Latest / The Favorites Sports Betting Podcast / Maria Konnikova on Poker, Risk and Finding An Edge

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Maria Konnikova on Poker, Risk and Finding An Edge · The Favorites Sports Betting Podcast

0:09
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Favorites the podcast from the Action Network.
0:12
Speaker 1: I am Chad Millman. Today. Poker has exploded during the
0:17
Speaker 1: Corona shutdown, especially online poker. For a lot of us,
0:21
Speaker 1: it takes us back to the full tilt days when
0:24
Speaker 1: becoming a professional poker player was just something you did.
0:26
Speaker 1: By Laudon on an opening and account. Today's guest Maria
0:30
Speaker 1: Kanakva has written a brilliant book, not just about poker,
0:34
Speaker 1: but about her deep dive and how poker can teach
0:37
Speaker 1: all of us about observing better, negotiating better, making better
0:43
Speaker 1: day to day decisions. No joke, Maria. Uh. The Biggest Bluff,
0:46
Speaker 1: How I Learned to pay attention, Master myself and Win
0:50
Speaker 1: by Maria Kondakova. It's a freaking joy. It's smart, it's funny.
0:54
Speaker 1: It's taking complicated concepts turning them into something entirely accessible.
0:59
Speaker 1: Nice on the book, Maria, Thank you so much, Chad.
1:02
Speaker 1: That means a lot. Uh. How did you come to
1:05
Speaker 1: the idea? I initially came to the idea from a
1:09
Speaker 1: very different angle than I think most people come to poker.
1:12
Speaker 1: All the poker players I've encountered over the last several
1:15
Speaker 1: years of playing full time they were games players when
1:18
Speaker 1: they were growing up. You know, they played chess or magic,
1:21
Speaker 1: the gathering um or or cards, and they learned poker
1:24
Speaker 1: from their parents. I grew up in household where games
1:27
Speaker 1: weren't a thing. You know. We we read books, Um,
1:31
Speaker 1: that was about it. Um. We didn't even have a
1:32
Speaker 1: deck of cards. I don't think my grandparents had a
1:34
Speaker 1: deck of cards. We didn't. And so to me, like
1:37
Speaker 1: poker was just this totally foreign thing. Um. I had
1:39
Speaker 1: no idea what it was. I never really gave it
1:41
Speaker 1: much thought. But I became really interested in the idea
1:46
Speaker 1: of luck and the role that luck plays in our lives,
1:49
Speaker 1: and whether there was some way that I could learn
1:52
Speaker 1: to tell the difference between the things I controlled and
1:55
Speaker 1: the things that I didn't control, because it's so easy
1:57
Speaker 1: to conflate the two, right a speuly, if you're getting lucky,
2:01
Speaker 1: like yeah, you know, everything is great, I'm smart, I'm
2:04
Speaker 1: doing well. You know, life is good, um, and you
2:08
Speaker 1: just kind of forget you also got really really lucky.
2:12
Speaker 1: And this was something that was on my mind, and
2:14
Speaker 1: so I started reading a lot to try to figure out, Okay, well,
2:18
Speaker 1: what's a way into this question, What's what's the book here,
2:21
Speaker 1: because this is just an idea, it's not a book.
2:24
Speaker 1: And um. Eventually someone suggested that I read up on
2:26
Speaker 1: game theory. They said, you know, if you're interested in chance,
2:29
Speaker 1: game theory is a really good framework for for approaching nos.
2:32
Speaker 1: And so I picked up John von Neumann's Theory of Game.
2:35
Speaker 1: Von Neuman is the father of game theory, and this
2:37
Speaker 1: book is kind of the seminal text um. And what
2:42
Speaker 1: I learned very early on in the first pages of
2:44
Speaker 1: the book is that von Neumann was a poker player,
2:48
Speaker 1: and that poker is what inspired game theory. That he actually,
2:52
Speaker 1: like me, didn't really care for games. Um, and he
2:54
Speaker 1: thought that chess was actually a pretty bad way to
2:58
Speaker 1: learn decision making if you wanted to study strategic decision
3:01
Speaker 1: making in life, because it's a game of perfect information.
3:05
Speaker 1: Everything's out there. You can see the chessboard, you can
3:07
Speaker 1: see all the pieces, and if you give me enough
3:10
Speaker 1: computing power, I'll be able to tell you what the
3:12
Speaker 1: right move is. Theoretically there is a right move. And
3:17
Speaker 1: what he loved about poker, the reason that poker was
3:19
Speaker 1: the game that actually drew his attention was it was
3:21
Speaker 1: a game of incomplete information. So there's not this chess board. Instead,
3:27
Speaker 1: there are the cards that I have, but you don't
3:29
Speaker 1: know what they are. There are the cards that you have,
3:32
Speaker 1: but I don't know what they are. There are the
3:33
Speaker 1: cards that we see in common, the community cards the board,
3:37
Speaker 1: and we both know that. And then how do I
3:40
Speaker 1: figure out what you have? How do I infer based
3:42
Speaker 1: on your actions? And what do you infer from how
3:45
Speaker 1: I'm acting? And how do I make the best decision
3:48
Speaker 1: I can knowing I don't know everything, knowing that there's
3:51
Speaker 1: all this uncertainty, and knowing that the cards that are
3:54
Speaker 1: still to come are just a crapshoot. No one, no
3:57
Speaker 1: one knows the what's coming in the deck. And when
4:01
Speaker 1: I read about the game, I thought, oh, this is
4:04
Speaker 1: really interesting. This could be a really good way into
4:07
Speaker 1: the topic of luck, to try to figure out the
4:09
Speaker 1: difference between controlling what you can you know, how you
4:13
Speaker 1: play um and the elements that are outside of your control.
