Kind: captions
Language: en
evolutionarily we you know if we see a
lion running at us we didn't have time
to sort of calculate the lion's kinetic
energy and you know is it optimal to go
this way or that way you just reacted
and
physically our bodies are well attuned
to actually make right decisions but
when you're playing a game like poker
this is not something that you ever you
know evolved to do and yet you're in
that same flight or fight response um
and so that's a really important skill
to be able to develop to basically learn
how to like
meditate in the moment and calm yourself
so that you can think clearly
the following is a conversation with liv
marie
formerly one of the best poker players
in the world trained as an
astrophysicist and is now a
philanthropist and an educator on topics
of game theory physics complexity and
life
this is the lex friedman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now dear friends
here's liv
bree
what role do you think luck plays in
poker and in life you can pick whichever
one you want poker or life and or life
the longer you play
the less influence luck has you know
like with all things the bigger your
sample size
um the more the quality of your
decisions or your strategies matter
um so
to answer that question yeah in poco it
really depends if you and i sat and
played
ten hands right now i might only win 52
of the time 53 maybe
um but if we played 10 000 hands then
i'll probably win like
over 98 99 of the time so
it's a question of sample sizes
and what are you figuring out over time
the betting strategy that this
individual does or literally doesn't
matter against any individual over time
against any individual over time the
better player because they're making
better decisions so what does that mean
to make a better decision well
ah to get into the real nitty-gritty
already um basically
poker is a game of math
um there are these strategies familiar
with like nash equilibria that's yes
right so there are these game theory
optimal strategies that you can adopt um
and the closer you play to them the less
exploitable you are
so
because i've studied the game a bunch um
although admittedly not for a few years
but back in you know when i was playing
all the time um i would study these game
theory optimal solutions
and try and then adopt those strategies
when i go and play so i'd play against
you and i would do that
and
because
the objective when you're playing game
theory optimal it's actually it's a loss
minimization thing that you're trying to
do um your best bet is to try and play
uh the sort of similar style you also
need to try and adopt this loss
minimization
um but because i've been playing much
longer than you i'll be better at that
so first of all you're not taking
advantage of my mistakes but then on top
of that
i'll be better at recognizing
when you are playing sub-optimally and
then deviating from this game theory
optimal strategy to exploit your bad
plays
can you define game theory and nash
equilibria
can we try to sneak up to it in a bunch
of ways like oh what's the game theory
framework of analyzing poker analyzing
any kind of situation so game theory is
just basically the
study of
decisions within a competitive situation
um i mean it's stately a branch of
economics um but it also applies to like
wider decision theory um and
you know usually when you see it it's
these like little payoff matrices and so
on that's how it's depicted but it's
essentially just like study of
strategies under different competitive
situations
um
and as it happens certain games in fact
many many games um have these things
called nash equilibria and what that
means is when you're in a nash
equilibrium basically uh it is not
there is no strategy
that you can take
that would be more beneficial than the
one you're currently taking assuming
your opponent is also doing the same
thing um so it'd be a bad idea you know
if we're both playing a in you know a
game three optimal strategy if either of
us deviate from that now
the other you know the we're putting
ourselves at a disadvantage um rock
paper scissors is actually a really
great example of this like if we
to were to start playing rock paper
scissors you know you know nothing about
me and we're going to play
for all our money let's play 10 rounds
of it what would your sort of optimal
strategy be do you think what would you
do
um
let's see
i
would
probably try to be as random as possible
exactly you want to because you don't
know anything about me
you don't want to give anything about a
way about yourself so ideally you'd have
like a little dice or somewhat you know
perfect randomizer that makes you
randomize 33 of the time each of the
three different things and in response
to that
um well actually i can kind of do
anything but i would probably just
randomize back too but actually it
wouldn't matter because you're i know
that you're playing randomly um so that
would be us in a nash equilibrium um
where we're both playing this like
unexploitable strategy
however if after a while you then notice
that i'm playing rock a little bit more
often than i should yeah you're the kind
of person that would do that wouldn't
you sure yes yes yes i'm more of a
scissors girl but anyway you are uh no
i'm a as i said randomizer uh
so you notice i'm throwing rock too much
or something like that right now you'd
be making a mistake by continuing
playing this game theory optimal
strategy because well the previous one
because
you are now
there's an i'm making a mistake and
you're not deviating and exploiting my
mistake um so you'd want to start
throwing paper a bit more often um in
whatever you figure is the right sort of
percentage of the time that i'm throwing
rock too often so that's basically an
example of where you know what what game
three optimal strategy is in terms of
loss minimization but it's not always uh
the maximally profitable thing if your
opponent is doing stupid stupid stuff
which you know in that example so that's
kind of then how it works in poker but
it's a lot more complex
um and the way poker players typically
you know nowadays they study the games
change so much and i think we should
talk about how it sort of evolved um but
nowadays like the top pros basically
