Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wisntal and I'm Tracy Halloway. Tracy, So you
Speaker 1: guys are going into hard lockdown again in Hong Kong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we are. We're experiencing our third wave of coronavirus and
Speaker 1: unfortunately it's worse than the first and second waves. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we're going back into social distancing measures. People are being
Speaker 1: told to work from home, bars are closed, and restaurants
Speaker 1: are implementing new restrictions. So yep, back to lockdown. So
Speaker 1: obviously this is all getting pretty tiresome. I think people
Speaker 1: are ready for real life to resume. But there's actually
Speaker 1: one well there's a few aspects of lockdown life that
Speaker 1: I kind of prefer, but there's one thing in particular
Speaker 1: that I and to be better. You know what it is? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I do. I think I've actually done it
Speaker 1: with you a couple of months ago. Oh yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: I find playing poker online with friends to be much
Speaker 1: better than playing poker, uh in real life with friends.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure poker is a better game online period,
Speaker 1: but at least unlike a sort of social version, I
Speaker 1: much prefer like playing in a room with a zoom
Speaker 1: chat going on than actually like gathering around a table
Speaker 1: with friends and playing poker. Wait, You're going to have
Speaker 1: to explain that, because I thought poker, you know, when
Speaker 1: people play on a casual level like that, it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be a social activity. You're not supposed to like
Speaker 1: doing it via zoom chat. Well I get that, and
Speaker 1: so I think that's maybe it's because of a little
Speaker 1: bit anti social or something like that. But normally, when
Speaker 1: I've played poker among friends or casually, people start talking
Speaker 1: about sports and they that flows down the dealing, and
Speaker 1: a really care about those conversas sports, or like someone
Speaker 1: or someone is like, oh, let's order pizza and they
Speaker 1: bring up to the table or chips and I'm like,
Speaker 1: come on, like let's just deal, or like someone gets distracted,
Speaker 1: they start telling a story while they're dealing. That gets
Speaker 1: really annoying. With the zoom chat in the you know,
Speaker 1: the online poker room, you can have all that stuff.
Speaker 1: You can still people having a name conversations or getting
Speaker 1: up for a snack, but it doesn't slow down the
Speaker 1: game at also have all you want to do is
Speaker 1: focus on the cards. Actually think it's a better experience. Well,
Speaker 1: I have a question how much does doing poker via
Speaker 1: zoom help when it comes to actual strategy and for instance,
Speaker 1: hiding your tells. Is that the reason you like it
Speaker 1: because maybe when you're playing in person, everyone knows what
Speaker 1: you're thinking, and when you're on zoom, it's much easier
Speaker 1: to hide your motivations. Well, let's time I was playing
Speaker 1: with a friend who was wearing glasses and I thought
Speaker 1: I could almost make out his whole cards in the
Speaker 1: reflection of his glasses. I couldn't, and that you know
Speaker 1: that would be unethical, But you know, I do think
Speaker 1: that's the thing. And I've noticed myself on the videos,
Speaker 1: like when I'm like, oh shoot, I'm really like leaning
Speaker 1: back at my chair here, I'm really staring. I wonder
Speaker 1: if people can you know I'm giving it away. I
Speaker 1: haven't played enough to like figure out patterns, but if
Speaker 1: I were to play enough with zoom uh calls, you know,
Speaker 1: you would probably start to notice. I gotta say so.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's a secret to all lots listeners
Speaker 1: that I am not a big poker fan or player,
Speaker 1: but when I do play, I find it much much
Speaker 1: more enjoyable when it's with actual people, and I think
Speaker 1: it's much more interesting to try to look at the
Speaker 1: psychological aspect of it all versus just the cards and
Speaker 1: doing the maths, which feels like what Zoom is mostly about. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I hear that, And actually I think without the Zoom
Speaker 1: it could get a little boring. And I think poker
Speaker 1: in general, even though I really enjoy it as a
Speaker 1: game or as a sport or whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call it, it can be boring and you just have
Speaker 1: long stretches of doing nothing, and the attempt to create
Speaker 1: action to create excitement can often be very costly. So
Speaker 1: I certainly am sympathetic to the view that it's more
Speaker 1: enjoyable in real life with actual people. Yeah, people definitely
Speaker 1: seem to do stupid things when they're playing the online
Speaker 1: games just to sort of whoa, just because they can.
Speaker 1: But anyway, um, so I take it we are doing
Speaker 1: a poker episode. Yeah, it's been a long time since
Speaker 1: we've done a poker episode, but I'm really excited about
Speaker 1: the one today because we're gonna be talking to an
Speaker 1: author of a new book, and unlike some of our
Speaker 1: previous guests who are professional online poker, longtime professional poker players.
Speaker 1: Our new guest is sort of relatively new to the
Speaker 1: upper echelons of the game. Oh that sounds great. I'm
Speaker 1: always well as someone who came to it, um relatively recently.
Speaker 1: I am always interested to hear what other people think
Speaker 1: of the game and how they're strategizing around it and
Speaker 1: actually playing. Yeah, I'm looking forward to learning some lessons.
Speaker 1: Our guest today is Maria Kannakova. She used to be
Speaker 1: a writer at The New Yorker and uh now she
Speaker 1: is a professional poker player and she is the author
Speaker 1: of the Biggest Bluff How I learned to pay attention,
Speaker 1: master myself and win. And she decided one day to
Speaker 1: be a poker success and she became one, which is
Speaker 1: extremely impressive. So, Maria, thank you very much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 1: So you just decided one day, you're like I am
Speaker 1: going to be a great poker player, and you just
Speaker 1: will yourself and trained yourself and you became one. You
Speaker 1: actually just manufactured it and made it happen. Is that
Speaker 1: is that accurate? Um? Not entirely, Not entirely. UM. I
Speaker 1: was someone like like you, Tracy, who had zero interest
Speaker 1: in poker whatsoever. I'm not a games player. I have
Speaker 1: no interesting games like any of them for my In
Speaker 1: my free time, I like to read and do things
Speaker 1: like that. I've never grown up in a household. I
Speaker 1: don't even think we had a deck of cards, and
Speaker 1: definitely no board games. Um they bore me. And I
Speaker 1: think the scariest thing that my niece and nephew can
Speaker 1: do is take out travelers of Katan. I just I
Speaker 1: start having a panic attack right away, thinking, Oh, no,
Speaker 1: are we actually going to have to play this? So
Speaker 1: so that's not my world at all. I wanted to
Speaker 1: write a book about luck, about the role that chance
Speaker 1: plays in our lives, but to do so in a
Speaker 1: more systematic way, to try to figure out, Okay, can
Speaker 1: we learn to tell the difference between the things that
Speaker 1: we can control and the things we can't control? Can
Speaker 1: we learn to figure out where skill ends and where
Speaker 1: chance begins? And I needed a way into that topic,
Speaker 1: and I actually found one through one of the great
Speaker 1: geniuses of the twentieth century, John von Neuman. I turned
Speaker 1: to him because he's the father of game theory, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to look at that framework for looking at chance.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that von Neuman was a poker
Speaker 1: player and that game theory is actually based on poker.
Speaker 1: That man Neuman believed that poker was the game that
Speaker 1: best resembled strategic decision making in real life, because real life,
Speaker 1: unlike a lot of games like chess, like go um,
Speaker 1: which are games of complete information where you can actually
Speaker 1: see the entire board, you can see all the pieces,
Speaker 1: you can figure out the right move, and you can
Speaker 1: compute what the right decision is, that's not real life.