4:18
Speaker 1: The deck, the run out of the cards, and poker
4:21
Speaker 1: is a clean environment. You know, it's not life, it's
4:23
Speaker 1: not noisy, so you can actually have a shot and
4:27
Speaker 1: hell of being able to tell the difference, whereas in
4:29
Speaker 1: life it's just impossible because there are so many things
4:31
Speaker 1: going on, there's so much noise out there. So I thought,
4:34
Speaker 1: I want to do this. Why don't I learn to
4:36
Speaker 1: play poker? Um? Why don't I start from scratch, get
4:40
Speaker 1: someone smart to teach me. Um. I got very lucky there,
4:43
Speaker 1: and see where it takes me. Take a year play
4:46
Speaker 1: the game, um, and see what I can learn about luck,
4:50
Speaker 1: about myself, about decision making. And obviously the journey didn't
4:53
Speaker 1: quite play out the way I thought it was going to.
4:55
Speaker 1: And it wasn't a year, it was much longer. Um.
4:58
Speaker 1: I never could have predicted I'd become a professional poker player.
5:01
Speaker 1: But here we are, right. So I and you touch
5:04
Speaker 1: on so many buzzwords, and obviously this is a betting
5:08
Speaker 1: audience that listens to this podcast, and and so many
5:12
Speaker 1: buzzwords that are important to people who gamble for a living.
5:17
Speaker 1: And your your grandmother sort of has a great response
5:21
Speaker 1: to how you like when you're proposing that you're going
5:24
Speaker 1: to be playing poker, and so much of this book
5:27
Speaker 1: sort of speaks to so many of the things that
5:29
Speaker 1: people in the gambling community sort of confront every day.
5:32
Speaker 1: But you've got something very early on in the book
5:34
Speaker 1: that I thought it was a great sentence and I
5:36
Speaker 1: want to read it. It's through poker. I wanted to
5:39
Speaker 1: team luck make a difference, even when the deck seemed
5:44
Speaker 1: stacked against me. Like in other words, control, control, control,
5:50
Speaker 1: Like the last part that's me editorializing, but that is
5:53
Speaker 1: everything A better is looking for. How do I manage
5:55
Speaker 1: luck and how do I control circumstances? Like what did
5:59
Speaker 1: you learn about this during the process? I learned that, yes,
6:04
Speaker 1: there are so many variables that we don't control. Um,
6:07
Speaker 1: we have no control over the cards, how they're going
6:10
Speaker 1: to be dealt in what order, Who's going to get
6:13
Speaker 1: which hand? You know, some some rounds. If you've ever
6:16
Speaker 1: played poker, you know that sometimes everyone gets crap cards,
6:19
Speaker 1: sometimes everyone gets monsters, and it's there's nothing that you
6:24
Speaker 1: can do about it. But what you can learn is
6:27
Speaker 1: to try to figure out how do I maximize my
6:29
Speaker 1: informational advantage because information is power. If I have more
6:33
Speaker 1: information than you, I'm going to be able to calculate
6:37
Speaker 1: the odds better, I'm going to be able to know
6:39
Speaker 1: exactly how much to bet. I'm going to know how
6:43
Speaker 1: to play this hand better than you. And even if
6:45
Speaker 1: I can get a one percentage. Even if I can
6:48
Speaker 1: get a two percentage, that's huge. I should use that.
6:50
Speaker 1: I should look to get all the edge that I
6:53
Speaker 1: can and figure out how do I do that, how
6:56
Speaker 1: do I listen the most information possible? And yes, I
6:59
Speaker 1: know that it's never gonna because those elements of uncertainty
7:02
Speaker 1: are never going to go away. But if you're you know,
7:05
Speaker 1: at fifty and I'm at um in terms of our certainty,
7:10
Speaker 1: or if I can figure out how to make myself
7:12
Speaker 1: a little bit more of a favorite, well that's great.
7:14
Speaker 1: I'm getting in my money well, and yeah, I can't
7:16
Speaker 1: control the run out, so I'm not always going to win.
7:19
Speaker 1: But if I'm placing this bet, if I'm playing the sand,
7:21
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it over and over and over
7:23
Speaker 1: if I know that I'm the odds favorite, because eventually
7:26
Speaker 1: I'm going to win. And poker taught me how to
7:29
Speaker 1: do that. Poker taught me how to look for the
7:32
Speaker 1: use of those edges. By the way, poker taught me
7:34
Speaker 1: that one percent is a hell of a lot. You know, before,
7:36
Speaker 1: before I started playing poker, I was like, that doesn't matter,
7:39
Speaker 1: you know, one percent, one percent is nothing, And I'm
7:41
Speaker 1: like one percent is huge. Give me the one percent. Now,
7:46
Speaker 1: that's how That's how betters are right. They're always scraping
7:49
Speaker 1: for like just that little bit of bit of an edge.
