Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions.
Speaker 2: I'm Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 3: And I'm Nate Silver. What's on tap today? Maria? Maybe
Speaker 3: a little maybe little pokey pokey poke Sorry, please hit
Speaker 3: it up?
Speaker 1: No, no, do not, do not.
Speaker 3: We haven't talked about poker in a while. This is
Speaker 3: a Saturday episode. It's supposed to be more fun, so
Speaker 3: we're gonna talk a little bit about poker and more
Speaker 3: particularly online poker versus live poker. I think this might
Speaker 3: reveal more than you think about how we process information,
Speaker 3: how our brains work. And Maria is a Sika who
Speaker 3: still likes online poker. I do not. You'll see that
Speaker 3: difference come out too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm excited to get started. Nate.
Speaker 2: Let's uh, let's get into it. This past weekend was
Speaker 2: the start of the online Bracelet series, which the World
Speaker 2: Series of Poker has been doing for a few years now,
Speaker 2: basically starting during COVID when bracelets were moved online when
Speaker 2: there was no World Series of Poker live during the summer,
Speaker 2: and it's become more and more of a thing where
Speaker 2: these highly competitive events with you know, coveded WSOP bracelets
Speaker 2: have moved to the Internet, and there's a lot of
Speaker 2: we're not going to talk about kind of is this
Speaker 2: a good thing? Is this a bad thing? We'll leave
Speaker 2: that question alone and instead we'll talk about just in
Speaker 2: general thoughts about playing online and playing live.
Speaker 3: Maria, you seem to like online poker more than I.
Speaker 2: Do, well, Nate, So you know, we do some disclosure
Speaker 2: on the show, and as listeners of the show note,
Speaker 2: I am an ambassador for Poker Stars. I'm a Poker
Speaker 2: Stars team. Pro poker Stars is an online poker company,
Speaker 2: So I have had to get used to playing online,
Speaker 2: which is not my preferred method of playing. By the way,
Speaker 2: I far far prefer playing live to playing online. But
Speaker 2: I learned to play poker playing online because the beauty
Speaker 2: of online poker is the sheer quantity of hands that
Speaker 2: you can get in and so the experience that you
Speaker 2: can acquire is much faster. So I used to, you know,
Speaker 2: when I just started playing for the Biggest Bluff, I
Speaker 2: would reverse commute to New Jersey multiple days a week
Speaker 2: to play online because in cafes I would play.
Speaker 3: Noan on McDonald's we talked in lat episode about how
Speaker 3: you've never fucking been to McDonald's.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So no, not not out of McDonald's. But I have
Speaker 2: definitely explored the world of online cafes that are open
Speaker 2: late in Hoboken and Jersey City.
Speaker 3: Do they know what you were doing?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Yes, they knew what I was doing because I had
Speaker 2: my laptop out and I was playing online. There was
Speaker 2: one cafe that I started going to. The owner loved
Speaker 2: online poker and at some point was like, can I
Speaker 2: play a few hands? When I was playing a tournament
Speaker 2: and I was like, uh, no, you're not allowed to
Speaker 2: do that, but he was.
Speaker 1: He was very excited.
Speaker 3: Was it that you were not allowed that you thought
Speaker 3: he was a fish?
Speaker 2: Well, you're not allowed to have someone else play for
Speaker 2: you on your account.
Speaker 3: But if like phil Ivy, is he from New Jersey, Yes,
Speaker 3: if phil Ivy on the cafe, would you let him play?
Speaker 1: No? I would not.
Speaker 2: My next book is about cheating.
Speaker 3: What if phil Ivy would kick you out of his
Speaker 3: cafe unless you unless you unless you let him play?
Speaker 3: I would say, so it's a the best player in
Speaker 3: the world and be you can no longer use a cafe.
Speaker 3: I mean, I feel like, doesn't that outweigh the No.
Speaker 2: I would say, I would say, Phil, I cannot believe
Speaker 2: you do not value your reputation because you know, I'm
Speaker 2: a journalist and I'm going to write about this in
Speaker 2: my book about cheating. How phil Ivy basically said that
Speaker 2: he wanted me to cheat And this is not a
Speaker 2: good look for you, Phil.
Speaker 3: So what you're saying is that when you won your
Speaker 3: online bracelet, phil Ivy was ghosting for you, right, but
Speaker 3: you agreed not to disclose that.
Speaker 2: In exactly exactly so, Nate, I actually think that this
Speaker 2: is probably one of the most djened things that you
Speaker 2: will hear me do.
Speaker 1: Nate.