spend all their time
in between sessions
running these simulators
uh using like software where they do
basically monte carlo simulations sort
of doing
billions of fictitious self-play
hands
you input a
fictitious hand scenario like oh what do
i do with jack nine suited on a
king ten four two two spade board um uh
and and you know against this bet size
so you'd input that press play it'll run
it's it's uh you know it's billions of
fake hands and then it'll converge upon
what the game theory optimal strategies
are um
and then you want to try and memorize
what these are basically they're like
ratios of how often you know what types
of hands uh you want to bluff and what
percentage of the time so then there's
this additional layer of inbuilt
randomization built in yeah those those
kind of simulations incorporate all the
betting strategies and everything else
like that so they
so as opposed to some kind of very crude
mathematical model of what's the
probability you went just based on the
quality of the card uh it's including
everything else too the the game theory
of it yes
yeah essentially and what's interesting
is that nowadays if you want to be a top
pro and you go and play in these really
like the super high stakes tournaments
or tough cash games if you don't know
this stuff you're going to get eaten
alive in the long run yeah but of course
you could get lucky over the short run
and that's where this like luck factor
comes in because
luck is both a blessing and a curse
if luck didn't you know if there wasn't
this random element and there wasn't the
ability for
worse players to win sometimes then
poker would fall apart
you know the same reason people don't
play chess
professionally for money against
you don't see people going and hustling
uh chess like not knowing
trying to make a living from it because
you know there's very little luck in
chess but there's quite a lot of luck in
poker have you seen a beautiful mind
that movie years ago well what do you
think about the game theoretic
formulation of
uh what is it the hot blonde at the bar
do you remember like oh yeah the way
they illustrated it is they're trying to
pick up a girl at a bar and there's
multiple girls they're like friend it's
like a friend group and you're trying to
approach i don't remember the details
but i remember don't you like then speak
to her friends yeah yeah like that fame
disinterest i mean it's classic pick-up
artist stuff right you you want to and
they were trying to uh correlate that
somehow that being an optimal strategy
a
game theoretically why
why what like i don't think i remember
don't imagine that there i mean there's
probably an optimal strategy is it
does that mean that there's an actual
nash equilibrium of like picking up
girls do you know the uh the marriage
problem it's optimal stopping yes so
where it's an optimal dating strategy
where you
uh do you remember yeah i think it's
like something like you you you know
you've got like a set of 100 people
you're going to look through and after
how many
do you
now after that after going on this many
dates out of a hundred at what point do
you then go okay the next best person i
see is that the right one and i think
it's like something like 37 percent
uh
it's one over e whatever that is right
which i think is
yeah
we're gonna fact-check that
um
yeah so but it's funny under those
strict constraints then yes after that
many people as long as you have a fixed
sized pool
then you just pick the the per the next
person that is better than anyone you've
seen before yeah
um
have you have you tried this have you
incorporated it i'm one of those people
i might we're and we're going to discuss
this i
and
what do you mean those people
i try not to optimize stuff i try to uh
listen to the heart
i don't
think
um i
like my mind immediately is attracted to
optimizing everything and i think that
if if you really give in to that kind of
addiction that you lose the
the joy of the small things the minutia
of life i think i don't know it says i'm
concerned about the addictive nature of
my personality in that regard in some
ways
while i think the on average people
under try and quantify things or try
under optimize um there are some people
who you know it's like with all these
things it's a you know it's a balancing
act i've been on dating apps but i've
never used them
i i'm sure they have data on this
because they probably have the optimal
stopping control problem because aren't
a lot of people that use social like
dating apps are on there for a long time
so the the the interesting
the interesting aspect is like all right
how long before you stop looking before
it actually starts affecting your mind
negatively such that you see
dating as a kind of
um
a game a kind of game versus an actual
uh
process of finding somebody that's going
to make you happy for the rest of your
life that's really interesting uh they
have the data i wish they would be able
to release that data and i do want to
it's okay cupid right i think they ran a
huge huge study on all of their yeah
they're more data-driven i think
what folks are yeah i think there's a
lot of opportunity for dating apps in
general you know even bigger than dating
apps people connecting on the internet i
just hope they're more data driven
and it doesn't seem that way
i think like uh i've always want i
always thought that um
good reads should be a dating app
like uh i've never used it the goodreads
is a good reason just list
like books that you've read okay and
allows you to comment on the books you
read and what books you're currently
reading it's a giant social networks of
people reading books and that seems to
be a much better database of like
interests of course to constrain you to
the books you're reading but like
that really reveals so much more about
the person allows you to discover shared
interests because books are kind of
window into the way you see the world
also like the kind of places
people you're curious about the kind of
ideas you're curious about are you a
romantic or are you called calculating
rationalists are you
are you into iron rand or are you into
bernie sanders are you into whatever
right and i feel like that reveals so
much more than like a a person