7:52
Speaker 1: It's why people are knee deep in like looking for
7:55
Speaker 1: every single bit of information they can find. And and
7:59
Speaker 1: in sports betting, it's about speed to write about understanding
8:01
Speaker 1: that edformation before anybody else. When did When did sort
8:06
Speaker 1: of you start to get a buzz for poker that's
8:11
Speaker 1: sort of played to your strengths and and sort of
8:14
Speaker 1: I guess a little bit explain to people I didn't
8:16
Speaker 1: sort of explain that you have a background in human
8:20
Speaker 1: behavior in psychology, and so that feeds into directly, um
8:25
Speaker 1: to some of the advantages that you might have found.
8:27
Speaker 1: Absolutely um So, I came to poker knowing nothing about poker,
8:30
Speaker 1: but with a PhD in psychology, and I'd studied human
8:33
Speaker 1: decision making and specifically decision making under risk and uncertainty
8:37
Speaker 1: and in hot emotional conditions. I looked at stock markets
8:40
Speaker 1: because I didn't know what poker was at the time. Honestly,
8:43
Speaker 1: had I known, poker would have been perfect. I wouldn't
8:45
Speaker 1: have even needed to design the studies. Just have people
8:47
Speaker 1: play poker and and look to see what they do. Um,
8:52
Speaker 1: So I had that background. I knew from a theoretical
8:55
Speaker 1: standpoint how people go wrong when they make decisions. Unfortunately, say,
9:00
Speaker 1: ecology is so good at finding the mistakes and not
9:03
Speaker 1: quite as good at figuring out how do you fix them?
9:05
Speaker 1: How do you actually teach the human mind to think probabilistically?
9:09
Speaker 1: How do you teach the human mind the difference between
9:12
Speaker 1: what five percent feels like what ten percent feels like,
9:14
Speaker 1: the fact that one percent is a lot doesn't come
9:17
Speaker 1: naturally to us. It's not something that psychologically we're equipped
9:22
Speaker 1: to handle because we learn from experience, we learn from doing,
9:26
Speaker 1: we learn from sampling, and probabilities aren't evenly distributed, and
9:30
Speaker 1: our experiences aren't evenly distributed, and so the way we
9:33
Speaker 1: learn in real life is skewed um and we overweight
9:37
Speaker 1: our personal experience. And so you know, we might be
9:41
Speaker 1: very risk seeking in certain situations just because we got
9:43
Speaker 1: lucky one time, or we know someone who got lucky,
9:46
Speaker 1: and we might be very risk averse because the opposite
9:49
Speaker 1: thing happened. And it's not based on any sort of
9:51
Speaker 1: real rational calculus. It's just based on these one off
9:55
Speaker 1: experiential events. Poker though, is a way to bridge that gap,
10:00
Speaker 1: because in poker, you're learning from experience, you're actually playing
10:04
Speaker 1: hand after hand after hand, thousands of hands, and you're
10:07
Speaker 1: learning correctly, so you start feeling, you start being able
10:10
Speaker 1: to internalize what those probabilities feel like. I didn't know
10:14
Speaker 1: that at the time, but I did have the psychological background,
10:17
Speaker 1: the mental framework. UM. I had the language to see
10:22
Speaker 1: what I needed to focus on, what the possible pitfalls
10:25
Speaker 1: in my thinking were and in other people's thinking. And
10:29
Speaker 1: I knew because I had been in a learning environment
10:32
Speaker 1: for a long time, I knew how important it was
10:34
Speaker 1: to have a good coach, to have a good mentor,
10:37
Speaker 1: and so right away I decided to seek out someone
10:39
Speaker 1: who could help me UM. And that someone was Eric Sidell,
10:42
Speaker 1: who was considered by many to be the greatest poker
10:45
Speaker 1: player of all time. And you know, I knew him
10:48
Speaker 1: as the guy with the visor and rounders, so so
10:51
Speaker 1: I didn't necessarily know his poker greatness, um. But but
10:56
Speaker 1: he agreed to help me, and so I was able
11:00
Speaker 1: to leverage I think a lot of my background because
11:03
Speaker 1: he knew how to help me apply it. He knew
11:06
Speaker 1: how to teach me the right thought habits so that
11:09
Speaker 1: I wouldn't pick up the wrong habits. It's not like
11:11
Speaker 1: I was a poker player and I wanted to get better.
11:14
Speaker 1: There was nothing to unt teach me. He It's not
11:16
Speaker 1: like he had to fix all of these problems that
11:19
Speaker 1: I already had. He had just a blank slate. He
11:22
Speaker 1: could tell me no, no, no, no no no, don't do
11:24
Speaker 1: that or do this. But I think that it really
11:26
Speaker 1: did help me, UM that I had this understanding of
11:31
Speaker 1: human decision making going into the process, and so I
11:35
Speaker 1: think I came in with a meta cognitive awareness UM
11:38
Speaker 1: that a lot of people don't have when they start
11:40
Speaker 1: the game. So he also early in the book that's
11:44
Speaker 1: really what gets him excited. And he's a fascinating character
11:47
Speaker 1: in the book, And like I knew about him, like
11:51
Speaker 1: as a poker player, but just didn't know about his personality.