Speaker 1: Real life is a game with a lot of unknowns,
Speaker 1: with a lot of uncertainty, with a lot of ambiguity.
Speaker 1: And that's what poker is. And so von Neuman believed
Speaker 1: that if you could actually solve poker, then you'd have
Speaker 1: the key to some of the most complex strategic decisions
Speaker 1: in reality. Um. And at the time, the guy was
Speaker 1: working on the hydrogen bomb, so so he really knew
Speaker 1: what he was talking about. He was at the highest
Speaker 1: echelons of governmental advising on strategy. This really really intrigued man.
Speaker 1: I thought, Oh, what is this poker thing? You know,
Speaker 1: I am really don't know what it is. But if
Speaker 1: this man thinks that poker is such a crucial element
Speaker 1: to understanding the exact questions I'm interested in. Maybe I
Speaker 1: should read a little bit about it. Started reading about it,
Speaker 1: and I thought, this is my book. Why don't I
Speaker 1: learn this game? Why don't I get someone really really
Speaker 1: good to teach me? Um? And why don't I use
Speaker 1: that kind of as a life metaphor to to explore
Speaker 1: all of these questions of skill and chance that I'm
Speaker 1: interested in. And I didn't actually say I'm going to
Speaker 1: become a great poker player. I had no expectations. I
Speaker 1: didn't know if I was going to be good, if
Speaker 1: I was going to be bad. It didn't really matter.
Speaker 1: What it mattered to me was the journey, the learning process, Tracy.
Speaker 1: I just want to point out that Maria has won
Speaker 1: three hundred eleven thousand dollars playing poker tournaments according to
Speaker 1: the Hendon mob database, including her best cash of an
Speaker 1: eighty four thousand dollar eighty four thousand six D pay day.
Speaker 1: So something to keep in mind when someone just says, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to learn how to do it, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: extremely impressed. Anyway, keep going. I just want to just
Speaker 1: sort of set the stage of how how successful that
Speaker 1: decision was. Yeah, fair enough, So you didn't set out
Speaker 1: to become a great poker player, but it looks like
Speaker 1: you got there anyway. But I have to say that
Speaker 1: mix of skill and luck that you were describing this
Speaker 1: is one of my own personal frustrations with poker, because
Speaker 1: I feel like, even if I personally play a really,
Speaker 1: really good game, if I just get a bunch of
Speaker 1: terrible cards, there's not that much I can do about it.
Speaker 1: So I'm very intrigued by your thesis. Um, I'm curious
Speaker 1: as you set out to learn more about poker, where
Speaker 1: did you begin? You mentioned reading a lot, but but
Speaker 1: where did you go from there? And who did you
Speaker 1: talk to? So I enlisted Eric Sidell, who is one
Speaker 1: of the best players in the world, some considered him
Speaker 1: to be the greatest player of all time, to serve
Speaker 1: as my coach and mentor throughout this journey. Um, I
Speaker 1: got incredibly lucky. You know. My Luks started from day
Speaker 1: one when he agreed to take on this project even
Speaker 1: though he's never taken a student before me, and said, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is interesting, this is intriguing. Let's see if someone
Speaker 1: with your mind set, with a background in psychology, who's
Speaker 1: a blank slate for poker basically, if we can teach
Speaker 1: you to play well, and he set my agenda and
Speaker 1: he was able to introduce me to a lot of
Speaker 1: the best minds in the game. So don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: I I did work incredibly hard. Um I When I
Speaker 1: decided to do this, you know, I left the New Yorker.
Speaker 1: I said, I'm going to do this full time, seven
Speaker 1: days a week, seven eight nine, ten hours a day.
Speaker 1: I was living in breathing poker, either playing or analyzing
Speaker 1: hands or studying or doing something. But but that aside,
Speaker 1: I also had access to the best minds in the game.
Speaker 1: So Eric introduced me to Dan Harrington, who literally wrote
Speaker 1: the textbooks on introduction to poker. I started working a
Speaker 1: lot with Phil Galfond, who is the founder of Run
Speaker 1: at Once, which is both a training site which is
Speaker 1: some of the best or training content and a poker site,
Speaker 1: um which you can't play on in the United States unfortunately,
Speaker 1: but you can play on in the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: And he's one of the greatest players of all time.
Speaker 1: And then all of these other great names just came
Speaker 1: along and helped me, and we're there to answer any
Speaker 1: question that I could possibly have. And that's rare when
Speaker 1: you have an opportunity to just pick the brains of
Speaker 1: the best practitioners in that world. I don't take that
Speaker 1: for granted, you know, I'm I could have been someone
Speaker 1: who worked really, really hard and never achieved success because
Speaker 1: I didn't have access to that. And Tracy, you know,
Speaker 1: to to answer your your frustration with the game. That's
Speaker 1: also the beautiful thing about it because it teaches you
Speaker 1: how to deal with that in life. It's one of
Speaker 1: these things where one of the lessons that all of
Speaker 1: my all of my teachers, but mostly Eric would stress
Speaker 1: over and over and over is that you have to
Speaker 1: divorce yourself completely from the outcome. What poker teaches you
Speaker 1: is to focus only on the thing you can control,
Speaker 1: which is the process, which is making the best decisions
Speaker 1: you possibly can and putting yourself in a position to win,
Speaker 1: because then over the long term, if you master the process,
Speaker 1: you're going to be a winning player. No matter what.
Speaker 1: In the short term, variance can go against you, and yeah,
Speaker 1: you can get bad cards, someone else can be hit
Speaker 1: in the face with the deck. Um, you might win it,
Speaker 1: you might lose a hand, you might lose a game,
Speaker 1: you might lose a tournament, but if you play over
Speaker 1: and over and over and you've always just completely disregarded
Speaker 1: the outcome and focused on making your process as good
Speaker 1: as possible, eventually you're going to win a lot of funeym.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit more about what what
Speaker 1: you get out of professional guidance? And obviously everyone knows
Speaker 1: there's a million poker books that's been that have been written.
Speaker 1: I read a handful of them. What is it that
Speaker 1: when you talk to someone like Eric Sidell or Dan Harrington?
Speaker 1: What is it that they can do for you? Is
Speaker 1: it hand analysis? Is it helping you identify patterns of
Speaker 1: play among the people with whom you're at a table.
Speaker 1: Talk to us about like what is it how that
Speaker 1: coaching works and what specifically they can offer to help
Speaker 1: someone's game go to the next level. Well, I think
Speaker 1: that personalization is key. Eric got to know me incredibly well.
Speaker 1: I mean, at this point, you know, I count him
Speaker 1: as a good friend because of just the sheer amount
Speaker 1: of time that I spent with his family. They basically
Speaker 1: adopted me. The Sidels are are amazing, um, and you know,
Speaker 1: I just I tagged along and spent more time with
Speaker 1: with them than I did with my own family for
Speaker 1: for over a year, um, and he really knew how
Speaker 1: I thought and who I was, and so that enabled
Speaker 1: him to see my weaknesses and to be able to
Speaker 1: really teach me how to think properly in a way
Speaker 1: that he couldn't have done had I just been some
Speaker 1: random person. And so I do think that that level
Speaker 1: of immersion was absolutely essential. And yes, hand analysis this
Speaker 1: is very important to that because a book can only
Speaker 1: teach you so much, but actually being able to discuss
Speaker 1: things with people actually and this is true of anything,
Speaker 1: of learning, absolutely anything, Having someone with whom to talk
Speaker 1: through ideas, talk through your thought process really helps you
Speaker 1: grow and learn because you're forced to explain your thought process,
Speaker 1: you're forced to pay attention to it, you're forced to
Speaker 1: analyze it in a way that allows you to spot
Speaker 1: loopholes that you otherwise wouldn't fat. One of the best
Speaker 1: teaching tools is to try to explain something to someone.