trying to look hot from a certain angle
and a tinder profile and it would also
be a really great filter
in the first place for people it selects
for people who read books and are
willing to go and
rate them and
give feedback on them and so on so
that's already a really strong filter
probably the type of people you'd be
looking for well at least be able to
fake reading books i mean the thing
about books you don't really need to
read it you can just game
yeah game the dating app by feigning
intellectualism can i admit something
very horrible about myself go on the
things that you know i don't have many
things in my closet but this is one of
them
i've never actually really read
shakespeare i've only read cliff notes
and i got a five in the ap english uh
exam
and i took
uh the which books have i read oh yeah
which was the the exam on which oh no
they they include a lot of them um
but hamlet
uh i don't even know if you read romeo
and juliet
uh macbeth i don't remember but i don't
understand it it's like really cryptic
it's hard it's really i don't and it's
not that pleasant to read it's like
ancient speak i don't understand it
anyway maybe i was too dumb i'm still
too dumb but uh
i did go to five which is yeah yeah i
don't know how the u.s grading system oh
no so ap english is a
there's kind of this advanced versions
of courses in high school and you take a
test that is like a broad test for that
subject and includes a lot it wasn't
obviously just shakespeare i think a lot
of it was also writing
uh written you have like ap physics ap
computer science ap biology ep chemistry
and then ap english or ap literature i
forget what it was
but i think shakespeare was a part of
that but i and you and your gamer the
point is you gamified it
well entirety i was into getting a's
i saw it as a game
i don't think any
i don't think all the learning i've done
has been outside of the outside of
school the deepest learning i've done
has been outside of school with a few
exceptions especially in grad school
like deep computer science courses but
that was still outside of school because
it was outside of getting site it was
outside of getting the a for the course
the best stuff i've ever done is
when you read the chapter and you do
many of the problems at the end of the
chapter which is usually not what's
required for the course like the hardest
stuff
in fact textbooks are freaking
incredible if you go back now and you
look at like biology textbook or
or
any of the computer science textbooks on
algorithms and data structures those
things are incredible they have the best
summary of a subject plus they have
practice problems of increasing
difficulty that allows you to truly
master the basic like the fundamental
ideas behind that that was i go through
my entire physics degree
with one textbook that was just really
comprehensive one that they told us at
the beginning of the first year buy this
but you're gonna have to buy
15 other books for all your
supplementary courses and i was like
every time i just checked to see whether
this book covered it and it did
and i think i only bought like two or
three extra and thank god because
they're so super expensive textbooks
it's a whole racket they've got going on
um
yeah they are they could just
you get the right one it's just like a
manual for
but what's interesting though
is
this is the tyranny of of having exams
and metrics it's the journey of exams
and metrics yes i loved them because i
loved i'm very competitive and i liked
yes i liked finding ways to gamify
things and then like sort of dust off my
shoulders afterwards when i get get a
good grade or be annoyed at myself when
i didn't um but yeah you're absolutely
right and that the actual
you know how much of that physics
knowledge i've retained like i've
i learned how to cram and study and
please an examiner but did that give me
the deep lasting knowledge that i needed
i mean yes yes and no
um but really like nothing makes you
learn
a topic better than when you actually
then have to teach it yourself
um you know like i'm trying to wrap my
teeth around this like game theory molok
stuff right now and
there's no exam at the end of it
uh that i can gamify there's no way to
gamify and sort of like shortcut my way
through it i have to understand it so
deeply from like deep foundational
levels to them to build upon it and then
try and explain it to other people and
like you know you're about to go and do
some lectures right you you
you can't you can't sort of just like
you probably presumably can't rely on
the knowledge that you got through when
you were studying for an exam
to reteach that yeah and especially high
level lectures especially the kind of
stuff you do on youtube
you're not just regurgitating material
you have to
think through
what is the core idea here and
when you do the lectures live especially
you have to
there's no
second takes
that is a luxury you get if you're
recording a video for youtube or
something like that
but
it definitely is a luxury you shouldn't
lean on
i've gotten to interact with a few
youtubers that lean on that too much
and you realize oh you're
you've gamified this system because
you're not really thinking deeply about
stuff you're through the edit both
written and uh
spoken
you're crafting an amazing video but you
yourself as a human being have not
really deeply understood it so live
teaching or at least on recording video
with very few takes is is uh is a
different beast and i think it's it's
the most honest way of doing it like as
few takes as possible that's why i'm
nervous about this
don't go back ah let's do that don't
this up liv
uh
the tyranny of exams i do think you know
people
talk about you know high school and
college
as a time to do drugs and drink and have
fun and all this kind of stuff but
you know looking back
of course i did a lot of those things
no uh yes but
it's also a time
when you get to
like read textbooks or read books or
learn
with all the time in the world
like you don't have these
responsibilities of like
uh
you know
laundry and uh
having to sort of uh pay for mortgage or
all that kind of stuff pay taxes all
this kind of stuff uh in most cases
there's just
so much time in the day for learning and
