Daniel Negreanu: Poker | Lex Fridman Podcast #324

00:00:00.000 | You could be the seventh best player in the whole world,

00:00:02.200 | like literally seventh best player.

00:00:03.920 | But if you're playing with the other six,

00:00:06.480 | you're the sucker.

00:00:07.960 | You are the worst player in the game, right?

00:00:10.840 | So like there's a lot of players,

00:00:12.840 | for example, like the Dan Blazarian's of the world, right?

00:00:15.440 | He's not a top level player,

00:00:17.600 | like these guys you see on TV,

00:00:19.520 | but he probably makes more money than they do

00:00:21.640 | because he plays with people

00:00:23.040 | that are far below his skill level.

00:00:24.680 | So part of the skill of being a poker player

00:00:27.240 | is finding situations where you're profitable,

00:00:30.600 | regardless of your skill level.

00:00:32.200 | The following is a conversation with Daniel Negrano,

00:00:37.600 | one of the greatest poker players of all time.

00:00:40.520 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.

00:00:42.440 | To support it,

00:00:43.320 | please check out our sponsors in the description.

00:00:45.720 | And now, dear friends, here's Daniel Negrano.

00:00:49.280 | Everything everyone does at the poker table

00:00:52.080 | conveys information.

00:00:53.240 | So let me ask sort of the big overview question.

00:00:56.440 | What are the various sources of information

00:00:58.920 | that you project and others project at the table

00:01:02.240 | that convey information?

00:01:03.960 | - Well, there's several different things.

00:01:05.160 | There's the ones that are conscious

00:01:06.520 | and then there's the ones that are subconscious, right?

00:01:08.640 | Like on the conscious level,

00:01:09.840 | it might be something someone says, right?

00:01:11.920 | You know, you ask them a question and they say,

00:01:13.720 | oh, you know, you shouldn't call me here, you should.

00:01:15.920 | So there's the verbal tells.

00:01:17.400 | There's also the more, you know, subconscious stuff,

00:01:20.120 | body posture, right?

00:01:21.800 | The eyes, the throat, the pulse,

00:01:24.760 | various things that are, you know, less controllable.

00:01:27.840 | I find I use a combination of both

00:01:29.960 | to try to gain information.

00:01:31.520 | But generally, when I have somebody more comfortable,

00:01:34.800 | they give off more.

00:01:36.320 | Like everyone has a different approach.

00:01:37.640 | Phil Ivey likes to intimidate.

00:01:39.480 | I go the other way.

00:01:40.360 | I want my opponents to be relaxed

00:01:42.640 | so that they'll give me more in that regard.

00:01:44.520 | - So Phil Ivey likes to perturb the system,

00:01:47.200 | like mess with it to see what comes out?

00:01:50.400 | - I think Phil has an aura about him

00:01:52.400 | where he wants you to know

00:01:54.200 | that he's watching you.

00:01:55.800 | Be afraid, be uncomfortable

00:01:58.000 | because when you're uncomfortable, I got you, right?

00:02:00.720 | And that's sort of his shtick where he, you know,

00:02:03.080 | and people do.

00:02:03.920 | Like when you sit at a table with Phil Ivey,

00:02:05.400 | it's intimidating.

00:02:06.480 | - He likes to rule by fear

00:02:07.720 | and you like to rule by, what is it, love?

00:02:10.000 | - That's a really good way to put it.

00:02:11.160 | I never put it like that, but it makes a lot of sense.

00:02:13.600 | Yeah, you know, fear Phil Ivey.

00:02:15.480 | And then with me, it's fine, don't worry.

00:02:17.200 | I'll take your money, but you're gonna enjoy it.

00:02:18.880 | It's great.

00:02:19.760 | - So that's what the talking at the table is about

00:02:21.760 | is getting to be relaxed

00:02:23.560 | and get some of that gray area

00:02:26.760 | between the conscious and the subconscious

00:02:28.360 | to reveal something.

00:02:29.680 | - There's that too.

00:02:30.520 | And also just, you know,

00:02:31.360 | and this is just part of who I am anyway.

00:02:32.640 | Like I like to talk to people,

00:02:34.040 | but one of the byproducts is the more I know about you,

00:02:36.520 | the more I likely know about how you think

00:02:38.240 | about different situations, right?

00:02:39.680 | So what do you do for a living?

00:02:40.520 | Oh, I'm a lawyer.

00:02:41.640 | I defend criminals.

00:02:42.920 | Okay, so this guy probably spends a lot of his time

00:02:45.480 | twisting the truth.

00:02:46.880 | He's trying to find, you know,

00:02:47.800 | and then, so then, you know,

00:02:48.840 | you already have a mindset of like,

00:02:50.520 | this guy might be more likely to bluff

00:02:52.040 | or he's probably comfortable doing that.

00:02:53.600 | Very subtle things like that.

00:02:55.280 | - And you start to pick up cues

00:02:57.880 | on what nervousness looks like for this person,

00:03:01.320 | what the nervousness communicates,

00:03:02.800 | all that kind of stuff.

00:03:03.640 | So we're talking about physical tells here.

00:03:05.600 | - Yeah, physical tells is a secondary thing.

00:03:07.440 | I was more specific, like player profiling, right?

00:03:10.520 | And sort of understanding the type of mind

00:03:12.160 | that I'm dealing with, right?

00:03:14.280 | So again, somebody who's a lawyer is used to trying,

00:03:17.920 | is fine with being deceptive as part of a game, right?

00:03:21.440 | Whereas maybe somebody is a Sunday school teacher

00:03:23.800 | and, you know, they don't feel comfortable.

00:03:25.800 | Maybe they think bluffing might be dishonest, right?

00:03:28.560 | So they're less likely to try some shenanigans against you.

00:03:31.560 | So, and then the other thing too is

00:03:33.360 | what type of person is this in terms of their,

00:03:36.600 | you know, like view on life, right?

00:03:40.040 | Are they positive?

00:03:40.880 | Do they feel like things go their way or they're not, right?

00:03:44.040 | There's those people that always,

00:03:45.200 | well, of course I lost.

00:03:46.400 | I always lose with this hand.

00:03:47.960 | And those types of people you can manipulate

00:03:50.200 | because when a card comes that you don't have them beat,

00:03:54.280 | right, but you can pretend 'cause they'll believe it.

00:03:56.520 | They're like, of course you beat me.

00:03:57.580 | So you bet all your chips against them,

00:03:59.220 | knowing that you can scare them

00:04:00.600 | because they already feel like they're gonna lose.

00:04:03.800 | - The inherent, like the cynicism.

00:04:05.960 | - Exactly.

00:04:06.800 | - Cynicism is easier to play against

00:04:08.360 | 'cause you can convince them that their cards suck.

00:04:10.720 | - Yeah, when somebody believes that they're a loser

00:04:12.660 | or they're unlucky, right?

00:04:14.240 | And that bad things happen to them always

00:04:16.080 | and they never catch a break.

00:04:17.560 | Well, you know, you can just help them make it true.

00:04:20.580 | (laughs)

00:04:22.000 | - What do you think about the rounders Teddy KGB

00:04:24.920 | when he does the Oreo tell?

00:04:27.000 | Do players at the high level communicate that kind of stuff?

00:04:30.240 | Do you think it's realistic

00:04:31.120 | to be able to have a tell like this

00:04:32.360 | that's partially subconscious?

00:04:34.480 | - So first of all, I love Brian Koppelman who made the film.

00:04:37.420 | And I think what they were going for

00:04:39.380 | is something obvious to the general public, right?

00:04:41.920 | Like, okay, it's very clear.

00:04:43.160 | You know, he eats the cookie, he doesn't eat the cookie

00:04:44.880 | and it means one or the other.

00:04:46.040 | At the highest levels, something that, you know, blatant,

00:04:50.040 | you're not gonna find.

00:04:51.000 | You're gonna find a lot more subtle things,

00:04:52.520 | maybe with posture or timing

00:04:54.960 | or, you know, different things like that.

00:04:56.360 | But at the lower levels, you know, you might see some,

00:05:00.320 | you might see, you know, with a lot of people

00:05:02.340 | when they're in a hand and they've bet

00:05:03.920 | whether they drink water in the hand

00:05:06.120 | is going to tell you something, generally speaking.

00:05:08.240 | - It's such an intimate part of the human experience

00:05:09.960 | that I feel like if you have food,

00:05:11.340 | you're gonna reveal something about yourself

00:05:13.160 | through the way you eat.

00:05:14.320 | I feel like that's a dangerous thing

00:05:15.640 | to have at the table.

00:05:16.480 | - Well, the thing is, generally speaking,

00:05:18.280 | people don't eat food in the middle of a hand.

00:05:20.160 | Like, they're not gonna bet

00:05:21.080 | and then just like grab a burger, right?

00:05:23.120 | What they will do though is, you know,

00:05:24.640 | they bet and it's up to you.

00:05:25.920 | And then they're, whether they're, you know, uncomfortable

00:05:28.320 | or they do it unconsciously,

00:05:29.280 | they just wanna do something

00:05:31.000 | to make themselves look relaxed or whatever.

00:05:32.880 | And, you know, they grab a water

00:05:34.440 | where they don't really need it in that moment,

00:05:35.920 | but they're trying to take your mind off of the situation.

00:05:39.220 | - So they, in the movie, wanted to show

00:05:42.760 | a simplistic version of something that does happen,

00:05:45.220 | something that's visually sort of clear.

00:05:48.400 | - Yeah, 'cause I think one of the things

00:05:49.480 | Rounders got right is that it's a poker movie, right?

00:05:52.360 | But you don't have to be great at poker

00:05:54.120 | or really understand poker to enjoy the movie.

00:05:56.160 | And that, you know, Oreo cookie tale,

00:05:58.260 | like, everyone gets that.

00:05:59.880 | They're like, okay, that's simple.

00:06:01.240 | If he would've went with something more subtle,

00:06:03.240 | you know, like licking your lips or looking to the right,

00:06:06.640 | and I think it might've been lost on the audience.

00:06:09.080 | - And they didn't actually explicitly say

00:06:12.160 | that that was a tell, I don't think.

00:06:14.980 | - I thought they did everything to let you know, right?

00:06:17.740 | With the music and the slow motion,

00:06:20.340 | and he's staring at it and he's like, aha.

00:06:22.660 | - Yeah, but they didn't actually say, you know,

00:06:25.420 | this is an obvious tell.

00:06:26.700 | Like Matt Damon's character didn't talk.

00:06:28.540 | - At the very end of it, you know, after he says,

00:06:30.980 | how the fuck did you lay that down?

00:06:33.540 | - The monster. - The monster, right?

00:06:34.660 | And he's like, you're not hungry?

00:06:37.940 | Not hungry, KGB?

00:06:38.780 | He's like, I keep on, you know?

00:06:40.380 | So he sort of references it,

00:06:41.820 | and then he takes the cookies, he notices,

00:06:43.300 | he's like, ah, he got me, and he breaks the rack of cookies.

00:06:46.200 | - Well, probably if you had that kind of tell on him,

00:06:48.440 | you wouldn't, and Matt Damon's character would not reveal.

00:06:51.520 | - Well, he says in the movie, he says,

00:06:53.440 | normally I wouldn't reveal a tell,

00:06:54.840 | but I don't have that much time.

00:06:56.600 | Like I've got to rattle him some way.

00:06:58.440 | So that was one way to do that.

00:07:00.600 | - How hard is it to do that to, in the KGB accent,

00:07:05.000 | to lay down a monster in those situations?

00:07:08.320 | In general, how hard is it to lay down

00:07:10.820 | a really strong hand, just psychologically?

00:07:13.280 | - Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's incredibly difficult

00:07:15.180 | for the vast majority of people.

00:07:16.720 | You know, part of what makes professionals

00:07:18.220 | really, really good is recognizing a situation

00:07:20.700 | that's very, very dangerous, and they need to jump ship.

00:07:23.520 | Like what happens to a lot of players

00:07:25.280 | is you get married to a hand.

00:07:26.580 | Let's say you have pocket aces,

00:07:27.940 | which is the best possible hand, right?

00:07:29.820 | But the board runs out where it's seven, eight, nine,

00:07:32.940 | and then there's a jack, and then there's a six.

00:07:34.740 | It's like, you have a great hand to start,

00:07:37.000 | but you don't anymore.

00:07:37.880 | So one of the difficult things for the average player

00:07:40.560 | is once they've put money in, cutting their losses

00:07:44.740 | and saying, okay, let's move on to the next hand.

00:07:46.720 | It's a very, very difficult thing for a lot of people.

00:07:48.220 | - At every stage of like pre-flop,

00:07:51.820 | all the way through, be able to just make a decision

00:07:55.020 | at that moment.

00:07:55.860 | - So yeah, essentially not being attached.

00:07:57.500 | Okay, I've already put in $40,000 in this pot,

00:08:00.500 | and this guy's bet another 20.

00:08:02.300 | Well, I mean, I gotta get my 40 back, right?

00:08:04.380 | Except in some cases, you have to reassess individually

00:08:08.540 | this situation and realize, all right,

00:08:09.980 | well, this is a bad investment, so I gotta cut my losses.

00:08:12.500 | - By the way, I should mention that you have

00:08:14.700 | an incredible YouTube channel

00:08:17.060 | where you explain a lot of stuff.

00:08:18.700 | You do a podcast.

00:08:19.700 | You do a lot of really awesome stuff.

00:08:21.300 | My probably favorite thing that you've done

00:08:23.680 | is your MasterClass that people should definitely check out,

00:08:27.380 | masterclass.com/lux.

00:08:29.900 | - There you go.

00:08:31.540 | - No, but it really is one of my favorite

00:08:34.700 | MasterClass courses, but also just a great introduction

00:08:37.260 | or overview of poker.

00:08:38.620 | It's great for people like me who are beginners,

00:08:41.820 | essentially, but it's probably really good

00:08:43.420 | for intermediate people, too.

00:08:44.380 | I mean, there's a lot of really good detail there.

00:08:46.440 | Anyway, what are hand ranges,

00:08:48.860 | and how do you begin to estimate the range of hands

00:08:51.060 | that your opponents have?

00:08:52.220 | - Yeah, so I actually, speaking of YouTube,

00:08:54.140 | I did a video on specifically this,

00:08:55.460 | Getting Familiar With Rangers, and essentially,

00:08:57.680 | back in my day, the old days,

00:08:58.760 | we didn't talk about poker that way.

00:09:00.340 | We're like, ah, I think he's got this,

00:09:01.520 | or I think he's got that, right?

00:09:03.940 | Nobody thought of the range of hands a player can have.

00:09:06.700 | So I guess the best example is, imagine all the potential

00:09:09.500 | hands as being a part of a grid, right?

00:09:11.780 | So the first player to act,

00:09:13.580 | they could have any one of those hands, right?

00:09:16.140 | Any one randomly dealt, right?

00:09:18.060 | But let's say now that that player raised to $3,000.

00:09:22.100 | Okay, well, you can eliminate now from this grid

00:09:24.540 | a whole bunch of hands that this player can no longer have,

00:09:27.160 | because if they had a two and a three, they wouldn't do that.

00:09:29.820 | So you can say, okay, he probably has a big pair.

00:09:32.460 | He has ace-king.

00:09:33.620 | You've narrowed the range of hands down, right?

00:09:36.700 | Now, through every action, on the flop, on the turn,

00:09:39.600 | and on the river, based on the decisions they make,

00:09:41.780 | you narrow it down even further.

00:09:43.820 | So the range of hands is the whole,

00:09:45.840 | the entirety of all the possibilities

00:09:48.740 | that this player you believe could have.

00:09:50.220 | And sometimes they fool you,

00:09:51.380 | or they have a hand that you don't expect them

00:09:53.180 | to have in their range.

00:09:54.260 | And maybe a little bit unorthodox,

00:09:56.940 | doing some things you don't expect to throw you off.

00:09:59.300 | But a range is essentially all the possibilities,

00:10:01.920 | and it narrows.

00:10:03.380 | Before the flop, it's endless.

00:10:05.140 | Player raises, okay, it's minimized.

00:10:07.260 | Now, player bets the flop, okay, it's minimized further.

00:10:09.540 | And then by the river, you can narrow down the entire range

00:10:13.420 | to just maybe even a few hands.

00:10:15.140 | - Is it always shrinking, or is there sort of,

00:10:17.860 | as you get surprised, I mean, it's always just an estimate.

00:10:21.420 | So does it ever expand based on sort of chaotic,

00:10:24.740 | unpredicted, surprising behavior of the players?

00:10:29.060 | - It really should never expand.

00:10:30.700 | The range of hands should always get smaller, right?

00:10:32.660 | Like again, we start with the full scope,

00:10:35.140 | and then you should factor in like, okay,

00:10:36.980 | these are all the possible hands

00:10:37.940 | you can have on the flop now, right?

00:10:39.940 | We can't have new hands on the turn.

00:10:41.940 | And if you get to that point where you think,

00:10:44.220 | oh, well, maybe he has this hand,

00:10:45.900 | then you sort of misjudged his range prior.

00:10:49.000 | So you're not thinking clearly.

00:10:50.420 | It should always shrink from the full scope

00:10:53.820 | to hopefully just a couple.

00:10:55.620 | - Well, in that video, you also talk about,

00:10:57.620 | it used to be that you would play your hand,

00:10:59.740 | but now you're playing a range

00:11:02.060 | that you're representing a range.

00:11:03.580 | You're not even just playing your hand.

00:11:05.660 | So what does it mean to represent a certain range?

00:11:08.740 | - Yeah, so that's another big thing that's different

00:11:10.420 | about poker from my day to today,

00:11:12.980 | is that back in our day, we would like put people

00:11:14.820 | on one hand, like you probably have king nine,

00:11:17.300 | or you have jacks or something like that.

00:11:19.220 | Now, people are cognizant of the idea

00:11:21.180 | that you could have an entire range of hands.

00:11:23.020 | So then you ask yourself in situations,

00:11:24.820 | all right, I know what I have,

00:11:26.620 | but what I could have in his mind,

00:11:29.140 | or my opponent's mind is any one of these hands.

00:11:31.300 | What would I do with the entirety of these hands?

00:11:34.020 | And so a lot of people that are trying to play optimally,

00:11:36.260 | you know, game theory optimal,

00:11:37.700 | they think in terms of what their range of hands would do

00:11:41.260 | rather than their very specific hand.

00:11:43.780 | - So is bluffing in that context,

00:11:46.060 | essentially misrepresenting the range of hands that you have?

00:11:49.900 | - No. - Is that how you think

00:11:50.740 | about it? - Not exactly.

00:11:51.860 | 'Cause so an optimal range, like if I bet the river,

00:11:54.620 | if I'm playing game theory optimal,

00:11:56.620 | a portion of my range is going to be, I have it.

00:11:59.060 | I got the best hand.

00:12:00.140 | And a portion of my range is going to be bluffs

00:12:01.860 | and there'll be balanced.

00:12:03.380 | So in theory, no matter what you do,

00:12:05.780 | no matter what you do, if you call or you fold,

00:12:08.140 | in theory, it's just, you're printing a zero, as we say,

00:12:11.620 | you're not getting, gaining or losing any EV

00:12:14.460 | if you were to do it that way.

00:12:15.380 | - What's EV?

00:12:16.300 | - EV is expected value.

00:12:17.860 | - Right. - So every play

00:12:18.820 | that you make, you know, it either is going to,

00:12:20.900 | in the long run, you know, make you some money

00:12:22.980 | or it's just a losing play.

00:12:24.380 | And as a professional, you try to make the fewest amount

00:12:27.260 | of minus EV plays you can.

00:12:29.180 | And the only reason you would make these minus EV plays

00:12:31.820 | is potentially if you were trying to set up your opponent

00:12:34.100 | for something later, right?

00:12:35.700 | So I might make some minus EV plays, right?

00:12:38.620 | So that I can exploit you later, right?

00:12:40.460 | - So you're building up--

00:12:41.540 | - Building up an image.

00:12:42.700 | - A player profile that's false in some way.

00:12:45.460 | - Something that I'm going to,

00:12:46.300 | I'm going to plant seeds in your mind

00:12:47.980 | so that I can exploit them later.

00:12:49.540 | So for example, why would players like show a big bluff?

00:12:52.940 | Like what would be the reason for that?

00:12:54.700 | They show a big bluff so that you know

00:12:56.140 | that they're capable of it.

00:12:57.300 | But maybe in their mind,

00:12:58.260 | they're never going to do that again.

00:12:59.820 | But now they think, you know, he bluffed me last time,

00:13:02.460 | maybe he's doing it again.

00:13:03.580 | But that's what we call like a leveling war.

00:13:06.740 | Because you know, you can go back and forth

00:13:09.340 | with whether or not, okay, this guy might know that.

00:13:11.580 | Like he showed a bluff

00:13:12.460 | because he's never going to bluff me again.

00:13:14.340 | So that's where it gets a little--

00:13:15.860 | - So that's a little bit different,

00:13:17.940 | though when we're talking about hand ranges,

00:13:19.620 | that's different than building up a mental model

00:13:23.220 | of what your opponents,

00:13:24.620 | what your opponents think of you

00:13:26.860 | and what your opponents think that you think of them

00:13:30.900 | and so on and so forth.

00:13:32.420 | Are you trying to construct those kinds of mental models?

00:13:35.820 | And is that separate from the hand ranges?

00:13:37.500 | - They go hand in hand, right?

00:13:39.140 | So if in a given situation, right,

00:13:41.420 | my range has this many value hands and this many bluffs,

00:13:45.180 | okay, so in theory, if I want to be balanced,

00:13:48.060 | you know, this is my range and this is what it looks like.

00:13:49.940 | I'll bet this 50% of the time, bet this 50% of the time.

00:13:52.700 | However, if I know that you think that I bluff too much,

00:13:57.500 | right, then I'm not going to bluff as much.

00:13:59.100 | I'm going to start,

00:13:59.940 | instead of betting these hands that I would 50/50,

00:14:02.140 | now what I'll do is I'll do like 70/30

00:14:04.660 | where I'm basically value betting

00:14:06.140 | most of the time against you, you know,

00:14:07.980 | or vice versa.

00:14:08.820 | If I know you always fold because you think I have it,

00:14:11.020 | I'm going to veer the other way.

00:14:12.380 | And instead of bluffing 50%, I'll bluff 70, 80% of the time

00:14:15.500 | to take advantage of your perception of me.

00:14:17.660 | - So to be successful,

00:14:19.060 | do you have to construct a solid model

00:14:22.060 | of all the players in the game or can you ignore them?

00:14:26.620 | - I think it's really important.

00:14:27.940 | Like when I play, I have in my phone,

00:14:29.900 | I have a player profile of everyone that I play with.

00:14:32.220 | Whenever I pick up, whether it's physical tells

00:14:34.060 | or tendencies they like to, you know, that they have.

00:14:38.780 | And overall, that's just going to, you know,

00:14:41.260 | that's going to allow you to exploit more, right?

00:14:43.860 | So like, if I played with somebody I've never played before,

00:14:46.540 | I'm probably just going to play optimally

00:14:48.660 | or at least as optimal as I know how

00:14:50.580 | until I start to gain some information on that player

00:14:53.420 | so that I can start to exploit them.

00:14:55.540 | - So what's the, when you say optimally,

00:14:57.460 | what does optimally mean versus,

00:14:59.540 | so game theory optimal versus exploitative?

00:15:04.420 | - Yeah, so that's like sort of the big debate in poker.

00:15:06.680 | We call it for short, GTO,

00:15:08.700 | game theory optimal versus exploitative play.

00:15:11.580 | So GTO, game theory optimal, is the idea that no,

00:15:15.180 | like I'm going to set up my play

00:15:16.980 | so that no matter what you do, you cannot exploit me.

00:15:20.460 | So essentially that's playing rock, paper, scissors, right?

00:15:24.020 | And throwing 33% of each every time, right?

00:15:27.700 | Nothing you do can beat that, nothing.

00:15:30.000 | You'll never be able to beat that, right?

00:15:32.060 | Exploitative play is starting to notice that,

00:15:34.060 | okay, well, you know what?

00:15:34.980 | This guy loves rock.

00:15:36.280 | He loves playing rock.

00:15:37.920 | So I'm going to go paper a little more.

00:15:39.540 | So I'm going to take advantage of him.

00:15:40.660 | So I won't be through, but now all of a sudden,

00:15:42.280 | when I do that, I'm no longer playing optimal

00:15:44.500 | because if you knew that I was making that adjustment,

00:15:46.300 | now you can exploit me.

00:15:48.020 | So that's where the sort of what we call

00:15:49.220 | a leveling war happens, where people veer from,

00:15:52.420 | you know, the optimal line of, okay, 33% each for each one.

00:15:56.420 | You can't beat that,

00:15:57.740 | but you also can't win with that either.

00:16:00.860 | - So you're always trying to be at the cutting,

00:16:03.260 | at the leading edge of suboptimal play.

00:16:05.940 | - Yeah, you're going back and forth.

00:16:07.420 | Listen, at the highest levels, like online,

00:16:10.100 | that these guys play, like they're trying to play

00:16:12.100 | pretty close to like game theory optimal

00:16:15.120 | because it's very difficult to do, first of all.

00:16:16.520 | No human being will ever be able to compute

00:16:20.040 | at the level that computers can.

00:16:21.620 | It's just never going to happen.

00:16:23.420 | So that's where like the human mind has to come into play

00:16:26.660 | and say, all right, well, you know,

00:16:28.460 | if I was playing against a robot, I would do X, but I'm not.

00:16:30.920 | I'm playing against you, so I have to adjust.

00:16:32.860 | - So does game theory optimal only look at the betting

00:16:36.180 | and the hands in the current hand,

00:16:40.560 | or does it look at the history?

00:16:42.260 | So if you were to play optimally, optimally,

00:16:44.580 | would you need to look at the history

00:16:46.260 | of the individual players,

00:16:47.220 | or just every hand is taken afresh?

00:16:49.380 | - See, that's why I love playing exploitatively

00:16:51.980 | for the most part, because with GTO,

00:16:54.780 | anything that's happened in the past

00:16:56.260 | has no bearing on this situation.

00:16:58.140 | It's simply based on what is the optimal play

00:17:00.660 | in a vacuum in this spot.

00:17:02.300 | Whereas exploitatively, okay,

00:17:03.780 | this guy bluffs way too much in these spots.

00:17:06.100 | So now I can make an adjustment and call more,

00:17:08.660 | you know, based on past information.

00:17:10.960 | GTO doesn't take into account history at all.

00:17:14.100 | - So like in a tournament,

00:17:15.260 | how quickly can you construct a player profile

00:17:17.660 | that you've never played before?

00:17:19.340 | - Depends on the level of the buy-in really, right?

00:17:22.340 | So the higher the buy-in, generally speaking,

00:17:25.580 | you can assume if they're professionals,

00:17:27.420 | that they're gonna have pretty similar profiles,

00:17:29.540 | because, you know, everyone's playing,

00:17:31.020 | you know, if you're playing this game well,

00:17:32.540 | it looks similar, right?