Speaker 1: If you're unable to explain a concept, that means you
Speaker 1: don't not understand it, and that is one of the
Speaker 1: first ways that a teacher can see whether someone has
Speaker 1: actually understood something. It's very easy to say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I get that, but then say Okay, now teach someone
Speaker 1: who doesn't get it um, and most people of flounder
Speaker 1: and not be able to do that, and so that
Speaker 1: and forth made it impossible for me to hide. I
Speaker 1: actually had to learn these ideas. I actually had to
Speaker 1: think through them for myself. And most of what Eric did,
Speaker 1: it's not like we never sat down and he said, okay,
Speaker 1: this is how you played this hand in that position.
Speaker 1: We didn't have a single conversation like that. It was all, okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's think through this. It's very socratic method um, which
Speaker 1: could have been which could be incredibly frustrating. And sometimes
Speaker 1: I just wanted to shake him and say, just tell
Speaker 1: me how to play this. You know, I don't know
Speaker 1: what I'm doing. Um. But what he was doing was
Speaker 1: giving me the building blocks of thought, the building blocks
Speaker 1: of analysis, so that I could survive on my own
Speaker 1: rather than UM, I have to constantly turn to him
Speaker 1: and try to memorize things. Memorization is not the way
Speaker 1: to go by the way. That's that's a really bad
Speaker 1: way of learning poker. And that's what a lot of
Speaker 1: people do. They're like, oh, this is my hand range.
Speaker 1: I know that I'm opening these hands. I know I'm
Speaker 1: doing this, I know I'm doing that. It's all based
Speaker 1: on memory. And while it's good to memorize certain things
Speaker 1: like the odds of hitting a flush, you know, very
Speaker 1: just very basic things. It's like a handfeld like ten things.
Speaker 1: And then otherwise in terms of how you play, it's
Speaker 1: all about the process, not about oh this is what
Speaker 1: I do with this hand. No, let me look at
Speaker 1: the situation. Let me look at all the factors, because
Speaker 1: no two hands are the same, No two situations are
Speaker 1: the same. And if you learn to conct contextualize every
Speaker 1: decision that way, you're going to be a much better
Speaker 1: decision maker, not just in poker, but in all decisions
Speaker 1: that you make. M Well, just on that note, So,
Speaker 1: once you had the building blocks of how to actually
Speaker 1: play poker, can you describe what worked for you and
Speaker 1: what you're playing style eventually looked like. That's a really
Speaker 1: excellent question. Um. One of the things that I had
Speaker 1: trouble with from the very beginning was aggression and bluff.
Speaker 1: Thing that's really not my personality. UM, that's not something
Speaker 1: I was ever good at, and that's something that people
Speaker 1: took advantage of. UM. I found myself being bullied a
Speaker 1: lot and actually bowing down to the pressure. And it
Speaker 1: was a really unpleasant realization. I had always thought of
Speaker 1: myself as, you know, a pretty successful, strong willed female,
Speaker 1: and it ends up that I'd actually internalized so many
Speaker 1: gender stereotypes. I would be much more passive because I
Speaker 1: wanted people to like me, and that was more important
Speaker 1: to me than winning a lot of money. I would
Speaker 1: fold hands because I didn't want people to say, oh,
Speaker 1: there's that horrible girl again who always raises me. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to. I wanted them to have a pleasant experience.
Speaker 1: This was really not a good way to play poker
Speaker 1: and not a good way to go through life. And
Speaker 1: I was really upset with myself when I realized that
Speaker 1: I was doing it, and so I really had to
Speaker 1: work hard at that and eventually came to a style
Speaker 1: that was much more my own and that actually took
Speaker 1: advantage of the things that I was innately good at.
Speaker 1: This is something that I learned from Phil Galfund. Phil
Speaker 1: is a very mild mannered person, and he told me,
Speaker 1: you know, when I was trying to be aggressive all
Speaker 1: the time, he said, look this, you don't have to
Speaker 1: be You have to find your own style and Peel
Speaker 1: himself isn't a terribly aggressive player, even though he's one
Speaker 1: of the most successful players in the world. He said,
Speaker 1: there's no one size fits all. Find the style that's
Speaker 1: best for you, and so yes, be aggressive, but be
Speaker 1: aggressive in a way that works for you. Not everyone
Speaker 1: can be hyper aggressive. It's something that has to fit
Speaker 1: with your personality. It didn't fit with mine, and so
Speaker 1: eventually I developed a very very I don't want to
Speaker 1: say the word reactive because it sounds kind of negative,
Speaker 1: but it's an adjustable playing style. Let's let's call it that, um.
Speaker 1: But it is reactive because I was reacting to people's
Speaker 1: perceptions of me and how they see women, because I
Speaker 1: realized that everyone saw me as a female first and
Speaker 1: as a poker player second, and if I could figure
Speaker 1: out how they thought women played, because by the way,
Speaker 1: poker's ninety seven percent male the professional world and three
Speaker 1: percent female. So most of the time people will be like, oh,
Speaker 1: my girlfriend plays, this is how she plays, so I
Speaker 1: think you're going to play like that. They take their
Speaker 1: you know, these very strange notions of how women are
Speaker 1: supposed to play or not play, and they apply them
Speaker 1: to me, at least at the beginning, and if I
Speaker 1: can figure out what that is, then I can play
Speaker 1: into it and actually take advantage of it. Because it's
Speaker 1: an incredibly strong it's a it's a wonderful thing to
Speaker 1: be underestimated. It's something that you can really really use.
Speaker 1: And once I realized that, then I turned it on
Speaker 1: its head and instead of letting myself people and I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, if you underestimate me and think that
Speaker 1: I will fold to everything, then I know how to
Speaker 1: I know how to counteract that. How should someone go
Speaker 1: about the process of self evaluating? So I, like I said,
Speaker 1: I like to play. I don't consider myself to be
Speaker 1: particularly good at it. I just enjoy it sometimes I do.
Speaker 1: All right, what are the first questions or what are
Speaker 1: the first you know, you mentioned the Socratic approach to learning,
Speaker 1: but what is what are the first things one should
Speaker 1: look for in themselves to just a identify, um, how
Speaker 1: they play currently and then be How might one go
Speaker 1: about evaluating a style of aggression or reaction that they're
Speaker 1: comfortable with themselves? Well, I think that self analysis starts
Speaker 1: far away from the poker table. I think everyone needs
Speaker 1: to take some time to just sit down and kind
Speaker 1: of do a little self assessment, think, Okay, what are
Speaker 1: my strengths, what are my weaknesses, What are the things
Speaker 1: that annoy me? What are the things that make me happy?