Speaker 2: Last weekend, so I was in Vermont for a long
Speaker 2: weekend Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Sunday. After driving back from
Speaker 2: Vermont and you know, listeners of the show have heard
Speaker 2: my wasp story. After all of this happened, I went
Speaker 2: back to Brooklyn, you know, dropped all my stuff off,
Speaker 2: and then took the Path train to New Jersey, where
Speaker 2: I had booked a hotel room for Sunday night to
Speaker 2: hop into the first two events of the World Series
Speaker 2: of Poker Online Bracelet series. So went, for the sole
Speaker 2: reason you know, of playing these events, did that, and
Speaker 2: then you know, went to work in the morning from
Speaker 2: a nice hotel, HIGHTT Regency, right on the water in
Speaker 2: Jersey City. Nice enough, great great views, Highly recommend for
Speaker 2: online poker, stable internet connection, no no issues with geolocation,
Speaker 2: which can be problematic when you're right on the water,
Speaker 2: as I found out, because sometimes what ends up happening
Speaker 2: is they pick up Wi Fi from New York and
Speaker 2: suddenly we'll kick you off. So High Regency did not
Speaker 2: have any of those issues. But I can't tell you
Speaker 2: much about the hotel because I checked in, you know,
Speaker 2: went to my room, fired up the tournaments, went to sleep, and.
Speaker 1: Woke up and left, and that that was.
Speaker 2: But you know, it actually made me think about so
Speaker 2: many differences right between playing live and playing online, and
Speaker 2: especially with series like this when it starts so incredibly late.
Speaker 2: So for people who aren't as d Jenny, these events
Speaker 2: start at three thirty and four thirty Vegas time Pacific time,
Speaker 2: which means six thirty and seven thirty pm East Coast time.
Speaker 2: So now imagine if you actually go deep in the event.
Speaker 2: So when I won my World a series of poker
Speaker 2: online bracelet, I was playing in Vegas and we finished
Speaker 2: the final table. I want at like three thirty am,
Speaker 2: which would have been six thirty am East Coast time.
Speaker 2: So if you think about that, it's insane, right, that's
Speaker 2: actually a crazy, crazy time to start a tournament, and
Speaker 2: it probably freezes out a lot of people who would
Speaker 2: have otherwise played. Like, for instance, this past Sunday, I
Speaker 2: was like, you know what, I don't know if I'm
Speaker 2: going to do that again because it's exhausting to do that.
Speaker 2: So I didn't cash one of the events. I cashed
Speaker 2: the other one, so ended up, you know, busting at
Speaker 2: like two am.
Speaker 1: And I was like, was it really worth.
Speaker 2: It for just you know, a few grand to do
Speaker 2: something like that? And you answered it. But so there
Speaker 2: are a lot of different considerations when you're playing online
Speaker 2: that you don't have to deal with when you're playing live.
Speaker 2: We talked back when it was the summer and we
Speaker 2: were playing the live World Series of Poker events. We
Speaker 2: talked about using you know, this new software that showed
Speaker 2: who was going to be at your table and how
Speaker 2: you would how it gave you extra information right, and
Speaker 2: how you could then rate the players rank them. Nate,
Speaker 2: you had this very complicated spreadsheet which I love, and
Speaker 2: you actually gave the players. Yeah, you had a rating scale,
Speaker 2: so you had all this extra stuff that you normally
Speaker 2: wouldn't have. But online there are if there are several issues.
Speaker 2: One is people don't use their real names, right, So
Speaker 2: there are screen names that people use. So you see this,
Speaker 2: you know, you see the people at your table, but
Speaker 2: you may or may not know who those people are.
Speaker 2: People do track screen names, and there are communities of
Speaker 2: poker players that study together that have these big spreadsheets
Speaker 2: of people's online screen names and say, oh, this is
Speaker 2: this person, this is this person. So then Nate, they
Speaker 2: can do what you did during the World series because
Speaker 2: they have the real name to go along with the
Speaker 2: screen name. But if you're someone who's not in that community,
Speaker 2: you might have no way of knowing, right, So you're
Speaker 2: actually missing that whole big piece of information. And you
Speaker 2: used to play online poker for a living. We never
Speaker 2: really talked about your experience of doing that and how
Speaker 2: you thought about kind of those you know, informational edges,
Speaker 2: informational asymmetries, and how the value of data, how it
Speaker 2: shifts between live and online. Because obviously, like live, one
Speaker 2: of my big edges is the fact that I'm a psychologist,
Speaker 2: Like there's and there's this wealth of data. I don't
Speaker 2: have any of that online, but I'd love to hear
Speaker 2: about your experience and kind of that contrast.
Speaker 3: So when I played online, I played limit hold them primarily.
