Evolutionarily, if we see a lion running at us,

we didn't have time to calculate the lion's kinetic energy,

and is it optimal to go this way or that way?

You just react it, and physically,

our bodies are well attuned to actually make right decisions.

But when you're playing a game like poker,

this is not something that you ever evolved to do,

and yet you're in that same flight or fight response.

And so that's a really important skill to be able to develop,

to basically learn how to meditate in the moment

and calm yourself so that you can think clearly.

The following is a conversation with Liv Burri,

formerly one of the best poker players in the world,

trained as an astrophysicist

and is now a philanthropist and an educator

on topics of game theory, physics, complexity, and life.

This is the Lex Friedman podcast.

To support it, please check out our sponsors

in the description.

And now, dear friends, here's Liv Burri.

What role do you think luck plays in poker and in life?

You can pick whichever one you want,

poker or life and or life.

The longer you play, the less influenced luck has,

you know, like with all things,

the bigger your sample size,

the more the quality of your decisions

or your strategies matter.

So to answer that question, yeah, in poker, it really depends.

If you and I sat and played 10 hands right now,

I might only win 52% of the time, 53% maybe.

But if we played 10,000 hands,

then I'll probably win like over 98, 99% of the time.

So it's a question of sample sizes.

And what are you figuring out over time?

The betting strategy that this individual does

or literally doesn't matter

against any individual over time?

Against any individual over time,

the better player because they're making better decisions.

So what does that mean to make a better decision?

Well, to get into the real nitty gritty already.

Basically, poker is the game of math.

There are these strategies familiar

with like Nash Equilibria that term, right?

So there are these game theory optimal strategies

that you can adopt.

And the closer you play to them,

the less exploitable you are.

So because I've studied the game a bunch,

although admittedly not for a few years,

but back in, you know, when I was playing all the time,

I would study these game theory optimal solutions

and try and then adopt those strategies when I go and play.

So I'd play against you and I would do that.

And because the objective,

when you're playing game theory optimal,

it's actually, it's a loss minimization thing

that you're trying to do.

Your best bet is to try and play a sort of similar style.

You also need to try and adopt this loss minimization.

But because I've been playing much longer than you,

I'll be better at that.

So first of all,

you're not taking advantage of my mistakes,

but then on top of that,

I'll be better at recognizing

when you are playing suboptimally

and then deviating from this game theory optimal strategy

to exploit your bad plays.

Can you define game theory and Nash Equilibria?

Can we try to sneak up to it in a bunch of ways?

Like, what's the game theory framework

of analyzing poker, analyzing any kind of situation?

So game theory is just basically the study of decisions

within a competitive situation.

I mean, it's technically a branch of economics,

but it also applies to like wider decision theory.

And usually when you see it,

it's these like little payoff matrices

and so on, that's how it's depicted.

But it's essentially just like study of strategies

under different competitive situations.

And as it happens, certain games,

in fact, many, many games have these things

called Nash Equilibria.

And what that means is when you're in a Nash Equilibrium,

basically it is not,

there is no strategy that you can take

that would be more beneficial

than the one you're currently taking,

assuming your opponent is also doing the same thing.

So it would be a bad idea,

if we're both playing in a game theory optimal strategy,

if either of us deviate from that,

now we're putting ourselves at a disadvantage.

Rockpapers is actually a really great example of this.

Like if we were to start playing rockpapers,

you know, you know nothing about me

and we're gonna play for all our money,

let's play 10 rounds of it.

What would your sort of optimal strategy be?

Do you think?

What would you do?

Let's see.

I would probably try to be as random as possible.

Exactly, because you don't know anything about me,

you don't want to give anything away about yourself,

so ideally you'd have like a little dice

or somewhat perfect randomizer

that makes you randomize 33% of the time

each of the three different things.

And in response to that,

well, actually I can kind of do anything,

but I would probably just randomize back too,

but actually it wouldn't matter

because I know that you're playing randomly.

So that would be us in a Nash equilibrium

where we're both playing this like unexploitable strategy.

However, if after a while,

you then notice that I'm playing rock

a little bit more often than I should.

Yeah, you're the kind of person that would do that,

wouldn't you?

Sure, yes, yes, yes, I'm more of a scissors girl,

but anyway.

You are?

No, I'm a, as I said, randomizer.

So you notice I'm throwing rock too much

or something like that.

Now you'd be making a mistake

by continuing playing this game theory optimal strategy,

well the previous one,

because you are now there's an,

I'm making a mistake

and you're not deviating and exploiting my mistake.

So you'd want to start throwing paper a bit more often

in whatever you figure is the right sort of percentage

of the time that I'm throwing rock too often.

So that's basically an example of where,

what game theory optimal strategy is

in terms of loss minimization,

but it's not always the maximally profitable thing

if your opponent is doing stupid stuff,

which in that example.

So that's kind of then how it works in poker,

but it's a lot more complex.

And the way poker players typically,

nowadays they study,

the games change so much.

And I think we should talk about how it sort of evolved,

but nowadays like the top pros

basically spend all their time in between sessions

running these simulators using like software

where they do basically Monte Carlo simulations,

sort of doing billions of fictitious self play hands.

You input a fictitious hand scenario,

like, oh, what do I do with Jack 9 suited

on a King 10, four to two spade board

and against this bet size.

So you'd input that, press play,

it'll run, it's billions of fake hands

and then it will converge upon

what the game theory optimal strategies are.

And then you want to try and memorize what these are.

Basically they're like ratios of how often,

what types of hands you want to bluff

and what percentage of the time.

So then there's this additional layer

of inbuilt randomization built in.

Yeah, those kind of simulations incorporate

all the betting strategies and everything else like that.

So as opposed to some kind of very crude mathematical model

of what's the probability you win

just based on the quality of the card,

it's including everything else too.

The game theory of it.

Yes, yeah, essentially.

And what's interesting is that nowadays,

if you want to be a top pro and you go and play

in these really like the super high stakes tournaments

or tough cash games,

if you don't know this stuff,

you're going to get eaten alive in the long run.

But of course you could get lucky over the short run

and that's where this like luck factor comes in

because luck is both a blessing and a curse.

If luck didn't, you know, if there wasn't this random element

and there wasn't the ability for worse players

to win sometimes, then poker would fall apart.

You know, the same reason people don't play chess

professionally for money against you.

You don't see people going and hustling chess,

like not knowing, trying to make a living from it

because you know there's very little luck in chess,

but there's quite a lot of luck in poker.

Have you seen Beautiful Mind, that movie?

Years ago.

Well, what do you think about the game

theoretic formulation of what is it,

the hot blonde at the bar?

Do you remember?

Oh, yeah.

The way they'd illustrated it is

they're trying to pick up a girl at a bar

and there's multiple girls.

They're like, it's like a friend group

when you're trying to approach.

I don't remember the details, but I remember.

Don't you like then speak to her friends?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just like that, faint disinterest.