Speaker 1: Because at the poker table, all of these things are
Speaker 1: going to come out. All of the psychological baggage that
Speaker 1: you carry with you is going to come out, and
Speaker 1: it's going to affect your game. Also, very important to
Speaker 1: poker and to a lot of other strategic decisions are
Speaker 1: how do I react to risk and to stress? So
Speaker 1: am I in what kinds of situations? Am I risk seeking?
Speaker 1: And what kinds of situations? And my risk averse? So
Speaker 1: in poker, you'll see that one of the best scenarios
Speaker 1: to pay attention to for other players if you want
Speaker 1: to take advantage of them, is how do they react
Speaker 1: when they lose huge pot? And relatedly, how do they
Speaker 1: react when they win a huge pot. Most players are
Speaker 1: actually going to react in some way, but that way
Speaker 1: is not going to be the same. So some people,
Speaker 1: for instance, when they lose a lot of money, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, they'll get hyper aggressive because they want
Speaker 1: to win those chips back. They'll become much more risk seeking.
Speaker 1: Other people when they lose a lot they'll suddenly become
Speaker 1: very cautious and very risk averse because they want to
Speaker 1: protect the little they have left. By the way, now
Speaker 1: put in investing or whatever it is for poker, and
Speaker 1: I think this is very true. Other people, when they
Speaker 1: win a lot of money, they'll again become very risk seeking.
Speaker 1: You say, oh, yeah, I'm on a roll. I have
Speaker 1: the hot hand, gotta take more risks, gotta gotta keep
Speaker 1: the role going. Others, when they win a lot, they'll say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm done. You know, now I'm gonna be really conservative.
Speaker 1: I want to protect what I already have. I don't
Speaker 1: want to lose this because I could get unlucky. You
Speaker 1: need to figure out how people are responding to those situations,
Speaker 1: and then you can take advantage of that. But by
Speaker 1: the same token, you need to figure out how you
Speaker 1: respond to that. Most people are honest with themselves. They say, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't let that affect me. You know, I'm a
Speaker 1: very rational person. No nobody is at the beginning, and
Speaker 1: you actually have to honestly do that self assessment and
Speaker 1: figure out, Okay, if I'm in that situation, how am
Speaker 1: I going to react? Because it's not going to be
Speaker 1: rational and how do I counteract that? So you you
Speaker 1: start from that, you start to be honest with yourself,
Speaker 1: put yourself in those most common situations, the ones that
Speaker 1: are most likely to get you off of a rational
Speaker 1: decision making path and onto an emotional decision making path,
Speaker 1: and figure out ahead of time what your emotional reactions are,
Speaker 1: so that you can figure out a game plan for
Speaker 1: how to counteract that, and how to actually identify ahead
Speaker 1: of time, so that you become someone who in the
Speaker 1: moment is more able to control your thought process, more
Speaker 1: able to control your emotions, and then you take it
Speaker 1: from there. So I feel like whenever we have a
Speaker 1: conversation about how best to play poker, and Joe and
Speaker 1: I have had quite a few of those on on
Speaker 1: the podcast over the past few years, but there's always
Speaker 1: this emphasis on being rational for obvious reasons. Right, it's
Speaker 1: a game of logic, it's a game of numbers and probabilities.
Speaker 1: But is there any room for for emotions, for gut feeling.
Speaker 1: Is there a way to use that to your advantage?
Speaker 1: I feel like that aspect of it rarely gets to um, Okay,
Speaker 1: you've you've hit on one of my one of my
Speaker 1: big passions which is to get the term gut feeling
Speaker 1: out of people's um action vocabulary. Ever, so we what
Speaker 1: we love to react with our gut and a lot
Speaker 1: of people will say, oh, you know, I'm a gut
Speaker 1: I'm a field player, I'm a gut player. So I
Speaker 1: as a psychologist, I studied this a lot. And what
Speaker 1: we find and study after study is that people have
Speaker 1: very very strong gut feelings, and they're equally strong when
Speaker 1: they're correct and when they're wrong. And if you ask
Speaker 1: people to tell the difference, they're on able to coin flips.
Speaker 1: So we have zero ability to tell which of our
Speaker 1: gut feelings are our intuitions is accurate and which is
Speaker 1: completely wrong minded. And our memories are very false when
Speaker 1: it comes to this, they're very biased. So we'll remember
Speaker 1: the times that we, you know, followed our gut and
Speaker 1: we're right, or didn't follow it and our gut was right,
Speaker 1: and we'll forget all of those other times where our
Speaker 1: gut was full of crap, which is what our gut
Speaker 1: is normally filled with. And so what I urge people
Speaker 1: to do is to realize that there's only one type
Speaker 1: of gut feeling that you should be able to pay
Speaker 1: attention to. And that's when it's not really a gut feeling.
Speaker 1: That's when it's thousands and thousands and thousands of hours
Speaker 1: of hard earned expertise of something that you are truly
Speaker 1: good at and that you've spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: studying that your mind might not have conscious access to,
Speaker 1: and so you actually experienced it as gut when it's
Speaker 1: really expertise. So for someone like Eric Seidel, if he
Speaker 1: has a got feeling that this person is bluffing at
Speaker 1: the poker table, you should go with that gut because
Speaker 1: it's not gut, it's pattern recognition. It's the fact that
Speaker 1: he's seen this situation play out over the last thirties
Speaker 1: some odd years countless times. He just hasn't actually sat
Speaker 1: down every time and then an analysis and said, oh,
Speaker 1: when this happens, this person is bluff thing. But his
Speaker 1: brain was doing that analysis even though he might not
Speaker 1: have consciously been writing it down because he doesn't have
Speaker 1: conscious access to it. He says, oh, gut feeling, But
Speaker 1: it's not gut feeling. It's over thirty years of winning
Speaker 1: at this game and seeing this play out over and
Speaker 1: over and over. If I have that same gut feeling
Speaker 1: this person is bluffing, I should ignore that and try
Speaker 1: to look at all of the other things that I
Speaker 1: can be using to make my decision. Because I do
Speaker 1: not have the expertise. I've not been playing poker nearly
Speaker 1: long enough. I cannot calm myself an expert. I'm not
Speaker 1: allowed to calm myself an expert for another ten years
Speaker 1: at least. Um, And so that's you have to be really,
Speaker 1: really careful. And that's not something that people really like
Speaker 1: to hear. We really love our guts, but you know
Speaker 1: our our guts. That's you don't want to be deciding
Speaker 1: with your stomach. You want to be deciding with your head.
Speaker 1: So talk to us a little bit more about your
Speaker 1: actual experience and uh, you know you mentioned okay, you
Speaker 1: decided you wanted to do this, you sought out instruction,
Speaker 1: but then actual put it into gameplay, And what was
Speaker 1: the learning curve like? And how long did it take
Speaker 1: you from going to someone who's like, okay, just sort
Speaker 1: of understanding the rules to feeling like you had a
Speaker 1: good chance at making money when you sat down at
Speaker 1: the poker table. What was that process like, Um, I
Speaker 1: still don't think I have a good chance of making
Speaker 1: funny when it sent out at the poker table. I
Speaker 1: think that impostor complex has has never entirely gone away. UM,
Speaker 1: but it was a very it was it took a
Speaker 1: long time. So the way that I started learning UM
Speaker 1: at first, I played online UM, even though I always
Speaker 1: knew that my goal was to play live my edges live. UM.
