Daniel Negreanu: Poker | Lex Fridman Podcast #324

You could be the seventh best player in the whole world. Like literally seventh best player. But if you're playing with the other six, you're the sucker. You are. You are the, like the worst player in the game, right? So, like, there's a lot of players, for example, like the Dan Blizzerians of the world, right. He's not a top level player, like, you know, these guys you see on tv, but he probably makes more money than they do because he plays with people that are far below his skill level. So part of the, part of the skill of being a poker player is finding situations where you're profitable, you know, regardless of your skill level.

The following is a conversation with Daniel Negreano, one of the greatest poker players of all time. This is the Lex Friedman podcast to support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Daniel Negrona. Everything everyone does at the poker table conveys information. So let me ask sort of the big overview question. What are the various sources of information that you project and others project at the table that convey information?

Well, there's several different things. There's the ones that are conscious and then there's the ones that are subconscious. Right. Like on the conscious level, it might be something someone says. Right. You know, you ask them a question and they say, oh, you know, you shouldn't call me here. You should. So there's the verbal tells. There's also the more, you know, subconscious stuff, body posture. Right. The eyes, the throat, the pulse, various things that are, you know, less controllable. I find I use a combination of both to try to gain information. But generally when I have somebody more comfortable, they give off more. When, like, everyone has a different approach. Phil Ivey likes to intimidate. I go the other way. I want my opponents to be relaxed so that they'll give me more in that regard.

So Phil Ivey likes to perturb the system, like mess with it to see what comes out.

I think Phil has an aura about him where he wants you to know that he's watching you be afraid, be uncomfortable, because when you're uncomfortable, I got you, right? And that's sort of his shtick where he, you know, and people do, like, when you sit at a table with Phil Ivey, it's, it's intimidating.

He likes to rule by fear and you like to rule by what is it? Love.

That's a really good way to put it. I never put it like that, but it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, you know, fear, Phil Ivy, and then with me, it's fine, don't worry, I'll take your money. But you're gonna enjoy it. It's great.

So that's what the talking at the table is about, is get him to be relaxed and get some of that gray area between the conscious and the subconscious to reveal something.

Yeah, there's that too. And also just, you know, and this is just part of who I am anyway. Like, I like to talk to people, but one of the byproducts is the more I know about you, the more I likely know about how you think about different situations. Right. So what do you do for a living? Oh, I'm a lawyer. I defend criminals. Okay. So this guy probably spends a lot of his time twisting the truth, trying to find, you know, and then, so then, you know, you already have a mindset of, like, this guy might be more likely to bluff, or he's probably comfortable doing that. Very subtle things like that.

And you start to pick up cues on what nervousness looks like for this person, what the nervousness communicates, all that kind of stuff. So we're talking about physical tells here.

Yeah. Physical tells is a secondary thing, though. I was more specific, like player profiling. Right. And sort of understanding the type of mind that I'm dealing with.

Right.

So again, somebody who's a lawyer is. Is used to trying, is. Is fine with being deceptive as part of a game. Right. Whereas maybe somebody's a Sunday school teacher and, you know, they don't feel comfortable. They maybe they think bluffing might be dishonest. Right. So they're less likely to try some shenanigans against you. So, and then the other thing, too is what type of person is this in terms of their, you know, out view. Out, like, view on life. Right. Are they positive? Do they feel like things go their way or they're not? Right. There's those people that always. Well, of course I lost. I always lose with this hand. And those types of people you can manipulate because when a card comes that you don't. You don't have them beat. Right. But you can pretend because they'll believe it. Like, of course you beat me. So you bet all your chips against them, knowing that you can scare them because they're. They. They already feel like they're going to lose.

The inherent, like the cynicism. Exact cynicism is easier to play against because you can convince them that their cards suck.

Yeah. When somebody believes that they're a loser or they're unlucky. Right. And that bad things Happen to them always. And they never catch a break. Well, you know, you can just help them make it true.

What do you think about the rounders, Teddy kgb, when he does the Oreo tell? Do players at the high level communicate that kind of stuff? Do you think it's realistic to be able to have a tell like this that's partially subconscious?

So, first of all, I love Brian Koppelman, who made the film, and I think what they were going for is something obvious to the general visually. Right. Like, okay, it's very clear. You know, he eats the cookie, he doesn't eat the cookie. And it means one or the other at the highest levels, something that, you know, blatant, you're not going to find. You're going to find a lot more subtle things, maybe with posture or. Or timing or, you know, different things like that. But at the lower levels, you know, you know, you might see some. You might see, you know, with a lot of people, when they're in a hand and they've bet, whether they drink water in the hand is going to tell you something.

Generally speaking, it's such an intimate part of the human experience that I feel like if you have food, you're going to reveal something about yourself through the way you eat. I feel like that's a dangerous thing to have at the table.

Well, the thing is, generally speaking, people don't eat food in the middle of a hand. Like, they're not going to bet and then just like.

And eat a burger.

Right. What they will do, though, is, you know, they've bet and it's up to you. And then they're. Whether they're uncomfortable or they do it unconsciously, they. They just want to do something to make themselves look relaxed or whatever. And, you know, they grab a water where they don't really need it in that moment, but they're trying to take your mind off of the situation.

So they, in the movie, wanted to show a simplistic version of something that does happen. Something that's visually sort of clear.