you don't realize it at the time because
at the time it seems like a chore like
why the hell does there's so much
homework but you never get a chance to
do this kind of learning this kind of
homework
ever again in life unless later in life
you really make a big effort out of it
you get so like you basically your
knowledge gets solidified you don't get
you don't get to have fun and learn
learning is really
is really fulfilling and really fun if
you're that kind of person like some
people
like to you know like knowledge is not
something that they think is fun but if
if that's a kind of thing that you think
is fun
that's the time to have fun and do the
drugs and drinking all that kind of
stuff but the learning
just going back to those textbooks
the hours spent with the textbooks is uh
is really really rewarding do people
even use textbooks anymore yeah do you
think because
there's days with their well
well not even that but just like
so much information really high quality
information you know is now in digital
format online
um yeah but they're not they are using
that but you know college is still very
there's a curriculum
i mean so much of school is about
rigorous study of a subject and still on
youtube
that's not there right youtube has um
uh grant sanderson talks about this he's
the this masterpiece
yeah three blue one brown
he says like i'm not a math teacher i
just take really cool concepts and i
inspire people but if you want to really
learn calculus if you want to really
learn linear algebra you just you should
do the textbook you should do that you
know and there's still
the uh the textbook industrial complex
that that like charges like two hundred
dollars for a textbook and somehow i
don't know this it's ridiculous
well they're like oh sorry new edition
edition 14.6 sorry you can't use 14.5
anymore it's like what's different we've
got one paragraph different
so we mentioned offline daniel negrano
um i'm going to get a chance to talk to
him on this podcast and he's somebody
that i was i found fascinating in terms
of the way he thinks about poker
verbalizes the way he thinks about poker
the way he plays poker
so
and he's still pretty damn good he's
been good for a long time so you
mentioned
that people are running these kind of
simulations and the game of poker has
changed
do you think he's adapting in this way
do you like the top pros do they have to
adopt this way or is there is there
still like
over years
you basically develop this gut feeling
about
like you you get to be like good the way
like alpha zero is good you look at the
board
and
somehow from the fog comes out the right
answer like this is likely what they
have this is likely the best way to move
and you don't really you can't really
put a finger on exactly why
but it just comes from your gut feeling
or no
yes and no
so gut feelings are definitely very
important um you know that we've got our
two mo
you can distill it down to two modes of
decision making right you've got your
sort of logical linear voice in your
head system two as it's often called and
your system on your
your gut intuition
um
and
historically in poker
the very best players were playing
almost entirely by their gut
um you know often they'd do some kind of
inspired play and you'd ask them why
they do it and they wouldn't really be
able to explain it um and that's
not so much because their process was
unintelligible but it was more just
because no one unders no one had the
language with which to describe what
optimal strategies were because no one
really understood how poker worked this
was before you know we had analysis
software you know no one was
writing you know if i guess some people
would write down their hands in a little
notebook but there was no way to
assimilate all this data and analyze it
but then you know with when computers
became cheaper and software started
emerging and then obviously online poker
where it would like automatically save
your hand histories um now all of a
sudden you kind of had this this body of
data that you could run analysis on
and so that's when people started to see
you know these mathematical solutions
and
um
and so what that meant
is the
the role of intuition essentially became
smaller
um
and it it meant more into as as we
talked before about you know this game
theory optimal style but as
also as i said like game theory optimal
is about um
loss minimization and being
unexploitable but if you're playing
against people who aren't because no one
person no human being can play perfectly
game through optimal in poker not even
the best ais they're still like they're
not you know they're 99.99 of the way
there or whatever but this it's kind of
like the speed of light you can't reach
it perfectly so there's still a role for
intuition yes so
when yeah when
you're playing this unexploitable style
but when your opponents start doing uh
something you know sub-optimal that you
want to exploit well now that's where
not only your like logical brain will
need to be thinking well okay i know i
have this my i'm in the sort of top end
of my range here with this with this
hand
so that means i need to be calling x
percent of the time um and i put them on
this range et cetera
but then
sometimes you'll have this gut feeling
that will tell you
you know
you know what this time i know i know
mathematically i'm meant to call now you
know i've got i'm in the sort of top end
of my range and
um these this is the odds i'm getting so
the math says i should call but there's
something in your gut saying they've got
it this time they've got it like uh
they're beating you maybe your hand is
worse um so then the the real art this
is where the last remaining art in poker
the fuzziness uh is like do you listen
to your gut how do you quantify the
strength of it or can you even quantify
the strength of it um and i think that's
what daniel
has i mean i i can't speak for how much
he's studying with with with the
simulators and that kind of thing i
think he has like he must be to still be
keeping up um but he has an incredible
intuition
for just he's seen so many hands of
poker in the flesh he's seen so many
people the way they behave when the
chips are you know when the money's on
the line and you've got him staring you