Speaker 1: I'm a psychologist. I'm not a mathematician. The last time
Speaker 1: I took a math class was in high school. My
Speaker 1: edges people UM and online. Sure some of that matters,
Speaker 1: but most of it is mathematics, So I'm not someone
Speaker 1: who was ever going to train there. But online you
Speaker 1: can get a lot more experience, and you can get
Speaker 1: live because the hands are much faster. So in a
Speaker 1: week of playing online you can get six months worth
Speaker 1: of live playing experience. So so that's very important. So
Speaker 1: I started there UM and until I started consistently making
Speaker 1: money online, Eric did not let me play live. He
Speaker 1: was very big about building your bank roll organically and
Speaker 1: making sure that you were very savvy financially with your decisions.
Speaker 1: What stakes when you the first tables that you said, So,
Speaker 1: I always played tournaments. I did not play cash games,
Speaker 1: so these were like five dollar buying tournaments. I made
Speaker 1: the decision at the beginning because it's a very if,
Speaker 1: it's a very different style of play, and um, we
Speaker 1: had to decide what was I going to do? And
Speaker 1: as if you're talking about life analogy, tournaments are definitely
Speaker 1: the way the way to go because they have a dynamic.
Speaker 1: There's a beginning, there's a middle, there's an end. It's
Speaker 1: much more of a progressive story as opposed to a
Speaker 1: cash game, which is much more static. So we decided
Speaker 1: I was going to focus exclusively on tournaments. So I
Speaker 1: was playing, you know, five dollar tournaments online. Once I
Speaker 1: started winning some of those, and I want to think
Speaker 1: a little over two thousand dollars, and I took that
Speaker 1: money and went to Vegas and started playing in the
Speaker 1: dailies and nightlies. Um, you know, the thirty five dollar
Speaker 1: buying tournaments, because that's as low as you can go
Speaker 1: for live poker. And I really wanted to play in
Speaker 1: these hundred dollar tournaments, and Erica wouldn't let me. He said,
Speaker 1: that's way too high for you. You You can't do it
Speaker 1: until you start winning at the lower ones. And I
Speaker 1: spent multiple months in Vegas playing every single day, multiple
Speaker 1: tournaments a day, and I was losing money for for
Speaker 1: a while, and I became very frustrated because I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm i'm studying, I'm working really hard, um,
Speaker 1: and nothing's working. And then it started working. Everything just
Speaker 1: kind of came together and I won my first tournament
Speaker 1: at Planet Hollywood. It was you know, forty five or
Speaker 1: something dollar buy and and I won over over nine
Speaker 1: hundred dollars and I was just over the over the moon.
Speaker 1: It was amazing. And then I started being able to
Speaker 1: play the hundred dollar tournaments and I started final tabling
Speaker 1: those and coming in second place and doing doing well there.
Speaker 1: And then I was able to move up gradually too,
Speaker 1: higher and higher stakes. And I think that that original
Speaker 1: win up Planet Hollywood made me realize, okay, um, I
Speaker 1: can do this. UM. I really needed that burst of confidence,
Speaker 1: because after two months of playing almost every day and
Speaker 1: not making any money, UM, it can be very frustrating.
Speaker 1: And eventually it can be enough to say, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm just really really bad at this. But what
Speaker 1: it shows you is that Sue or at the beginning,
Speaker 1: I was very very bad. But it also takes a
Speaker 1: while for everything to come together. Being bad. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you're not learning, it doesn't mean you're not improving,
Speaker 1: and you can't judge based on outcome. You have to
Speaker 1: just keep on, keep on plugging away at the process.
Speaker 1: And then I know, after after that first when I
Speaker 1: didn't look back because I was able to kind of
Speaker 1: finance my way through UM and then my big breakthrough
Speaker 1: at pc A, The Poker Stars carribean adventure UM when
Speaker 1: I made UM in you know, in one week, I
Speaker 1: made over a hundred thousand dollars UM. That happened almost
Speaker 1: a year to the day from the first time I
Speaker 1: played a live poker tournament. So I have two questions
Speaker 1: based on that. But the first one is Joe and
Speaker 1: I started this podcast by discussing the sort of pros
Speaker 1: and cons of doing online poker versus live games. What
Speaker 1: was your experience of that and how was the process different?
Speaker 1: And then secondly, when you were doing the live games,
Speaker 1: what did you tell people about who you are? You know,
Speaker 1: did anyone ask you what you were doing there? And
Speaker 1: you sort of appeared out of nowhere and and started
Speaker 1: to do very well. So I'm just wondering if people
Speaker 1: were curious about about you. Yeah, So, so the first
Speaker 1: part online and live is very different. I vastly prefer
Speaker 1: live poker, um, both because I'm better at it, but
Speaker 1: also I find it more interesting, there's more going on. Um.
Speaker 1: This isn't true of all people. A lot of people
Speaker 1: prefer playing online um, and they're different both in terms
Speaker 1: of speed and in terms of the player pools. Although
Speaker 1: right now things have gone a little bit murky because
Speaker 1: a lot of live players have moved online because with
Speaker 1: COVID you can't play live UM, so so now the
Speaker 1: player pools have become a little bit mixed. But before
Speaker 1: there were very different player tendencies, and you learned to
Speaker 1: play a little bit differently online than live, and online
Speaker 1: was actually tougher. The good online games were much harder
Speaker 1: than the live games because people were more mathematically minded. Um.
Speaker 1: The best players use software to analyze everything they have overlays,
Speaker 1: You're you're just seeing a table, They're seeing your sticks.
Speaker 1: They're seeing exactly what percentage Japan's you open pre flop,
Speaker 1: how often you three bet, how often you fold to
Speaker 1: a three bed, how often you forebet. All of those
Speaker 1: numbers are there because they have that software crunching in
Speaker 1: the background. If you want to play seriously, online you
Speaker 1: have to have it UM, even though some sites no
Speaker 1: longer allow it, but all of the sites that do UM,
Speaker 1: you're at this huge disadvantage if you don't use that.
Speaker 1: None of that exists live. You have to just learn
Speaker 1: to do that on your own. You have to learn
Speaker 1: to pay attention to it. So in that sense, live
Speaker 1: is harder UM. But I like it a lot better
Speaker 1: because I actually think that those muscles are very important
Speaker 1: too to train, and I think because I play live,
Speaker 1: I actually have a bit of an advantage on the
Speaker 1: sites that don't allow the HUDs, those that those software overlays,
Speaker 1: because I'm used to paying attention to players and I'm
Speaker 1: used to kind of counting for myself. Okay, how often
Speaker 1: does this person raise? How often do they three bet?
Speaker 1: How often do they fold to afford bit? You know,
Speaker 1: I'm used to tracking that in my mind, whereas players
Speaker 1: who have software that does it for them are not
Speaker 1: necessarily used to it. So that's but that's a big difference.
Speaker 1: So online much more mathematical, Live much more psychological, a
Speaker 1: lot more software number crunching online UM, a lot more
Speaker 1: people crunching live UM. In terms of whether people asked
Speaker 1: me questions at the beginning, I think they just when
Speaker 1: I was playing in most days tournaments, no one really
Speaker 1: gave me a second look, um, because otherwise other than saying, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a girl in the game, well that's weird. Um.