Yeah, because I think one of the things rounders got right is that it's a poker movie. Right. But you don't have to be great at poker or really understand poker to enjoy the movie. And that, you know, Oreo cookie tail, like, everyone gets that. They're like, okay, that's simple. If he would have went with something more subtle, you know, like licking your lips or looking to the right. And I think it might have been lost on the audience.

And they didn't actually explicitly say that that was A tell, I don't think.

I thought they did everything to let you know, right. With the music and slow motion and he's staring at it and he's like, aha.

Yeah. But they didn't actually say, you know, this is an obvious tell. Like Damon's character at the very end.

Of it, you know, after he. He says, how the did you lay that down? The monster, right? And he's like, he's like. He's like, you're not hungry? Not hungry.

Kgb.

He's like, I keep on, you know, so he sort of references it and then he takes the cookies. He notices. He's like, ah, he got me. And he breaks the, you know, the rack of cookies.

Well, probably if you had that kind of tell on him, you wouldn't. In Matt Damon's character would not reveal.

Well, he says in the movie, he says, normally I wouldn't reveal a tale, but I don't have that much time. Like, I've got to rattle him some way. Yeah, so that. That was one way to do that.

How hard is it to do that too, in a KGB accent, to lay down a monster in those situations? In general, how hard is it to lay down a really strong hand? Just psychologically?

Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's incredibly difficult for the vast majority of people. You know, part of what makes professionals really, really good is recognizing a situation that's very, very dangerous and they need to, you know, jump ship. Like, what happens to a lot of players is you get married to a hand. Let's say you have pocket aces, which is the best possible hand. Right. But the board runs out where it's 7, 8, 9, and then there's a jack and then there's a six. It's like you have a great hand to start, but you don't anymore. So one of the difficult things for the average player is, you know, once they've put money in, cutting their losses and saying, okay, let's move on to the next hand. It's very, very difficult thing for a.

Lot of people at every stage of, like, pre flop all the way through, be able to just make a decision on at that moment.

So, yeah, essentially not being attached. Okay, I've already put in $40,000 in this pot, and this guy's bet another 20. Well, I mean, I got to get my 40 back. Right. Except, you know, in some cases, you have to reassess individually this situation and realize, all right, well, this is a bad investment, so I got to cut my losses.

By the way, I should mention that you have an incredible YouTube channel where you explain a lot of stuff. You do a podcast. You do a lot of really awesome stuff. My probably favorite thing that you've done is your masterclass that people should Definitely check out. Masterclass.com lex There you go. No, but it really is one of my favorite masterclass courses, but also just a great introduction overview of poker. It's great for people like me who are beginners, essentially, but it's probably really good for intermediate people, too. I mean, there's a lot of really good detail there. Anyway, what are hand ranges, and how do you begin to estimate the range of hands that your opponents have?

Yeah, so I actually, speaking to YouTube, I did a video on specifically this, getting familiar with rangers. And essentially, you know, back in my day, the old days, we didn't talk about poker that way. We're like, I think he's got this or I think he's got that, right? Nobody thought of, like, the range of hands a player can have. So I guess the best example is imagine, like, all the potential hands as being a part of a grid, right? So the first player to act, they could have any one of those hands, right? Anyone randomly dealt, right? But let's say now that that player raised to $3,000, okay? Well, you can eliminate now from this grid a whole bunch of hands that this player can no longer have, because if they had a two and a three, they wouldn't do that. So you can say, okay, he probably has a big pair. He has ace, king. You know, you've narrowed the range of hands down right now through every action on the flop, on the turn, and on the river. Based on the decisions they make, you narrow it down even further. So the range of hands is the whole. The entirety of all the possibilities that this player, you believe could happen. Sometimes they fool you or they have a hand that you don't expect them to have in their range. And, you know, maybe a little bit unorthodox, doing some things you don't expect to throw you off, but a range is essentially all the possibilities. And it narrows as by the time before the flop, it's endless. Player raises. Okay, it's minimized. Now player bets the flop. Okay, it's minimized further. And then by the river, you know, you can narrow down the entire range to, you know, just maybe even a few hands.

Is it always shrinking or is there sort of, as you get surprised, I mean, it's always just an estimate. So is. Does it ever expand based on sort of chaotic, unpredicted, surprising, Behavior of the.

Players, it really should never expand. The range of hands should always get smaller. Right. Like, again, we start with the full.

The full scope.

And then you should factor in, like, okay, these are all the possible hands he can have on the flop now. Right. We can't have new hands on the turn. And if he. If he. If you get to that point where you think, oh, well, maybe he has this hand, then you. Then you sort of misjudged his range prior. So you're not thinking clearly. It should always shrink from the full scope to, you know, hopefully just a couple.

Well, in that video, you also talk about it used to be that you would play your hand, but now you're playing, Playing a range, that you're representing a range. You're not even just playing your hand. So what does it mean to represent a certain range?

Yeah, so that's another big thing that's different about poker from, you know, my day to today is that back in our day, we would, like, put people on one hand. I'm like, you probably have king nine, or you have jacks or something like that. Now people are cognizant of the idea that you could have an entire range of hands. So then you ask yourself in situations, all right, I know what I have, but what I could have in his mind or my opponent's mind is any one of these hands. What would I do with the entirety of these hands? And so a lot of people that are trying to play optimally, you know, game theory optimal, they think in terms of what their range of hands would do rather than their very specific hand.