00:17:34.620 | At the lower levels, you know,

00:17:35.780 | playing say in a 1000 or $1,500 buy-in or less,

00:17:38.980 | you know, within a half an hour or an hour,

00:17:41.740 | I have an idea of, all right,

00:17:42.980 | just by seeing how some players played a few hands,

00:17:46.380 | that, you know, so here's the thing with poker,

00:17:47.940 | it's like, I can see one clue of what he did,

00:17:50.020 | and it tells me so much about what he'll do

00:17:51.740 | in a vast number of scenarios.

00:17:53.900 | - And you're saying at the high level,

00:17:55.100 | people don't give too many clues.

00:17:56.420 | I mean, then--

00:17:57.260 | - Well, at the highest level,

00:17:59.140 | people are so much more similar

00:18:00.460 | in terms of their style of play.

00:18:02.140 | - They try to find some kind of balance

00:18:03.940 | between the GTO and the--

00:18:05.260 | - And now with all that we've seen on TV, right?

00:18:07.180 | Like people get to watch streams and whatever.

00:18:08.860 | So you get to watch all the top players play.

00:18:10.820 | So if you wanna learn how to play better,

00:18:11.900 | guess what you do?

00:18:12.780 | You copy what they're doing, essentially.

00:18:14.860 | Like, oh, he's only raising this much.

00:18:16.380 | I'm gonna do the same.

00:18:17.540 | They're betting this much.

00:18:18.380 | I'm gonna do the same.

00:18:19.340 | So as a result, what you end up having is sort of,

00:18:23.900 | you know, everyone deciding,

00:18:26.580 | like, I guess it's similar in chess with openings, right?

00:18:28.460 | People figure out, okay, this is an opening.

00:18:29.780 | This is what you do.

00:18:30.900 | And that's it, you know?

00:18:31.820 | And then everyone's similar to that.

00:18:33.340 | And then you have, of course, the outliers

00:18:35.020 | who try to do things a little differently

00:18:36.700 | and confuse people.

00:18:38.300 | - It seems like the outliers,

00:18:39.460 | like we talked offline that Magnus,

00:18:41.340 | in order to win, Magnus Carlsen

00:18:43.460 | has to play suboptimally in the openings

00:18:45.940 | to take his opponents out of the comfort zone

00:18:49.300 | so he can play what he calls pure chess

00:18:51.500 | as quickly as possible,

00:18:52.860 | which is just both short and deep calculations,

00:18:56.260 | purely what you're looking at the board

00:18:57.740 | versus memorized openings and memorized lines.

00:19:01.700 | Is it the case that the best poker players

00:19:05.380 | are the ones that are able to, at the right time,

00:19:09.700 | play really suboptimally or really unorthodox?

00:19:14.700 | - Yeah, specifically there's one guy

00:19:17.060 | who last year sort of took the poker world by storm,

00:19:19.540 | and his name is Michael Adamo.

00:19:21.100 | And he was doing things, like I said,

00:19:23.020 | most of the top pros play very similarly

00:19:25.060 | with the way that they construct ranges

00:19:27.260 | and their bet sizing and all these kind of things.

00:19:28.820 | He was doing some crazy things that nobody else was doing.

00:19:32.700 | So he studied sort of a different form of poker,

00:19:36.020 | and it was unorthodox.

00:19:38.060 | And it throws people off,

00:19:40.340 | 'cause he's in his comfort zone

00:19:41.660 | with these bet sizes and different things,

00:19:43.300 | whereas everyone else,

00:19:44.340 | they're not well studied in those spots.

00:19:46.580 | So as a result of him being unorthodox,

00:19:49.140 | he became like a monster and very difficult to play against

00:19:51.580 | 'cause he really knew what he was doing with it.

00:19:53.020 | - In tournament or cash games?

00:19:54.740 | - It was tournaments, yeah.

00:19:55.580 | He was crushing tournaments.

00:19:56.900 | He was going against the norm in terms of what is like,

00:20:00.780 | this is what you should do as a poker player in this spot.

00:20:02.660 | He wasn't doing that.

00:20:04.100 | He was doing what he thought was best,

00:20:05.740 | and he was doing things outside the norm

00:20:07.060 | that again, in a vacuum, you could look at that

00:20:08.900 | and you go, that's incorrect.

00:20:10.900 | That he should not do.

00:20:11.860 | That is a clear cut mistake.

00:20:13.660 | Even the solvers or the computers or game theory

00:20:16.660 | would say, this is wrong, what he's doing.

00:20:18.460 | But it's not wrong if he's doing it in a way

00:20:21.340 | that he's exploiting other players' tendencies.

00:20:24.180 | So for example, with him,

00:20:26.180 | say he's playing far too aggressively, okay?

00:20:28.620 | That's not good,

00:20:29.780 | unless your opponents are playing way too passively.

00:20:32.980 | So if your opponents are playing passively,

00:20:34.660 | the answer is to be more aggressive with them.

00:20:36.380 | And that's, I think, one of the biggest advantages he had

00:20:39.140 | was he was willing to do that.

00:20:40.820 | So bet big, big, big pots, bluffing.

00:20:44.860 | So in a spot where somebody would make it a thousand,

00:20:47.500 | he's making it 22,000.

00:20:49.460 | Like what?

00:20:50.420 | What is this?

00:20:51.260 | This makes no sense.

00:20:52.100 | And then people kind of know he has nothing,

00:20:53.700 | but they're too afraid to call him on it.

00:20:56.340 | Well, and then sometimes what happens is,

00:20:58.180 | this is where the leveling comes in.

00:20:59.340 | You're like, oh man, this guy's crazy.

00:21:00.580 | He's bluffing like nuts.

00:21:01.620 | Then he bets the 22,000 and you say,

00:21:03.980 | ah, I'm taking my stand, I call.

00:21:05.580 | And then he shows you like four of a kind

00:21:08.340 | or something like that.

00:21:09.420 | So he gets people out of their comfort zone.

00:21:11.140 | And I really enjoy watching him play.

00:21:12.500 | He's probably my favorite player to watch today.

00:21:15.740 | - Watching a guy like that,

00:21:16.820 | what aspect of his play have you been able to incorporate

00:21:19.860 | into your own?

00:21:20.780 | Like, what do you learn from that?

00:21:22.060 | 'Cause you're constantly learning,

00:21:22.940 | you're constantly adjusting.

00:21:23.940 | - Yeah.

00:21:24.780 | Well, no, and I love it.

00:21:25.600 | And as I said, so I think a lot of players

00:21:27.100 | sort of come to the same conclusions

00:21:28.620 | about this is how you play the spot, but he doesn't.

00:21:30.700 | And I love watching and thinking in terms of like,

00:21:32.700 | why he's doing this.

00:21:33.780 | And one specific thing, for example,

00:21:35.500 | is he's willing to really go for it.

00:21:38.300 | So in a spot where let's say he bets 2,000,

00:21:40.660 | he knows he'll get you to call 2,000, right?

00:21:43.780 | But he wants it all.

00:21:45.480 | He wants it all.

00:21:46.360 | So he says, you know what?

00:21:47.820 | I'll give up the 2,000, that's guaranteed.

00:21:50.300 | And I'll bet 50,000.

00:21:52.780 | And maybe if you call that now, you know,

00:21:54.580 | so listen, he lose the 2,000 seven, eight times,

00:21:57.100 | but if I get called for the 50 just once,

00:21:59.700 | you know, I'm profiting from that.

00:22:01.300 | And it also sets the, you know, the template for you

00:22:05.140 | to really sort of be a player

00:22:07.060 | that people are afraid to play against.

00:22:08.140 | He knocked me out in a tournament very early on

00:22:11.100 | in a huge event.

00:22:12.220 | And he had, he was so far ahead.

00:22:14.420 | He was one step ahead of my thought process in hand.

00:22:17.540 | And he did something that makes no sense whatsoever.

00:22:19.960 | I looked it up on the computer, huge mistake, if you will,

00:22:23.560 | but not a mistake 'cause he was taking advantage

00:22:25.260 | of my tendency.

00:22:26.100 | - Do you remember the cars?

00:22:26.920 | Is there an example?

00:22:27.760 | - I remember the whole thing.

00:22:28.600 | (laughing)

00:22:29.420 | I remember it like it was yesterday.

00:22:31.100 | - Can you take it like through an example hand

00:22:33.220 | that really demonstrates it?

00:22:34.820 | - So I'll explain the hand here.

00:22:36.260 | So I'm on the button and I have Ace King,

00:22:39.460 | which is a very good hand.

00:22:40.820 | And I raise and he calls from the big blind.

00:22:43.820 | The flop is nine, seven, five.

00:22:45.480 | So I have nothing really here.

00:22:47.060 | He checks, I check behind.

00:22:49.260 | The turn card's an Ace.

00:22:51.340 | He checks, I bet half the pot.

00:22:53.580 | There were 6,000 in there, I bet 3,000, okay?

00:22:56.860 | Now this is not a typical thing you see people do,

00:22:59.180 | but he raised me to 36,000, massive raise,

00:23:03.100 | bigger than the size of the pot.

00:23:04.580 | - What was the flop again?

00:23:05.740 | - Nine, seven, five, turn an Ace.

00:23:08.060 | - What is he representing exactly?

00:23:10.060 | - Well, he could have a straight,

00:23:10.900 | he could have three of a kind, he could have Aces up,

00:23:13.660 | he could have a whole bunch of hands.

00:23:14.780 | So he check raises me big to 36,000.

00:23:16.980 | I call the bet.

00:23:18.220 | So now there's something like 75,000.

00:23:20.100 | The river is a five, so the board pairs, okay?

00:23:25.100 | He thinks for a while and he bets all of it,

00:23:29.100 | which is three times the pot.

00:23:30.620 | He bets 225,000.

00:23:32.340 | There's only 75,000 out there, right?

00:23:34.780 | And in theory, he should never ever have a hand

00:23:36.980 | that can do that, right?

00:23:38.660 | So it confused me and I was like,

00:23:40.540 | okay, well, this guy's aggressive,

00:23:41.860 | he likes to bluff and all this kind of stuff.

00:23:43.260 | So I made the call with the Ace-King

00:23:45.300 | and he turned over 6, eight.

00:23:47.260 | So we had a straight.

00:23:48.860 | But here's the thing, in theory,

00:23:51.020 | that river card is bad for him.

00:23:52.980 | When I call the turn, I have a lot of the time

00:23:56.020 | three of a kind, two pair that just made a full house.

00:23:58.380 | So he was risking that.

00:23:59.660 | And the reason he did it was 'cause he thought

00:24:01.860 | I would perceive him to be bluffing a lot.

00:24:05.500 | So he just went for it and it worked.

00:24:07.580 | He was able to double up right away

00:24:09.300 | and knock me out of the tournament like an hour in.

00:24:11.220 | - Do you think he thought you might fold?

00:24:12.660 | Like what is the-- - I think specific,

00:24:13.980 | I think it was, it came down to this.

00:24:15.140 | It's as simple as this.

00:24:17.020 | He was cognizant of his image

00:24:19.620 | as being a wild, aggressive bluffer, right?

00:24:21.740 | And he was fully taking advantage of me,

00:24:24.300 | knowing that my tendency in these spots is to be curious

00:24:27.580 | and I wanna call and I wanna see it.

00:24:29.420 | So he was fully taking advantage of the fact

00:24:31.780 | that he thought I would call too often.

00:24:33.540 | Because otherwise, his play makes no sense.

00:24:35.820 | A small bet, a medium-sized bet, those make sense.

00:24:39.020 | But the bet that he made, in theory, is indefensible.

00:24:42.820 | It's just like clearly a mistake.

00:24:45.180 | But that's why poker's so fascinating,

00:24:47.060 | because he makes this play and it wasn't a mistake.

00:24:48.900 | It was above the rim, is what it was.

00:24:50.900 | - Do you think he put you on ace something?

00:24:53.340 | - I think exactly what he thought I had.

00:24:54.820 | Was ace king or something like that.

00:24:56.500 | (laughing)

00:24:57.900 | - That is so fun.

00:24:58.740 | That is so fun that the two players at such a high level

00:25:01.260 | were able to mess with each other's mind.

00:25:03.740 | How old is he?

00:25:04.580 | Is he young?

00:25:05.420 | - He's in his 20s, yeah.

00:25:06.260 | - I feel like that takes a lot of guts

00:25:07.780 | to take risks like that.

00:25:10.100 | - Well, that's what's great about him.

00:25:11.340 | He's certainly never accused

00:25:12.500 | of not having the guts to put it in.

00:25:13.820 | And that's scary to play against, right?

00:25:15.580 | The easiest opponent to play against

00:25:17.060 | is one who's just straightforward, passive,

00:25:20.520 | not wild and crazy.

00:25:21.700 | Playing against him,

00:25:23.140 | he's gonna put you in the blender, as we say.

00:25:25.020 | (laughing)

00:25:26.900 | - How can you control what you're perceived as representing?

00:25:31.900 | What hand you're perceived of as representing?

00:25:34.300 | So if the game of modern poker is,

00:25:38.340 | others are representing certain hands

00:25:40.520 | through the information they convey,

00:25:42.260 | and you're representing a certain hand range, sorry,

00:25:45.780 | through your play, how can you control that?

00:25:47.500 | Or is that not, is that the wrong way to think about it?

00:25:50.700 | But isn't bluffing and bet sizing

00:25:54.160 | and all of that kind of stuff,

00:25:55.500 | essentially controlling what others perceive

00:25:59.180 | as the hand range you have?

00:26:01.180 | - Ultimately, in terms of like,

00:26:03.420 | controlling people's perception of you,

00:26:05.260 | you can't fully control it,

00:26:06.540 | but you can do things to sway it, right?

00:26:10.740 | As I said earlier, showing bluffs and things like that,

00:26:12.900 | you know, leads your opponent to think

00:26:14.180 | maybe you do this more often than you're supposed to,

00:26:16.260 | or whatever the case may be.

00:26:17.100 | But in terms of like, controlling, you know,

00:26:22.660 | what your opponent can think about your hands

00:26:24.600 | in certain spots, I don't really think it equates that way.

00:26:26.400 | It doesn't really, you know,

00:26:27.360 | I think what people do when they're playing a hand

00:26:29.000 | is they think in terms of, all right,

00:26:31.160 | what does my range look like here?

00:26:33.080 | Okay, so my range has value.

00:26:35.440 | So you look at, you know,

00:26:36.640 | the actual hand you have secondarily.

00:26:38.840 | So you say, okay, well, I could have this,

00:26:41.280 | I could have this, I actually have this, right?

00:26:43.760 | But I could have all these hands.

00:26:44.800 | So my opponent, if he's thinking on a high level,

00:26:46.720 | he knows I could have all these hands, and I have this one.

00:26:49.040 | So what do I do with this one, right?

00:26:50.680 | In the bigger scope of things.

00:26:52.140 | - I guess I'm trying to understand,

00:26:54.280 | if your betting isn't a bet, pre-flop, your bet,

00:26:58.960 | doesn't that narrow the hand ranges?

00:27:01.440 | Doesn't matter what you have, it narrows the--

00:27:04.640 | - Absolutely.

00:27:05.520 | - And if you bet big, combined with the perception

00:27:10.520 | of you at the table, doesn't that represent a hand range?

00:27:14.680 | - Uh-huh, absolutely.

00:27:16.000 | - So like you can, with betting, essentially control

00:27:18.200 | what people estimate you to have.

00:27:20.200 | - Sure, so that makes it, so yeah.

00:27:21.960 | - So that's true.

00:27:23.380 | So for example, one of the most extreme examples is,

00:27:26.440 | we have, there's spots where there's a bet

00:27:29.660 | that's considered polarizing, right?

00:27:31.940 | So let's say there's a thousand in the pot

00:27:34.540 | and you bet 10,000, which is crazy big, right?

00:27:37.380 | That's saying one of two things.

00:27:38.580 | I either have the absolute best possible hand

00:27:41.380 | or absolutely nothing.

00:27:42.700 | Because any of the hands in the middle,

00:27:44.140 | I wouldn't do that with.

00:27:45.560 | So I'm essentially telling you, when I bet that,

00:27:47.960 | I'm like, I either got it, or you know, I got,

00:27:51.220 | I don't have a mediocre hand, like just a pair of nines

00:27:53.960 | or a pair of tens.

00:27:54.800 | I have a royal flush or have nine high.

00:27:57.840 | So with my bet sizing, I can control how my opponent's

00:28:02.140 | perceiving what my range is gonna be.

00:28:03.360 | So for example, you know, similarly, if I bet small, right?

00:28:07.220 | Well, that could be a lot of hands, right?

00:28:09.560 | That could represent a big part of my range.

00:28:12.160 | - The bigger the bet, the more, the narrower the range.

00:28:14.740 | - Apparently, the more polarized it is.

00:28:16.220 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:28:17.300 | How far could you get without looking at your cards?

00:28:20.600 | Do you think, how well could you do?

00:28:22.700 | - It depends on who I'm playing with, right?

00:28:24.740 | So if I was playing in a tournament with mediocre

00:28:27.500 | or weak players, I think I could probably do pretty well.

00:28:30.620 | - But even like world-class?

00:28:32.420 | - World-class, I don't think you'd have much of a chance,

00:28:34.400 | really, I mean.

00:28:35.240 | - The question is trying to get at like,

00:28:36.560 | how important is it that the actual hands you have

00:28:39.060 | versus the hands you're representing?

00:28:41.900 | - Right, so that's the question of essentially,

00:28:43.460 | if you're not looking at your hand pre-flop,

00:28:45.100 | you're basically giving up a fundamental advantage, right?

00:28:48.260 | Where you're gonna be playing way sub-optimally

00:28:50.680 | in terms of your hand selection, right?

00:28:52.080 | 'Cause if you don't look at your hand,

00:28:53.420 | you might have a two and a three.

00:28:54.880 | That's not good, but now you're playing it.

00:28:56.920 | So you've invested whatever, two, 3,000 bucks

00:28:59.600 | with absolute garbage, and it's very difficult

00:29:02.000 | to climb that hill, right?

00:29:03.680 | So it's much better to actually look at your cards

00:29:05.560 | and go, okay, I'll throw away the two and three,

00:29:07.320 | and I'll play the ace-king.

00:29:08.840 | - Speaking of garbage, you've said that 10-7

00:29:12.120 | is your favorite poker hand to play.

00:29:13.560 | Is that still the case, and what aspect of it

00:29:16.800 | is that you enjoy?

00:29:18.780 | - Yeah, so it's one of those viewer discretion is advised.

00:29:21.540 | Like 10-7, I've just noticed that throughout my life,

00:29:24.300 | you know, it's a tendency thing,

00:29:25.340 | that I've been lucky with it.

00:29:27.220 | So that's just sort of, but it's not like

00:29:28.860 | I'm gonna look at 10-7 and go, oh, wow,

00:29:30.820 | you know, I'm gonna call an all-in, or anything like that.

00:29:33.220 | I'll play it in situations where it makes sense,

00:29:35.700 | but, you know, it's rare, 'cause it's not a very good hand.

00:29:38.180 | - But is there some aspect of belief

00:29:42.940 | in the magic of this hand manifests quality of play?

00:29:47.040 | Or is that a little, whoa, whoa?

00:29:48.720 | - So here's the thing, it's, you know, poker players,

00:29:50.720 | some have said it's unlucky to be superstitious,

00:29:53.400 | but we're all a little bit superstitious, a little bit.

00:29:55.960 | You know, and so, I don't know, maybe it is a case

00:29:58.280 | where when I have 10-7, I feel somehow energetically

00:30:01.380 | that, you know, I'm more likely to catch something,

00:30:03.320 | which may actually make me more apt to be aggressive

00:30:06.080 | and confident in the hand,

00:30:07.400 | but you really shouldn't let yourself do that.

00:30:10.080 | Like, you're not supposed to fall in love

00:30:11.200 | with any specific hands.

00:30:12.800 | Yeah, but, you know, uncertainty is ruthless.

00:30:17.800 | It's, you know, the fact that it's a game of statistics,

00:30:23.220 | it can be too painful for the human psychology,

00:30:26.900 | so maybe you have to hold on to certain superstitions.

00:30:30.860 | Because, you know, I mean, there's a cold absurdity

00:30:34.460 | to the fact that you can play extremely well and still lose.

00:30:38.780 | I mean, actually, this year, you've played the,

00:30:43.780 | what is it, 50 days of World Series of Poker,

00:30:47.740 | and it seems like, at least from the perspective

00:30:51.020 | of me looking at it through the internet,

00:30:53.060 | it seems like there's a lot of hands

00:30:54.660 | that you were like 70, 30, 80, 20, all-in hands

00:30:59.180 | that you just were not going your way.

00:31:02.440 | That can sort of break you mentally.

00:31:04.260 | Absolutely.

00:31:05.480 | Yeah, one of the hardest things, especially about playing,

00:31:07.500 | 'cause cash games and tournaments are different,

00:31:09.620 | one of the most difficult things

00:31:10.660 | about being a tournament player is resilience,

00:31:13.380 | because more often than not,

00:31:14.860 | so if there's a tournament with 1,000 people,

00:31:17.420 | to win the tournament, you have to get all of the chips.

00:31:19.460 | That means there's one winner and 999 losers.

00:31:22.220 | So it's very rare that you actually win all the chips.

00:31:25.500 | So you're essentially, at some point,

00:31:27.220 | in every tournament you play,

00:31:28.180 | gonna deal with really bad luck and disappointment.

00:31:31.320 | And sometimes those streaks can have you question yourself

00:31:34.540 | and be introspective about, okay,

00:31:35.980 | so I think I'm 47 now.

00:31:37.980 | I think I've gotten better as time went on

00:31:40.180 | between distinguishing, okay,

00:31:42.100 | am I losing right now because of bad luck?

00:31:44.700 | Or is it fundamentally decisions I'm making

00:31:46.980 | are not very good, right?

00:31:48.780 | And that's one of the hardest things

00:31:50.180 | for anyone who plays poker to get to, right?

00:31:53.260 | Why am I losing?

00:31:54.300 | Am I losing because of my opponents being better,

00:31:57.260 | I'm not playing well, or am I losing just because of luck?

00:31:59.420 | And because there's so much variance in poker,

00:32:02.560 | a lot of players can be confused

00:32:04.740 | on both sides of the coin.

00:32:06.020 | One guy's winning and he thinks he's great,

00:32:07.700 | he's really not.

00:32:08.640 | Wait till the cards break even, as we say.

00:32:11.020 | - I think there's a lot of parallels to life as well.

00:32:13.500 | If you get screwed over and over,

00:32:15.620 | it's hard to know if you're doing something wrong

00:32:17.980 | or if it's just bad luck.

00:32:19.940 | - I think they did a study.

00:32:20.980 | I remember there was a study,

00:32:22.060 | it was supposed to be related to gambling,

00:32:23.900 | but it was mice and they put them in a little maze

00:32:25.980 | and they'd go down these three tubes

00:32:27.900 | and they'd go down this one tube

00:32:29.220 | and there'd be cheese, right?

00:32:30.900 | And then they'd go down again, cheese.

00:32:32.780 | Three times in a row, there was cheese there, right?

00:32:34.980 | The next time, there was an electric shock there, not cheese.

00:32:38.140 | The mouse went to get zapped, he got zapped, okay?

00:32:44.060 | Came back, he kept going back to get zapped until he died.

00:32:47.420 | Like he kept going because he found cheese there.

00:32:50.500 | He has one there.

00:32:52.080 | So he continued to go chase that win

00:32:54.740 | despite it being now all of a sudden not worthwhile

00:32:58.180 | till he died.

00:32:59.300 | And essentially what they said was

00:33:01.260 | that is essentially how they compared it

00:33:03.340 | to like the gambling brain

00:33:05.020 | and how people think about gambling.

00:33:06.780 | - You're chasing the wins.

00:33:08.180 | You learn too much.

00:33:09.900 | You sort of over-generalize the lessons learned

00:33:12.420 | from the times you've won.

00:33:13.460 | - So yeah, like beginner's luck can be detrimental.

00:33:15.620 | If you have some early luck

00:33:17.420 | and you believe that this is just the way

00:33:18.720 | it's supposed to be forever,

00:33:20.300 | it can put you in a delusional state

00:33:23.500 | where you feel like I'm just great, but no, you're not.

00:33:27.420 | You were just lucky in the beginning.

00:33:28.740 | - I actually played poker once in Vegas.

00:33:31.500 | It was a, it wasn't a tournament,

00:33:34.060 | but it was a kind of tournament-like style.

00:33:37.900 | I already forgot what it was,

00:33:39.060 | but what I do remember is I had four of a kind.

00:33:42.980 | So the last hand I've ever played in poker was,

00:33:46.500 | I got a four of a kind,

00:33:47.820 | and there was a couple of others with really strong hands.

00:33:51.460 | So everybody went all in.

00:33:53.100 | And I think you get some kind of bonus

00:33:54.560 | for getting four of a kind.

00:33:55.500 | - Bad beat jackpot you were playing.

00:33:56.860 | - Yeah, so something like this.

00:33:58.460 | I apologize if I don't know the details,

00:34:00.380 | but I just remember winning a lot of money

00:34:02.300 | and I walked away from the table.

00:34:04.060 | I said, I'm not playing poker again.

00:34:05.260 | This is great.

00:34:06.080 | I'm gonna hit it up top.

00:34:07.060 | 'Cause I started to feel like this is your,

00:34:09.380 | I started to think,

00:34:10.180 | even though I haven't really played poker at all,

00:34:12.180 | that I'm good.

00:34:13.300 | And that was a really dangerous feeling.

00:34:15.420 | And everybody was really mad

00:34:16.620 | for walking away from the table.

00:34:18.140 | - One of the other things

00:34:18.980 | that I think is interesting about poker too

00:34:20.000 | is good is relative, right?

00:34:21.960 | So you could be the seventh best player in the whole world,

00:34:25.180 | like literally seventh best player.

00:34:26.900 | But if you're playing with the other six,

00:34:29.460 | you're the sucker.

00:34:30.940 | You are the worst player in the game, right?

00:34:33.820 | So there's a lot of players,

00:34:35.820 | for example, like the Dan Blazarian's of the world, right?

00:34:38.420 | He's not a top level player,

00:34:40.580 | like these guys you see on TV,

00:34:42.500 | but he probably makes more money than they do

00:34:44.620 | because he plays with people

00:34:46.040 | that are far below his skill level.

00:34:47.660 | So part of the skill of being a poker player

00:34:50.220 | is finding situations where you're profitable,

00:34:53.580 | regardless of your skill level.

00:34:55.620 | - Another connection to life.

00:34:57.900 | Do you think Dan Blazarian is telling the truth

00:35:01.140 | about having made, what is it?

00:35:03.100 | 50, a hundred million dollars?

00:35:04.740 | Just a huge amount of money playing poker.

00:35:06.860 | - Considering what I know about the private games

00:35:09.400 | and the types of players who play in these private games

00:35:11.420 | and the stakes that they play,

00:35:12.780 | I absolutely believe Dan has made,

00:35:14.900 | I don't know how many millions,

00:35:16.180 | but whether it's 50, whatever,

00:35:17.800 | but it wouldn't surprise me

00:35:19.500 | that if you play in these games within a year,

00:35:21.680 | or you find the right businessman

00:35:23.920 | who has way too much Bitcoin money,

00:35:26.200 | and in one night you take him for 20 million,

00:35:28.340 | I absolutely could see it.

