back to indexDaniel Negreanu: Poker | Lex Fridman Podcast #324
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you could be the seventh best player in the whole world,
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like literally seventh best player.
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But if you're playing with the other six, you're the sucker.
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You are like the worst player in the game, right?
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So like there's a lot of players, for example,
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like the Dan Blazarians of the world, right?
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He's not a top level player,
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like these guys you see on TV,
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but he probably makes more money than they do
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because he plays with people
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that are far below his skill level.
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So part of the skill of being a poker player
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is finding situations where you're profitable,
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regardless of your skill level.
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The following is a conversation with Daniel Negrano,
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one of the greatest poker players of all time.
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This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors
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in the description.
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And now, dear friends, here's Daniel Negrano.
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Everything everyone does at the poker table
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conveys information.
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So let me ask sort of the big overview question.
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What are the various sources of information
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that you project and others project at the table
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that convey information?
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Well, there's several different things.
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There's the ones that are conscious
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and then there's the ones that are subconscious, right?
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Like on the conscious level,
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it might be something someone says, right?
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You know, you ask them a question and they say,
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oh, you know, you shouldn't call me here, you should.
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So there's the verbal tells.
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There's also the more, you know, subconscious stuff,
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body posture, right?
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The eyes, the throat, the pulse,
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various things that are, you know, less controllable.
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I find I use a combination of both
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to try to gain information,
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but generally when I have somebody more comfortable,
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they give off more.
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Like everyone has a different approach.
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Phil Ivey likes to intimidate.
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I go the other way.
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I want my opponents to be relaxed
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so that they'll give me more in that regard.
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So Phil Ivey likes to perturb the system,
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like mess with it to see what comes out.
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I think Phil has an aura about him
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where he wants you to know that he's watching you,
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be afraid, be uncomfortable,
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because when you're uncomfortable, I got you, right?
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And that's sort of his shtick where he, you know,
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and people do, like when you sit at a table with Phil Ivey,
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it's intimidating.
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He likes to rule by fear
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and you like to rule by, what is it, love?
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That's a really good way to put it.
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I never had anyone put it like that,
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but it makes a lot of sense.
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Yeah, you know, fear Phil Ivey,
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and then with me, it's fine, don't worry,
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I'll take your money, but you're gonna enjoy it.
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So that's what the talking at the table is about,
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is getting to be relaxed and get some of that gray area
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between the conscious and the subconscious
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to reveal something.
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Yeah, there's that too, and also just, you know,
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and this is just part of who I am anyway,
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like I like to talk to people,
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but one of the byproducts is the more I know about you,
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the more I likely know about how you think
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about different situations, right?
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So what do you do for a living?
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Oh, I'm a lawyer, I defend criminals.
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Okay, so this guy probably spends a lot of his time
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twisting the truth, trying to find, you know,
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and then, so then, you know, you already have a mindset
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of like, this guy might be more likely to bluff
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or he's probably comfortable doing that.
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Very subtle things like that.
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And you start to pick up cues on what nervousness looks like
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for this person, what the nervousness communicates,
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all that kind of stuff.
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So we're talking about physical tells here.
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Yeah, physical tells is a secondary thing.
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I was more specific like player profiling, right?
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And sort of understanding the type of mind
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that I'm dealing with, right?
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So again, somebody who's a lawyer is used to trying,
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is fine with being deceptive as part of a game, right?
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Whereas maybe somebody who's a Sunday school teacher
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and, you know, they don't feel comfortable,
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maybe they think bluffing might be dishonest, right?
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So they're less likely to try some shenanigans against you.
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So, and then the other thing too is,
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what type of person is this in terms of their, you know,
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like view on life, right?
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Are they positive?
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Do they feel like things go their way or they're not, right?
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There's those people that always, well, of course I lost,
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I always lose with this hand.
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And those types of people you can manipulate
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because when a card comes,
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that you don't have them beat, right?
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But you can pretend because they'll believe it.
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Like, of course you beat me.
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So you bet all your chips against them,
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knowing that you can scare them
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because they already feel like they're gonna lose.
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The inherent, like the cynicism.
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Cynicism is easier to play against
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because you can convince them that their cards suck.
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Yeah, when somebody believes that they're a loser
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or they're unlucky, right?
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And that bad things happen to them always
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and they never catch a break.
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Well, you know, you can just help them make it true.
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What do you think about the rounders Teddy KGB
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when he does the Oreo tell?
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Do players at the high level communicate that kind of stuff?
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Do you think it's realistic to be able to have a tell
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like this that's partially subconscious?
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So first of all, I love Brian Koppelman who made the film.
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And I think what they were going for
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is something obvious to the general public, right?
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Like, okay, it's very clear, you know, he eats the cookie,
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he doesn't eat the cookie and it means one or the other.
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At the highest levels, something that, you know, blatant,
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you're not gonna find.
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You're gonna find a lot more subtle things,
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maybe with posture or timing or, you know,
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different things like that.
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But at the lower levels, you know, you might see some,
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you might see, you know, with a lot of people
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when they're in a hand and they've bet,
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whether they drink water in the hand
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is going to tell you something generally speaking.
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It's such an intimate part of the human experience
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that I feel like if you have food,
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you're gonna reveal something about yourself
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through the way you eat.
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I feel like that's a dangerous thing
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to have at the table.
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Well, the thing is, generally speaking,
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people don't eat food in the middle of a hand.
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Like they're not gonna bet and then just like grab a burger.
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What they will do though is, you know,
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they bet and it's up to you and then they're,
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whether they're, you know, uncomfortable
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or they do it unconsciously,
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they just want to do something
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to make themselves look relaxed or whatever.
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And then, you know, they grab a water
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where they don't really need it in that moment,
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but they're trying to take your mind off of the situation.
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So they, in the movie, wanted to show a simplistic version
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of something that does happen,
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something that's visually sort of clear.
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Yeah, because I think one of the things Rounders got right
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is that it's a poker movie, right?
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But you don't have to be great at poker
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or really understand poker to enjoy the movie.
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And that, you know, Oreo cookie tale,
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like everyone gets that.
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They're like, okay, that's simple.
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If he would have went with something more subtle,
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you know, like licking your lips or looking to the right,
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or I think it might've been lost on the audience.
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And they didn't actually explicitly say
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that that was a tell, I don't think.
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I thought they did everything to let you know, right?
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With the music and slow motion and he's staring at it
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and he's like, aha.
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Yeah, but they didn't actually say,
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you know, this is an obvious tell,
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like Matt Damon's character didn't talk.
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At the very end of it, you know,
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after he says, how the fuck did you lay that down?
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The monster, right?
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And he's like, he's like, you're not hungry?
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He's like, I keep on, but you, you know,
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so he sort of references it and then he takes the cookies.
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He notices, he's like, ah, he got me.
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And he breaks the, you know, the rack of cookies.
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Well, probably if you had that kind of tell on him,
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you wouldn't, and Matt Damon's character would not reveal.
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Well, he says in the movie, he says,
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normally I wouldn't reveal a tell,
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but I don't have that much time.
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Like I've got to rattle him some way.
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So that was one way to do that.
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How hard is it to do that to, in a KGB accent,
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to lay down a monster in those situations?
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In general, how hard is it to lay down
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a really strong hand, just psychologically?
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Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's incredibly difficult
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for the vast majority of people.
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You know, part of what makes professionals
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really, really good is recognizing a situation
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that's very, very dangerous and they need to, you know,
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Like what happens to a lot of players
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is you get married to a hand.
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Let's say you have pocket aces,
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which is the best possible hand, right?
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But the board runs out where it's seven, eight, nine,
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and then there's a jack and then there's a six.
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It's like, you have a great hand to start,
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but you don't anymore.
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So one of the difficult things for the average player is,
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you know, once they've put money in, cutting their losses
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and saying, okay, let's move on to the next hand.
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It's a very, very difficult thing for a lot of people.
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At every stage of like pre flop all the way through,
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be able to just make a decision at that moment.
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So yeah, essentially not being attached.
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Okay, I've already put in $40,000 in this pot
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and this guy's bet another 20.
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Well, I mean, I gotta get my 40 back, right?
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Except, you know, in some cases you have to reassess
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individually this situation and realize,
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all right, well, this is a bad investment.
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So I got to cut my losses.
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By the way, I should mention that you have,
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you have an incredible YouTube channel
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where you explain a lot of stuff.
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You do a podcast, you do a lot of really awesome stuff.
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My probably favorite thing that you've done
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is your masterclass that people should definitely check out,
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masterclass.com slash Lux.
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No, but it really is one of my favorite masterclass courses,
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but also just a great introduction overview of poker.
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It's great for people like me who are beginners essentially,
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but it's probably really good for intermediate people too.
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I mean, there's a lot of really good detail there.
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Anyway, what are hand ranges
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and how do you begin to estimate the range of hands
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that your opponents have?
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Yeah, so I actually did, speaking to YouTube,
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I did a video on specifically this.
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Getting familiar with Rangers and essentially,
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you know, back in my day, the old days,
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we didn't talk about poker that way.
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We're like, I think he's got this
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or I think he's got that, right?
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Nobody thought of like the range of hands
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a player can have.
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So I guess the best example is,
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imagine like all the potential hands
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as being a part of a grid, right?
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So the first player to act,
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they could have any one of those hands, right?
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Anyone randomly dealt, right?
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But let's say now that that player raised to $3,000.
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Okay, well you can eliminate now from this grid,
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a whole bunch of hands that this player can no longer have
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because if they had a two and a three,
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they wouldn't do that.
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So you can say, okay, he probably has a big pair.
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You know, you've narrowed the range of hands down, right?
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Now through every action on the flop,
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on the turn and on the river,
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based on the decisions they make,
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you narrow it down even further.
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So the range of hands is the whole,
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the entirety of all the possibilities
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that this player you believe could have.
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And sometimes they fool you
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or they have a hand that you don't expect them
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to have in their range.
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And you know, maybe a little bit unorthodox
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doing some things you don't expect to throw you off,
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but a range is essentially all the possibilities
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and it narrows as by the time,
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before the flop it's endless,
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player raises, okay, it's minimized.
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You know, a player bets the flop,
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okay, it's minimized further.
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And then by the river, you know,
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you can narrow down the entire range to, you know,
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just maybe even a few hands.
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Is it always shrinking or is there sort of,
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as you get surprised?
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I mean, it's always just an estimate.
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So does it ever expand based on sort of chaotic,
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unpredicted surprising behavior of the players?
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It really should never expand.
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The range of hands should always get smaller, right?
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Like again, we start with the full scope
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and then you should factor in like, okay,
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these are all the possible hands
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you can have on the flop now, right?
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We can't have new hands on the turn.
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And if you get to that point where you think,
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oh, well, maybe he has this hand,
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then you sort of misjudged his range prior.
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So you're not thinking clearly.
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It should always shrink from the full scope to, you know,
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hopefully just a couple.
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Well, in that video, you also talk about,
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it used to be that you would play your hand,
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but now you're playing a range
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that you're representing a range.
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You're not even just playing your hand.
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So what does it mean to represent a certain range?
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Yeah, so that's another big thing
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that's different about poker from, you know,
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my day to today is that back in our day,
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we would like put people on one hand.
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I'm like, you probably have king nine
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or you have jacks or something like that.
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Now people are cognizant of the idea
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that you could have an entire range of hands.
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So then you ask yourself in situations,
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all right, I know what I have,
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but what I could have in his mind
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or my opponent's mind is any one of these hands.
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What would I do with the entirety of these hands?
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And so a lot of people that are trying to play optimally,
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you know, game theory optimal,
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they think in terms of what their range of hands would do
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rather than their very specific hand.
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So is bluffing in that context
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essentially misrepresenting the range of hands that you have?
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No. Is that how you think about it?
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Not exactly, because so an optimal range,
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like if I bet the river,
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if I'm playing game theory optimal,
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a portion of my range is going to be, I have it.
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I got the best hand.
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And a portion of my range is going to be bluffs
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and they'll be balanced.
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So in theory, no matter what you do,
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no matter what you do, if you call or you fold,
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in theory, it's just, you're printing a zero, as we say,
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you're not gaining or losing any EV,
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if you were to do it that way.
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EV is expected value, right?
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So every play that you make,
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you know, it either is going to in the long run,
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you know, make you some money,
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or it's just a losing play.
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And as a professional,
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you try to make the fewest amount of minus EV plays you can.
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And the only reason you would make these minus EV plays
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is potentially if you were trying to set up your opponent
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for something later, right?
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So I might make some minus EV plays, right?
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So that I can exploit you later, right?
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So you're building up an image,
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a player profile that's false in some way.
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Something that I'm going to,
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I'm going to plant seeds in your mind
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so that I can exploit them later.
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So for example, why would players like show a big bluff?
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Like what would be the reason for that?
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They show a big bluff
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so that you know that they're capable of it.
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But maybe in their mind,
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you're never going to do that again.
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But now they think, you know, he bluffed me last time.
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Maybe he's doing it again.
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But that's a, what we call like a level, a leveling war.
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Because it, you know, you can go back and forth
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with whether or not, okay, this guy might know that.
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Like he showed a bluff
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because he's never going to bluff me again.
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So that that's where it gets a little.
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So that's a little bit different.
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The, when we're talking about hand rangers,
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that's different than building up a mental model
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of what your opponents,
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what your opponents think of you
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and what your opponents think that you think of them
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and so on and so forth.
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Are you trying to construct those kinds of mental models?
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And is that separate from the hand rangers?
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They go hand in hand, right?
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So if any given, in a given situation, right?
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My range has this many value hands and this many bluffs.
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So in theory, if I want to be balanced, you know,
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this is my range and this is what it looks like.
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I'll bet this 50% of the time, bet this 50% of the time.
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However, if I know that you think that I bluff too much,
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right, then I'm not going to bluff as much.
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I'm going to start,
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instead of betting these hands that I would 50, 50,
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now what I'll do is I'll do like 70, 30,
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where I'm basically value betting
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most of the time against you, you know, or vice versa.
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If I know you always fold because you think I have it,
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I'm going to veer the other way.
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And instead of bluffing 50%,
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I'll bluff 70, 80% of the time
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to take advantage of your perception of me.
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So to be successful,
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do you have to construct a solid model of all the players
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in the game or can you ignore them?
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I think it's really important.
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Like when I play, I have in my phone,
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I have a player profile of everyone that I play with.
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Whenever I pick up, whether it's physical tells
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or tendencies they like to, you know, that they have.
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And overall, that's just going to, you know,
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that's going to allow you to exploit more, right?
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So like if I played with somebody I've never played before,
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I'm probably just going to play optimally
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or at least as optimal as I know how until I start to,
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you know, gain some information on that player
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so that I can start to exploit them.
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So what's the, when you say optimally,
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what does optimally mean versus,
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so game theory optimal versus exploitative?
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Yeah, so that's like sort of the big debate in poker.
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We call it for short,
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GTO game theory optimal versus exploitative play.
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So GTO game theory optimal is the idea that no,
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like I'm going to set up my play
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so that no matter what you do, you cannot exploit me.
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So essentially that's playing rock, paper, scissors, right?
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And throwing 33% of each every time, right?
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Nothing you do can beat that, nothing.
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You'll never be able to beat that, right?