So is. Is bluffing in that context, essentially misrepresenting the range of hands that you have.

No.

Is that how you think about it?

Not exactly, because. So an optimal range, like if I bet the river, if I'm playing game theory optimal, a portion of my range is going to be, I have it. I got. I got the best hand. And a portion of my range is going to be bluffs, and they'll be balanced. So in theory, no matter what you do, no matter what you do, you call or you fold. In theory, it's just you're printing a zero, as we say. You're not. You're not getting, gaining, or losing any ev. If you were to do it that way.

What's ev?

Ev is expected value.

Right?

So every play that you make, you know, it either is going to, in the long run, you know, make you some money, or it's. It's just a losing play. And as a professional, you Try to make the fewest amount of minus EV plays you can. And the only reason you would make these minus EV plays is potentially if you're trying to set up your opponent for something later. Right. So I might make some minus EV plays. Right. So that I can exploit you later. Right.

So you're building up, building up an image, a player profile that's false in some way.

Something that I'm going to. I'm going to plant seeds in your mind that I can exploit them later. So, for example, why would players, like, show a big bluff?

Yeah.

Like, what would be the reason for that? They show a big bluff so that you know that they're capable of it. But maybe in their mind they're never going to do that again. But now they think, you know, he bluffed me last time, maybe he's doing it again. But that's a, what we call like a level, a leveling war, because it, you know, you can go back and forth with whether or not, okay, this guy might know that, like, he showed a bluff because he's never going to bluff me again. So that, that's where it gets a little.

So that's a little bit different. The. When we're talking about hand ranges, that's different than building up a mental model of what your opponents, what your opponents think of you and what your opponents think that you think of them, and so on and so forth. Are you trying to construct those kinds of mental models and is that separate from the hand ranges?

They go hand in hand. Right. So if in a given situation. Right. My range has this many value hands and this many bluffs. Okay. So in theory, if I want to be balanced, you know, this is my range and this is what it looks like, I'll bet this 50% of the time. Bet this 50% of time. However, if I know that you think that I bluff too much. Right. Then I'm not going to bluff as much. I'm going to start. Instead of betting these hands that I would 50, 50. Now what I'll do is I'll do like 70, 30, where I'm basically value betting most of the time against you, you know, or vice versa. If I know you always fold because you think I have it, I'm going to veer the other way, and Instead of bluffing 50%, I'll bluff 70, 80% of the time to take advantage of your perception of me.

So to be successful, do you have to construct a solid model of all the players in the game, or can you ignore them?

I think it's really important. Like, when I play, I have in my phone, I have a player profile of everyone that I play with whenever I pick up, whether it's physical tells or tendencies they like to, you know, that, that they have. And overall, that's just gonna, you know, that's gonna allow you to exploit more. Right. So, like, if I played with somebody I've never played before, I'm probably just going to play optimally, or at least as optimal as I know how until I start to, you know, gain some information on that player so that I can start to exploit them.

So what's the. When you say optimally, what does optimally mean Versus? So game theory optimal versus exploitative.

Yeah, so that's like sort of the big debate in poker. We call it for short, GTO game theory optimal versus exploitative play. So GTO game theory optimal is the idea that. No, like, I'm going to set up my play so that no matter what you do, you cannot exploit me. So essentially, that's playing rock, paper, scissors. Right. And throwing 133 of each every time. Right. Nothing you do can beat that. Nothing. You'll never be able to beat that. Right. Exploitative play is starting to notice that. Okay, well, you know what? This guy loves rock. He loves playing rock. So I'm going to go paper a little more. So I'm going to take advantage of him. So I won't be through. But now all of a sudden when I do that, I'm no longer playing optimal because if you knew that I was making that adjustment, now you can exploit me. So that's where the sort of, what we call the leveling war happens, where people veer from, you know, the optimal line of, okay, 33% each for each one. You can't beat that. But you also can't win with that either.

So you're always trying to be at the. At the cutting, at the leading edge of suboptimal play.

You're. Yeah, you're going back and forth and listen, at the highest levels, like online that these guys play, like, they're trying to play pretty close to, like, game theory optimal because it's very difficult to do. First of all, no human being will ever be able to compute at the level that computers can. It's just never going to happen. So that's where like, the human mind has to come into play and say, all right, well, you know, if I was playing against a robot, I would do X. But I'm not. I'm playing against you, so I have to adjust.

So does Game theory optimal only look at the. The betting and the hands in the current hand, or does it look at the history? So if you were to play optimally, optimally, would you need to look at the history of the individual players or just every hand is taken afresh?

See, that's why I love playing exploitatively for the most part, because with gto, anything that's happened in the past has no bearing on this situation. It's simply based on what is the optimal play in a vacuum in this spot. Whereas exploitatively, okay, this guy bluffs way too much in these spots. So now I can make an adjustment and call more, you know, based on past information. GTO doesn't take into account history at all.

So, like in a tournament, how quickly can you construct a. A player profile that you've never played before?

Depends on the level of the buyin, really. Right? So the higher the buy in, generally speaking, you can assume, if they're professionals, that they're going to have pretty similar profiles because, you know, everyone's playing, you know, if you're playing this game, well, it looks similar, right? At the lower levels, you know, playing say in a $1,000 or $1,500 buying or less, you know, within a half an hour, an hour. I have an idea of. All right, just by seeing how some. A player's played a few hands that, you know. So here's the thing with poker. It's like I can see one clue of what he did, and it tells me so much about what he'll do in a vast number of scenarios.