I mean, it's classic pickup artists stuff.

Yeah.

And they were trying to correlate that somehow,

that being an optimal strategy, game theoretically.

Why?

What?

Like, I don't think, I remember.

I can't imagine that they were,

I mean, there's probably an optimal strategy.

Is it, does that mean that there's

a natural Nash equilibrium of like picking up girls?

Do you know the marriage problem?

It's optimal stopping.

Yes.

So where it's an optimal dating strategy,

where you, do you remember?

Yeah.

I think it's like something like,

you know, you've got like a set of a hundred people

you're going to look through.

And after how many do you,

now after that,

after going on this many dates out of a hundred,

at what point do you then go,

okay, the next best person I see,

is that the right one?

And I think it's like something like 37%.

It's one over E, whatever that is.

Right.

Which I think is 37%.

Yeah.

I'm going to fact check that.

Yeah.

So, but it's funny under those strict constraints,

then yes, after that many people,

as long as you have a fixed size pool,

then you just picked the next person

that is better than anyone you've seen before.

Yeah.

Have you tried this?

Have you incorporated it?

I'm not one of those people.

And we're going to discuss this.

And what do you mean those people?

I try not to optimize stuff.

I try to listen to the heart.

I don't think I like,

my mind immediately is attracted to optimizing everything.

And I think that if you really give into that kind of addiction

that you lose the joy of the small things,

the minutiae of life, I think.

I don't know.

I'm concerned about the addictive nature

of my personality in that regard.

In some ways, while I think the,

on average people under try and quantify things

or try under optimize, there are some people who,

you know, it's like with all these things,

it's a, you know, it's a balancing act.

I've been on dating apps when I've never used them.

I'm sure they have data on this

because they probably have the optimal stopping control problem.

Cause there aren't a lot of people that use social,

like dating apps are on there for a long time.

So the interesting aspect is like, all right,

how long before you stop looking,

before it actually starts affecting your mind

negatively such that you see dating as a kind of,

A game.

A kind of game versus an actual process of finding somebody

that's gonna make you happy for the rest of your life.

That's really interesting.

They have the data.

I wish they would be able to release that data.

And I do want to.

It's okay.

Cupid, right?

I think they ran a huge, huge study on all of their.

Yeah, they're more data driven.

I think, okay, Cupid folks are.

I think there's a lot of opportunity for dating apps

and you know, even bigger than dating apps,

people connecting on the internet.

I just hope they're more data driven

and it doesn't seem that way.

I think like, I've always thought that

Goodreads should be a dating app.

Like the.

I've never used it.

Goodreads is just lists like books that you've read.

And it allows you to comment on the books you read

and what the books you're currently reading.

But it's a giant social networks of people reading books.

And that seems to be a much better database of like interests.

Of course, to constrain you to the books you're reading,

but like that really reveals so much more about the person

allows you to discover shared interests

because books are kind of window

into the way you see the world.

Also like the kind of places people you're curious about,

the kind of ideas you're curious about.

Are you romantic?

Are you cold calculating rationalist?

Are you, are you into Iron Rand?

Or are you into Bernie Sanders?

Are you into whatever?

Right.

And I feel like that reveals so much more

than like a person trying to look hot

from a certain angle in the Tinder profile.

Well, and it would also be a really great filter

in the first place for people.

It selects people who read books

and are willing to go and rate them

and give feedback on them and so on.

So that's already a really strong filter

or probably the type of people you'd be looking for.

Well, at least be able to fake reading books.

I mean, the thing about books,

you don't really need to read it.

You can just look at the cliff notes.

Yeah, game the dating app by feigning intellectualism.

Can I admit something very horrible about myself?

Go on.

The things that, you know,

I don't have many things in my closet,

but this is one of them.

I've never actually read Shakespeare.

I've only read cliff notes.

And I got a five in the AP English exam.

Wow.

And I had the witch books, have I read?

Well, yeah, which was the exam on which books?

Oh, no, they include a lot of them.

But Hamlet, I don't even know if you read Romeo and Juliet.

Macbeth, I don't remember, but I don't understand it.

It's like really cryptic.

It's hard.

It's really, I don't, and it's not that pleasant to read.

It's like ancient speak.

I don't understand it.

Anyway, maybe I was too dumb.

Man, I'm still too dumb, but I did.

But you got a five, which is.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know how the U.S. grading system.

Oh, no, so AP English is a,

there's kind of this advanced versions of courses

in high school and you take a test

that is like a broad test for that subject and includes a lot.

It wasn't obviously just Shakespeare.

I think a lot of it was also writing, written.

You have like AP physics, AP computer science,

AP biology, AP chemistry, and then AP English

and AP literature, I forget what it was.

But I think Shakespeare was a part of that.

But I.

And you, and you gave the point is you gave a fight it.

Gave a fight.

Well, entirety, I was into getting A's.

I saw it as a game.

I don't think any, I don't think all the learning I've done

has been outside of the, outside of school.

The deepest learning I've done has been outside of school

with a few exceptions, especially in grad school,

like deep computer science courses.

But that was still outside of school

because it was outside of getting, sorry,

it was outside of getting the A for the course.

The best stuff I've ever done is when you read the chapter

and you do many of the problems at the end of the chapter,

which is usually not what's required for the course.

Like the hardest stuff.

In fact, textbooks are freaking incredible.

If you go back now and you look at like biology textbook

or any of the computer science textbooks

on algorithms and data structures,

those things are incredible.

They have the best summary of a subject.

Plus they have practice problems of increasing difficulty

that allows you to truly master the basic,

like the fundamental ideas behind that.

That was, I got to my entire physics degree

with one textbook that was just this really comprehensive one

that they told us at the beginning of the first year,

buy this, but you're gonna have to buy 15 other books

for all your supplementary courses.

And I was like, every time I was just checked

to see whether this book covered it and it did.

And I think I only bought like two or three extra

and thank God, because they're so super expensive textbooks.

It's a whole racket they've got going on.

Yeah, they are, they could just,

you get the right one, it's just like a manual for,

but what's interesting though,

is this is the tyranny of having exams and metrics.

The tyranny of exams and metrics, yes.

I loved them because I loved, I'm very competitive

and I liked finding ways to gamify things

and then like sort of dust off my shoulders

after when I get a good grade or be annoyed at myself

when I didn't, but yeah, you're absolutely right

in that the actual, you know,

how much of that physics knowledge I've retained?

Like I've, I learned how to cram and study

and please an examiner,

but did that give me the deep lasting knowledge

that I needed?

I mean, yes and no, but really like,

nothing makes you learn a topic better

than when you actually then have to teach it yourself.

You know, like I'm trying to wrap my teeth around this

like game theory, Molek stuff right now.

And there's no exam at the end of it that I can gamify.

There's no way to gamify and sort of like

shortcut my way through it.

I have to understand it so deeply

from like deep foundational levels to then build upon it

and then try and explain it to other people.