11:55
Speaker 1: And he just seems like a lovely guy who you
11:58
Speaker 1: want to spend time with, who's just intellectually curious. And
12:01
Speaker 1: early in the book he also mentions phil Ivy and
12:05
Speaker 1: like phil Ivy to everyone in the poker community, I'm
12:07
Speaker 1: literally to my right is a framed cover of a
12:12
Speaker 1: story I did for ESPN, the magazine about phil Ivy
12:15
Speaker 1: and um, you know he is a scary competitor, and explain,
12:21
Speaker 1: like I thought it was an interest in comparison. The
12:24
Speaker 1: way he thought about teaching you was an approach that
12:27
Speaker 1: is similar to what phil Ivey has. Yeah, so phil
12:30
Speaker 1: Ivy was actually the only name that I knew in
12:33
Speaker 1: the poker world. Somehow his name managed to transcend poker.
12:36
Speaker 1: I knew nothing about poker, but I knew who phil
12:38
Speaker 1: Ivy was. And um, Eric said something really interesting. Um.
12:44
Speaker 1: He said that not only does phil Ivy play all
12:48
Speaker 1: of these poker variants, and there was a point in
12:50
Speaker 1: time when he was considered the best at all of them.
12:53
Speaker 1: And each variant is almost like a different language because
12:56
Speaker 1: you're playing the same game, but the nuances are different,
12:59
Speaker 1: the stresses are different, you know, the things you have
13:01
Speaker 1: to pay attention to are slightly different. But his sister
13:04
Speaker 1: is someone who speaks multiple languages. Um, and something like
13:08
Speaker 1: I don't remember how many, but like twelve languages or
13:10
Speaker 1: something like that. Um. And so he thought, you know,
13:13
Speaker 1: how interesting that these siblings, who are both so successful
13:17
Speaker 1: in very different ways, share this thing which seems to
13:20
Speaker 1: be a linguistic ability, an ability to pick up the
13:24
Speaker 1: way that different people communicate. And Eric really liked that
13:28
Speaker 1: I actually speak multiple languages, that I come from a
13:31
Speaker 1: multi lingual background. I was born in Russia. Russian was
13:34
Speaker 1: my first language. Um. Then I learned English when I
13:37
Speaker 1: came to the US. I picked up French when I
13:39
Speaker 1: was a little kid, in Spanish, then Italian. You know,
13:41
Speaker 1: I ended up learning a lot of languages as I
13:43
Speaker 1: grew up. And he said, that's really interesting. And I
13:48
Speaker 1: think it's going to be very useful because if that
13:51
Speaker 1: sort of brain mentality, brain ability, whatever it is. Um,
13:56
Speaker 1: if if we take the I vs. As kind of
13:59
Speaker 1: one one case or two, if you if you think
14:02
Speaker 1: about both siblings, then perhaps there's something to that. Maybe
14:06
Speaker 1: you'll actually be able to pick up this new language
14:08
Speaker 1: of poker. So why do you think Eric decided to
14:12
Speaker 1: do it. I think he decided to do it for
14:16
Speaker 1: for a few reasons. One, he loves poker. The key
14:20
Speaker 1: is passionate about the game for him, you know, it
14:23
Speaker 1: is it's true love, you know he and he wants
14:26
Speaker 1: to spread that love with the world. And so I
14:28
Speaker 1: think because I came from the outside, because I was
14:33
Speaker 1: a writer with a journalistic background whose fan base wasn't
14:37
Speaker 1: poker players. I don't think any poker player knew who
14:40
Speaker 1: I was, who actually you know, came from a very
14:43
Speaker 1: different world. Um. He saw me as a way to
14:46
Speaker 1: potentially grow the game, as someone who could if I could,
14:51
Speaker 1: if you could get me to love poker too, then
14:54
Speaker 1: I could share that with a much wider audience. And
14:57
Speaker 1: to him, I think that was a valuable opportunity. And
15:00
Speaker 1: I think the other thing was that he really liked
15:03
Speaker 1: the challenge. He thought, Wow, can I teach this person
15:07
Speaker 1: with just a psychology background to think well enough to
15:10
Speaker 1: play well? Um? And I think to him that was
15:13
Speaker 1: a really interesting test of philosophy because so many players
15:17
Speaker 1: these days are very mathematical, you know, it's all about
15:20
Speaker 1: solvers and models and statistics. And he thought, well, can
15:25
Speaker 1: you still do well with a slightly different approach, um,
15:30
Speaker 1: And if he could train me to to be a
15:32
Speaker 1: good player, um, that would say something. So the book
15:35
Speaker 1: is incredibly funny and charming, and like I said, it's
15:38
Speaker 1: sort of it takes very complicated concepts that you're clearly
15:41
Speaker 1: adept at and it translates them so for for more
15:45
Speaker 1: of a mainstream audience. At what point, and like, there's
15:48
Speaker 1: moments in there where it feels almost like slapstick, and
15:52
Speaker 1: like when you're viewing Eric in the park and like
15:55
Speaker 1: trying to walk and carry your microphone, carry your recorder
15:59
Speaker 1: and take notes and do all these things, that was slapsticks.
