Speaker 1: Hi, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bomb Left podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is the iconic sort of the best
Speaker 1: seller of the Biggest Bluff. Thanks so much for having me,
Speaker 1: Bob So in this COVID nineteen era. Are you playing
Speaker 1: any online poker? I am. I actually just got back
Speaker 1: from New Jersey a few weeks ago because I'm in
Speaker 1: New York, where online poker is illegal, but it's legal
Speaker 1: in New Jersey. So my husband and I rented an
Speaker 1: airbnb for two weeks so that I could play the
Speaker 1: World Series online. Um, you have to be physically located
Speaker 1: in New Jersey or about it to do that. So
Speaker 1: I spent two weeks in a lovely studio on the
Speaker 1: Jersey shore playing poker. And how did you do in
Speaker 1: the World Series? Um? I'm I was down by but
Speaker 1: just by a few thousand dollars, which to me is
Speaker 1: winning because when you are buying in for tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars, being just a few feels like a win. Okay,
Speaker 1: so how much? Um, it's multiple events. There's an event
Speaker 1: every single day. So the way that they did it normally,
Speaker 1: this doesn't happen right now. The World Series was supposed
Speaker 1: to be happening in Las Vegas. Everyone was going to
Speaker 1: be there. It was all going to be live. My
Speaker 1: book UM, which came out on June, was originally coming
Speaker 1: out the week before the main event, so it was
Speaker 1: all planned out perfectly. And obviously you can plan all
Speaker 1: you want, and then COVID happens and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there's no World Series of Poker, there's no live poker period,
Speaker 1: no no poker tournaments, and so they scrambled and they
Speaker 1: decided to do a semblance of it online, and the
Speaker 1: way they did it was to do thirty one events,
Speaker 1: one every single day of July UM and the buying's
Speaker 1: range from four hundred dollars for the lowest UM to
Speaker 1: around four thousand dollars for for the highest and you
Speaker 1: can re buy into most of the events. Then they moved.
Speaker 1: As of August first, it's still going on, but now
Speaker 1: it's on an international platform g G Poker. So I
Speaker 1: was planning to go to Canada, but the border is
Speaker 1: closed because I wouldn't let us in either. UM. So unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I'm not playing, but a lot of people who are
Speaker 1: outside of the United States are, and they're the buyans
Speaker 1: can actually be higher and they're doing a mini main
Speaker 1: event for five thousand dollars, but I will not be
Speaker 1: taking part because I'm not in Canada. Well, is it
Speaker 1: higher just because it's Canadian dollars? No? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is all in US dollars. Okay, let's just go
Speaker 1: a little slower for the uninitiated. How does the World
Speaker 1: Series of Poker work? How do they come up with
Speaker 1: the ultimate Champion? So the World Series of Poker is
Speaker 1: actually it's a series, so there are lots of events.
Speaker 1: So normally for about a month and a half, poker
Speaker 1: players from all over the world come to Las Vegas
Speaker 1: and play a number of tournaments. And when people talk
Speaker 1: about the World Series of Poker, they're usually just thinking
Speaker 1: about the main event, which is the single most important one.
Speaker 1: It's a ten dollar buying and it determines the World champion.
Speaker 1: It determines who the World Champion of Poker is for
Speaker 1: that year. And so normally people just think, who don't
Speaker 1: play poker, just think the World Series that one tournament,
Speaker 1: but that's just the pinnacle. That's the last tournament of
Speaker 1: the series. And people can play what's called side events,
Speaker 1: but you can also win bracelets. Bracelets a bracelet is
Speaker 1: what you win when you win a World Series of
Speaker 1: Poker title. But if you win a bracelet in anything
Speaker 1: other than the main event, you're just a bracelet winner.
Speaker 1: You're not the world champion. Okay, to play in the
Speaker 1: main event, you have to qualify in one of these
Speaker 1: other events. They're completely independent. As long as you've got
Speaker 1: ten grand you can play. And have you played in
Speaker 1: the main event? I have. I've played in it multiple
Speaker 1: times and done. Um the first year, this is the
Speaker 1: opening scene of my book. I came down with a
Speaker 1: migraine on the first day and spent the better part
Speaker 1: of the second half of the day throwing up on
Speaker 1: the bathroom floor of the Lovely Rio Hotel and Casino.
Speaker 1: I did not do well. I made Day two and
Speaker 1: then probably busted. The next year, I cashed. I actually
Speaker 1: came in the top I don't remember, but it was
Speaker 1: maybe top five hundred, top six hundred players, but out
Speaker 1: of tens of thousands, So I felt pretty good about myself.
Speaker 1: And do you like playing poker? I do? I mean
Speaker 1: I used to not. I didn't know anything about poker
Speaker 1: um as of you know, if you and I were
Speaker 1: having this conversation five years ago, Um, I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: known what poker is. Really. The only exposure I had
Speaker 1: had to poker was Rounders, UM, which I thought was
Speaker 1: a great movie, and I thought Matt Damon did a
Speaker 1: wonderful job, and I really loved Teddy KGB. And that was,
Speaker 1: seriously the only poker I had ever seen. I didn't
Speaker 1: know how many cars were in a deck. I had
Speaker 1: zero interest in the game whatsoever. I'm not a games player.
Speaker 1: I grew up in a household that reads books. We
Speaker 1: didn't even have a TV when I was growing up,
Speaker 1: so I just grew up with lots and lots of bookshelves,
Speaker 1: and for entertainment in the evenings, we read or my
Speaker 1: parents read to us. And there wasn't even a deck
Speaker 1: of cards around, no board games, no chest, nothing like that.
Speaker 1: And so, like I said, five years ago, if you
Speaker 1: and I were talking, I would have laughed if you said,
Speaker 1: did you know that one day you're going to play
Speaker 1: poker professionally? Um. I got into it as a book
Speaker 1: project because I became fascinated by the notion of luck
Speaker 1: and the role that luck plays in our lives. So
Speaker 1: I came to it from from the side, from a
Speaker 1: very different angle but I did fall in love with
Speaker 1: the game and found that it taught me much more
Speaker 1: about life than I thought possible, and I'm still learning.
Speaker 1: I think it's such a beautiful game that really challenges
Speaker 1: you on a constant level. Um. And to me, the
Speaker 1: best things in life are the ones that force you
Speaker 1: to grow, force you to become a better version of yourself,
Speaker 1: constantly force you to think better. Are the things that
Speaker 1: don't let you plateau and don't let you just kind
Speaker 1: of past through. And to me, one of those things
Speaker 1: is poker. Okay, forgetting the number of what you learned psychologically, etcetera.
Speaker 1: How long did it take you to master the game?
Speaker 1: To understand what the game was? I'm talking about on
Speaker 1: the most raw level. If you're sitting there with someone
Speaker 1: who literally knows nothing but doesn't know their fifty two
Speaker 1: cards in a deck, how long would it take them
Speaker 1: to understand the game? Well, it depends on what you mean.
Speaker 1: If you mean learn the rules, not long at all.
Speaker 1: Within a week, we can have you playing and knowing
Speaker 1: exactly what it's going on in terms of the rules. Um.
Speaker 1: If you're talking about really understanding the game. Um. My
Speaker 1: coach Eric Seidel is one of the best players in
Speaker 1: the world and has been playing since the eighties and
Speaker 1: winning since the eighties. And if you ask him, he'd
Speaker 1: say that he still doesn't understand it and he still
Speaker 1: hasn't mastered it. So you've got those two extremes. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginning, as you say, five
Speaker 1: years ago, when you didn't even know how to play
Speaker 1: at hand. What was the motivation for writing the book.
Speaker 1: I went through a period in my life where nothing
Speaker 1: seemed to go right. I became sick, and no one
Speaker 1: knew what was wrong. It was an autoimmune condition, but
Speaker 1: ideopathic was the was the final diagnosis, which means we
Speaker 1: really have no idea of unknown origin for being specific.
Speaker 1: And I just became allergic to everything. My skin became
Speaker 1: allergic to everything. I couldn't go outside oftentimes because I
Speaker 1: was just erupt in hives whenever anything touched my body.
Speaker 1: I mean by a in hives, I mean face, neck, body, everything.
Speaker 1: It was painful to put on clothes, and so I
Speaker 1: had lots of time to think about things because I
Speaker 1: was at home, not not able to do anything. On
Speaker 1: massive doses of steroids. As people tried to figure out
Speaker 1: what was wrong and get this under control. And at
Speaker 1: the same time as this is happening and I'm trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what's wrong with me, my grandmother dies.
Speaker 1: And she wasn't sick or anything like that, totally independent, healthy,
Speaker 1: living by herself. She just slipped in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night. I think she was going up to go
Speaker 1: to the bathroom and she hit her head and didn't
Speaker 1: wake up. And it was one of these things where
Speaker 1: you realize, you know, it's just an accident. You could
Speaker 1: happen to anyone and you can't plan for it, and
Speaker 1: we didn't without her being sick, no one said goodbye,
Speaker 1: you know, we just had no idea. And my husband
Speaker 1: lest his job, my mom lost her job. Just all
Speaker 1: of these things kept happening, one right after the other,
Speaker 1: and it made me stop and just really realize how
Speaker 1: important luck is. That when things are going well, we
Speaker 1: we like to take credit. So often we say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I I've worked really hard. You know, I've
Speaker 1: been working towards this, um I've earned this. And the
Speaker 1: truth is, sure, you need to work hard, but you
Speaker 1: also need to get lucky, and things have to go
Speaker 1: your way, and luck has to come together in a
Speaker 1: lot of different ways. And there's so many things that
Speaker 1: are just beyond us, and someone else might have worked
Speaker 1: just as hard but not gotten lucky and not be
Speaker 1: where we are. And I wanted to write about that
Speaker 1: and explore it and figure out a way to learn
Speaker 1: to tell the difference between skill and chance, between the
Speaker 1: things we control and the things we don't. And when
Speaker 1: I started reading about all of these different elements, I
Speaker 1: came across game theory, which is an interesting framework for
Speaker 1: looking at chance, and learned when I started reading the
Speaker 1: foundational text of game theory, the Theory of Games and
Speaker 1: Economic Behavior, that John von Neuman, who's the father of
Speaker 1: game theory and also one of the geniuses of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, um one of the fathers of the computer.
Speaker 1: So you and I would be sitting here talking right
Speaker 1: now if it weren't for him. That he was a
Speaker 1: poker player, and that poker was the origin of game theory,
Speaker 1: that he actually believed that solving poker would give you
Speaker 1: a rubric for looking at life's most complicated decisions, and
Speaker 1: he the way he described it really intrigued me. It
Speaker 1: seemed that poker might be a way to tease the
Speaker 1: part all of these different themes I was thinking about.
Speaker 1: So I started reading about poker a little bit, a
Speaker 1: little bit slower. So all these all these bad things
Speaker 1: are happening. What makes you pick up the game theory book?
Speaker 1: I started reading whenever I knew that I wanted to
Speaker 1: write my next book about luck and about skill versus chance.
Speaker 1: That is not a book. That's just a question, philosophical enquiry.
Speaker 1: It ain't a nonfiction narrative. Um. You need a story
Speaker 1: for any book. You need a way in Um what
Speaker 1: I do at the beginning of any project. It doesn't
Speaker 1: matter how long or short I might be writing. Uh
Speaker 1: often I might be writing a New Yorker piece or
Speaker 1: a book. I read a lot. I think that writers
Speaker 1: need to first and foremost be readers. And for everything
Speaker 1: I write, I've read thousands and thousands of words more
Speaker 1: that I've written. And I just started reading everything I
Speaker 1: could find that had to do with luck and had
Speaker 1: to do with chance. And if you're reading about chance,
Speaker 1: game theory comes up. Because game theory is one of
Speaker 1: the foremost ways of looking at chance. It's one of
Speaker 1: the foremost economic theories of the twentieth century, and it
Speaker 1: teaches you about thinking probabilistically. It teaches you how to
Speaker 1: make decisions in uncertain environments. And I knew this. I
Speaker 1: have a PhD in psychology, so I knew that game
Speaker 1: theory is where I went. For those who are not
Speaker 1: up to speed, what exactly is game theory? Game theory
Speaker 1: is just a way of looking at the world where
Speaker 1: you try to figure out, how do I act in
Speaker 1: a way that no one else can exploit or take
Speaker 1: advantage of my decision? That's it. Okay, give us a
Speaker 1: couple of exact, non poker examples where game theory would
Speaker 1: come into play. Nuclear war, that's actually that was mon
Speaker 1: Nouman's example. He thought that solving poker would help you
Speaker 1: avoid nucle your war. If you're trying to figure out
Speaker 1: whether your opponent Cuban missile crisis that actually happened, that's
Speaker 1: game theory. What is Kruschev going to do? What is
Speaker 1: Jeff k gonna do? How far can we push them?
Speaker 1: How far is he going to do? Go? Is he
Speaker 1: actually going to press the proverbial red button and fire missiles?
Speaker 1: Is he bluffing? So this is a perfect quintessential game
Speaker 1: theoretical example. How can you gather information to try to
Speaker 1: figure out what the payoff matrix and game theories speak
Speaker 1: looks like, how can you gather information to figure out
Speaker 1: how we can get to a point in the matrix
Speaker 1: where neither one of us has any incentive to deviate?