down in the eye you know he's
intimidating he's got this like kind of
x factor vibe that he you know
gives out and he talks a lot which is an
interactive element which is he's
getting stuff from other people yes
yeah just like the subtlety so he's like
he's probing constantly yeah he's
probing and he's getting this extra
layer of information that others can't
now that said though he's good online as
well you know i don't know how again
would he be beating the top
cash game players online probably not no
um
but when he's in in person and he's got
that additional layer of information he
he can not only extract it but he knows
what to do with it um still so well
there's one player who i would say is
the exception to all of this
um and he's one of my favorite people to
talk about in terms of
i think he might have cracked the
simulation uh is phil hellmuth
uh he
in more ways than one he's a practice
simulation i think yeah he
somehow to this day is still and i love
you phil don't i'm not in any way
knocking you um he's still winning
so much at the world series of poker
specifically um he's now on 16 bracelets
the next nearest person i think has won
ten um
and he is consistently year in year out
going deep or winning these huge field
tournaments you know with like 2 000
people
um which statistically he should not be
doing
and
and yet
you watch some of the plays he makes and
they make no sense like mathematically
they are so far from game theory optimal
yeah and the thing is if you went and
stuck him in one of these like high
stakes cash games with a bunch of like
gto people he's gonna get ripped apart
but there's something that he has that
when he's in the halls of the world
series of poker specifically um
amongst sort of amateurish players
he gets them to do crazy like that
and and
but my little pet theory is that also
he
just the car he he's he's like a wizard
and he gets the cards to do what he
needs them to do
because he
ex he just expects to win and he expects
to rece you know to get flopper set with
a frequency far beyond what this you
know the the the real percentages are
and i don't even know if he knows what
the real percentages are he doesn't need
to because he gets there i think he has
found the chico because when i've seen
him play he seems to be like annoyed
that the long shot thing didn't happen
yes
he's like annoyed and it's almost like
everybody else is stupid because he was
obviously going to win with us
if that silly thing hadn't happened and
it's like you understand the silly thing
happens 99 of the time and it's a one
percent not the other way around but
genuinely for his lived experience at
the well only at the monster as a poker
it is like that so i don't blame him for
feeling that way um but he does he has
this he has this x factor and
the poker community has tried for years
to rip him down saying like you know he
doesn't he's no good but he's clearly
good because he's still winning or
there's something going on whether
that's he's figured out how to
mess with the fabric of reality and how
cards
are you know a randomly shuffled deck of
cards come out i don't know what it is
but he's doing doing it right still who
do you think is the greatest of all time
would you put hellmuth
no no he's definitely he seems like the
kind of person would mention he would
actually watch this so you might want to
be careful as i said i love phil and i
and i'm i'm i have i would say this to
his face i'm not saying anything i don't
he's got he truly i mean he is one of
the greatest yeah i don't know if he's
the greatest he's certainly the greatest
at the world series of poker
and he is the greatest at
despite the game switching into a
pure game almost an entire game of math
he has managed to keep the magic alive
and this like just through sheer force
of will making the game work for him and
that is incredible and i think it's
something that should be studied because
it's an example
yeah there might be some actual game
theoretic wisdom there there might be
something to be said about optimality
from studying him
right what do you mean by optimality
meaning
uh or rather game design perhaps
meaning if what he's doing is working
maybe
poker is more complicated than we're
currently modeling it as so like or
there's an extra layer and i don't mean
to get too weird and wooy
but
or there's an extra layer of
ability to manipulate the things the way
you want them to go that we don't
understand yet
do you think phil hellmuth understands
them is he just generally hashtag
positivity
he wrote a book on positivity and he has
yes he did
positivity trolling books no a
wrote a book about positivity yes
okay
about i think and i think it's about
sort of manifesting what you want
and getting the outcomes that you want
by believing so much in yourself and in
your ability to win like eyes on the
prize
um
and i mean it's working the man's
delivered
where do you put like phil ivey and all
those kinds of people um i mean i'm too
i've been
to be honest too much out of the scene
for the last few years to really
i mean phil ivey's clearly got again
he's got that x factor um
he's so incredibly intimidating to play
against i've only played against him a
couple of times but when he like looks
you in the eye and you're trying to run
a bluff on him no one's made me sweat
harder than phil ivey just
um my my bluff got through actually
that was actually one of the most
thrilling moments i've ever had in poker
was it was in a monte carlo and a high
roller i can't remember exactly what the
hand was but um i i you know i three bit
and then like just barreled all the way
through
and he just like put his laser eyes into
me and i felt like he was just scouring
my soul
and i was just like hold it together
live hold
together weaker
you know your hand a it
yeah i mean i was bluffing i i presume
which you know there's a chance i was
bluffing with the best hand but i'm
pretty sure my hand was worse um and
uh and he folded
i was truly one of my one of the deep
highlights of my correct did you show
the cards are you useful
what would you you should never show in
game like because especially as i felt
like i was one of the worst players at
the table in that tournament so