16:02
Speaker 1: Someone should have someone should have filmed us. That would
16:04
Speaker 1: have been a great comedy duo. It was, but it
16:06
Speaker 1: was funny for people who don't know. Eric is Um
16:09
Speaker 1: six and a half feet tall. I'm not Um, so
16:14
Speaker 1: right away, you know, when you have when you have
16:16
Speaker 1: two people walking next to each other who have such
16:18
Speaker 1: a high disparity, it's very amusing. But Eric is also
16:21
Speaker 1: a very fast walker, and I'm someone who likes to
16:24
Speaker 1: take notes both on a tape recorder and by hand
16:27
Speaker 1: when I'm doing interviews. So it made for some very
16:30
Speaker 1: interesting moments. It was. It was like it reads funny.
16:33
Speaker 1: It reads very funny, but like at some point you
16:37
Speaker 1: start to understand the art of war Elements is you
16:44
Speaker 1: sort of talk about in the book Um, and you
16:47
Speaker 1: transition from sort of being someone who is self deprecating
16:50
Speaker 1: and like learning about the game to becoming much more
16:54
Speaker 1: confident about your ability. So talk about explain I hate
16:58
Speaker 1: I hate people say talk about like, like, can you
17:01
Speaker 1: explain what that transition was like and sort of the
17:04
Speaker 1: different steps that were needed from a decision making point
17:08
Speaker 1: of view to become more confident. I think it's something
17:12
Speaker 1: I'm still working on, you know. I don't think that
17:15
Speaker 1: that's something that that ever ends, UM, because it's something
17:19
Speaker 1: that that I really needed help UM in doing UM.
17:23
Speaker 1: And you know, it's something I'm still working on in writing,
17:27
Speaker 1: and writing is something I've I've done from most of
17:29
Speaker 1: my professional career. So I think it's always a work
17:32
Speaker 1: in process. UM. That said, I will answer your question
17:36
Speaker 1: trying to I'm not trying to. I'm not trying to
17:38
Speaker 1: deflect it UM. So UM. As I went along the process,
17:44
Speaker 1: I took notes the entire time. I wrote every day
17:47
Speaker 1: because I wanted it to be authentic. I didn't want
17:51
Speaker 1: to forget what I was actually feeling and experiencing at
17:54
Speaker 1: every step along the way, because it's so easy to
17:56
Speaker 1: think you'll remember and to not take notes, and then
18:00
Speaker 1: you put your present self, you kind of try to
18:02
Speaker 1: project yourself backwards UM, and you end up forgetting what
18:06
Speaker 1: it really felt like or what you were really thinking.
18:09
Speaker 1: So the book is pretty true to that in the
18:11
Speaker 1: sense that I took notes that I was actually taking
18:14
Speaker 1: at the time, UM, and my confidence progression really mirrors
18:19
Speaker 1: what was happening UM. And I tried to I tried
18:22
Speaker 1: to be very deliberate about that, UM, because you don't
18:26
Speaker 1: want to read a book about someone claiming to be
18:28
Speaker 1: a novice, but from the beginning it reads like, you
18:32
Speaker 1: know you're not a novice. I have no idea what
18:34
Speaker 1: you're talking about. UM. And it was something that was
18:39
Speaker 1: very gradual and that I at first wasn't even aware of.
18:42
Speaker 1: I didn't know I lacked confidence, to be perfectly honest.
18:45
Speaker 1: I mean, I knew that I didn't know what I
18:47
Speaker 1: was doing, but that's a little bit different. You know,
18:49
Speaker 1: you can be you can be a totally amateur, but
18:52
Speaker 1: still think, Okay, I can do this, it'll be it'll
18:55
Speaker 1: be fine. UM. Pretty early on I realized that this
18:57
Speaker 1: was really hard, that it was much more to guilt
19:00
Speaker 1: that I ever imagined. And I also started noticing, UM
19:03
Speaker 1: because I think we should caveat here, because it's important
19:07
Speaker 1: in answering your question, UM, that I'm female and that
19:11
Speaker 1: of poker players are male. UM. It's a very very
19:15
Speaker 1: male dominated world, and so this is important because I
19:20
Speaker 1: realized that a lot of my lack of confidence kind
19:23
Speaker 1: of came from gender dynamics that I didn't realize I
19:27
Speaker 1: had internalized over time, but that I would kind of
19:30
Speaker 1: defer to people and say, oh, I guess you know better.