And you're saying at the high level, people don't give too many clues. I mean, well, at the highest level.

Is people are so much more similar in terms of their style of play.

They try to find some kind of balance between the GTO and now with.

All that we've seen on tv, right? Like, people get to watch streams and whatever, so you get to watch all the top players play. So if you want to learn how to play better, guess what you do. You copy what they're doing. Essentially, like, oh, he's only raising this much. I'm going to do the same. They're betting this much, I'm going to do the same. So as a result, what you end up happening is sort of, you know, every. Everyone deciding, like, I guess it's similar in chess with openings, right? People figure out, okay, this is an opening, this is what you do, and that's it, you know, and then everyone's similar to that. And then you have, of Course, the outliers who try to do things a little differently and confuse people.

It seems like the outliers, like we talked offline, that Magnus. In order to win, Magnus Carlsen has to play suboptimally in the openings to take his opponents out of the comfort zone. So he can play what he calls pure chess as quickly as possible. Was just both short and deep calculations. Purely, you're looking at the board versus memorized openings and memorized lines. Is it the case that the best poker players are the ones that are able to, at the right time, play really suboptimally or really unorthodox? Unorthodox, yeah.

Specifically, there's one guy who last year sort of took the poker world by storm, and his name is Michael Adamo. And he was doing things, like I said, you know, most of the top pros play very similarly with the way that they, you know, construct ranges and their bet sizing and all these kind of things. He was doing some crazy things that nobody else was doing. So he studied, you know, sort of a different form of poker and it, it was unorthodox and it, you know, it throws people off because he's in his comfort zone with these bet sizes and different things, whereas everyone else, they're, they're not well studied in those spots. So as a result of him being unorthodox, he became like a monster and very difficult to play against. Cause he really knew what he was doing with it.

And tournament or cash games, he was tournaments.

Yeah, he was crushing tournaments. He was going against the norm in terms of what is like, you know, this is what you should do as a poker player in this spot. He wasn't doing that. He was doing what he thought was best and he was doing things outside the norm. That again, in a vacuum, you could look at that and you go, that's incorrect. That he should not do that is a clear cut mistake. Even, you know, the solvers or the computers or game theory would say this is wrong what he's doing. But it's not wrong if he's doing it in a way that he's exploiting other players tendencies. So for example, with him, say he's playing far too aggressively. Okay, that's not good unless your opponents are playing way too passively. So if your opponents are playing passively, the answer is to be more aggressive with them. And that's, I think one of the, you know, biggest advantages he had was he was willing to do that.

So bet big, big, big pots, bluff huge.

So in a spot where somebody would make it a thousand. He's.

He's.

He's making it 22,000. Like, what. What. What is this? This makes no sense.

And then people kind of know he has nothing, but they. They're too afraid to call him on it.

Well, and then sometimes what happens is this is where the leveling comes in. You're like, man, this guy's crazy. He's bluffing like nuts. Then he bets the 22,000, and you say, ah, I'm taking my stand. I call. And then he shows you, like, you know, four of a kind or something like that.

Yeah.

So he gets people out of their comfort zone. And I really enjoy watching him play. He's probably my favorite player to watch.

Today, watching a guy like that. What aspect of his play have you been able to incorporate into your own? Like, what do you learn from that? Because you're constantly learning. You're constantly adjusting.

Yeah, well, no, and I love it. And as I said, so I think a lot of players sort of come to the same conclusions about this is how you play the spot. But he doesn't. And I love watching and thinking in terms of, like, why he's doing this. And one specific thing, for example, is he's willing to really go for it. So in a spot where, let's say he bets 2000, he knows he'll get. You call 2000. Right. But he wants it all. He wants it all. So he says, you know what? I'll give up the 2,000. That's guaranteed, and I'll bet 50,000. And maybe if you call that now, you know, so listen, you lose the 2007 eight times, but if I get called for the 50 just once, you know, I'm profiting from that. And it also sets the, you know, the template for you to really sort of be a player that people are afraid to play against. He knocked me out in a tournament very early on in a huge event, and he had. He was so far ahead. He was one step ahead of my thought process in hand. And he did something that makes no sense whatsoever. I looked it up on the computer. Huge mistake, if you will, but not a mistake, because he was taking advantage of my tendency.

Do you remember the cars? Is there an example?

Remember the whole thing? I remember, like, yesterday.

Can you take it, like, through an example hand that really demonstrates it?

So I'll explain the hand here. So I'm on the button, and I have ace king, which is a very good hand, and I raise, and he calls from the big blind. The flop is 9. 7, 5. So I have nothing really here. He checks, I check. Behind the turn, card's an ace. He checks. I bet half the pot. There were 6,000 in there. I bet 3,000. Okay, now, this is not a typical thing you see people do, but he raised me to 36,000. Massive raise, bigger than the size of the pot.

What was the flop again?

Nine, seven, five. Okay, turn an ace.

What is he representing exactly?