And like, you know,

you're about to go and do some lectures, right?

You can't, you can't sort of just like,

you presumably can't rely on the knowledge

that you got through when you were studying for an exam

to reteach that.

Yeah, and especially high level lectures,

especially the kind of stuff you do on YouTube,

you're not just regurgitating material.

You have to think through what is the core idea here.

And when you do the lectures live, especially,

you have to, there's no second takes.

That is the luxury you get if you're recording a video

for YouTube or something like that,

but it definitely is a luxury you shouldn't lean on.

I've gotten to interact with a few YouTubers

that lean on that too much.

And you realize, oh, you're,

you've gamified this system

because you're not really thinking deeply about stuff.

You're through the edit,

both written and spoken.

You're crafting an amazing video,

but you yourself as a human being

have not really deeply understood it.

So live teaching, or at least recording video

with very few takes is a different beast.

And I think it's the most honest way of doing it,

like as few takes as possible.

That's what I'm nervous about this.

Don't go back, you're like,

ah, let's do that.

Don't fuck this up, Liv.

The tyranny of exams.

I do think people talk about high school and college

as a time to do drugs and drink and have fun

and all this kind of stuff.

But, you know, looking back,

of course I did a lot of those things.

No, yes, but it's also a time

when you get to like read textbooks or read books

or learn with all the time in the world.

Like you don't have these responsibilities of like,

you know, laundry and having to sort of pay for mortgage

or all that kind of stuff, pay taxes,

all this kind of stuff.

In most cases, there's just so much time

in the day for learning.

And you don't realize at the time,

because at the time it seems like a chore,

like why the hell does there's so much homework?

But you never get a chance to do this kind of learning,

this kind of homework ever again in life,

unless later in life you really make a big effort out of it.

You get, like you basically, your knowledge gets solidified.

You don't get to have fun and learn.

Learning is really fulfilling and really fun

if you're that kind of person.

Like some people like to, you know,

like knowledge is not something that they think is fun.

But if that's the kind of thing that you think is fun,

that's the time to have fun and do the drugs

and drink and all that kind of stuff.

But the learning, just going back to those textbooks,

the hours spent with the textbooks is really, really rewarding.

Do people even use textbooks anymore?

Yeah.

Do you think?

Because it's these days with their TikTok and there.

Well, not even that, but it's just like so much information,

really high quality information.

You know, it's now in digital format online.

Yeah, but they're not, they are using that,

but you know, college is still very, there's a curriculum.

I mean, so much of school is about rigorous study

of a subject and still on YouTube, that's not there.

Right.

YouTube has, Grant Sanderson talks about this.

He's this math.

331 Brown.

Yeah, 331 Brown.

He says like, I'm not a math teacher.

I just take really cool concepts and I inspire people.

But if you want to really learn calculus,

if you want to really learn linear algebra,

you should do the textbook, you should do that.

You know, and there's still the textbook industrial complex

that like charges like $200 for textbooks somehow.

I don't know.

It's ridiculous.

Well, they're like, oh, sorry, new edition, edition 14.6.

Sorry, you can't use 14.5 anymore.

It's like, what's different?

We've got one paragraph different.

So we mentioned offline, Daniel Negrado.

I'm gonna get a chance to talk to him on this podcast.

And he's somebody that I found fascinating

in terms of the way he thinks about poker,

verbalizes the way he thinks about poker,

the way he plays poker.

So, and he's still pretty damn good.

He's been good for a long time.

So you mentioned that people are running these kinds

of simulations and the game of poker has changed.

Do you think he's adapting in this way?

Do you like the top pros?

Do they have to adopt this way?

Or is there still like over the years,

you basically developed this gut feeling about,

like you get to be like good the way alpha zero is good.

You look at the board and somehow from the fog

comes out the right answer.

Like this is likely what they have.

This is likely the best way to move.

And you don't really,

you can't really put a finger on exactly why,

but it just comes from your gut feeling or no.

Yes and no.

So gut feelings are definitely very important.

That we've got our two mode or you can distill it down

to two modes of decision making, right?

You've got your sort of logical linear voice in your head,

system two as it's often called

and your system on your gut intuition.

And historically in poker,

the very best players were playing almost entirely

by their gut.

You know, often they would do some kind of inspired play

and you'd ask them why they do it

and they wouldn't really be able to explain it.

And that's not so much because their process

was unintelligible,

but it was more just because no one had the language

with which to describe what optimal strategies were

because no one really understood how poker worked.

This was before, you know, we had analysis software,

you know, no one was writing,

I guess some people would write down their hands

in a little notebook,

but there was no way to assimilate all this data

and analyze it.

But then, you know, when computers became cheaper

and software started emerging

and then obviously online poker,

where it would like automatically save your hand histories,

now all of a sudden you kind of had this body of data

that you could run analysis on.

And so that's when people started to see, you know,

these mathematical solutions and so what that meant

is the role of intuition essentially became smaller.

And it went more into as we talked before

about, you know, this game theory optimal style.

But also as I said, like game theory optimal

is about loss minimization and being unexploitable.

But if you're playing against people who aren't,

because no person, no human being can play perfectly

game theory optimal in poker, not even the best AIs,

they're still like, they're 99.99% of the way there

or whatever, but it's kind of like speed of light,

you can't reach it perfectly.

So they're still a role for intuition?

Yes, so when, yeah, when you're playing

this unexploitable style, but when your opponents start

doing something, you know, suboptimal

that you want to exploit, well, now that's where

not only your like logical brain will need to be thinking,

well, okay, I know I have this,

I'm in the sort of top end of my range here with this,

with this hand.

So that means I need to be calling x% of the time

and I put them on this range, et cetera.

But then sometimes you'll have this gut feeling

that will tell you, you know, you know what, this time

I know, I know mathematically I meant to call now,

you know, I've got, I'm in the sort of top end of my range

and this is the odds I'm getting.

So the math says I should call, but there's something

in your gut saying they've got it this time,

they've got it like, they're beating you,

might be your hand is worse.

So then the real art, this is where the last remaining art

in poker, the fuzziness is like, do you listen to your gut?

How do you quantify the strength of it

or can you even quantify the strength of it?

And I think that's what Daniel has.

I mean, I can't speak for how much he's studying

with the simulators and that kind of thing.

I think he has, like he must be to still be keeping up,

but he has an incredible intuition for just,

he's seen so many hands of poker in the flesh.

He's seen so many people, the way they behave

when the chips are, you know, when the money's on the line

and he's got him staring you down in the eye,

you know, he's intimidating.

He's got this like kind of X factor vibe

that he, you know, gives out.

And he talks a lot, which is an interactive element,

which is he's getting stuff from other people.

Yes.

Yeah.

And just like the subtlety.

So he's like, he's probing constantly.

Yeah, he's probing and he's getting this extra layer

of information that others can't.

Now that said though, he's good online as well.