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Exploitative play is starting to notice that, okay,
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well, you know what?
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This guy loves rock.
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He loves playing rock.
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So I'm going to go paper a little more.
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So I'm going to take advantage of them.
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So I won't be through, but now all of a sudden,
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when I do that, I'm no longer playing optimal
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because if you knew that I was making that adjustment,
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now you can exploit me.
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So that's where the sort of what we call
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the leveling war happens, where people veer from,
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you know, the optimal line of, okay, 33% each for each one.
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You can't beat that, but you also can't win with that either.
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So you're always trying to be at the cutting,
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at the leading edge of suboptimal play.
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Yeah, you're going back and forth.
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And listen, at the highest levels,
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like online that these guys play,
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like they're trying to play pretty close
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to like game theory optimal
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because it's very difficult to do first of all.
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No human being will ever be able to compute
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at the level that computers can.
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It's just never going to happen.
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So that's where like the human mind has to come into play
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and say, all right, well, you know,
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if I was playing against the robot, I would do X,
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but I'm not, I'm playing against you.
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So I have to adjust.
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So does game theory optimal only look at the betting
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and the hands in the current hand
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or does it look at the history?
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So if you were to play optimally, optimally,
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would you need to look at the history
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of the individual players
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or just every hand is taken afresh?
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See, that's why I love playing exploitatively
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for the most part, because with GTO,
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anything that's happened in the past
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has no bearing on this situation.
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It's simply based on what is the optimal play
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in a vacuum in this spot.
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Whereas exploitatively, okay,
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this guy bluffs way too much in these spots.
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So now I can make an adjustment and call more, you know,
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based on past information.
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GTO doesn't take into account history at all.
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So like in a tournament,
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how quickly can you construct a player profile
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that you've never played before?
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Depends on the level of the buy in really, right?
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So the higher the buy in, generally speaking,
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you can assume if they're professionals,
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that they're gonna have pretty similar profiles
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because you know, everyone's playing,
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you know, if you're playing this game well,
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it looks similar, right?
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At the lower levels, you know,
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playing say in $1,000 or $1,500 buy in or less,
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you know, within a half an hour or an hour,
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I have an idea of all right,
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just by seeing how some players played a few hands that,
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you know, so here's the thing with poker,
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it's like, I can see one clue of what he did.
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And it tells me so much about what he'll do
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in a vast number of scenarios.
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And you're saying at the high level,
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people don't give too many clues.
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Well, at the highest level is,
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people are so much more similar
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in terms of their style of play.
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They try to find some kind of balance between the GTO.
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And now with all that we've seen on TV, right?
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Like people get to watch streams and whatever.
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So you get to watch all the top players play.
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So if you wanna learn how to play better,
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guess what you do?
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You copy what they're doing, essentially.
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Like, oh, he's only raising this much.
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I'm gonna do the same.
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They're betting this much.
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I'm gonna do the same.
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what you end up having is sort of,
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you know, everyone deciding.
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Like, I guess it's similar in chess with openings, right?
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People figure out, okay, this is an opening.
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This is what you do.
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And that's it, you know?
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And then everyone's similar to that.
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And then you have, of course, the outliers
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who try to do things a little differently
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and confuse people.
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It seems like the outliers,
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like we talked offline that Magnus,
link |
in order to win Magnus Carlsen,
link |
has to play suboptimally in the openings
link |
to take his opponents out of the comfort zone
link |
so he can play what he calls pure chess
link |
as quickly as possible,
link |
which is just both short and deep calculations.
link |
Purely, you're looking at the board
link |
versus memorized openings and memorized lines.
link |
Is it the case that the best poker players
link |
are the ones that are able to, at the right time,
link |
play really suboptimally or really unorthodox?
link |
Yeah, specifically there's one guy
link |
who last year sort of took the poker world by storm,
link |
and his name was Michael Adamo.
link |
And he was doing things, like I said,
link |
you know, most of the top pros play very similarly
link |
with the way that they construct ranges
link |
and their bet sizing and all these kinds of things.
link |
He was doing some crazy things
link |
that nobody else was doing.
link |
So he studied sort of a different form of poker
link |
and it was unorthodox.
link |
And it, you know, it throws people off
link |
because he's in his comfort zone
link |
with these bet sizes and different things,
link |
whereas everyone else,
link |
they're not well studied in those spots.
link |
So as a result of him being unorthodox,
link |
he became like a monster and very difficult to play against
link |
because he really knew what he was doing with it.
link |
In tournament or cash games?
link |
It was tournaments, yeah.
link |
He was crushing tournaments.
link |
He was going against the norm
link |
in terms of what is like, you know,
link |
this is what you should do as a poker player in this spot.
link |
He wasn't doing that.
link |
He was doing what he thought was best
link |
and he was doing things outside the norm
link |
that again, in a vacuum, you could look at that
link |
and you go, that's incorrect.
link |
That he should not do.
link |
That is a clear cut mistake.
link |
Even, you know, the solvers or the computers
link |
or game theory would say, this is wrong what he's doing.
link |
But it's not wrong if he's doing it in a way
link |
that he's exploiting other players tendencies.
link |
So for example, with him,
link |
say he's playing far too aggressively, okay?
link |
That's not good unless your opponents
link |
are playing way too passively.
link |
So if your opponents are playing passively,
link |
the answer is to be more aggressive with them.
link |
And that's, I think one of the, you know,
link |
biggest advantages he had was he was willing to do that.
link |
So bet huge, big, big pots bluffing.
link |
So in a spot where somebody would make it a thousand,
link |
he's making it 22,000.
link |
This makes no sense.
link |
And then people kind of know he has nothing,
link |
but they're too afraid to call him on it.
link |
Well, and then sometimes what happens is
link |
this is where the leveling comes in.
link |
You're like, man, this guy's crazy.
link |
He's bluffing like nuts.
link |
Then he bets the 22,000 and you say,
link |
ah, I'm taking my stand.
link |
I call, and then he shows you like, you know,
link |
four of a kind or something like that.
link |
So he gets people out of their comfort zone.
link |
And I really enjoy watching him play.
link |
He's probably my favorite player to watch today.
link |
Watching a guy like that,
link |
what aspect of his play have you been able
link |
to incorporate into your own?
link |
Like, what do you learn from that?
link |
Cause you're constantly learning,
link |
you're constantly adjusting.
link |
Well, no, and I love it.
link |
And as I said, so I think a lot of players
link |
sort of come to the same conclusions about
link |
this is how you play the spot, but he doesn't.
link |
And I love watching and thinking in terms of like,
link |
why he's doing this.
link |
And one specific thing, for example,
link |
is he's willing to really go for it.
link |
So in a spot where let's say he bets 2000,
link |
he knows he'll get you to call 2000, right?
link |
But he wants it all.
link |
So he says, you know what?
link |
I'll give up the 2000 that's guaranteed
link |
and I'll bet 50,000.
link |
And maybe if you call that now, you know,
link |
so listen, you lose the 2007, eight times,
link |
but if I get called for the 50 just once,
link |
you know, I'm profiting from that.
link |
And it also sets the, you know, the template for you
link |
to really sort of be a player
link |
that people are afraid to play against.
link |
He knocked me out in a tournament very early on
link |
And he had, he was so far ahead.
link |
He was one step ahead of my thought process in hand.
link |
And he did something that makes no sense whatsoever.
link |
I looked it up on the computer.
link |
Huge mistake, if you will, but not a mistake
link |
because he was taking advantage of my tendency.
link |
Do you remember the cars?
link |
Is there an example?
link |
I remember the whole thing.
link |
I remember it like it was yesterday.
link |
Can you take it like through an example hand
link |
that really demonstrates it?
link |
So I'll explain the hand here.
link |
So I'm on the button and I have ace king,
link |
which is a very good hand.
link |
And I raise and he calls from the big blind.
link |
The flop is nine, seven, five.
link |
So I have nothing really here.
link |
He checks, I check behind.
link |
The turn card's an ace.
link |
He checks, I bet half the pot.
link |
There were 6,000 there, I bet 3,000, okay?
link |
Now this is not a typical thing you see people do,
link |
but he raised me to 36,000.
link |
Massive raise, bigger than the size of the pot.
link |
What was the flop again?
link |
Nine, seven, five, turn an ace.
link |
What is he representing exactly?
link |
Well, he could have a straight,
link |
he could have three, three of a kind.
link |
He could have, you know, aces up.
link |
He could have a whole bunch of hands.
link |
So he check raises me big to 36,000.
link |
So now there's something like 75,000.
link |
The river is a five.
link |
So the board pairs, okay?
link |
He thinks for a while and he bets all of it,
link |
which is three times the pot.
link |
There's only 75,000 out there, right?
link |
And in theory, he should never ever have a hand
link |
that can do that, right?
link |
So it confused me.
link |
And I was like, okay, well, this guy's aggressive.
link |
He likes to bluff and all this kind of stuff.
link |
So I made the call with the ace king
link |
and he turned over six, eight.
link |
So we had a straight, but here's the thing.
link |
In theory, that river card is bad for him.
link |
When I call the turn, I have a lot of the time,
link |
three of a kind, two pair that just made a full house.
link |
So he was risking that.
link |
And the reason he did it was
link |
because he thought I would perceive him to be bluffing a lot.
link |
So he just went for it and it worked.
link |
He was able to double up right away
link |
and knock me out of the tournament like an hour in.
link |
Do you think he thought you might fold?
link |
I think specific, I think it was, it came down to this.
link |
It's as simple as this.
link |
He was cognizant of his image
link |
as being a wild, aggressive bluffer, right?
link |
And he was fully taking advantage of me,
link |
knowing that my tendency in these spots is to be curious.
link |
And I want to call and I want to see it.
link |
So he was fully taking advantage of the fact
link |
that he thought I would call too often.
link |
Because otherwise his play makes no sense.
link |
A small bet, a medium sized bet, those make sense.
link |
But the bet that he made in theory is indefensible.
link |
It's just like clearly a mistake.
link |
But that's why poker is so fascinating
link |
because he makes this play and it wasn't a mistake.
link |
It was above the rim, is what it was.
link |
Do you think he put you on ace something?
link |
I think exactly what he thought I had,
link |
was ace king or something like that.
link |
That is so fun that the two players at such a high level
link |
were able to mess with each other's mind.
link |
He's in his 20s, yeah.
link |
I feel like that takes a lot of guts
link |
to take risks like that.
link |
Well, that's what's great about him.
link |
He's certainly never accused
link |
of not having the guts to put it in.
link |
And that's scary to play against, right?
link |
The easiest opponent to play against
link |
is one who's just straightforward,
link |
passive, you know, not wild and crazy.
link |
Playing against him,
link |
he's going to put you in the blender, as we say.
link |
Yeah, how can you control
link |
what you're perceived as representing?
link |
What hand you're perceived of as representing?
link |
So if we're, if the game of modern poker is,
link |
others are representing certain hands
link |
through the information they convey,
link |
and you're representing a certain hand range, sorry,
link |
through your play, how can you control that?
link |
Or is that not, is that the wrong way to think about it?
link |
But isn't bluffing and bet sizing
link |
and all of that kind of stuff essentially controlling
link |
what others perceive as the hand range you have?
link |
Ultimately, in terms of like controlling
link |
people's perception of you, you can't fully control it,
link |
but you can do things to sway it, right?
link |
As I said earlier, showing bluffs and things like that,
link |
you know, leads your opponent to think
link |
maybe you do this more often than you're supposed to
link |
or whatever the case may be.
link |
But in terms of like controlling, you know,
link |
what your opponent can think about your hands
link |
in certain spots, I don't really think it equates that way.
link |
It doesn't really, you know, I think what people do
link |
when they're playing a hand is they think in terms of,
link |
all right, what does my range look like here?
link |
Okay, so my range has value.
link |
So you look at, you know,
link |
the actual hand you have secondarily.
link |
So you say, okay, well, I could have this,
link |
I could have this, I actually have this, right?
link |
But I could have all these hands.
link |
So my opponent, if he's thinking on a high level,
link |
he knows I could have all these hands and I have this one.
link |
So what do I do with this one, right, in the bigger scope
link |
I guess I'm trying to understand if your betting
link |
isn't a bet, preflop, your bet,
link |
doesn't that narrow the hand ranges?
link |
Doesn't matter what you have, it narrows the end.
link |
And if you bet big combined with the perception of you
link |
at the table, doesn't that represent the hand range?
link |
Uh huh, absolutely.
link |
So like you can, with betting essentially control
link |
what people estimate you to have.
link |
Sure, so that makes it, so yeah, so that's true.
link |
So for example, one of the most extreme examples is,
link |
we have, there's spots where there's a bet
link |
that's considered polarizing, right?
link |
So let's say there's a thousand in the pot
link |
and you bet 10,000, which is crazy big, right?
link |
That's saying one of two things.
link |
I either have the absolute best possible hand
link |
or absolutely nothing,
link |
because any of the hands in the middle,
link |
I wouldn't do that with.
link |
So I'm essentially telling you when I bet that,
link |
I'm like, I either got it or I got,
link |
I don't have a mediocre hand,
link |
like just a pair of nines or a pair of tens.
link |
I have a royal flush or have nine high.
link |
So with my bet sizing,
link |
I can control how my opponent is perceiving
link |
what my range is gonna be.
link |
So for example, similarly, if I bet small, right?
link |
Well, that could be a lot of hands, right?
link |
That could represent a big part of my range.
link |
The bigger the bet, the more, the narrower the range.
link |
Apparently the more polarized it is.
link |
Yeah, how far could you get
link |
without looking at your cards?
link |
Do you think how well could you do?
link |
It depends on who I'm playing with, right?
link |
So if I was playing in a tournament
link |
with mediocre or weak players,
link |
I think I could probably do pretty well.
link |
But even like world class.
link |
World class, I don't think you'd have much of a chance,
link |
The question is trying to get at like,
link |
how important is it that the actual hands you have
link |
versus the hands you're representing?
link |
Right, so that's the question of essentially,
link |
if you're not looking at your hand preflop,
link |
you're basically giving up a fundamental advantage, right?
link |
Where you're gonna be playing way suboptimally
link |
in terms of your hand selection, right?
link |
Cause if you don't look at your hand,
link |
you might have a two and a three.
link |
That's not good, but now you're playing it.
link |
So you've invested whatever, two, 3000 bucks
link |
with absolute garbage,
link |
and it's very difficult to climb that hill, right?
link |
So it's much better to actually look at your cards
link |
and go, okay, I'll throw away the two and three
link |
and I'll play the ace king.
link |
Speaking of garbage, you've said that 10, seven
link |
is your favorite poker hand to play.
link |
Is that still the case and what aspect of it
link |
is that you enjoy?
link |
Yeah, so it's one of those viewer discretion is advised.
link |
Like 10, seven, I've just noticed throughout my life,
link |
you know, it's a tendency thing that I've been lucky with it.
link |
So that's just sort of,
link |
but it's not like I'm gonna look at 10, seven and go,
link |
oh, wow, you know, I'm gonna call it all in
link |
or anything like that.
link |
I'll play it in situations where it makes sense,
link |
but you know, it's rare cause it's not a very good hand.
link |
But is there some aspect of belief
link |
in the magic of this hand manifests quality of play?