00:35:29.700 | I don't see any reason why.

00:35:31.000 | Listen, where he got his money initially,

00:35:33.060 | that's up to interpretation from his father or whatever,

00:35:36.580 | but has he made a bunch of money playing poker?

00:35:38.980 | Absolutely, no question.

00:35:40.380 | - Do you feel, as somebody who loves the game,

00:35:43.200 | do you think there's something almost ethically wrong

00:35:46.340 | in playing people much worse than you?

00:35:48.820 | - So yeah, that's a good question

00:35:50.220 | because part of the reason I played poker

00:35:53.540 | and wanted to become professional

00:35:54.620 | was I wanted to make my mother proud, right?

00:35:57.220 | And I don't think she would be proud of me

00:35:58.580 | taking Grandma Betty's last $5 and getting down the street,

00:36:03.060 | sending her broke and taking her pension check.

00:36:05.300 | So I play at the highest stakes

00:36:06.540 | against people who can afford it.

00:36:07.840 | They know who I am.

00:36:08.700 | I'm not a hustler.

00:36:09.540 | I'm not pretending I'm bad at poker to squeeze in.

00:36:12.580 | I was thinking about this just yesterday

00:36:13.960 | 'cause I played in a game

00:36:15.060 | that if I played that sort of role

00:36:17.940 | where a lot of guys do pros

00:36:19.280 | that sort of play down their skill level,

00:36:21.660 | pretend they're just one of the guys,

00:36:23.460 | these guys can make 20, $30 million in a year, legitimately.

00:36:27.580 | Like I believe that if I did that,

00:36:29.540 | if I said, you know what, I'm gonna go down that path,

00:36:31.620 | get into these games in LA,

00:36:33.140 | and travel and do all this kind of stuff,

00:36:34.540 | I can make 20 million a year.

00:36:35.700 | But it feels a little greasy, right?

00:36:38.120 | I don't like to kiss anyone's ass.

00:36:39.640 | I don't like to ask anyone for a favor or things like that.

00:36:43.340 | So, but yeah, I feel,

00:36:48.220 | listen, a rich guy who wants to sit down with a million bucks

00:36:51.220 | and get drunk and lose it, I have no empathy for that.

00:36:53.220 | I'm like, I don't have any moral qualms with that.

00:36:55.660 | - So if Grandma Betty is a billionaire.

00:36:58.020 | - Okay, give me, send it, send it, right?

00:37:01.220 | You know, absolutely, why not?

00:37:03.220 | - Well, let me ask you about a tough period

00:37:06.940 | of your recent life.

00:37:08.060 | You had a rough, like we mentioned,

00:37:10.140 | World Series of Poker, losing $1.1 million over 48 days.

00:37:15.140 | What were you going through mentally during that?

00:37:18.500 | - So here's the thing, you know, I do, like you said,

00:37:20.300 | I do a YouTube vlog every day.

00:37:21.580 | So I kind of share my thoughts and listen,

00:37:23.820 | I can edit that thing and keep out the bad stuff,

00:37:26.740 | but I think it's more authentic and genuine to show people

00:37:29.860 | the actual struggles and the pain that I go through,

00:37:32.060 | you know, without it.

00:37:32.900 | And I'd say the one thing I'm most proud of

00:37:35.020 | throughout the entire thing is the resilience,

00:37:36.620 | because there are moments you see me where I'm broken.

00:37:39.020 | I'm just like, I can't take it.

00:37:39.980 | I broke a selfie stick this year.

00:37:41.700 | Like I was filming it, 'cause you know, I do for my vlog,

00:37:43.940 | I smash the stick, threw it in the corner, right?

00:37:46.260 | It's just, that was my like hit rock bottom moment.

00:37:49.260 | And then I put the camera on me and I was like, all right,

00:37:51.220 | I'll let people see it.

00:37:52.340 | But mentally it was very difficult

00:37:53.860 | because there was a feeling of hopelessness

00:37:56.860 | where you can, I was making the decisions.

00:37:59.980 | Like I genuinely felt like I'm playing really, really well,

00:38:02.680 | but every time my money went in,

00:38:04.140 | my opponent's money went in and say I was 60%, 70%, 80%

00:38:08.140 | for about a two week stretch, I lost every one of those.

00:38:11.460 | And you start to wonder, you're like,

00:38:13.460 | I can't win if I never win, you know, in these spots.

00:38:16.900 | So it was difficult.

00:38:18.300 | Luckily I have, you know, 20 odd years of experience

00:38:20.980 | on how to deal with it.

00:38:21.980 | And so, as I said, I wake up the next day, ready to go.

00:38:25.980 | - So as if nothing happened.

00:38:27.940 | - To a certain degree, obviously, you know,

00:38:29.940 | the more it happens in the higher binds,

00:38:32.180 | like the one where I broke the selfie stick,

00:38:33.980 | I lost 500,000 in that tournament, right?

00:38:37.060 | And it was like the last card, it was painful.

00:38:38.980 | - I think you lost.

00:38:40.260 | - Yeah, that was great, that video.

00:38:42.020 | I think he lost.

00:38:45.020 | - What led up to the selfie stick gate?

00:38:47.540 | Like what, you just lost your shit for a,

00:38:50.940 | like 100 milliseconds.

00:38:53.820 | Like it was very brief.

00:38:55.380 | You're just like, what, the world wasn't making any sense?

00:38:58.340 | Like how do I keep losing kind of thing?

00:39:00.820 | How did you, why did you lose your shit?

00:39:02.500 | - You should never really think like this,

00:39:03.740 | but part of me felt like I deserve to win this.

00:39:05.940 | - Yes. - Right?

00:39:06.980 | So part of me was like, listen,

00:39:07.820 | I've lost so many in the last two weeks, all right,

00:39:10.140 | let, you know, the poker gods be kind to me right now

00:39:12.660 | and let me win this.

00:39:13.500 | And it looked good.

00:39:14.420 | I was in a great situation on the flop,

00:39:17.160 | great situation on the turn.

00:39:18.280 | I'm about to be a competitor.

00:39:20.060 | I'm gonna be a contender in this tournament

00:39:21.940 | to win a big prize pool and turn the whole thing around.

00:39:24.660 | It's all there for the taking.

00:39:26.480 | And then boom, the last card, it just, you know,

00:39:29.420 | it was a couple of weeks of frustration

00:39:31.540 | in the moment of filming that I just had, you know,

00:39:33.860 | sort of a visceral reaction, you know,

00:39:35.580 | and I smacked the selfie stick.

00:39:37.820 | And then like, I, it was, I see a corner, it's safe.

00:39:40.380 | I threw the selfie stick on the ground.

00:39:41.940 | And of course, social media blows up about how, you know,

00:39:45.220 | it was a violent act.

00:39:46.860 | - Yeah. - You know, I mean,

00:39:47.700 | it's like, have you never watched sports?

00:39:49.420 | Have you never seen a guy on the golf course,

00:39:51.380 | smack his club or throw their helmet?

00:39:53.380 | Like, you know, there was the,

00:39:55.140 | there's a guy, Justin Bonomo, who's a poker player.

00:39:57.060 | - Yeah. - And he's super,

00:39:58.740 | how to have, for lack of a better word,

00:40:00.540 | offended by everything.

00:40:01.980 | And he was equating my throwing a stick on the ground

00:40:04.700 | to violence against women, domestic abuse,

00:40:07.460 | and the idea that like,

00:40:09.120 | this makes women feel unsafe to play poker.

00:40:11.980 | And so that was kind of a running joke

00:40:13.420 | for the last two weeks,

00:40:14.260 | where every time I sat at a table,

00:40:15.780 | the guys would be like, "Oh, I feel unsafe.

00:40:17.500 | I feel unsafe."

00:40:19.340 | - Yeah.

00:40:20.180 | Can you take me through the hand?

00:40:21.000 | Do you remember what the hand was?

00:40:21.840 | Like, what was the?

00:40:22.680 | - Yeah, so it was a, you know,

00:40:23.940 | the player on the button raised.

00:40:25.700 | David Peters, very aggressive player.

00:40:27.500 | He went all in from the blind,

00:40:29.060 | and I had a pair of pocket 10s.

00:40:31.060 | So I went with my 10s, and he had queen 10 of spades.

00:40:34.100 | So I was good.

00:40:35.380 | I had way the best hand,

00:40:37.020 | and the flop was like king nine three, one spade.

00:40:40.080 | Turn was like the eight of spades.

00:40:42.420 | So now he has a flush draw,

00:40:43.980 | and the river was another spade.

00:40:45.220 | So he caught spade, spade, and he made a flush.

00:40:47.740 | - Wow, but statistically, you were winning the whole time.

00:40:50.660 | - Yeah, I was winning up until the last card.

00:40:52.300 | - What did he go all in on?

00:40:53.860 | Was it a bluff?

00:40:54.900 | - He made what's considered like a pretty standard play

00:40:57.140 | in modern poker, where, you know, a guy raised,

00:40:59.540 | and he was just trying to pick up, you know, what was there.

00:41:01.500 | And he ran into a hand in the big blind,

00:41:03.140 | and, you know, he got lucky.

00:41:04.420 | - So what was the, throughout the strategy of preparation,

00:41:08.420 | the strategy of play?

00:41:09.820 | So you're playing so many days.

00:41:12.340 | Are you trying to ignore the results

00:41:14.380 | and stick to a particular strategy?

00:41:16.900 | - Yes, for the most part, you know,

00:41:19.540 | what I'm trying to do is like,

00:41:21.580 | if I formulate a strategy for the whole seven weeks,

00:41:23.300 | 'cause there's a varying degree of buy-ins too.

00:41:25.980 | Like you have small ones, like 1500,

00:41:28.340 | then you've got like $250,000 buy-in.

00:41:30.260 | So I map out the seven weeks,

00:41:33.060 | and I'll give a little bit of mental energy to the 1500,

00:41:36.380 | which means I'll be on my phone.

00:41:37.620 | I'm not gonna, I don't care as much about this one.

00:41:39.740 | But the 250K, fully engaged, fully focused, you know,

00:41:43.860 | up against obviously the higher the buy-in,

00:41:45.740 | you know, super top competition.

00:41:48.260 | And, you know, as far as strategy goes,

00:41:50.940 | focusing on each day, playing the best I can,

00:41:53.940 | not the result.

00:41:55.580 | Like, 'cause if you focus on the result,

00:41:57.260 | you're focusing in the wrong place.

00:41:58.700 | Your focus should be on the decisions you actually make.

00:42:02.020 | Right, and if you're making good decisions consistently,

00:42:04.620 | you have to continue to do that.

00:42:05.700 | The frustrating part is this,

00:42:06.980 | with poker, unlike chess or other things,

00:42:09.060 | making the best possible decision doesn't mean you win.

00:42:12.420 | Often you lose, you don't in chess.

00:42:15.560 | - Well, Magnus Carlsen has also talked about that,

00:42:19.060 | there's some non-deterministic thing about chess too,

00:42:25.300 | given the limited cognitive capacity of the human mind.

00:42:30.260 | So he says that the world championship

00:42:32.480 | should have 20, 30, 40, 50 games,

00:42:34.660 | not the few that they have.

00:42:36.660 | It's too low of a sample.

00:42:38.300 | So in that sense, the high stakes poker tournaments

00:42:41.980 | are very, too low sample.

00:42:44.300 | - Sure, yeah.

00:42:45.340 | But when you think of the World Series of Poker,

00:42:47.220 | so as you said, I lost about one million, right?

00:42:49.820 | In one tournament, that was 500,000.

00:42:52.300 | So then, like a few others here, high buy-in tournaments.

00:42:54.660 | So the sample, or the amount,

00:42:56.220 | was 40, 50 total tournaments with high variance,

00:43:00.540 | and if you don't run well or do well in the highest buy-ins,

00:43:03.620 | you're gonna have a losing summer.

00:43:06.060 | - So you did a podcast on the mental game a few years ago,

00:43:08.780 | and that's just something you really care about.

00:43:10.660 | So what aspects of the mental game in poker

00:43:13.020 | is most difficult to master?

00:43:15.320 | - I think the most difficult thing for people

00:43:16.920 | is self-awareness, right, and resilience.

00:43:19.900 | Self-awareness to know, okay, so, again,

00:43:22.820 | is it, am I not doing as well as I could be because of luck,

00:43:26.340 | or is there things that I can learn?

00:43:28.020 | And I always look to mistakes as opportunities, I really do.

00:43:31.280 | When I make a mistake in a poker hand, right,

00:43:34.100 | call it a breakdown or whatever,

00:43:36.340 | that's where breakthroughs happen.

00:43:38.180 | I'm like, oh, you know what I could have done here?

00:43:40.940 | I could have done this,

00:43:42.580 | and that would have been really good,

00:43:43.620 | and I'm gonna do that going forward.

00:43:44.900 | So I think like with anything,

00:43:47.820 | you know, when you start out playing golf,

00:43:50.060 | like your goal is to just hit the ball, right?

00:43:52.860 | Then you try to hit it near,

00:43:54.780 | then you're trying to hit it straight,

00:43:56.220 | then you're trying to hit it on the green,

00:43:58.000 | then you're trying to hit it closer to the green,

00:43:59.220 | to the point where the pros get,

00:44:00.820 | where, you know, they're so finite,

00:44:03.540 | they're trying to hit it 63 yards

00:44:05.180 | and spin it back three yards.

00:44:06.900 | They're, it's imperfect.

00:44:08.500 | Like, they don't hit the perfect shot

00:44:10.340 | because the perfect shot for them is it goes in,

00:44:12.860 | but they try and make the mistakes

00:44:14.220 | smaller and smaller and smaller.

00:44:15.580 | Poker's the same.

00:44:17.100 | We all make mistakes consistently.

00:44:19.220 | The goal is to minimize, especially the big ones.

00:44:21.980 | - What was the lowest point for you psychologically?

00:44:26.460 | In poker in general, actually.

00:44:28.940 | Maybe it was this year, maybe it was in general.

00:44:31.260 | Do you remember there was times in your life,

00:44:33.420 | speaking of resilience,

00:44:34.900 | that were extremely difficult to you mentally?

00:44:37.700 | - Yeah, so early on, you know,

00:44:39.220 | as basically as a teenager, I was playing Toronto,

00:44:42.220 | and then in my early twenties,

00:44:43.140 | I'm like, I'm going to Vegas, right?

00:44:44.780 | And I thought I was the best.

00:44:46.340 | I'm like 21 years old, I'm like, check me out, right?

00:44:49.620 | Show up with $3,000, 24 hours later, you know, money's gone.

00:44:54.620 | And I remember the moment vividly.

00:44:58.420 | It was at the Binion's Horseshoe,

00:44:59.380 | it was about three in the morning.

00:45:00.580 | I was playing with seven other people.

00:45:02.740 | You know, I lost my last chips.

00:45:04.580 | I went to the bathroom, washed up, got out, they all left.

00:45:09.540 | And it was like a moment where I realized like,

00:45:11.140 | okay, in Toronto, I was the big fish,

00:45:12.940 | but here they were playing because of me.

00:45:15.220 | I was the sucker.

00:45:16.240 | I remembered every one of their faces.

00:45:18.020 | And then I remember not having enough money

00:45:19.540 | to get back to budget suites where I was staying.

00:45:22.140 | So I walked, you know, I walked.

00:45:25.020 | And in that moment, I was thinking about like,

00:45:26.540 | is this something that I'll be able to do?

00:45:28.060 | Am I good enough?

00:45:29.380 | You know, what am I going to do now?

00:45:30.740 | I'm in Vegas, I don't know anybody,

00:45:32.360 | and I have no money, right?

00:45:34.580 | So that was certainly like what felt like a low point

00:45:37.740 | walking back behind Paradise and Twain,

00:45:40.220 | which is not a great part of town.

00:45:41.880 | - Where did you find the strength to answer yes

00:45:46.340 | to that question that you can still do good?

00:45:48.980 | - I think this has been sort of a pattern in my life

00:45:51.140 | where like in the evening after it happens,

00:45:53.620 | like I don't have it.

00:45:54.820 | You know, I don't have that feeling of hope

00:45:56.900 | or, you know, resilience, if you will.

00:45:59.460 | I'm allowing myself to experience despair,

00:46:02.540 | which is exactly where I'm at.

00:46:04.300 | But then a good night's sleep, wake up the next morning,

00:46:07.020 | and just within me, I have that inner confidence

00:46:09.840 | to say, you know what, fuck it.

00:46:11.900 | Get back on the hobby horse, find a way, make it work.

00:46:15.340 | Right, but I do believe it's really therapeutic

00:46:18.300 | and worthwhile to allow yourself to feel and vent.

00:46:21.780 | So many people today, the Instagram culture world,

00:46:24.540 | I call it, it's like, they want to act like they're perfect.

00:46:26.860 | Nothing bothers them, bullshit, right?

00:46:28.900 | You're pissed off, it's okay to show it.

00:46:30.540 | Emotions, fine, we all have it.

00:46:32.300 | There's no reason you have to suppress it.

00:46:34.180 | Obviously, you don't want to have guys

00:46:35.640 | throwing selfie sticks around the room

00:46:36.960 | every time they lose a pot, right?

00:46:39.100 | But, you know, a little bit of--

00:46:40.900 | - You're gonna make everybody feel unsafe.

00:46:42.460 | - Yeah, exactly.

00:46:43.300 | - If that happens.

00:46:44.460 | So you're saying, there is a culture of saying,

00:46:46.740 | you know, stay positive, all this kind of stuff.

00:46:48.420 | But, you know, when you feel despair,

00:46:50.700 | don't resist it, ride it out.

00:46:52.940 | - 'Cause it doesn't go away, right?

00:46:54.880 | That feeling, you know, you think you put it away

00:46:56.320 | in the pit of your stomach and you think, you know,

00:46:57.740 | it's gone, it's not, it's still there.

00:46:59.500 | Let yourself go, fuck!

00:47:00.980 | - Yeah.

00:47:01.820 | - You know, it's all right.

00:47:02.780 | You know, there's nothing wrong

00:47:04.780 | with being a little bit emotional

00:47:05.740 | because once you've experienced it, you let it out,

00:47:08.740 | now you can move past it.

00:47:10.140 | - Yeah, and I feel like as long as your brain chemistry

00:47:12.740 | can support it, you can usually learn a good lesson from it.

00:47:17.380 | Like you become stronger,

00:47:18.620 | you become more resilient through it.

00:47:20.300 | It's really interesting.

00:47:21.260 | And a good night's sleep can really help.

00:47:23.100 | - Absolutely, yeah.

00:47:24.680 | - So through 2022, and in general,

00:47:28.380 | what does a perfect day in the life

00:47:30.100 | of Daniel Negreanu look like when you're,

00:47:32.820 | like on a day when you have to play a big game,

00:47:36.160 | big tournament game and so on?

00:47:37.620 | So like, what time do you wake up?

00:47:39.820 | What do you eat for breakfast?

00:47:41.220 | - So my life is twofold.

00:47:43.660 | Like one, when I'm playing, hardcore,

00:47:45.940 | and one when I'm not.

00:47:47.340 | And they look very different, right?

00:47:49.340 | So I'll give you a quick glimpse of like when I'm not,

00:47:51.860 | up at 10, you know, breakfast, in the gym at noon,

00:47:55.820 | you know, post-workout, meal, coffee, walk.

00:48:00.820 | Like, you know, I try to get, that's what I do for cardio.

00:48:05.940 | You know, I'm just very like home-bodied.

00:48:07.360 | I don't leave the house.

00:48:08.300 | It's very like boring and mundane, right?

00:48:10.700 | - Long distance walks, so like,

00:48:12.140 | what do you do when you're walking?

00:48:13.100 | You're thinking about stuff?

00:48:14.100 | - Well, no, honestly, I just walk on the treadmill.

00:48:15.780 | I try to get 15,000 steps a day,

00:48:18.020 | and I just walk for basically like an hour

00:48:19.780 | while I watch a show or I'm on the computer

00:48:21.660 | or something like that, you know, I'm on the treadmill.

00:48:23.460 | - Why walking, not running?

00:48:25.620 | - Well, I mean, I think walking,

00:48:27.420 | I mean, I do a little bit of running, but hardly any.

00:48:29.420 | I don't enjoy it.

00:48:30.700 | Like, I just like walking.

00:48:31.940 | And frankly, for fat loss, when it's usually what I'm doing

00:48:34.660 | after big poker tournaments is getting back in shape,

00:48:37.960 | that walking's ideal for it, right?

00:48:40.240 | So essentially, it's like the tale of two,

00:48:41.720 | during the World Series of poker,

00:48:43.640 | all my sort of structured life thrown out the window.

00:48:47.800 | - There's no walking.

00:48:48.920 | - There's very little walking.

00:48:50.200 | There's very little working out.

00:48:51.400 | There's very little anything.

00:48:52.240 | I go into the World Series, you know,

00:48:54.200 | like this year I went in around 157,

00:48:57.480 | and I expected to gain about 10 pounds

00:48:59.480 | during the World Series, not good pounds, wasn't muscle,

00:49:01.960 | but that's about what I did, 165.

00:49:03.760 | And then I spend the next month trying to, you know, lose it.

00:49:06.620 | But during the World Series, when I'm playing,

00:49:08.540 | the most important thing,

00:49:10.060 | without question that I have to focus on,

00:49:12.100 | and this is why I stopped focusing on working out

00:49:14.580 | and all this stuff, is sleep.

00:49:16.500 | If I'm not rested, I'm useless.

00:49:18.420 | If I only get five, six hours,

00:49:20.420 | and I have to go back the next day and play 14 hours,

00:49:23.540 | the chances of me being at my best, very, very slim.

00:49:26.500 | So sleep is a priority.

00:49:27.460 | - What's the perfect amount of sleep for you on those days?

00:49:30.100 | Eight, seven?

00:49:31.000 | - So eight hours is my go-to every night.

00:49:34.000 | During the World Series of poker, it's just not possible.

00:49:36.580 | Because of the way that it's structured,

00:49:37.960 | sometimes the tournaments end at 2.15 a.m.

00:49:41.000 | I get home about three o'clock.

00:49:44.400 | Takes me 30 minutes, 40 minutes to get to sleep.

00:49:46.960 | So now let's say I'm in bed by four.

00:49:48.840 | Well, the tournament's at, you know, two,

00:49:51.720 | so I have to get up and whatever.

00:49:53.560 | So it's very difficult to get exactly eight

00:49:55.120 | a lot of the time, you know,

00:49:56.320 | and also get back there in time.

00:49:57.680 | - Is there any hacks to quiet the mind?

00:50:01.400 | 'Cause you're going on a pretty intense roller coaster

00:50:04.600 | mentally when you're playing.

00:50:06.540 | Is there any tricks to getting to sleep,

00:50:10.140 | given the role of sleep? - I've been very lucky.

00:50:12.100 | Like, I'm blessed.

00:50:12.940 | I don't know if it's because of diet or what,

00:50:14.740 | but I've always been a very good sleeper.

00:50:16.700 | - You just shut off.

00:50:17.620 | - I get to sleep, and I sleep like a baby, you know?

00:50:20.020 | And I also nap really well.

00:50:21.860 | Like, during the World Series,

00:50:22.860 | sometimes what'll happen is,

00:50:23.820 | let's say I get knocked out of one event at 4 p.m.,

00:50:26.340 | and there's another one that I can jump in.

00:50:28.460 | Instead of jumping right into it,

00:50:30.100 | I'll go into like a private room and take 45-minute nap,

00:50:34.220 | and you know, and give me enough energy

00:50:36.160 | to continue and sort of reset my mind.

00:50:38.300 | - Yeah, and it solves a lot of problems with the nap, too.

00:50:41.060 | - It does. - Yeah.

00:50:41.900 | I feel like the nap is a magical trick in life.

00:50:46.180 | What else, diet-wise?

00:50:47.620 | What do you, your mind is going,

00:50:51.340 | you know, pretty intensely all day.

00:50:53.980 | - Yeah, so during, like I said,

00:50:55.860 | when I'm not playing, I'm super regimented.

00:50:58.740 | You know, I literally measure everything, you know?

00:51:02.300 | I count calories, I count macros, I follow it to a T.

00:51:05.900 | - Pretty balanced diet, or any--

00:51:07.460 | - I'm a vegan. - Vegan, yeah.

00:51:08.580 | - So it's, you know, a vegan diet, like--

00:51:10.500 | - But balanced in terms of carbs and protein--

00:51:12.100 | - Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I eat a healthy amount.

00:51:13.980 | I'm doing probably 150 grams of protein,

00:51:16.820 | like 60 grams of fat, 50, and then about--

00:51:20.140 | - And try to measure it all out.

00:51:21.460 | - I do, yeah.

00:51:22.300 | Basically, I created a meal plan.

00:51:23.460 | So what I did for myself,

00:51:24.580 | is 'cause I'm really anal and nerdy,

00:51:25.700 | I made a spreadsheet with like a day's food,

00:51:28.020 | and I have six different ones.

00:51:29.700 | So I just follow it.

00:51:30.980 | Like, it actually makes my life so much easier

00:51:34.580 | when I don't have to think about

00:51:35.420 | what I'm gonna eat for lunch,

00:51:36.380 | or what I'm gonna eat for dinner.

00:51:37.220 | I already know what I'm gonna eat.

00:51:38.100 | I already wrote it down.

00:51:39.060 | And it doesn't get boring,

00:51:40.300 | because I'm switching it up every day,

00:51:42.340 | you know, every six days,

00:51:43.180 | and occasionally I'll, you know,

00:51:45.180 | splurge or do something different.

00:51:46.300 | During the World Series of Poker,

00:51:47.900 | I eat whatever the fuck I wanna eat.

00:51:49.620 | - Yeah.

00:51:50.460 | - Like, at 2 a.m., I don't crave

00:51:52.860 | like a broccoli carrot salad.

00:51:54.940 | Like, I want chocolate, candy, and chips.

00:51:58.660 | So I'll just do it.

00:51:59.500 | - So you listen to the cravings.

00:52:01.340 | - Yeah, I realize like--

00:52:02.900 | - It's surprising, because like,

00:52:04.180 | you're so regimented outside of that.

00:52:06.580 | - It's really difficult.

00:52:07.740 | Like, I've done it before,

00:52:08.860 | where I played the World Series of Poker,

00:52:10.380 | and I made it a point to work out every day.

00:52:13.140 | But what that did was,

00:52:13.980 | it sacrificed sleep.

00:52:15.380 | - Yeah.

00:52:16.220 | - So then I found like, at 1 a.m.,

00:52:17.300 | I would be more tired, you know,

00:52:18.980 | because I've expended more energy

00:52:20.620 | than I would otherwise.

00:52:21.460 | So I essentially like,

00:52:22.820 | look at the World Series,

00:52:23.740 | the six, seven weeks where my body's

00:52:25.260 | just gonna take a beating,

00:52:26.340 | not like UFC fighter,

00:52:27.740 | but like a different kind of beating.