You know, I don't know how, again,

would he be beating the top cash game players online?

Probably not, no.

But when he's in person

and he's got that additional layer of information,

he can not only extract it,

but he knows what to do with it still so well.

There's one player who I would say is the exception

to all of this.

And he's one of my favorite people to talk about

in terms of, I think he might have cracked the simulation.

It's Phil Helmuth, he...

In more ways than one.

He's cracked the simulation, I think.

Yeah, he somehow to this day is still,

and I love you, Phil, I'm not in any way knocking you,

he's still winning so much

at the World Series of Pogo specifically.

He's now won 16 bracelets.

The next nearest person I think has won 10.

And he is consistently year in, year out,

going deep or winning these huge field tournaments.

You know, with like 2,000 people,

which statistically he should not be doing.

And yet, you watch some of the plays he makes

and they make no sense.

Like mathematically, they are so far

from game theory optimal.

And the thing is, if you went and stuck him

in one of these high stakes cash games

with a bunch of like GTO people,

he's gonna get ripped apart.

But there's something that he has

that when he's in the halls

of the World Series of Pogo specifically,

amongst sort of amateurish players,

he gets them to do crazy shit like that.

And, but my little pet theory is that also,

he just the car, he's like a wizard

and he gets the cards to do what he needs them to.

Because he just expects to win

and he expects to receive, you know,

to get flopper set with a frequency far beyond what this,

you know, the real percentages are.

And I don't even know

if he knows what the real percentages are.

He doesn't need to because he gets that.

I think he has found the Chico.

Because when I've seen him play,

he seems to be like annoyed

that the long shot thing didn't happen.

Yes.

He's like annoyed.

And it's almost like everybody else is stupid

because he was obviously going to win with this.

He's meant to win if that silly thing hadn't happened.

And it's like, you don't understand,

the silly thing happens 99% of the time.

And it's a 1%, not the other way round.

But genuinely, for his lived experience at the world's,

only at the world's, it is like that.

So I don't blame him for feeling that way.

But he does, he has this X factor

and the poker community has tried for years

to rip him down saying like, you know, he doesn't,

he's no good, but he's clearly good

because he's still winning or there's something going on.

Whether that's, he's figured out how to mess

with the fabric of reality

and how cards are, you know,

a randomly shuffled deck of cards come out.

I don't know what it is, but he's doing it right still.

Who do you think is the greatest of all time?

Would you put Hellmuth?

Now he's definitely, he seems like the kind of person

would mention he would actually watch this.

So you might want to be careful.

Well, as I said, I love Phil.

And I have, I would say this to his face.

I'm not saying anything.

I don't, he's got, he truly, I mean,

he is one of the greatest.

I don't know if he's the greatest.

He's certainly the greatest at the World Series of Poker.

And he is the greatest at,

despite the game switching into a pure game

or almost an entire game of math,

he has managed to keep the magic alive.

And there's like, just through sheer force of will

making the game work for him.

And that is incredible.

And I think it's something that should be studied

because it's an example.

Yeah, there might be some actual game theoretic wisdom.

There might be something to be said about optimality

from studying him, right?

What do you mean by optimality?

Meaning, or rather game design, perhaps.

Meaning if what he's doing is working,

maybe poker is more complicated

than we're currently modeling it as.

So like, yeah.

Or there's an extra layer,

and I don't mean to get too weird and wooey,

but, or there's an extra layer of ability

to manipulate the things the way you want them to go

that we don't understand yet.

Do you think Phil Helmuth understands them?

Is he just generally.

Hashtag positivity.

Well, he wrote a book on positivity, and he.

He has.

He did.

Not like a trolling book.

No.

A serious.

Straight up, yeah.

Phil Helmuth wrote a book about positivity.

Yes.

Okay.

About, I think, and I think it's about sort of manifesting

what you want and getting the outcomes that you want

by believing so much in yourself

and in your ability to win, like eyes on the prize.

And I mean, it's working.

The man's delivered.

But where do you put like Phil Ivy

and all those kinds of people?

I mean, I'm too, I've been, to be honest,

too much out of the scene

for the last few years to really,

I mean, Phil Ivy's clearly got, again,

he's got that X factor.

He's so incredibly intimidating to play against.

I've only played against him a couple of times,

but when he like looks you in the eye

and you're trying to run a bluff on him,

oof, no one's made me sweat harder than Phil Ivy.

Just my bluff got through, actually.

That was actually one of the most thrilling moments

I've ever had in poker was it was in a Monte Carlo

in a high roller.

I can't remember exactly what the hand was,

but I, you know, a three bit

and then like just barreled all the way through.

And he just like put his laser eyes into me.

And I felt like he was just scouring my soul.

And I was just like, hold it together, live,

hold it together.

And he was like, hold it.

You knew your hand was weaker.

Yeah. I mean, I was bluffing.

I presume, which, you know,

there's a chance I was bluffing with the best hand,

but I'm pretty sure my hand was worse.

And he folded.

I was truly one of the deep highlights of my career.

Did you show the cards or did you fall?

What is it?

You should never show in game.

Because especially as I felt like I was one

of the worst players at the table in that tournament.

So giving that information,

unless I had a really solid plan

that I was now like advertising or look,

I'm capable of bluffing Phil Ivy,

but like why, it's much more valuable

to take advantage of the impression that they have of me,

which is like, I'm a scared girl

playing a high roller for the first time.

Keep that going, you know.

Interesting.

But isn't there layers to this?

Like psychological warfare that the scared girl

might be way smart.

And then like just to flip the tables,

do you think about that kind of stuff?

Oh, definitely.

Is it better not to reveal information?

I mean, generally speaking,

you want to not reveal information.

You know, the goal of poker is to be as deceptive

as possible about your own strategies

while elucidating as much out of your opponent

about their own.

So giving them free information,

particularly if they're people

who you consider very good players,

any information I give them

is going into their little database

and I assume it's going to be calculated and used well.

So I have to be really confident

that my like meta gaming that I'm going to then do,

or they've seen this, so therefore that,

I'm going to be on the right level.

So it's better just to keep that little secret

to myself in the moment.

So how much is bluffing part of the game?

Huge amount.

So yeah, I mean, maybe actually, let me ask,

like what did it feel like with Phil Ivey

or anyone else when it's a high stake,

when it's a big, it's a big bluff.

So a lot of money on the table.

And maybe, I mean, what defines a big bluff?

Maybe a lot of money on the table,

but also some uncertainty in your mind and heart

about like self doubt,

well, maybe I miscalculated what's going on here,

what the bet said, all that kind of stuff.

Like what does that feel like?

I mean, it's, I imagine comparable to,

you know, running a, I mean,

any kind of big bluff where you have a lot of something

that you care about on the line, you know?

So if you're bluffing in a courtroom,

not that I didn't want to ever do that,

or something equatable to that, it's incredible.

You know, in that scenario, you know,

I think it was the first time I'd ever played a 20,

I'd won my way into this 25K tournament.