link |
Or is that a little?
link |
So here's the thing, it's, you know,
link |
poker players, some have said
link |
it's unlucky to be superstitious,
link |
but we're all a little bit superstitious, a little bit.
link |
You know, and so I don't know,
link |
maybe it is a case where when I have 10, seven,
link |
I feel somehow energetically that, you know,
link |
I'm more likely to catch something,
link |
which may actually make me more apt to be aggressive
link |
and confident in the hand.
link |
But you really shouldn't let yourself do that.
link |
Like you're not supposed to fall in love
link |
with any specific hands.
link |
Yeah, but you know, uncertainty is ruthless.
link |
It's, you know, the fact that it's a game of statistics,
link |
it can be too painful for the human psychology.
link |
So maybe you have to hold on to certain superstitions.
link |
Because, you know, I mean, there's a cold absurdity
link |
to the fact that you can play extremely well and still lose.
link |
I mean, actually this year you've played the,
link |
what is it, 50 days of World Series of Poker.
link |
And it seems like, at least from the perspective
link |
of me looking at it through the internet,
link |
it seems like there's a lot of hands
link |
that you were like 70, 30, 80, 20, all in hands
link |
that you just did not, were not going your way.
link |
That can sort of break you mentally.
link |
Yeah, one of the hardest things, especially about playing,
link |
because cash games and tournaments are different.
link |
One of the most difficult things about, you know,
link |
being a tournament player is resilience.
link |
Because more often than not, like,
link |
so if there's a tournament with a thousand people,
link |
to win the tournament, you have to get all of the chips.
link |
That means there's one winner and 999 losers.
link |
So it's very rare that you actually like win all the chips.
link |
So you're essentially at some point
link |
in every tournament you play,
link |
gonna deal with like really bad luck and disappointment.
link |
And sometimes those streaks can have you question yourself
link |
and be introspective about, okay,
link |
so I think I'm 47 now.
link |
I think I've gotten better as time went on
link |
between distinguishing, okay,
link |
am I losing right now because of bad luck?
link |
Or is it fundamentally decisions I'm making
link |
are not very good, right?
link |
And that's one of the hardest things
link |
for anyone who plays poker to get to, right?
link |
Am I losing because of my opponents being better?
link |
I'm not playing well, or am I losing just because of luck?
link |
And because there's so much variance in poker,
link |
a lot of players can be confused
link |
on both sides of the coin.
link |
One guy's winning and he thinks he's great.
link |
He's really not, wait till the cards break even as we say.
link |
I think there's a lot of parallels to life as well.
link |
If you get screwed over, over and over,
link |
it's hard to know if you're doing something wrong
link |
or if it's just bad luck.
link |
I think they did a study.
link |
I remember there was like a study
link |
that was mostly related to gambling,
link |
but it was mice and they put them in a little maze
link |
and they go down these three tubes
link |
and they go down this one tube and there'd be cheese, right?
link |
And then they go down again, cheese.
link |
Three times in a row there was cheese there, right?
link |
The next time there was an electric shock there, not cheese.
link |
The rat went, you know, the mouse went to get zapped.
link |
He got zapped, okay, came back.
link |
He kept going back to get zapped until he died.
link |
Like he kept going because he found cheese there.
link |
So he continued to go chase that win
link |
despite it being, you know, now all of a sudden
link |
not worthwhile till he died.
link |
And essentially what they said was
link |
that is essentially how they compared it
link |
to like, you know, the gambling brain
link |
and how people think about gambling.
link |
You're chasing the wins.
link |
You learn too much.
link |
You sort of overgeneralize the lessons learned
link |
from the times you've won.
link |
So yeah, like beginner's luck can be detrimental.
link |
If you have some early luck and you believe
link |
that this is just the way it's supposed to be forever,
link |
you know, it can put you in a delusional state
link |
where, you know, you feel like I'm just great,
link |
but no, you're not.
link |
You were just lucky in the beginning.
link |
I actually played poker once in Vegas.
link |
It was a, it wasn't a tournament,
link |
but it was a kind of tournament like style.
link |
I already forgot what it was.
link |
But what I do remember is that I had four of a kind.
link |
So the last hand I've ever played in poker was,
link |
I got a four of a kind and there was a couple of others
link |
with really strong hands.
link |
So everybody went all in.
link |
And I think you get some kind of bonus
link |
for getting four of a kind.
link |
Bad beat jackpot you were playing in.
link |
Yeah, so something like this.
link |
I apologize if I don't know the details,
link |
but I just remember winning a lot of money
link |
and I walked away from the table.
link |
I said, I'm not playing poker again.
link |
I'm gonna hit it up top.
link |
Cause I started to feel like this is your,
link |
I started to think,
link |
even though I haven't really played poker at all,
link |
And that was a really dangerous feeling.
link |
And everybody was really mad for walking away
link |
One of the other things that I think is interesting
link |
about poker too is good is relative, right?
link |
So you could be the seventh best player in the whole world,
link |
like literally seventh best player.
link |
But if you're playing with the other six,
link |
you're the sucker.
link |
You are like the worst player in the game, right?
link |
So like there's a lot of players, for example,
link |
like the Dan Blazarians of the world, right?
link |
He's not a top level player,
link |
like these guys you see on TV,
link |
but he probably makes more money than they do
link |
because he plays with people
link |
that are far below his skill level.
link |
So part of the skill of being a poker player
link |
is finding situations where you're profitable,
link |
regardless of your skill level.
link |
Another connection to life.
link |
Do you think Dan Blazarian is telling the truth
link |
about having made, what is it, $50, $100 million?
link |
Just a huge amount of money playing poker.
link |
Considering what I know about the private games
link |
and the types of players who play in these private games
link |
and the stakes that they play,
link |
I absolutely believe Dan has made,
link |
I don't know how many millions,
link |
but whether it's 50 or whatever,
link |
but it wouldn't surprise me
link |
that if you play in these games within a year
link |
or you find the right businessman
link |
who has way too much Bitcoin money,
link |
and in one night you take him for 20 million,
link |
I absolutely could see it.
link |
I don't see any reason why.
link |
Listen, where he got his money initially,
link |
that's up to interpretation from his father or whatever,
link |
but has he made a bunch of money playing poker?
link |
Absolutely, no question.
link |
Do you feel, as somebody who loves the game,
link |
do you think there's something almost ethically wrong
link |
in playing people much worse than you?
link |
So yeah, that's a good question
link |
because part of the reason I played poker
link |
and wanted to become professional
link |
was I wanted to make my mother proud, right?
link |
And I don't think she would be proud of me
link |
taking Grandma Betty's last $5 and down the street,
link |
sending her broke and taking her pension check.
link |
So I play at the high stakes
link |
against people who can afford it.
link |
They know who I am.
link |
I'm not a hustler.
link |
I'm not pretending I'm bad at poker to squeeze in.
link |
I was thinking about this just yesterday
link |
because I played in a game
link |
that if I played that sort of role
link |
where a lot of guys do pros
link |
that sort of play down their skill level,
link |
pretend they're just one of the guys,
link |
these guys can make $20, $30 million in a year, legitimately.
link |
Like I believe that like, if I did that,
link |
if I just said, you know what, I'm gonna go down that path,
link |
get into these games in LA, you know,
link |
and travel and do all this kind of stuff,
link |
I can make 20 million a year.
link |
But it feels a little greasy, right?
link |
I don't like to kiss anyone's ass.
link |
I don't like to ask anyone for a favor or things like that.
link |
So, but yeah, like I feel, listen,
link |
a rich guy who wants to sit down with a million bucks
link |
and get drunk and lose it, I have no empathy for that.
link |
I'm like, I don't have any moral qualms with that.
link |
So if a grandma Betty is a billionaire.
link |
Send it, send it, right?
link |
You know, absolutely, why not?
link |
Well, let me ask you about a tough period
link |
of your recent life.
link |
You had a rough, like we mentioned,
link |
the World Series of Poker losing $1.1 million over 48 days.
link |
What were you going through mentally during that?
link |
So here's the thing, you know, I do, like you said,
link |
I do a YouTube vlog every day.
link |
So I kind of share my thoughts and listen,
link |
I can edit that thing and keep out the bad stuff,
link |
but I think it's more authentic and genuine to show people
link |
the actual struggles and the pain that I go through,
link |
you know, without it.
link |
And I'd say the one thing I'm most proud of
link |
throughout the entire thing is the resilience
link |
because there are moments you see me where I'm broken.
link |
I'm just like, I can't take it.
link |
I broke a selfie stick this year.
link |
Like I was filming it.
link |
Cause you know, I do for my vlog,
link |
I smashed the stick through it in the corner, right?
link |
It's just, that was my like hit rock bottom moment.
link |
And then I put the camera on me and I was like, all right,
link |
I'll let people see it.
link |
But mentally it was very difficult
link |
because there was a feeling of hopelessness
link |
where I was making good decisions.
link |
Like I genuinely felt like I'm playing really, really well.
link |
But every time my money went in and my opponent's money
link |
went in and say, I was 60%, 70%, 80%
link |
for about a two week stretch, I lost every one of those.
link |
And you start to wonder, you're like,
link |
I can't win if I never win, you know, in these spots.
link |
So it was difficult.
link |
Luckily I have, you know, 20 odd years of experience
link |
on how to deal with it.
link |
And so, as I said, I wake up the next day, ready to go.
link |
So as if nothing happened.
link |
To a certain degree.
link |
Obviously, you know, the more,
link |
the more it happens in the higher vines,
link |
like the one where I broke the selfie stick,
link |
I lost 500,000 in that tournament, right?
link |
And it was like the last card, it was painful.
link |
Yeah, that was great, that video.
link |
What led up to the selfie stick gate?
link |
Like what, you just lost your shit
link |
for a, like a hundred milliseconds.
link |
Like it was very brief.
link |
You're just like, what, the world wasn't making any sense.
link |
Like, how do I keep losing kind of thing?
link |
How did you, why did you lose your shit?
link |
You should never really think like this,
link |
but part of me felt like I deserved to win this, right?
link |
So part of me was like, listen,
link |
I've lost so many in the last two weeks, all right.
link |
Let, you know, the poker gods be kind to me right now.
link |
And it looked good.
link |
I was in a great situation on the flop,
link |
great situation on the turn.
link |
I'm about to be a competitor.
link |
I'm going to be a contender in this tournament
link |
to win a big prize pool and turn the whole thing around.
link |
It's all there for the taking.
link |
And then boom, the last card, it just, you know,
link |
it was a couple of weeks of frustration
link |
in the moment of filming that I just had, you know,
link |
sort of a visceral reaction, you know,
link |
and I smacked the, smacked the selfie stick.
link |
And then like, I, it was, I see a corner, it's safe.
link |
I threw the selfie stick on the ground.
link |
And of course, social media blows up about how, you know,
link |
it was a violent act, you know?
link |
I mean, it's like, have you never watched sports?
link |
Have you never seen a guy on the golf course
link |
smack his club or throw their helmet?
link |
Like, you know, there was the,
link |
there's a guy, Justin Bonomo is a poker player.
link |
And he's a super, how to, for lack of a better word,
link |
offended by everything.
link |
And he was equating my throwing a stick on the ground
link |
to violence against women, domestic abuse,
link |
and the idea that like,
link |
this makes women feel unsafe to play poker.
link |
And so that was kind of a running joke
link |
for the last two weeks where every time I sat at a table,
link |
the guys would be like, oh, I feel unsafe, I feel unsafe.
link |
Can you take me through the hand?
link |
Do you remember what the hand was?
link |
Like, what was the...
link |
Yeah, so it was a, you know, a player on the button raised.
link |
David Peters, very aggressive player.
link |
He went all in from the blind
link |
and I had a pair of pocket tens.
link |
So I went with my tens and he had queen 10 of spades.
link |
I have way the best hand.
link |
And the flop was like king nine, three, one spade.
link |
Turn was like the eight of spades.
link |
So now he has a flush draw and the river was another spade.
link |
So he caught spade, spade, and he made a flush.
link |
Wow, but statistically you were winning the whole time.
link |
Yeah, I was winning it up until the last card.
link |
What did he go all in on?
link |
He made what's considered like a pretty standard play
link |
in modern poker where, you know, a guy raised
link |
and he was just trying to pick up, you know, what was there.
link |
And he ran into a hand in the big blind
link |
and you know, he got lucky.
link |
So what was the throughout the strategy of preparation,
link |
the strategy of play?
link |
So you're playing so many days.
link |
Are you trying to ignore the results
link |
and stick to a particular strategy?
link |
Yes, for the most part, you know,
link |
what I'm trying to do is like,
link |
I formulate a strategy for the whole seven weeks
link |
cause there's a varying degree of buy ins too.
link |
Like you have small ones, like 1500,
link |
then you've got like $250,000 buy in.
link |
So I map out the seven weeks and right,
link |
I'll give a little bit of mental energy to the 1500,
link |
which means I'll be on my phone.
link |
I'm not gonna, I don't care as much about this one,
link |
but the 250K fully engaged, fully focused, you know,
link |
up against obviously the higher the buy in,
link |
you know, super top competition.
link |
And you know, as far as strategy goes,
link |
focusing on each day, playing the best I can,
link |
Like, cause if you focus on the result,
link |
you're focusing in the wrong place.
link |
Your focus should be on the decisions you actually make.
link |
Right, and if you're making good decisions consistently,
link |
you have to continue to do that.
link |
The frustrating part is this,
link |
with poker, unlike chess or other things,
link |
making the best possible decision doesn't mean you win.
link |
Often you lose, you don't, chess.
link |
Well, Magnus Carlsen has also talked about that.
link |
There's some non deterministic thing about chess too,
link |
given the limited cognitive capacity of the human mind.
link |
So he says that the world championship should have
link |
20, 30, 40, 50 games, not the few that they have.
link |
It's too low of a sample.
link |
So in that sense, the high stakes poker tournaments
link |
are very too low sample.
link |
Well, when you think of the world series of poker,
link |
so as you said, I lost about 1 million, right?
link |
In one tournament, that was 500,000.
link |
So then, you know, like a few others here
link |
of high buying tournaments.
link |
So the sample or the amount was, you know,
link |
40, 50 total tournaments with, you know, high variance.
link |
And if you don't run well or do well in the highest buy ins,
link |
you know, you're gonna have a losing summer.
link |
So you did a podcast on the mental game a few years ago,
link |
but then that's just something you really care about.
link |
So what aspects of the mental game in poker
link |
is most difficult to master?
link |
I think the most difficult thing for people
link |
is self awareness, right?
link |
And resilience, self awareness to know, okay,
link |
so, you know, again, is it, am I not doing as well
link |
as I could be because of luck
link |
or is there things that I can learn?
link |
And I always look to mistakes as opportunities.
link |
When I make a mistake in a poker hand, right?
link |
Call it a breakdown or whatever,
link |
that's where breakthroughs happen.
link |
And I'm like, oh, you know what I could have done here?
link |
I could have done this and that would have been really good
link |
and I'm gonna do that going forward.
link |
So I think like with anything, you know,
link |
when you start out playing golf,
link |
like your goal is to just hit the ball, right?
