, I have that inner confidence to say, you know what?
2
SPEAKER_00
Fuck it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Get back on the hobby horse.
3
SPEAKER_01
Find a way, make it work, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
But I do believe it s really therapeutic and worthwhile to allow yourself to feel and vent.
3
SPEAKER_01
So many people today, the Instagram culture world, I call it, it s like, they wanna act like they re perfect.
3
SPEAKER_01
Nothing bothers them.
3
SPEAKER_01
Bullshit, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
You re pissed off, it s okay to show it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Emotion s fine, we all have it.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s no reason you have to suppress it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Obviously, you don t wanna have guys throwing selfie sticks around the room every time they lose a pot, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
You re gonna make everybody feel unsafe.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, exactly.
3
SPEAKER_00
If that happens.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you re saying, there is a culture of saying, stay positive, all this kind of stuff, but when you feel despair, don t resist it, ride it out.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because it doesn t go away, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
That feeling, you think you put it away in the pit of your stomach and you think it s gone.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s not, it s still there.
3
SPEAKER_01
Let yourself go, fuck!
3
SPEAKER_01
It s all right.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s nothing wrong with being a little bit emotional because once you ve experienced it, you let it out,
3
SPEAKER_01
now you can move past it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and I feel like as long as your brain chemistry can support it, you can usually learn a good lesson from it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like you become stronger, you become more resilient through it.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s really interesting.
3
SPEAKER_00
And a good night s sleep can really help.
3
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
So through 2022,
3
SPEAKER_00
and in general, what is a perfect day in the life of Daniel Negrano look like when you re, like on a day when you have to play a big game, big tournament game and so on?
3
SPEAKER_00
So like, what time do you wake up?
3
SPEAKER_00
What do you eat for breakfast?
3
SPEAKER_01
So my life is twofold.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like one when I m playing hardcore and one when I m not.
3
SPEAKER_01
and they look very different, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So I ll give you a quick glimpse of when I m not, up at 10, breakfast, in the gym at noon, post-workout, meal, coffee, walk.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s what I do for cardio.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m just very home-bodied.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t leave the house.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s very boring and mundane, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Long-distance walk, so what do you do when you re walking?
3
SPEAKER_00
You re thinking about stuff?
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, no, honestly, I just walk on the treadmill.
3
SPEAKER_01
I try to get 15,000 steps a day, and I just walk for basically like an hour while I watch a show or I m on the computer or something like that, you know, I m on the treadmill.
3
SPEAKER_00
Why walking, not running?
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, I mean, I think walking, I mean, I do a little bit of running, but hardly any.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t enjoy it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, I just like walking.
3
SPEAKER_01
And frankly, for fat loss, when it s usually what I m doing after big poker tournaments, is getting back in shape, that walking s ideal for it, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So essentially, it s like the tale of two, during the World Series of Poker,
3
SPEAKER_01
all my sort of structured life thrown out the window.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s no walking.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s very little walking, there s very little working out, there s very little anything.
3
SPEAKER_01
I go into the World Series, you know, like this year I went in around 157, and I expected to gain about 10 pounds during the World Series.
3
SPEAKER_01
Not good pounds, wasn t muscle, but that s about what I did, 165.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then I spend the next month trying to, you know, lose it.
3
SPEAKER_01
But during the World Series, when I m playing, the most important thing, without question, that I have to focus on, and this is why I stopped focusing on working out and all this stuff, is sleep.
3
SPEAKER_01
If I m not rested, I m useless.
3
SPEAKER_01
If I only get five, six hours and I have to go back the next day and play 14 hours, the chances of me being at my best, very, very slim.
3
SPEAKER_01
So sleep is a priority.
3
SPEAKER_00
What s the perfect amount of sleep for you on those days?
3
SPEAKER_00
Eight, seven?
3
SPEAKER_01
So eight hours is my go-to every night.
3
SPEAKER_01
During the World Series of Poker, it s just not possible.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because of the way that it s structured, sometimes the tournaments end at 2.15 a.m.
3
SPEAKER_01
I get home,
3
SPEAKER_01
about three o clock, takes me 30 minutes, 40 minutes to get to sleep.
3
SPEAKER_01
So now let s say I m in bed by four.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, the tournament s at, you know, two, so I have to get up and whatever.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it s very difficult to get exactly eight a lot of the time, you know, and also get back there in time.
3
SPEAKER_00
Is there any hacks to quiet the mind?
3
SPEAKER_00
Because you re going on a pretty intense rollercoaster mentally when you re playing.
3
SPEAKER_00
Is there any tricks to getting to sleep given the- I ve been very lucky.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like I m blessed.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know if it s because of diet or what, but I ve always been a very good sleeper.
3
SPEAKER_00
You can just shut off.
3
SPEAKER_01
I get to sleep and I sleep like a baby, you know?
3
SPEAKER_01
And I also nap really well.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like during the World Series, sometimes what ll happen is, let s say I get knocked out of one event at 4 p.m.
3
SPEAKER_01
and there s another one that I can jump in.
3
SPEAKER_01
Instead of jumping right into it, I ll go into like a private room and take 45 minute nap.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you know, and give me enough energy to continue and sort of reset my mind.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and it solves a lot of problems with the nap too.
3
SPEAKER_00
It does.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
I feel like the nap is a magical trick in life.
3
SPEAKER_00
What else, diet-wise, what do you, your mind is going?
3
SPEAKER_00
you know, pretty intensely all day.
3
SPEAKER_00
What do you do?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so during like, like I said, when I m not playing, I m super regimented.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, I have, I literally measure everything.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, I count calories, I count macros, I follow it to a T. Pretty balanced diet or any?
3
SPEAKER_01
I m a vegan.
3
SPEAKER_00
Vegan, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it s, you know, a vegan diet, like.
3
SPEAKER_00
But balanced in terms of carbs and protein.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I eat a healthy amount.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m doing probably 150 grams of protein, like 60 grams of fat, 50, and then about.
3
SPEAKER_00
And try to measure it all out.
3
SPEAKER_01
I do, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Basically, I created a meal plan.
3
SPEAKER_01
So what I did for myself is, because I m really anal and nerdy, I made a spreadsheet with like a day s food, and I have six different ones.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I just follow it.
3
SPEAKER_01
It actually makes my life so much easier when I don t have to think about what I m gonna eat for lunch or what I m gonna eat for dinner.
3
SPEAKER_01
I already know what I m gonna eat.
3
SPEAKER_01
I already wrote it down.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it doesn t get boring because I m switching it up every day, every six days, and occasionally I ll splurge and do something different.
3
SPEAKER_01
During the World Series of Poker, I eat whatever the fuck I wanna eat.
3
SPEAKER_01
At 2 a.m., I don t crave a broccoli carrot salad.
3
SPEAKER_01
I want chocolate, candy, and chips.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I ll just do it.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you listen to the cravings.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I realize it s- Surprising, because you re so regimented outside of that.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s really difficult.
3
SPEAKER_01
I ve done it before where I played the World Series of Poker, and I made it a point to work out every day.
3
SPEAKER_01
But what that did was it sacrificed sleep.
3
SPEAKER_01
So then I found at 1 a.m., I would be more tired.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, because I ve expended more energy than I would otherwise.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I essentially like, look at the World Series as six, seven weeks where my body s just going to take a beating, not like UFC fighter, but like a different kind of beating.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that s okay because I have so much confidence that within six weeks,
3
SPEAKER_01
of just like eating right and working out, I can get back to where I was.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s just hilarious to me that you d be eating chocolate, what, eating chocolate in bed as you re trying to get to sleep?
3
SPEAKER_01
Is this- Like literally a bag of like chips or chocolate, like on my way home and before bed, you know, just whatever.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is what the professional athlete does at the highest, most difficult event of his career.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so what else is there in terms of mental preparation and focus and meditation, those kinds of things, leading up to the games?
3
SPEAKER_00
Is there anything you like to, like any rituals you like to follow?
3
SPEAKER_01
So yeah, I have dabbled in the past with like meditation and different things like that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I know that there s health benefits to it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I understand that a lot of people get a lot from it and I ve done it for good amount of time, like long periods of time.
3
SPEAKER_01
I found that for me, I think it was predominantly placebo.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like it really wasn t doing anything for me that I felt like it was, it felt like I was doing something, but I really, I didn t see any specific results from it.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I don t really do that too much.
3
SPEAKER_01
One thing that I will do,
3
SPEAKER_01
for me is leading up is there s so much footage now that I ll make it a point to like watch my opponents.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then with like my phone, I ll take notes and I ll keep track of different things that I m seeing.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that sort of, and then what I ll do is I ll formulate a game plan.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like I m playing the Poker Masters coming up in about a week.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I ll look to see the tendencies of what my opponents are doing.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then I ll come up with like some things that I m gonna do, some tricks of the trade, if you will.
3
SPEAKER_01
Not game theory optimal stuff, stuff that I think, oh, they re making a mistake here that I can exploit.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then I look to do that in different ways and always look to, you know, throw curve balls.
3
SPEAKER_00
How hard is that process?
3
SPEAKER_00
Do you enjoy it?
3
SPEAKER_00
Or is it like really hard work to analyze the players to try to understand what are the different holes, what are the different mistakes, what are the strengths to avoid and that kind of stuff?
3
SPEAKER_01
I think the only thing that makes it harder is when you re young, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
You re in your 20s and you re trying to make your nest egg.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re trying to make your retirement money.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re hungry, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
You re like Clubber Lang in the gym.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re hungry.
3
SPEAKER_01
Whereas Rocky s in there taking pictures and smiling and doing commercials and stuff like that.
3
SPEAKER_01
I am 47.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m financially okay.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t need to win.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t need to compete at the highest levels.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think it was a boxer.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t remember which one.
3
SPEAKER_01
When asked this, he was asked the question, how do you get up in the morning still and do those morning runs?
3
SPEAKER_01
And he says, you know what?
3
SPEAKER_01
I ll be honest with you.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s a lot more difficult doing the 4 a.m.
3
SPEAKER_01
run in silk pajamas.
3
SPEAKER_01
It just is, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
But I ve always been self-motivated and I ve always found a way.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it s harder in the sense of like,
3
SPEAKER_01
it s not a need, I can still get by without it.
3
SPEAKER_01
But so in that regard, it does feel like a little bit of work.
3
SPEAKER_01
We re like, oh my God, that s a lot of footage I gotta get through.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I don t know that I have the time or I don t know that I wanna spend 10 hours of my day doing that when I could be doing other things.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, what do you still love about poker?
3
SPEAKER_00
When you said, when you enter, like the times you catch yourself just,
3
SPEAKER_00
being able to sort of take in the awe of it.
3
SPEAKER_00
What aspects do you love?
3
SPEAKER_01
I think that like for me, I ve always been really competitive, but I was never gonna be a professional athlete or a professional snooker player.
3
SPEAKER_01
I wasn t good enough at any of that stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
I didn t have the body type, whatever.
3
SPEAKER_01
But poker, it sort of levels the playing field, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
You re six, five, 240, big deal.
3
SPEAKER_01
We re not fighting here.
3
SPEAKER_01
We re fighting a different type of war.
3
SPEAKER_01
So the competitive aspect, I also have always been fueled throughout my career
3
SPEAKER_01
by doubters.
3
SPEAKER_01
So this is probably unhealthy, but every time people say like, you re done, you re washed up, you can t win anymore, it just makes me want to prove them wrong, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So I have a little bit of that in me, which again, you reading the comments and all these kinds, like I ve been told many times throughout my career for the last 15 that I m done, I can t compete anymore.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I enjoy, you know, proving them wrong.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, the game has changed so much.
3
SPEAKER_00
The greats of the past surely cannot be the greats of the present.
3
SPEAKER_00
That kind of commentary will continue for every sport, and certainly for poker, because poker really changed a lot over the past couple decades.
3
SPEAKER_00
Can you speak to how much it has changed?
3
SPEAKER_00
Because it s been at the top for so long.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
So complacency is a big issue for people who make it, if you will, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So in my era of the poker boom, around the early 2000s, there was a group of players who were the big names, the stars of the game.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, a lot of them had their egos out of whack where they just felt like, okay, I m the best.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, no, there s young guys learning.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s new software.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s solvers.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s all these kinds of things.
3
SPEAKER_01
And if you re not keeping up, then you ll get surpassed.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I remember
3
SPEAKER_01
Myself at a very early age thing i never want to be that guy and it was one of my first events in the late nineties i was the young buck.
3
SPEAKER_01
Playing with the tom mcavoy s and brad dowdy the guys of the era right and i was doing things more aggressively and they were scoffing at all these young kids with their aggressive three and all the stuff in the sort of mocking it you know and i thought never be that guy.
3
SPEAKER_01
Always have the humility to be introspective and always have the respect for your opponents that while you think you ve got it all figured out, they re learning new things and you can learn from them.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I ve always been willing to sort of swallow my pride and get coached by younger players who I might even be better than, but they see blind spots that I have that I might not.
3
SPEAKER_01
And they help me improve my game.
3
SPEAKER_01
I ve always been willing to sort of look every six months or a year and say, is what I m doing working?
3
SPEAKER_01
And if not, how do I get better?
3
SPEAKER_01
but most people from my generation, they go the other way.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know, they just have this idea that they figured it all out.
3
SPEAKER_01
Once you feel like you ve mastered it, there s nothing left to learn, that s the moment where everyone else starts to surpass you.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s the moment where you lose the mastery, because it s always evolving.
3
SPEAKER_00
How has the game changed?
3
SPEAKER_01
So the game has changed in terms of the way people learn it, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
When I started out, the only way to learn how to play poker was to sit your ass on the chair and play.