So that was the buy in, 25,000 euros.

And I had satelliteed my way in

because it was much bigger than I would ever normally play.

And, you know, I hadn't,

I wasn't that experienced at the time.

And now I was sitting there against all the big boys,

you know, the Nogranos, the Phil Ivey's and so on.

And then to like, each time you put the bets out,

you know, you put another bet out, your card.

Yeah, I was on a, what's called a semi bluff.

So there were some cards that could come

that would make my hand very, very strong and therefore win,

but most of the time those cards don't come.

So that is a semi bluff because you're representing,

what are you representing that you already have something?

So I think in this scenario, I had a flush draw to,

so I had two clubs, two clubs came out on the flop,

and then I'm hoping that on the turn and the river,

one will come.

So I have some future equity.

I could hit a club and then I'll have the best hand

in which case, great.

And so I can keep betting and I'll want them to call,

but I'm also got the other way of winning the hand

where if my card doesn't come,

I can keep betting and get them to fold their hand.

And I'm pretty sure that's what the scenario was.

So I had some future equity, but it's still, you know,

most of the time I don't hit that club.

And so I'd rather him just fold

because the pot is now getting bigger and bigger.

And in the end, like I jam all in on the river,

that's my entire tournament on the line.

As far as I'm aware, this might be the one time

I ever get to play a big 25K.

You know, this was the first time I played one.

So it was, it felt like the most momentous thing.

And this was also when I was trying to build myself up,

you know, build my name, a name for myself in poker.

I wanted to get respect.

Destroy everything for you.

It felt like it in the moment.

Like, I mean, it literally does feel

like a form of life and death.

Like your body physiologically

is having that flight or fight response.

What are you doing with your body?

What are you doing with your face?

Are you just like, what are you thinking about?

Well, a mixture of like, okay, what are the cards?

So in theory, I'm thinking about like, okay,

what are cards that make my hand look stronger?

Which cards hit my perceived range from his perspective?

Which cards don't?

What's the right amount of bet size to, you know,

maximize my fold equity in this situation?

You know, that's the logical stuff

that I should be thinking about.

But I think in reality, because I was so scared,

because there's this, at least for me,

there's a certain threshold of like nervousness or stress

beyond which the like logical brain shuts off.

And now it just gets into this like,

it just like, it feels like a game of wits basically.

It's like, of nerve.

Can you hold your resolve?

And it certainly got by that, like by the river.

I think by that point, I was like,

I don't even know if this is a good bluff anymore,

but fuck it, let's do it.

Your mind is almost numb

from the intensity of that feeling.

I call it the white noise.

And that's, and it happens in all kinds of decision making.

I think anything that's really, really stressful.

Like I can imagine someone in like an important job interview,

if it's like a job they've always wanted

and they're getting grilled, you know,

like Bridgewater style where they ask these really hard,

like mathematical questions.

You know, that's, it's a really learned skill

to be able to like subdue your flight or fight response,

you know, what I think get from the sympathetic

into the parasympathetic.

So you can actually, you know,

engage that voice in your head

and do those slow logical calculations.

Cause evolutionarily, we, you know,

if we see a lion running at us,

we didn't have time to sort of calculate

the lion's kinetic energy and, you know,

is it optimal to go this way or that way?

You just react it.

And physically, our bodies are well attuned

to actually make right decisions.

But when you're playing a game like poker,

this is not something that you ever, you know,

evolved to do.

And yet you're in that same flight or fight response.

And so that's a really important skill

to be able to develop to basically learn

how to like meditate in the moment

and calm yourself so that you can think clearly.

But as you were searching for a comparable thing,

it's interesting cause you just made me realize

that bluffing is like an incredibly

high stakes form of lying.

You're lying.

And I don't think you can...

You're telling a story.

No, no, it's straight up lying.

In the context of game, it's not a negative kind of lying.

But it is, yeah, exactly.

You're representing something that you don't have.

And I was thinking like,

in how often in life do we have such high stakes of lying?

Cause I was thinking certainly in high level military

strategy, I was thinking when Hitler was lying to Stalin

about his plans to invade the Soviet Union.

And so you're talking to a person like your friends

and you're fighting against the enemy,

whatever the formulation of the enemy is.

But meanwhile, the whole time you're building up troops

on the border.

That's extremely...

Wait, wait, so Hitler and Stalin were like pretending

to be friends?

Well, my history knowledge is terrible.

That's crazy.

Yeah, that they were, yeah, man.

And it worked because Stalin until the troops crossed

the border and invaded in Operation Barbarossa

where this storm of Nazi troops invaded

large parts of the Soviet Union.

And hence one of the biggest wars in human history began.

Stalin for sure was thought that this was never going to be,

that Hitler is not crazy enough to invade the Soviet Union.

That it makes geopolitically makes total sense

to be collaborators.

And ideologically, even though there's a tension

between communism and fascism or national socialism,

however you formulated, it still feels like

this is the right way to battle the West.

Right, they were more ideologically aligned.

They in theory had a common enemy, which is the West.

So it made total sense.

And in terms of negotiations and the way things

were communicated, it seemed to Stalin that for sure

that they would remain at least for a while

peaceful collaborators.

And everybody, because of that in the Soviet Union,

believe that it was a huge shock when Kiev was invaded.

And you hear echoes of that when I traveled to Ukraine

sort of the shock of the invasion.

It's not just the invasion on one particular border,

but the invasion of the capital city.

And just like, holy shit, especially at that time

when you thought World War I,

you realized that that was the war to end all wars.

You would never have this kind of war.

And holy shit, this person is mad enough

to try to take on this monster in the Soviet Union.

So it's no longer going to be a war of hundreds

of thousands dead.

It'll be a war of tens of millions dead.

And yeah, but that's a very large scale kind of lie,

but I'm sure there's in politics and geopolitics

that kind of lying happening all the time.

And a lot of people pay financially

and with their lives for that kind of lying.

But in our personal lives, I don't know how often we,

maybe we...

I think people do.

I mean, like think of spouses cheating on their partners,

right?

And then like having to lie like,

where were you last night?

Stuff like that.

Like that's, I think, you know,

I mean, unfortunately that stuff happens all the time, right?

So...

Or having like multiple families, that one is great.

When each family doesn't know about the other one

and like maintaining that life,

there's probably a sense of excitement about that too.

Seems unnecessary, yeah.

But why?

Well, just lying, like, you know,

the truth finds a way of coming out, you know?

Yes, but hence that's the thrill.

Yeah, perhaps, yeah, people.

I mean, you know, that's why I think actually like poker,

what's so interesting about poker is most of the best

players I know, they're always exceptions, you know,

they're always bad eggs,

but actually poker players are very honest people.

I would say they are more honest than the average,

you know, if you just took random population sample.

Because A, you know, I think, you know,

humans like to have that.