link |
Then you try to hit it in the air,
link |
then you're trying to hit it straight,
link |
then you're trying to hit it on the green,
link |
then you're trying to hit it closer to the green
link |
to the point where the pros get where, you know,
link |
they're so finite, they're trying to hit it 63 yards
link |
and spin it back three yards.
link |
Like they don't hit the perfect shot
link |
because the perfect shot for them is it goes in,
link |
but they try and make the mistakes smaller
link |
and smaller and smaller.
link |
Poker is the same.
link |
We all make mistakes consistently.
link |
The goal is to minimize, especially the big ones.
link |
What was the lowest point for you psychologically
link |
in poker in general, actually?
link |
Maybe it was this year, maybe it was in general.
link |
Do you remember there was times in your life,
link |
speaking of resilience,
link |
that were extremely difficult to you mentally?
link |
Yeah, so early on, you know, as basically as a teenager,
link |
I was playing in Toronto and then in my early 20s,
link |
I'm like, I'm going to Vegas, right?
link |
And I thought I was the best.
link |
I'm like 21 years old, I'm like, check me out, right?
link |
Show up with $3,000, 24 hours later, you know, money's gone.
link |
And I remember the moment vividly.
link |
It was at the Binion's Horse,
link |
it was about three in the morning.
link |
I was playing with seven other people.
link |
You know, I lost my last chips.
link |
I went to the bathroom, washed up, got out.
link |
And it was like a moment where I realized like, okay,
link |
in Toronto, I was the big fish.
link |
But here, they were playing because of me.
link |
I remembered every one of their faces.
link |
And then I remember not having enough money
link |
to get back to budget suites where I was staying.
link |
So I walked, you know, I walked.
link |
And in that moment I was thinking about like,
link |
is this something that I'll be able to do?
link |
You know, what am I going to do now?
link |
I'm in Vegas, I don't know anybody and I have no money,
link |
So that was certainly like what felt like a low point,
link |
walking back behind Paradise and Twain,
link |
which is not a great part of town.
link |
Where did you find the strength to answer yes
link |
to that question that you can still do good?
link |
I think this has been sort of a pattern in my life
link |
where like in the evening after it happens,
link |
like I don't have it.
link |
You know, I don't have that feeling of hope or,
link |
you know, resilience, if you will.
link |
I'm allowing myself to experience despair,
link |
which is exactly where I'm at.
link |
But then a good night's sleep, wake up the next morning
link |
and just within me, I have that inner confidence to say,
link |
Fuck it, get back on the hobby horse,
link |
find a way, make it work, right?
link |
But I do believe it's really therapeutic and worthwhile
link |
to allow yourself to feel and vent.
link |
So many people today, the Instagram culture world,
link |
I call it, it's like they want to act like they're perfect.
link |
Nothing bothers them, bullshit, right?
link |
You're pissed off, it's okay to show it.
link |
Emotion's fine, we all have it.
link |
There's no reason you have to suppress it.
link |
Obviously, you don't want to have guys throwing selfie sticks
link |
around the room every time they lose a pot, right?
link |
But, you know, a little bit of...
link |
You're gonna make everybody feel unsafe.
link |
So you're saying, there is a culture of saying,
link |
you know, stay positive, all this kind of stuff,
link |
but you know, when you feel despair, don't resist it,
link |
Because it doesn't go away, right?
link |
That feeling, you know, you think you put it away
link |
in the pit of your stomach and you think, you know,
link |
it's gone, it's not, it's still there.
link |
Let yourself go, fuck!
link |
You know, there's nothing wrong with being
link |
a little bit emotional, because once you've experienced it,
link |
you let it out, now you can move past it.
link |
Yeah, and I feel like, as long as your brain chemistry
link |
can support it, you can usually learn a good lesson
link |
from it, like you become stronger,
link |
you become more resilient through it.
link |
It's really interesting.
link |
And a good night's sleep can really help.
link |
So through 2022, and in general, what is a perfect day
link |
in the life of Daniel Negrano look like
link |
when you're, like on a day when you have to play
link |
a big game, big tournament game and so on?
link |
So like, what time do you wake up?
link |
What do you eat for breakfast?
link |
So my life is twofold.
link |
Like one, when I'm playing hardcore, and one when I'm not.
link |
And they look very different, right?
link |
So I'll give you a quick glimpse of like when I'm not,
link |
up at 10, you know, breakfast, in the gym at noon,
link |
you know, post workout,
link |
meal, coffee, walk, like, you know, I try to get,
link |
that's what I do for cardio, you know,
link |
and just very like home bodied.
link |
I don't leave the house.
link |
It's very like boring and mundane, right?
link |
Long distance walks.
link |
So like, what do you do when you're walking?
link |
You're thinking about stuff?
link |
Well, no, honestly, I just walk on the treadmill.
link |
I try to get 15,000 steps a day.
link |
And I just walk for basically like an hour
link |
while I watch a show or I'm on the computer
link |
or something like that, you know, I'm on the treadmill.
link |
Why walk and not running?
link |
Well, I mean, I think walking, I mean,
link |
I do a little bit of running, but hardly any.
link |
Like, I just like walking.
link |
And frankly, for fat loss,
link |
when it's usually what I'm doing after big poker tournaments
link |
is getting back in shape, that walking's ideal for it, right?
link |
So essentially it's like the tale of two.
link |
During the World Series of Poker,
link |
all my sort of structured life thrown out the window.
link |
There's no walking.
link |
There's very little walking.
link |
There's very little working out.
link |
There's very little anything.
link |
I go into the World Series, you know,
link |
like this year I went in around 157
link |
and I expected to gain about 10 pounds
link |
during the World Series.
link |
Not good pounds, it wasn't muscle,
link |
but that's about what I did, 165.
link |
And then I spend the next month trying to, you know, lose it.
link |
But during the World Series, when I'm playing,
link |
the most important thing without question
link |
that I have to focus on,
link |
and this is why I stopped focusing
link |
on working on all this stuff is sleep.
link |
If I'm not rested, I'm useless.
link |
If I only get five, six hours
link |
and I have to go back the next day and play 14 hours,
link |
the chances of me being at my best, very, very slim.
link |
So sleep is a priority.
link |
What's the perfect amount of sleep for you on those days?
link |
So eight hours is my go to every night.
link |
During the World Series of Poker, it's just not possible
link |
because of the way that it's structured.
link |
Sometimes the tournaments end at 2.15 a.m.
link |
I get home about three o clock.
link |
Takes me 30 minutes, 40 minutes to get to sleep.
link |
So now let's say I'm in bed by four.
link |
Well, the tournament's at, you know, two.
link |
So I have to get up and whatever.
link |
So it's very difficult to get exactly eight
link |
a lot of the time.
link |
You know, and also get back there in time.
link |
Is there any hacks to quiet the mind?
link |
Because you're going on a pretty intense rollercoaster
link |
mentally when you're playing.
link |
Is there any tricks to getting to sleep
link |
given the rollercoaster?
link |
I've been very lucky.
link |
I don't know if it's because of diet or what,
link |
but I've always been a very good sleeper.
link |
You just shut off.
link |
I get to sleep and I sleep like a baby, you know?
link |
And I also nap really well.
link |
Like during the World Series, sometimes what will happen
link |
is let's say I get knocked out of one event at 4 p.m.
link |
And there's another one that I can jump in.
link |
Instead of jumping right into it,
link |
I'll go into like a private room and take 45 minute nap.
link |
And you know, and give me enough energy to continue
link |
and sort of reset my mind.
link |
Yeah, and it solves a lot of problems with the nap too.
link |
Yeah, I feel like the nap is a magical trick in life.
link |
What else, diet wise?
link |
What do you, your mind is going, you know,
link |
pretty intensely all day.
link |
Yeah, so during like, like I said,
link |
when I'm not playing, I'm super regimented.
link |
You know, I have, I literally measure everything.
link |
You know, I count calories, I count macros,
link |
I follow it to a T.
link |
Pretty balanced diet or any?
link |
So it's, you know, a vegan diet, like.
link |
But balanced in terms of carbs and protein.
link |
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I eat a healthy amount.
link |
I'm doing probably 150 grams of protein,
link |
like 60 grams of fat, 50, and then about.
link |
And try to measure it all out.
link |
I do, yeah, I basically, I created a meal plan.
link |
So what I did for myself is,
link |
cause I'm really anal and I made a spreadsheet
link |
with like a day's food and I have six different ones.
link |
So I just follow it.
link |
Like I don't, it actually makes my life so much easier
link |
when I don't have to think about what I'm going to eat
link |
for lunch or what I'm going to eat for dinner.
link |
I already know what I'm going to eat.
link |
I already wrote it down and it doesn't get boring
link |
because I'm switching it up every day, you know,
link |
every six days and occasionally I'll, you know,
link |
splurge or do something different.
link |
During the World Series of Poker,
link |
I eat whatever the fuck I want to eat.
link |
Like it's at 2 a.m. I don't crave
link |
like a broccoli carrot salad.
link |
Like I want chocolate, candy and chips.
link |
So I'll just do it.
link |
So you listen to the cravings.
link |
Yeah, I realized like.
link |
It's surprising because like,
link |
you're so regimented outside of that.
link |
It's really difficult.
link |
Like I've done it before
link |
where I played the World Series of Poker
link |
and I made it a point to work out every day.
link |
But what that did was it sacrificed sleep.
link |
So then I found like at 1 a.m. I would be more tired,
link |
you know, because I've expended more energy
link |
than I would otherwise.
link |
So I essentially like look at the World Series
link |
is six, seven weeks where my body's
link |
just gonna take a beating, not like UFC fighter,
link |
but like a different kind of beating.
link |
And that's okay because I have so much confidence
link |
that within six weeks of just like eating right
link |
and working out, I can get back to where I was.
link |
But it's just hilarious to me that you'd be eating chocolate.
link |
What eating chocolate in bed
link |
as you're trying to get to sleep is this.
link |
Like literally a bag of like chips or chocolate,
link |
like on my way home and before bed,
link |
you know, just whatever.
link |
This is what the professional athlete does
link |
at the highest, most difficult event of his career.
link |
Okay, so what else is there in terms of mental preparation
link |
and focus and meditation, those kinds of things
link |
leading up to the games?
link |
Is there anything you like to,
link |
like any rituals you like to follow?
link |
So yeah, I have dabbled in the past
link |
with like meditation and different things like that.
link |
And I know that there's health benefits to it.
link |
And I understand that a lot of people get a lot from it
link |
and I've done it for a good amount of time,
link |
like long periods of time.
link |
I found that for me, I think it was predominantly placebo.
link |
Like it really wasn't doing anything for me
link |
that I felt like it was, it felt like I was doing something,
link |
but I really, I didn't see any specific results from it.
link |
So I don't really do that too much.
link |
One thing that I will do for me is leading up
link |
is there's so much footage now
link |
that I'll make it a point to like watch my opponents
link |
and then with like my phone, I'll take notes
link |
and I'll keep track of different things that I'm seeing.
link |
And that sort of, and then what I'll do
link |
is I'll formulate a game plan.
link |
Like I'm playing the Poker Masters coming up
link |
And I'll look to see the tendencies
link |
of what my opponents are doing.
link |
And then I'll come up with like some things
link |
that I'm gonna do, some tricks of the trade, if you will.
link |
Not game theory optimal stuff,
link |
stuff that I think, oh, they're making a mistake here
link |
that I can exploit.
link |
And then I look to do that in different ways
link |
and always look to throw curve balls.
link |
How hard is that process?
link |
Do you enjoy it or is it like really hard work
link |
to analyze the players to try to understand
link |
what are the different holes?
link |
What are the different mistakes?
link |
What are the strengths to avoid and that kind of stuff?
link |
I think the only thing that makes it harder
link |
is when you're young, right?
link |
And you're in your twenties
link |
and you're trying to make your nest egg.
link |
You're like, you're trying to make your retirement money.
link |
You're hungry, right?
link |
You're like clubber Lang and you know the gym, you're hungry.
link |
Whereas, you know, Rocky's in there taking pictures
link |
and smiling and doing commercials and stuff like that.
link |
So I am 47, I'm financially okay.
link |
I don't need to win.
link |
I don't need to compete at the highest levels.
link |
So I think it was a boxer.
link |
I don't remember which one.
link |
When asked this, he was asked the question,
link |
how do you get up in the morning still
link |
and do those morning runs?
link |
And he says, you know what?
link |
I'll be honest with you.
link |
It's a lot more difficult doing the 4 a.m. run
link |
in silk pajamas, right?
link |
It just is, right?
link |
But I've always been self motivated
link |
and I've always found a way.
link |
So it's harder in the sense of like, it's not a need.
link |
I can still get by without it.
link |
But so in that regard, it does feel like a little bit
link |
of work where like, oh my God,
link |
that's a lot of footage I gotta get through.
link |
And I don't know that I have the time or I don't know
link |
that I wanna spend 10 hours of my day doing that
link |
when I could be doing other things.
link |
I mean, what do you still love about poker?
link |
When you said, when you enter,
link |
like the times you catch yourself just being able
link |
to sort of take in the awe of it.
link |
What aspects do you love?
link |
I think that like for me,
link |
I've always been really competitive,
link |
but I was never gonna be a professional athlete
link |
or a professional snooker player.
link |
I wasn't good enough at any of that stuff.
link |
I didn't have the body type, whatever.
link |
But poker, it sort of levels the playing field, right?
link |
You're six, five, 240, big deal.
link |
We're not fighting here.
link |
We're fighting a different type of war.
link |
So the competitive aspect,
link |
I also have always been fueled throughout my career
link |
So this is probably unhealthy,
link |
but every time people say like, you're done,
link |
you're washed up, you can't win anymore,
link |
it just makes me wanna prove them wrong, right?
link |
So I have a little bit of that in me,
link |
which again, you're reading the comments
link |
and all these kinds of,
link |
like I've been told many times throughout my career
link |
for the last 15 that I'm done.
link |
I can't compete anymore.
link |
And I enjoy proving them wrong.
link |
Yeah, the game has changed so much.
link |
The greats of the past surely cannot be the greats
link |
That kind of commentary will continue for every sport.
link |
And certainly for poker,
link |
because poker really changed a lot
link |
over the past couple of decades.
link |
Can you speak to how much it has changed?
link |
Because you've been at the top for so long.
link |
Yeah, so complacency is a big issue
link |
for people who make it, if you will, right?
link |
So in my era of the poker boom, around the early 2000s,
link |
there was a group of players who were the big names,
link |
the stars of the game.
link |
Well, a lot of them had their egos out of whack
link |
where they just felt like, okay, I'm the best, that's it.
link |
Like, no, there's young guys learning,
link |
there's new software, there's solvers,
link |
there's all these kinds of things.
link |
And if you're not keeping up, then you'll get surpassed.
link |
And I remember myself at a very early age saying,
link |
I never want to be that guy.
link |
And it was one of my first events in the late 90s.
link |
I was the young buck playing with the Tom McAvoy's
link |
and Brad Doughty, the guys of the era, right?
link |
And I was doing things more aggressively
link |
and they were scoffing at all these young kids
link |
with their aggressive three and all this stuff.
link |
And they were sort of mocking it, you know?
link |
And I thought, never be that guy.