3
SPEAKER_01
In person?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes, in person.
3
SPEAKER_01
Play, maybe you jot down hands on a notepad.
3
SPEAKER_01
We didn t even have cell phones back then, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So I would write notes.
3
SPEAKER_01
I actually brought a notepad.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then you d analyze it and sort of try to figure it out that way and think about
3
SPEAKER_01
you know, maybe talking to friends and different players.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like when I grew up, there was John Jawanda, Alan Cunningham, and Phil Ivey.
3
SPEAKER_01
And we would sort of create like a little bit of a mastermind.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, how would you play this hand?
3
SPEAKER_01
What would you do here?
3
SPEAKER_01
That was the extent of it, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
We never had the correct answers.
3
SPEAKER_01
We always had theories about what might be right.
3
SPEAKER_01
Not until about five, six years ago, where everything changed.
3
SPEAKER_01
where, you know, artificial intelligence created solvers that will specifically say, okay, this is the optimal play.
3
SPEAKER_01
This is the game theory optimal play.
3
SPEAKER_01
So now, it introduced poker to a whole new group of
3
SPEAKER_01
like personality types.
3
SPEAKER_01
In my day, it was people that were dregs of society that didn t fit in, not college goers with a degree.
3
SPEAKER_01
These are people who were street hustlers playing pool.
3
SPEAKER_01
They found poker and they had these unique lives, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
But now, because poker can be studied, much like you study university or college, you had for example the German contingent.
3
SPEAKER_01
who was literally analyzing data and coming up with strategies based on this.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s like, what?
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, and the old guy, like, you know, got to play by feel or whatever.
3
SPEAKER_01
And they re like, they re learning.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I guess the way that you describe it is like in the old days, it required skill and talent, a card sense, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
That was the only way to become good.
3
SPEAKER_01
And today that s not the case.
3
SPEAKER_01
Good study habits, a good work ethic in that regard can make you a really good player, even if you aren t all that talented or gifted.
3
SPEAKER_01
Having a good work ethic is a talent, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Not necessarily card sense, but if you re able to put in the work and study from these solvers, you essentially have the perfect study tool now that we didn t have in my day.
3
SPEAKER_00
So what do the solvers give you?
3
SPEAKER_00
Do you start to memorize the optimal play for every single hand?
3
SPEAKER_00
You try your best.
3
SPEAKER_01
So again,
3
SPEAKER_01
Solvers are imperfect as well, in terms of the way that humans utilize them, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Because you can give solvers a certain number of inputs in terms of what you want it to solve, but a solver can think on many, many levels.
3
SPEAKER_01
So for example, the way that a typical player would do a solve is they say, okay, what does a solver think is the best play here?
3
SPEAKER_01
Bet one third pot, bet two thirds pot, or bet one and a half times pot, okay?
3
SPEAKER_01
You give it three parameters,
3
SPEAKER_01
It comes out with an output and it tells you what you should do with all the different hands you have.
3
SPEAKER_01
However, that s a simplified version of what a solver would really do because a solver might decide that seven times the pot is best, 10% of the pot.
3
SPEAKER_01
But when you re putting in a solve, you can only put in
3
SPEAKER_01
you know, specific parameters.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that s why, frankly, that s typically the number, one-third, two-third, and one-and-a-half times pi is what people often do.
3
SPEAKER_01
So they sort of have a vague idea of what a solver wants.
3
SPEAKER_01
But again, imperfect in terms of the implementation of it, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
And memorizing all the variables, like that King Jack offsuit with the King of Diamonds is 13%.
3
SPEAKER_01
No human brain can do that.
3
SPEAKER_01
So what you do is you bucket it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like you bucket it into say instead of 10,000 variables, you have 10 buckets and you say, okay, with these hands, we do roughly this and we do roughly this and you try your best to stay within those lines.
3
SPEAKER_01
But again, what I love about live poker partly is that nobody will ever be able to master game theory and mimic a solver.
3
SPEAKER_00
But you also have to incorporate
3
SPEAKER_00
your position, where you are, and obviously what cards you have, but also the size of your stack, how much money you have, and also whether you have the ability or desire to buy in, all those kinds of things.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you have to calculate all of that, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So the solver will do that, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
And essentially, you don t input your hand.
3
SPEAKER_01
It tells you, you ll look at the grade and be like, all right, this is my hand, and it tells you what it is.
3
SPEAKER_01
But it tells you what you would do with any hand, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
It gives you the full output.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that actually gives you a better idea, because you re ultimately, like you said, playing a range of hands, not a hand.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the solvers do things that are really interesting.
3
SPEAKER_01
You ve seen AlphaGo, I would imagine.
3
SPEAKER_01
Brilliant film, right, I thought.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I thought what was interesting is there was accepted theory from all the top Go players that this is what you do.
3
SPEAKER_01
The AI was doing things way different and they re like, this has to be wrong, but really it wasn t.
3
SPEAKER_01
So for example, a solver may say this, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Let s say you bet on the end and you bet a lot and a solver may say, you should fold here with a pair of kings and a queen kicker, which is a pair of kings, but call with a pair of fours and an ace kicker.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it s essentially telling you that you should fold this hand that is much better than this.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it begs the question, why?
3
SPEAKER_01
Because what the solvers do is they use the information of your own cards to formulate all the possible hands your opponent can have.
3
SPEAKER_01
So if your opponent is, so basically if you had the king
4
SPEAKER_01
Queen, you know, it may say, for lack of a better nerdy term, it blocks potential bluffing hands that your opponent can have.
4
SPEAKER_01
So let s say if your opponent would bluff with Queen-Jack, but you have a Queen, so there are less combinations of Queen-Jack.
4
SPEAKER_01
So it will find a better bluff catcher, if you will.
4
SPEAKER_01
So that s what s really not intuitive to poker players.
4
SPEAKER_01
Poker players usually think like, well, this, my hand is pretty good, so I got a call.
4
SPEAKER_01
But that s not how a solver would think.
4
SPEAKER_01
A solver uses, you know, common atrix and, you know.
4
SPEAKER_00
And sometimes it s tough to get the good why answers you just did for why a solver thinks something is better.
4
SPEAKER_00
Or maybe in poker, it s a little bit easier, but in the case of go and chess, it s not always obvious why
4
SPEAKER_00
Because it s not going to explain stuff to you.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think one of the best ways to learn poker is when you see a solver output and it tells you one of these things, try to figure out why.
4
SPEAKER_01
Why does this solver do this?
4
SPEAKER_01
Why does it want you to call with this and fold this?
4
SPEAKER_01
And try to think about it on a deeper level and you go, aha, probably because this card that I have here changes the range of my opponent s potential.
4
SPEAKER_00
I d love to get your opinion on your relationship with solvers, because, for example, Magnus doesn t use them, his team uses them, because he feels like he s going to rely on it too much, and you can t use it when you re playing.
4
SPEAKER_00
What you really want is to build up extremely strong intuition without the help of a solver.
4
SPEAKER_00
Is there some aspect of that that rings true to you?
4
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely.
4
SPEAKER_01
I totally can relate to what Meg is saying.
4
SPEAKER_01
First and foremost, because when solvers were first introduced, I didn t come from that world.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was so intimidated because I didn t know how to use it.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t know how to do an input.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I had two guys.
4
SPEAKER_01
One guy is a data scientist and another guy is like a poker savant, if you will, and they coached me and they did it.
4
SPEAKER_01
So today, if I was in a tough spot,
4
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, I don t know, what would a solver do?
4
SPEAKER_01
I will send them the hand and they ll run the solve for me and then sort of give me the parameters of what to do.
4
SPEAKER_01
When I was playing regularly using solvers with them, we were spending six to eight hours a day going over all these solves.
4
SPEAKER_01
So intuitively, I started to think and learn about what the solver would want, but I sort of understand where Magnus is coming from in that.
4
SPEAKER_01
You don t want to become a slave to the sim, as I say, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
There s one kid I know, I joked with him, his name is Landon Tice.
4
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, he made a play that the sim, you know, would say, this is a good play.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I m like, it s a good play, you know, in a simulated world against the robot, but it s not in practice against the human, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
You don t need to be doing that.
4
SPEAKER_01
So if you become a slave to the sim and always do what the sim says, you re handcuffed to a certain degree.
4
SPEAKER_00
Is there some, at the highest level of plays, there s still a role for feel and intuition?
4
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely.
4
SPEAKER_01
If you re not doing that, because here s the thing, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
No human being plays perfectly balanced in game three optimal like a robot would.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re not, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
So there are opportunities there to take advantage of the things that they do that are slightly too aggressive or less aggressive.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, for example,
4
SPEAKER_01
Say most human beings don t bluff enough in a certain spot.
4
SPEAKER_01
So you don t have to call with the correct range of hands.
4
SPEAKER_01
You don t have to, because they re not bluffing at the optimal frequency.
4
SPEAKER_01
So you don t have to call at the optimal frequency.
4
SPEAKER_01
You d be making a mistake, frankly, if you did.
4
SPEAKER_00
What s the difference between in-person and online play, given that context?
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, well, online poker and live poker, it s the same game, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Same, it s poker, but it s different in so many levels, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
I think playing online, you have to focus far more on fundamentals, you know, on game theory.
4
SPEAKER_01
You don t have the added bonus of looking across the table and getting any sense of whether your opponent is strong or weak, they re bluffing, whatever, you know.
4
SPEAKER_01
And also,
4
SPEAKER_01
Because online poker, those that play it, you play far more hands.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like some of these guys are playing 10, 20 tables at the same time, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
So you re just, you re hitting the long run really quickly and you re creating a database on your opponents, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
So let s have, you know, online, I can see your data.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m like, well, this guy, he s playing 40% of hands.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s betting the river 80% of the time.
4
SPEAKER_01
So now I can use that data and, you know, exploit you that way.
4
SPEAKER_01
When you play live, you don t have that.
4
SPEAKER_01
Do you enjoy playing online?
4
SPEAKER_01
I enjoy, so with online poker, I enjoy the convenience of it, because you know, you can be on your couch in your underwear, not leave your house.
4
SPEAKER_00
Do you also play multiple games at the same time, or do you try to play one game?
4
SPEAKER_01
I typically like to play one or two, but I can play up to four.
4
SPEAKER_01
I find that past four, it s hard for me to keep up and keep track of what s actually happening.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, it s a different mindset required.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like a lot of these young guys, they re accustomed to 20 tables at a time.
4
SPEAKER_00
It feels like the purity of the game is gone.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s much more robotic, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
So if you re playing 20 tables, you re just making decisions based on like what you, you know, you re not thinking about the depth of the situation and what just happened 15 minutes ago.
4
SPEAKER_01
You don t even know what happened because you can t pay attention to all that at once.
4
SPEAKER_00
And some of the magic of poker is the low sample.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like for example, and sorry to be bringing up Magnus so much, but there s so much parallel between the two of you and the poker and the chess world.
4
SPEAKER_00
He hates Olympics and world championships and all that kind of stuff because it s so low sample.
4
SPEAKER_00
But to me, that s part of the magic of it.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s the World Series of Poker, the main event, there s a magic to it.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I don t know what that is exactly because so much is at stake, it s so rare.
4
SPEAKER_00
so much drama and heartbreak leading up to it that all somehow, yeah, it accumulates to that magical moment when somebody wins.
4
SPEAKER_01
Especially that event, the World Series of Poker main event, historically, that s it, that s the pinnacle, that s where mainstream watches, that s where people are tuning in and the gravity of the moment, it s so much bigger than people.
4
SPEAKER_01
Everyone gets the opportunity to play armchair quarterback too, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Oh, he should do this, you re not there, you re not under the lights, you re not under the pressure.
4
SPEAKER_01
It might seem easy for you at home to be like, well, they have, but you can see the whole cards, they can t.
4
SPEAKER_01
Certainly the idea of,
4
SPEAKER_01
the small sample with tournaments.
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SPEAKER_01
I like the idea that you don t have to worry about, oh, well, if I do this now, then in the future, you know, I won t be balanced.
4
SPEAKER_01
I have to be balanced here or anything like that.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s like really boring and lame, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Again, that is kind of the way the younger generation learns how to play the game, being balanced in every spot.
4
SPEAKER_01
Um, and then randomizing, you know, like, Oh, I m supposed to do this 50% of the time.
4
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_01
So if my left card is red, I ll do it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And if it s black, I don t.
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SPEAKER_01
So you re not even making, you re no longer making actual decisions for yourself.
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SPEAKER_01
You re just randomizing.
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SPEAKER_01
And that s way less fun for me than tailoring it to the situation.
4
SPEAKER_00
And the final table at the main event, there s none of that.
4
SPEAKER_00
You have to, I mean, it s all or nothing.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, you shouldn t be, but there are.
4
SPEAKER_01
Again, I think a lot of the young guys, they are thinking in that regard, like, oh, randomization.
4
SPEAKER_00
Maybe at that table, the final table at the main event.
4
SPEAKER_00
What s a hand that stands out to you that was especially gutsy and powerful or memorable for that you ve seen in the history of poker?
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, for me, the one that stands out and probably because I was so young and it was my first year, I won a bracelet that year.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was friends with Scotty Wynn, the Prince of Poker, and he was heads up against the guy named Kevin McBride.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was on the rail.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m like, wow, he s heads up.
4
SPEAKER_01
He was so cool.
4
SPEAKER_01
He had a mullet, but it s perfect.
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SPEAKER_01
He had the white shirt, the black thing.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s drinking a Michelob, smoking a cigarette, whatever, all chill.