00:52:29.380 | And that's okay, because I have so much confidence

00:52:31.620 | that within six weeks of just like,

00:52:34.300 | eating right and working out,

00:52:35.900 | I can get back to where I was.

00:52:36.740 | - But it's just hilarious to me

00:52:37.820 | that you'd be eating chocolate,

00:52:39.100 | but eating chocolate in bed

00:52:40.420 | as you're trying to get to sleep.

00:52:42.060 | Is this--

00:52:42.900 | - Like, literally a bag of like,

00:52:44.220 | chips or chocolate.

00:52:45.220 | - Yeah.

00:52:46.060 | - Like, on my way home,

00:52:47.460 | and before bed, you know, just whatever.

00:52:49.340 | - This is what the professional athlete does

00:52:51.340 | at the highest, most difficult event of his career.

00:52:54.060 | Okay, so what else is there

00:52:56.660 | in terms of mental preparation

00:52:58.620 | and focus and meditation,

00:53:00.460 | those kinds of things leading up to the games?

00:53:03.100 | Is there anything you like to,

00:53:05.260 | like, any rituals you like to follow?

00:53:07.860 | - So yeah, I have dabbled in the past

00:53:10.100 | with like, meditation and different things like that.

00:53:11.740 | And I know that there's health benefits to it.

00:53:13.540 | And I understand that a lot of people

00:53:15.220 | get a lot from it.

00:53:16.340 | And I've done it for good amount of time,

00:53:18.540 | like, long periods of time.

00:53:20.340 | I found that for me,

00:53:21.500 | I think it was predominantly placebo.

00:53:23.740 | Like, it really wasn't doing anything for me

00:53:26.420 | that I felt like it was,

00:53:27.380 | it felt like I was doing something,

00:53:28.540 | but I really, I didn't see any specific results from it.

00:53:31.860 | So, I don't really do that too much.

00:53:33.980 | One thing that I will do for me is leading up,

00:53:37.340 | is there's so much footage now

00:53:39.260 | that I'll make it a point to like, watch my opponents.

00:53:42.260 | And then with like, my phone, I'll take notes

00:53:45.620 | and I'll keep track of different things that I'm seeing.

00:53:47.980 | And that sort of,

00:53:48.820 | and then what I'll do is I'll formulate a game plan.

00:53:50.980 | Like, I'm playing the Poker Masters coming up

00:53:52.980 | in about a week.

00:53:54.140 | And I'll look to see the tendencies

00:53:55.940 | of what my opponents are doing.

00:53:56.820 | And then I'll come up with like,

00:53:57.700 | some things that I'm gonna do,

00:53:59.060 | some tricks of the trade, if you will.

00:54:00.580 | Not game theory optimal stuff,

00:54:02.460 | stuff that I think,

00:54:03.300 | "Oh, they're making a mistake here that I can exploit."

00:54:05.980 | And then I look to do that in different ways

00:54:07.980 | and always look to, you know, throw curve balls.

00:54:11.740 | - How hard is that process?

00:54:14.300 | Do you enjoy it?

00:54:15.140 | Or is it like, really hard work to analyze the players

00:54:17.340 | to try to understand what are the different holes,

00:54:20.140 | what are the different mistakes,

00:54:21.140 | what are the strengths to avoid and that kind of stuff?

00:54:23.740 | - I think the only thing that makes it harder

00:54:25.620 | is when you're young, right?

00:54:27.420 | And you're in your twenties

00:54:28.260 | and you're trying to make your nest egg.

00:54:29.900 | You're like, you're trying to make your retirement money.

00:54:31.780 | You're hungry, right?

00:54:32.900 | You're like Clubber Lang and you know, the gym,

00:54:34.580 | you're hungry.

00:54:35.420 | Whereas, you know, Rocky's in there taking pictures

00:54:37.420 | and smiling and doing commercials and stuff like that.

00:54:39.900 | So I am 47, I'm financially okay.

00:54:42.460 | I don't need to win.

00:54:44.060 | I don't need to compete at the highest levels.

00:54:46.220 | So I think it was a boxer.

00:54:47.620 | I don't remember which one.

00:54:48.980 | When asked this, he was asked the question, you know,

00:54:51.580 | how do you get up in the morning, you know,

00:54:52.740 | still and do those morning runs?

00:54:54.740 | And he says, you know what?

00:54:55.580 | I'll be honest with you.

00:54:56.540 | It's a lot more difficult doing the 4 a.m. run

00:54:58.860 | in silk pajamas, right?

00:55:00.820 | It just is, right?

00:55:02.120 | But I've always been self-motivated

00:55:05.780 | and I've always found a way.

00:55:07.120 | So it's harder in the sense of like, it's not a need.

00:55:10.980 | I can still get by without it.

00:55:13.020 | But so in that regard,

00:55:14.620 | it does feel like a little bit of work

00:55:16.140 | where like, oh my God,

00:55:16.980 | that's a lot of footage I gotta get through.

00:55:18.980 | And I don't know that I have the time

00:55:19.980 | or I don't know that I wanna spend 10 hours of my day

00:55:23.300 | doing that when I could be doing other things.

00:55:25.700 | - I mean, what do you still love about poker?

00:55:29.060 | When you said, when you enter,

00:55:30.580 | like the times you catch yourself just being able

00:55:34.460 | to sort of take in the awe of it.

00:55:37.900 | What aspects do you love?

00:55:39.340 | - I think that like for me,

00:55:40.440 | I've always been really competitive,

00:55:42.180 | but I was never gonna be a professional athlete

00:55:44.060 | or a professional snooker player.

00:55:45.220 | I wasn't good enough at any of that stuff.

00:55:46.820 | I didn't have the body type, whatever.

00:55:49.180 | But poker, it sort of levels the playing field, right?

00:55:51.620 | You're six, five, 240, big deal.

00:55:54.020 | You know, we're not fighting here.

00:55:55.940 | We're fighting a different type of war.

00:55:57.600 | So the competitive aspect,

00:55:59.020 | I also have always been fueled throughout my career

00:56:02.740 | by doubters.

00:56:04.260 | So this is probably unhealthy,

00:56:05.740 | but every time people say like, you're done,

00:56:09.100 | you're washed up, you can't win anymore.

00:56:10.540 | It just makes me wanna prove them wrong, right?

00:56:13.660 | So I have a little bit of that in me,

00:56:15.340 | which again, you reading the comments and all these kinds,

00:56:17.800 | like I've been told many times throughout my career

00:56:19.740 | for the last 15 that I'm done, I can't compete anymore.

00:56:22.620 | And I enjoy, you know, proving them wrong.

00:56:27.300 | - Yeah, the game has changed so much.

00:56:29.960 | The greats of the past surely cannot be the greats

00:56:34.400 | of the present.

00:56:35.300 | Those that kind of commentary will continue for every sport.

00:56:38.900 | And certainly for poker,

00:56:40.100 | 'cause poker really changed a lot

00:56:42.120 | over the past couple of decades.

00:56:43.460 | Can you speak to how much has changed?

00:56:45.660 | - Yeah, I see. - Because it's been

00:56:46.500 | at the top for so long.

00:56:47.420 | - Yeah, so complacency is a big issue

00:56:49.380 | for people who make it, if you will, right?

00:56:51.380 | So in my era of the poker boom, around the early 2000s,

00:56:54.300 | there was a group of players who were the big names,

00:56:56.500 | the stars of the game.

00:56:57.700 | Well, a lot of them had their egos out of whack,

00:57:01.420 | where they just felt like, okay, I'm the best, that's it.

00:57:03.920 | Like, no, there's young guys learning,

00:57:05.620 | there's new software, there's solvers,

00:57:07.900 | there's all these kinds of things.

00:57:08.740 | And if you're not keeping up, then you'll get surpassed.

00:57:11.100 | And I remember myself at a very early age saying,

00:57:14.140 | I never wanna be that guy.

00:57:15.300 | And it was one of my first events in the late '90s.

00:57:17.820 | I was the young buck, playing with the Tom McAvoys

00:57:21.020 | and Brad Doughty, the guys of the era, right?

00:57:23.500 | And I was doing things more aggressively,

00:57:25.420 | and they were scoffing at, oh, these young kids

00:57:27.920 | with their aggressive three and all this stuff.

00:57:29.900 | And they were sort of mocking it, you know?

00:57:31.120 | And I thought, never be that guy.

00:57:33.180 | Always have the humility to be introspective,

00:57:35.900 | and always have the respect for your opponents

00:57:38.140 | that while you think you've got it all figured out,

00:57:41.180 | they're learning new things and you can learn from them.

00:57:43.340 | So I've always been willing to sort of swallow my pride

00:57:46.540 | and get coached by younger players,

00:57:48.780 | who I might even be better than,

00:57:50.260 | but they see blind spots that I have that I might not.

00:57:53.260 | And they help me improve my game.

00:57:55.220 | I've always been willing to sort of look

00:57:57.180 | every six months or year and say,

00:57:58.380 | is what I'm doing working?

00:57:59.300 | And if not, how do I get better?

00:58:01.620 | But most people from my generation, they go the other way.

00:58:06.320 | I don't know, they just have this idea

00:58:07.420 | that they figured it all out.

00:58:08.260 | Once you feel like you've mastered it,

00:58:10.020 | there's nothing left to learn.

00:58:10.860 | That's the moment where everyone else starts to surpass you.

00:58:13.820 | - That's the moment where you lose the mastery

00:58:17.780 | 'cause it's always evolving.

00:58:18.860 | How has the game changed?

00:58:20.660 | - So the game has changed in terms

00:58:21.980 | of the way people learn it, right?

00:58:23.780 | When I started out, the only way to learn how to play poker

00:58:25.660 | was to sit your ass on the chair and play.

00:58:28.380 | - In person? - Yes, in person.

00:58:30.460 | Play, maybe you jot down hands on a notepad.

00:58:32.820 | We didn't even have cell phones back then, right?

00:58:34.740 | So I would write notes.

00:58:36.380 | I actually brought a notepad and then analyze it

00:58:39.140 | and sort of try to figure it out that way

00:58:41.340 | and think about maybe talking to friends

00:58:44.620 | and different players.

00:58:45.540 | Like when I grew up, there was John Juanda,

00:58:47.260 | Alan Cunningham, and Phil Ivey.

00:58:48.740 | And we would sort of create a little bit of a mastermind.

00:58:52.260 | Well, how would you play this hand?

00:58:53.260 | What would you do here?

00:58:54.100 | That was the extent of it, right?

00:58:56.100 | We never had the correct answers.

00:58:57.940 | We always had theories about what might be right.

00:59:00.520 | Not until about five, six years ago

00:59:03.220 | where everything changed,

00:59:04.620 | where artificial intelligence created solvers

00:59:07.520 | that will specifically say, okay, this is the optimal play.

00:59:11.060 | This is the game through optimal play.

00:59:12.820 | So now it introduced poker to a whole new group

00:59:16.220 | of personality types.

00:59:18.540 | In my day, it was people that were dregs of society

00:59:21.460 | that didn't fit in, not college goers with a degree.

00:59:24.260 | These are people who were street hustlers, playing pool.

00:59:26.580 | They found poker and they had these unique lives, right?

00:59:29.660 | But now, because poker can be studied,

00:59:32.740 | much like you study university or college,

00:59:35.300 | you had, for example, the German contingent

00:59:37.420 | who was literally analyzing data

00:59:39.300 | and coming up with strategies based on this.

00:59:41.300 | And it's like, what?

00:59:42.380 | You know, and the old guy, like,

00:59:43.900 | you know, gotta play by feel or whatever.

00:59:45.780 | And they're like, they're learning.

00:59:47.340 | So I guess the way that you describe it is like,

00:59:49.460 | in the old days, it required skill and talent,

00:59:52.160 | a card sense, right?

00:59:53.860 | That was the only way to become good.

00:59:55.100 | And today that's not the case.

00:59:56.980 | Good study habits, a good work ethic in that regard

00:59:59.540 | can make you like a really good player,

01:00:01.220 | even if you aren't all that talented or gifted.

01:00:05.020 | Having a good work ethic is a talent, right?

01:00:07.460 | Not necessarily card sense, but if you're able to put

01:00:09.860 | in the work and study from these solvers,

01:00:12.200 | you essentially have the perfect study tool now

01:00:14.540 | that we didn't have in my day.

01:00:17.140 | - So what do the solvers give you?

01:00:19.900 | Do you start to memorize the optimal play

01:00:22.120 | for every single hand?

01:00:24.100 | - You try your best.

01:00:25.300 | So again, solvers are imperfect as well,

01:00:28.740 | in terms of the way the humans utilize them, right?

01:00:32.740 | Because you can give solvers a certain number of inputs

01:00:36.900 | in terms of what you want it to solve,

01:00:38.540 | but a solver can think on many, many levels.

01:00:40.920 | So for example, the way that a typical player

01:00:43.280 | would do a solve is to say, okay,

01:00:45.620 | what does the solver think is the best play here?

01:00:47.900 | Bet one third pot, bet two thirds pot,

01:00:50.740 | or bet one and a half times pot, okay?

01:00:52.620 | You give it three parameters.

01:00:54.420 | It comes out with an output and it tells you

01:00:56.460 | what you should do with all the different hands,

01:00:58.420 | you know, you have.

01:00:59.340 | However, that's a simplified version

01:01:01.820 | of what a solver would really do,

01:01:02.940 | because a solver might decide that seven times the pot

01:01:05.780 | is best, 10% of the pot.

01:01:07.660 | But when you're putting in a solve,

01:01:09.860 | you can only put in, you know, specific parameters.

01:01:12.540 | So that's why, frankly, that's typically the number,

01:01:14.920 | one third, two third, and one and a half times pot

01:01:17.140 | is what people often do.

01:01:18.500 | So they sort of have a vague idea of what a solver wants.

01:01:21.860 | But again, imperfect in terms of the implementation of it,

01:01:26.100 | right, and memorizing all the variables,

01:01:29.100 | like that King Jack offsuit with the King of Diamonds

01:01:31.820 | is 13%, no human brain can do that.

01:01:35.840 | So what you do is you bucket it.

01:01:37.540 | Like you bucket it into, say, instead of 10,000 variables,

01:01:41.040 | you have 10 buckets and you say, okay,

01:01:42.620 | with these hands, we do roughly this,

01:01:44.180 | and we do roughly this.

01:01:45.180 | And you try your best to, you know,

01:01:47.220 | stay within those lines.

01:01:48.300 | But again, what I love about live poker partly

01:01:50.500 | is that nobody will ever be able to master game theory,

01:01:54.780 | you know, and mimic a solver.

01:01:57.780 | - But you also have to incorporate your position,

01:02:02.780 | where you are, and obviously what cards you have,

01:02:06.420 | but also the size of your stack, how much money you have,

01:02:09.860 | and also whether you have the ability or desire to buy in,

01:02:14.560 | all those kinds of things.

01:02:15.400 | So you have to calculate all of that, right?

01:02:17.580 | - So the, you know, so the solver will do that, right?

01:02:20.380 | And essentially, you don't input your hand.

01:02:23.100 | It tells you, you'll look at the grade and be like,

01:02:25.980 | all right, this is my hand, and it tells you what it is,

01:02:27.980 | but it tells you what you would do with any hand, right?

01:02:30.940 | It gives you the full output.

01:02:32.220 | - And that actually gives you a better idea

01:02:33.980 | 'cause you're ultimately, like you said,

01:02:36.760 | playing a range of hands, not a hand.

01:02:39.380 | - And the solvers do things that are really interesting.

01:02:41.180 | You've seen AlphaGo, I would imagine.

01:02:43.000 | Brilliant film, right, I thought.

01:02:44.660 | And I thought what was interesting is there was,

01:02:46.860 | you know, accepted theory from all the top Go players

01:02:50.100 | that this is what you do.

01:02:51.100 | But the AI was doing things way different,

01:02:54.340 | and they're like, this has to be wrong,

01:02:55.680 | but really it wasn't.

01:02:56.840 | So for example, a solver may say this, right?

01:03:00.740 | Let's say you bet on the end, and you bet a lot,

01:03:04.300 | and a solver may say, you should fold here

01:03:07.420 | with a pair of kings and a queen kicker,

01:03:10.020 | which is, you know, a pair of kings,

01:03:11.960 | but call with a pair of fours and an ace kicker.

01:03:15.020 | So it's essentially telling you

01:03:16.860 | that you should fold this hand

01:03:18.780 | that is much better than this.

01:03:20.020 | So it begs the question, why?

01:03:23.140 | Because what the solvers do is they use the information

01:03:26.940 | of your own cards to formulate all the possible hands

01:03:30.380 | your opponent can have.

01:03:32.060 | So if your opponent is,

01:03:34.140 | so basically if you had the king queen,

01:03:36.620 | you know, it may say,

01:03:37.900 | for lack of a better nerdy term,

01:03:41.720 | it blocks potential bluffing hands

01:03:43.460 | that your opponent can have.

01:03:44.620 | So let's say if your opponent would bluff with queen jack,

01:03:47.740 | but you have a queen.

01:03:49.120 | So there are less combinations of queen jack.

01:03:51.280 | So it will find a better bluff catcher, if you will.

01:03:54.180 | So that's what's really not intuitive to poker players.

01:03:56.520 | Poker players usually think like,

01:03:58.020 | well, this, my hand is pretty good, so I got a call.

01:04:00.780 | But that's not how a solver would think.

01:04:02.540 | Solver uses, you know, common atrix and, you know.

01:04:06.980 | - And sometimes it's tough to get the good why answers

01:04:10.580 | you just did for why a solver thinks something is better.

01:04:13.300 | Or maybe in poker, it's a little bit easier,

01:04:14.860 | but in the case of go and chess, it's not always obvious why

01:04:18.820 | because it's not gonna explain stuff to you.

01:04:20.420 | - But I think one of the best ways to learn poker

01:04:23.460 | is when you see a solver output

01:04:25.100 | and it tells you one of these things, try to figure out why.

01:04:28.220 | Why does this solver do this?

01:04:30.000 | Why does it want you to call with this and fold this?

01:04:32.380 | And try to think about it on a deeper level.

01:04:34.180 | And you go, aha, probably because this card

01:04:36.820 | that I have here, you know,

01:04:38.780 | changes the range of my opponent's, you know, potential.

01:04:42.580 | - I'd love to get your opinion

01:04:43.940 | on your relationship with solvers.

01:04:45.540 | 'Cause for example, Magnus doesn't use them.

01:04:47.940 | His team uses them.

01:04:49.380 | 'Cause he feels like he's going to rely on it too much

01:04:54.180 | and you can't use it when you're playing.

01:04:57.100 | What you really want is to build up

01:04:58.820 | extremely strong intuition without the help of a solver.

01:05:02.740 | Is there some aspect of that that rings true to you?

01:05:04.900 | - Absolutely, I totally can relate to what Magnus is saying.

01:05:07.020 | First and foremost,

01:05:07.860 | because when solvers were first introduced,

01:05:09.900 | I didn't come from that world.

01:05:11.100 | I was so intimidated 'cause I didn't know how to use it.

01:05:13.580 | I don't know how to do an input.

01:05:15.380 | So I had two guys, one guy's a data scientist

01:05:17.540 | and you know, another guy's like a poker savant, if you will.

01:05:20.580 | And they coached me and they did it.

01:05:22.500 | So today, if I was in a tough spot, you know,

01:05:25.740 | and I'm like, I don't know, what would a solver do?

01:05:27.100 | I will send them the hand and they'll run the solve for me.

01:05:30.980 | And then sort of give me the parameters of what to do.

01:05:33.380 | When I was playing, you know,

01:05:34.900 | regularly using solvers with them,

01:05:36.700 | we were spending six to eight hours a day

01:05:38.220 | going over all these solves.

01:05:40.300 | So intuitively, I started to think and learn

01:05:42.740 | about what the solver would want.

01:05:44.100 | But I sort of understand where Magnus is coming from

01:05:46.100 | in that you don't wanna become a slave to the sim,

01:05:48.300 | as I say, right?

01:05:49.740 | There's one kid I know, I joked with him,

01:05:51.700 | his name is Landon Tice.

01:05:53.140 | And you know, he made a play that the sim, you know,

01:05:56.220 | would say, this is a good play.

01:05:57.860 | But I'm like, it's a good play, you know,

01:05:59.780 | in a simulated world against the robot.

01:06:01.820 | It's not in practice against the human, right?

01:06:05.100 | You don't need to be doing that.

01:06:06.660 | So if you become a slave to the sim

01:06:08.780 | and always do what the sim says,

01:06:10.620 | you're handcuffed to a certain degree.

01:06:13.100 | - Is there some, at the highest level plays,

01:06:16.020 | there's still a role for feel intuition.

01:06:19.460 | - Absolutely, if you're not doing that,

01:06:21.180 | 'cause here's the thing, right?

01:06:22.700 | No human being plays perfectly balanced

01:06:25.580 | in game three optimal like a robot would.

01:06:27.620 | They're not, right?

01:06:29.180 | So there are opportunities there to take advantage

01:06:30.980 | of the things that they do that are slightly too aggressive

01:06:34.340 | or less aggressive.

01:06:35.780 | You know, for example, say most human beings

01:06:38.740 | don't bluff enough in a certain spot.

01:06:41.060 | So you don't have to call with the correct range of hands.

01:06:44.660 | You don't have to because they're not bluffing

01:06:46.740 | at the optimal frequency.

01:06:48.020 | So you don't have to call at the optimal frequency.

01:06:50.500 | You'd be making a mistake, frankly, if you did.

01:06:52.900 | - What's the difference between in-person

01:06:56.860 | and online play, given that context?

01:06:59.500 | - Yeah, well, online poker and live poker,

01:07:01.980 | it's the same game, right?

01:07:03.340 | Same, it's poker, but it's different in so many levels.

01:07:06.140 | I think playing online,

01:07:08.820 | you have to focus far more on fundamentals,

01:07:11.020 | you know, on game theory.

01:07:12.220 | You don't have the added bonus of looking across the table

01:07:14.940 | and getting any sense of whether your opponent

01:07:17.060 | is strong or weak, they're bluffing, whatever, you know.

01:07:20.300 | And also because online poker, those that play it,

01:07:24.700 | you play far more hands.

01:07:26.740 | Like some of these guys are playing 10, 20 tables

01:07:28.900 | at the same time, right?

01:07:30.460 | So you're just, you're hitting the long run really quickly

01:07:32.420 | and you're creating a database on your opponents, right?

01:07:35.100 | So let's have, you know, online, I can see your data.

01:07:37.540 | I'm like, well, this guy, he's playing 40% of hands.

01:07:40.460 | He's betting the river 80% of the time.

01:07:43.220 | So now I can use that data and, you know,

01:07:45.580 | exploit you that way.

01:07:46.420 | When you play live, you don't have that.

01:07:48.980 | - Do you enjoy playing online?

01:07:51.140 | - I enjoy, so with online poker,

01:07:52.900 | I enjoy the convenience of it.

01:07:54.380 | 'Cause you know, you can be on your couch,

01:07:55.700 | in your underwear, not leave your house.

01:07:57.380 | - Do you also play multiple games at the same time

01:08:00.060 | or do you try to play one game?

01:08:01.500 | - I typically like to play one or two,

01:08:03.620 | but I can play up to four.

01:08:05.100 | I find that past four, it's hard for me to keep up

01:08:09.340 | and keep track of what's actually happening.

01:08:11.340 | You know, it's a different mindset required.

01:08:13.220 | Like a lot of these young guys,

01:08:14.180 | they're accustomed to 20 tables at a time.

01:08:16.680 | - It feels like the purity of the game is gone.

01:08:20.620 | - Well, it's much more robotic, right?

01:08:21.980 | So if you're playing 20 tables,

01:08:23.740 | you're just making decisions based on like what you,

01:08:25.980 | you know, you're not thinking about the depth

01:08:29.260 | of the situation and what just happened 15 minutes ago.

01:08:31.620 | You don't even know what happened

01:08:32.580 | because you can't pay attention to all that at once.

01:08:35.340 | - And some of the magic of poker is the low sample.

01:08:37.500 | - I agree.

01:08:38.340 | - So for example, and sorry to be bringing up Magnus so much

01:08:41.220 | but there's so much parallel between the two of you

01:08:42.940 | and the poker and the chess world.

01:08:45.620 | He hates Olympics and world championships

01:08:49.180 | and all that kind of stuff because it's so low sample.

01:08:51.740 | But to me, that's part of the magic of it.

01:08:53.420 | There's the World Series of Poker, the main event.

01:08:56.880 | There's a magic to it.

01:08:58.460 | - I agree, yeah.

01:08:59.300 | - And I don't know what that is exactly

01:09:00.940 | because so much is at stake, it's so rare.

01:09:03.740 | So much drama and heartbreak leading up to it

01:09:07.860 | that all somehow, yeah, it accumulates

01:09:12.220 | to that magical moment when somebody wins.

01:09:15.380 | - It's especially that event.

01:09:16.460 | The World Series of Poker main event historically,

01:09:18.300 | like that's it, you know, that's the pinnacle.

01:09:20.060 | That's where like mainstream watches.

01:09:21.580 | That's where people are tuning in

01:09:23.280 | and the gravity of the moment, you know,

01:09:25.460 | it's so much bigger than people.

01:09:26.660 | Like everyone gets the opportunity

01:09:28.340 | to play armchair quarterback too, right?

01:09:30.420 | Oh, he should do this.

01:09:31.500 | You're not there.

01:09:32.540 | You're not under the lights.

01:09:33.620 | You're not under the pressure.

01:09:34.940 | You know, it might seem easy for you at home to be like,

01:09:37.420 | well, yeah, but you can see the whole cards.

01:09:39.380 | You know, they can't.

01:09:40.500 | Certainly the idea of the small sample with tournaments,

01:09:44.220 | I like the idea that you don't have to worry about,

01:09:49.220 | oh, well, if I do this now, then in the future,

01:09:52.980 | you know, I won't be balanced.

01:09:54.020 | I have to be balanced here or anything like that.

01:09:55.700 | That's like really boring and lame, right?

01:09:58.020 | Again, that is kind of the way the younger generation

01:10:00.780 | learns how to play the game, being balanced in every spot

01:10:05.380 | and then randomizing, you know, like,

01:10:07.820 | oh, I'm supposed to do this 50% of the time.

01:10:09.220 | Okay, so if my left card is red, I'll do it.

01:10:12.340 | And if it's black, I don't.

01:10:13.260 | So you're not even making,

01:10:14.380 | you're no longer making actual decisions for yourself.

01:10:16.980 | You're just randomizing.

01:10:18.420 | And that's way less fun for me

01:10:20.740 | than tailoring it to the situation.

01:10:23.180 | - And the final table at the main event,

01:10:24.700 | there's none of that.

01:10:25.540 | You have to, I mean, it's all or nothing.

01:10:28.260 | - Well, you shouldn't be, but there are.

01:10:29.820 | Like again, I think a lot of the young guys,

01:10:31.580 | they are thinking in that regard, like, oh, randomization.

01:10:34.820 | - Maybe at that table, the final table at the main event.

01:10:38.060 | What's a hand that stands out to you

01:10:39.780 | that was especially gutsy and powerful or memorable

01:10:44.140 | for that you've seen in the history of poker?