Speaker 1: But over time, yeah, absolutely, and people started figuring out
Speaker 1: what I was doing. I never volunteered it, but I
Speaker 1: never lied about it if someone asked, UM. And I
Speaker 1: think that it stood out because when I was traveling,
Speaker 1: I would be sitting, you know, in these smaller tournaments,
Speaker 1: and then all of these high roller players, not just
Speaker 1: Derek but all his friends would come over and say
Speaker 1: hi to me and give me a hug, because those
Speaker 1: were the people I knew. Those were my friends in
Speaker 1: the game. And so people started realizing, wait, who is
Speaker 1: this girl who knows all of these people both um.
Speaker 1: And then the poker media picked up on it, um
Speaker 1: and did a few stories about me, and then I
Speaker 1: lost a little bit of my anonymity. M I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask another question about the only reason we talked
Speaker 1: sometimes about poker on this podcast, which is nominally about
Speaker 1: markets and economics, is there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: in the investing world who play poker and are interested
Speaker 1: in then and there's obviously a lot of theoretical cross
Speaker 1: over right now in investing. We've seen just in the
Speaker 1: last several months, but for a while, this absolute explosion
Speaker 1: of online trading and retail money coming into trading like
Speaker 1: we've never seen before. And if I wanted to do
Speaker 1: some sort of like you know, forced torture analogy, maybe
Speaker 1: a sort of like the Chris Moneymaker phenomenon where after
Speaker 1: everyone saw him when the World Series of Poker without
Speaker 1: a bunch of people got into playing online poker. But
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, lots of people are entering the investing
Speaker 1: world trading like crazy online. And I'm curious, um, you
Speaker 1: know how that's changed the game even in person? You know,
Speaker 1: when you're at a live table against people who have
Speaker 1: like had their experience, um playing mostly online, have seen
Speaker 1: more hands online because they're multi tabling it perhaps than
Speaker 1: someone like even like Eric Sidell has seen in the
Speaker 1: thirty year career, just because they could play so many
Speaker 1: hands so so much. How has that fundamentally changed the
Speaker 1: game from your perspective that so many people have seen
Speaker 1: so much, uh, in a way that historically never been
Speaker 1: the case before. Well, it's actually changed it live much
Speaker 1: less than you would think, because, um, a lot of
Speaker 1: the online players when they actually make the transitions to live,
Speaker 1: are horrible. Uh. They you don't understand live poker. They
Speaker 1: give off way too much information. And when you're multi tabling,
Speaker 1: you don't You're not You're good at the mathematical, tiny edges,
Speaker 1: you're not good at the very big spots because you
Speaker 1: don't have to be. That's not how you play. You
Speaker 1: play for volume and for making a tiny bit of money. Um,
Speaker 1: multi tabling is not the way to get good at
Speaker 1: live poker. But it's a wonderful They would kick my
Speaker 1: ass on online, don't get me wrong, But a lot
Speaker 1: of times I love playing with them live because they
Speaker 1: don't know what they're doing. Um, and they give off
Speaker 1: way too much information. Um. However, a lot of the
Speaker 1: really best players these days who have come up both
Speaker 1: online and live, have made the game more challenging, or
Speaker 1: so I've been told. So a lot of people say, WHOA,
Speaker 1: you know you came in at such a horrible time
Speaker 1: when you know poker is dying because it's getting so complex.
Speaker 1: I have no idea. It's all I've ever seen, it's
Speaker 1: all I know. I don't know what it was like before.
Speaker 1: I've been told it's tougher now, um, But I think
Speaker 1: that they bring a much more mathemat radical mindset. They're
Speaker 1: using solvers programs that actually run you know, thousands of
Speaker 1: Monte Carlo simulations and try to figure out what's the
Speaker 1: approximate way to play this hand, um, And so they're
Speaker 1: thinking about it in a much more precise way. Um.
Speaker 1: That said, I actually think that it can give a
Speaker 1: false sense of confidence, because it's really important to remember
Speaker 1: that poker has not been solved, that these solvers are
Speaker 1: only approximations, and they're only as good as with any
Speaker 1: algorithms as the inputs that you put in, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people missed use solvers. They don't know how
Speaker 1: to put it in ranges correctly, they don't know how
Speaker 1: to put in the build the game trees correctly, and
Speaker 1: garbage and garbage out. As with every single algorithm, and
Speaker 1: even the players who do use them correctly, who know
Speaker 1: exactly what they're doing, and who are the best in
Speaker 1: the world at them, a lot of times they won't see,
Speaker 1: they won't think creatively, they won't actually see um, some
Speaker 1: of the nuances that are happening live because they're so
Speaker 1: locked into their solutions and they know exactly what they're
Speaker 1: post to do, and you can really exploit that. So
Speaker 1: some of sometimes the mathematical guys are the easiest players
Speaker 1: to play against. Usually they're gonna they're gonna really excel um,
Speaker 1: But there are moments where you can just completely take
Speaker 1: advantage of them, and I have. I've actually won against
Speaker 1: some of the absolute best players in the world by
Speaker 1: knowing exactly how they were thinking about things because I
Speaker 1: also use solvers. You have to if you're playing at
Speaker 1: a high level. Um, But I use them as a
Speaker 1: way to enhance my thinking, not as a way of
Speaker 1: saying of gaining certainty. There's really there's I think a
Speaker 1: big risk, not just in poker, but in financing everything,
Speaker 1: in thinking that algorithms and big data and all of
Speaker 1: this stuff that it's going to give you certainty that
Speaker 1: you don't actually have. And I think that there's a
Speaker 1: big risk of over confidence there and of failing to
Speaker 1: pay attention to other things because you think you've got it.
Speaker 1: I'll figured out I'm going to make an assumption in
Speaker 1: this next question, and do tell me if it's incorrect.
Speaker 1: But when we started the discussion and you were describing
Speaker 1: your project, you you sort of said or you suggested
Speaker 1: that poker was you know, your interest in it was
Speaker 1: came from intellectual curiosity and you saw as this mix
Speaker 1: of skill and luck that best reflected life. It sounds
Speaker 1: like as you embarked on this project that you came
Speaker 1: to really enjoy your poker experience. I'm just wondering, when
Speaker 1: you know, if that happened, what made it happen? Like,
Speaker 1: what was that moment when you when you thought, actually
Speaker 1: I really like this and I'm having fun. It definitely happened. Um,
Speaker 1: there wasn't one moment um. I think it was a
Speaker 1: realization over time. And I think that the reason that
Speaker 1: I love poker is because of what it's teaching me
Speaker 1: about non poker is because of how complex the game is.
Speaker 1: It's because the more I learned about it, the more
Speaker 1: difficult it becomes. And I feel like it's teaching me
Speaker 1: to stretch my mind, to think in new ways, to
Speaker 1: challenge myself on both an intellectual and an emotional human
Speaker 1: love ball And until COVID, you know, I was playing
Speaker 1: live regularly. I was still traveling all over the world. Um.
Speaker 1: In fact, you know I had to cancel plans for
Speaker 1: my what was going to be my UM next big tournament.
Speaker 1: Um it became one of the last live poker tournaments
Speaker 1: to be held in this country. UM. So I was
Speaker 1: on my way there and ended up going back because
Speaker 1: of what was happening, and I realized that this was
Speaker 1: not good and that the casino was not where I
Speaker 1: should be. Um And But until that moment, I had
Speaker 1: no intention of quoting, end of pulling back from playing
Speaker 1: seriously live because it was still giving me so much.