4
SPEAKER_01
He bets it all on the river and the guy is thinking and he psychologically owned him and he said – he goes with his beard, he goes, you call going to be all over baby.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s right.
4
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_01
So this guy who was an amateur heard that.
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SPEAKER_01
And was like, there s so much pressure in this moment right now.
4
SPEAKER_01
I can t handle this pressure.
4
SPEAKER_01
But Scotty just told me if I call here, it s the pressure s gone.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t have to be under it anymore.
4
SPEAKER_01
So he sort of hypnotized them into making the call, you know, and Scotty had it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Scotty had, you know, the full house and it was over for the guy.
4
SPEAKER_01
You call gonna be all over baby.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was, I just, I love that aspect, sort of the table talk dynamic, which isn t as prevalent today as it was back then.
4
SPEAKER_01
Um,
4
SPEAKER_01
But that one sticks out, and probably because it was one of my first.
4
SPEAKER_00
So the few words you say at the table can completely affect a hand like that.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s scary.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was just so cool to me, you know, like just how he was so calm.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I think that too added more pressure to the amateur.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I think like, again, part of it is, even back then, it was 1998, there s still a big rail of people and there s lights and they re, you know, they re filming and all this kind of stuff.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s a lot of pressure for a guy who s never been in this environment.
4
SPEAKER_01
And now I m telling you, it can all be over soon.
4
SPEAKER_01
It will all be over soon.
4
SPEAKER_01
Just call, it s finished.
4
SPEAKER_00
Something about that accent too.
4
SPEAKER_00
Now you re a master at table talk as well.
4
SPEAKER_00
Do you just kind of go with your gut, you flow with it, or is there a deliberate strategy with it sometimes?
4
SPEAKER_01
There s usually some sort of strategy that I think about in terms of what I want to say and whatnot, but a lot of the time I just go with it.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, and the more you talk, the more information you get.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but in some cases against really good players, you re just giving away information, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Like if I m playing against Phil Ivey, I m not engaging in anything because he can read through it.
4
SPEAKER_01
He can sense based on what I m saying, you know, the clues and where I m trying to take him.
4
SPEAKER_01
And he reads through, he sees the tree through the forest or whatever you want to call it, the forest or the trees.
4
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, so then I would just be like,
4
SPEAKER_01
allowing myself to be exploitable.
4
SPEAKER_00
Is some of it just for fun?
4
SPEAKER_00
Because at the end of the day, if you re having fun you might be at the top of your game.
4
SPEAKER_01
I ve been thinking about this a lot lately, actually.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s funny you bring this up because I ve been thinking about when I m at my best.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I think I m at my best when I am comfortable like that, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Where I m not so stiff and worried about checking properly and worried about reading people.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m like, no, I m me.
4
SPEAKER_01
All right, I m gonna play some book.
4
SPEAKER_01
What do you wanna do?
4
SPEAKER_01
You wanna call me?
4
SPEAKER_01
Call, go ahead, do what you want, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Because then I realized, ultimately it was like, I m comfortable in that.
4
SPEAKER_01
My opponents aren t as comfortable in that.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re comfortable with this, the robot thing.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I thought more about that and how, especially with some tournaments coming up, I plan on really kind of sort of getting back to my roots in that regard.
4
SPEAKER_00
I love it.
4
SPEAKER_00
From a spectator perspective, I love it.
4
SPEAKER_00
But it s also interesting whenever you see a Daniel on the ground or quiet.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s an interesting like, like it feels like a calm before a storm of sorts.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I m sure that s also part of it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like I ve gone, I ve ebbed and flowed.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like I said, you know, I took on some coaches and that was really learning game theory because I felt like it was important to always stick, you know, keep up with what s going on.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then I do feel like to some degree,
4
SPEAKER_01
It sort of took away a little bit of my own instinctual ideas in terms of what I should be doing, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
So I think like the most dangerous version of myself is a deep understanding of the game theory.
4
SPEAKER_01
with my wisdom of many years and comfort of just sort of being myself at the table.
4
SPEAKER_00
And being relaxed.
4
SPEAKER_00
Relaxed.
4
SPEAKER_00
Letting your mind flow.
4
SPEAKER_00
Let me ask you the greatest, the GOAT question, greatest of all time.
4
SPEAKER_00
Can you make the case for a few folks?
4
SPEAKER_00
So first, you tweeted referring to Phil Ivey as the GOAT, saying the GOAT doing GOAT things.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s a recent tweet.
4
SPEAKER_00
So can you make the case for Phil Ivey, or maybe who is the greatest poker player of all time?
4
SPEAKER_00
Would you put Phil?
4
SPEAKER_01
For me, until someone knocks him off the podium, the king of poker and the GOAT is Phil Ivey, okay?
4
SPEAKER_01
And the reason I say that is I think of poker as more than just one game, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
There s different variants.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s Hold em, Omaha, Stud, Triple Draw, all these different types of games.
4
SPEAKER_01
And Phil, in every arena,
4
SPEAKER_01
has been dominant.
4
SPEAKER_01
Whether it was tournament poker, dominated it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Mixed game high stakes poker in Bobby s room, dominated.
4
SPEAKER_01
Online poker against all the wizards, dominated.
4
SPEAKER_01
Made millions in every arena.
4
SPEAKER_01
He sort of took a few years away from poker with his legal troubles and things like that, but he s back.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s been playing in the high roller series again and he comes from – he s cut from a different cloth.
4
SPEAKER_01
But he has a tenacity and a focus that s unparalleled, I think.
4
SPEAKER_01
When he s in the zone, I mean, this has nothing to do with race.
4
SPEAKER_01
It really has to do with mannerism.
4
SPEAKER_01
But he does remind me of like a combination of Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods in the way that he approaches it.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s very intense.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
And he outworks everybody.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I think, frankly, a lot of his mannerisms do come from them.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because he s young, watching these guys on TV, and a lot of his ways of being is learned behavior, I think, probably from people like that.
4
SPEAKER_00
People at the top of their sport, and people that are Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan aren t just at the top of their sport, but they kind of dominate the sport.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s some kind of aura that...
4
SPEAKER_01
There s a uniqueness to them.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re not built like us.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re not, you know, they re not.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like I wish, I wish I could have the kind of focus that Phil Ivey has, you know, and see everything that he s saying.
4
SPEAKER_01
I just, that s not me, you know?
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t have that, and he does.
4
SPEAKER_01
He has that gene, whatever it is.
4
SPEAKER_00
But they also look like they re not having that much fun.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re more focused on the perfection, like a dogged pursuit of perfection.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that might even be true.
4
SPEAKER_01
It might not be as fun.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_01
I have fun at the table.
4
SPEAKER_01
When you look outwardly, you look at someone, maybe he is having a blast.
4
SPEAKER_01
Maybe that s just the way that he likes it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like is Tiger Woods having fun when he s on 17 about to win a major?
4
SPEAKER_01
Doesn t look like it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Theoretically.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, if you look at Michael Jordan, I don t know about Tiger Woods, but I think they re more focused on every single mistake they make.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think they re more obsessed about not making a mistake and hating every time they make a mistake.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s probably like 99% of their mental energy.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think that s part of what makes them great, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
They don t look past the mistake and just let it, it s whatever.
4
SPEAKER_01
No, they re like, they wanna correct it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, there s a tension almost like a trade-off.
4
SPEAKER_00
I wonder if that s always the case between sort of greatness and happiness.
4
SPEAKER_01
I remember Huck Seed who, you know, when I was a kid growing up, he was like the poker idol.
4
SPEAKER_01
He won the world championship in 1996 and I was lucky enough to hang out with him a little bit and he would go through these streaks where
4
SPEAKER_01
He had an A game and he had an F game.
4
SPEAKER_01
His A game was unparalleled.
4
SPEAKER_01
Nobody could beat him, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
But his F game was so terrible that he was just a fish.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, he was playing terribly.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I remember him saying, and it was exactly what you re saying, he d make like one little mistake, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
And then he would go off.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, why do you do that?
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, you know, your B game would be just fine.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s like, well, if I m going to make a mistake, what s the point?
4
SPEAKER_01
What s the point of trying?
4
SPEAKER_01
If you can t play perfect, there s no point in playing at all.
4
SPEAKER_01
He was extreme in that regard in the way that he viewed it.
4
SPEAKER_00
And depending on the sport, those folks, like in chess, certainly the case, that kind of mindset can destroy you.
4
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely, no, I totally see that.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because a sequence of mistakes, like the kind of year you had with the World Series at Polk, it can completely destroy a human being if you re not able to see the bigger picture of it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
You said that Phil Ivey s the hardest, your toughest opponent, the toughest person to play against.
4
SPEAKER_00
Why is that, and how do you beat him?
4
SPEAKER_01
Because Phil Ivey s just, he s seeing things that nobody else is seeing really, like subtle things, where I m putting my hands, where I m looking, you know, my pulse, like stuff that I don t even know I m giving off.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s so engaged and so focused and has such a, just a, he s fearless, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
A lot of people, you know, they ll play poker and be like, you know what, I don t think this guy has it.
4
SPEAKER_01
But do they have the guts?
4
SPEAKER_01
Do they have the cojones, if you will, to actually do anything about it, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
And stand up to this person?
4
SPEAKER_01
He does.
4
SPEAKER_00
I forgot the hand that you tweeted about the goat doing goat things.
4
SPEAKER_01
It wasn t even that big of a goat hand.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was pretty impressive.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s hands where like, there was a famous one in Australia where the flop was like Jack Jack at nine.
4
SPEAKER_01
And Phil check raised the flop with six, seven, nothing, just absolutely nothing.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the guy re-raised him, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
And Phil just knew he went all in with nothing.
4
SPEAKER_01
If the guy calls, he s done, he s cooked.
4
SPEAKER_01
But he was so tuned in that this guy s not strong that he just, you know, he did things like that.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s tough to play against a guy like that.
4
SPEAKER_00
So he gets great reads and is able to execute on them, has the guts to execute on them.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s got experience, he s got work ethic.
4
SPEAKER_01
He also, I think one thing I m underselling too, is his strategic mind, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Like I believe that, you know, like I said, the new age player, they learn how to play through a very systematic approach.
4
SPEAKER_01
Okay, let s look at the data.
4
SPEAKER_01
Make up a game right now.
4
SPEAKER_01
Three cards, we each get three cards.
4
SPEAKER_01
Jacks are wild, sixes are, you know, six of hearts is wild, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Just make up that game.
4
SPEAKER_01
Phil will figure it out.
4
SPEAKER_01
intuitively very, very quickly, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Without having the answers for him, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
So that s like the difference between the players of my generation.
4
SPEAKER_01
We had to figure this stuff out on our own.
4
SPEAKER_01
Today, oh, I want to know the answer.
4
SPEAKER_01
I go ask the computer and the computer tells me.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I really believe like if you created a game from scratch that Phil Ivey would be my horse that I
5
SPEAKER_00
I wanted to play in it.
5
SPEAKER_01
So he s in some sense in tune with some deeper thing.
5
SPEAKER_00
He has what we used to call card sense.
5
SPEAKER_00
Card sense.
5
SPEAKER_01
Can you try to make the case for some others like Doyle Brunson, Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negrano, and maybe one of the modern guys like Justin Bonomo or somebody like that?
5
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, so let s start with Doyle.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like what Doyle has going for him above and beyond is twofold, really.
5
SPEAKER_00
Longevity.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, he s in his late 80s.
5
SPEAKER_00
And last time I played with him, I was like, how is he getting better?
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, I really felt like he was playing better than he had, you know, in the previous years.
5
SPEAKER_00
But also with Doyle, like,
5
SPEAKER_00
Doyle had to figure, you know, we talked about my generation having to figure it on their own.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, they really had to figure it on their own.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, they didn t have any computer simulation to tell you if Ace King was a favorite over pocket sixes.
5
SPEAKER_00
They didn t.
5
SPEAKER_00
So we know what he did.
5
SPEAKER_00
He would take a deck of cards and they would deal out, and they would, with a notepad, right, okay, Ace King won.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then they would do like a hundred of them and be like, all right, Ace King won like 53, so it must be a favorite.
5
SPEAKER_00
And he did it manually, you know?
5
SPEAKER_00
And he did it in a time when it was very, very difficult.
5
SPEAKER_00
And he s seen poker evolve and change throughout the years.
5
SPEAKER_00
Now, listen, is he gonna be able to compete against the top players in the world today?
5
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely not, you know?
5
SPEAKER_00
But how many people, he s the best 88-year-old player in the world by a mile, okay?
5
SPEAKER_00
That s not even close.
5
SPEAKER_00
And Doyle, again, he s another guy who plays all the games.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s played high stakes cash, tournaments, you name it.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s iconic, you know, he s the godfather.
5
SPEAKER_01
So- But there s also an element to that, so the iconic element, like your personality in poker.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean,
5
SPEAKER_01
not to romanticize the thing too much, but poker is also a game of personalities.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s part of the greatness is like the uniqueness of the human being.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think also, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, like looking at it from that perspective in terms of like goat, like goat in terms of what you represent, like the cowboy, the godfather, you know, he s been around, you know, he played in the 60s and stuff like that.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s just something like incredibly cool.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like I often think about if I could go back in time,
5
SPEAKER_00
and visit an era, I d love to go to Vegas in the 70s.
5
SPEAKER_00
I can think of what it would smell like, probably not ideal, cigarettes and the leather jackets and just the vibe of what it must ve been like with the mobsters and things like that.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s lived through all that, all the cool movies we ve seen.
5
SPEAKER_00
Doyle talks about some of those films and he s like, yeah, that guy, he said he was gonna stab me in my stomach.