19:32
Speaker 1: I'm just going to fold my cards, right, I guess
19:34
Speaker 1: you're really strong, I'll fold. I don't want to get
19:37
Speaker 1: in the way that I would do things like when
19:39
Speaker 1: I had really good cards, I was wasn't raising nearly
19:42
Speaker 1: aggressively enough. I wasn't winning enough money because I didn't
19:45
Speaker 1: want people to think of me as you know, that
19:47
Speaker 1: aggressive bitch who who always triple barrels and and does
19:52
Speaker 1: all of this. I wanted them to like me. I
19:54
Speaker 1: wanted to to be nice. That's not that's not a
19:57
Speaker 1: great motivation when you're trying to win at a game. Um,
20:01
Speaker 1: you can be nice and still play aggressively. Right, that
20:05
Speaker 1: those are two different things. When I started realizing those,
20:08
Speaker 1: um that those were things I needed to work on,
20:12
Speaker 1: that was the first step toward trying to kind of
20:15
Speaker 1: overcome them and build a little bit more confidence in
20:18
Speaker 1: what I was doing. But that confidence didn't come until
20:23
Speaker 1: I had something to back it up. So it came
20:27
Speaker 1: with knowledge. It came with practice, It came with time
20:30
Speaker 1: and just experience and sitting at table after table after
20:33
Speaker 1: table and playing in tournament after tournament, playing hand after
20:37
Speaker 1: hand after hand and playing it out and then talking
20:40
Speaker 1: through what I was doing so that I could figure out, Okay,
20:44
Speaker 1: you know, how are my decisions? Am I starting to
20:46
Speaker 1: think better? My starting to make better decisions? Um? And
20:50
Speaker 1: it really helped that at some point I started winning. UM.
20:54
Speaker 1: I think that that's essential. I mean, it's so hard
20:57
Speaker 1: to have confidence. Um, if your results are ship you know,
21:02
Speaker 1: I don't know, Listen hasn't stopped anybody I work with.
21:07
Speaker 1: So but but I don't and I don't want to
21:09
Speaker 1: give it away. But like, it's known that you ended
21:12
Speaker 1: up becoming an incredibly successful professional poker player. Explain how
21:18
Speaker 1: well you've done. Give people the context, Like you sort
21:21
Speaker 1: of have to talk about the money, because money is
21:23
Speaker 1: how you judge success in poker, So give people some
21:25
Speaker 1: background on that. Sure. So, UM, I the first time
21:29
Speaker 1: I sat down at a real table in a real casino. Um. Like,
21:34
Speaker 1: my first real poker tournament was January, and I ended
21:40
Speaker 1: up spending multiple months in Vegas playing all the time
21:45
Speaker 1: until I started actually winning those daily tournaments. UM. And
21:49
Speaker 1: then Eric wanted to make sure and I think this
21:51
Speaker 1: is actually a really important point for all gamblers, UM,
21:53
Speaker 1: that I played within my bankroll so that I never
21:56
Speaker 1: played higher than I could afford to lose. And then
21:59
Speaker 1: I built up my bankroll organically. So I started at
22:02
Speaker 1: very small stakes the tournaments that I played it at
22:04
Speaker 1: the beginning, where you know, thirty five dollar tournaments. Then
22:07
Speaker 1: I moved up to you know, hundred twenty dollars tournaments
22:10
Speaker 1: after I was doing well at those. Then after I
22:12
Speaker 1: was consistently doing well at those, I moved up to
22:14
Speaker 1: thousand dollar tournaments. And that's kind of how I built
22:17
Speaker 1: my way up. And I you know, I won my
22:21
Speaker 1: first I won my first tournament at Planet Hollywood. It
22:24
Speaker 1: was a Planet Hollywood daily tournament. Very proud of myself, UM,
22:28
Speaker 1: I want almost a thousand dollars. It was. It was huge.
22:32
Speaker 1: It was life changing with life affirming um. And then
22:36
Speaker 1: you know, I I pushed on. I I did the grind.
22:41
Speaker 1: I grinded the poker circuit and I started playing more.
22:44
Speaker 1: I started studying much harder, just studying or playing every
22:48
Speaker 1: single day, seven days a week, UM, eight nine hours
22:51
Speaker 1: a day, just really taking it seriously. At this point,
22:54
Speaker 1: I was doing this full time because for the book,
22:56
Speaker 1: I hadn't gone full time poker pro or anything like that.
22:59
Speaker 1: But I really wanted to commit myself to this, and
23:02
Speaker 1: I started as I analyzed things, I would figure out
23:05
Speaker 1: what leaks I had, what things I needed to work on.
23:08
Speaker 1: I eventually got a mental game coach as well, someone
23:11
Speaker 1: who could help me on kind of the mental elements,
23:13
Speaker 1: just where Eric was helping me with the strategy. UM.
23:16
Speaker 1: I started getting better, getting some second place finishes UM,
23:21
Speaker 1: placing in some international events. UM. And then the pivotal
23:25
Speaker 1: moment came a year after I sat down at my
23:28
Speaker 1: first tournament, almost to the day, UM, when I played
23:31
Speaker 1: in the Poker Stars Caribbean Adventure, the pc A National
23:35
Speaker 1: and somehow miraculously this was a four day tournament. UM.
23:40
Speaker 1: A lot of people played UM, and I won, and
23:43
Speaker 1: I ended up you know, the final table was stacked
23:47
Speaker 1: with really famous players, and it was surreal. I couldn't sleep,
23:52
Speaker 1: you know, I couldn't eat, I couldn't do anything. UM.
23:56
Speaker 1: But that just I think that changed the entire trajectory
23:59
Speaker 1: of my poker care because there's a big difference between
24:02
Speaker 1: first place and second place. Um, not just financially, although financially,
24:07
Speaker 1: but the media doesn't care about second place. You know,
24:10
Speaker 1: no one cares about second place. People care about the winner.