Speaker 1: How can I figure out if he's bluffing or not?
Speaker 1: How can I figure out how far he's willing to go?
Speaker 1: And in order to do that, you need to input
Speaker 1: a lot of things into that mental model. This is
Speaker 1: why game theory isn't just about math. It is about math,
Speaker 1: but it's also about psychology. It's about trying to put
Speaker 1: numbers in probably abilities, on human emotions, on human actions,
Speaker 1: on human decisions. And that's why von Neuman turned to poker,
Speaker 1: and that's why game theory can give you an approximation.
Speaker 1: But it's just an approximation. Everything in life is an approximation.
Speaker 1: He realized that you can't solve anything, So let me
Speaker 1: just you ask let me answer your question. So, if
Speaker 1: you think about something like a Nash equilibrium, which is
Speaker 1: when you actually find that square where no one deviates,
Speaker 1: it exists in theory, but in practice it's almost impossible
Speaker 1: to reach that square because people are people, and you
Speaker 1: can think that you understand them, but Ultimately, there's always
Speaker 1: the chance that you don't UM, and so it's a
Speaker 1: probabilistic answer. It's not a definitive answer. Well, in game theory,
Speaker 1: is there a specific paradigm or is it as simple
Speaker 1: as you say, we're gathering information talking about the nouns
Speaker 1: and the unknowns. What do you mean by that? Specifically?
Speaker 1: You talked about the matrix? What did you know you
Speaker 1: talk about game theory. It's like, I'm about the matrix
Speaker 1: the movie. So you actually you actually draw a matrix.
Speaker 1: So you have Bob on one side and you have
Speaker 1: Maria on the other, and in the simplest one, you
Speaker 1: have four squares. Let's say yes, no, yes, no. And
Speaker 1: if we're trying to figure out what will Bob and Maria,
Speaker 1: you know, what will their payoffs look like in the
Speaker 1: four little squares of that matrix? So if both of
Speaker 1: them say yes, then agree to whatever proposition. UM, let's
Speaker 1: say you know that. Let's say we're choosing ice cream
Speaker 1: and we're trying to and if you and I agree
Speaker 1: on an ice cream flavor, we both get sent gallons
Speaker 1: of this ice cream flavor. We can't talk to each
Speaker 1: other beforehand. Obviously, in real life, you can but in
Speaker 1: your so ideally you coordinate, but if you can't coordinate,
Speaker 1: So if you and I both come up with the
Speaker 1: same flavor, we get into the yes yes box, right,
Speaker 1: and our payoff there. Let's say it's of four is
Speaker 1: four and four. We're both really really happy, right if
Speaker 1: But let's say you and I or actually it might
Speaker 1: not be four and for because what if our two
Speaker 1: flavors are different. What if I know that your favorite
Speaker 1: flavors chocolate, My favorite flavor is vanilla, but I want
Speaker 1: some ice cream rather than not having any ice cream.
Speaker 1: And so if I know your chocolate, and I don't
Speaker 1: think that you know that I like vanilla, I might
Speaker 1: say chocolate. So we both get into that box. But
Speaker 1: it's a four for you and it's actually one for me. Right,
Speaker 1: So now now it changes, so you just get different
Speaker 1: ice cream flavors. So let's say now we're in the
Speaker 1: yes no, you stay chocolate, but I say vanilla. Well,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, we're in a different box, and
Speaker 1: we're in a box where your payoff is lower in
Speaker 1: mine is higher, and we need to try to figure
Speaker 1: out how do we get to the box where we
Speaker 1: both kind of maximize it. Maybe both of us kind
Speaker 1: of like vanilla, it's in the middle. Maybe vanilla would
Speaker 1: be a three for both of us. That would be great,
Speaker 1: not vanilla, sorry strawberry, but we need a new flavor.
Speaker 1: So maybe strawberries actually second best for both of us.
Speaker 1: So strawberries are three for you and a three for me, Well,
Speaker 1: then maybe we should try to coordinate on strawberry, right,
Speaker 1: because that's actually going to give us the most the
Speaker 1: best optimal mutual payoff because the total of that box
Speaker 1: is six, whereas your chocolate my vanilla boxes just five. Right,
Speaker 1: So we can start playing like that, and then you
Speaker 1: have to try to figure out Okay, well, how are
Speaker 1: you thinking? How am I thinking? I use the type
Speaker 1: of person who's gonna want to coordinate on strawberry if
Speaker 1: I can't see you or talk to you, um, and
Speaker 1: should I risk it? Or are you the kind of
Speaker 1: person who's just gonna go chocolate all the way you're
Speaker 1: going to You're going to betray me, so to speak.
Speaker 1: So we can't coordinate because you want that chocolate and
Speaker 1: you don't care if I don't get any ice cream.
Speaker 1: So that's a very silly example, but you can that's
Speaker 1: kind of how you. That's how you that's how you
Speaker 1: look at the matrix. You assign different ways well articulated.
Speaker 1: So you're reading the book and he mentions poker. Does
Speaker 1: a lightbulb go off in your head? Or is it
Speaker 1: an evolutionary process to decide to write a book? Um,
Speaker 1: it's both. At the beginning, it wasn't a light bulb.
Speaker 1: When I read von Neuman, I became intrigued by poker,
Speaker 1: and I thought, huh, this is interesting. And then when
Speaker 1: I started reading about poker, all I did that I
Speaker 1: had zero poker books in the house, so I just
Speaker 1: googled poker and started reading a little bit about it online.
Speaker 1: That's when a light bulb went off, when I just thought, Hey,
Speaker 1: this game seems really interesting and it actually seems to
Speaker 1: get out a lot of these things that I'm curious about.
Speaker 1: It has an element of skill, it has an element
Speaker 1: of chance. Von Neumann thinks that it actually has the
Speaker 1: perfect balance of skill and chance to make it a
Speaker 1: good analogy for life. I don't know much about it,
Speaker 1: but if I even thinks so, it's good enough for me.
Speaker 1: I mean, the guy's brilliant. So that's when a lightbulb
Speaker 1: moment actually went off, and I thought this could be it.
Speaker 1: And right away I actually just emailed my agent and said, hey,
Speaker 1: what do you think does this seem like a good idea?
Speaker 1: And at this point we've been going back and forth
Speaker 1: for six months and she'd been saying no to every
Speaker 1: single thing I've proposed, and this one she said that
Speaker 1: the sounds promising. See what you can find. So so
Speaker 1: that was the start of the book. So what what
Speaker 1: was the process of actually selling the book? So first,
Speaker 1: and this was true of all of my books. Um,
Speaker 1: I feel very very strongly that you need to work
Speaker 1: very hard on your proposal, no matter how many books
Speaker 1: you've written, and no matter what your reputation is, because
Speaker 1: you're doing it not just for selling it. You're doing
Speaker 1: it for you because it helps you think through the
Speaker 1: whole thing. It helps you figure out whether this is
Speaker 1: actually going to work as a book, whether it's going
Speaker 1: to be a good story. So it's a really good exercise.
Speaker 1: And a lot of the proposal is actually writing scenes
Speaker 1: and writing parts of chapters to try to figure this out.
Speaker 1: And so I actually, before I sold the book, I
Speaker 1: spent putiple months playing. So I approached Eric Sidell, one
Speaker 1: of the greatest poker players in the world who agreed
Speaker 1: to become my coach. And I actually started on my
Speaker 1: journey before selling the book because I needed material for
Speaker 1: the proposal. I needed to see if it was going
Speaker 1: to work. I needed to see whether the game was
Speaker 1: actually going to fulfill its promise of teaching me what
Speaker 1: I wanted to learn. I wanted to see if I
Speaker 1: liked it. I mean, I didn't want to sell a
Speaker 1: book and then go play poker and realize that it
Speaker 1: made me sick and that I absolutely hated it and
Speaker 1: that it bore me to tears. It's going to be
Speaker 1: multiple years of my life. Any book is multiple years
Speaker 1: of your life, so you better you better think hard
Speaker 1: and pick something that's right for you. Um. And so
Speaker 1: the process looked like me starting to learn to play
Speaker 1: with Eric. I went to Vegas. I even made my
Speaker 1: first a little bit slower, a little bit slower told
Speaker 1: the book. Yet this stuff be doing because you've already
Speaker 1: met Eric Seidell. Okay, how did you meet Eric and
Speaker 1: how did you approach him? I'm a journalist. I cold
Speaker 1: called him. I had no connection to him whatsoever. I
Speaker 1: followed him on Twitter and sent him a message. And
Speaker 1: the reason that I chose him was a very sophisticated reason.
Speaker 1: I did a Google search of best poker buyers of
Speaker 1: all time, and his name came up in multiple lists,
Speaker 1: and I did some research because his name wasn't the
Speaker 1: only one who came in, and he seemed to check
Speaker 1: the most of my boxes. I wanted someone who was older,
Speaker 1: who had been around a while, and who had a
Speaker 1: more broad approach to the game. I didn't want someone
Speaker 1: who was young and just starting out and just had
Speaker 1: of the mathematical stuff that's the hot ticket today. I
Speaker 1: wanted someone who could really speak to my psychology background,
Speaker 1: so that was number one. So I needed someone from
Speaker 1: from from the past, so to speak. But I wanted
Speaker 1: someone who was still relevant. And Eric was actually the
Speaker 1: only person who checks both of those boxes, who was
Speaker 1: winning in the eighties and who was a winning today.
Speaker 1: I mean, that just doesn't happen. Most poker players careers
Speaker 1: are much shorter, and they don't they can't keep performing
Speaker 1: at the same high level. Then I looked at videos.
Speaker 1: He seemed like a nice guy. He's very quiet, seemed
Speaker 1: very self effacing, very humble, and a lot of the
Speaker 1: other poker players were out there like in your face, screaming, swearing, yelling,
Speaker 1: throwing temper tantrums, you know, throwing cards and trips in
Speaker 1: the air. And Eric was just kind of sitting there quietly,
Speaker 1: and I thought, I'm going to spend a year with
Speaker 1: someone as my mentor. I want someone nice and I
Speaker 1: want someone I can get along with. And then I
Speaker 1: realized that he was the guy from Rounders, so that
Speaker 1: was just a bonus that he was the guy in
Speaker 1: the in the red visor in the Rounders videos. And
Speaker 1: I thought, wow, it's a Rounders guy. It's they gotta
Speaker 1: gotta email him. So I found him on Twitter and
Speaker 1: I just contacted him and I said, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a journalist. I was still at The New Yorker
Speaker 1: full time then, um and said I'm working on a
Speaker 1: new project. I'd love to talk to you about it.
Speaker 1: I think it's something that might interest you. Um And
Speaker 1: he wrote up and he he was just immediately open.
Speaker 1: There were no like tell me more about you. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how much time this is going to take.
Speaker 1: That he loves my writing. The guy reads the New Yorker,
Speaker 1: he loves the New Yorker. He knew exactly who I was,
Speaker 1: so that helped and I didn't realize how lucky I got.
Speaker 1: Most poker players do not know what the New Yorker is. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you meet Eric. What's the next process in this
Speaker 1: run up to selling the book and deciding to do
Speaker 1: the book? Well, first I had to pitch Eric and
Speaker 1: have him agreed to take me on. So I convinced
Speaker 1: him that it was a good idea. Um. The way
Speaker 1: I did that was, you know, I told him that
Speaker 1: my background was psychology and as a journalist observing people,
Speaker 1: and he thought that and I'd studied decision making specifically,
Speaker 1: That's what I did for my pH d. And so
Speaker 1: I actually had studied a lot of the things that
Speaker 1: are important for playing poker, So that was part of it.
Speaker 1: And I think for him that was a challenge to see,
Speaker 1: you know, can he take someone from zero and can
Speaker 1: my background? Can a psychological approach still work? Because right now,
Speaker 1: most new players, if not all, entering the game are mathematical,
Speaker 1: and I had taken my last math class in high school,
Speaker 1: so that was never my strong suit and so he
Speaker 1: was curious to see if that approach could still work.
Speaker 1: And I think the other reason he took me on
Speaker 1: was that he loves the game, and he saw in
Speaker 1: me an opportunity to spread the love of the game
Speaker 1: to other people, to the non poker world, because I can't.
Speaker 1: I wasn't part of the poker community, and the people
Speaker 1: who read my books weren't poker players, and so I
Speaker 1: think he saw it as a long term investment, so
Speaker 1: he agreed to give it a try and to see
Speaker 1: if it would work. And we ended up getting along.