Speaker 1: And I was still learning so much about thinking about
Speaker 1: decision making, about emotional regulation, about people, about all of
Speaker 1: these different elements, and that, to me is beautiful. There
Speaker 1: are so few things that will give you that kind
Speaker 1: of richness of experience. And now my PhD not just
Speaker 1: in psychology, but I studied for years decision making under
Speaker 1: risk and uncertainty and under hot emotional conditions. I made
Speaker 1: people play stock market games. I looked at all of
Speaker 1: their decisions, and I spent so long studying all of
Speaker 1: this stuff, and nothing has taught me more about it
Speaker 1: than poker basically stopped me. It's not me much more
Speaker 1: than my PhD. Actually, I want to ask you about that.
Speaker 1: The the emotional valance part because you can learn about
Speaker 1: you know, get really good at uh, pattern recognition, you
Speaker 1: can get really good at math. You can get to
Speaker 1: know yourself and your bluffing strategy and what you feel
Speaker 1: comfortable with what. At some point, you get to a
Speaker 1: position where you're in a tournament or maybe you're sort
Speaker 1: of on the bubble with a chance to make money,
Speaker 1: and you're in a huge pot and the stakes are
Speaker 1: really high, and uh, you know, people's heart start to
Speaker 1: beat faster. How do you do you have a process
Speaker 1: for sticking to your method of analysis and not letting
Speaker 1: the emotions of those moments dictate what you ultimately decide
Speaker 1: to do. Yeah. Absolutely in I mean part of it
Speaker 1: is experience. At the beginning, I would give off a
Speaker 1: lot of information just because these situations were new to
Speaker 1: me and it was really difficult for me to to
Speaker 1: deal with the emotions and I hadn't thought through them,
Speaker 1: you know. Part way through my journey, I actually got
Speaker 1: a mental coach, so someone who helped me with the
Speaker 1: mental elements of the game, someone named Jared Tendler, who
Speaker 1: was very very good, um at teaching me to to
Speaker 1: have some of these you know, mental cooling and emotional
Speaker 1: cooling strategies because you do need someone to look at
Speaker 1: you from the outside. Even though I'm someone who studied
Speaker 1: self control and who really knows all of these strategies theoretically,
Speaker 1: practically speaking, it's much more difficult to apply them to
Speaker 1: yourself because you when you're on tilt that's the poker
Speaker 1: term for letting emotions into your decision process, it's really
Speaker 1: really hard to identify and analyze it in yourself. It's
Speaker 1: much easier to see it in someone else. We're not
Speaker 1: objective about ourselves, especially when we get into emotional situations.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of the work happened away from
Speaker 1: the poker to table. A lot of it involved going
Speaker 1: through games, going through hands, going through tournaments. I would
Speaker 1: take lots and lots of notes and try to figure
Speaker 1: out after the fact, Okay, what situations got me off
Speaker 1: my game, what things tilted me, what types of things
Speaker 1: made me emotional? Okay, now now I'm going to actually
Speaker 1: physically write all of those things down. Jared made me
Speaker 1: make spreadsheets um where I would then say, Okay, what's
Speaker 1: the emotion I was experiencing and what am I going
Speaker 1: to do? What are the things I'm going to say
Speaker 1: to myself in the moment to to counteract that, how
Speaker 1: am I going to avoid this happening next time? You
Speaker 1: have to do that work ahead of time, because once
Speaker 1: you're already on tilt, it's too late. So if you
Speaker 1: don't do that hard work in advance, UM, it's not
Speaker 1: going to happen, and you're going to end up letting
Speaker 1: emotions into your decision process, which is not good. If
Speaker 1: they're incidental emotions. You know, sometimes the emotions are correct, um,
Speaker 1: and they're actually integral to the decision, But of the time,
Speaker 1: or even of the time, that's not the case. So
Speaker 1: you need to learn to identify them and dismiss them.
Speaker 1: And you need to learn techniques of cooling your hot
Speaker 1: emotional states and figuring out how do I get back
Speaker 1: to a rational place. And the only way to do
Speaker 1: that is if you know and advance what your triggers are,
Speaker 1: if you know and advance how you're likely to react,
Speaker 1: because then you can be proactive as opposed to emotionally reactive. UM.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to um, the point you
Speaker 1: were making about women, how women are treated in the
Speaker 1: game versus men, because I feel like whenever Joe and
Speaker 1: I do a poker episode, it sort of sounds like
Speaker 1: a massive cliche because Joe clearly enjoys the game and
Speaker 1: plays it a reasonable amount, and I don't really see
Speaker 1: what the big deal is. And although I play it
Speaker 1: when I'm forced to and talk about it when I'm
Speaker 1: forced to, Joe, UM, I don't find it that compelling.
Speaker 1: Why do you think women aren't as attracted to poker
Speaker 1: as men? And what can be done to change that
Speaker 1: and maybe interest women a bit more in the game. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's anything inherent. I think that actually
Speaker 1: women are incredible poker players. Some of the best poker
Speaker 1: players in the world, and the most impressive people are female. UM.
Speaker 1: And there are people who have succeeded in all sorts
Speaker 1: of other areas of life. And you have someone like
Speaker 1: Vanessa Selps who went to Yale undergrad yea law school,
Speaker 1: brilliant lawyer. UM worked at some of the best touch
Speaker 1: funds in the world, professional poker player, Livebury astrophysicist, professional
Speaker 1: poker player. You know, you have you have these very
Speaker 1: very very impressive females. And I think that historically it's
Speaker 1: been a male game, and so the culture is not
Speaker 1: necessarily welcoming to women, and women don't realize I think
Speaker 1: a lot of the times what poker is. They just
Speaker 1: see it as this gambling thing. And one of the
Speaker 1: things I've tried to stress in my book, and I
Speaker 1: hope my book actually brings more women to the game, um,
Speaker 1: is that poker is not gambling. It's actually different from
Speaker 1: every single other game in a casino. It's a game
Speaker 1: of skill. It's a game where you can win with
Speaker 1: the worst hand and where you can lose with the
Speaker 1: best hand. Because eight percent of time, and this is
Speaker 1: not a number that I'm just kind of pulling out
Speaker 1: of thin air, um, there was actually a study that
Speaker 1: economists did who analyzed hundreds of thousands of poker hands
Speaker 1: online and found that the best hand one twelve percent
Speaker 1: of the time, which means that pent of the time
Speaker 1: it's the best player who forces someone with the better
Speaker 1: hand to fold. And that, to me, that's just the
Speaker 1: epitome of skill. It's all about becoming better and mastering
Speaker 1: your process so that you can maximize your decisions, um
Speaker 1: and basically be the be the more skilled person in
Speaker 1: the game. And I think that that's not clear from
Speaker 1: the popular culture. I think a lot of women think
Speaker 1: of poker as you know, oh everyone's smoking, you know,
Speaker 1: these guys in the back realm with cigars. I don't
Speaker 1: want to do that. I don't want to gamble. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of times when if you don't
Speaker 1: understand the game, and if you haven't taken the time
Speaker 1: to actually study in and to figure out, oh, this
Speaker 1: is a game that can teach me a lot um,
Speaker 1: you're like, you know what, this is boring. I don't
Speaker 1: want to do this. It's not a boring game at
Speaker 1: all if you actually start figuring out what it's about.