giving that information unless i had a
really solid plan that i was now like
advertising oh look i'm capable of
bluffing phil ivey but like why
it's much more valuable
to take advantage of the impression that
they have of me which is like i'm a
scared girl playing a high roller for
the first time keep that going you know
interesting but isn't there layers to
this like psychological warfare that the
scared girl
might be way smart and then like to to
flip the tables do you think about that
kind of stuff or definitely i mean not
going to reveal information i mean
generally speaking you want to not
reveal information you know the goal of
poker is to be as
deceptive as possible about your own
strategies while
elucidating as much out of your opponent
about their own
so
giving them free information
particularly if they're people who you
consider very good players
any information i give them is going
into their little database and being i
assume it's going to be calculated and
used well
so i have to be really confident that my
like meta gaming that i'm going to then
do or they've seen this so therefore
that i'm going to be on the right level
um so it's better just to keep that
little secret to myself in a moment so
how much is bluffing part of the game
huge amount
so yeah i mean maybe actually let me ask
like what did it feel like with the ivy
or anyone else when it's a high stake
when it's a big
it's a big bluff
um so a lot of money on the table
and maybe
i mean what defines a big bluff maybe a
lot of money on the table but also some
uncertainty in your
mind and heart about
like self-doubt well maybe i
miscalculated what's going on here what
the bet said all that kind of stuff like
what does that feel like
i mean it's
i imagine comparable to
you know running a
i mean any kind of big bluff where you
have a lot of something that you care
about on the line
you know so if you're
bluffing in a courtroom not that anyone
should ever do that or you know
something equatable to that it's it's
incr
you know in that scenario you know i
think it was the first time i'd ever
played a 20 i'd won my way into this 25k
tournament
so that was the buy in 25 000 euros and
i had satellited my way in because it
was much bigger than i would never ever
normally play
and you know i hadn't i wasn't that
experienced at the time and now i was
sitting there against all the big boys
you know the negra news the fill ivs and
so on um
and then
uh to like
you know each time you put the bets out
you know you put another bet out
your car yeah i was on a what's called a
semi-bluff so there were some cards that
could come that would make my hand very
very strong and therefore win but most
of the time those cards don't come so
that it's the same above because you're
representing what are you representing
that you already have something
so i think in this scenario i had a
flush draw two two so i had two clubs
two two clubs came out on the flop and
then i'm hoping that on the turn in the
river one will come so i have some
future equity i could hit a club and
then i'll have the best hand in which
case great um and so i can keep betting
and i'll want them to call but i'm also
got the other way of winning the hand
where if my
card doesn't come i can keep betting and
get them to fold their hand
and i'm pretty sure that's what the
scenario was
um so i had some future equity but it's
still you know most of the time i don't
hit that club and so i would rather him
just fold because i'm you know the pot
is now getting bigger and bigger and in
the end like i jam all jam all in on the
river
that's my entire tournament on the line
as far as i'm aware this might be the
one time i ever get to play a big 25k
you know this is the first time i played
once so it was
it felt like the most momentous thing
and this is also when i was trying to
build myself up you know build my name a
name for myself in in poker i wanted to
get respect destroy everything for you
it felt like it in the moment like i
mean it literally does feel like a form
of life and death like your body
physiologically is having that flight or
fight response what are you doing with
your body what are you doing with your
face are you just like
what are you thinking about
a mixture of like okay what are the
cards so
in theory i'm thinking about like okay
what are cards that look make my hand
look stronger which you know which cards
hit my perceived range from his
perspective which cards don't um what's
the right amount of bet size to you know
maximize my fold equity in this
situation you know that's the logical
stuff that i should be thinking about
but i think in reality because i was so
scared because there's this at least for
me there's a certain threshold of like
nervousness or stress beyond which the
like logical brain shuts off
and now it just gets into this like
it's just like it feels like a game of
wits basically it's like of nerve can
you hold your hold your resolve
um and it certainly got by that like by
the river at this i think by that point
i was like i don't even know if this is
a good bluff anymore but it let's
do it your mind is almost numb from the
intensity of that feeling i call it the
white noise
and and that's this
and it happens in all kinds of decision
making i think anything that's really
really stressful like i can imagine
someone in like an important job
interview if it's like a job they've
always wanted and they're getting
grilled you know like bridgewater style
where they ask these very like really
hard like mathematical questions
you know that's it's a really learned
skill to be able to like
subdue
your flight or fight response you know
what i think get from the sympathetic
into the parasympathetic so you can
actually you know engage the that voice
in your head and do those slow logical
calculations because evolutionarily we
you know if we see a lion running at us
we didn't have time to sort of calculate
the line's kinetic energy and you know
is it optimal to go this way or that way
you just reacted and
physically our bodies are well attuned
to actually make right decisions but
when you're playing a game like poker
this is not something that you ever you
know evolved to do and yet you're in
that same flight or fight response