link |
Always have the humility to be introspective
link |
and always have the respect for your opponents
link |
that while you think you've got it all figured out,
link |
they're learning new things and you can learn from them.
link |
So I've always been willing to sort of swallow my pride
link |
and get coached by younger players
link |
who I might even be better than,
link |
but they see blind spots that I have that I might not.
link |
And they, you know, they helped me improve my game.
link |
I've always been willing to sort of look every six months
link |
or a year and say, is what I'm doing working?
link |
And if not, how do I get better?
link |
But most people from my generation, they go the other way.
link |
I don't know, they just have this idea
link |
that they figured it all out.
link |
Once you feel like you've mastered it,
link |
there's nothing left to learn.
link |
That's the moment where everyone else
link |
starts to surpass you.
link |
That's the moment where you lose the mastery
link |
because it's always evolving.
link |
How has the game changed?
link |
So the game has changed
link |
in terms of the way people learn it, right?
link |
When I started out, the only way to learn how to play poker
link |
was to sit your ass on the chair and play.
link |
Yes, in person, play.
link |
Maybe you jot down hands on a notepad.
link |
We didn't even have cell phones back then, right?
link |
So I would write notes.
link |
I actually brought a notepad.
link |
And then you don't analyze it
link |
and sort of try to figure it out that way
link |
and think about maybe talking to friends
link |
and different players.
link |
Like when I grew up, there was John Jawanda,
link |
Alan Cunningham and Phil Ivey.
link |
And we would sort of create
link |
like a little bit of a mastermind.
link |
Well, how would you play this hand?
link |
What would you do here?
link |
That was the extent of it, right?
link |
We never had the correct answers.
link |
We always had theories about what might be right.
link |
Not until about five, six years ago
link |
where everything changed.
link |
Where artificial intelligence created solvers
link |
that will specifically say, okay, this is the optimal play.
link |
This is the game theory optimal play.
link |
So now it introduced poker to a whole new group
link |
of like personality types.
link |
In my day, it was people that were dregs of society
link |
that didn't fit in, not college goers with a degree.
link |
These are people who were street hustlers playing pool.
link |
They found poker and they had these unique lives, right?
link |
But now because poker can be studied,
link |
much like you study university or college,
link |
you had, for example, the German contingent
link |
who was literally analyzing data
link |
and coming up with strategies based on this.
link |
And it's like, what?
link |
And the old guy, got to play by feel or whatever.
link |
And they're like, they're learning.
link |
So I guess the way that you describe it is like
link |
in the old days, it required skill and talent,
link |
a card sense, right?
link |
That was the only way to become good.
link |
And today that's not the case.
link |
Good study habits, a good work ethic in that regard
link |
can make you like a really good player.
link |
Even if you aren't all that talented or gifted,
link |
having a good work ethic is a talent, right?
link |
Not necessarily card sense, but if you're able to put
link |
in the work and study from these solvers,
link |
you essentially have the perfect study tool now
link |
that we didn't have in my day.
link |
So what do the solvers give you?
link |
Do you start to memorize the optimal play
link |
for every single hand?
link |
You try your best.
link |
So again, solvers are imperfect as well,
link |
in terms of the way the humans utilize them, right?
link |
Because you can give solvers a certain number of inputs
link |
in terms of what you want it to solve,
link |
but a solver can think on many, many levels.
link |
So for example, the way that a typical player
link |
would do a solve is to say, okay,
link |
what does a solver think is the best play here?
link |
Bet one third pot, bet two thirds pot,
link |
or bet one and a half times pot, okay?
link |
You give it three parameters, it comes out with an output
link |
and it tells you what you should do
link |
with all the different hands you have.
link |
However, that's a simplified version
link |
of what a solver would really do,
link |
because a solver might decide
link |
that seven times the pot is best, 10% of the pot.
link |
But when you're putting in a solve,
link |
you can only put in specific parameters.
link |
So that's why, frankly, that's typically the number,
link |
one third, two third, and one and a half times pot
link |
is what people often do.
link |
So they sort of have a vague idea of what a solver wants.
link |
But again, imperfect in terms of the implementation of it.
link |
And memorizing all the variables,
link |
like that King Jack offsuit with the King of Diamonds
link |
is 13%, no human brain can do that.
link |
So what you do is you bucket it.
link |
Like you bucket it into say, instead of 10,000 variables,
link |
you have 10 buckets and you say, okay,
link |
with these hands, we do roughly this,
link |
and we do roughly this.
link |
And you try your best to stay within those lines.
link |
But again, what I love about live poker partly
link |
is that nobody will ever be able to master game theory,
link |
and mimic a solver.
link |
But you also have to incorporate your position,
link |
where you are, and obviously what cards you have,
link |
but also the size of your stack,
link |
how much money you have,
link |
and also whether you have the ability
link |
or desire to buy in, all those kinds of things.
link |
So you have to calculate all of that, right?
link |
So the solver will do that, right?
link |
And essentially, you don't input your hand.
link |
It tells you, you'll look at the grade,
link |
and be like, all right, this is my hand,
link |
and it tells you what it is.
link |
But it tells you what you would do with any hand, right?
link |
It gives you the full output.
link |
And that actually gives you a better idea,
link |
because you're ultimately, like you said,
link |
playing a range of hands, not a hand.
link |
And the solvers do things that are really interesting.
link |
You've seen AlphaGo, I would imagine.
link |
Brilliant film, right, I thought.
link |
And I thought what was interesting is there was,
link |
you know, accepted theory from all the top Go players,
link |
this is what you do.
link |
But the AI was doing things way different,
link |
and they're like, this has to be wrong,
link |
but really it wasn't.
link |
So for example, a solver may say this, right?
link |
Let's say you bet on the end, and you bet a lot,
link |
and a solver may say, you should fold here
link |
with a pair of kings and a queen kicker,
link |
which is, you know, a pair of kings,
link |
but call with a pair of fours and an ace kicker.
link |
So it's essentially telling you
link |
that you should fold this hand
link |
that is much better than this.
link |
So it begs the question, why?
link |
Because what the solvers do is they use the information
link |
of your own cards to formulate all the possible hands
link |
your opponent can have.
link |
So if your opponent is,
link |
so basically if you had the king, queen,
link |
you know, it may say, for lack of a better nerdy term,
link |
it blocks potential bluffing hands
link |
that your opponent can have.
link |
So let's say if your opponent would bluff with queen, jack,
link |
but you have a queen.
link |
So there are less combinations of queen, jack.
link |
So it will find a better bluff catcher, if you will.
link |
So that's what's really not intuitive to poker players.
link |
Poker players usually think like,
link |
well, this, my hand is pretty good, so I got a call,
link |
but that's not how a solver would think.
link |
Solver uses, you know, common matrix and, you know.
link |
And sometimes it's tough to get the good why answers
link |
you just did for why a solver thinks something is better,
link |
or maybe in poker it's a little bit easier,
link |
but in the case of go and chess, it's not always obvious why,
link |
because it's not gonna explain stuff to you.
link |
I think one of the best ways to learn poker
link |
is when you see a solver output
link |
and it tells you one of these things, try to figure out why.
link |
Why does this solver do this?
link |
Why does it want you to call with this and fold this?
link |
And try to think about it on a deeper level.
link |
And you go, aha, probably because this card
link |
that I have here, you know, changes the range
link |
of my opponent's, you know, potential.
link |
I'd love to get your opinion
link |
on your relationship with solvers.
link |
Because for example, Magnus doesn't use them.
link |
His team uses them.
link |
Cause he feels like he's going to rely on it too much.
link |
And you can't use it when you're playing.
link |
What you really want is to build up
link |
an extremely strong intuition without the help of a solver.
link |
Is there some aspect of that that rings true to you?
link |
I totally can relate to what Magnus is saying.
link |
First and foremost, because when solvers
link |
was first introduced, I didn't come from that world.
link |
I was so intimidated because I didn't know how to use it.
link |
I don't know how to do an input.
link |
So I had two guys, one guy's a data scientist
link |
and, you know, another guy's like a poker savant,
link |
if you will, and they coached me and they did it.
link |
So today, if I was in a tough spot, you know,
link |
and I'm like, I don't know, what would a solver do?
link |
I will send them the hand and they'll run the solve for me.
link |
And then sort of give me the parameters of what to do.
link |
When I was playing, you know,
link |
regularly using solvers with them,
link |
we were spending six to eight hours a day
link |
going over all these solves.
link |
So intuitively I started to think and learn
link |
about what the solver would want,
link |
but I sort of understand where Magnus is coming from
link |
in that you don't want to become a slave to the sim,
link |
There's one kid I know, I joked with him,
link |
his name is Landon Tice.
link |
And, you know, he made a play that the sim, you know,
link |
would say, this is a good play.
link |
But I'm like, it's a good play, you know,
link |
in a simulated world against the robot.
link |
It's not in practice against the human, right?
link |
You don't need to be doing that.
link |
So if you become a slave to the sim
link |
and always do what the sim says,
link |
you're handcuffed to a certain degree.
link |
Is there some, at the highest level plays,
link |
there's still a role for feel and intuition?
link |
If you're not doing that,
link |
cause here's the thing, right?
link |
No human being plays perfectly balanced
link |
in game three optimal like a robot would.
link |
They're not, right?
link |
So there are opportunities there to take advantage
link |
of the things that they do that are slightly too aggressive
link |
or less aggressive.
link |
You know, for example,
link |
say most human beings don't bluff enough in a certain spot.
link |
So you don't have to call with the correct range of hands.
link |
You don't have to,
link |
because they're not bluffing at the optimal frequency.
link |
So you don't have to call at the optimal frequency.
link |
You'd be making this mistake, frankly, if you did.
link |
What's the difference between in person and online play,
link |
given that context?
link |
Yeah, well, online poker and live poker,
link |
it's the same game, right?
link |
but it's different in so many levels, right?
link |
I think playing online,
link |
you have to focus far more on fundamentals.
link |
You know, on game theory,
link |
you don't have the added bonus of looking across the table
link |
and getting any sense of whether your opponent
link |
is strong or weak, they're bluffing, whatever, you know.
link |
And also because online poker, those that play it,
link |
you play far more hands.
link |
Like some of these guys are playing 10, 20 tables
link |
at the same time, right?
link |
So you're just, you're hitting the long run really quickly
link |
and you're creating a database on your opponents, right?
link |
So let's say, you know, online, I can see your data.
link |
I'm like, well, this guy, he's playing 40% of hands.
link |
He's betting the river 80% of the time.
link |
So now I can use that data and, you know,
link |
exploit you that way.
link |
When you play live, you don't have that.
link |
Do you enjoy playing online?
link |
I enjoy, so with online poker, I enjoy the convenience of it
link |
because, you know, you can be on your couch
link |
in your underwear, not leave your house.
link |
Do you also play multiple games at the same time
link |
or do you try to play one game?
link |
I typically like to play one or two,
link |
but I can play up to four.
link |
I find that past four, it's hard for me to keep up
link |
and keep track of what's actually happening.
link |
You know, it's a different mindset required.
link |
Like a lot of these young guys,
link |
they're accustomed to 20 tables at a time.
link |
It feels like the purity of the game is gone.
link |
It's much more robotic, right?
link |
So if you're playing 20 tables,
link |
you're just making decisions based on like what, you know,
link |
you're not thinking about the depth of the situation
link |
and what just happened 15 minutes ago.
link |
You don't even know what happened
link |
because you can't pay attention to all that at once.
link |
And some of the magic of poker is the low sample.
link |
For example, and sorry to be bringing up Magnus so much,
link |
but there's so much parallel between the two of you
link |
and the poker and the chess world.
link |
He hates Olympics and world championships
link |
and all that kind of stuff because it's so low sample.
link |
But to me, that's part of the magic of it.
link |
There's the World Series of Poker, the main event.
link |
There's a magic to it.
link |
And I don't know what that is exactly
link |
because so much of the stake is so rare,
link |
so much drama and heartbreak leading up to it
link |
that all somehow, yeah, it accumulates
link |
to that magical moment when somebody wins.
link |
Especially that event,
link |
the World Series of Poker main event historically,
link |
like that's it, you know, that's the pinnacle.
link |
That's where like mainstream watches,
link |
that's where people are tuning in
link |
and the gravity of the moment, you know,
link |
it's so much bigger than people,
link |
like everyone gets the opportunity
link |
to play armchair quarterback too, right?
link |
Oh, he should do this.
link |
You're not under the lights.
link |
You're not under the pressure.
link |
You know, it might seem easy for you at home to be like,
link |
well, yeah, but you can see the whole cards.
link |
You know, they can't.
link |
Certainly the idea of the small sample with tournaments,
link |
I like the idea that you don't have to worry about,
link |
oh, well, if I do this now, then in the future,
link |
you know, I won't be balanced.
link |
I have to be balanced here or anything like that.
link |
That's like really boring and lame, right?
link |
Again, that is kind of the way the younger generation
link |
learns how to play the game, being balanced in every spot
link |
and then randomizing, you know, like, oh,
link |
I'm supposed to do this 50% of the time.
link |
Okay, so if my left card is red, I'll do it.
link |
And if it's black, I don't.
link |
So you're not even making,
link |
you're no longer making actual decisions for yourself.
link |
You're just randomizing.
link |
And that's way less fun for me
link |
than tailoring it to the situation.
link |
And the final table at the main event,
link |
there's none of that.
link |
You have to, I mean, it's all or nothing.
link |
Well, you shouldn't be, but there are like, again,
link |
I think a lot of the young guys,
link |
they are thinking in that regard,
link |
like, oh, randomization.
link |
Maybe at that table, the final table at the main event,
link |
what's a hand that stands out to you
link |
that was especially gutsy and powerful or memorable
link |
for that you've seen in the history of poker?
link |
Well, for me, the one that stands out
link |
and probably because I was so young
link |
and it was my first year, like one of my wife,
link |
won a bracelet that year,
link |
was I was friends with Scotty Wynn, the Prince of Poker.
link |
And he was heads up against the guy named Kevin McBride.
link |
And I was on the rail, you know, I'm like, wow,
link |
he's gonna, you know, he's heads up.
link |
And he was so cool.
link |
Like he had a mullet, but it's perfect, right?
link |
He had the white shirt, the black thing.
link |
He's drinking a Michelob, smoking a cigarette, whatever,
link |
you know, all chill.
link |
He bets it all on the river.
link |
And the guy's thinking, and he psychologically owned him.
link |
And he said, he goes with his beer, he goes,
link |
you call gonna be all over baby.
link |
Ha ha ha, that's right.
link |
Okay, so this guy who was an amateur heard that
link |
and was like, there's so much pressure
link |
in this moment right now.
link |
I can't handle this pressure.
link |
But Scotty just told me, if I call here,
link |
the pressure's gone.
link |
I don't have to be under it anymore.
link |
So he sort of hypnotized them into making the call,
link |
you know, and Scotty had it.
link |
Scotty had, you know, the full house
link |
and it was over for the guy.
link |
You call gonna be all over baby.
link |
It was, I just, I love that aspect,
link |
sort of the table talk dynamic,
link |
which isn't as prevalent today as it was back then,
link |
but that one sticks out.
link |
And it probably, because it was one of my first.
link |
So the few words you say at the table can completely affect
link |
That's almost, that's scary.