Well, he could have a straight. He could have three, three of a kind. He could have, you know, aces up. He could have a whole bunch of hands. So he check, raises me big to 36,000. I call the bet. So now there's something like 75,000. The river is a five, so the board pairs, okay? He thinks for a while, and he bets all of it, which is three times the pot. He bets 225,000. There's only 75,000 out there, right? And in theory, he should never, ever have a hand that can do that, right? So it confused me, and I was like, okay, well, this guy's aggressive. He likes to bluff and all this kind of stuff. So I made the call with the ace, king, and he turned over 6, 8. So we had a straight. But here's the thing. In theory, that river card is bad for him. When I call the turn, I have a lot of the time, three of a kind, two pair that just made a full house. So he was risking that. And the reason he did it was because he thought I would perceive him to be bluffing a lot. So he just went for it. And it worked. He was able to double up right away and knock me out of the tournament like an hour in.

Do you think he thought you might fold? Like what?

I think specific. I think it was. It came down to this. It's as simple as this. He was cognizant of his image as being a wild, aggressive bluffer. Right? And he was fully taking advantage of me, knowing that my tendency in these spots is to be curious and I want to call and I want to see it. So he was fully taking advantage of the fact that he thought I would call too often, because otherwise his play makes no sense. A small bet, a medium sized bet, those make sense. But the bet that he made in theory is indefensible. It's just like, clearly a mistake. But that's why poker is so fascinating, because he makes this play, and it wasn't a mistake. It was above the rim is what it was.

Do you think he put you on ace something?

I think exactly what he thought I had Was ace, king or something like that? Like that, you know.

Oh, that is so fun. That is so fun that the two players at such a high level were able to mess with each other's mind. How, how old is he? Is he young?

He's in his 20s. Yeah.

I feel like that takes a lot of guts to take risks like that.

Well, that's what's great about him. He's certainly never accused of not having the guts to put it in. And that's scary to play against. Right. The easiest opponent to play against is one who's just straightforward, passive, you know, not wild and crazy. Playing against him, he's going to put you in the blender, as we say.

How can you control what you're perceived as representing, what hand you're perceived of as representing? So if we're, if the game of modern poker is. Others are representing certain hands through the information they convey, and you're representing a certain hand range, sorry, through your play, how can you control that? Or is that not. Is that the wrong way to think about it? But isn't belughing and bet sizing and all that kind of stuff essentially controlling what others perceive as the hand range.

You have ultimately, in terms of, like, controlling people's perception of you, you can't fully control it, but you can do things to sway it. Right. As I said earlier, showing bluffs and things like that leads your opponent to think, maybe you do this more often than you're supposed to or whatever the case may be. But in terms of, like, controlling, you know, what your opponent can think about your hands in certain spots, I don't really think it equates that way. It doesn't really, you know, I think what people do when they're playing a hand is they think in terms of, all right, what does my range look like here? Okay, so my range has value. So you, you, you look at, you know, the actual hand you have secondarily. So you say, okay, well, I could have this, I could have this. I actually have this. Right. But I could have all these hands. So my opponent, if he's thinking on a high level, he knows I could have all these hands and I have this one, so what do I do with this one? Right. In the bigger scope of things, I.

Guess I'm trying to understand if you're betting isn't a bet preflop your bet doesn't that narrow the hand ranges, doesn't matter what you have.

Absolutely.

Narrows the end.

Absolutely.

And if you bet big, combined with the perception of you at the Table. Doesn't that represent a hand range?

Huh? Absolutely.

So, like, you can, with betting, essentially control what people estimate you to have.

Sure. So that makes it so. Yeah, so that's, that's true. So, for example, one of the most extreme examples is we have, we do there, like there's, there's spots where there's a bit we. That's considered polarizing, right? So let's say there's a thousand in the pot and you bet 10,000, which is crazy big, right. That's saying one of two things. I either have the absolute best possible hand or absolutely nothing, because any of the hands in the middle, I wouldn't do that with. So I'm essentially telling you when I bet that I'm like, I either got it or, you know, I got, I don't have a mediocre hand, like just a pair of nines or a pair of tens. I have a royal flush or have nine high. So with my bet sizing, I, I can control how my opponent is perceiving what my range is going to be. So, for example, you know, similarly, if I bet small, right. Well, that could be a lot of hands, Right. That can represent a big part of my range.

The bigger the bet, the more, the.

Narrower the range, the more polarized it is.

Yeah, yeah. How far could you get without looking at your cards, do you think? How well could you do?

It depends on who I'm playing with, Right. So if I was playing in a tournament with mediocre or weak players, I think I could probably do pretty well.

But even like world class.

World class, I don't think you'd have much of a chance, really.

I mean, the question is trying to get at like, how important is it the actual hands you have versus the, the, the hands you're representing?

Right. So that's the question of essentially, if you're not looking at your hand pre flop, you're basically giving up an fundamental advantage right. Where you're, you're going to be playing way suboptimally in terms of your hand selection, right? Because if you don't look at your hand, you might have a two and a three. That's not good. But now you're playing it. So you've invested whatever, two, three thousand bucks with absolute garbage. And it's very difficult to climb that hill, right? So it's much better to actually look at your cards and go, okay, I'll throw away the 2 and 3 and I'll play the ace king.

Speaking of garbage, you're. You've said that 107 is your favorite poker hand to play? Is that still the case? And what aspect of it is that you enjoy?