5
SPEAKER_00
He knows these people.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s a source of history.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, when poker was a game for the mob and the degenerates and all that kind of stuff before it transitioned into professional sport, a professional game.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so he was there through the whole thing.
5
SPEAKER_01
He s been there through the whole transition.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s seen it all, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and then to the online world.
5
SPEAKER_01
So what about, I can t even say it without smiling, Phil Hellmuth.
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so Phil, here s the thing with Phil.
5
SPEAKER_00
He takes it very personal when I say this.
5
SPEAKER_00
And he doesn t hear the compliment.
5
SPEAKER_00
He only hears the negativity.
5
SPEAKER_00
Because Phil wants to be considered the greatest of all time.
5
SPEAKER_01
Hashtag positive.
5
SPEAKER_00
He wants to be the greatest of all time.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I m like, Phil, here s the facts.
5
SPEAKER_00
You have the best, absolute greatest resume at the World Series of Poker of anyone in the world.
5
SPEAKER_00
Is that not enough, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
That s what you have.
5
SPEAKER_00
You have that, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Now, do I think you re the best no-limit hold em player in the world today?
5
SPEAKER_00
No.
5
SPEAKER_00
Do I think that you can play high-stakes mixed games with the best players in the world today and win?
5
SPEAKER_00
No, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
So he wouldn t get as much flack on this topic if he wasn t so boastful and demanding.
5
SPEAKER_00
You never hear Phil Ivey say, I m the best in the world.
5
SPEAKER_00
His peers do, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
But Phil wants to make the claim, and I simply say,
5
SPEAKER_00
I beg to differ, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
I beg to differ.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, I don t think you are the best player in the world.
5
SPEAKER_01
If we can linger on the compliments so he can hear it, what makes him so good?
5
SPEAKER_01
Because it seems like a lot of times his play is not optimal.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, he definitely has his own brand of – and style of play, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
He does not adhere to – he s never used a solver in his life.
5
SPEAKER_00
He doesn t know – he s not in that world, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
He – Phil does – Phil has a lot of faith and a lot of confidence in what he does and that it will be successful and I think there s something to be said about that, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
He doesn t ever lack confidence.
5
SPEAKER_00
in belief that he can win and he finds a way to do it his way.
5
SPEAKER_00
And frankly, a lot of what he does is very effective against specific types of players who are intimidated by him, by whether it s his resume or his demeanor or his attitude sometimes, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Like if you re an average player and then, you know, you beat Phil in a hand, you re going to hear it.
5
SPEAKER_00
This idiot from Northern Europe and beat me in this pot, like, and for some people, they don t like that.
5
SPEAKER_00
So he can use that against them.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I also think too, like,
5
SPEAKER_00
He.
5
SPEAKER_00
cares so much, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
And that leads to trying really, really hard.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like he sees these moments and he doesn t phone him in.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like whatever brand of poker he plays, he tries his best at all times to succeed and to win.
5
SPEAKER_00
And there s some, even though like he s fundamentally flawed in a lot of things that he does compared to some of the bigger players, his effort and will and like his determination to stick around is, you know, is up there.
5
SPEAKER_01
And he is somebody who seems to really hate losing.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
He, you know, he, he s, he s got this, he feels like he deserves to win.
5
SPEAKER_00
Right.
5
SPEAKER_00
In all cases.
5
SPEAKER_00
And if he loses, it s, you know.
5
SPEAKER_01
As he joked around that you and him might do an anger management course.
5
SPEAKER_01
Now this is tough because you re a humble guy, but objectively speaking, can you say what your strengths are?
5
SPEAKER_01
You re often listed as one of, if not the greatest player of all time.
5
SPEAKER_01
So what are the things that make you stand out?
5
SPEAKER_00
So for me, when I grew up, I admired the big cash game players, because that s what I was.
5
SPEAKER_00
I loved tournaments, but I wanted to be well-rounded.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, in my day, you couldn t make the Poker Hall of Fame if you just played one game.
5
SPEAKER_00
You had to jump into the high-stakes games in Bobby s room, as they say, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
And I was able to do that.
5
SPEAKER_00
In my mid-20s, I was playing 4,000, 8,000 limits.
5
SPEAKER_00
You could win or lose a million dollars in a day.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I grinded it out.
5
SPEAKER_00
A lot of people think, oh, he s lucky, he s had sponsorship, otherwise he d be broke.
5
SPEAKER_00
I built multi-million dollar bankrolls before any of that stuff existed and I did it the good old-fashioned way by sitting my butt on the table.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think probably one of my biggest strengths
5
SPEAKER_00
is self-awareness and in that regard, a level of humility that always allows me to say, okay, well, you know what?
5
SPEAKER_00
In this case with these players, they re better than me, so what am I going to learn from them, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Rather than have this need to say, I am the best because of history and
5
SPEAKER_00
I m always looking to guys and go, wow, he does this really well, whether it s the Adamos or the Ivys or whoever it may be.
5
SPEAKER_00
So my willingness to adapt, I think, and stay relevant by learning what the young guys are learning is something I ve always done.
5
SPEAKER_00
I also pride myself on, again, being well-rounded, like playing all the games.
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t feel intimidated in any game, whatever the format is.
5
SPEAKER_01
So always being a scholar of the game as the game evolves, as the different games evolve, the different players evolve, the culture evolves, always adjusting by being a scholar, having the humility to be a scholar.
5
SPEAKER_00
A healthy respect for the younger generation, how they learn, what they learn, and what they can teach me.
5
SPEAKER_00
rather than pooh-pooh it and say, oh, these kids today, because that s what a lot of people like the Mike Mattisos and the Phil Hellmuths, my generation, they just pooh-pooh it because they don t understand it.
5
SPEAKER_00
On a level of one to ten, their level of understanding of this is like a one, maybe, if I m being generous by calling it a one.
5
SPEAKER_00
They really don t understand it, so they pooh-pooh it.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s easy to do that, like, oh, that s not how I do it, so that s wrong, or that s stupid, or whatever.
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t take that approach.
5
SPEAKER_00
I go, well, let me learn.
5
SPEAKER_00
Let me see what there is to this.
5
SPEAKER_01
But that said, the crankiness that Mattisow and Phil Hellmuth have is great to watch, especially when they re at a table with you.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I love it, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s a blast.
5
SPEAKER_01
You re masterful at being able to get under their skin.
5
SPEAKER_01
What about somebody from the new school, like Justin Bonomo, who s leading in terms of cash wins?
5
SPEAKER_01
Is there somebody like that that stands out to you as a potential GOAT status person?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so there s two different ones, but one is very, so they re both just no limit, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
So I, like again, when I think of poker, I think of, you know, a variety of games, but there s so many of the young guys that specialize.
5
SPEAKER_00
Michael Adamo is one that I ve mentioned several times and I love the way that he approaches the game.
5
SPEAKER_00
Another one that s highly respected because of his online prowess and his
5
SPEAKER_00
People have looked at how close he is to game theory, and they say he s about as perfect as you get.
5
SPEAKER_00
I ve got a kid named Linus, Linus Love Online, Linus Lingard.
5
SPEAKER_00
So he just came second recently, I believe, in the huge Triton event.
5
SPEAKER_00
So he s primarily an online player.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, he s an online cash player for the most part, but he plays some live.
5
SPEAKER_00
And he s, again, and I respect the peers that I play with who say, yeah, he s tough as nails.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s another kid, too.
5
SPEAKER_00
Russian kid named Timofey Kuznetsov.
5
SPEAKER_00
And he plays all the games and he s well-respected in that regard.
5
SPEAKER_00
And same with a guy like Jungleman, Dan Cates, who s a unique personality.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, this guy showed up, won the Poker Players Championship back-to-back years in a Randy Macho Man Savage costume.
5
SPEAKER_00
And he was doing Macho Man the entire time.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, yeah, I m going to
5
SPEAKER_00
take all the chips like I did last year, bust them all.
5
SPEAKER_00
And he was in character for the entirety of the tournament.
5
SPEAKER_00
This is great.
5
SPEAKER_00
Just unique.
5
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, I respect for a lot of those guys.
5
SPEAKER_01
Is it gonna take time to figure out who stands the test of time?
5
SPEAKER_00
That s the thing, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
So a lot of these kids, like there was a guy who beat me heads up in the million dollar one drop.
5
SPEAKER_00
I got 8.7, he won $15 million, a kid named Dan Coleman.
5
SPEAKER_00
He was seen as like the next big thing in poker, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
He made his money.
5
SPEAKER_00
just wasn t for him.
5
SPEAKER_00
So he s moved on to doing what he s doing, skiing in the Alps, whatever.
5
SPEAKER_00
We have nobody seen him from like five, six years.
5
SPEAKER_00
So that can happen, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Because there is a lot of burnout.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think it was actually Gotham Chess who mentioned something about how difficult it is to like – I think it s true in poker.
5
SPEAKER_00
When you get really, really good at something,
5
SPEAKER_00
to get this much better takes so much work.
5
SPEAKER_00
And a lot of people don t necessarily want to put in that kind of work in order to do that.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s just even staying at the same level takes a huge amount of work.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, so if you want to get better at chess, you re already like really, really good.
5
SPEAKER_00
And you re trying to get like one little bit better.
5
SPEAKER_00
You have to study like,
5
SPEAKER_00
in a ridiculous amount.
5
SPEAKER_00
And again, once you ve already had, I think the toughest thing for anybody, once you ve tasted success and you ve already achieved it, staying hungry, staying on the top.
5
SPEAKER_00
Reaching the top is much easier than it is to stay there.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
Over years, what s your training regimen in poker in terms of
5
SPEAKER_01
how you keep improving.
5
SPEAKER_01
So you said you study games, but that s mostly leading up to a particular tournament.
5
SPEAKER_01
But is there kind of a behind the scenes daily activity you try to do that kind of over time keeps you sharp?
5
SPEAKER_00
So for me, now that I m 47, I feel like the predominant
5
SPEAKER_00
aspect of my poker game is going to be, in terms of my success, is gonna be my mental state, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
So I find it s really, really important for me, now at this age, to have balance.
5
SPEAKER_00
So when I m not playing poker, and I m out of it, poker s not even on my radar.
5
SPEAKER_01
You re able to remove it from your mind.
5
SPEAKER_00
Doing my fantasy hockey, play a little chess, play some golf, watch some hockey, whatever the case may be, outside of the game.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then I start to get the itch.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like after the World Series of Poker,
5
SPEAKER_00
the poker door was closed for all of August.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you took some time off.
5
SPEAKER_00
All of August, I didn t play any poker at all until just recently.
5
SPEAKER_00
I started to get the itch again, because that s what s important for me, is if I don t have the itch and I don t want to play poker, then I m not gonna be at my best.
5
SPEAKER_00
Once I start getting the itch, that s when I start to say, okay, let s start watching some of these streams, let s see what my opponents are up to lately, and let s look at some solvers and different things like that.
5
SPEAKER_01
And you re doing pretty good.
5
SPEAKER_01
You came back and doing pretty good.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so far.
5
SPEAKER_01
Do you like being in front of the camera?
5
SPEAKER_01
Through the hell of the World Series of Poker this year, you filmed every single day, you did a vlog.
5
SPEAKER_01
Does that energize you?
5
SPEAKER_01
Is that exhausting?
5
SPEAKER_01
Because it s really beneficial to a huge amount of people.
5
SPEAKER_01
It energizes the poker community, but do you see it as a service or do you purely just love it?
5
SPEAKER_00
I ve been comfortable on camera since I was a kid.
5
SPEAKER_00
When I was a kid, I wanted to be an actor, like really, really young.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it was always comfortable in that environment.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I think like that gives me a little bit of advantage sometimes too with these filmed events, because I m comfortable with a mic on and on camera with the lights.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I think a lot of people maybe aren t with the knowledge that other people are going to see what they re doing every day.
5
SPEAKER_00
So it s been so comfortable and easy for me as far as the World Series goes and the vlogs and all the shooting.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s kind of therapeutic for me.
5
SPEAKER_00
It is essentially my version of journaling, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
So there s a lot of value, I think, in like, at the end of the day, doing a brain dump, where you just write out and journal.
5
SPEAKER_00
But doing it on camera has a similar effect.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it also, you know, when you make a mistake on your own, you re held accountable to you.
5
SPEAKER_00
But when I have to explain it to others, like here s what I did,
5
SPEAKER_00
and this is the mistake I made or whatever the case may be, it actually, I think that helps me, you know?
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so you re held responsible by a larger audience.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think it s like, so like I said, listen, I m 47, my life is good, I don t have to be in this tournament.
5
SPEAKER_00
If I m over it, I can just dump my chips off and go home, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
But I can t when I m doing the vlog, like I have to actually answer to that, you know?
5
SPEAKER_00
Keeps me in line.
5
SPEAKER_01
How hard is it to win the main event of the World Series of Poker?
5
SPEAKER_00
The main event of the World Series of Poker is the hardest event to win simply because of the sheer size of it.
5
SPEAKER_00
You re talking 7,000, 8,000 players and a lot of landmines.
5
SPEAKER_00
Frankly,
5
SPEAKER_00
There are so many players that you ve not played with before, too.
5
SPEAKER_00
You play these high roller events, like these super ones, you get 30, 40 people.
5
SPEAKER_00
You know everybody, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
So you have an idea.
5
SPEAKER_00
You sit at the main event, you don t have any idea.
5
SPEAKER_00
This guy wearing a Philadelphia Eagles jersey and sunglasses and he just raised you being, I don t know this guy.
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t know what he s about.
5
SPEAKER_00
So there s a lot of like,
5
SPEAKER_00
It s grueling too.