link |
It was just so cool to me, you know,
link |
like just how he was so calm.
link |
And I think that too, added more pressure to the amateur.
link |
And I think like, again, part of it is,
link |
even back then it was 1998,
link |
there's still a big rail of people and there's lights
link |
and they're, you know, they're filming
link |
and all this kind of stuff.
link |
And it's a lot of pressure for a guy
link |
who's never been in this environment.
link |
And now I'm telling you, it can all be over soon.
link |
It will all be over soon.
link |
Just call, it's finished.
link |
Something about that accent too.
link |
Now you're a master at table talk as well.
link |
Do you have, do you just kind of go with your gut,
link |
Or is there a deliberate strategy with this sometimes?
link |
There's usually some sort of strategy that I think about
link |
in terms of what I want to say and whatnot.
link |
But a lot of the time I just go, I go with it, you know,
link |
the more you talk, the more information you get.
link |
Yeah, but in some cases against really good players,
link |
you're just giving away information, right?
link |
Like if I'm playing against Phil Ivey,
link |
I'm not engaging in anything.
link |
Cause he can read through it.
link |
He can sense based on what I'm saying, you know,
link |
the clues and where I'm trying to take him.
link |
And he reads through, he sees the tree through the forest
link |
or whatever you want to call it,
link |
the forest through the trees.
link |
And you know, so then I would just be like
link |
allowing myself to be exploitable.
link |
Is some of it just for fun?
link |
Because at the end of the day, if you're having fun,
link |
you might be at the top of your game.
link |
I've been thinking about this a lot lately actually.
link |
It's funny you bring this up
link |
because I've been thinking about when I'm at my best.
link |
And I think I'm at my best when I am comfortable like that.
link |
Where I'm not so stiff and worried about, you know,
link |
checking properly and worried about reading people.
link |
I'm like, no, I'm me.
link |
All right, I'm going to play some poker.
link |
Do you want to call me?
link |
Call, go ahead, do what you want.
link |
Cause then I realized, you know, ultimately it was like,
link |
I'm comfortable in that.
link |
My opponents aren't as comfortable in that.
link |
They're comfortable with this, you know, the robot thing.
link |
But I thought more about that and how,
link |
especially with some tournaments coming up,
link |
I plan on really kind of sort of getting back to my roots
link |
From a spectator perspective, I love it.
link |
But it's also interesting whenever you see a Daniel
link |
on the ground of quiet.
link |
That's an interesting, like it feels like a calm
link |
before a storm of sorts.
link |
So I'm sure that's also part of it.
link |
Yeah, like I've gone, I've ebbed and flowed.
link |
And like I said, you know, I took on some coaches
link |
and that was really learning game theory.
link |
Cause I felt like it was important to always stick,
link |
you know, keep up with what's going on.
link |
And then I do feel like to some degree,
link |
it sort of took away a little bit of my own
link |
instinctual ideas in terms of what I should be doing.
link |
So I think like the most dangerous version of myself
link |
is a deep understanding of the game theory
link |
with my wisdom of many years of,
link |
and comfort of just sort of like being myself at the table.
link |
And being relaxed.
link |
Letting your mind flow.
link |
Let me ask you the greatest, the goat question,
link |
greatest of all time.
link |
Can you make the case for a few folks?
link |
So first you tweeted referring to Phil Ivey as the goat,
link |
saying the goat doing goat things.
link |
That's a recent tweet.
link |
So can you make the case for Phil Ivey,
link |
or maybe who is the greatest poker player of all time?
link |
Would you put Phil?
link |
For me, until someone knocks him off the podium,
link |
the king of poker and the goat is Phil Ivey.
link |
So, and the reason I say that is,
link |
I think of poker as more than just one game.
link |
There's different variants.
link |
You know, there's Holdem, Omaha, Stud, Triple Draw,
link |
all these different types of games.
link |
And Phil in every arena has been dominant.
link |
Whether it was tournament poker, dominated it.
link |
Mixed game, high stakes poker in Bobby's room, dominated.
link |
Online poker against all the wizards, dominated.
link |
Made millions in every arena.
link |
And, you know, he sort of took a few years away from poker
link |
with his legal troubles and things like that,
link |
You know, he's been playing in the high roller series again.
link |
And, you know, he comes from,
link |
he's cut from a different cloth,
link |
but he has a tenacity and a focus that's unparalleled,
link |
When he's in the zone, I mean, for lack,
link |
and this has nothing to do with race.
link |
It really has to do with mannerism,
link |
but he does remind me of like a combination
link |
of Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods
link |
in the way that he approaches it.
link |
He's very intense.
link |
And he outworks everybody, you know?
link |
And I think, frankly,
link |
a lot of his mannerisms do come from them
link |
because he's young watching these guys on TV.
link |
And a lot of his ways of being, you know,
link |
his learned behavior, I think probably from people like that.
link |
People at the top of their sport
link |
and people that are Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan
link |
aren't just at the top of their sport,
link |
but they kind of dominate the sport
link |
to some kind of aura that.
link |
There's a uniqueness to them.
link |
They're not built like us.
link |
They're not, you know, they're not.
link |
Like I wish, I wish I could have the kind of focus
link |
that Phil Ivey has, you know, and see everything
link |
I just, that's not me, you know?
link |
I don't have that.
link |
And he does, he has that gene, whatever it is.
link |
But they also look like they're not having that much fun.
link |
They're more focused on the perfection,
link |
like a dogged pursuit of perfection.
link |
And you know, that might even be true.
link |
It might not be as fun.
link |
You know, I don't know.
link |
Like I have fun at the table.
link |
When you look outwardly, you look at someone,
link |
like maybe he is having a blast.
link |
Maybe that's just the way that he likes, you know?
link |
Like is Tiger Woods having fun when he's like on 17
link |
about to win a major?
link |
It doesn't look like it, theoretically.
link |
Well, if you look at Michael Jordan,
link |
I don't know about Tiger Woods,
link |
but I think they're more focused
link |
on every single mistake they make.
link |
I think they're more obsessed about not making a mistake
link |
and hating every time they make a mistake.
link |
That's probably like 99% of their mental energy.
link |
I think that's part of what makes them great, right?
link |
They don't look past the mistake and just let it,
link |
They're like, they want to correct it.
link |
And yeah, there's a tension, almost like a trade off.
link |
I wonder if that's always the case
link |
between sort of greatness and happiness.
link |
I remember Huck Seed, who, you know,
link |
when I was a kid growing up, he was like the poker idol.
link |
He won the world championship in 1996.
link |
And I was lucky enough to hang out with him a little bit.
link |
And he would go through these streaks
link |
where he had an A game and he had an F game.
link |
His A game was unparalleled.
link |
Nobody could beat him, right?
link |
But his F game was so terrible that he was just a fish.
link |
You know, he was playing terribly.
link |
And I remember him saying,
link |
and it was exactly what you're saying.
link |
He'd make like one little mistake, right?
link |
And then he would go off.
link |
And I was like, Huck, why do you do that?
link |
Like, you know, your B game would be just fine.
link |
He's like, well, if I'm gonna make a mistake,
link |
What's the point, right?
link |
Like, if you can't play perfect,
link |
there's no point in playing at all.
link |
So he was extreme in that regard,
link |
in the way that he viewed it.
link |
And depending on the sport,
link |
those folks, like in chess, certainly the case,
link |
that kind of mindset can destroy you.
link |
No, I totally see that.
link |
Because of a sequence of mistakes.
link |
Like the kind of year you had
link |
with the well scissor poker
link |
can completely destroy a human being.
link |
If you're not able to see the bigger picture of it.
link |
You said that Phil Ivey is the hardest,
link |
your toughest opponent,
link |
the toughest person to play against.
link |
And how do you beat him?
link |
Because Phil Ivey's just,
link |
he's seeing things that nobody else has seen really.
link |
Like subtle things, where I'm putting my hands,
link |
where I'm looking, you know, my pulse,
link |
like stuff that I don't even know I'm giving off.
link |
He's so engaged and so focused
link |
and has such a, just a, he's fearless, right?
link |
A lot of people, you know,
link |
they'll play poker and be like,
link |
I don't think this guy has it.
link |
But do they have the guts?
link |
Do they have the cojones, if you will,
link |
to actually do anything about it?
link |
And stand up to this person?
link |
I forgot the hand that you tweeted
link |
about the goat doing goat things.
link |
That wasn't even that big of a goat hand.
link |
But like, there's hands where like,
link |
there was a famous one in Australia
link |
where the flop was like jack, jack at nine
link |
and Phil check raised the flop with six, seven, nothing.
link |
Just absolutely nothing.
link |
And the guy re raised him, right?
link |
And Phil just knew.
link |
He went all in with nothing.
link |
If the guy calls, he's done, he's cooked.
link |
But he was so tuned in that this guy's not strong,
link |
that he just, you know, he did things like that.
link |
And it's tough to play against a guy like that.
link |
So he gets great reads and is able to execute on them,
link |
has the guts to execute on them.
link |
He's got experience, he's got work ethic.
link |
He also, I think one thing I'm underselling too,
link |
is his strategic mind, right?
link |
Like I believe that, you know, like I said,
link |
the new age player, they learn how to play
link |
through a very systematic approach.
link |
Okay, let's look at the data.
link |
Make up a game right now.
link |
Three cards, we each get three cards.
link |
Jacks are wild, sixes are, you know,
link |
six of hearts is wild, right?
link |
Just make up that game.
link |
Phil will figure it out intuitively,
link |
very, very quickly, right?
link |
Without having the answers for him, right?
link |
So that's like the difference
link |
between the players of my generation.
link |
We had to figure this stuff out on our own.
link |
Today, well, I wanna know the answer,
link |
I go ask the computer and the computer tells me.
link |
So I really believe like if you created a game from scratch
link |
that Phil Ivey would be my horse that I wanna play in it.
link |
So he's in some sense in tune with some deeper thing.
link |
He has what we used to call card sense.
link |
Can you try to make the case for some others
link |
like Doyle Brunson, Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negrano,
link |
and maybe one of the modern guys
link |
like Justin Bonomo or somebody like that?
link |
Sure, oh, so let's start with Doyle, okay?
link |
Like what Doyle has going for him above all,
link |
above and beyond is twofold, really.
link |
Longevity, I mean, he's in his late 80s.
link |
And last time I played with him, I was like,
link |
how is he getting better?
link |
Like I really felt like he was playing better
link |
than he had, you know, in the previous years.
link |
But also with Doyle, like Doyle had to figure,
link |
you know, we talked about my generation
link |
having to figure it on their own.
link |
I mean, they really had to figure it out on their own.
link |
Like they didn't have any computer simulation
link |
to tell you if Ace King was a favorite over pocket sixes.
link |
So we know what he did.
link |
He would take a deck of cards and they would deal out,
link |
and they were with a notepad, right?
link |
Okay, Ace King won.
link |
And then they would do like a hundred of them
link |
and be like, all right, Ace King won like 53.
link |
So it must be a favorite.
link |
And he did it manually, you know?
link |
And he did it in a time when it was very, very difficult.
link |
And he's seen poker evolve and change throughout the years.
link |
Now, listen, is he gonna be able to compete
link |
against the top players in the world today?
link |
Absolutely not, you know?
link |
But how many people, he's the best 88 year old player
link |
in the world by a mile, okay?
link |
That's not even close.
link |
And Doyle, again, he's another guy who plays all the games.
link |
He's played high stakes cash, tournaments, you name it.
link |
He's iconic, you know, he's the godfather.
link |
So, but there's also an element to that.
link |
So the iconic element, like your personality in poker.
link |
I mean, not to romanticize this thing too much,
link |
but poker is also a game of personalities.
link |
I mean, it's part of the greatness
link |
is like the uniqueness of the human being.
link |
Yeah, I think also, yeah.
link |
I mean, if you'd like looking at it from that perspective
link |
in terms of like Goat,
link |
like Goat in terms of what you represent,
link |
like the cowboy, the godfather, you know,
link |
he's been around, you know,
link |
we played in the sixties and stuff like that.
link |
It's just something like incredibly cool.
link |
Like I often think about if I could go back in time
link |
and like visit, you know, an era,
link |
I'd love to go like to Vegas in the seventies
link |
and just like, I'm proud.
link |
I already, like, I can think of what it would smell like,
link |
probably not ideal, cigarettes and, you know,
link |
the leather jackets and just the vibe
link |
of what it must've been like with the mobsters
link |
and things like that.
link |
You know, he's lived through all that,
link |
all the cool movies we've seen.
link |
Like Doyle talks about some of those films.
link |
He's like, yeah, that guy,
link |
he said he was gonna stab me in my stomach.
link |
You know, he knows these people.
link |
It was, he's like a source of history, really.
link |
Yeah, when poker was a game for the mob
link |
and the degenerates and all that kind of stuff
link |
before it transitioned into professional sport.
link |
Professional game.
link |
Yeah, so he was there through the whole thing.
link |
He's been there through the whole transition.
link |
He's seen it all, yeah.
link |
Yeah, and then to the online world.
link |
I can't even say without smiling, Phil Hellmuth.
link |
Okay, so Phil, here's the thing with Phil.
link |
He takes it very personal when I say this
link |
and he doesn't hear the compliment.
link |
He only hears the negativity.
link |
Because Phil wants to be considered
link |
the greatest of all time.
link |
He wants to be the greatest of all time.
link |
But I'm like, Phil, here's the facts.
link |
You have the best, absolute greatest resume
link |
at the World Series of Poker of anyone in the world.
link |
Is that not enough, right?
link |
That's what you have.
link |
You have that, right?
link |
Now, do I think you're the best
link |
no limit holding player in the world today?
link |
Do I think that, you know,
link |
you can play high stakes mixed games
link |
with the best players in the world today and win?
link |
So he wouldn't get as much flack on this topic
link |
if he wasn't so boastful and like, you know, demanding.
link |
Like you never hear Phil Ivey say,
link |
I'm the best in the world.
link |
Like his peers do, right?
link |
But Phil wants to make the claim.
link |
And I simply say, I beg to differ, right?
link |
Like, I don't think you are the best player in the world.
link |
If we can linger on the compliment so he can hear it,
link |
what makes him so good?
link |
Because it seems like a lot of times
link |
his play is not optimal.
link |
Yeah, he definitely has his own brand and style of play,
link |
He does not adhere to,
link |
he's never used a solver in his life.
link |
He doesn't know, he's not in that world, right?
link |
Phil has a lot of faith and a lot of confidence
link |
in what he does and that it will be successful.
link |
And I think there's something to be said about that, right?
link |
He doesn't ever lack in belief that he can win
link |
and he finds a way to do it his way.
link |
And frankly, a lot of what he does
link |
is very effective against specific types of players
link |
who are intimidated by him,
link |
but whether it's his resume or his demeanor
link |
or his attitude sometimes, right?
link |
Like if you're an average player
link |
and then you beat Phil in a hand, you're gonna hear it.
link |
This idiot from Northern Europe and beat me in this pot.
link |
And for some people, they don't like that.
link |
So he can use that against them.
link |
But I also think too, like he cares so much, right?
link |
And that leads to trying really, really hard.
link |
Like he sees these moments and he doesn't phone them in.