01:10:46.100 | - Well, for me, the one that stands out

01:10:47.580 | and probably because I was so young

01:10:49.620 | and it was my first year, like,

01:10:51.060 | when I won a bracelet that year,

01:10:53.260 | was I was friends with Scotty Wynn, the Prince of Poker.

01:10:56.460 | And he was heads up against the guy named Kevin McBride.

01:10:58.980 | And I was on the rail, you know, I'm like, wow,

01:11:00.900 | he's gonna, you know, he's heads up.

01:11:02.300 | And he was so cool.

01:11:03.500 | Like he had a mullet, but it's perfect, right?

01:11:05.940 | He had the white shirt, the black thing.

01:11:07.660 | He's drinking a Michelob, smoking a cigarette, whatever,

01:11:10.540 | you know, all chill.

01:11:12.140 | He bets it all on the river and the guy's thinking,

01:11:14.980 | and he psychologically owned him.

01:11:17.760 | And he said, he goes with his beer, he goes,

01:11:20.060 | "You call, gonna be all over, baby."

01:11:21.740 | Ha ha ha, that's right.

01:11:23.540 | Okay, so this guy who was an amateur heard that

01:11:27.100 | and was like, there's so much pressure

01:11:29.140 | in this moment right now.

01:11:30.260 | I can't handle this pressure.

01:11:31.860 | But Scotty just told me if I call here,

01:11:33.660 | it's the pressure's gone.

01:11:34.940 | I don't have to be under it anymore.

01:11:36.180 | So he sort of hypnotized them into making the call,

01:11:39.740 | you know, and Scotty had it.

01:11:41.460 | Scotty had, you know, the full house

01:11:43.220 | and it was over for the guy.

01:11:44.220 | You call, gonna be all over, baby.

01:11:45.980 | It was, I just, I love that aspect,

01:11:47.900 | sort of the table talk dynamic,

01:11:49.340 | which isn't as prevalent today as it was back then.

01:11:52.800 | But that one sticks out.

01:11:55.220 | And it probably, because it was one of my first.

01:11:57.140 | - So the few words you say at the table

01:12:01.140 | can completely affect a hand like that.

01:12:05.100 | That's almost, that's scary.

01:12:07.660 | - It was just so cool to me, you know,

01:12:09.740 | like just how he was so calm.

01:12:11.900 | And I think that too added more pressure to the amateur.

01:12:14.900 | And I think like, again, part of it is,

01:12:17.540 | even back then, it was 1998,

01:12:19.380 | there's still a big rail of people and there's lights

01:12:21.620 | and they're, you know, they're filming

01:12:22.900 | and all this kind of stuff.

01:12:23.740 | And it's a lot of pressure for a guy

01:12:25.300 | who's never been in this environment.

01:12:26.580 | And now I'm telling you, it can all be over soon.

01:12:31.100 | It will all be over soon.

01:12:33.540 | Just call, it's finished.

01:12:35.660 | (laughing)

01:12:36.820 | - Something about that accent too.

01:12:39.140 | Now you're a master at table talk as well.

01:12:41.620 | Do you have, do you just kind of go with your gut,

01:12:45.260 | you flow with it, or is there a deliberate strategy

01:12:48.140 | with this sometimes?

01:12:48.980 | Like in the-- - There's usually

01:12:49.820 | some sort of strategy that I think about

01:12:51.780 | in terms of what I want to say and whatnot.

01:12:53.380 | But a lot of the time, I just go, I go with it, you know?

01:12:56.540 | - The more you talk, the more information you get.

01:12:59.180 | - Yeah, but in some cases against really good players,

01:13:02.020 | you're just giving away information, right?

01:13:04.320 | Like if I'm playing against Phil Ivey,

01:13:05.620 | I'm not engaging in anything 'cause he can read through it.

01:13:09.020 | He can sense based on what I'm saying, you know,

01:13:11.500 | the clues and where I'm trying to take him.

01:13:13.660 | And he reads through, he sees the tree through the forest

01:13:16.580 | or whatever you want to call it,

01:13:17.660 | the forest through the trees.

01:13:19.020 | And, you know, so then I would just be like

01:13:21.980 | allowing myself to be exploitable.

01:13:24.540 | - Is some of it just for fun?

01:13:26.660 | Because at the end of the day, if you're having fun,

01:13:29.420 | you might be at the top of your game.

01:13:31.300 | - I've been thinking about this a lot lately, actually.

01:13:33.340 | It's funny you bring this up

01:13:34.500 | because I've been thinking about when I'm at my best.

01:13:36.940 | And I think I'm at my best when I am comfortable like that,

01:13:39.500 | right, where I'm not so stiff and worried about, you know,

01:13:42.940 | checking properly and worried about reading people.

01:13:44.940 | I'm like, no, I'm me.

01:13:46.460 | All right, I'm gonna play some poker.

01:13:47.300 | What do you want to do?

01:13:48.140 | You want to call me?

01:13:48.960 | Call, go ahead, do what you want, right?

01:13:49.940 | 'Cause then I realized, you know,

01:13:50.780 | ultimately it's like I'm comfortable in that.

01:13:53.100 | My opponents aren't as comfortable in that.

01:13:54.620 | They're comfortable with this.

01:13:55.920 | You know, the robot thing.

01:13:57.260 | But I thought more about that and how,

01:13:59.980 | especially with some tournaments coming up,

01:14:01.940 | I plan on really kind of sort of getting back

01:14:04.900 | to my roots in that regard.

01:14:06.260 | - I love it.

01:14:08.500 | From a spectator perspective, I love it.

01:14:10.060 | But it's also interesting whenever you see a Daniel

01:14:11.940 | on the ground, a quiet.

01:14:13.100 | That's an interesting, like,

01:14:16.460 | like it feels like a calm before a storm of sorts.

01:14:20.920 | So I'm sure that's also a part of it.

01:14:22.420 | - Yeah, like I've gone, I've ebb and flowed.

01:14:24.180 | Like I said, you know, I took on some coaches

01:14:26.000 | and I was really learning game theory

01:14:27.400 | 'cause I felt like it was important to always stick,

01:14:29.680 | you know, keep up with what's going on.

01:14:31.240 | And then I do feel like to some degree,

01:14:33.520 | it sort of took away a little bit of my own

01:14:36.440 | instinctual ideas in terms of what I should be doing.

01:14:39.880 | Right? - Yeah.

01:14:40.720 | - So I think like the most dangerous version of myself

01:14:43.880 | is a deep understanding of the game theory

01:14:46.840 | with my wisdom of many years of,

01:14:50.080 | and comfort of just sort of like being myself at the table.

01:14:53.280 | - And being relaxed. - Relaxed.

01:14:55.260 | - Letting your mind flow.

01:14:56.620 | Let me ask you the greatest, the goat question,

01:14:59.320 | greatest of all time.

01:15:00.300 | Can you make the case for a few folks?

01:15:03.380 | So first you tweeted referring to Phil Ivey as the goat,

01:15:07.500 | saying the goat doing goat things.

01:15:09.340 | That's a recent tweet.

01:15:10.740 | So can you make the case for Phil Ivey?

01:15:14.260 | Or maybe who is the greatest poker player of all time?

01:15:17.580 | Would you put Phil?

01:15:19.060 | - For me, until someone knocks him off the podium,

01:15:21.860 | the king of poker and the goat is Phil Ivey.

01:15:24.680 | Okay, so and the reason I say that is,

01:15:26.280 | I think of poker as more than just one game, right?

01:15:28.540 | There's different variants.

01:15:29.920 | You know, there's Hold'em, Omaha, Stud, Triple Draw,

01:15:32.480 | all these different types of games.

01:15:34.080 | And Phil in every arena has been dominant.

01:15:37.920 | Whether it was tournament poker, dominated it.

01:15:40.580 | Mixed game high stakes poker in Bobby's room, dominated.

01:15:43.680 | Online poker against all the wizards, dominated.

01:15:46.920 | Made millions in every arena.

01:15:48.600 | And you know, he sort of took a few years away from poker

01:15:51.200 | with his legal troubles and things like that,

01:15:52.700 | but he's back.

01:15:53.660 | You know, he's been playing in the high roller series again.

01:15:56.300 | And you know, he comes from,

01:15:58.160 | he's cut from a different cloth.

01:15:59.860 | But he has a tenacity and a focus that's unparalleled,

01:16:03.700 | I think.

01:16:04.540 | When he's in the zone, I mean, for lack,

01:16:06.460 | and this has nothing to do with race.

01:16:08.080 | It really has to do with mannerism.

01:16:09.580 | But he does remind me of like a combination

01:16:12.300 | of Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods

01:16:14.020 | in the way that he approaches it.

01:16:15.100 | He's very intense.

01:16:16.340 | - Yeah.

01:16:17.180 | - And he outworks everybody, you know?

01:16:19.060 | And I think, frankly, a lot of his mannerisms

01:16:21.360 | do come from them.

01:16:22.560 | Because he's young, watching these guys on TV,

01:16:24.960 | and a lot of his ways of being, you know,

01:16:27.240 | his learned behavior, I think, probably from people like that.

01:16:29.400 | - People at the top of their sport,

01:16:31.320 | and people that are Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan

01:16:34.080 | aren't just at the top of their sport,

01:16:35.720 | but they kind of dominate the sport.

01:16:37.160 | There's some kind of aura that--

01:16:38.440 | - There's a uniqueness to them.

01:16:39.720 | They're not built like us.

01:16:41.440 | They're not, you know, they're not.

01:16:42.740 | Like I wish, I wish I could have the kind of focus

01:16:45.200 | that Phil Ivey has, you know,

01:16:46.560 | and see everything that he's saying.

01:16:47.600 | I just, that's not me, you know?

01:16:49.500 | I don't have that.

01:16:50.340 | And he does.

01:16:51.180 | He has that gene, whatever it is.

01:16:53.380 | - But they also look like they're not having that much fun.

01:16:55.700 | They're more focused on the perfection,

01:16:58.180 | like a dogged pursuit of perfection.

01:17:00.100 | - And you know, that might even be true.

01:17:01.860 | It might not be as fun.

01:17:03.080 | You know, I don't know.

01:17:03.920 | Like I have fun at the table.

01:17:05.100 | When you look outwardly, you look at someone,

01:17:07.220 | like maybe he is having a blast.

01:17:08.540 | Maybe that's just the way that he likes it, you know?

01:17:11.060 | Like is Tiger Woods having fun when he's like on 17,

01:17:13.860 | about to win a major?

01:17:14.700 | Doesn't look like it, theoretically.

01:17:16.980 | - Well, if you look at Michael Jordan,

01:17:19.280 | I don't know about Tiger Woods,

01:17:20.360 | but I think they're more focused

01:17:22.800 | on every single mistake they make.

01:17:25.080 | I think they're more obsessed about not making a mistake

01:17:27.960 | and hating every time they make a mistake.

01:17:30.520 | That's probably like 99% of their mental energy.

01:17:34.800 | - I think that's part of what makes them great, right?

01:17:37.440 | They don't look past the mistake and just let it,

01:17:39.240 | it's whatever.

01:17:40.080 | No, they're like, they wanna correct it.

01:17:41.840 | And--

01:17:42.680 | - Yeah, there's a tension, almost like a trade-off.

01:17:44.600 | I wonder if that's always the case

01:17:45.880 | between sort of greatness and happiness.

01:17:49.240 | - I remember Huxeed, who, you know,

01:17:51.720 | when I was a kid growing up, he was like the poker idol.

01:17:54.000 | He won the world championship in 1996.

01:17:55.960 | And I was lucky enough to hang out with him a little bit.

01:17:58.000 | And he would go through these streaks

01:17:59.200 | where he had an A game and he had an F game.

01:18:02.520 | His A game was unparalleled.

01:18:03.760 | Nobody could beat him, right?

01:18:05.120 | But his F game was so terrible that he was just a fish.

01:18:09.040 | You know, he was playing terribly.

01:18:10.280 | And I remember him saying,

01:18:11.320 | and it was exactly what you're saying.

01:18:13.360 | He'd make like one little mistake, right?

01:18:16.200 | And then he would go off.

01:18:17.680 | And I was like, why do you do that?

01:18:19.280 | Like, you know, your B game would be just fine.

01:18:20.680 | He's like, well, if I'm gonna make a mistake,

01:18:21.840 | what's the point?

01:18:23.540 | What's the point, right, of trying?

01:18:25.880 | Like, if you can't play perfect,

01:18:27.280 | there's no point in playing at all.

01:18:28.800 | So he was extreme in that regard

01:18:30.640 | and the way that he viewed it.

01:18:32.000 | - And depending on the sport, those folks,

01:18:34.440 | like in chess, certainly the case,

01:18:36.360 | that kind of mindset can destroy you.

01:18:38.480 | - Absolutely.

01:18:39.320 | No, I was totally--

01:18:40.160 | - 'Cause a sequence of mistakes,

01:18:42.720 | like the kind of year you had with the World Series at Polk,

01:18:45.720 | it can completely destroy a human being

01:18:48.400 | if you're not able to see the bigger picture of it.

01:18:51.040 | - Yeah.

01:18:52.200 | - You said that Phil Ivey's the hardest,

01:18:55.280 | your toughest opponent,

01:18:56.360 | the toughest person to play against.

01:18:57.800 | Why is that?

01:18:58.960 | And how do you beat him?

01:19:00.720 | - Because Phil Ivey's just,

01:19:02.240 | he's seeing things that nobody else is seeing, really.

01:19:04.840 | Like subtle things, where I'm putting my hands,

01:19:06.780 | where I'm looking, you know, my pulse,

01:19:08.760 | like stuff that I don't even know I'm giving off.

01:19:10.680 | He's so engaged and so focused

01:19:13.000 | and has such a, just a,

01:19:14.800 | he's fearless, right?

01:19:17.600 | A lot of people, you know, they'll play poker

01:19:19.160 | and be like, "You know what?

01:19:20.000 | "I don't think this guy has it."

01:19:20.820 | But do they have the guts?

01:19:22.480 | Do they have the cojones, if you will,

01:19:24.360 | to actually do anything about it, right?

01:19:26.600 | And stand up to this person?

01:19:27.680 | He does, you know?

01:19:29.200 | - I forgot the hand that you tweeted

01:19:30.840 | about the goat doing goat things.

01:19:33.240 | - That wasn't even that big of a goat hand.

01:19:34.960 | - Yeah, it was pretty impressive.

01:19:35.800 | - There's hands where like,

01:19:37.280 | there was a famous one in Australia

01:19:39.980 | where the flop was like jack, jack, nine,

01:19:43.260 | and Phil check raised the flop with six, seven, nothing.

01:19:46.640 | Just absolutely nothing.

01:19:47.840 | And the guy re-raised him, right?

01:19:50.440 | And Phil just knew.

01:19:52.080 | He went all in with nothing.

01:19:53.800 | If the guy calls, he's done, he's cooked.

01:19:55.600 | But he was so tuned in that this guy's not strong

01:19:59.240 | that he just, you know, he did things like that.

01:20:01.220 | And it's tough to play against a guy like that.

01:20:03.400 | - So he gets great reads and is able to execute on them,

01:20:07.680 | has the guts to execute on them.

01:20:09.980 | He's got experience, he's got work ethic.

01:20:12.580 | He also, I think one thing I'm underselling too,

01:20:16.140 | is his strategic mind, right?

01:20:18.200 | Like I believe that, you know, like I said,

01:20:21.780 | the new age player,

01:20:22.620 | they learn how to play through a very systematic approach.

01:20:25.220 | Okay, let's look at the data.

01:20:27.020 | Make up a game right now.

01:20:29.060 | Three cards, we each get three cards.

01:20:31.060 | Jacks are wild, sixes are, you know,

01:20:34.020 | six of hearts is wild, right?

01:20:35.560 | Just make up that game.

01:20:36.820 | Phil will figure it out intuitively, very, very quickly,

01:20:40.680 | right, without having the answers for him, right?

01:20:43.760 | So that's like the difference

01:20:45.000 | between the players of my generation.

01:20:46.740 | We had to figure this stuff out on our own.

01:20:48.880 | Today, well, I wanna know the answer,

01:20:50.860 | I go ask the computer and the computer tells me.

01:20:53.240 | So I really believe like if you created a game from scratch

01:20:55.720 | that Phil Ivey would be my horse that I wanted to play in.

01:20:59.160 | - So he's in some sense in tune with some deeper thing.

01:21:03.520 | - He has what we used to call card sense.

01:21:06.200 | - Card sense.

01:21:07.680 | Can you try to make the case for some others

01:21:09.840 | like Doyle Brunson, Phil Helmuth, Daniel Negreanu,

01:21:13.920 | and maybe one of the modern guys like Justin Bonomo

01:21:16.760 | or somebody like that? - Sure.

01:21:17.720 | Oh, so let's start with Doyle, okay?

01:21:19.940 | Like what Doyle has going for him above and beyond

01:21:22.680 | is twofold, really.

01:21:24.160 | Longevity, I mean, he's in his late 80s.

01:21:26.680 | And last time I played with him, I was,

01:21:28.920 | I'm like, how is he getting better?

01:21:30.480 | Like I really felt like he was playing better

01:21:32.040 | than he had, you know, in the previous years.

01:21:34.600 | But also with Doyle, like Doyle had to figure,

01:21:38.040 | you know, we talked about my generation

01:21:39.880 | having to figure it on their own.

01:21:40.920 | I mean, they really had to figure it on their own.

01:21:43.040 | Like they didn't have any computer simulation

01:21:45.200 | to tell you if Ace King was a favorite over pocket sixes.

01:21:47.720 | They didn't.

01:21:48.560 | So we know what he did.

01:21:49.380 | He would take a deck of cards and they would deal out,

01:21:51.640 | and they would, with a notepad, right, okay, Ace King won.

01:21:54.360 | And then they would do like a hundred of them,

01:21:55.640 | be like, all right, Ace King won like 53,

01:21:57.680 | so it must be a favorite.

01:21:58.720 | And he did it manually, you know?

01:22:00.720 | And he did it in a time when it was very, very difficult.

01:22:03.200 | And he's seen poker evolve and change throughout the years.

01:22:06.160 | Now, listen, is he gonna be able to compete

01:22:08.240 | against the top players in the world today?

01:22:09.400 | Absolutely not, you know?

01:22:10.960 | But how many people, he's the best 88 year old player

01:22:14.680 | in the world by a mile, okay?

01:22:16.400 | That's not even close.

01:22:17.640 | And Doyle, again, he's another guy who plays all the games.

01:22:20.120 | He's played high stakes cash, tournaments, you name it.

01:22:22.840 | He's iconic, you know, he's the godfather.

01:22:24.800 | - But there's also an element to that,

01:22:26.480 | so the iconic element, like your personality in poker.

01:22:30.520 | I mean, not to romanticize this thing too much,

01:22:33.360 | but poker is also a game of personalities.

01:22:38.240 | I mean, it's part of the greatness

01:22:39.920 | is like the uniqueness of the human being.

01:22:43.040 | - Yeah, I think also, yeah.

01:22:44.200 | I mean, if you'd like looking at it from that perspective

01:22:46.080 | in terms of like goat,

01:22:47.340 | like goat in terms of what you represent,

01:22:49.320 | like the cowboy, the godfather, you know?

01:22:51.400 | He's been around, you know, he played in the '60s

01:22:53.840 | and stuff like that.

01:22:54.680 | It's just something like incredibly cool.

01:22:56.420 | Like I often think about if I could go back in time

01:22:59.400 | and like visit an era,

01:23:01.280 | I'd love to go like to Vegas in the '70s.

01:23:04.200 | And just like, I can think of what it would smell like,

01:23:07.080 | probably not ideal, cigarettes and the leather jackets

01:23:10.320 | and just the vibe of what it must've been like

01:23:12.360 | with the mobsters and things like that.

01:23:13.840 | And you know, he's lived through all that,

01:23:15.160 | all the cool movies we've seen.

01:23:16.400 | Like Doyle talks about some of those films

01:23:18.600 | and he's like, yeah, that guy,

01:23:20.200 | he said he was gonna stab me in my stomach.

01:23:22.140 | You know, he knows these people.

01:23:23.880 | It was, he's like a source of history, really.

01:23:27.280 | - Yeah, when poker was a game for the mob

01:23:31.720 | and the degenerates and all that kind of stuff

01:23:34.520 | before it transitioned into professional sport.

01:23:37.440 | - Yeah. - Professional game.

01:23:39.100 | Yeah, so he was there through the whole thing.

01:23:40.720 | He's been there through the whole transition.

01:23:42.840 | - He's seen it all, yeah.

01:23:43.800 | - Yeah, and then to the online world.

01:23:45.160 | So what about,

01:23:46.840 | (laughs)

01:23:49.920 | I can't even say it without smiling, Phil Hellmuth.

01:23:51.800 | - Okay, so Phil, here's the thing with Phil.

01:23:53.760 | He takes it very personal when I say this.

01:23:56.520 | And he doesn't hear the compliment.

01:23:58.080 | He only hears the negativity.

01:23:59.600 | 'Cause Phil wants to be considered

01:24:00.760 | the greatest of all time. - Hashtag positive.

01:24:02.520 | - He wants to be the greatest of all time.

01:24:04.400 | But I'm like, Phil, here's the facts.

01:24:07.080 | You have the best, absolute greatest resume

01:24:10.160 | at the World Series of Poker of anyone in the world.

01:24:12.360 | Is that not enough, right?

01:24:14.000 | That's what you have.

01:24:14.900 | You have that, right?

01:24:16.240 | Now, do I think you're the best

01:24:17.720 | no limit hold'em player in the world today?

01:24:19.340 | No.

01:24:20.180 | Do I think that you can play high stakes mixed games

01:24:22.840 | with the best players in the world today and win?

01:24:24.440 | No, right?

01:24:25.360 | So he wouldn't get as much flack on this topic

01:24:28.360 | if he wasn't so boastful and demanding.

01:24:31.640 | You never hear Phil Ivey say, "I'm the best in the world."

01:24:34.200 | His peers do, right?

01:24:35.760 | But Phil wants to make the claim,

01:24:37.160 | and I simply say, "I beg to differ."

01:24:40.040 | Right?

01:24:40.880 | I beg to differ.

01:24:41.840 | I don't think you are the best player in the world.

01:24:45.440 | - If we can linger on the compliments so he can hear it,

01:24:48.320 | what makes him so good?

01:24:50.440 | Because it seems like a lot of times

01:24:52.800 | his play is not optimal.

01:24:54.680 | - Yeah, he definitely has his own brand and style of play.

01:24:57.880 | Right?

01:24:58.720 | He does not adhere to,

01:24:59.540 | he's never used a solver in his life.

01:25:00.760 | He doesn't know, he's not in that world, right?

01:25:03.160 | Phil does, Phil has a lot of faith

01:25:04.760 | and a lot of confidence in what he does

01:25:06.300 | and that it will be successful.

01:25:07.520 | And I think there's something to be said about that.

01:25:09.120 | Right?

01:25:09.960 | He doesn't ever lack in belief that he can win,

01:25:13.640 | and he finds a way to do it his way.

01:25:15.880 | And frankly, a lot of what he does is very effective

01:25:19.200 | against specific types of players

01:25:21.600 | who are intimidated by him,

01:25:23.680 | by whether it's his resume or his demeanor

01:25:25.600 | or his attitude sometimes.

01:25:27.040 | Right?

01:25:27.880 | Like if you're an average player

01:25:28.720 | and then you beat Phil in a hand, you're gonna hear it.

01:25:31.800 | This idiot from Northern Europe and beat me in this pot.

01:25:34.400 | Like, and for some people, they don't like that.

01:25:37.160 | So he can use that against them.

01:25:39.800 | But I also think too, like he cares so much.

01:25:44.800 | Right?

01:25:46.120 | And that leads to trying really, really hard.

01:25:48.440 | Like he sees these moments and he doesn't phone them in.

01:25:50.880 | Like whatever brand of poker he plays,

01:25:53.440 | he tries his best at all times to succeed and to win.

01:25:57.280 | And there's something to be said.

01:25:58.120 | Even though like he's fundamentally flawed

01:26:00.080 | in a lot of things that he does

01:26:01.040 | compared to some of the bigger players,

01:26:02.840 | his effort and will and like his determination

01:26:05.200 | to stick around is up there.

01:26:08.480 | - And he is somebody who seems to really hate losing.

01:26:12.240 | - Yes.

01:26:13.080 | Yeah.

01:26:13.920 | He feels like he deserves to win.

01:26:17.280 | - Yeah.

01:26:18.120 | - Right?

01:26:18.960 | In all cases.

01:26:19.780 | And if he loses, it's not just.

01:26:22.000 | - As he joked around that you and him

01:26:23.880 | might do an anger management.

01:26:25.760 | (laughing)

01:26:26.600 | - Yeah, he said that in one video.

01:26:28.720 | - Course.

01:26:29.560 | Now this is tough because you're a humble guy,

01:26:33.680 | but objectively speaking,

01:26:35.440 | can you say what your strengths are?

01:26:37.880 | You're often listed as one of,

01:26:39.800 | if not the greatest player of all time.

01:26:41.380 | So what are the things that make you stand out?

01:26:44.120 | - So for me, when I grew up,

01:26:46.360 | I admired the big cash game players.

01:26:48.280 | 'Cause that's what I was.

01:26:49.120 | I love tournaments, but I wanted to be well-rounded.

01:26:51.320 | Like in my day, you couldn't make the Poker Hall of Fame

01:26:53.760 | if you just played one game.

01:26:55.240 | You had to jump in to the high stakes games

01:26:57.720 | in Bobby's room, as they say.

01:26:59.160 | Right?

01:27:00.000 | And I was able to do that.

01:27:00.920 | When I was in my early, in my mid twenties,

01:27:03.600 | I was playing 4,000, 8,000 limits.

01:27:06.000 | You know, you could win or lose a million dollars in a day.

01:27:08.100 | So I grinded it out.

01:27:09.200 | Like a lot of people think, oh, you know, he's lucky.

01:27:11.160 | He's had sponsorship.

01:27:12.520 | Otherwise he'd be broke.

01:27:13.360 | He's like, I built multi-million dollar bank rolls

01:27:16.440 | before any of that stuff existed.

01:27:18.000 | And I did it the good old fashioned way

01:27:20.160 | by sitting my butt on the table.

01:27:21.720 | I think probably one of my biggest strengths

01:27:24.060 | is self-awareness.

01:27:25.600 | And in that regard, a level of humility

01:27:29.080 | that always allows me to say, okay, well, you know what?

01:27:31.980 | In this case with these players, they're better than me.

01:27:34.480 | So what am I gonna learn from them?

01:27:35.840 | Right?

01:27:36.680 | Rather than have this need to say,

01:27:38.040 | I am the best because of history.

01:27:40.040 | I'm always looking to guys and go, wow,

01:27:41.520 | he does this really well.

01:27:42.440 | Whether it's the Adamos or the Ivys or whoever it may be.

01:27:45.600 | So my willingness to adapt, I think,

01:27:49.000 | and stay relevant by learning what the young guys

01:27:53.040 | are learning is something I've always done.

01:27:54.760 | And I also pride myself on, again, being well-rounded,

01:27:58.160 | like playing all the games.