Yeah, yeah. So it's one of those viewer discretion is advised, like 10 7, I've just noticed throughout my life, you know, it's a tendency thing that I've been lucky with it. So that's just sort of. But it's not like I'm going to look at 107 and go, oh, wow, you know, I'm going to call an all in or anything like that. I'll play it in situations where it makes sense, but, you know, it's rare because it's not a very good hand.

But is there some aspect of belief in the magic of this hand manifests quality of play?

There should be, but I. So here's the thing. It's, you know, poker players, some have said it's unlucky to be superstitious, but we're all a little bit superstitious. A little bit, you know, and so, I don't know, maybe it is a case where when I have 10 7, I feel somehow energetically that, you know, I'm more likely to catch something, which may actually make me more apt to be aggressive and confident in the hand. But. But you really shouldn't let yourself do that. Like, you're not supposed to fall in love with any specific hands.

Yeah, but, you know, uncertainty is ruthless. You know, the fact that it's a game of statistics, it can be too painful for the human psychology. So maybe you have to hold on to certain superstitions because, you know, I mean, there's. There's a cold absurdity to the fact that you can play up, you can play extremely well and still lose. I mean, actually, this year you've played, what is it, 50 days of world Series of Poker. And it seems like, at least from the perspective of me looking at it through the Internet, it seems like there's a lot of hands that you were like 70, 30, 80, 20, all in hands that you just did not. Were not going your way. That can sort of break you mentally.

Absolutely, yeah. One of the hardest things, especially about playing, because cash games and tournaments are different. One of the most difficult things about, you know, being a tournament player is resilience, because more often than not, like, so if there's a tournament with thousand people, to win the tournament, you have to get all of the chips. That means there's one winner and 999 losers. So it's very rare that you actually, like, win all the chips. So you're Essentially, at some point in every tournament you play gonna deal with, like, really bad luck and disappointment. And sometimes those streaks can have you question yourself and be introspective about, okay, so I think I'm 47 now. I think I've gotten better as time went on between distinguishing, okay, am I losing right now because of bad luck, or is it. Fundamentally, decisions I'm making are not very good. Right. And that's one of the hardest things for anyone who plays poker to. To get to. Right. Why am I losing? Am I losing because of my opponent's being better? I'm not playing well? Or am I losing just because of luck? And because there's so much variance in poker, a lot of players can be confused on both sides of the coin. One guy's winning, and he thinks he's great. He's really not. Wait till the cards break even, as we say.

You know, I think there's a lot of parallels to life as well. You don't. If you get screwed over over and over, it's hard to know if you're doing something wrong or if it's just bad luck.

I think they did a study. I remember there was, like, a study. It was supposedly related to gambling, but it was mice. And they put them in a little maze, and they go down these three tubes, and they go down this one tube, and there'd be cheese, right? And then they go down again. Cheese. Three times in a row. There was cheese there, right? The next time, there was an electric shock there. Not cheese. The rat went. You know, the mouse went to get zapped. He got zapped, okay. Came back. He kept going back to get zapped until he died. Like, he kept going because he found cheese there. He has one there. So he continued to go chase that wind to. Despite it being, you know, now all of a sudden not worthwhile till. Till they died. And essentially what they said was, that is essentially how they compared it to, like, you know, the gambling brain and how people think about gambling.

You're chasing the wins. You learn too much. You sort of overgeneralize the lessons learned from the times you've won.

Yeah, like, beginner's luck can be detrimental if you. If you have some early luck and you believe that this is just the way it's supposed to be forever. You know, it can put you in a delusional state where, you know, you feel like, I'm just great, but. No, you're not. You were just lucky in the beginning.

I actually played poker once in Vegas. It was a. It wasn't a tournament, but it was a kind of tournament, like style. I already forgot what it was. But what I do remember is I had four of a kind. So the last hand I've ever played in poker was I got a four of a kind, and there was a couple of others with really strong hands. So everybody went all in. And I think you get some kind of bonus for getting four of a kind.

Bad beat. Jackpot. You were playing it.

Yeah. So something like this, I apologize if I don't know the details, but I just remember winning a lot of money. And I walked away from the table. I said, I'm not playing poker again. This is great. I'm gonna up top. Because I started to feel like this is your. I started to think, even though I haven't really played poker at all, that I'm, I'm good. And that was a really dangerous feeling. And everybody was really mad for walking away from the table.

One of the other things that I think is interesting about poker, too, is good is relative, right? So you could be the seventh best player in the whole world. Like literally seventh best player. But if you're playing with the other six, you're the sucker. You are the worst player in the game, right? So there's a lot of players, for example, like the Dan Blazerians of the world, right? He's not a top level player like, you know, these guys you see on tv, but he probably makes more money than they do because he plays with people that are far below his skill level. So part of the, part of the skill of being a poker player is finding situations where you're profitable, you know, regardless of your skill level.

Another connection to life. You think Dan Balzerian is telling the truth about having made, what is it, 50, $100 million, just a huge amount of money playing poker?

Considering what I know about the private games and the types of players who play in these private games and the stakes that they play, I absolutely believe, you know, Dan has made I don't know how many millions, but I, you know, whether it's 50, whatever. But it wouldn't surprise me that if you play in these games within a year, or you, you know, you find the right businessman who has way too much bitcoin money, you know, and, you know, in one night, you take him for 20 million, I absolutely could see it. I don't see any reason why. Listen, where he got his money initially, you know, that's that up to interpretation from his father, whatever. But what. But has he made a bunch of money playing poker? Absolutely. No question.