5
SPEAKER_00
You re seven, eight days where you re in the blender, as you might say.
5
SPEAKER_01
So what s the structure?
5
SPEAKER_01
So it s $10,000 buy-in or something like that.
5
SPEAKER_01
And there s a bunch of tables and you just keep playing.
5
SPEAKER_01
When is it over for a single table?
5
SPEAKER_00
So the way that it works is this.
5
SPEAKER_00
So there s let s say 8,000 players and the way the main event works, unique to others, is there s various day ones you can play, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
So a day one, you re going to play from noon till like midnight, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
If you re still in, you bag up your chips and you ll come back for day two, okay?
5
SPEAKER_00
There s four different day ones, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Now they ll all combine essentially to play on a day two and at the end of the night, they redraw.
5
SPEAKER_00
the tables.
5
SPEAKER_00
So you don t just win your table.
5
SPEAKER_00
If players get knocked out, tables break, they continue to be replaced.
5
SPEAKER_00
So you start with 8,000, then after day one, you ve got 6,000.
5
SPEAKER_00
Then you do the same, you play like a 12-hour day and you slowly whittle down.
5
SPEAKER_00
Day three, day four, you re in the money and then you continue to progress.
5
SPEAKER_00
Then what they do now with the final table is they – because they were trying to do this for TV, these final tables can take
5
SPEAKER_00
you know, 12 hours to play.
5
SPEAKER_00
And what we were finding was, you know, you start the thing at 5 p.m.
5
SPEAKER_00
and it goes till 8 a.m.
5
SPEAKER_00
and like nobody s watching anymore, so they separate into three days now.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so you re talking now, it s like six, seven days to get to the final table and another three days to play it.
5
SPEAKER_00
So you re grinding for, you know, a week and a half.
5
SPEAKER_01
But most of the time, you re playing against people you ve never played against before.
5
SPEAKER_00
Especially early on, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then by the end, who knows?
5
SPEAKER_00
Rarely do you see, you see in the last hundred, you usually see some notable names.
5
SPEAKER_00
Then in the last 27, you might see one, maybe two.
5
SPEAKER_00
Final table, maybe one.
5
SPEAKER_00
But often it s gonna be some players you ve never heard of before.
5
SPEAKER_01
Is there strategies that maximize your likelihood of having a chance?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes, absolutely.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, I think the World Series of Poker main event is a unique animal in that, you know, like we talk about game theory and all that kind of stuff.
5
SPEAKER_00
If you re focused on that when you re playing, you re really not playing well, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
You need to just exploit, because you re gonna have a lot of people who see this as a bucket list item.
5
SPEAKER_00
You know, they just wanna play the main event in the World Series, and they might be scared, they might be nervous or whatever.
5
SPEAKER_00
You don t have to worry about being balanced, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, you know, I have to make sure that I m balanced.
5
SPEAKER_00
No, you don t.
5
SPEAKER_00
You re playing with this guy now for three hours, you might never see him again.
5
SPEAKER_00
So just make the play that makes sense for you, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
So yeah, I approach that event very differently than I would like playing against the high roller players that I play with.
5
SPEAKER_00
Does that mean more aggressive, essentially?
5
SPEAKER_00
Less, actually.
5
SPEAKER_00
So when you play against really good players, you have to take small plus EV scenarios where you push the envelope and you re playing really aggressive.
5
SPEAKER_00
You re bluffing off your stack.
6
SPEAKER_01
You got to do this.
6
SPEAKER_01
You got to focus a little bit more on being balanced because otherwise, you know, you re not going to beat these guys.
6
SPEAKER_01
Whereas if you re playing with amateurs and you re playing with regular players, for the most part, risking all your chips on a bluff, probably don t need to do that.
6
SPEAKER_01
You don t need to do that nearly as much.
6
SPEAKER_01
You can probably slowly but surely build your stack without taking, you know, those high-risk, high-variance situations because you ll find better situations.
6
SPEAKER_00
What mistakes do amateurs usually make in tournaments like that?
6
SPEAKER_00
Are they over bluffing?
6
SPEAKER_01
Well, I think amateurs generally, the biggest mistake they make is they think that pros are bluffing more than they are.
6
SPEAKER_01
So like a pro will bet all his chips on the end.
6
SPEAKER_01
They re like, ah, I don t know, maybe, you know, this Phil Ivey, maybe he s doing some crazy stuff.
6
SPEAKER_01
He s like, probably not.
6
SPEAKER_01
He s probably just got it, you know?
6
SPEAKER_00
And then they lose all their money by calling or going all in as well.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so the right thing is to be more patient.
6
SPEAKER_00
So amateur is too impatient or just bad reads.
6
SPEAKER_01
So all the amateurs are built different.
6
SPEAKER_01
Some of the amateurs are just too weak and passive.
6
SPEAKER_01
They re just waiting for the nuts, you know?
6
SPEAKER_01
And then, you know, the pros, everyone notices that.
6
SPEAKER_01
And then when they make their big hand, they don t get paid anyway.
6
SPEAKER_01
So in order to win the main event, I mean, you have to have some components of your game that are aggressive.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s very unlikely to expect to just get the cards the whole way and just always have the best hand.
6
SPEAKER_01
You re gonna have to find ways to win pots that, you know, where you don t have the best hand.
6
SPEAKER_00
How do you win the final table?
6
SPEAKER_01
The final table is unique now, especially because you re talking about the way that poker works in tournaments is that if there s seven people left and you have just, you know, you re very short on chips,
6
SPEAKER_01
But if one other player goes out, you just make like $300,000 for folding, like just for sitting out, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
The term for that that kids use is ICM, independent chip model, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
Where it talks about the value of each chip.
6
SPEAKER_01
Where what happens, what we see now is, let s say one guy has a big chip lead,
6
SPEAKER_01
There s another guy who s second in chips and there s a couple that are short.
6
SPEAKER_01
These guys in the middle, they just play super tight and they wait for the little guys to go while the big stack is just pounding them because he can afford to, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
He knows that people are handcuffed.
6
SPEAKER_01
Let s say I had 10 million in chips and you have 9 million in chips.
6
SPEAKER_01
These guys have little chips.
6
SPEAKER_01
If I go in on you, are you going to call me?
6
SPEAKER_01
and risk like, you know, guaranteed pay jumps of like moving up a few spots.
6
SPEAKER_01
So really the question comes down to like, are you the type of guy who just wants to inch up or are you gonna go for it?
6
SPEAKER_01
And you re gonna go for the win.
6
SPEAKER_01
I think ultimately there s some value in being the guy who says, you know, I don t care if I come seventh.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m not worried about going from seventh to fifth.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m here to win.
6
SPEAKER_00
And- So you re saying like the guys that win will often be the ones that call there.
6
SPEAKER_00
So like, they re not just bullying the small stacks.
6
SPEAKER_01
They re the ones that are willing to risk it, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
So there are some people who, you know, if there s five left.
6
SPEAKER_01
and they re third in chips and there s two guys very short and they ll have ace-king and someone moves.
6
SPEAKER_01
They ll just fold.
6
SPEAKER_01
They fold the hand because they want to wait for those two other players to get broke and that way they make actual money.
6
SPEAKER_01
I guess the thought process between winning first place and winning the most amount of money are different.
6
SPEAKER_01
They re conflicting, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
Because in order to like – if your focus is only on winning the tournament, you will make mistakes financially where you had guaranteed income for just folding, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
Let s say a guy has one chip left.
6
SPEAKER_01
You know, one chip and me and you have good chips and I go all in with you and I lose.
6
SPEAKER_01
Now that guy, you know, got the guaranteed, you know, he got the pay jump that I wouldn t have got.
6
SPEAKER_01
So there s some extremely stupid mistakes you can make from a financial perspective, but it s often at odds with, you know, giving yourself the best chance to actually come first.
6
SPEAKER_00
And in a tournament, especially the main event, especially the final table, it s all about coming in first.
6
SPEAKER_01
Well, I know because most of the people who make it, so like, you know, when you play these high rollers, these guys are accustomed to playing for $100,000.
6
SPEAKER_01
They re accustomed to this kind of money.
6
SPEAKER_01
So they re going to play, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
But you re talking about guys who bought into a $10,000 tournament, maybe never had $100K cash in their life.
6
SPEAKER_01
And now they re sitting there.
6
SPEAKER_01
And it s like 1,000,000 for fifth and 2,000,000 for fourth.
6
SPEAKER_01
So like, they don t wanna be fifth.
6
SPEAKER_01
They re just gonna sit there and go, ah, I don t wanna.
6
SPEAKER_01
So they ll be under more financial pressure because they re not like your typical high roller type player.
6
SPEAKER_00
Are you still able to find the guts to take big risks?
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, see, I m trying to win.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like, I think that gives me an advantage, frankly, where I might make decisions that are financially suboptimal,
6
SPEAKER_01
because I m trying to win, but there s also an inherent advantage to that.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like that, again, something I watched and learned from a guy like Michael Adamo, where he takes advantage of these people playing so passively in these spots where he s like, I don t, I m not trying to come, I m going to win.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m just going to bully, bulldoze you.
6
SPEAKER_01
Cause I m not worried about, you know, the small financial mistake of, you know, a pay jump.
6
SPEAKER_00
What advice could you give to beginning poker players?
6
SPEAKER_00
Actually, at every level, how to get better, how to improve, how to improve their game.
6
SPEAKER_00
Obviously, as you said, it s easiest to get better in the beginning, but what advice would you give how to get better?
6
SPEAKER_01
So one of the ways, I mean, I think way back to the how I started, right, and there s so many resources and tools available right now to analyze hands, but when you play, right, and you find yourself in a situation or a hand that you re not really sure about, not because you had aces and went all in and you lost, like that s not interesting, but an interesting situation where you re not sure what you did, jot the hand down, write it out,
6
SPEAKER_01
And then either A, use some of the tools, whether it s the solvers, if you re advanced enough, or ask your group, like have a couple of friends at your level and talk through the different decisions and start to learn that way, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
Because those mistakes that you make or those tough hands, that s where the real learning comes from.
6
SPEAKER_01
So basically, because you re gonna be in similar scenarios.
6
SPEAKER_01
In poker, you re rarely gonna have the identical situation, but you ll have situations that are similar.
6
SPEAKER_01
You raised with Ace King, someone 3-bet, and the guy goes all in.
6
SPEAKER_01
Okay, well, what do I do in that spot?
6
SPEAKER_01
You re going to have similar situations in the future as well.
6
SPEAKER_01
So figuring that out, the more you can do that, you chop away at different strategical mistakes you used to make that you no longer make.
6
SPEAKER_00
Are there resources like your master class is great?
6
SPEAKER_00
Are there books?
6
SPEAKER_01
So there was a guy named Michael Acevedo.
6
SPEAKER_01
This is again for a little bit more advanced players, but it s a book called Modern Poker Theory, I think it s called, which sort of explains game theory, right, to the novice, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
So it s a little bit – I think if you re new to poker, it s probably above
6
SPEAKER_01
the rim for you.
6
SPEAKER_01
But once you start to get a little better and you want to understand how to do it, it s probably a good resource for as far as books.
6
SPEAKER_01
And there s also like tons of people who stream poker, professional players.
6
SPEAKER_01
And then you can get in there and you get in on the chat and you start talking, you ask them and you see people, you know, explaining their thought process and things like that.
6
SPEAKER_01
There s so many free resources.
6
SPEAKER_01
And of course my masterclass, I think does a good job of sort of compartmentalizing like, you know, how to attack it on a deeper level.
6
SPEAKER_01
And we, you know, we get it.
6
SPEAKER_01
I try to get into what s funny when I did the masterclass,
6
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I asked them, I was like, well, you know, how high end do you want this in terms of poker?
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SPEAKER_01
And they re like, we want really, really high end.
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And I was like, oh, sure.
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Then I started to explain really, really high end.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m like, okay, well, maybe the one below that.
6
SPEAKER_01
Right?
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SPEAKER_01
So I try to explain really complex, you know, theory in a more palatable way, in English, if you will.
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SPEAKER_01
Because some of these kids, you hear them talk and you d be like,
6
SPEAKER_00
But you also, which is really nice, give example hands that really illustrate the point, which is really nice.
6
SPEAKER_00
You also wrote a book, I think 10 years ago, Power Hold em Strategy.
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SPEAKER_00
It s interesting to think how much of the stuff in that book still applies, how much doesn t.
6
SPEAKER_01
Listen, I still think the book holds up to a certain degree.
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SPEAKER_01
Obviously, like, you know, it isn t optimal because there s like a more advanced strategies.
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SPEAKER_01
And if you played that way, people will figure out a way to exploit you.
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SPEAKER_01
But if you re like an average player playing an average buy-ins, like that s sort of what I coined, like small ball approach, absolutely will work.
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SPEAKER_01
You know, at the highest level, you have to add much more, a lot more bluffing.
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SPEAKER_01
But overall, I think it s still, you know, for the most part, there s a lot of really, especially with tournaments, there s a lot of really good principles in the book.
6
SPEAKER_00
What s the difference in the dynamics, if you could just comment on, between heads-up poker and when multiple people are in one hand?
6
SPEAKER_00
What are interesting aspects to everything we ve been talking about, from game theory to exploitative strategies, all that kind of stuff?
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SPEAKER_01
So the biggest difference when you play let s say nine handed, you know, against eight other players and, you know, heads up is first of all just the type of hands and the number of hands you re going to have to play.
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SPEAKER_01
So the way that it works is if there s nine people, two out of the nine hands you have to put in money and the other seven you could just fold for nothing, okay?