01:27:59.240 | Like I don't feel intimidated in any game,

01:28:02.580 | you know, whatever the format is.

01:28:04.440 | - So always being a scholar of the game

01:28:06.960 | as the game evolves, as the different games evolve,

01:28:09.760 | the different players evolve, the culture evolves,

01:28:12.160 | always adjusting by being a scholar,

01:28:13.920 | having the humility to be a scholar.

01:28:14.760 | - A healthy respect for, a healthy respect

01:28:18.000 | for the younger generation, how they learn,

01:28:20.120 | what they learn, and what they can teach me.

01:28:22.320 | Rather than poo-poo it.

01:28:24.280 | And say, oh, these kids today.

01:28:25.600 | 'Cause that's what a lot of people,

01:28:26.760 | like the Mike Mattisos and the Phil Hellmuths,

01:28:28.560 | my generation, they just poo-poo it

01:28:30.500 | because they don't understand it.

01:28:32.040 | On a level of one to 10, their level of understanding

01:28:34.560 | of this is like a one, maybe.

01:28:36.740 | If I'm being generous by calling it a one.

01:28:38.560 | They really don't understand it, so they poo-poo it.

01:28:41.400 | Right?

01:28:42.220 | It's easy to do that.

01:28:43.060 | Like, oh, that's not how I do it,

01:28:44.040 | so that's wrong or that's stupid or whatever.

01:28:46.540 | I don't take that approach.

01:28:47.560 | I go, well, let me learn.

01:28:48.680 | Let me see what there is to this.

01:28:50.520 | - But that said, the crankiness that Mattisos

01:28:53.120 | and Phil Hellmuth have is great to watch,

01:28:55.200 | especially when they're at a table with you.

01:28:57.480 | - Oh, I love it, yeah.

01:28:58.320 | It's a blast, it's a blast.

01:29:00.520 | - You're masterful at being able to get under their skin.

01:29:03.600 | What about somebody from the new school,

01:29:06.320 | like Justin Bonomo, who's leading in terms of cash wins?

01:29:11.320 | Is there somebody like that that stands out to you

01:29:14.000 | as a potential GOAT status person?

01:29:17.540 | - Yeah, so there's two different ones,

01:29:19.140 | but one is very, so they're both just no limit, right?

01:29:23.120 | So I, like, again, when I think of poker,

01:29:24.960 | I think of a variety of games,

01:29:26.940 | but there's so many of the young guys that specialize.

01:29:29.220 | Michael Adamo is one that I've mentioned several times,

01:29:31.280 | and I love the way that he approaches the game.

01:29:32.720 | Another one that's highly respected

01:29:34.200 | because of his online prowess and his,

01:29:36.080 | people have looked at how close he is to game theory,

01:29:39.540 | and they say he's about as perfect as you get,

01:29:41.320 | and it's a kid named Linus, Linus Love Online, Linus Lingard.

01:29:46.400 | So he just came second recently, I believe,

01:29:48.900 | in the Triton, huge Triton event.

01:29:51.100 | - So he's primarily an online player.

01:29:52.620 | - Yeah, he's an online cash player for the most part,

01:29:54.380 | but he plays some live.

01:29:55.420 | And he's, again, and I respect the peers that I play with

01:29:58.740 | who say, yeah, he's tough as nails.

01:30:00.700 | There's another kid too, Russian kid,

01:30:03.980 | named Timofey Kuznetsov, and he plays all the games,

01:30:07.500 | and he's well-respected in that regard.

01:30:10.540 | And same with a guy like Jungleman, Dan Cates,

01:30:12.900 | who's a unique personality.

01:30:14.340 | I mean, this guy showed up, won the Poker Players

01:30:17.000 | Championship back-to-back years

01:30:18.480 | in a Randy Macho Man Savage costume,

01:30:20.820 | and he was doing Macho Man the entire time.

01:30:23.240 | Oh yeah, I'm gonna take all the chips like I did last year,

01:30:27.480 | bust 'em all, and he was in character

01:30:29.440 | for the entirety of the tournament.

01:30:30.280 | - This is great. - Just unique.

01:30:32.040 | But yeah, I respect for a lot of those guys.

01:30:35.040 | - Is it gonna take time to figure out

01:30:36.920 | who stands the test of time?

01:30:40.160 | - That's the thing, right?

01:30:41.440 | So a lot of these kids, like there was a guy

01:30:43.280 | who beat me heads up in the Million Dollar One Drop.

01:30:46.600 | I got 8.7, he won $15 million, kid named Dan Coleman.

01:30:49.880 | He was seen as the next big thing in poker, right?

01:30:53.440 | He made his money, just wasn't for him.

01:30:56.200 | So he's moved on to doing what he's doing,

01:30:58.180 | skiing in the Alps, whatever.

01:31:00.080 | We have nobody seen him in five, six years,

01:31:02.360 | so that can happen, right?

01:31:04.660 | Because there is a lot of burnout.

01:31:06.040 | I think it was actually Gotham Chess

01:31:09.240 | who mentioned something about how difficult it is to,

01:31:12.320 | I think it's true in poker.

01:31:13.160 | When you get really, really good at something,

01:31:15.080 | to get this much better takes so much work.

01:31:18.960 | And a lot of people don't necessarily

01:31:20.760 | wanna put in that kind of work in order to do that.

01:31:23.480 | - That's just even staying at the same level

01:31:25.600 | takes a huge amount of work.

01:31:27.200 | - Like so if you wanna get better at chess,

01:31:28.560 | you're already like really, really good

01:31:29.640 | and you're trying to get like one little bit better.

01:31:31.600 | You have to study like in a ridiculous amount.

01:31:34.600 | You know, and again, that's once you've already had,

01:31:37.040 | I think the toughest thing for anybody,

01:31:38.520 | once you've tasted success

01:31:39.960 | and you've already achieved it,

01:31:41.820 | staying hungry, staying on the top.

01:31:43.800 | Reaching the top is much easier than it is to stay there.

01:31:47.680 | - Yeah.

01:31:49.000 | Over years, what's your training regimen in poker

01:31:53.360 | in terms of how you keep improving?

01:31:58.360 | So you said you study games,

01:31:59.760 | but that's mostly leading up to a particular tournament.

01:32:03.600 | But is there kind of a behind the scenes daily activity

01:32:07.800 | you try to do that kind of over time keeps you sharp?

01:32:11.560 | - So for me, now that I'm 47,

01:32:12.980 | and I feel like the predominant aspect of my poker game

01:32:17.340 | is going to be in terms of my success

01:32:19.240 | is gonna be my mental state, right?

01:32:21.600 | So I find it's really, really important for me

01:32:23.600 | now at this age to have balance.

01:32:26.720 | So when I'm not playing poker and I'm out of it,

01:32:29.720 | poker's not even on my radar.

01:32:32.360 | - You're able to remove it from your mind.

01:32:34.360 | - Doing my fantasy hockey, play a little chess,

01:32:37.200 | you know, play some golf, watch some hockey,

01:32:40.040 | whatever the case may be,

01:32:41.440 | outside of the game.

01:32:42.720 | And then I start to get the itch.

01:32:43.820 | Like after the World Series of Poker,

01:32:45.680 | the poker door was closed.

01:32:47.960 | - Yeah, you took some time off.

01:32:49.280 | - All of August, I didn't play any poker at all

01:32:51.440 | until just recent.

01:32:52.640 | You know, I started to get the itch again.

01:32:54.440 | 'Cause that's what's important for me

01:32:55.800 | is if I don't have the itch and I don't want to play poker,

01:32:58.240 | then I'm not gonna be at my best.

01:32:59.720 | Once I start getting the itch,

01:33:01.440 | that's when I start to say,

01:33:02.400 | "Okay, let's start watching some of these streams.

01:33:04.560 | "Let's see what my opponents are up to lately.

01:33:06.740 | "And, you know, let's look at some solvers

01:33:09.220 | "and different things like that."

01:33:10.980 | - And you're doing pretty good.

01:33:12.400 | You came back and doing pretty good.

01:33:14.380 | - Yeah, so far.

01:33:16.240 | - Do you like being in front of the camera?

01:33:18.600 | Through the hell of the World Series of Poker this year,

01:33:21.640 | you filmed every single day.

01:33:23.200 | You did a vlog.

01:33:24.320 | Does that energize you?

01:33:25.400 | Is that exhausting?

01:33:26.240 | 'Cause it's really beneficial to a huge amount of people.

01:33:28.400 | It energizes the poker community.

01:33:30.560 | But do you see it as a service

01:33:32.180 | or do you purely just love it?

01:33:34.680 | - I've been comfortable on camera since I was a kid.

01:33:37.280 | When I was a kid, I wanted to be an actor.

01:33:39.140 | Like really, really young.

01:33:40.400 | And it was always comfortable in that environment.

01:33:42.960 | And I think like that gives me a little bit of advantage

01:33:45.780 | sometimes too with these filmed events.

01:33:47.920 | 'Cause I'm comfortable with a mic on

01:33:49.280 | and on camera with the lights.

01:33:50.900 | And I think a lot of people maybe aren't

01:33:52.440 | with the knowledge that other people

01:33:53.920 | are gonna see what they're doing every day.

01:33:55.440 | So it's been so comfortable and easy for me

01:33:57.140 | as far as the World Series goes

01:33:58.720 | and the vlogs and all the shooting.

01:34:00.720 | It's kind of therapeutic for me.

01:34:02.280 | It is essentially my version of journaling, right?

01:34:06.560 | So there's a lot of value, I think,

01:34:08.060 | in like at the end of a day doing a brain dump

01:34:10.160 | where you just write out and journal.

01:34:11.920 | But doing it on camera has a similar effect.

01:34:15.520 | And it also, when you make a mistake on your own,

01:34:19.640 | you're held accountable to you.

01:34:20.880 | But when I have to explain it to others,

01:34:23.320 | like here's what I did and this is the mistake I made

01:34:26.280 | or whatever the case may be,

01:34:27.680 | it actually, I think that helps me.

01:34:31.040 | - Yeah, so you're held responsible by a larger audience.

01:34:34.160 | - Yeah, I think 'cause like I said,

01:34:35.680 | listen, I'm 47, my life is good.

01:34:38.440 | I don't have to be in this tournament.

01:34:39.600 | If I'm over it, I can just dump my chips off and go home.

01:34:42.960 | But I can't when I'm doing the vlog.

01:34:45.280 | Like I have to actually answer to that, you know?

01:34:49.120 | And it keeps me in line.

01:34:51.080 | - How hard is it to win the main event

01:34:53.960 | of the World Series of Poker?

01:34:56.240 | - So the main event of the World Series of Poker

01:34:57.640 | is the hardest event to win

01:34:59.360 | simply because of the sheer size of it.

01:35:01.680 | You're talking 7,000, 8,000 players, right?

01:35:04.360 | And a lot of landmines.

01:35:05.440 | And frankly, there are so many players

01:35:08.840 | you've not played with before too.

01:35:10.840 | You play these high roller events, like the super ones,

01:35:12.880 | you get 30, 40 people, you know everybody, right?

01:35:15.360 | So you have an idea.

01:35:16.880 | You sit at the main event, you don't know, have any idea.

01:35:19.240 | This guy wearing a Philadelphia Eagles jersey

01:35:21.040 | and sunglasses and you just raised your big,

01:35:23.240 | I don't know this guy, I don't know what he's about.

01:35:26.120 | So there's a lot of like, it's grueling too.

01:35:29.280 | You're seven, eight days where you're in the blender,

01:35:32.520 | as you might say.

01:35:34.240 | - So what's the structure?

01:35:36.120 | So it's $10,000 buy-in or something like that.

01:35:38.640 | And there's a bunch of tables and you just keep playing.

01:35:41.960 | Like when is it over for a single table?

01:35:44.800 | - So the way that it works is this.

01:35:46.080 | So there's, let's say 8,000 players.

01:35:47.840 | And the way the main event works, unique to others,

01:35:50.160 | is there's various day ones you can play, right?

01:35:53.220 | So a day one, you're gonna play from noon

01:35:55.160 | till like midnight, right?

01:35:57.320 | If you're still in, you bag up your chips

01:36:00.040 | and you'll come back for day two, okay?

01:36:02.080 | There's four different day ones, right?

01:36:04.360 | Now they'll all combine essentially to play on a day two.

01:36:07.040 | And at the end of the night, they redraw the tables.

01:36:09.800 | So you don't just win your table.

01:36:11.140 | If players get knocked out, tables break,

01:36:13.680 | they continue to be replaced.

01:36:15.280 | So you start with 8,000, then after day one,

01:36:18.120 | you've got 6,000, then you do the same.

01:36:20.960 | You play like a 12-hour day and you slowly whittle down.

01:36:25.360 | Day three, day four, you're in the money.

01:36:28.520 | And then you continue to progress.

01:36:29.840 | And then what they do now with the final table is,

01:36:32.480 | because they were trying to do this for TV,

01:36:34.360 | these final tables can take 12 hours to play.

01:36:38.760 | And what we were finding was,

01:36:41.080 | you start the thing at 5 p.m. and it goes till 8 a.m.

01:36:44.560 | and nobody's watching anymore.

01:36:45.960 | So they separate into three days now.

01:36:49.320 | And so you're talking now,

01:36:51.320 | it's like six, seven days to get to the final table

01:36:53.120 | and another three days to play it.

01:36:54.640 | So you're grinding for a week and a half.

01:36:58.840 | - But most of the time, you're playing against people

01:37:01.880 | you've never played against before.

01:37:03.840 | - Especially early on, yeah.

01:37:04.880 | And then by the end, who knows?

01:37:06.920 | Rarely do you see, you see in the last 100,

01:37:09.560 | you usually see some notable names.

01:37:11.480 | Then in the last 27, you might see one, maybe two.

01:37:13.760 | Final table, maybe one.

01:37:15.440 | But often it's gonna be some players

01:37:18.080 | you've never heard of before.

01:37:20.040 | - Is there strategies that maximize

01:37:23.240 | your likelihood of having a chance?

01:37:25.440 | - Yes, absolutely.

01:37:26.560 | I think the World Series of Poker main event

01:37:28.000 | is a unique animal in that,

01:37:30.400 | we talk about game theory and all that kind of stuff.

01:37:32.360 | If you're focused on that when you're playing,

01:37:34.160 | you're really not playing well.

01:37:36.660 | You need to just exploit

01:37:38.280 | because you're gonna have a lot of people

01:37:39.600 | who see this as a bucket list item.

01:37:41.520 | They just wanna play the main event in the World Series

01:37:43.480 | and they might be scared,

01:37:44.520 | they might be nervous or whatever.

01:37:45.880 | You don't have to worry about being balanced.

01:37:48.760 | Oh, I have to make sure that I'm balanced.

01:37:50.520 | No, you don't.

01:37:51.360 | You're playing with this guy now for three hours,

01:37:53.240 | you might never see him again.

01:37:54.720 | So just make the play that makes sense for you.

01:37:57.040 | So yeah, I approach that event

01:38:01.000 | very differently than I would

01:38:02.640 | like playing against the high roller players

01:38:04.760 | that I play with.

01:38:05.600 | - Does that mean more aggressive, essentially?

01:38:07.200 | - Less, actually.

01:38:08.760 | So when you play against really good players,

01:38:11.880 | you have to take small plus EV scenarios

01:38:15.440 | where you push the envelope

01:38:17.000 | and you're playing really aggressive,

01:38:18.120 | you're bluffing off your stack.

01:38:19.440 | You gotta do this.

01:38:20.280 | You gotta focus a little bit more on being balanced

01:38:22.720 | 'cause otherwise, you're not gonna beat these guys.

01:38:25.440 | Whereas if you're playing with amateurs

01:38:27.120 | and you're playing with regular players,

01:38:28.800 | for the most part, risking all your chips on a bluff,

01:38:33.200 | probably don't need to do that.

01:38:34.720 | You don't need to do that nearly as much.

01:38:35.760 | You can probably slowly but surely build your stack

01:38:39.360 | without taking those high risk, high variant situations

01:38:41.960 | 'cause you'll find better situations.

01:38:44.080 | - What mistakes do amateurs usually make

01:38:47.240 | in tournaments like that?

01:38:48.720 | Are they over bluffing?

01:38:50.160 | - Well, I think amateurs generally,

01:38:52.320 | the biggest mistake they make

01:38:53.200 | is they think that pros are bluffing more than they are.

01:38:56.280 | So like a pro will bet all his chips on the end

01:38:57.960 | and they're like, "Ah, I don't know.

01:38:58.840 | "Maybe it's Phil Ivey.

01:39:00.320 | "Maybe he's doing some crazy stuff."

01:39:01.440 | He's like, "Probably not.

01:39:02.840 | "He's probably just got it."

01:39:04.280 | - And then they lose all their money by calling

01:39:07.960 | and going all in as well.

01:39:09.580 | And so the right thing is to be more patient.

01:39:15.040 | So amateur is too impatient or just bad reads.

01:39:19.080 | - So all the amateurs are built different.

01:39:21.120 | Some of the amateurs are just too weak and passive.

01:39:23.400 | They're just waiting for the nuts.

01:39:25.440 | And then the pros, everyone notices that.

01:39:27.320 | And then when they make their big hand,

01:39:29.160 | they don't get paid anyway.

01:39:30.600 | So in order to win the main event,

01:39:32.800 | I mean, you have to have some components of your game

01:39:35.400 | that are aggressive.

01:39:36.480 | It's very unlikely to expect to just get the cards

01:39:39.920 | the whole way and just always have the best hand.

01:39:42.400 | You're gonna have to find ways to win pots

01:39:44.520 | that where you don't have the best hand.

01:39:47.040 | - How do you win the final table?

01:39:49.600 | - The final table is unique now,

01:39:51.200 | especially because you're talking about

01:39:53.160 | the way that poker works in tournaments

01:39:54.640 | is that if there's seven people left

01:39:56.880 | and you're very short on chips,

01:39:59.560 | but if one other player goes out,

01:40:01.520 | you just make like $300,000 for folding,

01:40:04.640 | like just for sitting out.

01:40:06.760 | The term for that that kids use is ICM,

01:40:10.680 | independent chip model,

01:40:13.280 | where it talks about the value of each chip.

01:40:15.460 | Where what happens, what we see now is,

01:40:17.440 | let's say one guy has a big chip lead

01:40:19.600 | and there's another guy who's second in chips

01:40:21.320 | and there's a couple that are short.

01:40:22.760 | These guys in the middle, they just play super tight

01:40:25.960 | and they wait for the little guys to go

01:40:28.320 | while the big stack is just pounding them

01:40:31.640 | because he can afford to, right?

01:40:33.560 | He knows that people are handcuffed.

01:40:35.040 | So let's say I had 10 million in chips

01:40:36.880 | and you have 9 million in chips

01:40:38.280 | and these guys have little chips.

01:40:39.200 | If I go in on you, are you gonna call me

01:40:42.080 | and risk like guaranteed pay jumps

01:40:45.360 | of like moving up a few spots?

01:40:46.720 | So really the question comes down to like,

01:40:48.580 | are you the type of guy who just wants to inch up

01:40:51.480 | or are you gonna go for it

01:40:52.960 | and you're gonna go for the win?

01:40:54.040 | I think ultimately there's some value

01:40:56.000 | in being the guy who says,

01:40:56.840 | "You know, I don't care if I come seventh.

01:40:58.600 | "I'm not worried about going from seventh to fifth.

01:41:01.400 | "I'm here to win."

01:41:02.600 | And so you're saying like the guys that win

01:41:04.840 | will often be the ones that call there.

01:41:07.120 | So like they're not just bullying the small stacks.

01:41:10.120 | They're--

01:41:10.960 | Well, they're the ones that are willing to risk it, right?

01:41:14.520 | So there are some people who, you know,

01:41:16.840 | if there's five left, you know, and they're third in chips

01:41:21.240 | and there's two guys very short

01:41:22.360 | and you, you know, they'll have ace king

01:41:24.280 | and someone moves, they'll just fold.

01:41:26.080 | They fold the hand because they wanna wait

01:41:28.760 | for those two other players to get broke

01:41:30.620 | and that way they let you know, they make actual money.

01:41:32.280 | So you, I guess the thought process

01:41:33.640 | between winning first place

01:41:35.280 | and winning the most amount of money are different.

01:41:37.440 | They're conflicting, right?

01:41:39.240 | Because in order to like win the,

01:41:41.360 | if you're just, if your focus is only

01:41:42.840 | on winning the tournament,

01:41:43.680 | you will make mistakes financially

01:41:45.040 | where you had guaranteed income for just folding, right?

01:41:47.680 | Let's say a guy has one chip left, you know, one chip

01:41:51.540 | and me and you have good chips

01:41:53.320 | and I go all in with you and I lose.

01:41:55.240 | Now that guy, you know, got the guaranteed, you know,

01:41:57.840 | he got the pay jump that I wouldn't have got.

01:41:59.440 | So there's some extremely stupid mistakes you can make

01:42:01.200 | from a financial perspective, but it's often at odds with,

01:42:04.720 | you know, giving yourself the best chance

01:42:06.520 | to actually come first.

01:42:07.800 | - And in a tournament, especially the main event,

01:42:11.240 | especially the final table, it's all about coming in first.

01:42:15.080 | - Well, I know because most of the people who make it,

01:42:17.520 | so like, you know, when you play these high rollers,

01:42:19.400 | these guys are accustomed to playing for a hundred thousand

01:42:21.280 | to they're accustomed to this kind of money.

01:42:23.020 | So they're gonna play, right?

01:42:24.220 | For the most, but you're talking about guys

01:42:25.740 | who bought into a $10,000 tournament,

01:42:27.220 | maybe never had a hundred K cash in their life.

01:42:29.580 | And now they're sitting there and it's like 1 million

01:42:32.500 | for fifth and 2 million for fourth.

01:42:34.300 | So like, they don't wanna be fit.

01:42:37.380 | They're just gonna sit there and go, ah, I don't want.

01:42:39.620 | So they'll be under more financial pressure

01:42:41.740 | because they're not like your typical high roller type player

01:42:45.100 | - Are you still able to find the guts to take big risks?

01:42:48.920 | - Yeah, see, I'm trying to win.

01:42:50.780 | Like, I think that gives me an advantage, frankly,

01:42:53.180 | where I might make decisions that are financially

01:42:55.860 | suboptimal because I'm trying to win,

01:42:58.900 | but there's also an inherent advantage to that.

01:43:01.040 | Like that, again, something I watched and learned

01:43:04.020 | from a guy like Michael Adama, where he takes advantage

01:43:07.200 | of these people playing so passively in these spots

01:43:09.660 | where he's like, I'm not trying to come, I'm gonna win.

01:43:11.900 | I'm just gonna bulldoze you.

01:43:14.140 | 'Cause I'm not worried about, you know,

01:43:16.160 | the small financial mistake of, you know, a pay jump.

01:43:21.160 | - What advice could you give to beginning poker players?

01:43:25.560 | Actually at every level, how to get better,

01:43:27.760 | how to improve, how to improve their game.

01:43:30.040 | Obviously, as you said, it's easiest to get better

01:43:33.640 | in the beginning, but what advice would you give

01:43:36.040 | how to get better?

01:43:37.320 | - So one of the ways, I mean, I think way back

01:43:39.000 | to the how I started, right?

01:43:40.200 | And there's so many resources and tools available right now

01:43:42.480 | to analyze hands, but when you play, right?

01:43:45.940 | And you find yourself in a situation or a hand

01:43:48.400 | that you're not really sure about, not because you had aces

01:43:51.080 | and went all in and you lost, like that's not interesting,

01:43:53.560 | but an interesting situation where you're not sure

01:43:55.200 | what you did, jot the hand down, write it out.

01:43:59.200 | And then either A, you know, use some of the tools,

01:44:02.000 | whether it's the solvers, if you're, you know,

01:44:03.920 | advanced enough, or ask your group, you know,

01:44:07.240 | like have a couple of friends at your level

01:44:09.040 | and talk through the different decisions

01:44:10.760 | and start to learn that way, right?

01:44:12.640 | 'Cause those mistakes that you make or those tough hands,

01:44:15.620 | that's where the real learning comes from.

01:44:17.280 | Like, so that, so basically if you're,

01:44:19.720 | 'cause you're gonna be in similar scenarios.

01:44:21.480 | In poker, you're rarely gonna have the identical situation,

01:44:24.320 | but you'll have situations that are similar.

01:44:26.540 | You know, you raised with ace king, someone three bet,

01:44:28.600 | another guy goes all in.

01:44:29.760 | Okay, well, what do I do in that spot?

01:44:31.800 | You know, it's, you're gonna have similar situations

01:44:34.400 | in the future as well.

01:44:35.240 | So figuring that out, the more you can do that,

01:44:38.140 | you chop away at, you know, different strategical mistakes,

01:44:42.400 | you know, you used to make that you no longer make.

01:44:44.980 | - Are there resources like your masterclass is really,

01:44:47.440 | is great, are there books?

01:44:50.000 | - So there was a guy named Michael Acevedo.

01:44:51.840 | This is my, again, for a little bit more advanced players,

01:44:54.200 | but it's a book called "Modern Poker Theory,"

01:44:57.220 | I think it's called, which sort of explains game theory,

01:45:00.520 | right, to the novice, right?

01:45:02.840 | So it's a little bit, I think if you're new to poker,

01:45:05.300 | it's probably above the rim for you.

01:45:08.360 | But once you start to get a little better

01:45:09.960 | and you wanna understand how to do it,

01:45:11.600 | it's probably a good resource for as far as books.

01:45:13.360 | And there's also like tons of people who stream poker,

01:45:15.860 | professional players, and then you can get in there

01:45:17.940 | and you get in on the chat and you start talking,

01:45:19.780 | you ask them and you see people, you know,

01:45:21.660 | explaining their thought process and things like that.

01:45:23.860 | There's so many free resources.

01:45:25.320 | And of course my masterclass, I think does a good job

01:45:27.320 | of sort of compartmentalizing, like, you know,

01:45:30.520 | how to attack it on a deeper level.

01:45:32.400 | And we, you know, we get it, I try to get into,

01:45:34.580 | what's funny when I did the masterclass,

01:45:36.820 | I asked them, I was like, well, you know,

01:45:38.780 | how high end do you want this in terms of poker?

01:45:41.620 | And they're like, we want really, really high end.

01:45:42.940 | And I was like, oh, sure.

01:45:44.440 | Then I started to explain really, really high end,

01:45:46.020 | and they're like, okay, well, maybe the one below that.

01:45:48.140 | (both laughing)

01:45:49.620 | Right?

01:45:50.460 | So I try to explain really complex, you know,

01:45:54.900 | theory in a more palatable way, in English, if you will.

01:45:58.780 | 'Cause some of these kids, you hear them talk

01:46:00.260 | and you'd be like, huh?

01:46:02.180 | - But you also, which is really nice,

01:46:03.780 | give example hands that really illustrate a point,

01:46:08.500 | which is really nice.

01:46:10.460 | You also wrote a book, I think 10 years ago,

01:46:13.500 | Power Hold'em Strategy.

01:46:14.880 | It's interesting to think how much of the stuff

01:46:19.220 | in that book still applies, how much doesn't.