Speaker 3: I did quite well for your period of a few years,
Speaker 3: which I attribute not necessarily to deep study. But like, look,
Speaker 3: poker and number one poker is a game where all
Speaker 3: that matters for you win rate is how was your
Speaker 3: strength relative to the players you're playing against. Right, I
Speaker 3: can walk in the games where I'm the best player
Speaker 3: at the tail by far. I can walk in a
Speaker 3: game for I'm the worst player at the table by far.
Speaker 3: I like think I'm closer to the best than the worst. Right,
Speaker 3: the average team I'm sitting in, I think on plus ev.
Speaker 3: But like that's what really matters. So in the poker
Speaker 3: boom years, the moneymaker boom, the online poker boom, the
Speaker 3: average person was quite bad. And then and then things
Speaker 3: got tougher with party poker and other sites closed to Americans.
Speaker 3: After the UIGEA passed in two thousand and six, a
Speaker 3: lot of the better players, excuse me, a lot of
Speaker 3: the worst players dried up and left the game. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: my last six months were losing months after having felt
Speaker 3: like it was an ATM for some period of time. However,
Speaker 3: even then I was playing in you know, almost the
Speaker 3: higher stakes available at that time, as far as like
Speaker 3: as high as like one hundred two hundred dollar blinds,
Speaker 3: which is a pretty big game for two thousand and five. Yeah,
Speaker 3: not as big as an no limic game with those stakes,
Speaker 3: but like it was a surreal game. I would impress
Speaker 3: people by like eyeing in. I would like drop my
Speaker 3: whole role down and put buying for sixty thousand dollars
Speaker 3: just to look cool, because it's a fucking door and
Speaker 3: it was in my twenties, right, and like, but even
Speaker 3: then you had maybe a few dozen regulars, right, and
Speaker 3: so like you did have some wreaths, right. I think
Speaker 3: I like to get in like people's headspace with them
Speaker 3: a little bit. What a lot of people do when
Speaker 3: they play online is they will multi table, meaning playing
Speaker 3: more than one game at once. And I would do that.
Speaker 3: I would do that, but I would play three or
Speaker 3: four tables as opposed to like some people literally play
Speaker 3: eight or sixteen or twenty right where they're just playing
Speaker 3: totally paint by numbers poker almost always playing like way
Speaker 3: too tight, and I'd try to, like I try to
Speaker 3: like be a little more focused on individual decisions. But like,
Speaker 3: but you know, but like that's not the environment right now.
Speaker 3: I mean, back then there was not RTA. RTA is
Speaker 3: real time assistance where there are now solvers, and it's illegal,
Speaker 3: it's illegal. And maybe I do get the props sometimes
Speaker 3: I do play occasionally less and less and less and less,
Speaker 3: but like I'll get the props sometimes saying prove you're
Speaker 3: a human and not a computer. Maybe I maybe that's
Speaker 3: a sign that I'm playing too mechanically or playing like
Speaker 3: a solver.
Speaker 2: Hey, Nate, I've never I've never gotten that prompt.
Speaker 1: What does that say about my.
Speaker 3: I don't know, But now it feels weird to say,
Speaker 3: as like kind of a a math guy, right, you know,
Speaker 3: I feel like my relative strengths in poker are actually
Speaker 3: kind of like the soft skills, at least relative to
Speaker 3: that like elite player population, right, Like, I think I
Speaker 3: have a pretty good attitude about money. I think I
Speaker 3: definitely am not always playing my a game. I don't
Speaker 3: think I have super tilt problems. You know, I can
Speaker 3: pick up not against Maybe you should forget about the
Speaker 3: best pros, but against like amateurs, I can read players
Speaker 3: pretty well, I can I can estimate pretty well and
Speaker 3: piece some shit together right, and be more composed and like,
Speaker 3: you know, online, I think those advantages are lesser number one.
Speaker 3: And also, like I just find like, you know, when
Speaker 3: I play poker live, there's an act of intentionality to it. Right,
Speaker 3: It's like I decided today too, because there's no casino
Speaker 3: within an hour and a half of me, Right, I
Speaker 3: decided to take a trip to a casino to play
Speaker 3: a tournament and take a week out. It'll cost me money,
Speaker 3: it'll cost you money. You know, hopefully I'll make back
Speaker 3: the entry fee and win. Most of the time, you don't, right,
Speaker 3: but like, but if there's an opportunity cost there, I
Speaker 3: could be doing something else right and like, but there's
Speaker 3: an active intentionality there that gives me more presence. You know.