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SPEAKER_01
When your head s up, you re forced to put money in every single hand, okay?
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SPEAKER_01
And there s only one other hand in front of you, which means the ranges of hands that you play is way wider, right?
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SPEAKER_01
So if you re nine handed, right, and you re in first position, you re like, all right, what do I need to play?
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SPEAKER_01
Like a good pair, you know, two high cards suited, a big ace, you know, stuff like that.
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SPEAKER_01
That s it, right?
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SPEAKER_01
That s what you re going to play, right?
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SPEAKER_01
and you re gonna fold all the rest.
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SPEAKER_01
When your head s up, you look at a king and a two, and you re like, well, I gotta play this.
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SPEAKER_01
You re forced to play a lot more hands in a lot more complex situations when you re playing heads up, because you re gonna be playing much far weaker hands.
6
SPEAKER_01
Queen five, jack three, all these types of hands, and you re gonna see flops where you re not gonna have the luxury of being like, I m in there with a premium hand.
6
SPEAKER_01
Queens, kings, aces, those are easier to play, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
Very, very strong holdings.
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SPEAKER_01
Heads up, you re forced to dance and fight a lot more.
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SPEAKER_01
You can t sit in the weeds and wait.
6
SPEAKER_01
What do you enjoy more?
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SPEAKER_01
Mm, heads up is very intense.
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SPEAKER_01
I like heads up, but I think if you had to play heads up eight, 10 hours, it s so mentally draining, because you re faced with so many constant decisions, each and every spot.
6
SPEAKER_01
You play nine handed, you look at a nine and a three, you throw it away, you hang out for a bit.
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SPEAKER_00
You get breaks.
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You relax, you go, you get a little break, and you play it.
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Heads up, you re like, it s like boom, boom.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s like you re in the ring.
6
SPEAKER_01
You re in the octagon, and you re facing haymakers nonstop.
6
SPEAKER_00
Since we talked about online a bit, is it possible to cheat in poker, especially online?
6
SPEAKER_00
We offline also talked about the cheating controversy that s going on in the chess world.
6
SPEAKER_00
Is it possible to use, what is it, remotely connected anal beads to somehow cheat?
6
SPEAKER_00
No.
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SPEAKER_00
Is there, is that a concern of cheating online?
6
SPEAKER_01
So here s the thing.
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SPEAKER_01
It s kind of like romanticized from the old days, like, you know, in the Western stuff, like people trying to cheat.
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SPEAKER_00
And have you ever killed a man because he cheated?
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SPEAKER_01
No, I have not.
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SPEAKER_01
But when I started out as a teenager, I played in a game with a bunch of Italians, and I knew they cheated.
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And I didn t care because they were so bad that I could win anyway.
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SPEAKER_01
I was like, I knew they would cheat, but I knew how they were cheating.
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SPEAKER_01
So I was like, all right, you guys suck.
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SPEAKER_01
So here s the thing.
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Anytime you re talking about
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large sums of money, there will be people looking to take advantage, whether that s live or online, right?
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SPEAKER_01
And so it s like the job essentially of the, you know, the online operators or the, you know, live event staff to police it the best they can and the players themselves being on the lookout for it, you know?
6
SPEAKER_01
Like a guy like Dole Brunson is a great resource because he s seen it all and he s seen all the tricks, you know, and so live, you know, he probably could spot a few things.
6
SPEAKER_01
But online, there s various ways people can try to cheat, but there s also really good
6
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security measures in place to catch them, you know?
6
SPEAKER_01
And we ve caught, you know, like about two years ago, there was a huge undertaking of like 500 accounts that were banned for doing different things.
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SPEAKER_01
And, you know, there s, and again, you can t go in, they can t go into detail in terms of how they re doing it, because otherwise, you know, then you re sort of giving the cheats the playbook in terms of how to take advantage.
6
SPEAKER_01
But it s always going to be a concern for poker wherever you play, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
But it s not something I m worried about personally.
6
SPEAKER_00
And by the way, online there s really interesting algorithms that do some of the work in an automated way to detect, to flag things that are weird.
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SPEAKER_00
But in person it s just not something at the highest level that you re super concerned about.
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SPEAKER_00
So it s not, it didn t quite infiltrate the poker world to a degree where it s a huge concern.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like, so here s the thing.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t play in private games and whatever, right?
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SPEAKER_01
But in private games, theoretically, you know, you could be in – if you don t trust the people you re playing with, like I ve heard stories of people where, you know, they have an earpiece in that you can t see, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
And they have, you know, like RFID on the cards or something like that and they have a phone reading it.
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SPEAKER_01
So they have somebody in a truck telling them, you re going to win this hand, you re going to lose this hand.
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SPEAKER_01
Like that happened in a private game.
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SPEAKER_01
And the guy, what s often funny about some of these people who cheat is they re so greedy and blatantly obvious that they get caught.
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SPEAKER_01
Where if they use this tool in a more subtle way, they could probably continue to get away with it.
6
SPEAKER_01
But again, that s not something I worry about in a casino environment, in these tournaments and things like that.
6
SPEAKER_01
But if I was playing in private games, like if I came down to Texas and some guy, I got cheated in a game by a guy named Blacky Blackburn and Tex.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s a red flag right there.
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SPEAKER_01
I was at the Chimo Hotel.
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I was a teenager and they saw me playing, you know, I was making good money as a teenager.
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SPEAKER_01
I had like a $13,000 bankroll, you know, and I went and played in this game with them in a private hotel room and found out later that the guy was a card mechanic.
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SPEAKER_01
You know, he was dealing and he could, you know, deal you the hands and he knew what you had and stuff like that.
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SPEAKER_01
So yeah, I remember, you know, I lost a big number in that game and it was a good learning lesson in terms of, you know, being wary of who you trust.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so if the dealer is in on it, that s one way you could cheat.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s fascinating.
6
SPEAKER_01
That s part of the reason that they cut.
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SPEAKER_01
So like, you ll see like, there s a burn card.
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SPEAKER_01
Because what would happen, you know, maybe in the old days is like, if you re sitting in the one seat, I could lift the card and you could see it, the next card coming, right?
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SPEAKER_01
So what they do is they have a card on top of it that you burn that isn t the card and then the next card is the one that comes face up.
6
SPEAKER_00
I just learned about the edge sorting thing that Phil Ivey, maybe others were involved with.
6
SPEAKER_00
I just, reading it at first was super interesting to me, that you can exploit the imperfections in the printing of cards.
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SPEAKER_00
That was almost cool to me.
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SPEAKER_00
That s almost not cheating, because it s like- That needs to be a movie.
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SPEAKER_00
That needs to be a movie.
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SPEAKER_00
Yes.
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SPEAKER_00
That s fascinating.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, what happened with Phil Ivey in that whole case is it s a catastrophe really.
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SPEAKER_01
It is such a horrible precedent because here s what he did.
6
SPEAKER_01
Phil Ivey shows up at the casino and says, I want to play this game.
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SPEAKER_01
They say, okay.
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SPEAKER_01
All right, I want to play with those dicks.
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SPEAKER_01
They say, okay.
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SPEAKER_01
They agree to everything that he says.
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SPEAKER_01
He never touches the cards.
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SPEAKER_01
He doesn t do anything outside of the fact that the cards that you supplied have imperfections on them and he can see them.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
Okay.
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SPEAKER_01
So that increases his chances of winning.
6
SPEAKER_01
He could still lose theoretically, right?
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SPEAKER_01
Probably not, but he s, he can lose in theory.
6
SPEAKER_01
It just gives him a little bit of an edge and it s all stuff based on what you provided.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
So the idea that you offered a game, I accepted, I beat you and now you want to free roll me.
6
SPEAKER_01
That s disgusting.
6
SPEAKER_00
So for people who don t know, maybe you can elaborate, and it s just fascinating to me, but you re exploiting the imperfections in the card patterns on the back, and then they look different if you rotate it.
6
SPEAKER_00
And the fascinating thing, too, when you shuffle, usually you don t rotate the cards, so that you can see the, sort of detect which cards are the strong cards by marking them through rotating them.
6
SPEAKER_00
And the way you know they re rotated is because of the,
6
SPEAKER_00
Pattern imperfections.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so some of the cards like you said like, you know, they had those like the that pattern on it Yeah, and some of them this was faulty cards on there.
6
SPEAKER_01
We re not cut properly Yeah, so like the eights and nines had the card cut differently and those are important cards in this game You know the eights and nines or whatever so you could essentially from looking at the back of the card discern
6
SPEAKER_01
you know, what it s gonna be.
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SPEAKER_01
You do nothing in terms of like cheating yourself.
6
SPEAKER_01
You re not rigging the game.
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SPEAKER_01
All you re doing is taking advantage of the fact that you re playing, you know, you ve offered me cards that are faulty.
6
SPEAKER_00
Can I just say that, of course, it would be Phil Ivey, who s the goat at the normal game who would be figuring out this particular thing.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, that s what, if you re into soccer, Diego Maradona has that famous hand of God in the World Cup.
6
SPEAKER_00
or he scores a goal with his hand.
6
SPEAKER_00
So of course the referee didn t see it, they thought it was a header.
6
SPEAKER_00
So I mean, part of the magic of the genius of the people at the top of the game is they re able to exploit all the flaws that are there.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s a beautiful thing to say.
6
SPEAKER_01
Well, see, Phil had, in his heyday, he had
6
SPEAKER_01
He exploited weaknesses in casinos, you know, systems all over the country.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like in one night – I don t know if you know this story.
6
SPEAKER_01
In one night, he would take a plane, a private plane and fly to 30 different casinos all over the country because he would have these deals where they re like, all right, we got this big rich
7
SPEAKER_00
sucker who s going to come here and play craps and he s going to lose all our money.
7
SPEAKER_00
So he d have this deal with one of the casinos where they d be like, all right, you get 20% back up to half a million, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
So if you lose half a million, we ll give you back 100K, okay?
7
SPEAKER_00
So he d go to one casino in Tunica, he d play half a million, win, win or lose,
7
SPEAKER_00
He would leave.
7
SPEAKER_00
They think they re going to get him to stay, they get him a big room, whatever.
7
SPEAKER_00
Let s say he goes to Tunica, he loses half a million.
7
SPEAKER_00
Now he flies to Atlantic City, he wins half a million.
7
SPEAKER_00
He lost half a million and won half a million, but he got 100,000 back.
7
SPEAKER_00
He s actually plus 100,000.
7
SPEAKER_00
Do that at 10 casinos a night, you re making a million dollars in free equity.
7
SPEAKER_00
They would give him promotional chips and all these kind of things and free flights and stuff like that.
7
SPEAKER_00
He took advantage of the image.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
you know, that they re trying to exploit.
7
SPEAKER_00
So this is why I don t have any empathy for these casinos, because they re giving you free drinks.
7
SPEAKER_00
They re giving you, why do you think they re doing that?
7
SPEAKER_00
Kind of the kindness of their heart?
7
SPEAKER_00
They re trying to exploit you.
7
SPEAKER_00
So guess what?
7
SPEAKER_00
You lost at your own game, pay the piper.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I think it was crazy because the judges in his case said, he did not cheat, but well, it s probably not right.
7
SPEAKER_00
Hold on.
7
SPEAKER_00
You just said he didn t cheat.
7
SPEAKER_00
You know, that, that should be the end of the case.
7
SPEAKER_01
And then the casinos do the funny thing.
7
SPEAKER_01
I mentioned to you, I was just at the UFC and Dana White is a huge gambler.
7
SPEAKER_01
He s a blackjack gambler.
7
SPEAKER_01
And there s that famous situation where you got kicked out of a casino and the casinos do that kind of thing when you win too much.
7
SPEAKER_01
So he won some ridiculous amount of money.
7
SPEAKER_01
He bets like, I mean, he plays like millions of dollars on hands of blackjack.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s insane.
7
SPEAKER_01
And so he won really big and he got kicked out.
7
SPEAKER_00
Was he counting?
7
SPEAKER_00
No, no, he wasn t counting.
7
SPEAKER_00
So counting in blackjack here in Las Vegas is like the only game where they actually can ask you not to play.
7
SPEAKER_00
So like basically if you re counting cards, right, you could potentially have an edge in blackjack and there are some professionals who do that.
7
SPEAKER_00
But they get caught pretty quickly and then they say you can play craps, you can play whatever you want, but you can t play blackjack here anymore.
7
SPEAKER_01
No, I don t think Dana White is counting.
7
SPEAKER_01
I think he was winning a lot.
7
SPEAKER_01
I guess they can claim that they believe you re counting, because how do you really know if you re counting?
7
SPEAKER_00
Well, they easily, they figure it out.
7
SPEAKER_00
So basically they have an eye in the sky and they can see.
7
SPEAKER_00
So if you re varying your bet size, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
So there s certain spots where based on the cards that are out, let s say for example, a lot of the twos, threes, and fours, and fives have been coming out.
7
SPEAKER_00
So the deck is rich in face cards.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s very good for the player, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
So imagine you were betting 500 bucks
7
SPEAKER_00
then all of a sudden you up your bet to 2,000 or 5,000 when the deck is rich.
7
SPEAKER_00
They know when the deck is rich in high cards because they keep a counter themselves.
7
SPEAKER_00
So if they notice a player increasing their bet sizes when the deck is good for them, it s a telltale sign.
7
SPEAKER_01
Interesting.
7
SPEAKER_01
I don t think Daniel White would be counting.
7
SPEAKER_01
Casinos don t kick you out if you – don t often kick you out.
7
SPEAKER_01
Do they ever kick you out if you make too much money?