Speaker 1: So if we learned pretty early on that it was
Speaker 1: going to work in terms of us being able to
Speaker 1: work together, then I needed material before I could put
Speaker 1: together a proposal to sell the book. So he started
Speaker 1: teaching me. We started working together. UM, I started learning
Speaker 1: to play. So before I sold the book, UM, I
Speaker 1: spent a few a few months going daily to New
Speaker 1: Jersey back and forth to play online because online poker
Speaker 1: is legal in New Jersey and not legal in New York,
Speaker 1: which is bizarre, but it's but it's the case. So
Speaker 1: I did that, and then I went to Vegas for
Speaker 1: my first live real life let's go just a little
Speaker 1: bit slower. You you go to New Jersey, you created account,
Speaker 1: what are those initial experiences playing online? Like? I hate
Speaker 1: playing online, I still do. I'm not I'm not a
Speaker 1: fan you it's not what I love about poker, but
Speaker 1: why Eric wanted me to learn to play online, and
Speaker 1: I think he was absolutely right with the experience. Online
Speaker 1: is much faster. You can play thousands of hands these days.
Speaker 1: Online players get experience in a month that it used
Speaker 1: to take live pros people who didn't do this professional
Speaker 1: years to acquire. That's the difference in speed. And so
Speaker 1: if you're learning, it's really helpful to see a whole
Speaker 1: array of situations and to see an array of behaviors
Speaker 1: and to start learning by experience. That's how the human
Speaker 1: mind learns best. And so playing online, I got to
Speaker 1: see hand after hand after hand, and it was just
Speaker 1: at first, it was very, very overwhelming, um and everything
Speaker 1: stressed me out. I didn't know how to use the interface.
Speaker 1: I don't like timers, and you have timers, how long
Speaker 1: you can take to make a decision. All of this
Speaker 1: stuff was very stressful, but it started teaching me how
Speaker 1: to play. It started teaching me all of these different situations.
Speaker 1: And the really good thing about it is I could
Speaker 1: actually record all of my sessions because you can just
Speaker 1: screen record. So i'd play a tournament, I'd record the
Speaker 1: whole thing, and then I'd be able to take it
Speaker 1: to Eric and we could go through it and he
Speaker 1: could help me, so we could go through decision by decision.
Speaker 1: What I was doing to start teaching me how to
Speaker 1: think through things and how to think about poker. So
Speaker 1: in that sense it was invaluable. But in the sense
Speaker 1: of am I having fun yet? No, I wasn't having
Speaker 1: fun and I didn't love going to New Jersey. To
Speaker 1: be perfectly honest, you want to be able if you're
Speaker 1: already playing online. You want to play from the comfort
Speaker 1: of your home. You don't want to be sitting in
Speaker 1: a Starbucks with strangers looking over your shoulder and asking, hey,
Speaker 1: what are you doing, which is exactly what happened to me. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what is the difference between the people who play
Speaker 1: online and what did you learn about people and luck
Speaker 1: in those initial sessions? Very little? I mean, this is
Speaker 1: just me learning the ropes. This, This is why this
Speaker 1: journey ended up taking three years instead of one. Um.
Speaker 1: So this at this point I'm not I'm not learning much.
Speaker 1: I'm just still trying to figure out whether it's straight
Speaker 1: piazza flush or flush pizza straight. You have to remember
Speaker 1: that I'm a total notice. I have to I don't
Speaker 1: even know the rules of the game. So look, starting
Speaker 1: online is me trying to figure out what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: And we're not even at the scale versus chance yet.
Speaker 1: Right now, we're still at the very rudimentary stage of
Speaker 1: how do you play? Okay, So, in your online career
Speaker 1: in New Jersey, before you get to Vegas, how much
Speaker 1: did it cost you to learn how to play? Oh?
Speaker 1: I ended up winning two thousand dollars, a little over
Speaker 1: two thousand dollars, okay, But before you were up in
Speaker 1: the black? How far deep in the red were you?
Speaker 1: If at all fifty dollars was minnitial deposit. I never
Speaker 1: re deposited. That's pretty good. So how long do you
Speaker 1: play online before you decide to hit the big world
Speaker 1: in Vegas? A few months? And how frequently? Um? Three
Speaker 1: or four days a week? And so how do you
Speaker 1: or does Eric decide you're ready to go to Vegas? Um?
Speaker 1: Part of it was bankroll. So when I saved up
Speaker 1: enough money because Eric wanted me to take it seriously
Speaker 1: as a profession, and so he said that I had
Speaker 1: to earn my way up, and so we waited until
Speaker 1: I made enough money where I could finance my trip
Speaker 1: to Vegas all through what I already what I want
Speaker 1: from poker? Is that the same same two thousand dollars? Okay,
Speaker 1: so good a thing I want. I withdrew it all
Speaker 1: and we we went to Vegas. I mean, Eric was
Speaker 1: in Vegas most of the time, most of that time anyway. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you go to Vegas. Where do you stay? Um?
Speaker 1: I stayed at different places I made. I spent multiple
Speaker 1: months in Vegas, so I stayed in airbnbs, I stayed
Speaker 1: at the Aria. So it just depended, okay. And the
Speaker 1: longer you stayed does the hotel cut you a rate? Really? Really? Okay?
Speaker 1: So you go to Vegas. Go to Vegas, and what's
Speaker 1: the first step, Um, start playing baby tournaments, the dailies
Speaker 1: that cost you know, thirty five dollars and the nightlies.
Speaker 1: So I'm not allowed to play any of the more
Speaker 1: expensive tournaments. I have to start from the bottom. And
Speaker 1: until I start winning those, says Eric, I cannot make
Speaker 1: my way up to any further stakes. Well, well, you're
Speaker 1: a high achiever. How did it feel to be in
Speaker 1: the little league? Oh, I don't care. I'm I'm not
Speaker 1: I think there's not a there's it's a very it's
Speaker 1: a it's a very different thing to be a high
Speaker 1: achiever and to be embarrassed to be in the little leagues.
Speaker 1: I'm never embarrassed to be in the little leagues. I
Speaker 1: think that's how you learn. I mean, I've spent my
Speaker 1: whole life saying I don't know how to do this.
Speaker 1: Please tell me, and please teach me. I don't understand.
Speaker 1: That's what I do. I write about people who are
Speaker 1: much smarter than I am and who know much more
Speaker 1: than I do, and I interview them and I write
Speaker 1: articles about them and about their work. So I love
Speaker 1: not knowing. Um, for me, it's fine. I got to
Speaker 1: start at the bottom. You have to learn everything. You
Speaker 1: talk about these baby tournaments, and that's where you start
Speaker 1: to learn. You wonder what effect being a woman is
Speaker 1: in the game. Certain people try to intimidate. Could you
Speaker 1: amplify that a little bit? Sure? Of course, are we
Speaker 1: still talking about selling my book because at this point
Speaker 1: I've told my book. Okay, so literally literally, where in
Speaker 1: this process did you sell your book? After? After I
Speaker 1: had been in Vegas for a little bit, then I
Speaker 1: went back to New York sold the book and then
Speaker 1: came back to Vegas. Okay, how much to make it worth?
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get how in terms of the
Speaker 1: number that the company gives you. Are you saying, well,
Speaker 1: I need enough to live for X per year and
Speaker 1: that's that's the criterion. Nope, that's not how it works.
Speaker 1: I mean my books sold that auctions. My third book,
Speaker 1: my first two were best sellers. It was a It
Speaker 1: was a pretty straightforward process. I have a good agent. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that now that you're deep into the process, you're
Speaker 1: not worrying about cash. You have enough to live on. No,
Speaker 1: I mean you always have to worry about cash, especially
Speaker 1: because I left the New Yorker, so my income went
Speaker 1: to zero completely, and you have to even at the
Speaker 1: New Yorker, there's all writers are freelancers. So no that
Speaker 1: if it's no health insurance, this is all stuff I
Speaker 1: have to pay for. And I have suddenly stopped writing.
Speaker 1: I've realized that I need to be playing poker full time,
Speaker 1: and so all of my income streams went to zero.
Speaker 1: When you get a book advance, it's not what you
Speaker 1: think it is because you have no idea how long
Speaker 1: the book is going to take, So you need to
Speaker 1: make sure that it will last you. You don't get
Speaker 1: it all, you just get a quarter of it goes
Speaker 1: to your agents. So so there's that you pay your
Speaker 1: own taxes. So there's that I leave in New York City,
Speaker 1: so the tax right is very very high. So there's that,
Speaker 1: and you need to I have a mortgage. You need
Speaker 1: to kind of know that you're paying for planning for
Speaker 1: all of these things. So no, I have zero dollars
Speaker 1: to spend on poker. Okay, so you you played online,
Speaker 1: you went to Vegas, you sold the book. The next
Speaker 1: step is starting starting to uh grind my way up
Speaker 1: until I can start winning these little baby tournaments so
Speaker 1: that I can make money, so that I can actually
Speaker 1: see if I can move up to the next level
Speaker 1: in the poker tournament. Because my advance is going towards
Speaker 1: paying my mortgage and my health insurance and all these
Speaker 1: other things, it's not going towards paying my poker tournaments.
Speaker 1: I did put a little bit aside because I knew
Speaker 1: that for the book, I wanted to play the main
Speaker 1: event that you and I started off talking about, So
Speaker 1: I knew that ten thousand dollars was going to be
Speaker 1: budgeted for that no matter what, UM, and so that
Speaker 1: was put aside. Otherwise I needed to earn my way
Speaker 1: up or not as the case. Maybe Okay, going back
Speaker 1: to those initial experiences in the baby tournaments, what did
Speaker 1: you learn? I learned this is where I really started
Speaker 1: learning a lot um. At the beginning, I wasn't doing
Speaker 1: well for a number of reasons. I mean, first, I
Speaker 1: was intimidated. Playing live is not like playing online. UM.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how anything worked. I didn't know the mechanics.
Speaker 1: I felt like a literal fish out of water. I
Speaker 1: say literal because in poker or the term for bad
Speaker 1: players who don't know what they're doing is fish. And
Speaker 1: I was definitely a fish, um. And so I and
Speaker 1: I felt it. I knew that I didn't know anything.
Speaker 1: And it would have been one thing if it had
Speaker 1: been just this really warm and friendly and welcoming environment
Speaker 1: and people said, oh, it's okay, like you're you're okay,
Speaker 1: we'll help you out, um. And that's what it was.
Speaker 1: At the highest levels, they are excitels of the world.
Speaker 1: They opened their arms wide and they were all incredibly
Speaker 1: generous and helpful. All of the big high stakes players
Speaker 1: gave me their phone numbers, said they'd help me, and
Speaker 1: we're really excited about my whole journey. When you enter
Speaker 1: a random casino off scrip and are playing in a
Speaker 1: thirty five dollar tournament, those aren't the same players. These
Speaker 1: are people who are here to have fun. They're drinking.
Speaker 1: They are mostly men. The poker world is male um,
Speaker 1: and they don't really care for a female at the table,
Speaker 1: And if you're already there, they're not gonna mind their
Speaker 1: manners because they're here to have fun and they shouldn't
Speaker 1: have to act differently because a woman is at the table.
Speaker 1: So I initially I wasn't playing well because it was
Speaker 1: really intimidating, and I would let them bully me, and
Speaker 1: I didn't want conflict. I wanted people to like me,
Speaker 1: so i'd fold, and even when I had good cards,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't necessarily bet as much as I should because
Speaker 1: I didn't want them to think, Oh, that's the bitch
Speaker 1: who was always so aggressive. You know. I wanted them
Speaker 1: to think I was a nice person. That's not the
Speaker 1: way to play poker. That was not that's not the
Speaker 1: game theoretical answer, And I was I was just letting
Speaker 1: them walk all over me. And then it took a
Speaker 1: while for me to realize what was happening, And it
Speaker 1: took a while for me to realize that this was
Speaker 1: actually an advantage. That they were all underestimating me and
Speaker 1: what I was capable of, and correctly, at the beginning,
Speaker 1: they weren't underestimating me because I did exactly what they
Speaker 1: wanted me to. You know, they'd bully me and I'd fold.
Speaker 1: They do this, and I'd go away. You know, That's
Speaker 1: that's what they wanted, and they got it. But once
Speaker 1: I realized that I was able to take that dynamic
Speaker 1: and put it up and turn it around and really
Speaker 1: figure out, Okay, fine, if you think I'm just a girl.
Speaker 1: There was a guy who kept calling me little girl
Speaker 1: over and over and he really got to me. Um.
Speaker 1: Good for him, you know, he he got me to
Speaker 1: make bad decisions. That's what you're supposed to do. Um,
Speaker 1: but he he really got to me. And but then
Speaker 1: I realized, if, okay, if you think of me as
Speaker 1: a little girl, then I can get away with things
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't have otherwise been able to get away with.