Most people like to have some kind of, you know,

mysterious, you know, an opportunity to do something

like a little edgy.

So we get to sort of scratch that itch of being edgy

at the poker table where it's like, it's part of the game.

Everyone knows what they're in for and that's allowed.

And you get to like really get that out of your system.

And then also like poker players learned that, you know,

I would play in a huge game against some of my friends,

even my partner Igor, where we will be, you know,

absolutely going at each other's throats,

trying to draw blood in terms of winning each money

off each other and like getting under each other's skin,

winding each other up, doing the craftiest moves we can.

But then once the game's done, the, you know,

the winners and the losers will go off and get a drink

together and have a fun time and like talk about it

in this like weird academic way afterwards.

Because that, and that's why games are so great.

Cause you get to like live out or like this competitive urge

that, you know, most people have.

What's it feel like to lose?

Like we talked about bluffing when it worked out.

What about when you, when you go broke?

So like in a game, I'm, you know,

fortunately I've never gone broke.

You mean in like full life?

Full life, no.

I know plenty of people who have.

And I don't think Igor would mind me saying,

he went, you know, he went broke once in poker bowl,

you know, early on when we were together.

I feel like you haven't lived unless you've gone broke.

Oh, yeah.

In some sense.

Right.

It's a fundamental sense.

I mean, I'm happy.

I've sort of lived through it vicariously through him

when he did it at the time.

But yeah, what's it like to lose?

Well, it depends.

So it depends on the amount.

It depends what percentage of your net worth

you've just lost.

It depends on your brain chemistry.

It really, you know, varies from person to person.

You have a very cold calculating way of thinking about this.

So it depends what percentage you have.

Well, it did.

It really does, right?

Yeah, it's true.

But that's, I mean, that's another thing

poker trains you to do.

You see, you see everything in percentages

or you see everything in like ROI

or expected hourly's or cost benefit, et cetera.

You know, so that's, one of the things I've tried to do

is calibrate the strength of my emotional response

to the win or loss that I've received.

Because it's no good if you like, you know,

you have a huge emotional dramatic response to a tiny loss.

Or on the flip side, you have a huge win

and you're sort of dead inside that you don't even feel it.

Well, that's, you know, that's a shame.

I want my emotions to calibrate with reality

as much as possible.

So yeah, what's it like to lose?

I mean, I've had times where I've lost, you know,

busted out of a tournament that I thought I was going to win in.

You know, especially if I got really unlucky

or I make a dumb play where I've gone away

and like, you know, kicked the wall, punched a wall.

I like nearly broke my hand one time.

Like I'm a lot less competitive than I used to be.

Like I was like pathologically competitive

in my like late teens, early twenties.

I just had to win at everything.

And I think that sort of slowly waned as I've gotten older.

According to you, yeah.

According to me.

I don't know if others would say the same, right?

I feel like ultra competitive people,

like I've heard Joroh can say this to me.

It's like, he's a lot less competitive than he used to be.

I don't know about that.

Oh, I believe it.

No, I totally believe it.

Like, because as you get, you can still be like,

I care about winning.

Like when, you know, I play a game with my buddies online

or, you know, whatever it is,

polytopia is my current obsession.

Like, when I...

Thank you for passing on your obsession to me.

Are you playing now?

Yeah, I'm playing now.

We're going to have a game.

But I'm terrible and I enjoy playing terribly.

I don't want to have a game

because that's going to pull me into your monster

of like competitive play.

It's important.

It's an important skill.

I'm enjoying playing on the...

I can't...

You just do the points thing, you know, against the bots.

Yeah, against the bots.

And I can't even do the...

There's like a hard one and there's a very hard one.

And then it's crazy, yeah.

It's crazy.

I don't even enjoy the hard one.

The crazy I really don't enjoy.

Because it's intense.

You have to constantly try to win

as opposed to enjoy building a little world and...

Yeah, no, no, there's no time for exploration of polytopia.

You've got to get...

Well, once you graduate from the crazies,

then you can come play the...

Graduate from the crazies.

Yeah, in order to be able to play a decent game against,

like, you know, our group,

you'll need to be consistently winning

like 90% of games against 15 crazy bots.

Yeah.

And you'll be able to...

Like, I could teach you it within a day, honestly.

How to beat the crazies?

How to beat the crazies.

And then you'll be ready for the big leagues.

Generalizes to more than just polytopia.

But okay, why were we talking about polytopia?

Losing hurts.

Losing hurts. Oh, yeah.

Yes, competitiveness over time.

Oh, yeah.

I think it's more that, at least for me,

I still care about winning when I choose to play something.

It's just that I don't see the world as zero some as I used to be, you know?

I think as you one gets older and wiser,

you start to see the world more as a positive something.

Or at least you're more aware of externalities

of scenarios, of competitive interactions.

And so, yeah, I'm more aware of my own, you know, like,

if I have a really strong emotional response to losing,

and that makes me then feel shitty for the rest of the day.

And then I beat myself up mentally for it.

Like, I'm now more aware that that's unnecessary negative externality.

So I'm like, okay, I need to find a way to turn this down,

you know, dial this down a bit.

Was poker the thing that has...

If you think back at your life

and think about some of the lower points of your life,

like the darker places you've gone in your mind,

did it have to do something with poker?

Like, did losing spark the descent into darkness,

or was it something else?

Um, I think my darkest points in poker

were when I was wanting to quit and move on to other things.

But I felt like I hadn't ticked all the boxes I wanted to tick.

Like, I wanted to be the most winningest female player,

which is by itself a bad goal.

Um, you know, that was one of my initial goals,

and I was like, well, I haven't...

You know, and I wanted to win a WPT event.

I've won one of these, I've won one of these,

but I won one of those as well.

And that sort of, again, like,

is a drive of, like, overoptimization

to random metrics that I decided were important,

without much wisdom at the time,

but then, like, carried on.

Um, that made me continue chasing it longer

than I still actually had the passion to chase it for.

And I don't have any regrets that, you know,

I played for as long as I did, because who knows,

you know, I wouldn't be sitting here,

I wouldn't be living this incredible life

that I'm living now.

Um, this is the height of your life right now.

This is it, peak experience.

Absolute pinnacle here in your robot land.

Yeah, yeah.

With your creepy light.

No, it is.

I mean, I wouldn't change a thing about my life right now,

and I feel very blessed to say that.

So, but the dark times were in the sort of, like,

2016 to 18, even sooner, really,

where I was like, I had stopped loving the game,

and I was going through the motions.

And I would, and then I was like,

you know, I would take the loss as harder

than I needed to, because I'm like,

oh, it's another one.

And it was, I was aware that, like,

I felt like my life was ticking away,

and I was like, is this going to be what's on my tombstone?

Oh, yeah, she played the game of, you know,

this zero sum game of poker,

slightly more optimally than her next opponent.

Like, cool, great legacy, you know.

I just wanted, you know, there was something in me

that knew I needed to be doing something

more directly impactful, and just meaningful.