Speaker 3: The other problem too is that kind of mentioned this earlier, Like,
Speaker 3: because these tournaments start in the PM typically, right, or
Speaker 3: you've just been playing a long time, and there's like
Speaker 3: and there's fatigue because you don't get you know, live
Speaker 3: poker is nice and frankly fairly slow until you get
Speaker 3: to like shorthanded poker, Right, you're not playing most of
Speaker 3: the time. You have your break for twenty minutes every
Speaker 3: two hours, right, you have a dinner break like online,
Speaker 3: even if you do start early, it's kind of a grind.
Speaker 3: But like, you know, I've just had fucking times and
Speaker 3: I'm like, Okay, I was bored tonight decided to fire
Speaker 3: up like a fifty dollars hundred dollars tournament, right, and like,
Speaker 3: is it really worth me staying up another two hours
Speaker 3: to ladder up and win an extra couple hundred dollars
Speaker 3: and expected value? Like I don't know, right, And so
Speaker 3: you like, I find the whole thing kind of kind
Speaker 3: of difficult.
Speaker 1: And we'll be back right after this.
Speaker 2: I think the lateness thing is a huge factor. I
Speaker 2: actually think that the entire East Coast is at a
Speaker 2: huge disadvantage to the West Coast because your cognitive function
Speaker 2: is an not going to be as sharp, you know,
Speaker 2: at when it's midnight for you, it's only nine pm
Speaker 2: for the people who are playing from Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: That's a huge difference.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've looked at this in the context of so
Speaker 3: here's a little actual actionable gambling tip. Although it's probably
Speaker 3: accounted for in the point spot, so there's maybe not
Speaker 3: edge there. Right. We have this NFL model we've been
Speaker 3: working on for a couple of months now, right where
Speaker 3: literally any every NFL games is like teen twenty is
Speaker 3: account of four and all types of stuff, all types
Speaker 3: of fancy shit.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: You know, teams playing at night when it's outside of
Speaker 3: their time zone. So the West Coast team has a
Speaker 3: big advantage versus an East Coast team in night games. Right,
Speaker 3: it's about almost a full point, which is not huge huge.
Speaker 3: That's like in the cost of NFL, where like if
Speaker 3: you have a point edge, you will beat the point
Speaker 3: spread on average. Right, that's pretty big. In fact, like
Speaker 3: even when the game is on the East Coast, the
Speaker 3: West Coast team can still be more fatigue or the
Speaker 3: East Coast team rather can still be worft because they're
Speaker 3: playing you know, you still have the West Coast team
Speaker 3: playing at five pm locally till eight instead of eight
Speaker 3: until eleven when you play most NFL games in the afternoon,
Speaker 3: practice in the afternoon, et cetera. Right, a bit of
Speaker 3: a reverse effect, by the way, where the West Coast
Speaker 3: teams do a little bit worse in games that sort
Speaker 3: up one pm Eastern ten am West coast time. But
Speaker 3: it's a little asymmetric, right, people, I'm an id L,
Speaker 3: so maybe I'm an exception, right, But like most people
Speaker 3: stretch a little better in the morning if they have
Speaker 3: to get up earlier than in the even at least
Speaker 3: for physical types of activity. Right, So like, yeah, that
Speaker 3: type of stuff like does matter quite a bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I mean, for sure, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: data on our cognitive function and time of day. And
Speaker 2: let me just say that there are two factors that
Speaker 2: are that really matter. One is just the actual light outside, right,
Speaker 2: and how it affects are body circadian rhythms, because as
Speaker 2: we evolved, light cues really matter and kind of make
Speaker 2: a difference. And there are certain cues towards morning that
Speaker 2: tell us to wake up, certain ques towards evening that
Speaker 2: tell us to go to sleep. But your chronotype, so Nate,
Speaker 2: you said you're a night owl. Your chronotype, that's what
Speaker 2: that is, right, your own internal circadian rhythm that also matters.
Speaker 2: So there are people who are who have an earlier
Speaker 2: chronotype and so they actually function better in the mornings.
Speaker 2: There are people who have a later chronotype. They function
Speaker 2: better later. It's easier in modern society for early birds
Speaker 2: to function because their chronotype is aligned more aligned right
Speaker 2: with modern demands and also actually more aligned with the
Speaker 2: with light. And I'm guessing there are no data on
Speaker 2: this night because this is not the way that professional
Speaker 2: sports work. But I'm assuming that the advantage will go
Speaker 2: away if the West team has been on the East
Speaker 2: coast for two weeks. We could look at but I
Speaker 2: don't think that ever happens, right, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think in l teams would generally fly. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean all the sports science stuff is getting better.
Speaker 3: Home field advantage is generally declining, right, because they're like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you want to show up in that environment a couple
Speaker 3: of days beforehand, for sure. Yeah, I mean you're thinking
Speaker 3: about on them.