7
SPEAKER_01
You re playing millions of dollars that they
7
SPEAKER_00
Unless they would never kick you out for making too much money, unless they suspect cheating, because why would they?
7
SPEAKER_00
They have an advantage.
7
SPEAKER_00
They want the money back.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s not like you go in there and win $10 million.
7
SPEAKER_00
You re like, oh, no, that s enough for us.
7
SPEAKER_01
What about if he was talking shit the whole time?
7
SPEAKER_01
I wonder.
7
SPEAKER_00
I don t think that would matter, you know what I mean?
7
SPEAKER_01
Because in the long run, they ll get the money back.
7
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
7
SPEAKER_01
You tweeted, if you watch Jersey Shore, Family Vacation, we would probably get along really well.
7
SPEAKER_01
What is it about, because I lived in Jersey for a while, what is it about Jersey Shore characters that you love?
7
SPEAKER_00
I just love that they re sort of, I love the debauchery.
7
SPEAKER_00
I think Pauly D s a fun guy, you know, and just like, it s just something like, it s just,
7
SPEAKER_00
It s what do you call it?
7
SPEAKER_00
It s trash TV, it s a guilty pleasure, but you can just watch Snooki get drunk and falling all over herself or whatever.
7
SPEAKER_01
Is that part, do you love that part of Vegas as well?
7
SPEAKER_00
Eh, not really, like I don t go out and stuff, but I kinda, I just like the characters.
7
SPEAKER_00
I like that they have, you know, unique personalities.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I think like we live in a world now where people are more and more careful of what they say and afraid of backlash and all that stuff.
7
SPEAKER_00
And it s kind of like an old school version of just like, say what you feel, it s okay, as long as your intent is good.
7
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, like they haven t been canceled, if you will, which is good, but I feel like their type of behavior
7
SPEAKER_00
slowly but surely – because they got a lot of flack originally for misrepresenting Italian-Americans or something like that.
7
SPEAKER_00
There was a lot of backlash about this isn t how Italian-Americans really are and blah, blah, blah.
7
SPEAKER_00
They were representing that group of people and they received some backlash back in the day.
7
SPEAKER_01
I m a huge supporter of diversity in all the beautiful forms that the human species is able to generate, and that s certainly one dimension.
7
SPEAKER_01
What s the greatest Vegas movie, would you say?
7
SPEAKER_01
I don t know if that s a difficult question.
7
SPEAKER_01
Not really.
7
SPEAKER_01
Fear of Loathing in Las Vegas, Leaving Las Vegas.
7
SPEAKER_00
Casino, baby.
7
SPEAKER_01
Casino.
7
SPEAKER_00
I watch, because anytime Casino s on randomly, I always watch it.
7
SPEAKER_01
Such a great movie.
7
SPEAKER_01
It could be one of the, Sharon Stone.
7
SPEAKER_00
Frankly, Sharon Stone reminded me, every time I would watch the movie, it reminded me of my wife, Amanda.
7
SPEAKER_00
Like totally, I would see like the character and I was like, I m the Robert De Niro character in the film.
7
SPEAKER_00
I used to watch it through that lens, you know.
7
SPEAKER_01
From like the depth of love that you have?
7
SPEAKER_00
Just kind of, she was, I remember that she was like, she was like, she lit up every room.
7
SPEAKER_00
She does light up every room when she goes there.
7
SPEAKER_00
Everybody s attracted and drawn to her.
7
SPEAKER_00
And she was kind of, when she was younger, she was a little wild and crazy and whatnot.
7
SPEAKER_00
So she reminded me of the Sharon Stone character.
7
SPEAKER_00
And then the Robert De Niro character is trying to like,
7
SPEAKER_00
to have a stable life, you know, and be that.
7
SPEAKER_00
That was me.
7
SPEAKER_01
Who was the Joe Pesci in your life?
7
SPEAKER_00
Well, there was a guy named, there was a James Woods, for sure, who was the Lester.
7
SPEAKER_00
We called him, we actually called him Lester.
7
SPEAKER_00
A few of my friends call him Lester.
7
SPEAKER_00
You know, the greasy guy who tried to get back in and all that.
7
SPEAKER_00
But yeah.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, one of my favorite scenes is when they meet out in the desert.
7
SPEAKER_01
And it s like a 50-50 odds if you re gonna make it out alive in that.
7
SPEAKER_01
I mean, yeah, there s an epicness to that portrayal of Vegas.
7
SPEAKER_00
I love – I mean it s just totally – I mean it s obviously more corporate now and it s different.
7
SPEAKER_00
But I love those movies.
7
SPEAKER_00
I love all those movies, just seeing that life.
7
SPEAKER_00
And like I said, if there was a period in time that I could go back to and just experience it, it would be right around then.
7
SPEAKER_00
That would be that.
7
SPEAKER_00
Playing with a mob.
7
SPEAKER_00
I think of like these crime shows today, like they re so unrealistic now because
7
SPEAKER_00
If they re in an era that is now, none of this stuff can happen, because there s cameras everywhere.
7
SPEAKER_00
You can t get away with these killing somebody and jumping in a car, and you re going to get caught.
7
SPEAKER_00
But in the 70s, that stuff happened.
7
SPEAKER_01
Across the line, you die.
7
SPEAKER_00
Lake Mead is recently losing water, and every couple of days, they re finding more and more bodies from that era.
7
SPEAKER_01
Oh, no.
7
SPEAKER_00
They really are.
7
SPEAKER_01
You re close with your mom.
7
SPEAKER_00
What did you learn about life from your mom?
7
SPEAKER_00
My mother was very generous.
7
SPEAKER_00
My mother, she experienced joy through giving people food for the most part.
7
SPEAKER_00
My dad would get him drinks and that was how she felt fulfilled, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
She felt good when she like would cook for you and like she d be that person you d come over and she d be like, are you hungry?
7
SPEAKER_00
And you say, no, no, no, I m okay.
7
SPEAKER_00
She s gonna put 15 things in front of you, and you ll eat.
7
SPEAKER_00
You re gonna eat.
7
SPEAKER_00
Because everyone does that, to be polite.
7
SPEAKER_00
No, no, I m good.
7
SPEAKER_00
But they will start to eat.
7
SPEAKER_00
And just her hospitality in that regard, and just being generous, and being a good host to people, and things like that.
7
SPEAKER_01
How did that help define who you are as a person, that generosity?
7
SPEAKER_01
Did it rub off on you?
7
SPEAKER_00
It made me think about, in my life,
7
SPEAKER_00
when it comes to like any sort of business deals or things like that, I don t want to get the best of it in such a way where I screw the other person.
7
SPEAKER_00
I genuinely don t.
7
SPEAKER_00
I d much rather you owe me than me owe you.
7
SPEAKER_00
So if I hire people, they get paid more than they re supposed to and I d rather them do that and work towards it rather than feel underpaid because if they re underpaid, they ll likely under deliver.
7
SPEAKER_00
Whereas if they feel overpaid,
7
SPEAKER_00
Then if I need them to do something special, they re not gonna be like, hey, I don t get paid for that.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s like, yeah, you do.
7
SPEAKER_00
You really do.
7
SPEAKER_00
So that s certainly like played out in my life where I set it up in such a way where I don t owe, you know, I m owed, but that s okay.
7
SPEAKER_00
Cause I can handle taking the worst of it in spots.
7
SPEAKER_00
I don t like being the person to, you know, feel like I m indebted to others.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and in some way the karma of that tends to pay dividends in the long term somehow.
7
SPEAKER_01
Somehow there s somebody up there that s keeping track in some kind of way.
7
SPEAKER_01
What advice would you give to young people today in high school and college?
7
SPEAKER_01
How to have a career they can be proud of or maybe how to have a life in general they can be proud of?
7
SPEAKER_00
I would say like your 20s is a good opportunity to set yourself up for the rest of your life, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
So while the 20s are a period where you want to have fun and you want to experience youth.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s also a good opportunity to start thinking about what do you want your life to look like in your 30s and your 40s, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
I feel like it s the best time to really put yourself out there and take risks and try to hit it, whatever, to work really, really hard to set yourself up.
7
SPEAKER_00
I said this at an event I was speaking at.
7
SPEAKER_00
With poker, when your bankroll is very, very small, it s replenishable, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
You don t need to protect it as much as you do once you ve got something, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
Once you have a brand or you have money or you have something like that, that s when you want to start protecting it.
7
SPEAKER_00
But in your 20s is an opportunity to just really sort of…
7
SPEAKER_00
to work really, really hard to set yourself up for the future.
7
SPEAKER_00
I am concerned a little bit, like every time I talk to kids today, I m like, what do you wanna be?
7
SPEAKER_00
They all wanna be YouTubers or Instagram stars or rappers, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
Like, okay, that s cool, but there s only so many of those that there can be.
7
SPEAKER_00
So it might be worthwhile having a little bit of a backup plan.
7
SPEAKER_01
I think it s easier to be successful on Instagram and social media if you do something else.
7
SPEAKER_00
I would say this too.
7
SPEAKER_00
One other thing I would say is,
7
SPEAKER_00
Don t choose a profession or an idea because you think it ll make you rich, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
Pursue something that you actually love.
7
SPEAKER_00
Because if you love it, you re way more likely to become rich.
7
SPEAKER_00
If you don t, you do something that you don t actually enjoy, now you re spending a lot of your life unhappy, doing something you don t want, and if you re not passionate about it, the chances of you being successful are much lower.
7
SPEAKER_01
And also becoming rich, and I ve talked to a lot of rich people, hang out with a lot of rich people, is not going to be as fulfilling as you imagine.
7
SPEAKER_01
if you arrive there by not doing the thing that you love doing.
7
SPEAKER_01
Ultimately, the thing that you love doing is like, that s what makes life worth living.
7
SPEAKER_00
There s another quote, and I can t remember who it was, otherwise I would quote them, but it says something to the effect of like, if we believe in the lie that more is always better, then we can never truly arrive.
7
SPEAKER_00
Because wherever we are, more is better, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
I ve never understood, and I ve been around rich people, like, you know, you said, you know, I never got, I can t, I don t get it.
7
SPEAKER_00
Like, if you have a billion dollars, why do you give a shit about money at all?
7
SPEAKER_00
Like, and they re still like, oh, we made this deal, and I m like, you know, we picked up 300, who cares?
7
SPEAKER_00
Like, your life is set.
7
SPEAKER_00
Like, there is that bell curve, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
Where obviously being in poverty, you know, there s obviously a high rate of unhappiness, but there s a certain amount of money where you reach,
7
SPEAKER_00
You know we reach level happiness and then too much you find the people that are searching for money to fill these holes it starts to go back down again.
7
SPEAKER_01
What is the getting more money could become a game like a sport that s fun to play as long as you.
7
SPEAKER_01
directly or indirectly acknowledge that what you love is the game of it versus the actual attainment of money.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I think that s what it is, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
For me, I ve never cared about money that much.
7
SPEAKER_00
I just never did.
7
SPEAKER_00
Otherwise, I would have a lot more of it.
7
SPEAKER_00
But it s always been strange to me how people that have that kind of money like
7
SPEAKER_00
are cheap in any way, you know?
7
SPEAKER_00
Like they wouldn t donate $5,000 to a worthwhile charity because it s like, buddy, this – like when it changes your life, not – even like small things like taxes.
7
SPEAKER_00
Like, okay, you have $20 billion and you re worried about paying 33%, 30% to 31%.
7
SPEAKER_00
I get it, I get the point of it all, but it literally has no effect on your life whatsoever.
7
SPEAKER_00
Your life is unchanged, whether it s 31 or 33.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s the negative of a lot of money is if it corrupts the way you see the world, you start to be protective and so on.
7
SPEAKER_01
I mean, part of the challenge of when you get a lot of money is people start to treat you differently, and so navigating that correctly is very challenging, so don t change.
7
SPEAKER_01
Remain the same person you always were, because if you change, you start to, I mean, that s why power corrupts is you get a lot of power, you get a lot of fame, you get a lot of money, you start to distrust people, you start to push away people that are actually really close to you.
7
SPEAKER_00
You develop some biases where you think like you re just this, you know, you think like,
7
SPEAKER_00
It was all you and you re a genius and you re so great and all these other people who don t have, it s just because they don t have what you have.
7
SPEAKER_00
Then you start to view that group of people, whether they re impoverished or whatever, as less than and that you re some great guru where you could have just got lucky and bought bitcoins, could have done anything and then you became super wealthy.
7
SPEAKER_00
Then you have this Dunning-Kruger effect.
7
SPEAKER_00
where you think you know everything about everything.
7
SPEAKER_00
And a lot of poker people have that.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I, listen, I m probably guilty in some ways too, you know, thinking because you can figure out poker and be, you know, great at that, that you could figure out anything.
7
SPEAKER_00
So there s like, it s true, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
I mean, we sort of, we genuinely feel like people that reach the highest levels of poker feel like they are intelligent.
7
SPEAKER_00
So they will look at problem solving and think that they have answers.
7
SPEAKER_01
Well, you have to remind yourself that you re not.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s best to see the world as you did just get lucky, or at least from my perspective, that you re not better than anybody.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I don t think there s anything wrong with acknowledging that you worked hard to get where you were.
7
SPEAKER_00
There isn t.
7
SPEAKER_00
But at the same time, it s not available to everybody in the same way.
7
SPEAKER_00
Right time, right place.
7
SPEAKER_00
For me, my poker career could have gone very differently.
7
SPEAKER_00
If things didn t work out, if I had some bad luck in the wrong times, who knows where I d be.
7
SPEAKER_01
You said your brain crawl is pretty small in your 20s.