Speaker 1: If you think I'm incapable of bluffing, I'm going to
Speaker 1: bluff more. I'm going to run big bluffs because you're
Speaker 1: going to fold. Because if you think that I couldn't
Speaker 1: possibly be doing that, then you think I must have
Speaker 1: a strong hand. If you're someone who would rather die
Speaker 1: than fold to a girl or be bluff by a girl,
Speaker 1: well I'm not going to bluff you because that would
Speaker 1: just be throwing money on fire, because you're going to
Speaker 1: call me no matter what. But when I have good hands,
Speaker 1: or even marginally good hands, I'm gonna bet a lot
Speaker 1: because you're gonna call me, and you're gonna call me
Speaker 1: with hands that are worse than mine. If you're someone
Speaker 1: who doesn't want to take my money because you want
Speaker 1: to be a gentleman, there are guys who are very
Speaker 1: condescending and patronizing and telling me all the things I
Speaker 1: was doing wrong, um, and wanted to help me out
Speaker 1: by calling me honey and showing me their cards. You
Speaker 1: know you made a good fold, honey, here you go,
Speaker 1: here's my hand, um, And I'd say, okay, fine, this
Speaker 1: is great, thank you for showing me your cards. Information
Speaker 1: is very important, so I love seeing what what cards
Speaker 1: you hold. But also I now know that when you
Speaker 1: bet a lot, I should fold, even if I have
Speaker 1: a pretty good hand because you don't want to take
Speaker 1: my money because you're a gentleman, or you'd like to
Speaker 1: see yourself as a gentleman. Once I could figure out
Speaker 1: how people saw me and how they wanted to see themselves,
Speaker 1: you know, do they want to see themselves as a
Speaker 1: big macho ga or asked the gentleman? Or is this?
Speaker 1: Or is that? Once I could figure out those more
Speaker 1: human elements, that I started being able to really take
Speaker 1: advantage of them. And that's when I started winning and
Speaker 1: making real money. And when you made this money, did
Speaker 1: the men get angry? Yeah, of course, that's a simple answer.
Speaker 1: Not all of them, Um, I mean Eric was ecstatic
Speaker 1: when I won my first tournament, as was my husband,
Speaker 1: as where all of the players who Eric had introduced
Speaker 1: me to, I mean everyone who Everyone was always very
Speaker 1: very supportive and excited. The guys I was playing against, no,
Speaker 1: they weren't. In the first tournament I won, Um, it
Speaker 1: was a baby tournament. I don't remember how much. The
Speaker 1: entry fee was around fifty dollars at Planet Hollywood. And
Speaker 1: when we got to the final table, um, I was
Speaker 1: the chip leader. I had most of the chips in play,
Speaker 1: and they all started pressuring me to chop, which means
Speaker 1: stopped playing and just divide up the money. Um, and
Speaker 1: I didn't really know what that was. Eric and I
Speaker 1: had never talked about it because I'd never been in
Speaker 1: that situation. And I was going to agree because okay,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to be nice, I want to
Speaker 1: be amenable. Then one of them just turned to me
Speaker 1: and said, yeah, you know you don't you know you're
Speaker 1: gonna just lose all those trips. You're in a position
Speaker 1: of power now, but you're just gonna lose them. And
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, well screw you. No, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna chop. So they were not happy. They and then
Speaker 1: they just kept and then another one of them busted,
Speaker 1: and another one and they just kept pressuring me to chop.
Speaker 1: But at that point nothing was going to compel me
Speaker 1: to chop. So I ended up winning and I was
Speaker 1: and they were not happy because they just wanted me
Speaker 1: to give up my money and give it to them.
Speaker 1: But you know, we talked about the arc from being
Speaker 1: intimidated to winning. Uh, you know, it takes a psychological
Speaker 1: makeup to be at the top and endure others people's
Speaker 1: hate or anger or that you how did you learn
Speaker 1: how to cope with that. How did you gain a
Speaker 1: thick skin? Well, I mean part of it was my training.
Speaker 1: So my graduate advisor, who I worked with for many
Speaker 1: years and who then became a close mentor and friend
Speaker 1: of mine, was Walter Michelle and two people who aren't
Speaker 1: familiar with the name, they're probably still familiar with the
Speaker 1: work because it's become part of the popular culture. The
Speaker 1: Marshmallow test the famous psychological experiment that had little kids
Speaker 1: set at a table with a marshmallow or another treat
Speaker 1: whatever they liked the most in front of them, and
Speaker 1: there was a bell next to the treat, and they
Speaker 1: were told, you can you can ring the bell at
Speaker 1: any point and you're allowed to eat your treat. But
Speaker 1: if you don't ring the bell, if you just wait
Speaker 1: for us to come back to the room, we'll give
Speaker 1: you many more treats and you'll be able to eat
Speaker 1: as many. You'll be able to eat more of them.
Speaker 1: And what they wanted to learn was how long would
Speaker 1: this child weight? A three year old or four year
Speaker 1: old and there's this delicious things setting right in front
Speaker 1: of you, it's really hard to wait, and one minute
Speaker 1: feels like an hour. I mean to a kid that young,
Speaker 1: it's actually really hard to delay gratification. And what Walter
Speaker 1: found was that the kids who were able to wait
Speaker 1: the longest had much better life outcomes. So they followed
Speaker 1: these kids. They're still following them. Walter unfortunately died a
Speaker 1: few years ago, but the kids are still being followed. Um.
Speaker 1: And so now it's you know, over forty years later, um,
Speaker 1: and they were the kids who waited longer, did better
Speaker 1: in school, better SAT scores, went to better colleges, have
Speaker 1: better health outcomes, are just much more successful in life.
Speaker 1: And so this was kind of the foundational study of
Speaker 1: self control and of how important the ability to regulate
Speaker 1: your emotions and regularly cool hot stimuli. So the marshmallow
Speaker 1: in this case is the hot stimulus. You want it,
Speaker 1: it's right in front of you, yourity to wait, your
Speaker 1: ability to cool it off. There were kids. I love
Speaker 1: the interviews with the kids. So home said, you know, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I put a frame around it in my head because
Speaker 1: you can't eat a picture. Others that said, you know,
Speaker 1: oh I pictured it. I pretended that it was a cloud,
Speaker 1: and you can't eat a cloud. Others just turned the
Speaker 1: chair around so they weren't looking at it. Now, these
Speaker 1: are kids coming up with these strategies spontaneously. But Walter
Speaker 1: found you could teach them. You could actually teach these strategies,
Speaker 1: and kids who learned those strategies were just as successful
Speaker 1: as the ones who had them intuitively. And so I've
Speaker 1: been doing this work for a long time, and so
Speaker 1: I think I had a lot of the arsenal and
Speaker 1: the vocabulary for realizing what was going on and having
Speaker 1: some techniques in play so that I could remove myself
Speaker 1: from the situation that said, I mean, I wasn't successful
Speaker 1: from the beginning. I had to work hard, and I
Speaker 1: ended up actually working with a mental game coach, someone
Speaker 1: who could help me, someone who could see me objectively,
Speaker 1: because even if you're me, I mean, I was very
Speaker 1: I think I was a little overcompetent at the beginning
Speaker 1: of my ability to regulate my emotions because I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I have a psychology PhD. This is what
Speaker 1: I studied. I'm a natural. Well, when you're at a
Speaker 1: poker table in a new environment and there's lots of
Speaker 1: pressure and the stakes are rising, you're gonna you're gonna
Speaker 1: mess up. And I realized that I did need help,
Speaker 1: and so I a lot of the things that I learned,
Speaker 1: I only learned because I was I had someone on
Speaker 1: the outside who I could talk to and who would
Speaker 1: be able to in a sense, mirror me back to me.
Speaker 1: But to to say, oh, so, it seems like, you know,
Speaker 1: you get really upset when these guys are trying to
Speaker 1: bully you. It seems like when you're in those situations,
Speaker 1: you default to this more passive thing. And I'd say, oh,
Speaker 1: I guess you're right, because he was right. He just
Speaker 1: I would just explain what happened and tell him the day,
Speaker 1: but he could synthathize it in a way that it's
Speaker 1: very difficult to do when it's you who's going through it.
Speaker 1: Which is which is all to say that, sure, I
Speaker 1: had a lot of the skills and a lot of
Speaker 1: the knowledge, and I think that helped me, and that
Speaker 1: helped me ramp up more quickly. But I still need
Speaker 1: it outside help. I still needed someone who could help
Speaker 1: talk me through it. Um. And I think that that's
Speaker 1: something very important to realize. Whether you paid or not,
Speaker 1: what is someone like that normally charge for their help? Um.
Speaker 1: It depends on the person. Uh, there's there's a huge
Speaker 1: scale and mental game coaches. I mean it starts at
Speaker 1: a few hundred dollars an hour, and I know some
Speaker 1: I never worked with them who charged over a thousand
Speaker 1: dollars an hour. Okay, Just so there's a point in
Speaker 1: your book that a lot of people are interested in
Speaker 1: that does not directly relate to poker. You have a
Speaker 1: line there we say you don't believe in the ten rule?
Speaker 1: Could you go a little deeper there? Sure m. I
Speaker 1: spent a lot out of time arguing back and forth
Speaker 1: with Andre's Eriksson, who is the father of of the
Speaker 1: research into into deliberate practice, who recently passed away. He did, yes,
Speaker 1: he died a few weeks ago. Unfortunately. I liked him
Speaker 1: a lot. He was a great guy. We disagreed on everything,
Speaker 1: and we never got into a fight because he didn't.
Speaker 1: He would just listen to you and he just never
Speaker 1: raised his voice, and he just would not and say, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I don't agree, and he would and he would go on,
Speaker 1: and it was it's so rare, you know. And I
Speaker 1: was attacking his work because I wanted to challenge him
Speaker 1: on a lot of the things that he was saying,
Speaker 1: and he just he was okay with that, and that's
Speaker 1: I really admired that. I think that's such a rare
Speaker 1: characteristic for a researcher. So what is what is your
Speaker 1: actual belief relative? So I think that I think that
Speaker 1: practice is absolutely important. No one is saying that it's not.
Speaker 1: You need to work hard, and you need to need
Speaker 1: to practice, and you need to practice deliberately. I think
Speaker 1: Honders was brilliant in so many ways in figuring out
Speaker 1: that these components matter. However, he insisted that that's all
Speaker 1: that matters, And what I say is that's absolutely not true.
Speaker 1: Genetics matter, Talent matters. Who you are when you start matters.
Speaker 1: The same amount of hours done in the exact same
Speaker 1: way as not going to translate for person A to
Speaker 1: person BE, and PERSONNE might need a hundred hours to
Speaker 1: get amazing. Person B might never get to that level
Speaker 1: even with a hundred thousand hours. So there are lots
Speaker 1: of individual differences. There's a lot of variability, and yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to work hard, but that's not enough, and
Speaker 1: you have to also figure out where your skills are
Speaker 1: and you have to figure out what you're able to do.
Speaker 1: Had I decided that I wanted to write a book
Speaker 1: about playing golf, there'd be no book. My hand eye
Speaker 1: coordination is zero. I cannot hit a golf ball, for
Speaker 1: the love of my life, and I can't, especially for
Speaker 1: a baseball book. If a ball is flying at my face,
Speaker 1: I mean, I duck, I can't. I can't do that.
Speaker 1: I'm not someone who's good at any of that. And
Speaker 1: believe me, even if I practice for ten thousand hours,
Speaker 1: even something like golf, which is a very which is
Speaker 1: something that's very amenable to learning, never going to be
Speaker 1: able to hit balls with tiger woods or or go
Speaker 1: on any sort of a decent level. I know that,
Speaker 1: and I and I'm willing to bet a lot of
Speaker 1: money on it. And that's the difference between me and uders.
Speaker 1: Unders would say that's absolutely not true. You can be
Speaker 1: tiger Woods, and I'd say, no, only tiger woods can
Speaker 1: be tiger Woods. And he said, no, Well, you didn't
Speaker 1: practice well or you didn't practice deliberately enough. Okay, Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a lot in the psychology in the book. One
Speaker 1: thing we didn't cover is the game you're playing is
Speaker 1: Texas Hold Him. You make a big point in the
Speaker 1: book where you're analogizing that to life, and you believe
Speaker 1: it's the best analogy in in games. It's not me,
Speaker 1: it's von Neuman. So let's just let's just get that
Speaker 1: straight because I didn't make it up. I just stole
Speaker 1: his uh with with full attribution, but it's his idea.
Speaker 1: So which we're looking for is what is the balance
Speaker 1: of known information to unknown information? What is the balance
Speaker 1: between the things that we have in common and the
Speaker 1: things that we have in private. Because poker is a
Speaker 1: game of incomplete information, like life. So there are things
Speaker 1: that you know, there are things that I know. There
Speaker 1: are things we both know, and we need to make
Speaker 1: the best decision possible knowing that we don't know everything right,
Speaker 1: we can only guess at some of this hidden information.
Speaker 1: Other games like chess are really bad analogies for life.
Speaker 1: Von Neuman dismissed it completely because chess is a perfect
Speaker 1: information game. There's always a right move. You can solve it.
Speaker 1: And he said, if you give me enough computing power,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you exactly what you're supposed to do. And
Speaker 1: of course chess has been solved, and so he said,
Speaker 1: that's not life. Life is not a chess game. You
Speaker 1: can't see all the pieces, you can't see the board.
Speaker 1: You know, you might think you're looking at a queen
Speaker 1: and then while the disguise comes off and it's actually
Speaker 1: a bishop or or whatnot. So life is full of deception.