Speaker 1: But it's boring if you just are sitting there and
Speaker 1: no one wants to include you because you're not in
Speaker 1: the boys club. I think that that turns a lot
Speaker 1: of women off. And I think a lot of times
Speaker 1: when they walk into a casino and sit down at
Speaker 1: a poker table at those lower stakes, it's not a
Speaker 1: welcoming experience. A lot of men are drinking. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of sexism. I mean, I've been called everything under
Speaker 1: the moon. Some of the stuff is not not fit
Speaker 1: for a radio consumption. So I'm not I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say what I've been called. But if you can
Speaker 1: think of it. I've been called it. I've been propositioned, literally,
Speaker 1: given a key card and told what my rate was
Speaker 1: going to be. I've experienced things I never thought i'd experience,
Speaker 1: and that's a problem, and I think that keeps a
Speaker 1: lot of women from the game. And honestly, had I
Speaker 1: not been a journalist going into this for a book
Speaker 1: and had I not seen what was possible, had I
Speaker 1: not had a lot of the best players showing me
Speaker 1: that their excitement, their love of the game, the fact
Speaker 1: that it's a really beautiful game before I sensed it
Speaker 1: for myself, and I kind of took their word for
Speaker 1: it because I said, well, you guys are brilliant and
Speaker 1: you could do anything in the world, and you've chosen
Speaker 1: to play poker, So I guess, I guess there must
Speaker 1: be something to this. If I didn't have that, there's
Speaker 1: a very good chance that I would have gotten right
Speaker 1: up and walked out and never come back. Well, it's
Speaker 1: good that you didn't. I think that's a great place
Speaker 1: to leave it. What just real quickly, Um, how have
Speaker 1: you been spending the the crisis, the quarantine and what
Speaker 1: are your plans for when it's over? Um, I've been
Speaker 1: focusing on my book launch. So this was not the
Speaker 1: way I planned to release my book. But my book
Speaker 1: came out in the middle of quarantine. So I'm in
Speaker 1: New York. Um. I barely have left Brooklyn, or I mean,
Speaker 1: I barely have left my apartment since the end of February,
Speaker 1: except for two weeks UM in July, where I actually
Speaker 1: got an airbnb in New Jersey to play the World
Speaker 1: Series of Poker online because in the US to have
Speaker 1: to be physically located in New Jersey or Nevada in
Speaker 1: order to be able to play. UM. And so I
Speaker 1: did that, and now I'm back in Brooklyn. UM. And
Speaker 1: do you not foresee any more travel in in my
Speaker 1: immediate future? But yeah, my quarantine has been has been
Speaker 1: spent on trying to get the book out there, even
Speaker 1: though it's not See this this, this is the thing.
Speaker 1: This is what poker teaches. You focus on the process,
Speaker 1: and you can't control you can't control the outcomes, you
Speaker 1: can't control what's going on around you. So everything that's
Speaker 1: happening right now, that's just that's out of my hands. UM.
Speaker 1: That's the variance, and that's the things that you can't
Speaker 1: predict for UM. And that you can't control for so
Speaker 1: what I can do is focus on myself and focus
Speaker 1: on trying to make this as good of an experience
Speaker 1: as I possibly can. Maria, that was great, really, uh
Speaker 1: really enjoyed you coming on and uh, best of luck
Speaker 1: and congrat something and looking forward to see you rising
Speaker 1: on the Hendon mob. I'll keep both you're re checking
Speaker 1: your profile and I see your your cash your cash winnings,
Speaker 1: continue to write. Thank you guys so much, thanks for it.
Speaker 1: That was really interesting, crazy, I found that really inspiring,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I always say I like the game,
Speaker 1: but I admit that I'm not good at it. But
Speaker 1: maybe I should just decide to try to get good
Speaker 1: at it, and maybe we both should, Like, maybe we
Speaker 1: should both stop talking about it so much and just
Speaker 1: both become good at it. That'd be fun, wouldn't it.
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that Maria makes it look a
Speaker 1: lot easier than it actually. Um and that said clearly,
Speaker 1: I haven't read the book, but just talking to her, like,
Speaker 1: it's clear that she's a talented player, and it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty phenomenal that she managed to do so, like completely
Speaker 1: out of her own will. She just wilds this professional
Speaker 1: poker career into being that's amazing. We kind of did
Speaker 1: that with like podcast, right, I think it's slightly different.
Speaker 1: But okay, um, well we could do we could do
Speaker 1: a part cast series where where we all go to
Speaker 1: Vegas and why don't we just see who makes the
Speaker 1: most money. I think that's what we should do. Let's
Speaker 1: just do that. Yeah, rather than putting too much pressure
Speaker 1: to actually become good when it's all over, let's just
Speaker 1: both go and just see who wins more money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we'll record everything. It would be great. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: actually something to look forward to. Yeah, that's something to
Speaker 1: look forward to and all that. But you know, I
Speaker 1: do think I do think her a description of poker
Speaker 1: as this mixture of luck and skill is a really
Speaker 1: important one. And it's sort of similar in financial markets
Speaker 1: as well. You can get lucky on a single call,
Speaker 1: but over the long run, all your investment decisions sort
Speaker 1: of average out, and eventually, if you're making just tons
Speaker 1: and tons of stupid decisions, your your luck is going
Speaker 1: to get overwhelmed by your stupidity and your long term
Speaker 1: average is going to go down. Yeah it's a cliche,
Speaker 1: but fund managers, you know, they love to talk about
Speaker 1: my process. I follow on a process that I may
Speaker 1: have lost money at this quarter, but my process, my process.
Speaker 1: But that is essentially what that means, which is like,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes you're have an approach that's not gonna work,
Speaker 1: you got bad cards, the company you invested in, whatever.
Speaker 1: But that is what they're talking about, is that discipline
Speaker 1: to have an approach. And you know, the the greatest
Speaker 1: ones investors are not just someone who randomly got lucky
Speaker 1: because they bought Netflix fifteen years ago or whatever, but
Speaker 1: actually have some sort of process and discipline to evaluate investments.
Speaker 1: It's just extremely, extremely hard. If someone were to ask
Speaker 1: me what my poker process was, I would say a
Speaker 1: mixture of panic and confusion. See that's what you know.
Speaker 1: You have the self evaluation part, So that's good, that's
Speaker 1: the first step. I don't know, I would probably say
Speaker 1: something pretty similar with a couple of that, with like
Speaker 1: some sort of like overconfidence or trying to do hard,
Speaker 1: to be clever but probably but no better. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: I am looking forward to testing all of this out
Speaker 1: in Vegas once the whole coronas fingers crossed, I'm looking forward. Okay,
Speaker 1: this has been another episode of the All Thoughts Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe wisn't Thal. You can follow
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at The Stalwart and you should follow
Speaker 1: our guests on Twitter Maria kna Cova. Her handle is
Speaker 1: at m conda Cova. Also be sure to check out
Speaker 1: her new book, The Biggest Blow How I Learned to
Speaker 1: pay attention, master myself and Win, and be sure to
Speaker 1: follow our producer Laura Carlson at Laura M. Carlton. Follow
Speaker 1: The Bloomberg had a podcast, Francesca Levi at Francesca Today
Speaker 1: and check out all of our podcasts under the handle
Speaker 1: at podcast. Thanks for listening to