01:46:21.340 | - Listen, I still think the book holds up to a certain degree.

01:46:23.740 | Obviously, like, you know, it isn't optimal

01:46:26.420 | because there's like a more advanced strategies.

01:46:28.380 | And if you played that way,

01:46:29.300 | people will figure out a way to exploit you.

01:46:30.940 | But if you're like an average player

01:46:32.340 | playing an average buy-ins, like that's sort of

01:46:34.380 | what I coined like small ball approach,

01:46:36.820 | absolutely will work, you know?

01:46:38.820 | At the highest level, you have to add much more,

01:46:40.940 | a lot more bluffing.

01:46:42.380 | But overall, I think it's still, you know,

01:46:44.640 | for the most part, there's a lot of really,

01:46:45.820 | especially with tournaments,

01:46:46.660 | there's a lot of really good principles in the book.

01:46:48.960 | - What's the difference in the dynamics,

01:46:50.740 | if you could just comment on, between a heads up poker

01:46:53.980 | and when multiple people are in one hand?

01:46:56.540 | What are interesting aspects,

01:46:58.060 | everything we've been talking about,

01:46:59.160 | from game theory to exploitative strategies,

01:47:03.500 | all that kind of stuff.

01:47:04.660 | - So the biggest difference when you play,

01:47:06.100 | let's say nine handed, you know,

01:47:07.740 | against eight other players and you know,

01:47:09.740 | heads up is, first of all, just the type of hands

01:47:13.740 | and the number of hands you're gonna have to play.

01:47:15.220 | So the way that it works is if there's nine people,

01:47:18.180 | two out of the nine hands, you have to put in money.

01:47:20.340 | And the other seven, you could just fold for nothing, okay?

01:47:22.820 | When your head's up,

01:47:23.860 | you're forced to put money in every single hand, okay?

01:47:27.460 | And there's only one other hand in front of you,

01:47:29.780 | which means the ranges of hands that you play

01:47:31.780 | is way wider, right?

01:47:33.500 | So if you're nine handed, right?

01:47:35.100 | And you're in first position,

01:47:36.000 | and you're like, all right, what do I need to play?

01:47:37.940 | Like a good pair, you know, two high cards,

01:47:40.900 | suited, a big ace, you know, stuff like that.

01:47:43.460 | That's it, right?

01:47:44.300 | That's what you're gonna play, right?

01:47:46.400 | And you're gonna fold all the rest.

01:47:47.700 | When your head's up, you look at a king and a two,

01:47:50.680 | and you're like, well, I gotta play this.

01:47:52.460 | You know, you're gonna, you're forced to play

01:47:54.940 | a lot more hands in a lot more complex situations

01:47:57.480 | when you're playing heads up,

01:47:59.940 | because you're gonna be playing much far weaker hands.

01:48:02.600 | Queen five, jack three, all these types of hands.

01:48:05.540 | And you're gonna see flops where you're not gonna have

01:48:07.620 | the luxury of being like, I'm in there with a premium hand.

01:48:10.020 | Queens, kings, aces, those are easier to play, right?

01:48:13.140 | Very, very strong holdings.

01:48:14.740 | Heads up, you're forced to dance and fight a lot more.

01:48:19.420 | You know, you can't sit in the weeds and wait.

01:48:21.600 | What do you enjoy more?

01:48:22.740 | Heads up is very intense.

01:48:25.760 | I like heads up, but I think if you had to play

01:48:29.180 | heads up eight, 10 hours, it's so mentally draining,

01:48:32.020 | 'cause your face with so many constant decisions,

01:48:34.820 | each and every spot, like you play nine handed,

01:48:37.060 | you look at a nine and a three, you throw it away,

01:48:39.220 | you hang out for a bit, you relax, you get a little break,

01:48:41.620 | and then play a hand.

01:48:42.460 | Heads up, you're like, it's like, boom, boom.

01:48:44.060 | It's like you're in the ring.

01:48:45.060 | You know, you're in the octagon,

01:48:46.060 | and you're facing like haymakers nonstop.

01:48:49.100 | - Since we talked about online a bit,

01:48:53.740 | is it possible to cheat in poker, especially online?

01:48:57.260 | We offline also talked about the cheating controversy

01:49:00.380 | that's going on in the chess world.

01:49:03.180 | Is it possible to use, what is it,

01:49:06.660 | remotely connected anal beads to somehow cheat?

01:49:10.980 | No.

01:49:11.820 | Is that a concern of cheating online?

01:49:15.820 | - So here's the thing.

01:49:17.340 | It's kind of like romanticized from the old days,

01:49:19.860 | like in the Westerns and stuff, like people trying to cheat.

01:49:22.220 | - And have you ever killed a man because he cheated?

01:49:24.140 | - No, I have not, but when I started out as a teenager,

01:49:26.980 | I played in a game with a bunch of Italians,

01:49:28.820 | and I knew they cheated, and I didn't care,

01:49:31.180 | 'cause they were so bad that I could win anyway.

01:49:33.740 | I was like, I knew they would cheat,

01:49:34.820 | but I knew how they were cheating,

01:49:35.740 | so I was like, all right, you guys suck.

01:49:37.180 | But so here's the thing.

01:49:38.020 | Anytime you're talking about large sums of money,

01:49:41.020 | there will be people looking to take advantage,

01:49:43.620 | whether that's live or online, right?

01:49:45.940 | And so it's like the job essentially of the online operators

01:49:50.940 | or the live event staff to police it the best they can,

01:49:54.620 | and the players themselves being on the lookout for it.

01:49:57.340 | Like a guy like Dole Brunson's a great resource

01:49:58.980 | 'cause he's seen it all, and he's seen all the tricks.

01:50:01.820 | And so live, he probably could spot a few things.

01:50:04.500 | But online, there's various ways people can try to cheat,

01:50:07.540 | but there's also really good security measures

01:50:11.620 | in place to catch 'em.

01:50:14.420 | And we've caught, about two years ago,

01:50:16.700 | there was a huge undertaking of like 500 accounts

01:50:20.460 | that were banned for doing different things.

01:50:22.740 | And again, they can't go into detail

01:50:26.060 | in terms of how they're doing it,

01:50:27.880 | 'cause otherwise, then you're sort of giving the cheats

01:50:30.460 | the playbook in terms of how to take advantage.

01:50:32.620 | But it's always gonna be a concern for poker

01:50:34.620 | wherever you play, right?

01:50:36.700 | But it's not something I'm worried about personally.

01:50:40.340 | - So at the highest in-person, and by the way,

01:50:42.500 | online, there's really interesting algorithms

01:50:44.540 | that do some of the work in an automated way

01:50:46.700 | to detect, to flag things that are weird.

01:50:50.100 | But in-person, it's just not something

01:50:51.900 | at the highest level that you're super concerned about.

01:50:54.260 | So it's not, it didn't quite infiltrate the poker world

01:50:58.160 | to a degree where it's a huge concern.

01:51:00.080 | - Yeah, so here's the thing.

01:51:01.760 | I don't play in private games and whatever, right?

01:51:04.080 | But in private games, theoretically,

01:51:05.880 | you could be, if you don't trust the people

01:51:07.880 | you're playing with, like I've heard stories of people

01:51:09.940 | where they have an earpiece in that you can't see, right?

01:51:13.440 | And they have RFID on the cards or something like that,

01:51:18.040 | and they have a phone reading it,

01:51:19.880 | so they have somebody in a truck telling 'em,

01:51:21.480 | you're gonna win this hand, you're gonna lose this hand.

01:51:23.120 | Like that happened in a private game.

01:51:24.860 | You know, and the guy, what's often funny

01:51:26.700 | about some of these people who cheat

01:51:28.200 | is they're so greedy and blatantly obvious

01:51:31.140 | that they get caught.

01:51:32.420 | Where if they use this tool in a more subtle way,

01:51:35.120 | they could probably continue to get away with it.

01:51:37.320 | But again, that's not something I worry about

01:51:39.620 | in a casino environment, you know,

01:51:42.100 | in these tournaments and things like that.

01:51:43.860 | But if I was playing in private games,

01:51:45.820 | like if I came down to Texas and some guy,

01:51:48.180 | I got cheated in a game by a guy named

01:51:50.260 | Blacky Blackburn and Tex.

01:51:52.640 | - That's a red flag right there.

01:51:53.480 | - I was at the Chimo Hotel, I was a teenager,

01:51:55.460 | and they saw me playing, you know,

01:51:56.740 | I was making good money as a teenager.

01:51:58.420 | I had like a $13,000 bankroll, you know,

01:52:00.820 | and I went and played in this game with them

01:52:02.060 | in a private hotel room and found out later

01:52:04.220 | that the guy was a card mechanic.

01:52:06.400 | You know, he was dealing and he could, you know,

01:52:08.140 | deal you the hands and he knew what you had

01:52:09.620 | and stuff like that. - Ah, God.

01:52:10.700 | - So yeah, I remember, you know,

01:52:12.140 | I lost a big number in that game

01:52:14.500 | and it was a good learning lesson

01:52:15.660 | in terms of, you know, being wary of who you trust.

01:52:18.380 | - Yeah, so if the dealer is in on it,

01:52:22.180 | that's one way you could cheat.

01:52:23.880 | It's fascinating. - That's part of the reason

01:52:26.280 | that they cut.

01:52:27.480 | So like, you'll see like, there's a burn card

01:52:30.820 | because what would happen, you know,

01:52:32.180 | maybe in the old days is like,

01:52:33.700 | if you're sitting in the one seat,

01:52:34.740 | I could lift the card and you could see it,

01:52:36.480 | the next card coming, right?

01:52:38.100 | So what they do is they have a card on top of it

01:52:40.100 | that you burn that isn't the card,

01:52:41.220 | and then the next card is the one that comes face up.

01:52:44.060 | - I just learned about the edge sorting thing

01:52:48.660 | that Phil Ivey, maybe others were involved with.

01:52:52.080 | I just, reading it at first was super interesting to me

01:52:55.700 | that you can exploit the imperfections

01:52:59.560 | in the printing of cards.

01:53:01.180 | - Yeah. - That was almost cool to me.

01:53:02.900 | That's almost not cheating because it's like--

01:53:05.900 | - That needs to be a movie.

01:53:07.300 | - That needs to be a movie, yes.

01:53:08.820 | - Yeah, what happened with Phil Ivey in that whole case

01:53:10.820 | is it's a catastrophe, really.

01:53:12.940 | It is such a horrible precedent

01:53:14.860 | 'cause here's what he did.

01:53:15.820 | Phil Ivey shows up at the casino, says,

01:53:17.260 | "I wanna play this game."

01:53:18.220 | They say, "Okay, all right, I wanna play with those dicks."

01:53:20.640 | They say, "Okay."

01:53:21.980 | They agree to everything that he says.

01:53:24.060 | He never touches the cards.

01:53:25.420 | He doesn't do anything outside of the fact

01:53:28.180 | that the cards that you supplied

01:53:30.380 | have imperfections on them and he can see them.

01:53:32.500 | - Yeah. - Okay?

01:53:33.540 | So that increases his chances of winning.

01:53:35.700 | He could still lose, theoretically, right?

01:53:38.060 | Probably not, but he can lose.

01:53:39.860 | In theory, it just gives him a little bit of an edge,

01:53:41.820 | and it's all stuff based on what you provided.

01:53:44.220 | - Yeah. - So the idea

01:53:45.300 | that you offered a game, I accepted, I beat you,

01:53:48.380 | and now you wanna free roll me?

01:53:50.260 | That's disgusting.

01:53:51.700 | - So for people who don't know, maybe you can elaborate,

01:53:53.860 | and it's just fascinating to me,

01:53:55.180 | but you're exploiting the imperfections

01:53:57.260 | in the card patterns on the back,

01:53:59.420 | and then they look different if you rotate it.

01:54:01.780 | And the fascinating thing, too,

01:54:04.180 | when you shuffle, usually you don't rotate the cards

01:54:06.940 | so that you can see the,

01:54:10.580 | sort of detect which cards are the strong cards

01:54:14.460 | by marking them through rotating them.

01:54:17.820 | And the way you know they're rotated

01:54:19.220 | is because of the pattern imperfections.

01:54:21.460 | - Yeah, so some of the cards, like you said,

01:54:23.260 | like they had that pattern on it,

01:54:26.020 | and some of them, this was faulty cards on there,

01:54:28.420 | were not cut properly.

01:54:29.700 | So the eights and nines had the card cut differently,

01:54:33.860 | and those are important cards in this game,

01:54:35.580 | the eights and nines or whatever.

01:54:36.780 | So you could essentially,

01:54:37.620 | from looking at the back of the card,

01:54:39.260 | discern what it's gonna be.

01:54:41.820 | You do nothing in terms of cheating yourself.

01:54:45.000 | You're not rigging the game.

01:54:45.840 | All you're doing is taking advantage of the fact

01:54:47.380 | that you're playing, you've offered me cards

01:54:49.600 | that are faulty.

01:54:51.300 | - Can I just say that, of course, it would be Phil Ivey,

01:54:54.180 | who's the goat at the normal game

01:54:56.780 | who would be figuring out this particular thing.

01:54:58.860 | I mean, that's what, if you're into soccer,

01:55:00.580 | this Diego Maradona has that famous hand of God

01:55:03.860 | in the World Cup, where he scores a goal with his hand.

01:55:07.200 | And so of course, the referee didn't see it,

01:55:10.100 | they thought it was a header.

01:55:11.340 | So I mean, part of the magic of the genius

01:55:14.340 | of the people at the top of the game

01:55:15.540 | is they're able to exploit all the flaws that are there.

01:55:20.580 | - That's a beautiful thing to say.

01:55:21.420 | - Well, see, Phil had, in his heyday,

01:55:24.260 | he had, he exploited weaknesses in casinos,

01:55:28.300 | systems all over the country.

01:55:31.020 | Like in one night, I don't know if you know this story,

01:55:33.020 | in one night, he would take a plane, a private plane,

01:55:35.620 | and fly to 30 different casinos all over the country.

01:55:38.740 | 'Cause he would have these deals where they're like,

01:55:40.180 | all right, we've got this big, rich sucker

01:55:41.740 | who's gonna come here and play craps

01:55:43.100 | and he's gonna lose all our money.

01:55:44.240 | So he'd have this deal with one of the casinos

01:55:46.020 | where they'd be like, all right,

01:55:47.580 | you get 20% back up to half a million, right?

01:55:50.560 | So if you lose half a million, we'll give you back 100K.

01:55:53.500 | So he'd go to one casino in Tunica,

01:55:56.220 | he'd play half a million, win, win or lose, he would leave.

01:56:00.980 | They think they're gonna get him to stay,

01:56:02.440 | they get him a big room, whatever.

01:56:04.040 | So let's say he goes to Tunica, he loses half a million.

01:56:06.900 | Now he goes, he flies to Atlantic City,

01:56:08.820 | he wins half a million.

01:56:10.220 | He lost half a million and won half a million,

01:56:12.580 | but he got 100,000 back.

01:56:14.220 | So he's actually plus 100,000.

01:56:16.480 | Do that at 10 casinos a night,

01:56:17.940 | you're making a million dollars in free equity.

01:56:19.900 | And they would give him promotional chips

01:56:21.500 | and all these kinds of things

01:56:22.660 | and free flights and stuff like that.

01:56:24.200 | So he took advantage of the image

01:56:26.260 | that they're trying to exploit.

01:56:27.260 | So this is why I don't have any empathy for these casinos

01:56:29.700 | 'cause they're giving you free drinks,

01:56:31.460 | they're giving you, why do you think they're doing that?

01:56:33.180 | Kind of the kindness of their heart?

01:56:34.660 | They're trying to exploit you.

01:56:36.140 | So guess what?

01:56:37.020 | You lost at your own game, pay the piper.

01:56:39.600 | And I think it was crazy 'cause the judges in his case said,

01:56:43.060 | he did not cheat, but wow, it's probably not right.

01:56:47.420 | Hold on, you just said he didn't cheat.

01:56:49.860 | You know, that should be the end of the case.

01:56:52.500 | And then the casinos do the funny thing.

01:56:54.580 | I mentioned to you, I was just at the UFC

01:56:56.220 | and Dana White is a huge gambler.

01:56:59.980 | He's a blackjack gambler.

01:57:01.540 | And there's that famous situation

01:57:04.300 | where he got kicked out of a casino

01:57:05.820 | and the casinos do that kind of thing

01:57:07.020 | when you win too much.

01:57:08.500 | So he won some ridiculous amount of money.

01:57:10.940 | He bets like, I mean, he plays like millions of dollars

01:57:15.020 | on hands of blackjack, it's insane.

01:57:16.620 | And so he won really big and he got kicked out.

01:57:19.460 | Was he counting?

01:57:20.500 | No, no, he wasn't counting.

01:57:21.660 | So counting in blackjack here in Las Vegas

01:57:23.680 | is like the only game where they actually

01:57:25.460 | can ask you not to play.

01:57:26.860 | So like basically if you're counting cards, right?

01:57:28.900 | You could potentially have an edge in blackjack

01:57:30.420 | and there are some professionals who do that,

01:57:31.940 | but they get caught pretty quickly.

01:57:33.500 | And then they say, you can play craps,

01:57:34.740 | you can play whatever you want,

01:57:35.580 | but you can't play blackjack here anymore.

01:57:36.820 | No, I don't think Dana White is counting.

01:57:38.980 | I think he was winning a lot.

01:57:40.260 | I guess they can claim that they believe you're counting

01:57:43.660 | 'cause how do you really know if you're counting?

01:57:45.060 | Well, they easily, they figure it out.

01:57:47.140 | So basically they have an eye in the sky and they can see.

01:57:49.260 | So if you're varying your bet size, right?

01:57:51.020 | So there are certain spots where based on the cards

01:57:52.820 | that are out, let's say for example,

01:57:54.620 | a lot of the twos, threes, and fours, and fives

01:57:57.660 | have been coming out.

01:57:58.660 | So the deck is rich in face cards.

01:58:01.720 | That's very good for the player, right?

01:58:03.580 | So imagine you were betting 500 bucks

01:58:06.860 | and then all of a sudden you up your bet to 2000 or 5000

01:58:09.980 | when the deck is rich.

01:58:11.080 | They know when the deck is rich in high cards

01:58:12.940 | 'cause they keep a counter themselves.

01:58:14.740 | So if they notice a player increasing their bet sizes

01:58:17.300 | when the deck is good for them, it's a telltale sign.

01:58:20.260 | - Interesting.

01:58:21.100 | I don't think Daniel White would be counting.

01:58:22.660 | It's so, casinos don't kick you out

01:58:24.420 | if you don't often kick you out.

01:58:26.180 | Do they ever kick you out if you make too much money?

01:58:28.780 | 'Cause you're playing millions of dollars that they--

01:58:30.660 | - Unless they, they would never kick you out

01:58:32.300 | for making too much money unless they suspect cheating

01:58:34.340 | 'cause why would they?

01:58:35.280 | They have an advantage.

01:58:36.240 | They want the money back.

01:58:37.500 | It's not like you go in there and win 10 million.

01:58:38.660 | You're like, oh no, that's enough for us.

01:58:40.100 | - What about if he was talking shit the whole time?

01:58:42.020 | I wonder.

01:58:42.860 | - I don't think that would matter.

01:58:44.460 | You know? - 'Cause in the long run,

01:58:46.500 | they'll get the money back.

01:58:48.100 | - Exactly.

01:58:48.940 | - Yeah.

01:58:49.780 | You tweeted, if you watch "Jersey Shore" family vacation,

01:58:55.660 | we would probably get along really well.

01:58:57.460 | What is it about, 'cause I had lived in Jersey for a while,

01:58:59.940 | what is it about "Jersey Shore" characters that you love?

01:59:03.420 | - I just love that they're sort of, I love the debauchery.

01:59:06.600 | I think Pauly D's a fun guy, you know?

01:59:08.940 | And just like, it's just something like, it's just,

01:59:12.280 | it's, what do you call it?

01:59:13.600 | It's trash TV, it's a guilty pleasure.

01:59:15.700 | But you can just watch Snooki get drunk

01:59:17.580 | and falling all over herself or whatever.

01:59:19.540 | - So is that part, do you love that part of Vegas as well?

01:59:23.220 | - Eh, not really.

01:59:24.060 | Like, I don't go out and stuff.

01:59:25.300 | But I kinda, I just like the characters.

01:59:27.060 | I like that they have, you know, unique personalities.

01:59:30.100 | And I think like, we live in a world now

01:59:32.460 | where people are more and more careful of what they say

01:59:36.580 | and afraid of backlash and all that stuff.

01:59:38.500 | And it's kind of like an old school version

01:59:41.100 | of just like, say what you feel.

01:59:42.620 | It's okay, as long as your intent is good.

01:59:44.940 | And, you know, like, they haven't been canceled,

01:59:49.460 | if you will, which is good.

01:59:50.900 | But I feel like their type of behavior,

01:59:53.460 | slowly but surely, like,

01:59:54.740 | 'cause they got a lot of flack originally

01:59:56.140 | for misrepresenting like, Italian Americans

01:59:59.860 | or something like that.

02:00:00.700 | Like, there was a lot of backlash about,

02:00:02.060 | this isn't how Italian Americans really are

02:00:03.940 | and blah, blah, blah.

02:00:05.020 | So they sort of were representing that group of people.

02:00:08.780 | And, you know, they received some backlash back in the day.

02:00:13.220 | - I'm a huge supporter of diversity

02:00:15.820 | in all the beautiful forms that the human species

02:00:19.140 | is able to generate.

02:00:20.020 | And that's certainly one dimension.

02:00:22.060 | What's the greatest Vegas movie, would you say?

02:00:25.220 | I don't know if that's a difficult question.

02:00:26.500 | - Not really.

02:00:27.340 | - "Fear of Loathing Las Vegas," "Leaving Las Vegas."

02:00:29.060 | - "Casino," baby.

02:00:29.900 | - "Casino."

02:00:30.740 | - I watch, 'cause anytime "Casino" is on randomly,

02:00:32.580 | I always watch it.

02:00:33.740 | - Such a great movie.

02:00:34.980 | It could be one of the, Sharon Stone.

02:00:38.060 | - Sharon Stone.

02:00:38.980 | Frankly, Sharon Stone reminded me,

02:00:41.340 | every time I would watch the movie,

02:00:42.340 | it reminded me of my wife, Amanda.

02:00:44.540 | Like, totally.

02:00:45.620 | I would see the character, and I was like,

02:00:47.380 | I'm the Robert De Niro character in the film.

02:00:49.860 | I used to watch it through that lens, you know?

02:00:52.940 | - From the depth of love that you have?

02:00:57.340 | - Just kind of, she was, I remember that she was like,

02:01:00.020 | she was like, she lit up every room.

02:01:01.900 | She does light up every room when she goes there.

02:01:03.580 | Everybody's attracted and drawn to her.

02:01:05.620 | And she was kind of, when she was younger,

02:01:07.220 | she was a little wild and crazy and whatnot.

02:01:09.260 | So she reminded me of the Sharon Stone character.

02:01:11.660 | And then the Robert De Niro character's trying to like,

02:01:13.940 | have a stable life, you know, and be that.

02:01:16.060 | Now that was me.

02:01:16.900 | - Who was the Joe Pesci in your life?

02:01:19.060 | - Well, there was a guy named,

02:01:19.900 | there was a James Woods, for sure, who was the Lester.

02:01:22.540 | We called him, we actually called him Lester.

02:01:24.820 | A few of my friends call him Lester.

02:01:26.620 | You know, the greasy guy,

02:01:28.980 | who tried to get back in and all that.

02:01:31.420 | But yeah.

02:01:32.260 | - Yeah, one of my favorite scenes

02:01:33.100 | is when they meet out in the desert,

02:01:35.300 | and it's like a 50/50 odds

02:01:36.660 | if you're gonna make it out alive in that.

02:01:38.420 | I mean, yeah, there's an epicness

02:01:40.860 | to that portrayal of Vegas.

02:01:43.420 | - I love, I mean, it's just totally,

02:01:45.420 | I mean, it's obviously more corporate now,

02:01:46.780 | and it's different, but I love those movies.

02:01:49.460 | I love all those movies, just seeing that life.

02:01:51.460 | And like I said, if there was a period in time

02:01:53.140 | that I could go back to and just experience it,

02:01:55.380 | it would be that, you know, right around then.

02:01:56.780 | - There'll be that.

02:01:58.060 | We're playing with a mob.

02:02:00.220 | - I think of like these crime shows today,

02:02:02.000 | like they're so unrealistic now,

02:02:04.040 | because if they're in an era that is now,

02:02:06.660 | like none of this stuff can happen,

02:02:08.260 | 'cause there's cameras everywhere.

02:02:09.700 | You can't like get away with these,

02:02:11.060 | like killing somebody and jumping in a car,

02:02:13.680 | and you're gonna get caught, you know?

02:02:15.860 | But in the '70s, you know, that stuff happened.

02:02:18.260 | - You cross the line, you die.

02:02:19.620 | - Yeah, Lake Mead.

02:02:20.460 | Lake Mead is recently like losing water,

02:02:22.860 | and like every couple days,

02:02:24.300 | they're finding more and more bodies from that era.

02:02:26.780 | - Oh, no. - They really are.

02:02:28.380 | - You're close with your mom.

02:02:30.860 | What did you learn about life from your mom?

02:02:33.340 | - My mother was very generous.

02:02:35.060 | My mother, she experienced joy through giving people.

02:02:39.220 | Food, for the most part, my dad would get them drinks,

02:02:42.100 | and that was how she felt fulfilled, right?

02:02:45.580 | She felt good when she like would cook for you,

02:02:47.460 | and like she'd be that person, you'd come over,

02:02:49.380 | and she'd be like, "Are you hungry?"

02:02:50.740 | And you'd say, "No, no, no, I'm okay."

02:02:51.940 | She's gonna put 15 things in front of you, and you'll eat.

02:02:54.740 | You know, you're gonna eat,

02:02:55.580 | 'cause everyone does that, to be polite.

02:02:56.820 | "No, no, I'm good."

02:02:57.780 | But you know, they will start to eat.

02:02:59.540 | And just her hospitality in that regard,

02:03:01.500 | and just being generous,

02:03:02.500 | and like being a good host to people, and things like that.

02:03:07.520 | - How did that define, like help define

02:03:09.960 | who you are as a person, that generosity?

02:03:13.080 | - Yeah. - Did it rub off on you?

02:03:14.560 | - It made me think about, in my life,

02:03:17.480 | when it comes to like any sort of business deals,

02:03:21.560 | or things like that, I don't wanna get the best of it

02:03:23.960 | in such a way where I screw the other person.

02:03:25.640 | I genuinely don't.

02:03:26.960 | I'd much rather you owe me, than me owe you.

02:03:29.440 | So if I hire people,

02:03:31.120 | they get paid more than they're supposed to.

02:03:33.180 | And I'd rather them do that, and work towards it,

02:03:36.080 | rather than feel underpaid.

02:03:37.240 | 'Cause if they're underpaid, they'll likely under deliver.