Do you feel like, as somebody who loves the game, do you think there's something almost ethically wrong in playing people much worse than you?

So, yeah, that's a good question. Because, you know, part of the reason I played poker and wanted to become professional was, like, I wanted to be. Make my mother proud, right? And I don't think she would be proud of me taking, like, Grandma Betty's, like, last $5, you know, and down the street, you know, sending her broke and taking her pension check. So I play at the highest stakes against people who can afford it. They know who I am. I'm not a hustler. I'm not pretending I'm bad at poker to squeeze in. Like, I was thinking about this just yesterday because I played in a game that if I played that sort of role where a lot of guys do pros that sort of play down their skill level, pretend they're just one of the guys, these guys can make 20, 30 million dollars in a year legitimately. Like, I believe that. Like, if I did that, if I said, you know what? I'm gonna go down that path, get into these games in LA and travel and do all this kind of stuff, I can make 20 million a year. But it feels a little greasy, right? I don't like to kiss anyone's ass. I don't like to ask anyone for a favor or things like that. So. But, yeah, like, I feel. Listen, a rich guy who wants to sit down with a million bucks and get drunk and lose it, I have no empathy for that. I'm like, I don't have any moral qualms with that.

So if Grandma Betty is a billionaire, send it.

Send it, right? You know? Absolutely. Why not?

Well, let me ask you about a tough period of your recent life. You had a rough. Like we mentioned, the World Series of poker, losing $1.1 million over 48 days. What were you going through mentally during that?

So here's the thing. You know, I do. Like you said, I do a YouTube vlog every day, so I kind of share my thoughts and listen. I can edit that thing and keep out the bad stuff, but I think it's more authentic and genuine to show people the actual struggles and the pain that I go through, you know, without it. And I'd say the one thing I'm most proud of throughout the entire thing is the resilience, because there are moments you see me where I'm broken. I'm just like, I can't take it. I broke a selfie stick this year. Like I was filming it because, you know, I do, for my vlog, I smash the stick, threw it in the corner, right? Just that was my like hit rock bottom moment. And then I put the camera on me and I was like, all right, I'll let people see it. But mentally it was very difficult because there was a feeling of hopelessness where you can. I was making good decisions. Like, I genuinely felt like I'm playing really, really well. But every time my money went in and my opponent's money went in and say I was 60%, 70%, 80% for about a two week stretch, I lost every one of those. And you start to wonder, you're like, I can't win if I never win, you know, in these spots. So it was difficult. Luckily I have, you know, 20 odd years of experience and how to deal with it. And so as I said, I wake up the next day ready to go you.

So as if nothing happened to a certain degree.

Obviously, you know, the more, the more it happens in the higher buy ins. Like the one where I broke the selfie stick, I lost 500,000 in that tournament, right? And it was like the last card, it was painful.

I think he lost.

Yeah, that was great, that video. I think he lost.

What led up to the selfie stick gate? Like, what? You just lost your for a like 100 milliseconds. Like, it was very brief. You're just like, what? The world wasn't making any sense. Like, how am I, do I keep losing kind of thing. How did you, why did you lose your shit?

You should never really think like this. But part of me felt like I deserve to win this. Yes, right. So part of me was like, listen, I've lost so many in the last two weeks. All right, Let you know the poker gods be kind to me right now. Let me win this. And it looked good.

Yeah.

I was in a great situation on the flop, great situation on the turn. I'm about to be a competitor, I'm going to be a contender in this tournament to win a big prize pool and turn the whole thing around. It's all there for the taking. And then boom, the last card, it just, you know, it was couple weeks of frustration in the moment of filming that I just had, you know, sort of a visceral reaction, you know, and I smacked the smack, the selfie stick. And then like I, it was, I see a corner, it's safe. I threw the selfie stick on the ground. And of course social media blows up about how, you know, it was a violent act.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, it's like, have you never watched sports? Have you never seen a guy on the golf course smack his club or throw their helmet? Like, you know, there was the. There's a guy. Justin Bonimo is a poker player.

Yeah.

And he's super, for lack of a better word, offended by everything. And he was equating my throwing a stick on the ground to violence against women, domestic abuse, and the idea that like this makes women feel unsafe to play poker. And so that was kind of a running joke for the last two weeks where every time I sat at a table, the guys be like, oh, I feel unsafe, I feel unsafe. Yeah.

Can you take me through the hand? Do you remember what the hand was like? What was the.

Yeah, so it was a, you know, the player on the button raised. David Peters, very aggressive player. He, he went all in from the blind and I had a pair of pocket tens, so I went with my tens and he had queen, 10 of spades. So I was good. I have way the best hand. And the flop was like king, nine, three, one spade turn was like the eight of spades. So now he has a flush draw and the river was another spade. So he caught spade, spade. And he made a, he made a flush.

Wow. But statistically you were winning the whole time.

Yeah, I was winning up until the last card.

What did he go all, all in on? Was it a bluff?

He made what's considered like a pretty standard play in modern poker where, you know, a guy raised and he was just trying to pick up, you know, what was there and he ran into a hand in the big blind and, you know, he got lucky.

So what was the. Throughout the strategy of preparation, the strategy of play. So you're playing so many days is are you trying to ignore the results and stick to a particular strategy?