Speaker 2: A couple of days, but not two weeks, and it
Speaker 2: takes a while for your rhythms to reset.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you're trained for like as I you know,
Speaker 3: the past several summers played the World Series for at
Speaker 3: least a couple of weeks, right, you can you do
Speaker 3: get training right. One of the advice people sudvice I
Speaker 3: give is like, if you're playing, if you really care
Speaker 3: about the main event in the World Series, which if
Speaker 3: you love poker, you you probably should, right, Like, don't
Speaker 3: have that be your first tournament. I mean, you want
Speaker 3: to get in some reps. You want to kind of
Speaker 3: know where the bathrooms are, literally, I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: all that stuff. All that stuff matters. I Mean, one
Speaker 3: thing I noticed is like I have an uncanny recollection
Speaker 3: for live hands they played weeks, months, years ago, you know,
Speaker 3: down to the color of you know, what suit of
Speaker 3: the cards were, you know, Ace five of diamonds, even
Speaker 3: though it might not matter or or whatever else, right,
Speaker 3: the color of the chips or how But like I
Speaker 3: you know, online I'm like, I think I played at
Speaker 3: quads versus full house hand last night there or something
Speaker 3: like that, right, I just don't know. I don't have
Speaker 3: the tactile like recall.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, I'm sure that people who just play
Speaker 2: online all the time, it becomes there probably is different
Speaker 2: our brain architecture that is involved, because that's the where
Speaker 2: our brains work right there. They're flexible and they do
Speaker 2: kind of change according to how you're using them. And
Speaker 2: so I'm assuming it's for someone who's an full time
Speaker 2: online player. It's probably not the case. But One of
Speaker 2: the things you said, Nate that really resonates that there's
Speaker 2: so much science behind this is that our brain does process, retain,
Speaker 2: and just work through information much much better when it's physical,
Speaker 2: when we're actually doing it, when we're learning by doing
Speaker 2: and not by you know, doing by pressing a button.
Speaker 2: So work that I think is actually kind of related.
Speaker 2: I hadn't thought about this until until now, but I
Speaker 2: think that this is quite relevant. There's a ton of work,
Speaker 2: and this research started, you know, probably several decades ago,
Speaker 2: and it's only gotten more and more powerful in the
Speaker 2: sense that replicated bigger studies. So there's a lot of
Speaker 2: work that shows that the single best way of taking
Speaker 2: notes right retaining information is to do it by hand,
Speaker 2: to actually physically write, and that there's a huge difference
Speaker 2: between taking notes by hand and typing on a computer.
Speaker 2: And there are multiple reasons for this. One of them
Speaker 2: is that there is this connection between you know, the
Speaker 2: hand physically going through these motions and the brain that
Speaker 2: strengthens the wiring. The other thing is that you don't
Speaker 2: write as quickly as you type, so you already have
Speaker 2: to process the information to know what's important enough to
Speaker 2: write down. How do I write it down, how do
Speaker 2: I take the different themes from it? How do I
Speaker 2: actually distill this? And so you're not just passively listening.
Speaker 2: You have to actively do this, whereas if you're typing,
Speaker 2: you can basically type everything, but you retain that information
Speaker 2: a lot worse. So this made me think that with
Speaker 2: online poker there's actually a similar effect going on where
Speaker 2: when it's live and also the way that our brain
Speaker 2: retains information and encodes information, the more points of encoding
Speaker 2: you can have, the better. So if you have like
Speaker 2: a memory where you have you remember, oh, these were
Speaker 2: the colors, right, these were the smells. This was what
Speaker 2: I just had for you know, if you can encode
Speaker 2: in a multisensory way, it's going to be much much
Speaker 2: more powerful, much more lasting. You're going to take a
Speaker 2: lot more from it than if you just do kind
Speaker 2: of a one note type of thing. And when you're
Speaker 2: playing live poker, you have that right because you are
Speaker 2: in a multisensor, You're in the real world, you are
Speaker 2: in an environment with people. There are dynamics, you can see, looks,
Speaker 2: you know, it smells. Unfortunately, there are a lot of
Speaker 2: things that are going on that will help you process
Speaker 2: retain and actually kind of learn from this, whereas online
Speaker 2: it's just buttons and it's just a screen in front
Speaker 2: of you, and our brain just does not process information
Speaker 2: well that way, So I think that there is a
Speaker 2: huge disconnect.
Speaker 3: It's also from a strategy standpoint, like more points of estimation, right,
Speaker 3: you just have more information that you're looking at. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and like to me, I think my strength as poker
Speaker 3: player in some ways are like triangulating different points of information. Right.