7
SPEAKER_01
I m sure you ve been around a lot of people you care a lot about who ve lost everything in poker.
7
SPEAKER_01
What s that like?
7
SPEAKER_01
What s those low points of losing everything?
7
SPEAKER_00
I think because I ve been there, I have more empathy than I probably should for those people that really feel for them because I remember being in Vegas and being totally broke and like a guy loaning me $400 and me like turning that $400 into $20,000, $400 and I was like eternally grateful of that.
7
SPEAKER_00
So when I have friends who go through that, like I always try to consult them obviously
7
SPEAKER_00
but they really need his money for the most part.
7
SPEAKER_00
But I remember saying no to one friend because he didn t have a plan.
7
SPEAKER_00
So I like to try to help them in that regard.
7
SPEAKER_00
Like my buddy s like, can you stake me in this game?
7
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, all right, well, how much do you, then I was like, let s break down the math, bro.
7
SPEAKER_00
You want me to stake you?
7
SPEAKER_00
So you get 50% of the profit, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
So I said, how much do you think you can make in this game?
7
SPEAKER_00
How much is the biggest, biggest winners make?
7
SPEAKER_00
He s like, well, I can probably, you know, I probably do like 20,000 a month.
7
SPEAKER_00
in this game, it s okay.
7
SPEAKER_00
So you get half of that, cause I get 10, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
What is your monthly nut?
7
SPEAKER_00
How much are you spending?
7
SPEAKER_00
It s like, well, I m renting this thing for 8,000.
7
SPEAKER_00
You re spending 17,000 a month.
7
SPEAKER_00
So like, no matter what, you re set up to fail.
7
SPEAKER_00
Like this isn t gonna work.
7
SPEAKER_00
So I actually didn t give him the money.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, what you need to do to earn more money is lower your monthly nut, because it s too high.
7
SPEAKER_00
It just, you know, it just doesn t mathematically add up.
7
SPEAKER_00
So trying to set them right in that regard is something that like,
7
SPEAKER_00
I feel obliged to do, especially if they re friends.
7
SPEAKER_01
But what about the mental aspect of the struggle they re going through, the struggle you were going through?
7
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s really rough to have no money.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s not for everybody.
7
SPEAKER_00
This really isn t.
7
SPEAKER_00
A lot of people might listen to this and think like, oh, I wanna play poker.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s like most people fail.
7
SPEAKER_00
Most people who want to play in the NFL, they spend their college years, most of them are not going to make it.
7
SPEAKER_00
Most of you who try to play poker professionally are going to fail, and you re going to experience despair.
7
SPEAKER_00
There are those, like in anything, that have the passion, have the know-how, have the luck, and all that sort of stuff, and it all pans out.
7
SPEAKER_00
But they re the minority.
7
SPEAKER_01
And so for the low points, if you remember, what does it take to sort of overcome that, overcome the mental struggle?
7
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you re making it sound like certain people are just genetically able to and certain aren t.
7
SPEAKER_00
I do think some people are more apt to being able to deal with adversity and having resilience and some people just can t hack it.
7
SPEAKER_00
But generally what I would advise people that are, let s say a guy s playing really high stakes or whatever, doing badly is,
7
SPEAKER_00
Step number one is take a little bit of a break here.
7
SPEAKER_00
Let s recalibrate and let s start small again.
7
SPEAKER_00
Let s restart and let s play smaller stakes and let s get our confidence back because in poker, without confidence, you cannot be successful.
7
SPEAKER_00
It is incredibly important to have almost an inflated level of confidence in yourself because you re up against it, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
As I said, the majority of people fail.
7
SPEAKER_00
Why are you special?
7
SPEAKER_00
Why are you different?
7
SPEAKER_00
You have to be pretty confident about yourself to think that you are one of the chosen ones.
7
SPEAKER_01
And then don t resist the despair and take a nap.
7
SPEAKER_01
Definitely take a nap.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s a, listen, it s okay to experience it, like I said.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you re gonna experience despair.
8
SPEAKER_01
What else, what should you be feeling?
8
SPEAKER_01
You know, if things are going poorly and you just lost all your money.
8
SPEAKER_01
Excited?
8
SPEAKER_01
Maybe like, okay, have your moment of grief.
8
SPEAKER_01
Allow yourself to experience it so that you can, you know, reassemble.
8
SPEAKER_00
There s a fundamental way in which you haven t really lived life if you haven t experienced periods of despair.
8
SPEAKER_01
you have a jaded view of the world, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
Weird thing about the human condition that both the highs and the lows are important.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
What role does love play in the human condition, Daniel Negreanu?
8
SPEAKER_01
That s a good one.
8
SPEAKER_00
What role has love played in your life?
8
SPEAKER_01
It s yeah, that s, you know, you sort of talked about the ups and downs of, uh,
8
SPEAKER_01
of the human condition and love has been that for me, right?
8
SPEAKER_01
Like I m in a good place now, but even with my now wife, years ago, she was young, she was new to poker and she wasn t ready to settle down.
8
SPEAKER_01
I was like, when I met her, I think I was 31, she was 21.
8
SPEAKER_01
And I was ready to like lock her up, if you will, you know, let s do this.
8
SPEAKER_01
And I bought a ring way back when she was like, not about that.
8
SPEAKER_01
She was living the Hollywood life.
8
SPEAKER_01
She was living, you know, partying in LA, doing that kind of stuff and wasn t ready.
8
SPEAKER_01
And we split.
8
SPEAKER_01
And that one hit me hard.
8
SPEAKER_01
So I didn t realize how much of a hit that had on my confidence in my, in everything really, in poker, with other women.
8
SPEAKER_01
It had me a little jaded about women too, you know, resentful, you know, and it took a lot of like self-reflection.
8
SPEAKER_01
I did like a lot of personal growth work and workshops and things like that.
8
SPEAKER_01
And then didn t see her for years.
8
SPEAKER_01
And she came back to town.
8
SPEAKER_01
I was a much different person.
8
SPEAKER_01
It was just, you know, four years ago or something like that.
8
SPEAKER_01
And she was too, went to dinner.
8
SPEAKER_01
A few months later, we were married.
8
SPEAKER_01
It worked out so different because we both had to grow and become different people.
8
SPEAKER_00
And that love was still there somehow.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like she went through her relationships, I went through mine, we experienced life and I was married once before too, called my starter marriage, if you will.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
You don t know.
8
SPEAKER_01
I think until you do it, until you get married and experience the sacrifice, not necessarily the sacrifices, but your value systems, if they don t align identically, which they re not going to, someone like me, probably one of my strengths in poker, but my weaknesses in relationship is judgment.
8
SPEAKER_01
When I play poker, I need to judge you.
8
SPEAKER_01
That s essentially what I m doing.
8
SPEAKER_01
I m gauging who you are and what you re good at and what you re bad at.
8
SPEAKER_01
That can have repercussions because that s the lens I look at everyone with based on how you live your life.
8
SPEAKER_01
I m judging you.
8
SPEAKER_01
This guy s this, this guy s that, this guy s that.
8
SPEAKER_01
That s not healthy.
8
SPEAKER_00
You have to shut that off in a personal relationship.
8
SPEAKER_01
I finally realized what love is, frankly, for me.
8
SPEAKER_01
with her is no judgment, right?
8
SPEAKER_01
She s so like, yeah, so I have my way of being right.
8
SPEAKER_01
If she wants to have cereal for dinner.
8
SPEAKER_01
Hey, that s the best decision for her.
8
SPEAKER_01
I was living in a framework of better and worse.
8
SPEAKER_01
The way that I do things is better and yours is worse.
8
SPEAKER_01
Do things more like I do.
8
SPEAKER_01
That s a recipe for disaster.
8
SPEAKER_01
True acceptance and true love is accepting someone exactly as they are.
8
SPEAKER_01
If she wants to do something different, I m gonna support her, whatever it is.
8
SPEAKER_01
Even if I disagree with it personally and the way that I would do things, learning to just realize that she s had a different journey and a different walk towards where she s at than I have.
8
SPEAKER_01
I can t pass my judgments on other people like that.
8
SPEAKER_00
I believe it is ethically wrong and probably illegal to eat cereal for dinner.
8
SPEAKER_01
Listen, if she wants it, she wants it.
8
SPEAKER_00
Acceptance.
8
SPEAKER_01
Like when she goes to bed, like all these little things about my regimented life, she s not.
8
SPEAKER_01
Like our motto at our wedding was like, you keep me wild, I ll keep you safe, you keep me wild.
8
SPEAKER_01
I keep her safe, she keeps me wild.
8
SPEAKER_01
She s like not organized and anal and all those kind of things, I am.
8
SPEAKER_01
She helps me like,
8
SPEAKER_01
let loose, you know, oh no, I m eating this, this.
8
SPEAKER_01
She s like, have some popcorn.
8
SPEAKER_01
I m like, all right, let s do it, you know?
8
SPEAKER_00
She keeps me freed.
8
SPEAKER_00
And accepting that, embracing that, the differences, the chaos of it.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s what makes it fun.
8
SPEAKER_01
Like I literally do think about with her, how important it is and how much I try to like,
8
SPEAKER_01
just come from neutral and like compassion and never judge.
8
SPEAKER_01
Cause she s got other things that she deals with.
8
SPEAKER_01
Right.
8
SPEAKER_01
That I don t, she s bipolar.
8
SPEAKER_01
Right.
8
SPEAKER_01
So with that, I ve studied and I ve learned a lot about, you know, sort of mental health and what that means and, um, ways in which.
8
SPEAKER_01
a lot of characteristics about somebody is completely out of their control when they re bipolar, right?
8
SPEAKER_01
And there s swings, like there s no cocktail for bipolar that solves the issue, right?
8
SPEAKER_01
So there s medications that work to level you out for periods of time, but then they start to fade and they don t work as well.
8
SPEAKER_01
So they constantly need readjustment.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s an unsolved mystery to a certain degree.
8
SPEAKER_01
So in some sense, her diagnosis made our relationship easier
8
SPEAKER_01
because I don t take anything personal, right?
8
SPEAKER_01
I realize that sometimes she s gonna be in a mood.
8
SPEAKER_01
She s so good about communicating it, though.
8
SPEAKER_01
She tells me, some morning she ll be like, bad mood, trying to get out of it, babe.
8
SPEAKER_01
I m like, okay.
8
SPEAKER_01
I leave her alone.
8
SPEAKER_00
Well, that s great.
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, she s grown to be able to communicate, to understand, to self-reflect, to understand where she is.
8
SPEAKER_00
I have people in my life who I love who are bipolar.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s a beautiful ride.
8
SPEAKER_01
It is, right?
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, the highs and the lows are there.
8
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, because I feel like a protector.
8
SPEAKER_01
For me, I just wanna be a rock, right?
8
SPEAKER_01
And that s part of the whole cereal thing.
8
SPEAKER_01
If she wants to eat cereal, don t make a rung for anything she wants to do.
8
SPEAKER_00
What have you learned from life from the song The Gambler by Kenny Rogers?
8
SPEAKER_00
You gotta know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, know when to run.
8
SPEAKER_00
You never count your money when you re sitting at the table.
8
SPEAKER_00
There ll be plenty of time for counting when the dealing s done.
8
SPEAKER_00
Do you live by those words?
8
SPEAKER_01
The first part of it, for sure.
8
SPEAKER_00
What do they even mean?
8
SPEAKER_01
You got to know when to hold, know when.
8
SPEAKER_01
So basically it s like, all right, you know, in life, like, you know, let s say, let s use a whatever, the market, for example.
8
SPEAKER_01
You bought a stock, right?
8
SPEAKER_01
Or you bought Bitcoin and you re like, it s gonna go to the moon, right?
8
SPEAKER_01
It s like, okay, well, maybe things have changed.
8
SPEAKER_01
New scenario, new circumstances, new situation.
8
SPEAKER_01
Are you going down with the ship, right?
8
SPEAKER_01
Or are you gonna lay the hand down?
8
SPEAKER_01
Are you gonna fold it?
8
SPEAKER_01
Whether it s a relationship, you know, you re with this woman, you re like, all right,
8
SPEAKER_01
I think it s time to fold this one.
8
SPEAKER_01
I don t think that we re gonna be able to make this hand work right now.
8
SPEAKER_00
When to fold them and when to run.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, when to run.
8
SPEAKER_00
Every gambler knows that the secret to surviving is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep, because every hand s a winner and every hand s a loser.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s like a stoic philosophy.
8
SPEAKER_00
And the best thing you can hope for is to die in your sleep.
8
SPEAKER_00
Every hand s a winner and every hand s a loser.
8
SPEAKER_00
What does that mean?
8
SPEAKER_01
I like that one.
8
SPEAKER_01
I like, for me, that s like the difference between victim and responsible, like the way that I think about it, right?
8
SPEAKER_01
You can be a victim to circumstance, or you can be responsible for everything in your life, right?
8
SPEAKER_01
So when an event happens, the event itself is neither good or bad until you assign it value.
8
SPEAKER_01
Right, so like an event happens and can be traumatic, it can be painful, but how you respond to it is ultimately gonna be up to you.
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Like you actually do have a choice.
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And that s the thing you can control.
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The fact that you, Daniel Negreanu, took my commentary about the gambler seriously shows once more that you re a beautiful human being.
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Thank you so much for being who you are, for inspiring millions of people about poker, about how to live life, and thank you for giving me your valuable time today.
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This is amazing.
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Thanks for talking.
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It was great to have the conversation.
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Thanks for listening to this conversation with Daniel Negrano.
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To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
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And now, let me leave you with some words from Doyle Brunson.
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Poker is war.
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People pretend it is a game.
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Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.