link |
Like whatever brand of poker he plays,
link |
he tries his best at all times to succeed and to win.
link |
And there's some, even though like he's fundamentally flawed
link |
in a lot of things that he does
link |
compared to some of the bigger players,
link |
his effort and will and like his determination
link |
to stick around is, you know, is up there.
link |
And he is somebody who seems to really hate losing.
link |
Yes, yeah, he feels like he deserves to win, right?
link |
And if he loses, it's, you know, it's not just.
link |
As you joked around that you and him
link |
might do an anger management course.
link |
Yeah, I did say that in one video.
link |
Now this is tough because you're a humble guy,
link |
but objectively speaking,
link |
can you say what your strengths are?
link |
You're often listed as one of,
link |
if not the greatest player of all time.
link |
So what are the things that make you stand out?
link |
So for me, when I grew up,
link |
I admired the big cash game players,
link |
because that's what I was.
link |
I love tournaments, but I wanted to be well rounded.
link |
Like in my day, you couldn't make the poker hall of fame
link |
if you just played one game.
link |
You had to jump in to the high stakes games
link |
in Bobby's room, as they say, right?
link |
And I was able to do that.
link |
When I was in my early, in my mid twenties,
link |
I was playing 4,000, 8,000 limits.
link |
You know, you could win or lose a million dollars in a day.
link |
So I grinded it out.
link |
Like a lot of people think, oh, you know, he's lucky.
link |
He's had sponsorship.
link |
Otherwise he'd be broke.
link |
It's like, I built multi million dollar bankrolls
link |
before any of that stuff existed.
link |
And I did it the good old fashioned way
link |
by sitting my butt on the table.
link |
I think probably one of my biggest strengths
link |
is self awareness.
link |
And in that regard, a level of humility
link |
that always allows me to say, okay, well, you know what?
link |
In this case with these players, they're better than me.
link |
So what am I going to learn from them, right?
link |
Rather than have this need to say,
link |
I'm the best because of history.
link |
I'm always looking to guys and go, wow,
link |
he does this really well.
link |
Whether it's the Adamos or the Ivies or whoever it may be.
link |
So my willingness to adapt, I think,
link |
and stay relevant by learning what the young guys are learning
link |
is something I've always done.
link |
And I also pride myself on, again, being well rounded,
link |
like playing all the games.
link |
Like I don't feel intimidated in any game,
link |
you know, whatever the format is.
link |
So always being a scholar of the game
link |
as the game evolves, as the different games evolve,
link |
the different players evolve, the culture evolves,
link |
always adjusting by being a scholar,
link |
having the humility to be a scholar.
link |
A healthy respect for, a healthy respect
link |
for the younger generation, how they learn,
link |
what they learn and what they can teach me,
link |
rather than poo poo it and say, oh, these kids today.
link |
Cause that's what a lot of people,
link |
like the Mike Matisos and the Phil Hellmuth, my generation,
link |
they just poo poo it because they don't understand it.
link |
On a level of one to 10,
link |
their level of understanding of this is like a one, maybe.
link |
If I'm being generous by calling it a one,
link |
they really don't understand it.
link |
So they poo poo it, right?
link |
It's easy to do that.
link |
Like, oh, that's not how I do it.
link |
So that's wrong or that's stupid or whatever.
link |
I don't take that approach.
link |
I go, well, let me learn.
link |
Let me see what there is to this.
link |
But that said, the crankiness that Matisos
link |
and Phil Hellmuth have is great to watch,
link |
especially when they're on a table with you.
link |
Yeah, it's a blast.
link |
You're masterful at being able to get under their skin.
link |
What about somebody from the new school,
link |
like Justin Bonomo, who's leading in terms of cash wins.
link |
Is there somebody like that,
link |
that stands out to you as a potential GOAT status person?
link |
Yeah, so there's two different ones, but one is very...
link |
So they're both just no limit, right?
link |
So again, when I think of poker,
link |
I think of a variety of games,
link |
but there's so many of the young guys that specialize.
link |
Michael Adamo is one that I've mentioned several times
link |
and I love the way that he approaches the game.
link |
Another one that's highly respected
link |
because of his online prowess and his...
link |
People have looked and how close he is to game theory
link |
and they say he's about as perfect as you get.
link |
And I got a kid named Linus.
link |
Linus love online, Linus Linger.
link |
So he just came second recently, I believe in the Triton,
link |
huge Triton event.
link |
So he's primarily an online player.
link |
Yeah, he's an online cash player for the most part,
link |
but he plays some live.
link |
And he's, again, and I respect the peers that I play with
link |
who say, yeah, he's tough as nails.
link |
There's another kid too, Russian kid named Timofey Kuznetsov
link |
and he plays all the games and he's well respected
link |
And same with a guy like a Jungleman, Dan Cates,
link |
who's a unique personality.
link |
I mean, this guy showed up, won the poker players championship
link |
back to back years in a Randy Macho Man Savage costume.
link |
And he was doing Macho Man the entire time.
link |
Oh yeah, I'm gonna take all the chips like I did last year.
link |
And he was in character for the entirety of the tournament.
link |
But yeah, I respect for a lot of those guys.
link |
Is it gonna take time to figure out
link |
who stands the test of time?
link |
That's the thing, right?
link |
So a lot of these kids,
link |
like there was a guy who beat me heads up
link |
in the million dollar one drop.
link |
I got 8.7, he won $15 million, kid named Dan Coleman.
link |
He was seen as like the next big thing in poker, right?
link |
He made his money, just wasn't for him.
link |
So he's moved on to doing what he's doing,
link |
skiing in the Alps, whatever.
link |
We have nobody seen him from like five, six years.
link |
So that can happen, right?
link |
Because there is a lot of burnout.
link |
I think it was actually a Gotham Chess
link |
who mentioned something about how difficult it is to like,
link |
I think it's true in poker.
link |
When you get really, really good at something,
link |
to get this much better takes so much work.
link |
And a lot of people don't necessarily wanna put in
link |
that kind of work in order to do that.
link |
That's just even staying at the same level
link |
takes a huge amount of work.
link |
Like, so if you wanna get better at chess,
link |
you're already like really, really good.
link |
And you're trying to get like one little bit better.
link |
You have to study like in a ridiculous amount, you know?
link |
And again, that's once you've already had,
link |
I think the toughest thing for anybody,
link |
once you've tasted success
link |
and you've already achieved it,
link |
staying hungry, staying on the top,
link |
reaching the top is much easier than it is to stay there.
link |
Over years, what's your training regimen in poker
link |
in terms of how you keep improving?
link |
So you said you study games,
link |
but that's mostly leading up to a particular tournament.
link |
But is there kind of a behind the scenes daily activity
link |
you try to do that kind of over time keeps you sharp?
link |
So for me, now that I'm 47,
link |
and I feel like the predominant aspect of my poker game
link |
is going to be in terms of my success
link |
is gonna be my mental state, right?
link |
So I find it's really, really important for me now
link |
at this age to have balance.
link |
So when I'm not playing poker and I'm out of it,
link |
poker is not even on my radar.
link |
You're able to remove it from your mind.
link |
Doing my fantasy hockey, play a little chess,
link |
you know, play some golf, watch some hockey,
link |
whatever the case may be,
link |
outside of the game.
link |
And then I start to get the itch.
link |
Like after the World Series of Poker,
link |
the poker door was closed.
link |
Yeah, you took some time off.
link |
All of August, I didn't play any poker at all
link |
until just recently, you know.
link |
I started to get the itch again.
link |
Because that's what's important for me,
link |
is if I don't have the itch and I don't want to play poker,
link |
then I'm not gonna be at my best.
link |
Once I start getting the itch,
link |
that's when I start to say,
link |
okay, let's start watching some of these streams.
link |
Let's see what my opponents are up to lately.
link |
And, you know, let's look at some solvers
link |
and different things like that.
link |
And you're doing pretty good.
link |
You came back and doing pretty good.
link |
Do you like being in front of the camera
link |
through the hell of the World Series of Poker this year?
link |
You filmed every single day.
link |
Does that energize you?
link |
Is that exhausting?
link |
Because it's really beneficial to a huge amount of people.
link |
It energizes the poker community.
link |
But do you see it as a service
link |
or do you purely just love it?
link |
I've been comfortable on camera since I was a kid.
link |
When I was a kid, I wanted to be an actor.
link |
Like really, really young.
link |
And I was always comfortable in that environment.
link |
I think like that gives me a little bit of an advantage
link |
sometimes too, with these film events.
link |
Cause I'm comfortable with the mic on
link |
and on camera with the lights.
link |
And I think a lot of people maybe aren't
link |
with the knowledge that other people
link |
are gonna see what they're doing every day.
link |
So it's been so comfortable and easy for me.
link |
As far as the World Series goes
link |
and the vlogs and all the shooting,
link |
it's kind of therapeutic for me.
link |
It is essentially my version of journaling, right?
link |
So there's a lot of value, I think,
link |
in like at the end of a day doing a brain dump
link |
where you just write out and journal.
link |
But doing it on camera has this similar effect.
link |
And it also, when you make a mistake on your own,
link |
you're held accountable to you.
link |
But when I have to explain it to others,
link |
like here's what I did.
link |
And this is the mistake I made
link |
or whatever the case may be.
link |
It actually, I think that helps me.
link |
Yeah, so you're held responsible by a larger audience.
link |
I think it's like, so like I said,
link |
listen, I'm 47, my life is good.
link |
I don't have to be in this tournament.
link |
If I'm over it, I can just dump my chips off and go home.
link |
But I can't when I'm doing the vlog,
link |
like I have to actually answer to that.
link |
And it keeps me in line.
link |
How hard is it to win the main event
link |
of the World Series of Poker?
link |
So the main event of the World Series of Poker
link |
is the hardest event to win
link |
simply because of the sheer size of it.
link |
You're talking seven, 8,000 players, right?
link |
And a lot of landmines.
link |
And frankly, there are so many players
link |
that you've not played with before too.
link |
You play these high roller events, like the super ones,
link |
you get 30, 40 people, you know everybody, right?
link |
So you have an idea.
link |
You sit at the main event, you don't have any idea.
link |
This guy wearing a Philadelphia Eagles jersey
link |
and sunglasses, and he just raised you big.
link |
I don't know this guy, I don't know what he's about.
link |
So there's a lot of like, it's grueling too.
link |
You're seven, eight days where you're in the blender
link |
as you might say, so.
link |
So what's the structure?
link |
So it's $10,000 buy in or something like that.
link |
And there's a bunch of tables and you just keep playing.
link |
Like when is it over for a single table?
link |
So the way that it works is this.
link |
So there's, let's say 8,000 players.
link |
And the way the main event works, unique to others,
link |
is there's various day ones you can play, right?
link |
So a day one, you're gonna play from noon
link |
till like midnight, right?
link |
If you're still in, you bag up your chips
link |
and you'll come back for day two, okay?
link |
There's four different day ones, right?
link |
Now they'll all combine essentially to play on a day two.
link |
And at the end of the night, they redraw the tables.
link |
So you don't just win your table.
link |
If players get knocked out, tables break,
link |
they continue to be replaced.
link |
So you start with 8,000, then after day one,
link |
you've got 6,000, then you do the same.
link |
You play like a 12 hour day and you slowly whittle down.
link |
Day four, day three, day four, you're in the money.
link |
And then you continue to progress.
link |
And then what they do now with the final table is they,
link |
because they were trying to do this for TV,
link |
these final tables can take, you know, 12 hours to play.
link |
And what we were finding was, you know,
link |
you start the thing at 5 p.m. and it goes till 8 a.m.
link |
And like nobody's watching anymore.
link |
So they separate into three days now.
link |
And so you're talking now, it's like six, seven days
link |
to get to the final table and another three days to play it.
link |
So you're grinding for, you know, a week and a half.
link |
But most of the time you're playing against people
link |
you've never played against before.
link |
Especially early on, yeah.
link |
And then by the end, like, who knows?
link |
You know, rarely do you see, you see in the last hundred,
link |
you usually see some notable names.
link |
Then in the last 27, you might see one, maybe two.
link |
Final table, maybe one.
link |
But often it's gonna be, you know,
link |
some players you've never heard of before.
link |
Is there strategies that maximize your likelihood
link |
of having a chance?
link |
Like I think the World Series of Poker main event
link |
is a unique animal in that, you know,
link |
like we talk about game theory and all that kind of stuff.
link |
If you're focused on that when you're playing,
link |
you're really not playing well, right?
link |
You need to just exploit
link |
because you're gonna have a lot of people
link |
who see this as a bucket list item.
link |
You know, they just wanna play
link |
the main event in the World Series.
link |
And they might be scared, they might be nervous or whatever.
link |
You don't have to worry about being balanced, right?
link |
Oh, you know, I have to make sure that I'm, no you don't.
link |
You might not, you're playing with this guy now
link |
for three hours, you might never see him again.
link |
So just make the play that makes sense for you, right?
link |
So yeah, you're gonna, I approach that event
link |
very differently than I would
link |
like playing against the high roller players
link |
that I play with today.
link |
Does that mean more aggressive essentially?
link |
So when you play against really good players,
link |
you have to take small plus EV scenarios
link |
where you push the envelope
link |
and you're playing really aggressive.
link |
You're bluffing off your stack.
link |
You gotta do this.
link |
You gotta focus a little bit more on being balanced
link |
because otherwise, you know,
link |
you're not gonna beat these guys.
link |
Whereas if you're playing with amateurs
link |
and you're playing with regular players,
link |
for the most part, risking all your chips on a bluff,
link |
probably don't need to do that.
link |
You don't need to do that nearly as much.
link |
You can probably slowly but surely build your stack
link |
without taking, you know, those high risk,
link |
high variance situations
link |
because you'll find better situations.
link |
What mistakes do amateurs usually make
link |
in tournaments like that?
link |
Are they over bluffing?
link |
Well, I think amateurs generally,
link |
the biggest mistake they make is they think
link |
that pros are bluffing more than they are.
link |
So like a pro will bet all his chips on the end
link |
and they're like, ah, I don't know.
link |
Maybe, you know, it's Phil Ivey.
link |
Maybe he's doing some crazy stuff.
link |
He's like, probably not.
link |
He's probably just got it, you know?
link |
And then they lose all their money by calling
link |
or going all in as well.
link |
And so the right thing is to be more patient.
link |
So amateur is too impatient or just bad reads?
link |
So all the amateurs are built different.
link |
Some of the amateurs are just too weak and passive.
link |
They're just waiting for the nuts, you know?
link |
And then, you know, the pros, everyone notices that.
link |
And then when they make their big hand,
link |
they don't get paid anyway.
link |
So in order to win the main event,
link |
I mean, you have to have some components
link |
of your game that are aggressive.
link |
It's very unlikely to expect to just get the cards
link |
the whole way and just always have the best hand.
link |
You're gonna have to find ways to win pots
link |
that, you know, where you don't have the best hand.
link |
How do you win the final table?
link |
The final table is unique now,
link |
especially because you're talking about the way
link |
that poker works in tournaments is that
link |
if there's seven people left
link |
and you have just, you know, you're very short on chips.
link |
But if one other player goes out,
link |
you just make like $300,000 for folding,
link |
like just for sitting out, right?