Speaker 1: Life is full of things you don't know and things
Speaker 1: that are concealed, and so you need an imperfect information
Speaker 1: game to be like life. But within poker, there are
Speaker 1: lots of different variants. And the reason that no limit
Speaker 1: hold them is the one that I chose, and the
Speaker 1: one that seems to be the best is the exact
Speaker 1: balance of knowns to unknowns seems just about right. There
Speaker 1: are other variants of poker where there's too much unknown,
Speaker 1: and so it becomes too much of a gamble. So
Speaker 1: if there are five cards that every single person has
Speaker 1: that you can't see, all of a sudden, they're just
Speaker 1: too many X factors and it becomes too much about
Speaker 1: a guessing game and too little about skill. If there's
Speaker 1: only one card. There's some variants where there's only one
Speaker 1: whole card. Then it becomes too mathematical, too much like chess.
Speaker 1: There's too little that's unknown, and and hold him in Texas,
Speaker 1: hold him. He thought that this was actually the variant
Speaker 1: with the best balance, and the reason that you choose
Speaker 1: no limit as opposed to limit. So the differences in
Speaker 1: limit your bets are limited. There's always a cap to
Speaker 1: what you can you can bet, and no limit there
Speaker 1: isn't he said, Well, life is no limit. You can
Speaker 1: always go all in, you can always bet everything. Nothing's
Speaker 1: keeping you from it. So if you want an analogy
Speaker 1: for life, it better be no limit. Okay. A couple
Speaker 1: of things you brought up. You mentioned a couple of
Speaker 1: times math and the people with mathematical skills. To what
Speaker 1: degree do they have an advantage and where are they
Speaker 1: in the poker hierarchy and sphere. Well, it depends. Um,
Speaker 1: I think that you need both. I think that you
Speaker 1: need both math and psychology. And I think that the
Speaker 1: best players have both. And the best players know which
Speaker 1: one is their skill and that's where they've focus, that's
Speaker 1: where their edges. But they also learned to master the
Speaker 1: other thing to the best of their ability. So for
Speaker 1: someone like Eric Seidel, he's a psych guy and he's
Speaker 1: not a math guy, and yet he has the most
Speaker 1: advanced mathematical software that he uses to try to figure
Speaker 1: out what the math guys are thinking. Someone like Stephen Chidwick,
Speaker 1: who is currently considered one of the best tournament players
Speaker 1: in the world. He's much younger. Um, he's a math guy,
Speaker 1: He's the one who knows exactly how to set up
Speaker 1: all of these simulations. Or someone who I worked with, Um,
Speaker 1: who's just a great guy and a great player at
Speaker 1: someone like I Caxton. They know the math, that's their
Speaker 1: strong suit, that's where they've run all the simulations. Their
Speaker 1: numbers leave me and Eric far behind, but their psychology
Speaker 1: might not be quite as strong because they are much
Speaker 1: more in their heads about the math and might not
Speaker 1: be picking up on some of the physical cues, might
Speaker 1: not be picking up on some of the psychological dynamics. However,
Speaker 1: at the top, I mean, I actually think that Stevie
Speaker 1: and I probably are picking up on all the psychology
Speaker 1: because there I've just named two of the best players
Speaker 1: in the world, But almost everyone else is not them.
Speaker 1: And there are people who rely way too much on
Speaker 1: the math and they miss a lot, and I can
Speaker 1: actually sometimes they're the easiest to play against at the
Speaker 1: table because you know what they're thinking, you know what
Speaker 1: they're going to do, and you know that they're missing
Speaker 1: a lot of information because they've already figured out mathematically
Speaker 1: exactly what they need to do here, and there are
Speaker 1: people who don't care about the math at all. They're
Speaker 1: also easy to play against because you can exploit them
Speaker 1: because they're going to make bad mistakes because they don't
Speaker 1: care about the math. They don't care about the odds.
Speaker 1: They're just playing the man. And you need to understand
Speaker 1: the math. And you need to understand that part as well.
Speaker 1: You mentioned at the beginning you hadn't taken a math
Speaker 1: course since high school. To what degree have you? Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, spit up and become accustomed to and learn
Speaker 1: the math. I mean I count on my fingers and
Speaker 1: Eric still do. And Eric told me at the very
Speaker 1: beginning that there's no hard math the math. He said,
Speaker 1: it's so easy that a sixth grader can do it.
Speaker 1: If you can add, subtract, multiplind, divide. So I have
Speaker 1: not picked up any advanced math skills, but I have
Speaker 1: become better at because I've had more practice. Is mental
Speaker 1: math um and I I'm someone who was always fine
Speaker 1: at math. I mean I took advanced calculus. I just
Speaker 1: took it in high school and I haven't taken it
Speaker 1: since I always could understand the math. I just didn't
Speaker 1: like it. It wasn't interesting to me. So I have
Speaker 1: those muscles somewhere back there, UM, and I was able
Speaker 1: to wake some of them up, so I can calculate
Speaker 1: POD odds pretty quickly. At the beginning, it took me
Speaker 1: a while and I'd have to be sitting there counting.
Speaker 1: Now I still use my fingers, but I do it
Speaker 1: very very quickly. Okay. Another element you talked about in
Speaker 1: the book is aggressiveness. So, uh, is that something that
Speaker 1: people just tend to play aggressively and they don't modulate
Speaker 1: their behavior And are the aggressive players a certain type
Speaker 1: that you can then adjust to? Well, it depends once again,
Speaker 1: it depends on the player. So at the beginning, I
Speaker 1: feel like players start off in one of two modes.
Speaker 1: Some are way too aggressive now I'm talking about amateurs
Speaker 1: who are just starting out, and some are like me,
Speaker 1: way too passive. UM. So I was too scary, UM
Speaker 1: and not nearly aggressive enough. And there are a lot
Speaker 1: of players, UM, and I think actually most players are
Speaker 1: on the other end. They play too many hands, they're
Speaker 1: too aggressive, they like bluffing and they enjoy that. And
Speaker 1: as you learn more about the game, UM, there are
Speaker 1: players who keep being super aggressive always and back in
Speaker 1: the day um as Area told me it was before
Speaker 1: my time, but he said that that used to work
Speaker 1: because all the thinking players would think, go, well, if
Speaker 1: you're being that aggressive, you know you must have a
Speaker 1: really good hand. Um And so there was once upon
Speaker 1: a time when the whole general level of the game
Speaker 1: was lower. Super aggression got people very very far are
Speaker 1: Once people started catching on, they, as you said, adjusted,
Speaker 1: they started realizing, wait, this guy is just running everyone
Speaker 1: over because no one's standing up to them. Now, if
Speaker 1: you start standing up to them, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the aggression is not paying off anymore. Because you are
Speaker 1: people are pushing back, and you have junk you have
Speaker 1: you don't have a strong hand at all. You're bluffing
Speaker 1: way too much, and all of a sudden you start
Speaker 1: losing money. And as Eric said, the guys who failed
Speaker 1: to adjust, who stayed super aggressive, wint bust. They went broke,
Speaker 1: they lost all of their money. And so the best
Speaker 1: players are players who This is actually a similar answer
Speaker 1: to the one I gave about math and psychology. The
Speaker 1: best players are players who figure out what their natural
Speaker 1: level of aggression is and who figure out what works
Speaker 1: for them, what feels comfortable to them, and then who
Speaker 1: are able to do that and to adjust to other players.
Speaker 1: So someone like Eric is not someone who's an aggressive
Speaker 1: person in real life and not someone who's like a
Speaker 1: maniac at the table. The at certain tables, he's capable
Speaker 1: of very maniacal plays because he's very good at adjusting.
Speaker 1: He's good at reading what people are doing and what
Speaker 1: people think of him, and so you need to learn
Speaker 1: to use people's perceptions of you against them. So if
Speaker 1: people are sitting there thinking underestimating Eric, thinking that oh,
Speaker 1: he's someone who's you know, he's never going to go
Speaker 1: maniac on me, well then it's time for him to
Speaker 1: go maniac on them. Um Or there are other tables
Speaker 1: when you're at a table with maniacs, and in those tables,
Speaker 1: you become very quiet and you wait for a very
Speaker 1: strong hand, and that's when you fight back. You don't
Speaker 1: fight maniacs with maniac tendencies. That's a mistake that people
Speaker 1: often make. Okay, how about tells. Tells are something that
Speaker 1: is not nearly as important as people think, and very
Speaker 1: different from what people think. So originally, you know, everyone
Speaker 1: always thinks poker face, right, you you have to stare
Speaker 1: at people's faces and the eyes are the window to
Speaker 1: the soul. My last book was about con artists, and
Speaker 1: let me tell you, if someone's a good liar, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna find out. Um. I spent multiple years with
Speaker 1: people who deceived on a daily basis, very very intelligent people,
Speaker 1: and when I met them, I knew who they were,
Speaker 1: and I was still taken by them because that's how
Speaker 1: good they are. And the psychology tells us that people
Speaker 1: are really really bad at spotting liars. We spot liars
Speaker 1: on average, no better than chance. Where we suck at
Speaker 1: learning to tell whether someone's being deceitful or not. And
Speaker 1: the face is actually the worst place to look because
Speaker 1: the face leads you astray because the face has fake cues,
Speaker 1: even if people don't mean to have them there, Their
Speaker 1: face tells you something because subconsciously we look at faces,
Speaker 1: and there are certain traits that communicate certain things like trustworthiness.
Speaker 1: Certain cuts of the jaw and certain eyebrows say trustworthy,
Speaker 1: others say aggression. It's not something we're consciously aware of.
Speaker 1: It just something that we experience and react to within
Speaker 1: just micro seconds, within fractions of a second of staying
Speaker 1: a face. And so when people are trying to stare
Speaker 1: someone down saying, oh, is your left eyebrow twitching? Is
Speaker 1: your nostril doing this? That's wrong. It's probably not going
Speaker 1: to tell you anything. It's probably gonna screw you up,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna make mistakes. That said, the human body
Speaker 1: does convey a lot of information, but most of it's
Speaker 1: not coming from the face. And it turns out, um,
Speaker 1: I met this really cool researcher um who actually studies
Speaker 1: secrets and was looking at tells in poker, because poker
Speaker 1: is natural secret keeping, right, You're you're trying to keep
Speaker 1: other people from guessing how strong your hand is. And
Speaker 1: so he looked at videos of people playing the main
Speaker 1: event of the World Series of Poker. He had people
Speaker 1: analyze them and ask how strong someone's cards were, how
Speaker 1: strong was their hand, And he had them look at
Speaker 1: unaltered videos. He had them look at just the face,
Speaker 1: and then he had them look at just the arms
Speaker 1: and hands. And what he found was when people just
Speaker 1: looked at the video, the unaltered one, they were no
Speaker 1: better than chance as predicted. When they just looked at
Speaker 1: the face, they were worse than chance. So the face
Speaker 1: screwed them up. They actually thought that they knew much
Speaker 1: more than they did, and they made they made bad
Speaker 1: mistakes when they looked at the hands, though they actually
Speaker 1: improved and they were predicting at much better accuracy. And
Speaker 1: so he found that the hands are giving off a
Speaker 1: lot more information than any other part of the body.
Speaker 1: And he's done a lot more work on that since then.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that it's not just in poker,
Speaker 1: that when we look at hands and a lot of
Speaker 1: different contexts, we can predict a lot about the behavior
Speaker 1: of the person. So do you employ that information when
Speaker 1: you play? Do you look at the hands and what
Speaker 1: might you see that might affect your play. It's all
Speaker 1: about how people handle their cards and their chips, how
Speaker 1: they under their bets, how they know how smooth their
Speaker 1: motion is. And this is really important. You have to
Speaker 1: observe someone over time. One time doesn't mean anything. You
Speaker 1: have to see how their actions and how the way
Speaker 1: that they move changes from normal. Right, So how do
Speaker 1: they how do they normally bet? Is this same or
Speaker 1: is it or is it smoother? Or is it you
Speaker 1: know or is it less smooth? So a lot of
Speaker 1: it is about deviations from baseline and in order to
Speaker 1: be able to see if someone is deviating from baseline.
Speaker 1: You need to establish a baseline. How do you do that.
Speaker 1: You do that by looking at people over and over
Speaker 1: and over and observing hands even when you're not playing
Speaker 1: with them, even when you're just when you don't have
Speaker 1: any cards and you're just looking at them when they're
Speaker 1: playing against someone else. Okay, Now, one of the big
Speaker 1: stories in the book is before you make it to
Speaker 1: the big game, you're playing I believe it planning Hollywood,
Speaker 1: are one of these so called baby games, and you
Speaker 1: have an incredible hand, but you're beaten by a better hand,
Speaker 1: and you go to tell Eric the story and I'm
Speaker 1: beaten by a worse hand. That's hence the bad beat.
Speaker 1: So when my when the money gets in, I have
Speaker 1: the best hand, and I should be winning there most
Speaker 1: of the time. I should be winning there over the time,
Speaker 1: and actually even more. I think at that point I
Speaker 1: was in almost favorite, and this person hits their miracle
Speaker 1: card and wins, and I'm knocked out of the tournament.
Speaker 1: That's what's called a bad beat. When you get your
Speaker 1: money in as a favorite, statistically speaking, and then the
Speaker 1: other part of the variance happens. Because there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as I've gotten my money in as favorite and
Speaker 1: I've lost. So two percent happens, and it happens a
Speaker 1: lot more frequently than you think it will happen. So
Speaker 1: so this is one of these things where you're supposed
Speaker 1: to Vaughan and say I made the right decision, and
Speaker 1: then variancet and go my way. That's not what I said.