and so that's a really important skill
to be able to develop to basically learn
how to like
meditate in the moment and calm yourself
so that you can think clearly
but as you were searching for
a comparable thing it's interesting
because i you just made me realize that
bluffing is
like an incredibly high stakes form of
lying
you're you're you're lying
and i don't think you're telling a story
it's not it's straight up lying
in in the context of game
it's not a negative kind of lying
but it is yeah exactly you are you're
i'm you're representing something that
you don't have and i was thinking like
in how often in life
do we have such high stakes of lying
because i was thinking um
certainly in
high-level military strategy i was
thinking um
when hitler was lying to stalin
about his plans
to invade the soviet union
and so you're you're you're talking to a
person like your friends
and uh you're fighting against the enemy
whatever the the the formulation that
enemy is but
meanwhile whole time you're building up
troops on the border
um
that's extremely wait so hitler and
stalin were like pretending to be
friends yeah my history knowledge is
terrible that's crazy yeah that they
were
uh yeah
man
uh and it worked because stalin until
the troops crossed the border and
invaded
in operation barbarossa where they
this storm of nazi troops invaded large
parts of the soviet union and hence one
of the biggest wars in human history
uh began
stalin for sure was thought that this
was uh never going to be uh that hillary
is not crazy enough
to invade the soviet union that they it
makes geopolitically makes total sense
to be collaborators and ideologically
even though there's a tension between
communism and fascism or uh national
socialism however you formulated it
still feels like this is the right way
to battle the west right
they were more ideologically aligned you
know they in theory had a common enemy
which is the west so
made total sense and in terms of
negotiations and the way things were
communicated
it um it seemed to stalin that for sure
that
they would remain at least for a while
uh peaceful collaborators and uh that
uh and everybody everybody because of
that in the soviet union believed that
it was a huge shock when kiev was
invaded and you hear echoes of that when
i traveled to ukraine sort of the shock
of
the invasion
it's not just the invasion on one
particular border but the invasion of
the capital city and just like holy
especially at that time
when you thought world war one
you realized that that was the war that
to end all wars you would never have
this kind of war
and holy this this person is mad
enough to try to take on this monster in
the soviet union
uh so it's not no longer going to be a
war of hundreds of thousands dead it'll
be a war of tens of millions dead and um
yeah but that
like you know that's a very large scale
kind of lie but i'm sure there's in
politics and geopolitics that kind of
lying happening all the time
uh and a lot of people pay financially
and with their lives for that kind of
lying but in our personal lives i don't
know how often we
uh maybe we i think people do i mean
like think of spouses cheating on their
partners right and then like having to
lie like where were you last night stuff
that's tough yeah like that's
i think
you know i mean unfortunately that stuff
happens all the time right so or having
like multiple families that one is great
when when each family doesn't know the
other about the other one and like
maintaining that life
there's probably a sense of excitement
about that
too um
or it seems unnecessary yeah but why
well just lying like like you know
the truth finds a way of coming out you
know yes but hence that's the thrill
yeah perhaps yeah people i mean and
you know that's that's why i think
actually like poker what what's so
interesting about poker is
most of the best players i know they're
always exceptions you know they're
always bad eggs
but actually poker players are very
honest people i would say they are more
honest than the average you know if you
just took random
uh random population example um because
a you know i think you know humans like
to have that
most people like to have some kind of
you know mysterious you know an
opportunity to do something like a
little edgy
so we get to sort of scratch that itch
of being edgy at the poker table where
it's like it's part of the game everyone
knows everyone knows what they're in for
and that's allowed and you get to like
really get that out of your system
um
and then also like
poker players learned that you know i'll
you know i would play in a huge game
against some of my friends even my
partner igor where we will be you know
absolutely going at each other's throats
trying to draw blood in terms of winning
each money off each other and like
getting under each other's skin winding
each other up
um doing the craftiest moves we can
but then once the game's done
the you know the winners and the losers
will go off and get a drink together and
have a fun time and like talk about it
in this like weird academic way
afterwards because that and that's why
games are so great because you get to
like live out
our like this competitive urge that you
know most people have what's it feel
like to lose
like we talked about bluffing when it
worked out
what about when you
when you go broke
so like in a game i i'm you know
unfortunately i've never gone broke um
um i know plenty of people who have um
uh
and i don't think eagle would mind me
saying he went you know he went broke
once in pokeball you know early on when
we were together i feel like you haven't
lived unless you've gone broke oh yeah i
i in some sense right well i i i mean
i'm happy i i've sort of lived through
it vicariously through him when he did
it at the time
but yeah what is it like to lose well it
depends so it depends on the amount it
depends what percentage of your net
worth you've just lost
um
it depends on your brain chemistry it
really you know varies from person to
person you have a very cold calculating
way of thinking about this uh so it
depends what percentage
well it really does right yes
but that's i mean
that's another thing poker trains you to
do you see you you see everything in