link |
The term for that that, you know,
link |
show kids uses ICM, independent, you know, chip model,
link |
right, where it talks about the value of each chip.
link |
Where what happens, what we see now is,
link |
let's say one guy has a big chip lead
link |
and there's another guy who's second in chips
link |
and there's a couple that are short.
link |
These guys in the middle, they just play super tight
link |
and they wait for the little guys to go
link |
while the big stack is just pounding them
link |
because he can afford to, right?
link |
He knows that people are handcuffed.
link |
So let's say I had 10 million in chips
link |
and you have 9 million in chips.
link |
And these guys have little chips.
link |
If I go all in on you, are you gonna call me
link |
and risk like, you know, guaranteed pay jumps
link |
of like moving up a few spots?
link |
So really the question comes down to like,
link |
are you the type of guy who just wants to inch up
link |
or are you gonna go for it?
link |
And you're gonna go for the win.
link |
I think ultimately there's some value
link |
in being the guy who says,
link |
you know, I don't care if I come seventh.
link |
I'm not worried about going from seventh to fifth.
link |
And so you're saying like the guys that win
link |
will often be the ones that call there.
link |
So like, they're not just bullying the small stacks, they're.
link |
Well, they're the ones,
link |
no, they're the ones that are willing to risk it, right?
link |
So there are some people who, you know,
link |
if there's five left, you know,
link |
and they're third in chips
link |
and there's two guys very short
link |
and you, you know, they'll have ace king
link |
and someone moves, they'll just fold.
link |
They fold the hand because they wanna wait
link |
for those two other players to get broke.
link |
And that way they let you know, they make actual money.
link |
So you, I guess the thought process
link |
between winning first place
link |
and winning the most amount of money are different.
link |
They're conflicting, right?
link |
Because in order to like win,
link |
if you're just, if your focus is only on winning
link |
the tournament, you will make mistakes financially
link |
where you had guaranteed income for just folding, right?
link |
Let's say a guy has one chip left, you know, one chip
link |
and me and you have good chips
link |
and I go all in with you and I lose.
link |
Now that guy, you know, got the guaranteed,
link |
you know, he got the pay jump that I wouldn't have got.
link |
So there's some extremely stupid mistakes
link |
you can make from a financial perspective,
link |
but it's often at odds with, you know,
link |
giving yourself the best chance to actually come first.
link |
And in a tournament, especially the main event,
link |
especially the final table, it's all about coming in first.
link |
Well, I know because most of the people who make it,
link |
so like, you know, when you play these high rollers,
link |
these guys are accustomed to playing for a hundred thousand,
link |
they're, they're accustomed to this kind of money.
link |
So they're going to play, right?
link |
For the most, but you're talking about guys
link |
who bought into a $10,000 tournament,
link |
maybe never had a hundred K cash in their life.
link |
And now they're sitting there and it's like 1 million
link |
for fifth and 2 million for fourth.
link |
So like, they don't want to be fifth,
link |
they're just going to sit there and go, ah, I don't want.
link |
So they'll, they'll be under more financial pressure
link |
because they're not like your typical high roller
link |
Are you still able to find the guts to take big risks?
link |
Yeah, see, I'm trying to win.
link |
Like, I think that gives me an advantage, frankly,
link |
where I might make decisions that are financially suboptimal
link |
because I'm trying to win,
link |
but there's also an inherent advantage to that.
link |
Like that again, something I watched and learned
link |
from a guy like Michael Adamo,
link |
where he takes advantage of these people playing
link |
so passively in these spots where he's like,
link |
I don't, I'm not trying to come, I'm going to win.
link |
I'm just going to bull bulldoze you.
link |
Cause I'm not worried about, you know,
link |
the small financial mistake of, you know, a pay jump.
link |
What advice could you give to, to beginning poker players?
link |
Actually at every level, how to get better,
link |
how to improve, how to improve their game.
link |
Obviously, as you said,
link |
it's easiest to get better in the beginning,
link |
but what advice would you give how to get better?
link |
So one of the ways, I mean,
link |
I think way back to the how I started, right?
link |
And there's so many resources and tools available right now
link |
to analyze hands, but when you play, right?
link |
And you find yourself in a situation or a hand
link |
that you're not really sure about,
link |
not because you had aces and went all in and you lost,
link |
like that's not interesting,
link |
but an interesting situation where you're not sure
link |
what you did, jot the hand down, write it out.
link |
And then either A, you know, use some of the tools,
link |
whether it's the solvers, if you're advanced enough,
link |
or ask your group, you know,
link |
like have a couple of friends at your level
link |
and talk through the different decisions
link |
and start to learn that way, right?
link |
Cause those mistakes that you make
link |
or those tough, those tough hands,
link |
that's where the real learning comes from.
link |
Like, so that next, so basically if you're,
link |
cause you're gonna be in similar scenarios.
link |
In poker, you're rarely gonna have the identical situation,
link |
but you'll have situations that are similar.
link |
You know, you raise with ace king, someone three bet,
link |
another guy goes all in.
link |
Okay, well, what do I do in that spot?
link |
You know, it's, you're gonna have similar situations
link |
in the future as well.
link |
So figuring that out, the more you can do that,
link |
you chop away at, you know,
link |
different strategical mistakes, you know,
link |
you used to make that you no longer make.
link |
Are there resources like your masterclasses really is great?
link |
So there was a guy named Michael Acevedo.
link |
This is my, again, for a little bit more advanced players,
link |
but it's a book called a modern poker theory,
link |
I think it's called,
link |
which sort of explains game theory, right?
link |
To the novice, right?
link |
So it's a little bit, I think if you're new to poker,
link |
it's probably above the rim for you.
link |
But once you start to get a little better
link |
and you wanna understand how to do it,
link |
it's probably a good resource for as far as books.
link |
And there's also like tons of people
link |
who stream poker, professional players.
link |
And then you can get in there and you get in on the chat
link |
and you start talking, you ask them,
link |
you see people, you know,
link |
explaining their thought process and things like that.
link |
There's so many free resources.
link |
And of course my masterclass,
link |
I think does a good job of sort of compartmentalizing,
link |
like, you know, how to attack it on a deeper level.
link |
And we, you know, we get it, I try to get into,
link |
what's funny when I did the masterclass,
link |
I asked them, I was like, well, you know,
link |
how high end do you want this in terms of poker?
link |
And they're like, we want really, really high end.
link |
And I was like, okay, sure.
link |
Then I started to explain really, really high end.
link |
I'm like, okay, well, maybe the one below that, right?
link |
So I try to explain really complex, you know,
link |
theory in a more palatable way, in English, if you will.
link |
Cause some of these kids, you hear them talk
link |
and you'd be like, huh?
link |
But you also, which is really nice, give example hands
link |
that really illustrate the point, which is really nice.
link |
You also wrote a book, I think 10 years ago,
link |
Power Holding Strategy.
link |
It's interesting to think how much of the stuff
link |
in that book still applies, how much doesn't.
link |
Listen, I still think the book holds up to a certain degree.
link |
Obviously like, you know, it isn't optimal
link |
because there's like a more advanced strategies.
link |
And if you played that way,
link |
people will figure out a way to exploit you.
link |
But if you're like an average player playing
link |
an average buy ins, like that's sort of what I coined,
link |
like small ball approach, absolutely will work.
link |
You know, at the highest level,
link |
you have to add much more, a lot more bluffing.
link |
But overall, I think it's still, you know,
link |
for the most part, there's a lot of really,
link |
especially with tournaments,
link |
there's a lot of really good principles in the book.
link |
What's the difference in the dynamics,
link |
if you could just comment on between a heads up poker
link |
and when multiple people are in one hand,
link |
what are interesting aspects to everything
link |
we've been talking about from game theory
link |
to exploitative strategies, all that kind of stuff.
link |
So the biggest difference when you play,
link |
let's say nine handed, you know,
link |
against eight other players and you know, heads up is,
link |
first of all, just the type of hands
link |
and the number of hands you're gonna have to play.
link |
So the way that it works is if there's nine people,
link |
two out of the nine hands, you have to put in money.
link |
And the other seven, you could just fold for nothing, okay?
link |
When you're heads up,
link |
you're forced to put money in every single hand, okay?
link |
And there's only one other hand in front of you,
link |
which means the ranges of hands that you play
link |
is way wider, right?
link |
So if you're nine handed, right?
link |
And you're in first position, you're like, all right,
link |
what do I need to play?
link |
Like a good pair, you know, two high cards suited,
link |
a big ace, you know, stuff like that, that's it, right?
link |
That's what you're gonna play, right?
link |
And you're gonna fold all the rest.
link |
When you're heads up, you look at a king and a two
link |
and you're like, well, I gotta play this.
link |
You know, you're gonna, you're gonna,
link |
you're forced to play a lot more hands
link |
in a lot more complex situations
link |
when you're playing heads up,
link |
because you're gonna be playing much far weaker hands.
link |
Queen five, Jack three, all these types of hands.
link |
And you're gonna see flops where you're,
link |
you're not gonna have the luxury of being like,
link |
I'm in there with a premium hand, queens, kings, aces.
link |
Those are easier to play, right?
link |
Very, very strong holdings.
link |
Heads up, you're forced to dance and fight a lot more.
link |
You know, you can't sit in the weeds and wait.
link |
What do you enjoy more?
link |
Heads up is very intense.
link |
I like heads up, but I think if you had to play heads up
link |
eight, 10 hours, it's so mentally draining
link |
because your face with so many constant decisions
link |
each and every spot.
link |
Like you play nine handed, you look at a nine and a three,
link |
you throw it away, you hang out for a bit, relax,
link |
you go, you get a little break and then play hand.
link |
Heads up, you're like, it's like, boom, boom.
link |
It's like you're in the ring, you know,
link |
you're in the octagon and you're facing like
link |
haymakers nonstop.
link |
Since we talked about online a bit,
link |
is it possible to cheat in poker, especially online?
link |
So we offline also talked about the cheating controversy
link |
that's going on in the chess world.
link |
Is it possible to use, what is it?
link |
Remotely connected anal beads to somehow cheat?
link |
No, is that a concern of cheating online?
link |
So here's the thing, it's kind of like romanticized
link |
from the old days, like, you know, in the Western stuff,
link |
like people trying to cheat.
link |
And have you ever killed a man because he cheated?
link |
But when I started out as a teenager,
link |
I played in a game with a bunch of Italians
link |
and I knew they cheated and I didn't care
link |
because they were so bad that I could win anyway.
link |
I was like, I knew they would cheat,
link |
but I knew how they were cheating.
link |
So I was like, all right, you guys suck.
link |
But so here's the thing,
link |
anytime you're talking about large sums of money,
link |
there will be people looking to take advantage,
link |
whether that's live or online, right?
link |
And so it's like the job essentially of the, you know,
link |
the online operators or the, you know, live event staff
link |
to police it the best they can.
link |
And the players themselves being on the lookout for it.
link |
You know, like a guy like Dole Brunson is a great resource
link |
because he's seen it all and he's seen all the tricks,
link |
you know, and so live, you know,
link |
he probably could spot a few things.
link |
But online, there's various ways people can try to cheat,
link |
but there's also really good security measures in place
link |
to catch them, you know?
link |
And we've caught, you know, like about two years ago,
link |
there was a huge undertaking of like 500 accounts
link |
that were banned for doing different things.
link |
And, you know, there's, and again, you can't go in,
link |
they can't go into detail in terms of how they're doing it.
link |
Cause otherwise, you know, then you're sort of giving
link |
the cheats the playbook in terms of how to take advantage.
link |
But it's always gonna be a concern for poker
link |
wherever you play, right?
link |
But it's not something I'm worried about personally.
link |
So at the highest in person, and by the way,
link |
online there's really interesting algorithms
link |
that do some of the work in an automated way
link |
to detect, to flag things that are weird.
link |
But in person, it's just not something at the highest level
link |
that you're super concerned about.
link |
So it's not, it didn't quite infiltrate the poker world
link |
to a degree where it's a huge concern.
link |
Yeah, like, so here's the thing.
link |
I don't play in private games and whatever, right?
link |
But in private games, theoretically, you know,
link |
you could be in, if you don't trust the people
link |
you're playing with, like I've heard stories of people
link |
where, you know, they have an earpiece in
link |
that you can't see, right?
link |
And they have, you know, like RFID on the cards
link |
or something like that, and they have a phone reading it.
link |
So they have somebody in a truck telling them,
link |
you're gonna win this hand, you're gonna lose this hand.
link |
Like that happened in a private game.
link |
You know, and the guy, what's often funny
link |
about some of these people who cheat is they're so greedy
link |
and blatantly obvious that they get caught.
link |
Where if they use this tool in a more subtle way,
link |
they could probably continue to get away with it.
link |
But again, that's not something I worry about
link |
in a casino environment, you know, in these tournaments
link |
and things like that.
link |
But if I was playing in private games,
link |
like if I came down to Texas and some guy,
link |
I got cheated in a game by a guy named Blackie Blackburn
link |
and Tex, I was at the Chimo Hotel, I was a teenager
link |
and they saw me playing, you know,
link |
I was making good money as a teenager.
link |
I had like a $13,000 bankroll, you know,
link |
and I went and played in this game with them
link |
in a private hotel room and found out later
link |
that the guy was a card mechanic, you know,
link |
he was dealing and he could, you know, deal you the hands
link |
and he knew what you had and stuff like that.
link |
So yeah, I remember, you know,
link |
I lost a big number in that game
link |
and it was a good learning lesson in terms of, you know,
link |
being wary of who you trust.
link |
Yeah, so if the dealer is in on it,
link |
that's one way you could cheat.
link |
That's part of the reason that they cut.
link |
So like, you'll see like, there's a burn card
link |
because what would happen in, you know,
link |
maybe in the old days is like,
link |
if you're sitting in the one seat,
link |
I could lift the card and you could see it,
link |
the next card coming, right?
link |
So what they do is they have a card on top of it
link |
that you burn that isn't the card
link |
and then the next card is the one that comes face up.
link |
I just learned about the edge sorting thing
link |
that Phil Ivey and maybe others were involved with.
link |
I just, reading it at first was super interesting to me
link |
that you can exploit the imperfections
link |
in the printing of cards.
link |
That was almost cool to me.
link |
That's almost not cheating because it's like.
link |
That needs to be a movie.
link |
That needs to be a movie, yes.
link |
Yeah, what happened with Phil Ivey in that whole case
link |
is it's a catastrophe, really.
link |
It is such a horrible precedent.
link |
Cause here's what he did.
link |
Phil Ivey shows up at the casino says,
link |
I want to play this game.
link |
They say, okay, all right, I want to play with those decks.
link |
They say, okay, they agree to everything that he says.
link |
He never touches the cards.
link |
He doesn't do anything outside of the fact
link |
that your cards that you supplied
link |
have imperfections on them and he can see them.
link |
Okay, so that increases his chances of winning.
link |
He could still lose theoretically, right?
link |
Probably not, but he can lose.
link |
In theory, it just gives him a little bit of an edge
link |
and it's all stuff based on what you provided.
link |
So the idea that you offered a game, I accepted, I beat you
link |
and now you want to free roll me?
link |
That's disgusting.
link |
So for people who don't know, maybe you can elaborate
link |
and it's just fascinating to me,