24:12
Speaker 1: It's not it's not a story if it's second place, right,
24:15
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if it's poker or sports or or
24:18
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. Um. And so the fact that
24:21
Speaker 1: I won actually changed a lot of things. First, of course,
24:24
Speaker 1: the confidence I just took down a major international title. Secondly,
24:29
Speaker 1: I got a formal sponsorship from Poker Stars, so I
24:31
Speaker 1: joined Team Pro, which was huge. It me it meant
24:34
Speaker 1: that I could I signed a contract to play full
24:36
Speaker 1: time for a year. UM. So I signed on to
24:39
Speaker 1: kind of do this, and I knew I'd be able
24:41
Speaker 1: to travel all over the world. You know, I ended
24:43
Speaker 1: up going everywhere, Macaw, Monte Carlo, um, just all over
24:48
Speaker 1: the map. I hate my cow by the way. Um.
24:51
Speaker 1: And And I also it was really important to me
24:55
Speaker 1: to prove to myself that I could do this again,
24:57
Speaker 1: that it wasn't like a one hit wonder, um, that
24:59
Speaker 1: it wasn't like okay, guys, I did it. Now I'm
25:01
Speaker 1: out of here. Um. And so I ended up you know,
25:04
Speaker 1: really working even harder in a way after I won
25:08
Speaker 1: UM and I think it paid off. Um I. When
25:11
Speaker 1: I went to Macau, I ended up a final tabling
25:14
Speaker 1: two big events in one week, coming in second in
25:16
Speaker 1: one of them. I don't remember what I came in
25:18
Speaker 1: in the other, fifth or something. See if it's not
25:20
Speaker 1: first or second. Remember I don't remember, UM and UM.
25:27
Speaker 1: In the course of two years, UM I made over
25:30
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand dollars from playing poker. That is astonishing,
25:36
Speaker 1: and that's not an insignificant sum of money. No. No, that,
25:39
Speaker 1: by the way, we should we should note for people
25:42
Speaker 1: who are listening to this being like I should become
25:44
Speaker 1: a poker player. That's not actually my profit. That was like,
25:46
Speaker 1: that was net not a that was gross, not net
25:50
Speaker 1: there that was gross walking around now exactly exactly their expenses,
25:56
Speaker 1: their taxes. There are lots of things that happened with that.
25:59
Speaker 1: There are lots of turn ments that I played that
26:01
Speaker 1: I didn't cash that aren't on there. Um. But but still,
26:05
Speaker 1: that's pretty that's pretty cool for never having played before. No,
26:09
Speaker 1: I would say that there's a lot of people who
26:10
Speaker 1: would love to say, Hey, I've won three grand playing
26:13
Speaker 1: poker two years after I started playing poker. Yeah, what,
26:17
Speaker 1: how would you describe yourself as a player. I would
26:22
Speaker 1: like to think that I've picked up some things from
26:25
Speaker 1: from my mentor that i'm and I actually think I have.
26:29
Speaker 1: I'm very lucky that not only was I coached by
26:33
Speaker 1: Rick Sidell, but he introduced me to his friends, and
26:36
Speaker 1: his friends are some of the best players and people
26:39
Speaker 1: in the world. They're amazing. So someone else I ended
26:41
Speaker 1: up working with a lot was Phil Galfond, who's a
26:45
Speaker 1: brilliant player um and brilliant human being. And something that
26:49
Speaker 1: both Eric and Phil share is their emotional equilibrium. They
26:54
Speaker 1: are two of the calmest players I know. I have
26:57
Speaker 1: never and obviously everyone tilts um and for people who
27:00
Speaker 1: don't know the term, that means just getting emotional in
27:03
Speaker 1: your decision making. It's a great word, though. You should
27:05
Speaker 1: learn it and you should use it in your every
27:07
Speaker 1: day vocabulary. But I've never seen Phil tilt. I've never
27:10
Speaker 1: seen Eric tilt. Like I said, I know they do
27:13
Speaker 1: because everyone does, but they're just so even keeled. I mean,
27:17
Speaker 1: Phil was just doing something called the Galphon Challenge where
27:20
Speaker 1: he challenged anyone in the world two heads up plo um,
27:23
Speaker 1: and he started off his first challenge, he was down
27:27
Speaker 1: almost one million euros, so that's over a million dollars
27:32
Speaker 1: um and most people would have quit. And Phil took
27:37
Speaker 1: a week off the challenge and said, you know what,
27:41
Speaker 1: I still think I'm a favorite. I think I have
27:43
Speaker 1: an edge. I want to keep going. And he ended
27:45
Speaker 1: up winning, so he didn't only recoup that million euros,
27:51
Speaker 1: but he ended up with a profit. And how many
27:55
Speaker 1: people can do that, how many people in the face
27:57
Speaker 1: of that loss can actually stay calm, take time to
28:01
Speaker 1: rationally reflect and say, I'll keep playing and play well
28:06
Speaker 1: and then play well enough to come back from that.
28:08
Speaker 1: And it's one of the best sports comeback stories ever.