percentages um or you see everything in
like roi or expected hourlies or cost
benefit etc you know so
um
that's
i i one of the things i've tried to do
is calibrate the strength of my
emotional response to the to the win or
loss that i've
received
because it's it's no good if you like
you know you have a huge emotional
dramatic response to a tiny loss um or
on the flip side you have a huge win and
you're so dead inside that you don't
even feel it well that's you know that's
a shame i want my emotions to calibrate
with reality as much as possible
um
so yeah what's it like to lose i mean
i've had times where i've
lost you know busted out of a tournament
i thought i was going to win in is you
know especially if i got really unlucky
or um or i make a dumb play uh where
i've gone away and like you know kicked
kicked the wall
punched a wall i like nearly broke my
hand one time like
um i'm a lot less competitive than i
used to be like i was like
pathologically competitive in my like
late teens early 20s i just had to win
everything um and i think that's sort of
slowly waned as i've gotten older
according to you yeah according to me i
i don't know if others would say the
same right um i feel like ultra
competitive people
like i've heard joe rogan say this to me
it's like i think he's a lot less
competitive than he used to be i don't
know about that
oh i believe it no i totally believe it
like
because as you get you can still be like
i care about winning like when you know
i play a game with my buddies online or
you know whatever it is polytopia is my
current obsession like why not thank you
for passing on your obsession to me are
you playing now yeah i'm playing now we
gotta have a game but i'm terrible and i
enjoy playing terribly i don't want to
have a game because that's gonna pull me
into your monster of of like uh
competitive play it's important
i'm enjoying playing on the
i can't
you just do that you just do the points
thing you know against the bots yeah
against the bots and i can't even do the
uh uh there's like a hard one and
there's a very crazy yeah that's crazy i
can't i don't even enjoy the hard one
the crazy i really don't enjoy because
it's intense you have to constantly try
to win as opposed to enjoy building a
little world and
yeah no no there's no time for
exploration in polytopia you gotta get
well when once you graduate from the
crazies then you can come play the
graduate from the crazy yeah so in order
to be able to play a decent game against
like
you know our group um you'll need to be
you'll need to be consistently winning
like 90 of games against 15 crazy bots
yeah and you'll be able to like there'll
be i could i could teach you it within a
day honestly um how how to be the
crazies how to be the crazies and then
and then you'll be ready for the big
leagues generalizes uh to more than just
polotopia but okay uh why were we
talking about polytopia losing hurts
losing hers oh yeah yes competitiveness
over time um oh yeah
i think it's more that at least for me
i still care about playing about winning
when i choose to play something it's
just that i don't see the world as
zero-sum as i used to be you know
um i think as you one gets older and
wiser
you start to see the world more as a
positive something or at least you're
more aware of externalities
of of scenarios of competitive
interactions
um and so
yeah i just like i'm more and i'm more
aware of my own you know like
if i have a really strong emotional
response to losing and that makes me
then feel shitty for the rest of the day
and then i beat myself up mentally for
it like i'm now more aware that that
that's unnecessary negative externality
so i'm like okay i need to find a way to
turn this down you know dial this down a
bit was poker the thing that has if you
think back at your life
and think about some of the lower points
of your life like the darker places
you've gone in your mind did it have to
do something with poker
like what did losing spark
the
um the descent into darkness or was it
something else um
i think my darkest points in poker were
when
i was wanting to quit and move on to
other things but i felt like i hadn't
ticked all the boxes i wanted to tick
yeah like i wanted to be the most
winningest
female player which is by itself a bad
goal um you know that was one of my
initial goals and i was like well i
haven't you know and i wanted to win a
wpt event i won one of these i won one
of these but i want one of those as well
and
that
sort of again like it's a drive of like
over optimization to random metrics that
i decided were important um without much
wisdom at the time but then like carried
on um
that made me continue chasing it longer
than i still actually had the passion to
chase it for
and i don't i don't have any regrets
that you know i played for as long as i
did because who knows you know i
wouldn't be sitting here i wouldn't be
living this incredible life that i'm
living now um this is this is the height
of your life right now this is it
experience
absolute pinnacle
here in your in your robot land yeah
yeah
with your creepy light
no it is i mean i i wouldn't change a
thing about my life right now and i feel
very blessed to say that um
so but
the dark times were in sort of like
2016 to 18 even sooner really where i
was like
i had stopped loving the game
and i was going through the motions
and
i would that and and then i was like you
know i would take the losses harder than
i needed to yeah because i'm like oh
it's another one and it was i was aware
that like i felt like my life was
ticking away and i was like is this
going to be what's on my tombstone oh
yeah she played the game of you know
this zero-sum game of poker
slightly more optimally than her next
opponent
like cool great legacy you know so
i just wanted you know there was
something in me that knew i needed to be
doing something
more
directly impactful um and just
meaningful it was like a search for
meaning and i think it's a thing a lot
of poker players even a lot of i imagine
any
games players who
sort of
love intellectual pursuits
um
you know i think you should ask magnus
carlsen this question yeah walking away
from chess right yeah like it must be so
hard for him you know h