Speaker 1: I ran to Eric and I started telling him as
Speaker 1: they started crying to him, not literally crying, but complaining, saying,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I can't believe this happened. And he
Speaker 1: shut me up. He said, I don't want to hear it,
Speaker 1: and I just I couldn't believe that he didn't want
Speaker 1: to hear what I had to say. I mean, he's
Speaker 1: my coach. He's supposed to listen to me. And he
Speaker 1: asked me, he said, do you have a question about
Speaker 1: how you played the hand? And my answer was well no,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know I had top set, which is
Speaker 1: about as strong as it guts. And he said, well
Speaker 1: that's it. Hand over, and he said, let's make a deal.
Speaker 1: I never want to know how a hand ends. All
Speaker 1: I care about is your decision process. All I care
Speaker 1: about is what you were thinking. Are there questions, are there,
Speaker 1: nodes are They're parts of the decision that you weren't
Speaker 1: sure of. If so, let's talk about it. But the ending,
Speaker 1: the outcome, just forget it because that's not what you control.
Speaker 1: So this goes back to my original question, skill versus chance.
Speaker 1: Skill is the process, it's the decision. It's how you
Speaker 1: made the decision. It's whether you were thinking clearly, whether
Speaker 1: you put your money in well as a favorite, whether
Speaker 1: you were using the information that you had to the
Speaker 1: best of your abilities. Outcome, that's luck. That has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with you. Now the money is already in
Speaker 1: your decision is done. Now the cards have to cooperate,
Speaker 1: and you don't control the cards. That's the chance. And
Speaker 1: so we don't care about the chance. We don't. We
Speaker 1: don't focus on that. What we care about is the
Speaker 1: stuff that we actually can change, which is how we play,
Speaker 1: how we think about something. And so that was his rule.
Speaker 1: No bad beat stories. He said, that's someone else, that's
Speaker 1: never you. You are not allowed to tell a bad
Speaker 1: beat story. Okay, At some point he says, you have
Speaker 1: enough experience to play at the ARIA. I have a
Speaker 1: couple of questions here. When you're at the ARIA, not playing.
Speaker 1: Does everybody allow you to see your their car or
Speaker 1: just Eric? What is the process there, and what is
Speaker 1: the process where you ultimately get in the game. And
Speaker 1: what if somebody who's at one of these baby games
Speaker 1: decides they want to play the aria, what happens? Then
Speaker 1: anyone can play any tournament. Anyone can play if you
Speaker 1: have enough money, just that buy in and there you
Speaker 1: are in terms of whether I can see people's cards.
Speaker 1: So I had quite a unique arrangement. Eric played in
Speaker 1: a lot of high roller events at the area. So
Speaker 1: these are tournaments that are dollars dollars to enter, so
Speaker 1: not not anywhere near the level that I'm playing. And
Speaker 1: there are a limited number of people who play those games,
Speaker 1: and how many people are there and depends on the day. Um,
Speaker 1: but we're talking tense. That's thirty would be a good day.
Speaker 1: Usually it's fewer. And the way that it worked normally
Speaker 1: is tournaments aren't cash games. No one is allowed to
Speaker 1: sit behind players and look at their cards. It's not
Speaker 1: allowed period. This was in a cash game, someone can
Speaker 1: sweat behind you, that's fine, No one cares. In a
Speaker 1: tournament this this is actually against the rules. However, this
Speaker 1: is the area can run its own tournaments, and I
Speaker 1: was learning, and Eric said that he wanted me to
Speaker 1: be able to see his cards, and the tournament director
Speaker 1: there said, if every single person is okay with that,
Speaker 1: then I'm okay with it. And so I asked every
Speaker 1: single person and all of them said sure, not a
Speaker 1: problem at all. And so I was allowed to sit
Speaker 1: and sweat with Eric to see his cards while he
Speaker 1: was playing UM. And then other players as I got
Speaker 1: to know them, and as they became friendly with me
Speaker 1: and started helping me with different elements of my game,
Speaker 1: other players would say, hey, why don't you sweat with
Speaker 1: me today? So I UM. All in all, I played with,
Speaker 1: played with, sweaded with three different players during my time there.
Speaker 1: I sweateated with Eric most frequently. UM. I also did
Speaker 1: a sweat a few times with Jason Coon and with
Speaker 1: I Caxton. Those are two amazing players, both of whom
Speaker 1: were really helpful to me. But everyone else I've never
Speaker 1: seen their cards. Okay, just talking irrelevant of you. All
Speaker 1: the high state game poker players know are at the area,
Speaker 1: well for that those tournaments, yes, so they're there are
Speaker 1: cash games coming up playing happening all the time. This
Speaker 1: isn't a cash game, So the high state cash games
Speaker 1: are happening at Bobby's room at the Bellagio, at a
Speaker 1: different casino. That's a different player pool, because tournament players
Speaker 1: are not cash players, and vice versa. Just for the uninitiated,
Speaker 1: explain the difference. In a cash game, every single chip
Speaker 1: is worth a certain amount of money. So you buy
Speaker 1: in for a hundred dollars and you get a hundred
Speaker 1: dollars worth of chips, and that's exactly how much you have.
Speaker 1: And if you lose them, you can read, you can
Speaker 1: add on whatever you want um and you can walk
Speaker 1: away at any point. Maybe you want a huge hand,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, your hundred trips became five hundred,
Speaker 1: and you say, you know what I want to go now.
Speaker 1: That's called a hit and run. Then you take your
Speaker 1: tips and you leave. In a tournament, trips have zero
Speaker 1: cash value. You buy in for certain amounts, a hundred
Speaker 1: dollars and you get ten thousand ships, and so does
Speaker 1: every single person. And the chips are just a way
Speaker 1: of keeping score. So they're just like points, and your
Speaker 1: goal is to gather all of them, and your chips
Speaker 1: are only worth something relative to the chips of the
Speaker 1: other players, and you can never you can't get up
Speaker 1: and walk away when you suddenly find yourself with a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand ships. Nope, gotta gotta keep playing because they're
Speaker 1: worth zero um. And if you if it's a freeze
Speaker 1: out tournament, which means you can't re enter. If you
Speaker 1: lose them, you're done. You're out of the tournament. And
Speaker 1: of players give or take anywhere from depending on the
Speaker 1: exact turn, meant are going to go home with zero
Speaker 1: dollars because they will bust before the money and everyone
Speaker 1: else is going to make money. And in a cash
Speaker 1: game that just doesn't happen. That's not the same. Okay,
Speaker 1: a couple of things. So let's say I'm at the
Speaker 1: area in the tournament begins. Is there a time limit, Yeah,
Speaker 1: at the high rollers, Yes, you have thirty seconds to
Speaker 1: make every decision. No, I mean for the whole tournament itself.
Speaker 1: Oh no, it ends when it ends. Okay. And let's
Speaker 1: say I'm playing in a cash game and I walk away.
Speaker 1: The other players are cool with that, Yeah, they keep playing.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're someone who always hit and runs,
Speaker 1: so you're someone who always comes and as soon as
Speaker 1: you win, you leave, they're probably not gonna want you
Speaker 1: to play with them anymore. Um. But if it's an
Speaker 1: open game, they can't do anything about it. If it's
Speaker 1: a private game, they can. Then you're saying, these are
Speaker 1: different players who play cash games and play tournament games.
Speaker 1: It's a different it's a different strategy. It's a different
Speaker 1: game because in a cash game, you are are always
Speaker 1: playing with the same number of blinds. So if you
Speaker 1: are playing at a low stakes game, say one dollar
Speaker 1: two dollars, it's not suddenly going to become a two
Speaker 1: dollar five dollar game or five dollar ten dollar game.
Speaker 1: Just doesn't happen. In a tournament, the blinds keep going up,
Speaker 1: and so it's a very different strategy because your chips,
Speaker 1: relatively speaking, suddenly start being worth less and less and less.
Speaker 1: It's something that has a beginning. The beginning is like
Speaker 1: a cash game because you're deep stack, you have lots
Speaker 1: of big blinds, and then it becomes much less like
Speaker 1: a cash game because all of a sudden, the blinds
Speaker 1: are you know, was one, two, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it's a thousand, two thousand, and if you still have
Speaker 1: your ten thousand and chips, all of a sudden instead
Speaker 1: of you know, blinds, you all of a sudden have
Speaker 1: five and you're gonna bust. Um. And so the pressure
Speaker 1: is very different, The dynamics are different, the decision making
Speaker 1: process is different. A lot of players play both. Now
Speaker 1: I play cash as well, but most people specialize in one.
Speaker 1: So ultimately, uh, when you're at the area, do you
Speaker 1: what's the biggest buy in tournament that you ever played
Speaker 1: at the area. I've only ever played their daily tournaments,
Speaker 1: so two forty dollar? Okay? Low? Uh. So ultimately you
Speaker 1: go to Monaco and then you go to the Carabean
Speaker 1: where you ultimately win. UM. Tell us the process there,
Speaker 1: I mean, it was just it's more of the same.
Speaker 1: I just I kept working and studying and studying with
Speaker 1: more and more people, UM, and just improving slowly, UM
Speaker 1: and slowly working my way up. UM. Once I would
Speaker 1: do well at a certain level, so I'd constantly challenge
Speaker 1: myself UM. And no one could have predicted that I'd
Speaker 1: win a tournament, a major tournament at that UM. And
Speaker 1: that's one of these things where you have to work hard,
Speaker 1: but you also have to get lucky. And I most
Speaker 1: of those things had to come together and as a
Speaker 1: result of winning, uh, you get on the Poker Stars team.
Speaker 1: Tell us about that. So Poker Stars, which is one
Speaker 1: of the biggest poker companies in the world, has something
Speaker 1: that's called Team Pro. So it's a team of players
Speaker 1: which are their professional players that are sponsored by the brand.
Speaker 1: So whenever you play, you wear a little patches. Let's
Speaker 1: say you know, Poker Stars Team Pro. So you're like,
Speaker 1: you become like a NASCAR or Formula one where you're
Speaker 1: suttenly put putting all these decals on you. Um, but
Speaker 1: it's really prescigious and it's something where they kind of
Speaker 1: they endorse you and you represent them, but you all
Speaker 1: of a sudden also have more of a budget to play.
Speaker 1: So I never received a salary from them. That's not
Speaker 1: how it worked because I didn't want any sort of
Speaker 1: conflict of interest. But for their tournaments, I had a budget,
Speaker 1: so they'd say, you know, you can spend this amount
Speaker 1: on Buyen's for instance. So it enabled me to play
Speaker 1: without being quite as afraid of of going broke because
Speaker 1: I had I had this cushion and I wasn't paying
Speaker 1: for all of my own tournaments. At the Poker Stars.
Speaker 1: I'm not aligned with Poker Stars anymore. No, no, Um,
Speaker 1: I left the team last year. And what was the
Speaker 1: decision process there? It was a it was a mutual decision. Um.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to be involved with any poker company
Speaker 1: when my book came out, I wanted it to you know,
Speaker 1: I wanted to just promote the book and not anyone else.
Speaker 1: I didn't want anyone once again to think there was
Speaker 1: a conflict of interest. And they were moving on. They've
Speaker 1: actually cut most of their live pros. Um. Their strategy
Speaker 1: is now much more online. Um. And I'm not an
Speaker 1: online player. Okay. So let's say you get a hankering
Speaker 1: to play, doesn't matter who's playing in terms of names,
Speaker 1: where the location is. Maybe you go to Atlantic City,
Speaker 1: you play, or you say, you know, I don't like
Speaker 1: the players there. Um, I don't like Atlantic City, I
Speaker 1: hardly ever. I mean I so I for me, because
Speaker 1: I'm a tournament player. It's not a hankering. I go
Speaker 1: where the tour goes. So I look at the schedule.
Speaker 1: They're announced well in advance, and I plan out the
Speaker 1: stops I want to play at. So I I plan
Speaker 1: out where I want to be so at any given point,
Speaker 1: I mean right now, there's zero going on. Let's just
Speaker 1: be clear. In the middle of a pandemic, there's no
Speaker 1: live poker. But let's reverse, you know, two years ago
Speaker 1: when when this was still a thing. At any given
Speaker 1: point in time, there are lots of major poker tours.
Speaker 1: The World Series of Poker just happens once a year,
Speaker 1: but there's a World Poker Tour which has major events
Speaker 1: once a month. There's the European Poker Tour, which is
Speaker 1: the one that's run by by poker Stars, and that's
Speaker 1: happening in Europe. There's an Asia Pacific Poker Tour which
Speaker 1: is happening in Asia. Um, there are a bunch in
Speaker 1: the US. You've got the World Poker Tour, You've got
Speaker 1: the World Series Circuit events. So there are lots of
Speaker 1: things happening at any given point in time. Time and
Speaker 1: so what I would do would be sit down and
Speaker 1: map out a schedule, map out what events that what
Speaker 1: stops I wanted to go to, because they're all series.
Speaker 1: So you go and it's a number of different events.