Speaker 3: Not the best gto a player, not the best live talesperson.
Speaker 3: You don't have the most poker experience. But if you're
Speaker 3: a center of ten in all those categories, then I
Speaker 3: feel like there's some added value there, especially in environments
Speaker 3: where you're late in a tournament, or it's an unusual setting,
Speaker 3: or this a usual player, or something's happening right, and
Speaker 3: you kind of like are good at making like snap
Speaker 3: estimates quickly and like adapting to that and like and
Speaker 3: those skills all go away. You can kind of be
Speaker 3: more I don't know how you put it. You can
Speaker 3: kind of be more like specter me about playing online.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: You just have to focus on, like on like certain
Speaker 3: things right obsessively, and you can block out other things,
Speaker 3: whereas I like kind of the elements of surprise and
Speaker 3: unusual elements to some extent. Right, that's where my like
Speaker 3: life experience as I get into my you know, mid
Speaker 3: to late forties, starts to matter more potentially. And we'll
Speaker 3: be right back after this.
Speaker 2: Break finally, to kind of wrap this up, i'd love
Speaker 2: your opinion. So you know, I was playing when I
Speaker 2: played these New Jersey events, it was the first time
Speaker 2: i'd actually played on this new New Jersey client. So
Speaker 2: I made a new screen name no one had ever
Speaker 2: seen before, so no one knew who I was. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to say what it is. I want to
Speaker 2: preserve that information for as long as possible. But on
Speaker 2: the other hand, I had zero notes. Like my Nevada account,
Speaker 2: I actually know who a lot of the players are
Speaker 2: and like I have notes on them, and here I
Speaker 2: had none. Right, I actually was starting from a fresh
Speaker 2: slate because even the names that I recognized, because it's
Speaker 2: the same player pool now it's it's one player pool.
Speaker 2: So I recognized that I'd played with some of them,
Speaker 2: but I didn't remember right who it was because that
Speaker 2: was on my Nevada account, which I couldn't sign into
Speaker 2: when I was playing in New Jersey. It's not like
Speaker 2: my notes transferred from one account to the other. And
Speaker 2: so I was playing. One of the events I was
Speaker 2: playing was a six max, which means for people who
Speaker 2: don't play poke, it's six players. So it's more shorthanded,
Speaker 2: you're playing more hands, it's more action. And so I
Speaker 2: was torn. I was like, should I be really focused
Speaker 2: on the table, paying attention to, you know, betsizing and
Speaker 2: what people are doing, or should I frantically be googling
Speaker 2: these screen names to figure out who these people are
Speaker 2: and trying to find out some information? And am I
Speaker 2: you know, basically, how do I how do I value
Speaker 2: that right? Because I know that there's some people who
Speaker 2: have that information by virtue of having played, and I'm
Speaker 2: at a disadvantage. But I'm also disadvantaging myself by looking
Speaker 2: it up while playing and trying to process all of
Speaker 2: this other stuff. And so I was torn. Right, So
Speaker 2: I'm actually curious to know what your thoughts are. Since
Speaker 2: we've talked about this in Live poker, it's a slightly
Speaker 2: different calculus when you're in a situation like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Look, I think in general, Look, I got to
Speaker 3: have other World Chairs of Poker, where you go in
Speaker 3: and you spend the first ten minutes kind of looking
Speaker 3: people up, right, you know, I think there's always a
Speaker 3: question about how explicit you want your thought process to be,
Speaker 3: including things I take notes about your hands versus like
Speaker 3: quote unquote playing in flow, right, you know, every now
Speaker 3: and then maybe every fourth or fifth session. I I'm
Speaker 3: just gonna write down every hand I play today, I
Speaker 3: look at with my coach later for my own gratification.
Speaker 3: I think you can make you play better too. You
Speaker 3: have like a little bit of permanent record for yourself, right,
Speaker 3: But there's time when like, look, now we're running fairly deep,
Speaker 3: or there's a mule dynamic at the table, or people
Speaker 3: are in conversation and the conversations giving me more information
Speaker 3: than you know. So I think it's important to like
Speaker 3: be able to play in flow. And it's also like
Speaker 3: kind of like stressful, right, But I don't know. Look,
Speaker 3: I'm not taking a very professional attitude when I play
Speaker 3: online poker necessarily, right, I'm looking at it as like recreation,
Speaker 3: whereas with a live poker then I take it quite seriously. Right,
Speaker 3: I think information overkill can be a detriment. But again,
Speaker 3: it's a very different fucking skill. It's like you're in
Speaker 3: air traffic controller or something, right, And yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, I think the best player online place isn't
Speaker 3: They're like, yeah, I might not have player reads when
Speaker 3: I have population reads. I know that the average player
Speaker 3: doesn't check rays often enough when there are three flush
Speaker 3: cards on the board, or when they do, it's never
Speaker 3: a bluff kind of thing, right, Like that type of
Speaker 3: mass data mining is probably yeah, very helpful, I would imagine, right.