02:03:39.480 | Whereas if they feel overpaid,

02:03:41.200 | then if I need them to do something special,

02:03:43.320 | they're not gonna be like, "Hey, I don't get paid for that."

02:03:45.280 | It's like, yeah, you do.

02:03:46.760 | You really do.

02:03:47.600 | So that's certainly like played out in my life,

02:03:49.900 | where I set it up in such a way, where I don't owe.

02:03:53.120 | You know, I'm owed.

02:03:54.680 | But that's okay.

02:03:56.120 | 'Cause I can handle taking the worst of it in spots.

02:03:58.640 | I don't like being the person to, you know,

02:04:01.880 | feel like I'm indebted to others.

02:04:04.360 | - Yeah, and in some way, the karma of that

02:04:06.600 | tends to pay dividends in the longterm, somehow.

02:04:10.200 | Somehow there's somebody up there

02:04:15.120 | that's keeping track in some kind of way.

02:04:17.600 | What advice would you give to young people today,

02:04:20.480 | in high school and college?

02:04:22.280 | How to have a career they can be proud of,

02:04:25.240 | or maybe how to have a life in general

02:04:27.340 | they can be proud of?

02:04:28.940 | - I would say like, your 20s is a good opportunity

02:04:32.120 | to set yourself up for the rest of your life, right?

02:04:34.920 | So while the 20s are a period where you wanna have fun,

02:04:38.200 | and you wanna experience youth,

02:04:40.440 | it's also a good opportunity to start thinking about,

02:04:42.400 | what do you want your life to look like

02:04:44.840 | in your 30s and your 40s, right?

02:04:46.840 | So I feel like it's the best time

02:04:48.660 | to really put yourself out there and take risks,

02:04:51.200 | and try to hit it, you know, whatever,

02:04:53.760 | you know, like to work really, really hard

02:04:55.360 | to set yourself up.

02:04:56.400 | Because, and I said this at a event I was speaking at,

02:04:59.880 | when you're like, with poker,

02:05:01.040 | when your bankroll is very, very small,

02:05:02.480 | it's replenishable, right?

02:05:05.120 | You don't need to protect it as much

02:05:06.960 | as you do once you've got something, right?

02:05:09.360 | Once you have a brand, or you have money,

02:05:11.200 | you have something like that,

02:05:12.560 | that's when you wanna start protecting.

02:05:14.040 | But in your 20s is an opportunity

02:05:15.560 | to just really sort of get a cut,

02:05:17.680 | get, you know, to work really, really hard

02:05:19.760 | to set yourself up, you know, for the future.

02:05:22.060 | I am concerned a little bit,

02:05:23.280 | like every time I talk to kids today,

02:05:24.600 | I'm like, what do you wanna be?

02:05:26.080 | They all wanna be YouTubers,

02:05:27.880 | or Instagram stars, or rappers, right?

02:05:30.640 | Like, okay, I was like, that's cool,

02:05:32.480 | but like, there's only so many of those,

02:05:34.280 | you know, that there can be.

02:05:35.360 | So it might be worthwhile having

02:05:36.520 | a little bit of a backup plan.

02:05:38.040 | - I think it's easier to be successful

02:05:39.880 | on Instagram and social media if you do something else.

02:05:43.220 | And-- - I would say this too.

02:05:44.720 | One other thing I would say is,

02:05:47.000 | don't choose a profession or an idea

02:05:49.680 | because you think it'll make you rich, right?

02:05:54.040 | Pursue something that you actually love.

02:05:56.580 | Because if you love it,

02:05:57.760 | you're way more likely to become rich.

02:05:59.600 | If you don't, you do something

02:06:01.320 | that you don't actually enjoy,

02:06:03.000 | now you're spending a lot of your life unhappy,

02:06:05.480 | doing something you don't want,

02:06:06.720 | and if you're not passionate about it,

02:06:08.800 | you're probably not,

02:06:09.800 | the chances of you being successful are much lower.

02:06:12.280 | - And also becoming rich,

02:06:14.040 | and I've talked to a lot of rich people,

02:06:15.800 | hang out with a lot of rich people,

02:06:17.440 | is not going to be as fulfilling as you imagine

02:06:21.480 | if you arrive there by not doing

02:06:23.280 | the thing that you love doing.

02:06:24.760 | - That's true. - Ultimately,

02:06:25.640 | the thing that you love doing is,

02:06:28.180 | like, that's what makes life worth it.

02:06:30.360 | - There's another quote,

02:06:31.320 | I can't remember who it was,

02:06:32.280 | otherwise I would quote them,

02:06:33.120 | but it says something to the effect of,

02:06:35.020 | if we believe in the lie that more is always better,

02:06:39.720 | then we can never truly arrive.

02:06:41.680 | Because wherever we are, more is better, right?

02:06:44.520 | I've never understood,

02:06:45.720 | and I've been around rich people,

02:06:46.760 | like you said, I never got, I don't get it.

02:06:50.880 | If you have a billion dollars,

02:06:52.000 | why do you give a shit about money at all?

02:06:54.720 | Like, and they're still like, oh, we made this deal,

02:06:56.720 | and I'm like, we picked up 300, who cares?

02:06:59.680 | Your life is set.

02:07:01.200 | There is that bell curve, right?

02:07:03.120 | Where obviously being in poverty,

02:07:05.320 | there's obviously a high rate of unhappiness,

02:07:07.400 | but there's a certain amount of money where you reach,

02:07:10.040 | where you reach a level of happiness,

02:07:11.040 | and then too much, you find that people

02:07:13.360 | that are searching for money to fulfill these holes,

02:07:15.480 | it starts to go back down again.

02:07:17.580 | - Well, the getting more money could become a game,

02:07:21.600 | like a sport, that's fun to play,

02:07:23.600 | as long as you directly or indirectly acknowledge

02:07:27.400 | that what you love is the game of it.

02:07:29.600 | Versus the actual attainment of money.

02:07:31.120 | - And I think that's what it is, right?

02:07:32.680 | For me, I've never cared about money that much.

02:07:34.680 | I just never did.

02:07:35.520 | Otherwise I would have a lot more of it.

02:07:37.360 | But it's always been strange to me

02:07:40.120 | how people that have that kind of money

02:07:42.240 | like are cheap in any way.

02:07:45.260 | You know, like they wouldn't donate 5,000

02:07:47.240 | to a worthwhile charity.

02:07:48.960 | 'Cause it's like, buddy, this,

02:07:50.640 | like when it changes your life,

02:07:52.440 | not, and even like small things like taxes.

02:07:55.520 | Like, okay, you have $20 billion,

02:07:57.480 | and you're worried about paying 33%, 30% of 31.

02:08:00.680 | I get it, I get the point of it all,

02:08:03.520 | but like it literally has no effect on your life whatsoever.

02:08:06.920 | Your life is unchanged, whether it's 31 or 33.

02:08:10.280 | - Yeah, that's the negative of a lot of money

02:08:12.920 | is if it corrupts the way you see the world,

02:08:14.880 | you start to be protective and so on.

02:08:16.580 | I mean, part of the challenge of when you get a lot of money

02:08:19.320 | is people start to treat you differently.

02:08:21.240 | And so navigating that correctly is very challenging.

02:08:24.840 | So don't change.

02:08:26.700 | Remain the same person you always were.

02:08:29.980 | 'Cause if you change, you start to,

02:08:32.060 | I mean, that's why power corrupts

02:08:33.740 | is you get a lot of power, you get a lot of fame,

02:08:36.020 | you get a lot of money.

02:08:37.860 | You start to distrust people.

02:08:40.180 | You start to push away people

02:08:41.900 | that are actually really close to you.

02:08:43.300 | - And you also, I think you develop some biases

02:08:45.460 | where you think like you're just this,

02:08:47.100 | you know, you think like it was all you,

02:08:49.420 | and you're a genius, and you're so great,

02:08:51.060 | and all these other people who don't have,

02:08:52.460 | it's just 'cause they don't have what you have.

02:08:54.080 | And like, you just,

02:08:55.180 | then you start to like view that group of people,

02:08:57.080 | whether they're impoverished or whatever, as like less than,

02:09:00.280 | and that you're some like great guru

02:09:01.680 | where you could have just got lucky and bought Bitcoins

02:09:04.080 | that you could have done anything,

02:09:05.500 | and then you became like super wealthy.

02:09:07.500 | And then you have this like Dunning-Kruger effect

02:09:10.140 | where you think you know everything about everything.

02:09:11.800 | And a lot of poker people have that.

02:09:13.000 | And I, listen, I'm probably guilty in some ways too,

02:09:15.780 | you know, thinking because you can figure out poker

02:09:17.600 | and be great at that, that you could figure out anything.

02:09:20.180 | So there's like, it's true, right?

02:09:21.440 | I mean, we sort of, we genuinely feel like,

02:09:24.160 | people that reach the highest levels of poker

02:09:25.640 | feel like they are intelligent.

02:09:27.200 | So they will look at problem solving

02:09:28.440 | and think that they have answers.

02:09:30.120 | - Well, you have to remind yourself that you're not.

02:09:32.200 | - Yeah.

02:09:33.040 | - It's best to see the world as you did just get lucky,

02:09:35.480 | or at least from my perspective,

02:09:37.080 | that you're not better than anybody.

02:09:38.400 | - Yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong

02:09:39.240 | with like acknowledging that you worked hard

02:09:40.720 | to get where you were.

02:09:41.980 | Like there isn't, but at the same time,

02:09:43.520 | like it's not available to everybody in the same way.

02:09:46.140 | You know, right time, right place.

02:09:47.440 | Like for me, my poker career

02:09:48.600 | could have gone very differently, you know?

02:09:50.500 | If things didn't work out, you know,

02:09:52.320 | if I had some bad luck in the wrong times,

02:09:54.400 | like who knows where I'd be.

02:09:56.080 | - So you said your brain curl is pretty small in your 20s.

02:09:59.840 | I'm sure you've been around a lot of people

02:10:01.800 | you care a lot about who've lost everything in poker.

02:10:04.720 | What's that like?

02:10:05.960 | What's those low points of losing everything?

02:10:09.280 | - I think because I've been there,

02:10:12.040 | I have more empathy than I probably should for those people.

02:10:15.600 | I really feel for them.

02:10:16.480 | 'Cause I remember being in Vegas and being totally broke.

02:10:18.960 | And like a guy loaning me $400

02:10:21.720 | and me like turning that 400 into 20,000,

02:10:24.260 | 400 bucks and it was like eternally grateful of that.

02:10:27.340 | So when I have friends who go through that,

02:10:29.540 | like I always try to consult them obviously,

02:10:32.220 | but they really need his money for the most part.

02:10:34.660 | But I remember saying no to one friend

02:10:36.420 | because he didn't have a plan.

02:10:37.700 | So I like to try to help them in that regard.

02:10:39.820 | Like my buddy's like, can you stake me in this game?

02:10:42.220 | And I was like, all right, well, how much do you?

02:10:43.860 | Then I was like, let's break down the math, bro.

02:10:45.740 | You want me to stake you?

02:10:46.580 | So you get 50% of the profit, right?

02:10:48.740 | So I said, how much do you think you can make in this game?

02:10:50.440 | How much does the biggest winners make?

02:10:52.160 | He's like, well, I can probably,

02:10:53.640 | I probably do like 20,000 a month in this game.

02:10:56.280 | So, okay.

02:10:57.120 | So you get half of that 'cause I get 10, right?

02:10:58.960 | What is your monthly net?

02:10:59.920 | How much are you spending?

02:11:00.760 | He's like, well, I'm renting this thing for 8,000.

02:11:03.400 | You're spending 17,000 a month.

02:11:05.920 | So like no matter what you're set up to fail.

02:11:09.480 | Like this isn't gonna work.

02:11:10.900 | So I actually didn't give him the money.

02:11:12.160 | And I was like, what you need to do to earn more money

02:11:13.920 | is lower your monthly net.

02:11:15.240 | 'Cause it's too high.

02:11:16.080 | It just, you know, it doesn't mathematically add up.

02:11:19.140 | So trying to set them right in that regard

02:11:21.460 | is something that like I feel obliged to do,

02:11:24.660 | especially if they're friends.

02:11:25.500 | - But what about the mental aspect of the struggle

02:11:27.540 | they're going through?

02:11:28.380 | The struggle you were going through?

02:11:29.980 | Just, I mean, it's really rough to have no money.

02:11:34.380 | - It's not for everybody.

02:11:35.500 | This really isn't.

02:11:36.320 | Like a lot of people might, you know, listen to this

02:11:37.700 | and think like, oh, I wanna play poker.

02:11:38.780 | It's like most people fail.

02:11:40.540 | Most people who wanna play in the NFL,

02:11:43.860 | they spend their college years,

02:11:46.280 | like most of them are not gonna make it.

02:11:48.480 | Most of you who try to play poker professionally

02:11:50.400 | are going to fail and you're gonna experience despair.

02:11:52.880 | Okay?

02:11:53.760 | There are those like in anything that have the passion,

02:11:56.120 | have the know-how, have the luck

02:11:57.320 | and all that sort of stuff and it all pans out.

02:11:59.640 | But you know, they're the minority.

02:12:01.600 | - And so for the low points, if you remember,

02:12:06.440 | what does it take to sort of overcome that,

02:12:08.700 | overcome the mental struggle?

02:12:12.240 | I mean, you're making it sound like certain people

02:12:13.760 | are just genetically able to in certain--

02:12:15.540 | - I do think some people are more apt

02:12:17.380 | to being able to deal with like adversity

02:12:19.260 | and having resilience and some people just can't hack it.

02:12:21.580 | But like I generally what I would advise,

02:12:23.340 | you know, people that are, let's say a guy's playing,

02:12:24.740 | you know, really high stakes or whatever,

02:12:26.440 | you're doing badly is step number one

02:12:28.500 | is take a little bit of a break here.

02:12:30.500 | Let's recalibrate and let's start small again.

02:12:33.740 | Let's, you know, let's restart

02:12:34.980 | and let's play smaller stakes

02:12:36.100 | and let's get our confidence back

02:12:37.660 | because in poker, without confidence,

02:12:39.960 | you cannot be successful.

02:12:41.620 | It is incredibly important to have almost an inflated

02:12:44.760 | level of confidence in yourself

02:12:46.840 | because you're up against it, right?

02:12:48.760 | As I said, the majority of people fail.

02:12:50.420 | So why are you special?

02:12:51.480 | Why are you different?

02:12:52.520 | You have to be pretty confident about your, you know,

02:12:54.480 | yourself to think that you are one of the chosen ones.

02:12:57.520 | - And then don't resist the despair and take a nap.

02:13:01.640 | - Definitely take a nap.

02:13:03.000 | And listen, it's okay to experience it.

02:13:05.040 | Like I said, yeah, you're gonna experience this.

02:13:06.760 | What else would you, what should you be feeling?

02:13:09.240 | You know, if things are going poorly

02:13:10.360 | and you just lost all your money.

02:13:11.440 | Excited?

02:13:12.840 | Maybe like, okay, have your moment of grief.

02:13:15.900 | Allow yourself to experience it

02:13:17.100 | so that you can, you know, reassemble.

02:13:20.540 | - There's a fundamental way

02:13:21.780 | in which you haven't really lived life

02:13:23.740 | if you haven't experienced periods of despair.

02:13:27.200 | - You have a jaded view of the world, right?

02:13:30.060 | - Weird thing about the human condition

02:13:31.880 | that both the highs and the lows are important.

02:13:35.300 | - Yeah.

02:13:36.140 | - What role does love play in the human condition?

02:13:40.780 | - Daniel Negreanu.

02:13:42.280 | - That's a good one.

02:13:43.680 | - What role has love played in your life?

02:13:47.060 | - It's, yeah, that's, you know,

02:13:48.740 | you sort of talked about the ups and downs

02:13:51.020 | of the human condition and love has been that for me, right?

02:13:56.020 | (both laughing)

02:13:58.560 | Like I'm in a good place now,

02:14:00.560 | but you know, even with my now wife,

02:14:03.380 | years ago, you know, she was young.

02:14:06.700 | She was, you know, new to poker

02:14:07.940 | and she wasn't ready to settle down.

02:14:09.280 | I was like, when I met her,

02:14:10.380 | I think I was 31, she was 21.

02:14:12.500 | And I was ready to like lock her up, if you will,

02:14:15.060 | you know, let's do this.

02:14:16.460 | And I bought a ring way back when,

02:14:17.860 | she was like not about that.

02:14:19.220 | She was living the Hollywood life.

02:14:21.000 | She was living, you know, partying in LA,

02:14:22.340 | doing that kind of stuff and wasn't ready.

02:14:23.940 | And we split and that one hit me hard.

02:14:27.260 | So I didn't realize how much of a hit

02:14:31.160 | that had on my confidence in my, in everything really,

02:14:35.260 | in poker, with other women.

02:14:36.640 | It had me a little jaded about women too,

02:14:39.320 | you know, resentful, you know.

02:14:42.100 | And it took a lot of like self-retro,

02:14:43.340 | I did like a lot of personal growth work

02:14:45.820 | and workshops and things like that.

02:14:47.620 | And then didn't see her for years.

02:14:49.900 | And she came back to town, I was a much different person.

02:14:51.820 | It was just, you know, four years ago

02:14:53.140 | or something like that.

02:14:54.180 | And she was too.

02:14:55.540 | Went to dinner, a few months later, we were married.

02:14:58.780 | It worked out so different 'cause we both had to grow,

02:15:01.500 | you know, and become different people.

02:15:03.060 | - Huh, and that love was still there somehow.

02:15:05.540 | - Yeah, like she went through her relationships.

02:15:07.580 | I went through mine.

02:15:08.580 | You know, we experienced life.

02:15:09.960 | And I was married once before too, you know,

02:15:12.920 | called my starter marriage, if you will.

02:15:14.920 | Which, yeah, you know, we just, you don't know.

02:15:19.040 | I think like until you do it, until you get married

02:15:21.200 | and, you know, experience like the sacrifice,

02:15:23.600 | not necessarily the sacrifices, but your value systems.

02:15:25.800 | If they don't align identically,

02:15:27.080 | which they're not going to.

02:15:29.160 | Someone like me, one of, probably one of my,

02:15:31.800 | one of my strengths in poker,

02:15:32.860 | but my weaknesses in relationship is judgment, right?

02:15:36.120 | When I play poker, I need to judge you.

02:15:37.920 | It's essentially what I'm doing.

02:15:39.340 | I'm gauging who you are and what you're good at

02:15:42.020 | and what you're bad at.

02:15:43.140 | And that can have repercussions 'cause it leads,

02:15:45.180 | that's how I, you know,

02:15:46.500 | that's the lens I look at everyone with

02:15:48.620 | based on how you live your life.

02:15:49.680 | I'm judging you.

02:15:50.520 | This guy's this, this guy's that, this guy's that.

02:15:52.020 | And that's not healthy.

02:15:53.300 | - So you have to shut that off in personal relationships.

02:15:56.140 | - You have to learn to like, and the thing,

02:15:56.980 | I finally realized what love is, frankly, for me,

02:15:59.500 | with her is no judgment, right?

02:16:02.100 | - Yeah, acceptance.

02:16:02.940 | - So like, yeah, so I have my way of being, right?

02:16:04.900 | If she wants to have cereal for dinner,

02:16:06.940 | maybe that's the best decision for her.

02:16:08.560 | I was living in a framework of better and worse.

02:16:11.280 | The way that I do things is better and yours is worse.

02:16:13.940 | Do things more like I do.

02:16:15.840 | That's the recipe for disaster.

02:16:17.400 | True acceptance and true love is accepting someone

02:16:19.840 | like exactly as they are.

02:16:21.440 | You know, if she wants to do something different,

02:16:23.200 | I'm gonna support her, whatever it is.

02:16:25.040 | Even if I disagree with it personally

02:16:26.640 | and like the way that I would do things,

02:16:28.560 | learning to just realize that she's had a different journey

02:16:31.400 | and a different walk towards where she's at than I have.

02:16:34.280 | So I can't pass my judgments on other people like that.

02:16:37.500 | - I believe it is ethically wrong

02:16:39.340 | and probably illegal to eat cereal for dinner.

02:16:42.020 | - Listen, if she wants it, she wants it.

02:16:45.660 | - Acceptance.

02:16:46.820 | - Like when she goes to bed,

02:16:47.900 | like all these little things about my regimented life.

02:16:50.060 | She's not.

02:16:50.900 | Like our motto at our wedding was like,

02:16:53.620 | "You keep me wild, I'll keep you safe, you keep me wild."

02:16:56.700 | I keep her safe, she keeps me wild.

02:16:59.020 | She's like not organized and anal and all those

02:17:01.460 | kind of things, I am.

02:17:02.940 | She helps me like let loose.

02:17:06.160 | You know, "Oh no, I'm eating this, this."

02:17:07.560 | She's like, "Have some popcorn."

02:17:08.920 | I'm like, "All right, let's do it."

02:17:10.040 | You know, she keeps me freed.

02:17:12.560 | - And accepting that, embracing that,

02:17:14.800 | the difference is the chaos of it.

02:17:17.720 | - Yeah.

02:17:18.560 | - That's what makes it--

02:17:19.380 | - Like I literally do think about with her

02:17:21.080 | how important it is and how much I try to like

02:17:23.380 | just come from neutral and like compassion and never judge.

02:17:28.240 | 'Cause she's got other things that she deals with, right?

02:17:30.400 | That I don't.

02:17:31.240 | She's bipolar, right?

02:17:32.920 | So with that, I've studied and I've learned a lot about

02:17:35.840 | you know, sort of mental health and what that means

02:17:37.860 | and ways in which a lot of characteristics about somebody

02:17:42.860 | is completely out of their control when they're bipolar.

02:17:46.660 | Right?

02:17:47.500 | And there's swings, like there's no cocktail

02:17:51.260 | for bipolar that solves the issue, right?

02:17:53.820 | So there's medications that work to level you out

02:17:56.540 | for periods of time, but then they start to fade

02:17:58.700 | and they don't work as well.

02:17:59.560 | So they constantly need readjustment.

02:18:01.540 | It's an unsolved mystery to a certain degree.

02:18:04.020 | So in some sense, you know, her diagnosis

02:18:08.420 | made our relationship easier

02:18:11.180 | because I don't take anything personal, right?

02:18:13.540 | I realize that sometimes she's gonna be in a mood.

02:18:16.040 | And so, you know, I mean,

02:18:18.060 | she's so good about communicating it though.

02:18:19.780 | She tells me, some morning she'll be like,

02:18:21.500 | "Bad mood, trying to get out of it, babe."

02:18:23.100 | I'm like, "Okay."

02:18:24.020 | I leave her alone.

02:18:24.860 | - Well, that's great.

02:18:25.700 | That means she's grown to be able to communicate,

02:18:27.620 | to understand, to self-reflect, to understand where she is.

02:18:29.980 | I have people in my life who I love who are bipolar.

02:18:32.940 | It's a beautiful ride.

02:18:34.080 | - It is, right?

02:18:35.140 | Yeah, it's, yeah.

02:18:36.700 | The highs and the lows are there.

02:18:38.820 | So, but yeah, like, because I feel like a protector.

02:18:41.580 | For me, I just wanna be a rock, right?

02:18:44.420 | And that's part of the whole cereal thing.

02:18:45.940 | If she wants to eat cereal,

02:18:47.820 | don't make a rung for anything she wants to do.

02:18:50.580 | - What have you learned from life

02:18:52.140 | from the song "The Gambler" by Kenny Rogers?

02:18:55.700 | You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,

02:18:58.740 | know when to walk away, know when to run.

02:19:01.580 | You never count your money

02:19:02.780 | when you're sitting at the table.

02:19:04.140 | There'll be plenty of time for counting

02:19:05.620 | when the dealing's done.

02:19:06.860 | Is that, do you live by those words?

02:19:08.940 | - The first part of it, for sure.

02:19:10.860 | - What do they even mean?

02:19:12.020 | 'Cause--

02:19:12.860 | ♪ You got to know when to hold ♪

02:19:15.380 | So basically, it's like, all right, in life,

02:19:17.620 | like, let's use a, whatever, the market, for example.

02:19:21.620 | You bought a stock, right?

02:19:23.140 | Or you bought Bitcoin, and you're like,

02:19:24.340 | it's gonna go to the moon, right?

02:19:26.380 | It's like, okay, well, maybe things have changed.

02:19:29.580 | New scenario, new circumstances, new situation.

02:19:32.500 | Are you going down with the ship, right?

02:19:34.820 | Or are you gonna lay the hand down?

02:19:36.100 | Are you gonna fold it?

02:19:37.100 | Whether it's a relationship, you know?

02:19:38.780 | You're with this woman, you're like, all right,

02:19:41.180 | I think it's time to fold this one.

02:19:43.060 | I think, you know, I don't think that we're gonna be able

02:19:45.500 | to make this hand work right now.

02:19:47.740 | - When to fold 'em and when to run.

02:19:49.780 | - Yeah, when to run. - So maybe,

02:19:51.700 | every gambler knows that the secret to surviving

02:19:54.180 | is knowing what to throw away

02:19:55.500 | and knowing what to keep,

02:19:56.860 | 'cause every hand's a winner and every hand's a loser.

02:19:59.740 | That's like a stoic philosophy.

02:20:01.180 | And the best thing you can hope for is to die in your sleep.

02:20:04.980 | Every hand's a winner and every hand's a loser.

02:20:09.300 | What does that mean?

02:20:10.420 | - I like that one.

02:20:11.260 | I like, for me, that's like the difference

02:20:13.060 | between victim and responsible,

02:20:14.420 | like the way that I think about it, right?

02:20:16.180 | You can be a victim to circumstance,

02:20:18.180 | or you can be responsible for everything in your life, right?

02:20:20.460 | So when an event happens, the event itself

02:20:23.620 | is neither good or bad until you assign it value, right?

02:20:27.460 | So like an event happens and can be traumatic,

02:20:30.820 | it can be painful, but how you respond to it

02:20:33.860 | is ultimately gonna be up to you.

02:20:35.580 | Like you actually do have a choice.

02:20:36.820 | - And that's the thing you can control.

02:20:39.000 | The fact that you, Daniel Negreanu,

02:20:41.140 | took my commentary about the gambler seriously

02:20:44.020 | shows once more that you're a beautiful human being.

02:20:46.300 | (laughing)

02:20:47.140 | Thank you so much for being who you are,

02:20:49.380 | for inspiring millions of people about poker,

02:20:51.780 | about how to live life.

02:20:53.100 | And thank you for giving me your valuable time today.

02:20:55.420 | This is amazing.

02:20:56.260 | Thank you for talking. - It was fun, man.

02:20:57.080 | It was great to have the conversation.

02:20:58.860 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation

02:21:01.260 | with Daniel Negreanu.

02:21:02.420 | To support this podcast,

02:21:03.540 | please check out our sponsors in the description.

02:21:06.180 | And now let me leave you with some words from Doyle Bronson.

02:21:11.180 | "Poker is war.

02:21:13.540 | "People pretend it is a game."

02:21:16.500 | Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

02:21:19.300 | (upbeat music)

02:21:21.880 | (upbeat music)

02:21:24.460 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Daniel Negreanu: Poker | Lex Fridman Podcast #324

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