It was just like a search for meaning,

and I think it's a thing a lot of poker players,

even a lot of, I imagine any games players who sort of love

intellectual pursuits, you know,

I think you should ask Magnus Carlson this question.

Yeah, walking away from chess, right?

Yeah, like, it must be so hard for him.

You know, he's been on the top for so long,

and it's like, well, now what?

He's got this incredible brain, like, what to put it to.

And yeah, it's...

It's this weird moment where I was just

spoken with people that won multiple gold medals at the Olympics,

and the depression hits hard after you win.

Don't come in crash.

Because it's a kind of a goodbye, saying goodbye to that person

to all the dreams you had that you thought would give meaning

to your life.

But in fact, life is full of constant pursuits of meaning.

It doesn't...

You don't, like, arrive and figure it all out,

and there's endless bliss.

Now it continues going on and on.

You constantly have to figure out to rediscover yourself.

And so for you, like, that struggle to say goodbye to poker,

you have to, like, find the next...

There's always a bigger game.

That's the thing.

That's my motto.

It's like, what's the next game?

And more importantly, because obviously,

game usually implies zero sum.

Like, what's the game which is, like, OmniWin?

Look, what?

OmniWin.

OmniWin.

Why is OmniWin so important?

Because if everyone plays zero sum games,

that's a fast track to either completely stagnate as a civilization,

but more actually far more likely to extinct ourselves.

You know, like, the playing field is finite.

You know, nuclear powers are playing, you know,

a game of poker with their chips of nuclear weapons, right?

And the stakes have gotten so large

that if anyone makes a single bet, you know,

fires some weapons, the playing field breaks.

I made a video on this.

Like, you know, the playing field is finite.

And if we keep playing these adversarial zero sum games,

thinking that in order for us to win,

someone else has to lose.

Or if we lose that someone else wins, that will extinct us.

It's just a matter of when.

What do you think about that mutually assured destruction?

That very simple, almost to the point of caricaturing game theory idea

that does seem to be at the core of why we haven't blown each other up yet with nuclear weapons.

Do you think there's some truth to that?

This kind of stabilizing force of mutually assured destruction?

And do you think that's going to hold up through the 21st century?

I mean, it has held, yes.

There's definitely truth to it that it was a, you know,

it's a Nash equilibrium.

Yeah, are you surprised it held this long?

Isn't it crazy?

It is crazy when you factor in all the, like,

near miss accidental firings.

Yes.

That makes me wonder, like, you know,

you're familiar with the, like, quantum suicide thought experiment,

where it's basically like you have a,

you know, like a Russian roulette type scenario hooked up to some kind of quantum event,

you know, particle splitting or periparticle splitting.

And if it, you know, if it goes A,

then the gun doesn't go off and it goes B,

then it does go off and it kills you.

Because you can only ever be in the universe,

you know, assuming like the Everett branch, you know,

multiverse theory, you'll always only end up in the branch

where you continually make, you know, option A comes in.

But you run that experiment enough times,

it starts getting pretty damn, you know, out of the tree gets huge.

There's a million different scenarios,

but you'll always find yourself in this,

in the one where it didn't go off.

And so from that perspective, you are essentially immortal,

because someone, and you will only find yourself

in the set of observers that make it down that path.

Yeah.

So it's, it's kind of.

That doesn't mean, that doesn't mean you're,

you're still not going to be fucked at some point in your life.

No, of course not.

No, I'm not, I'm not advocating,

like we're all immortal because of this.

It's just like a fun thought experiment.

And the point is it like raises this thing of like these things

called observer selection effects, which Bostrom,

and Nick Bostrom talks about a lot,

and I think people should go read.

It's really powerful,

but I think it could be overextended that logic.

I'm not sure exactly how it can be.

I just feel like you can get,

you can overgeneralize that logic somehow.

Well, no, I mean, it leads you into like solipsism,

which is a very dangerous mindset.

Again, if everyone like falls into solipsism of like,

well, I'll be fine.

I mean, that's a great way of creating a very,

you know, self terminating environment.

But my point is, is that with the nuclear weapons thing,

there have been at least, I think it's 12 or 11,

near misses of like just stupid things.

Like there was moonrise over Norway,

and it made weird reflections of some glaciers in the mountains,

which set off, I think, the alarms of NORAD,

NORAD radar, and that put them on high alert, nearly ready to shoot.

And it was only because the head of Russian military

happened to be at the UN in New York at the time,

that they go like, well, wait a second,

why would they fire now when their guy is there?

And it was only that lucky happenstance,

which doesn't happen very often,

where they didn't then escalate it into firing.

And there's a bunch of these different ones.

Stanislav Petrov, like saved the person

who should be the most famous person on earth,

because he's probably on expectations,

saved the most human lives of anyone,

like billions of people by ignoring Russian orders to fire,

because he felt in his gut that actually this was a false alarm,

and it turned out to be, you know, very hard thing to do.

And there's so many of those scenarios

that I can't help but wonder at this point,

that we aren't having this kind of like selection effect thing going on,

because you look back and you're like, geez,

that's a lot of near misses.

But of course, we don't know the actual probabilities

that they would have lent each one would have ended up in nuclear war.

Maybe they were not that likely.

But still, the point is, it's a very dark,

stupid game that we're playing.

And it is an absolute moral imperative, if you ask me,

to get as many people thinking about ways

to make this like very precarious,

because we're in a Nash equilibrium,

but it's not like we're in the bottom of a pit.

You know, if you would like map it topographically,

it's not like a stable ball at the bottom of a thing.

We're not in equilibrium because of that.

We're on the top of a hill with a ball balanced on top,

and just any little nudge could send it flying down,

and, you know, nuclear war pops off and hellfire and bad times.

On the positive side, life on earth will probably still continue,

and another intelligent civilization might still pop up.

Maybe, yeah.

It depends on the X risk.

It depends on the X risk.

Nuclear war, sure, that's one of the perhaps less bad ones.

Green goo through synthetic biology, very bad.

It will turn, you know, destroy all, you know, organic matter through,

you know, it's basically like a biological paperclip maximizer,

also bad, or AI type, you know, mass extinction thing as well would also be bad.

Shh, they're listening.

There's a robot right behind you.

Okay, wait, so let me ask you about this.

From a game theory perspective,

do you think we're living in a simulation?

Do you think we're living inside a video game created by somebody else?

Well, so what was the second part of the question?

Do I think we're living in a simulation and?

A simulation that is observed by somebody for purpose of entertainment,

so like a video game.

Are we listening?

Are we, because there's a, it's like Phil Hellmuth type of situation, right?

There's a creepy level of like,

this is kind of fun and interesting.

Like there's a lot of interesting stuff going on.

I mean, that could be somehow integrated into the evolutionary process,

where the way we perceive and are.

Are you asking me if I believe in God?

Sounds like it.