Speaker 2: Yep, no, absolutely, And yeah, in game, I made the
Speaker 2: decision that so I told you I was playing two
Speaker 2: bracelet events. One was a mystery Bounty which was full table,
Speaker 2: and one was six max, which was a higher buy
Speaker 2: and it was a one thousand dollars buy and thankfully
Speaker 2: that was the one I catched in. So so it
Speaker 2: was this, you know, one K six max, and I
Speaker 2: made the decision that I would try to look up
Speaker 2: the players at my six MACS tables, but not at
Speaker 2: the mystery bounty because Mystery bounty first more players, but
Speaker 2: secondly more population tendencies, right, because it's a mystery bounty format,
Speaker 2: so people are doing things like try to build up
Speaker 2: big stacks it's a smaller buy, and so you can
Speaker 2: make some sort of generalizations right about how people are playing.
Speaker 2: But then, Nate, I got incredibly frustrated because I spent
Speaker 2: this time, you know, noting all of them, my six macs,
Speaker 2: and then I get moved to a new table, and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, you know that the strategy that
Speaker 2: you described for the World series where you spend the
Speaker 2: first ten minutes doesn't work online because you might be
Speaker 2: getting moved. You might be at the same table, you
Speaker 2: might get lucky and be at the same table for
Speaker 2: two hours, but you might get moved every ten minutes.
Speaker 2: And it's incredibly frustrating. And I did feel like when
Speaker 2: I was looking things up, I was missing hands and
Speaker 2: missing some information and maybe it is more important to
Speaker 2: just focus on Okay, this person seems to be you know,
Speaker 2: three bedding too much or or or or whatever it is,
Speaker 2: and this isn't an important thing. We're talking about kind
Speaker 2: of the importance of information, But there's also psychologically you
Speaker 2: can get information overload and you have to actually figure out,
Speaker 2: like how do I prioritize and wait this information and
Speaker 2: what information is the most valuable?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, we did play a pandemic
Speaker 3: game online but with a fixed player pool where half
Speaker 3: of the people are on zoom, right, and that's very different.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Look, I think poker is a much more fun game
Speaker 3: when you have the dynamic of playing repeatedly against the
Speaker 3: same opponents. Right. That can be true in a World
Speaker 3: Series poker event where you're there from noon to midnight.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean, you actually develop some long
Speaker 3: term equilibriums potentially, right, And if you're switching table all
Speaker 3: the time, you don't get that. But look, Maria, I'm
Speaker 3: going to have you close. Let's say that I moved
Speaker 3: to a country where there's more acts to online poker
Speaker 3: and no cash live poker, right, no live poker. What
Speaker 3: would your three tips be? Because you're better at this
Speaker 3: than me for forgetting or two tips even? What are
Speaker 3: your one to three tips for improving as an online player?
Speaker 2: I mean, the reason I started off by talking about
Speaker 2: the schedules, I think that that is actually incredibly important
Speaker 2: that you should try to look at events and schedules
Speaker 2: that will be more conducive to your sleep schedule and
Speaker 2: when you're sharper cognitively. So I know people who don't
Speaker 2: you know who live in the United States. When it
Speaker 2: comes for big series like w Coop which just happened,
Speaker 2: which was is one of Poker Star's kind of signature series,
Speaker 2: they leave the country to play those series and they
Speaker 2: actually game it to figure out, you know, where should
Speaker 2: I be, which country should I be, which time zone
Speaker 2: should I be in, so that the schedules are best
Speaker 2: for my performance. So I think that that's important and
Speaker 2: kind of knowing that about yourself and not playing a
Speaker 2: schedule that is going to be somewhere where you cannot
Speaker 2: perform at peak performance. And related to that, I think
Speaker 2: there are lots of people who would disagree with me
Speaker 2: on this who are online players, but I would actually
Speaker 2: say limit multi tabling. I think it's more important to
Speaker 2: focus on one, two, max three, you know, tables, but
Speaker 2: your decision quality. I see some of some players I
Speaker 2: really admire. So you know, Patrick Leonard Pads who constantly
Speaker 2: posts on social media about his hands, and I love him.