Speaker 1: So if you don't do well in one tournament, you
Speaker 1: just enter another one and you have many opportunities to
Speaker 1: do well. Um. And so that's how I would choose
Speaker 1: when to play, and then when I went home, I
Speaker 1: really wanted to relax. I mean, in which was the
Speaker 1: year that I really spent really playing full time. That's
Speaker 1: when I was a Poker Stars Team pro. I was
Speaker 1: on the road for over eight months of the year.
Speaker 1: That's exhausting, and I was I was just I was spent.
Speaker 1: Uh So every time I was home, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to recharge. I had zero desire to play poker. Okay,
Speaker 1: now we live in an arrow. Used to be pre Internet,
Speaker 1: you had to go out to have experiences. Now all
Speaker 1: the actions at home. But one thing I always say
Speaker 1: is when you walk out the front door, you ever
Speaker 1: know what will happen. Let me give you an analogy
Speaker 1: to ultimately form the question there. I have a friend
Speaker 1: who got divorced, and to use the vernacular, he'll hit
Speaker 1: on anything that moves. So have you learned that it's two?
Speaker 1: Is engagement the key? Because of luck, you never know
Speaker 1: how the play plays out. Is it about the number
Speaker 1: of ups, shall we say? Or is it about strategizing
Speaker 1: the ups? It's about all of these things. So engagement definitely,
Speaker 1: because engagement gives you an edge, and engagement allows you
Speaker 1: to take in more information and information with power. Information
Speaker 1: is key, but yes, it's also about strategizing the ups
Speaker 1: and minimizing the downs. So poker isn't about winning every hand.
Speaker 1: It's about winning the most with your good hands and
Speaker 1: losing the least with your bad hands. And you can
Speaker 1: you can take that not just in the immediate hand
Speaker 1: to hand, but also in the long term in terms
Speaker 1: of tournaments. In terms of the long term. A lot
Speaker 1: of players go broke because they go on a hot
Speaker 1: streak and they're winning, and they don't realize that there's
Speaker 1: such a thing as regression to the mean that this
Speaker 1: isn't sustainable, that they're just getting lucky. Sure, they're probably
Speaker 1: playing well, but they're also getting lucky, and so you
Speaker 1: need to plan ahead. You need to figure out, Okay,
Speaker 1: how do I plan for the down swain which is
Speaker 1: going to happen. A lot of people don't do that,
Speaker 1: and instead they say, Wow, I'm great, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to play one thousand dollar tournaments anymore. I'm going to
Speaker 1: play ten thousand dollar tournaments. I'm gonna play twenty dollar tournaments. Hell,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna play fifty dollar tournaments. And there goes their money.
Speaker 1: Because they can't actually afford to do that. Now you
Speaker 1: talk in the book that you are on one side
Speaker 1: of psychological training and there's another side which might close
Speaker 1: you out of professorships. What's going on there? Oh, I
Speaker 1: was just so. So that was just me talking about
Speaker 1: different schools of social psychology. So the person who was
Speaker 1: my mentor, who was my advisor, Walter Michelle Um is
Speaker 1: someone who is very adamantly opposed to the person reality
Speaker 1: trait research. UM. So there's a school of personality psychology
Speaker 1: which says that you know, we have the Big five,
Speaker 1: the big five traits, and we have certain levels of
Speaker 1: extra version and neuroticism and open this to experience all
Speaker 1: of these things. And Walter said, bulletshit, that is not true.
Speaker 1: That's not how the world works. You can't decontextualized personality.
Speaker 1: Personality only matters in context if you're going to predict behavior.
Speaker 1: And he actually did this back in the sixties. He
Speaker 1: wrote a book that looked at the correlation between these
Speaker 1: all of these different measures and actual behavior and found
Speaker 1: that the correlation was point one or point two, so
Speaker 1: predicted ten to of what happened, which is nothing. It's
Speaker 1: very low. And yet people were saying, this is the
Speaker 1: holy Grail, and he said, here's your problem. People don't
Speaker 1: have a there's no such thing as someone who is,
Speaker 1: you know, conscientious. Maybe you're conscientious that well, your teachers
Speaker 1: think you're the neatest person ever, and you never make
Speaker 1: your bed, and your parents are frustrated because everything is
Speaker 1: such a mess, your clothes are on the floor, and
Speaker 1: you're the opposite of conscientious at home. Context. Maybe you're
Speaker 1: someone who is a risk speaker in certain situations, like
Speaker 1: you love to skydive, you like to really do all
Speaker 1: you know, go go go full on out there, but
Speaker 1: you're incredibly risk averse when it comes too many. And
Speaker 1: you're someone who you know who keeps all your money
Speaker 1: in a piggy bank because you're scared of the banks.
Speaker 1: So once again context, and he said that what matters
Speaker 1: is behavioral signatures. If then signatures, if we're in this situation,
Speaker 1: then this person behaves that way. That all of the
Speaker 1: other personality work was really pointless when it came to
Speaker 1: actually predicting how someone would behave, and pretty pointless as descriptors.
Speaker 1: There's an entire school of psychology who hates that and
Speaker 1: does not like Walter. I'm attached to him. I was
Speaker 1: his last student. When I apply to academic jobs, I
Speaker 1: come with Walter's baggage because I represent his viewpoint. And
Speaker 1: so if and I never was in academia, I don't
Speaker 1: like academia for these very reasons. Um, I think it's
Speaker 1: it's very I think it's very incestuous, very much who
Speaker 1: you know and whose school you're on, and all of
Speaker 1: these things. But imagine that I went on the job
Speaker 1: market and I applied to a school for someone who's
Speaker 1: really big in the Big five of personality is on
Speaker 1: the hiring committee. I might have done amazing work in
Speaker 1: what I do, but I'm not going to get an
Speaker 1: interview because that person is very opposed to my point
Speaker 1: of view and doesn't want me in their psyche department.
Speaker 1: Or I might not even have one of them, but
Speaker 1: I might have the department who thinks that all social
Speaker 1: psychology is total bullshit and that it's all about neuroscience.
Speaker 1: And if I get that person who's making the decision
Speaker 1: or listening to my job talk or reviewing my paper,
Speaker 1: I'm done. I don't have a fair shop. They're not
Speaker 1: actually going to look to see if i'm saying anything
Speaker 1: interesting or if my research is interesting, because fundamentally they
Speaker 1: disagree with what I'm doing. That's one of the things
Speaker 1: I loved about poker. Um, none of that matters. Doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what you look like, where you went to school,
Speaker 1: who you studied with, whether you even graduated, what your
Speaker 1: last name is, what religion you are. Another matters. If
Speaker 1: you play well, you get to play, and if you
Speaker 1: can afford it, you can buy into any tournament. No
Speaker 1: one can ever block you from buying into a tournament. Now,
Speaker 1: you immigrated from Russia at a young age. To what
Speaker 1: degree did that and having foreign parents affect your life
Speaker 1: and career trajectory? I mean, my life would have been
Speaker 1: completely different had that not happened. I mean it was
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. I did not leave Russia. I left
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. This was before the fall of the
Speaker 1: Berlin Wall. No one knew when that was coming down. Um,
Speaker 1: and so how did I stay? And I mean, I'm Jewish,
Speaker 1: It's I'm actually saying the reverse. I'm saying, how did
Speaker 1: it change someone who grew up or started in Russia
Speaker 1: had foreign parents as opposed someone who grew up in America.
Speaker 1: I can't answer that question. Because I didn't grow up
Speaker 1: in America, I know how my life was changed. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know that had I stayed in Russia, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have had I wouldn't be a writer, I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: had any of these opportunities. What age did you come
Speaker 1: to America and did you feel different from kids? How
Speaker 1: long did it take to assimilate? Um? It took a while.
Speaker 1: I mean I didn't speak English, so of course, had
Speaker 1: I grown up here would have been different. Um. So
Speaker 1: I think I was much more aware of the limits
Speaker 1: of our abilities very early on, because I couldn't communicate.
Speaker 1: I couldn't say a single word in English. But I
Speaker 1: was lucky that I was little, so I was able
Speaker 1: to learn quickly. I don't actually remember learning English. It
Speaker 1: just happened naturally, the way I remember learning some other
Speaker 1: languages that I speak now, But my my four year
Speaker 1: old brain picked it up eventually. And what did your
Speaker 1: parents do for a living in America? Computer programmers? What
Speaker 1: they did in Russia, that's what they were trained. And
Speaker 1: how many kids in the family? Four? Four that I
Speaker 1: grew up with, actually five, okay, well the four that
Speaker 1: you grew up with the other three. What are where
Speaker 1: are you in the hierarchy, baby? And what are their
Speaker 1: lives look like? Um? My oldest sister is an m
Speaker 1: d PhD. She's an anatologist and runs a lab at
Speaker 1: Yale University. My other sister is a veterinarian and lives
Speaker 1: in Vermont, and my brother, Um, lives in Sweden with
Speaker 1: his wife and kids and works for Spotify. Really, okay,
Speaker 1: so you go to Harvard, what's that experience like? That's
Speaker 1: really you're at the age when Zuckerberg is there in
Speaker 1: the Biggle they were so so that was Zuckerberg was
Speaker 1: a year below me. Eduardo was my year, and not
Speaker 1: only my year. You lived in the same freshman dorm
Speaker 1: as I did. I've known I know all of those
Speaker 1: guys from the beginning. I was one of the first
Speaker 1: few hunt producers of Facebook. And what was your opinion
Speaker 1: of them? Um? I always I didn't know Mark well.
Speaker 1: I liked a Guardo he was always a really nice guy.
Speaker 1: And the the Winkle the Winkle Watses were always nice,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know them really either. Okay, so going
Speaker 1: to Harvard was a good experience. I loved it. So
Speaker 1: my my husband also went to Harvard and he hated it,
Speaker 1: so he and I had very, very different experiences, but
Speaker 1: I absolutely loved it. Is that where you met No,
Speaker 1: now we met later um through a friend who was
Speaker 1: my my co worker and his former roommate. So at
Speaker 1: what point do you decide you want to study psychology.
Speaker 1: I decided I wanted to study psychology when I was
Speaker 1: in high school and took an Advanced Placement psychology class,
Speaker 1: and the summer reading assignment was Oliver sax Is, the
Speaker 1: man who mistook his wife for a hat, And I
Speaker 1: remember reading that book and falling in love and thinking,
Speaker 1: oh my god, the human brain is the most fascinating
Speaker 1: thing in the world. I want to be all over
Speaker 1: sex when I grow up. Not the doctor part, but
Speaker 1: the person who can write that way and who can
Speaker 1: describe the human mind that way. So after you get
Speaker 1: your PhD. The concept of becoming a writer was instilled
Speaker 1: back in high school. Oh, the concept of becoming a
Speaker 1: writer was instilled when I was six years old, five
Speaker 1: or sex. Apparently I had announced it to my family
Speaker 1: way back then that I was going to be a writer.
Speaker 1: I wrote my first book in first grade. I've always
Speaker 1: wanted to write. I study in Harvard, I studied fiction.
Speaker 1: I studied fiction writing. I had actually I actually graduated
Speaker 1: with a writing portfolio. Okay, So if we look at
Speaker 1: the country at large, specifically Trump, the election, etcetera, what
Speaker 1: does your experience with game theory and psychology tell us
Speaker 1: about what is happening in America today. I'm very pessimistic.
Speaker 1: I mean and I'm very scared. I am not a
Speaker 1: Trump supporter at all. I've done everything I can. I've
Speaker 1: written for every publication about I could think of. You know,
Speaker 1: I started off with a piece in The New Yorker
Speaker 1: right after the election, call it saying Donald Trump con
Speaker 1: artist question mark. Well that has since changed to exclamation
Speaker 1: point written about Trump and his lives for Politico. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I just wrote a piece about Trump and
Speaker 1: as a poker player, as a maniac poker player for
Speaker 1: Politico just a few weeks back. Um. I've become more
Speaker 1: and more pessimistic, and I think that we run a
Speaker 1: real risk of a second term, which scares me. Um.
Speaker 1: I think people cannot get complacent. Um. And this is
Speaker 1: just what a what a way to make the conversation
Speaker 1: going a really depressing direction. Trump. It's funny because people
Speaker 1: want to talk about every stuff and other stuff, but
Speaker 1: it's all really the people want to talk about. In
Speaker 1: terms of game theory, what might you advise the Democrats
Speaker 1: to beat Trump in the election? I mean, Trump is
Speaker 1: a maniac, and the way you beat mania accident to
Speaker 1: be a maniac back it's too fine. Pick your spots
Speaker 1: and play more conservatively, and but really concentrate on those
Speaker 1: few hands that you are playing. Um. I think that
Speaker 1: people make a mistake when they go down to Trump's level,
Speaker 1: when they stooped to that level, when they actually try
Speaker 1: to be a maniac back and return. You can't beat
Speaker 1: him at that game. I think you need to be
Speaker 1: much smarter than that, and I think you need to
Speaker 1: be much more patient and try to try to beat
Speaker 1: him by by playing stronger hands and playing them well. Okay,
Speaker 1: so in terms of engagement, everything is up in the
Speaker 1: year because of COVID. Would you tell Biden to debate
Speaker 1: him or not to debate Trump? Stay in the basement
Speaker 1: because you want to be you want to be as
Speaker 1: conservative as possible against a maniac. Don't give him any
Speaker 1: don't give him any occasions to uh to lash out. No,
Speaker 1: do not debate him. What's that going to do? Okay?