Kind of, but God seems to be not optimizing in the different formulations of God that we conceive of.

He doesn't seem to be, or she optimizing for like personal entertainment.

Maybe the older gods did, but the, you know, just like the,

basically like a teenager in their mom's basement,

watching, create a fun universe to observe.

So kind of crazy shit might happen.

Okay, so to try and answer this.

Do I think there is some kind of extraneous intelligence to our,

you know, classic measurable universe that we, you know, can measure with,

you know, through our current physics and instruments?

I think so, yes.

Partly because I've had just small little bits of evidence in my own life,

which have made me question, like, so I was a diehard atheist.

Even five years ago, you know, I got into like the rationality community,

big fan of less wrong, continue to be incredible resource.

But I've just started to have too many little

snippets of experience, which don't make sense with the current sort of purely materialistic

explanation of how reality works.

Isn't that just like a humbling practical realization that we don't know how reality works?

Isn't that just a reminder to yourself?

Yeah, no, it's a reminder of epistemic humility, because I felt too hard,

you know, same as people, like, I think, you know, many people who are just like,

my religion is the way, this is the correct way, this is the work, this is the law.

You are immoral if you don't follow this, blah, blah, blah.

I think they are lacking epistemic humility.

They're a little too much hubris there.

But similarly, I think the sort of the Richard Dawkins brand of atheism is too rigid as well

and doesn't, you know, there's a way to try and navigate these questions,

which still honors the scientific method, which I still think is our best sort of realm of like

reasonable inquiry, you know, a method of inquiry.

So an example, I have two kind of notable examples that like really rattled my cage.

The first one was actually in 2010, early on in my poker career.

And I remember the Icelandic volcano that erupted that like shut down kind of all

Atlantic airspace.

And it meant I got stuck down in the south of France.

I was there for something else.

And I couldn't get home.

And someone said, well, there's a big poker tournament happening in Italy.

Maybe do you want to go?

I was like, oh, right, sure.

Like, let's, you know, got a train across, found a way together.

And the buy in was 5,000 euros, which was much bigger than my bankroll would normally allow.

And so I played a feeder tournament, won my way in, kind of like I did with the Monte Carlo,

big one.

So then I won my way, you know, from 500 euros into 5,000 euros to play this thing.

And on day one of then the big tournament, which turned out to have,

it was the biggest tournament ever held in Europe at the time.

It got over like 1,200 people, absolutely huge.

And I remember they dimmed the lights for before, you know, the normal shuffle up and

deal to tell everyone to start playing. And they played Chemical Brothers, Hey Boy, Hey Girl,

which I don't know why it's notable, but it was just like a really, it was a song I always liked.

It was like one of these like pump me up songs.

And I was sitting there thinking, oh, yeah, it's exciting.

I'm playing this really big tournament.

And out of nowhere, just suddenly this voice in my head, just it sounded like my own sort of,

you know, when you say, you think in your mind, you hear a voice kind of, right?

At least I do.

And so it sounded like my own voice.

And it said, you are going to win this tournament.

And it was so powerful that I got this like wave of like, you know,

this sort of goosebumps down my body.

And that I even, I remember looking around being like, did anyone else hear that?

And obviously people are in their phones like no one else heard it.

And I was like, okay, six days later, I win the fucking tournament out of 1,200 people.

And I said, I don't know how to explain it.

Okay. Yes. Maybe I have that feeling before every time I play.

And it's just that I happen to, you know, because I won the tournament,

I retroactively remembered it.

Or the, or the feeling gave you a kind of, now from the film Hellmuthian.

Well, exactly.

Like it gave you a confident, a deep confidence.

And it did, it definitely did.

Like I remember then feeling this like sort of, well, although I remember then on day one,

I then went and lost half my stack quite early on.

And I remember thinking like, oh, that was bullshit.

You know, what kind of premonition is this?

Thinking, oh, I'm out.

But, you know, I managed to like keep it together and recover.

And then, and then just went like pretty perfectly from then on.

And either way, it definitely instilled me with this confidence.

And I don't want to put a, I don't, I can't put an explanation.

Like, you know, was it some, you know, huge extra, extra supernatural thing driving me?

Or was it just my own self confidence in someone that just made me make the right decisions?

I don't know.

And I don't, I'm not going to put a frame on it.

And I think I know a good explanation.

So we're a bunch of NPCs living in this world created by in the simulation.

And then people, not people, creatures from outside of the simulation

sort of can tune in and play your character.

And that feeling you got is somebody just like,

they got to play a poker tournament through you.

Honestly, it felt like that.

It did actually feel a little bit like that.

But it's been 12 years now.

I've retold this story many times.

Like, I don't even know how much I can trust my memory.

You're just an NPC retelling the same story.

Because they just played the tournament and left.

Yeah.

They're like, oh, that was fun.

Cool.

Yeah, cool.

Next.

And now you're for the rest of your life left as a boring NPC retelling this great greatness.

Well, what was interesting was that after that, then I didn't obviously

win a major tournament for quite a long time.

And it left.

That was actually another sort of dark period because I had this incredible,

like the highs of winning that just on a material level were insane, winning the money.

I was on the front page of newspapers because there was this girl that came out of nowhere

and won this big thing.

And so again, chasing that feeling was difficult.

But then on top of that, that was this feeling of almost being touched by something

bigger that was like, uh.

And also maybe did you have a sense that I might be somebody special?

Like this kind of, I think that's the confidence thing that maybe you could do something special

in this world after all kind of feeling.

I definitely, I mean, this is the thing I think everybody wrestles with to an extent, right?

We all, we are truly the protagonists in our own lives.

And so it's a natural bias, human bias to feel, to feel special.

And I think, and in some ways we are special.

Every single person is special because you are that the universe does,

the world literally does revolve around you.

That's the thing in some respect.

But of course, if you then zoom out and take the amalgam of everyone's experiences,

then no, it doesn't.

So there is this shared sort of objective reality,

but sorry, this objective reality that is shared.

But then there's also this subjective reality, which is truly unique to you.

And I think both of those things coexist and it's not like one is correct and one isn't.

And again, anyone who's like, uh, oh no, your lived experience is everything versus

your lived experience is nothing.

No, it's, it's, it's a blend between these two things.

They can exist concurrently.

But there's a certain kind of sense that at least I've had my whole life.

And I think a lot of people have this as like, well, I'm just like this little person.

And surely I can't be one of those people that do the big thing, right?

There's all these big people doing big things.

There's big actors and actresses, big musicians.

There's big business owners and all that kind of stuff, scientists and so on.

I, you know, I have my own subjective experience that I enjoy and so on,

but there's like a different layer, like, um, surely I can't do those great things.

I mean, one of the things just having interacted with a lot of great people,

I realized, no, they're like just the same, the same, the same humans as me.

And that realization I think is really empowering.

And like to remind yourself.

But are they?

Huh?

But are they?

Are they?

Well, it depends on some, yeah.