Speaker 2: I took you know, I took his course at run
Speaker 2: at Once Poker. You know, I think he has absolutely
Speaker 2: great content. He's an amazing player. But when I see
Speaker 2: his computer screen like it, you know, it gives me
Speaker 2: a heart attack. Like he's playing you know, ten, eleven, twelve,
Speaker 2: all of these. He has this huge multi table setup,
Speaker 2: and it just to me, if you're trying to improve,
Speaker 2: quantity in that case does not trump quality and you
Speaker 2: can't give as much focus too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a weird thing in some ways to say, like, uh,
Speaker 3: I mean, because your edges in online poker, most forms
Speaker 3: of poker, but especially online poker, are like are very small,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, And it doesn't take very
Speaker 3: much to like send you into break even or negative.
Speaker 3: Right if you're giving away x amount of dollars per
Speaker 3: hour in rake and x amount of dollars to vary
Speaker 3: in some bad luck, right then like you know, you go,
Speaker 3: you make one more mistake for one hundred hands, and
Speaker 3: you might be a losing player, right, So, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it just seems weird to me that, Like, I mean,
Speaker 3: unless you were in the kind of poka thing days,
Speaker 3: we can play very mechanically, right. I think I'm much
Speaker 3: better when I focus on one to sometimes two decisions
Speaker 3: at a time.
Speaker 2: I don't know, so, so yeah, that would be my
Speaker 2: piece of advice number two. And I think that that
Speaker 2: actually goes hand in hand with how our brain works.
Speaker 2: That our brains cannot multitask, and it's very difficult for
Speaker 2: us to process all of this information. We're never processing
Speaker 2: it at the same time. We're just you know, serially
Speaker 2: task switching. That's bad, that's cognitively depleting. That's going to
Speaker 2: actually make us even more tired by the end of
Speaker 2: the session. And then the third one day would go
Speaker 2: back to kind of what we were talking about with
Speaker 2: information and notes, I would say, focus on the quality
Speaker 2: of your notes and if you can, Like when I
Speaker 2: play live, I take notes by hand, and I think
Speaker 2: that that's sometimes I do it on my phone because
Speaker 2: I don't always have a notebook, But when I do
Speaker 2: it by hand, there's something really fun and interesting about that.
Speaker 3: Do you do you have good handwriting?
Speaker 2: I have legible handwriting. It can be good if I
Speaker 2: but when I'm when I'm writing quickly, it's not pretty.
Speaker 2: But you could read it, which is important. And but
Speaker 2: I'm used to writing by hand. I write all of
Speaker 2: my drafts by hand when I'm even my books.
Speaker 3: So I didn't know that about you.
Speaker 1: Yes, you didn't know.
Speaker 3: Yes, with a fucking canon paper what?
Speaker 1: Yes, this can be another episode night.
Speaker 3: What I would I'm going to give it a thousand
Speaker 3: winning against that.
Speaker 2: So take take good notes and actually readview hands so
Speaker 2: that you can you can learn from your sessions and
Speaker 2: have them be something where you're you're actually actively learning information. Yes, Nate,
Speaker 2: I have notebooks filled with drafts, and I type obviously too,
Speaker 2: and I don't like literally write every single word, but yeah,
Speaker 2: I write tons by hand, and like the biggest bluff,
Speaker 2: I think the first draft of that whole book was
Speaker 2: written by hand.
Speaker 3: It's just so much slower.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so much slower, which gives you more time to process,
Speaker 2: and also when you type it up, because then I
Speaker 2: type it up after it's edit number one.
Speaker 3: I'm processing up here. I'm processing up here. The typing
Speaker 3: is just the last step.
Speaker 1: Well, here we go with that.
Speaker 2: With that confession, we will leave our listeners for this weekend.
Speaker 2: So Nate, maybe maybe we can Maybe you and I
Speaker 2: can plan a trip to New Jersey to play online
Speaker 2: poker for a day, or maybe we don't.
Speaker 3: Some good what do they have there, Taylor? I think
Speaker 3: we can find Italian food, Yes, some Sri Lankan and
Speaker 3: shade over there.
Speaker 2: Let's do it, Let's do it, let's have let's have
Speaker 2: dinner and play some poker.
Speaker 3: Okay deal, phil Ivey, You're invited.
Speaker 1: If you're in New Jersey, borrow.
Speaker 3: Tell.
Speaker 2: It'll be fun. You Me and Phil Let's do it.
Speaker 2: Let us know what you think of the show. Reach
Speaker 2: out to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot Fm.
Speaker 2: Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 3: And by me Nate Silver. The show was a Cool
Speaker 3: production of Pushin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
Speaker 3: by Isaac Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya gerwit Lydia,
Speaker 3: Jean Kott and Daphne Chen are our editors, and our
Speaker 3: executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 2: If you like the show, please rate and review us
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Speaker 1: Thanks for tuning in.