Yes, for the most part. You know, what I'm trying to do is like if I formulate a strategy for the whole seven weeks, because there's a varying degree of buy ins too. Like you have small ones, like 1500, then you got like $250,000 buy in. So I map out the seven weeks and right. I'll give little bit of mental energy to the 1500, which means I'll be on my phone. I'm not going to, I don't care as much about this one. But the 250k, fully engaged, fully focused, you know, up against obviously the higher the buy in, you know, super top competition. And you know, as far as strategy goes, focusing on each day playing the best, I Can not the result like, because if you focus on the result, you're, you're focused in the wrong place. Your focus should be on the decisions you actually make. Right. And if you're making good decisions consistently, you have to continue to do that. The frustrating part is this with poker, unlike chess or other things, making the best possible decision doesn't mean you win often you lose. You don't in chess.

Well, Magnus Carlson has also talked about that there's some non deterministic thing about chess too, given the limited cognitive capacity of the human mind. So he says that the world championship should have 20, 30, 40, 50 games, not the few that they have. It's too low of a sample. So in that sense, the high stakes poker tournaments are very. Too low sample.

Sure. Yeah. Well, when you think of the World Series of Poker. So you, like, as you said, I lost about 1 million, right. In one tournament that was 500,000.

Yeah.

So then you know, like a few others here of high buying tournaments. So the sample or the amount was, you know, 40, 50 total tournaments with, you know, high variance. And if you don't run well or do well in the highest buy ins, you know you're going to have a losing summer.

So you did a podcast on the mental game a few years ago, but that's just something you really care about. So what aspects of the mental game in poker is most difficult to master?

I think the most difficult thing for people is self awareness, right. And, and resilience. Self awareness to know. Okay, so you know, again, is it, am I, am I not doing as well as I could be because of luck? Or is there things that I can learn? And I always look to mistakes as opportunities. I really do. When I make a mistake in a poker hand, right, call it a breakdown or whatever, that's where breakthroughs happen, where I'm like, oh, you know what I could have done here? I could have done this and that would have been really good. And I'm going to do that going forward. So I think like with anything, you know, when you start out playing golf, like your goal is to just hit the ball, right? Then you try to hit it in the air, then you're trying to hit it straight, then you're trying to hit it on the green, then you're trying to hit it closer to the green, to the point where the pros get where, you know, they're so finite. They're trying to hit it 63 yards and spin it back three yards. They're in. It's imperfect. Like they don't hit the perfect shot because the perfect shot for them is it goes in. But they try and make the mistakes smaller and smaller and smaller. Poker is the same. We all make mistakes consistently. The goal is to minimize, especially the big ones.

What was the lowest point for you psychologically in poker in general? Actually, maybe it was this year. Maybe it was in general. Do you remember there was times in your life, speaking of resilience, that were extremely difficult to you mentally?

Yeah. So early on, you know, as. Basically as, you know, as a teenager, I was playing Toronto. And then in my early 20s, I'm like, I'm going to Vegas, right? And I thought I was the best. I'm like 21 years old. I'm like, check me out, right? Show up with $3,000, 24 hours later, you know, money's gone. And I remember. I remember the moment vividly. It was at the Binions horseshoe, was about 3 in the morning. I was playing with seven other people. You know, I lost my last chips. I went to the bathroom, washed up, got out, they all left. And it was like a moment where I realized, like, okay, in Toronto, I was the big fish, but here they were playing because of me. I was the sucker. I remembered every one of their faces. And then I remember not having enough money to get back to budget suites where I was staying. So I walked. I didn't, you know, I walked. And in that moment, I was thinking about, like, is this something that I'll be able to do? Am I good enough? You know, what am I going to do now I'm in Vegas, I don't know anybody, and I have no money, right? So that was certainly like, what felt like a low point. Walking back behind paradise and Twain, which is not a great part of town.

Where did you find the strength to answer yes to that question that you can. You can still do good?

I think this has been sort of a pattern in my life where, like, in the evening after it happens, like, I don't have it, you know, I don't have that feeling of hope or, you know, resilience, if you will. I'm. I'm allowing myself to experience despair, which is exactly where I'm at. But then a good night's sleep. Wake up the next morning, and just within me, I have that inner confidence to say, you know what? Fuck it. Get back on the hobby horse. Find a way. Make it work, right? And I do. But I do believe it's really therapeutic and worthwhile to allow yourself to feel and vents so many people today. The instagram culture world, I call it. It's like they want to act like they're perfect. Nothing bothers them. Bullshit, Right? You're pissed off. It's okay to show it. Emotions, fine. We all have it. There's no reason you have to suppress it. Obviously, you don't want to have guys throwing selfie sticks around the room every time they lose a pot, right? Yeah, but. But, you know, a little.

You're gonna make everybody feel unsafe.

Yeah, exactly.

That happens. So you're saying there is a culture of saying, you know, stay positive, all this kind of stuff, but, you know, when you feel despair, don't resist it.

Write it out, because it doesn't go away. Right. That feeling, you know, you think you put it away in the pit of your stomach and you think, you know, it's gone. It's not. It's still there. Let yourself go.

Yeah.

You know, it's all right. You know, there's nothing wrong with being a little bit emotional, because once you've experienced it, you let it out. Now you can move past it.

Yeah. And I feel like as long as your brain chemistry can support it.