Speaker 1: And then let's go back to the nomination process. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Biden is a centrist. Bernie and Warren were further to
Speaker 1: the left, believing the American needed systemic change. Certainly since
Speaker 1: that time, Black lives matters happens, there are protests, we
Speaker 1: have COVID nineteen, we have all these economic issues. Would
Speaker 1: you advise l was a good decision to play conservatively
Speaker 1: with Biden. Would a decision further oute there like Bernie
Speaker 1: have been a better decision. Obviously it's never gonna happen,
Speaker 1: But what's your opinion. My opinion was that Warren was
Speaker 1: a much better nominee and that it should have been so. So. No,
Speaker 1: I don't think Biden was the best decision. Um, but
Speaker 1: I don't think that Sanders was the right decision either.
Speaker 1: I think I was in the Elizabeth Warren. But let's
Speaker 1: make it a little bit less about personality more about,
Speaker 1: you know, the vision. Both until she waffled a little bit,
Speaker 1: both Warren and c Anders were saying, Okay, you know,
Speaker 1: we have to break up the tech companies, we have
Speaker 1: to be aware of corporations. You know, we need health
Speaker 1: care for all, which is certainly different from what Trump
Speaker 1: and the Republicans are selling. When you're someone in that position,
Speaker 1: can you win with being outside or do you play
Speaker 1: it safe? I think you can win. I think I
Speaker 1: think that playing it safe is not always as safe
Speaker 1: a strategy as people think. That was a fundamental mistake
Speaker 1: that I made early on in poker. I thought that
Speaker 1: I couldn't go wrong by playing it safe, and it
Speaker 1: ends up that I could. That I was bleeding chips,
Speaker 1: I was bleeding supporters because I was just being very,
Speaker 1: very timid. So I think sometimes you need to go
Speaker 1: out there and realize that extreme more a little bit
Speaker 1: more extreme doesn't necessarily mean unsafe, that actually the safe
Speaker 1: choice might be the less safe one, because that's someone
Speaker 1: who's incapable of winning. I don't think Biden's incapable of winning,
Speaker 1: by the way, I'm just saying that, Um, I think
Speaker 1: it it's false to think that the quote unquote safe
Speaker 1: choice is actually safe. Another thing Eric says is essentially
Speaker 1: played a win. You don't want to just be in
Speaker 1: the money. Tell us a difference there, so, as I
Speaker 1: already um intimated, when you're playing tournament poker, it's very
Speaker 1: different from cash games because most people are going to
Speaker 1: walk away with zero, and so there's a point in
Speaker 1: a tournament called the bubble, and the bubble is the
Speaker 1: point where the next person out gets zero and then
Speaker 1: the person after that makes money. So let's say it's
Speaker 1: a hundred dollar tournament um and ten people are getting paid.
Speaker 1: The person who is out in eleventh place gets zero dollars,
Speaker 1: and the person who's out in tenth place gets, say
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty dollars. Okay, so they make twenty
Speaker 1: dollars because a hundred dollars is they're buying, and they
Speaker 1: make twenty dollars. But the way that tournament payouts work
Speaker 1: is that they're concentrated at the top. So if you
Speaker 1: keep just min cashing, which means being out in tenth
Speaker 1: place right after the bubble, if you keep just squeaking
Speaker 1: your way into the money and you keep making twenty dollars,
Speaker 1: you're going to go broke, because what about all those
Speaker 1: tournaments that you didn't cash, What about the travel expenses,
Speaker 1: what about all these different things you need. Actually, to
Speaker 1: a hundred dollar tournament, you need to be making a
Speaker 1: thousand dollars or you need to be making ten thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: not twenty. And the only way to do that is
Speaker 1: to make the final table where the real money is concentrated.
Speaker 1: Because maybe out in tenth places a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: dollars and first place gets nine dollars. That that's a
Speaker 1: little that's a little extreme, but maybe, but it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of like that. And so what Eric was saying,
Speaker 1: don't try to squeak into the money so that you
Speaker 1: can say you cashed, because you want to try to
Speaker 1: accumulate chirps, to put yourself in a position to win,
Speaker 1: to put yourself in a position to actually make the
Speaker 1: final table, to actually make a deep run, because that's
Speaker 1: how you actually make money in this game. And it's
Speaker 1: a very diff strategy. A lot of people will just
Speaker 1: start playing very conservatively, unfolding every single hand because they
Speaker 1: just want to say they cast they want to make
Speaker 1: that men cash. But that's a very short sighted strategy.
Speaker 1: You need to be more aggressive. You need to actually
Speaker 1: be willing to risk more, because only by risking more
Speaker 1: earlier are you going to be able to put yourself
Speaker 1: in a position to win the most. Okay, let's talk
Speaker 1: about different things where the numbers are different. In Gulf,
Speaker 1: they pay a long way down. Certainly the person who
Speaker 1: wins makes usually double what number two, But then from
Speaker 1: there people can make hundreds of thousands of dollars being
Speaker 1: in the top ten. Okay, and certainly there's costs to
Speaker 1: play golf now, a lot of those people play to win.
Speaker 1: I'm a fan of ski racing Bodie Miller, who's now retired.
Speaker 1: He would play to win, whereas it's a season long
Speaker 1: cup and people with lesser victories might win on a
Speaker 1: cumulative basis. The question becomes, do you at this elite level,
Speaker 1: do you have to play to win in order to
Speaker 1: succeed or is there a role for the journey person
Speaker 1: in this game? Now you have to play to win
Speaker 1: um in order to really succeed UM. I think that
Speaker 1: the journey person needs to play cash games as well,
Speaker 1: UM if they want to. Tournament poker is very high variants,
Speaker 1: So tournament poker, UM, if you're not, if you don't
Speaker 1: have a few big scores every single year, you're gonna
Speaker 1: lose money and you're going to go broke. A lot
Speaker 1: of tournament players they like playing tournaments, but they also
Speaker 1: supplement with cash games, which are much steadier, much lower invariants.
Speaker 1: So that's one way of doing it, so, so if
Speaker 1: you want to go hybrid that that's one way. Another
Speaker 1: way of doing it is to just sell a lot
Speaker 1: of your actions. So a lot of people who aren't
Speaker 1: making those huge scores but who want to keep playing,
Speaker 1: they'll sell nine of their tournaments, so they're just playing
Speaker 1: for ten percent. They can only lose ten percent, but
Speaker 1: if they actually hit that big score, they're only gonna
Speaker 1: win time percent of it, and their investors are going
Speaker 1: to get ninety percent. So there are lots of ways
Speaker 1: of mitigating risks. So in that sense, sure, there's there's
Speaker 1: definitely room for everyone. And if you're just there to
Speaker 1: have fun, I think there's also room for you because
Speaker 1: as long as you don't as long as you don't
Speaker 1: quit your day job, I think that it's something where
Speaker 1: you can learn a lot and where you can actually
Speaker 1: become a better decision maker. And I think it's better
Speaker 1: not to quit your day job. One of the reasons
Speaker 1: that I think I was able to improve quickly was
Speaker 1: I knew I didn't have to write. I could always
Speaker 1: go back to being a writer full time, and I
Speaker 1: didn't have to play poker to make a living, and
Speaker 1: I think that liberated me to actually play better. So
Speaker 1: what did you learn about your initial question, your premise
Speaker 1: life of visa VI, luck and chance. I learned that
Speaker 1: in the short term you have to have luck on
Speaker 1: your side. So in poker, poker is a game of
Speaker 1: skill and there's a chance element. But over the long term,
Speaker 1: the best players are going to win, and that I
Speaker 1: think is true in a in a macro sense as well.
Speaker 1: But in order to get to the long term, you
Speaker 1: need to get lucky in the short term. So any hand,
Speaker 1: any game, any tournament, a much worse player can win
Speaker 1: if they get lucky and if they actually look out.
Speaker 1: So I can play against Eric and win. That doesn't
Speaker 1: mean I've suddenly become better than Eric. That just means
Speaker 1: I got lucky. But if Rik and I play ten times,
Speaker 1: he's gonna probably win more than I win. If we
Speaker 1: play a hundred of times, he's definitely going to win
Speaker 1: more than I win. If we play a thousand times,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna have any money left. That's how much
Speaker 1: more skilled he is than I am. So over the
Speaker 1: long term, skill in the immediate term, look, but you
Speaker 1: need to plan ahead. You need to realize that good
Speaker 1: luck and bad luck one doesn't necessarily follow the other
Speaker 1: and you never know how long the long term is.
Speaker 1: So it's not like if I got on lucky today,
Speaker 1: I have to get lucky tomorrow. Life doesn't work that way.
Speaker 1: Probability doesn't work that way. So all you can do
Speaker 1: is keep making good decisions and keep putting yourself in
Speaker 1: a position to win, and never risk so much that
Speaker 1: you can't recover. I think that's a very valuable life
Speaker 1: lesson because you don't know how long you're going to
Speaker 1: have to stick it out while the variance is not
Speaker 1: on your side, and you have to just be ready
Speaker 1: and be there when luck turns your way again. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's just assume if I snap my finger and
Speaker 1: COVID was over, which of course is not going to happen.
Speaker 1: Are you a writer? Are you a poker player? What
Speaker 1: do you anticipate doing after this lull both? I mean
Speaker 1: I had no plans of stopping to play poker, never
Speaker 1: had any plans to stop writing, and they go very
Speaker 1: well hand in hand. I can write anywhere in the world,
Speaker 1: I can play poker in most places in the world,
Speaker 1: so why not do both? But I think I'm always
Speaker 1: first and foremost a writer that's always my my first identity.
Speaker 1: That's what I love. Um, that's where my heart is,
Speaker 1: and that's what makes me I am. But I love
Speaker 1: poker and I was still learning a lot and still
Speaker 1: really growing in the game when COVID hit um, and
Speaker 1: so I fully intend to keep playing, at least for
Speaker 1: the foreseeable future, while I'm still winning and while I'm
Speaker 1: still enjoying it. Why would I stop? And are you
Speaker 1: pulling together a new book as we talk? Um? No,
Speaker 1: I'm not someone who's thinking about my next project before
Speaker 1: I'm done with my previous project, and it always takes
Speaker 1: me at least six months to figure out what I'm
Speaker 1: going to do next in terms of books, So I
Speaker 1: have no idea what's next. I'm working on some other
Speaker 1: things that aren't books, um, that I can't talk about
Speaker 1: right now. But so I am. You will be seeing
Speaker 1: creative output for me from me in the coming months,
Speaker 1: but they're not It's not going to be in book form.
Speaker 1: But the next book is I'm not sure? But is it?
Speaker 1: The creative projects are writing yes, okay, into what do
Speaker 1: we did the success of the book? Uh? Meat or
Speaker 1: exceed your expectations? And what opportunities have come along as
Speaker 1: a result of the book. I mean, so far, it's
Speaker 1: only been a month since it's been out. So Um,
Speaker 1: I've been very happy with the with the reception that
Speaker 1: people seem to be responding to it and enjoying it.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what to expect. It's very different from
Speaker 1: my prior books. It's much more personal. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a memoir, it's it's a first person book. It's the
Speaker 1: first time I've written in my real voice, not just
Speaker 1: my journalistic voice, and I've actually shared what's in my head. Um,
Speaker 1: And so I think it's always makes you feel very
Speaker 1: vulnerable putting yourself out there like that. So I didn't
Speaker 1: know if people would like it, and I've been very
Speaker 1: gratified that I've gotten a good response and that the
Speaker 1: poker community likes it. Um. That's also something that I
Speaker 1: didn't know, um, whether that was going to work out
Speaker 1: or not, because poker players can be a tough crowd,
Speaker 1: and so I I'm really glad that they think I've
Speaker 1: represented them well for the most part. Um, It's it's
Speaker 1: been hard. I mean I had to cancel my book
Speaker 1: to our, I had to cancel all of my events. Um,
Speaker 1: it's not at all like the book release that I
Speaker 1: had planned. Um, but you you, the funny thing is
Speaker 1: that's what my book is about. Right. You can plan
Speaker 1: as much as you want, and then chance is going
Speaker 1: to be what it's going to be, and you have
Speaker 1: to deal with it. Actually, the human narrative as opposed
Speaker 1: to the psychology, was the most interesting for me, and
Speaker 1: I almost wish there were two books, one without any
Speaker 1: of the psychological analysis and one with it, because just
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of times I would get really
Speaker 1: into it and you, you know, you would talk about
Speaker 1: all the theories, etcetera. But I said, you know, what
Speaker 1: is a person feeling? You know, what are they gonna do?
Speaker 1: What's happening? In any event, Maria, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: doing this. Thanks for taking time out of your day
Speaker 1: tell your story. Certainly fascinating for all those of us
Speaker 1: who are interested both in poker in life. Thanks again,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Bob, It's been a pleasure. Until
Speaker 1: next time. This is Bob left Sex