28:11
Speaker 1: And the reason I'm saying this is I think that
28:15
Speaker 1: that approach I would like to think that the approach
28:17
Speaker 1: that Phil and Erica spouse in terms of kind of
28:19
Speaker 1: that emotional center um that it rubbed off on me,
28:24
Speaker 1: that it's something that I bring to the game. So
28:29
Speaker 1: I think and I think it's easier for me because
28:31
Speaker 1: I'm female. To be perfectly honest, I don't have the
28:33
Speaker 1: testosterone swings. I don't have, you know, I don't have
28:37
Speaker 1: the as much you go in the game as a
28:39
Speaker 1: lot of male poker players do um, and so I
28:43
Speaker 1: think that that actually is a characteristic of how I
28:46
Speaker 1: play UM. And it's also something it's a mentality that
28:50
Speaker 1: Eric taught me very early on. I tried to tell
28:53
Speaker 1: him a bad beat story and he just yelled at
28:55
Speaker 1: me and he said, no, I don't want to hear this.
29:00
Speaker 1: This is terrible. Do not tell me this. And I
29:02
Speaker 1: never want you to tell me about be story. Ever,
29:04
Speaker 1: You're not allowed to. In fact, I don't ever want
29:07
Speaker 1: to hear how a hand ended. I don't care. I
29:10
Speaker 1: just care about the decision process. Do you have a
29:12
Speaker 1: question about how you play the hand? Is there anything
29:14
Speaker 1: interesting in what you did and what you could control
29:17
Speaker 1: in the elements of the decision process, Because that's the
29:20
Speaker 1: crucial thing, not the outcome. You have to divorce yourself
29:24
Speaker 1: from the outcome. And that's such a powerful mental frame.
29:27
Speaker 1: That's such a powerful mental shift. I think that's what
29:29
Speaker 1: allows you to not tilt um and to kind of
29:32
Speaker 1: deal with these swings with emotional equilibrium. And so I
29:35
Speaker 1: think that that at the end of the day, it's
29:39
Speaker 1: kind of the the central tenant to how I try
29:41
Speaker 1: to play poker. And yes, this doesn't kind of answer
29:44
Speaker 1: the question of strategy. You know, I'm a more aggressive
29:47
Speaker 1: player and I you know, my a tighter player. Um.
29:50
Speaker 1: And the answer to that is it depends. Um. The
29:52
Speaker 1: other thing that Eric taught me is to constantly adjust.
29:55
Speaker 1: Don't be one kind of player. Don't be someone who's
29:58
Speaker 1: known as a maniac, don't be someone who's known in it.
30:00
Speaker 1: Be someone who is capable of doing both and everything
30:04
Speaker 1: in between. Because you are so observant and so in
30:07
Speaker 1: tune with the table that you're able to just completely
30:10
Speaker 1: switch gears depending on your opponents. Um, I'm not there,
30:14
Speaker 1: but that's what I aspired to do. So you're touching
30:16
Speaker 1: a couple of things that are that I think are
30:17
Speaker 1: really fascinating about the process right and and in sports
30:23
Speaker 1: betting as a comp like people will always talk about
30:26
Speaker 1: how I got the right number, I was on the
30:29
Speaker 1: right side, it was you know, it was a bad
30:32
Speaker 1: beat or whatever. It was not in a way that
30:34
Speaker 1: sort of makes them feel badly. They're just like, that's
30:37
Speaker 1: the way the games go, and if I got to
30:39
Speaker 1: the right decision making process, I'm comfortable with how the
30:43
Speaker 1: outcome is. What the outcome is good or bad. Um.
30:48
Speaker 1: You talked a lot about sort of disaster versus triumph
30:52
Speaker 1: in sort of as a concept. Explain what that means,
30:55
Speaker 1: because I think almost anybody who's embedding could understand it
30:58
Speaker 1: wants to hear about it. Um. This is originally a
31:01
Speaker 1: concept that I heard from another grade of poker, Dan
31:04
Speaker 1: Harrington Um, who wrote a series of books that a
31:07
Speaker 1: lot of people have read when they start playing poker.
31:09
Speaker 1: Harrington's unhold him and he taught me something that I
31:16
Speaker 1: think everyone needs to know, and that's you will never
31:20
Speaker 1: learn how to play good poker. If you get lucky,
31:24
Speaker 1: you have to get unlucky. And at first I was like,
31:28
Speaker 1: what do you mean. I don't want to get lucky.
31:29
Speaker 1: I want to win. And what he meant was when
31:34
Speaker 1: you fail, when you when you're met with disaster, you're
31:38
Speaker 1: forced to go back and to examine what you did,
31:43
Speaker 1: to examine your thought process to figure out how did
31:46
Speaker 1: I get here? You know, what were the variables I
31:48
Speaker 1: was looking at? Was my decision correct? Was my process correct?
31:52
Speaker 1: Or was it flawed? And if it was flawed, well,
31:55
Speaker 1: then I need to learn how to improve it. And
31:58
Speaker 1: if it was right, if my process is actually right, okay,
32:01
Speaker 1: then how do I dismiss this bad result? And keep going.
32:05
Speaker 1: And if you're lucky, you never do that. It's so
32:09
Speaker 1: easy when you're lucky to say, yep, I played really well,
32:12
Speaker 1: Yeah I made no mistakes. I'm listen. A very fascinating
32:17
Speaker 1: thing is to look at exit interviews of people who
32:20
Speaker 1: have won tournaments and listen to how many great players
32:24
Speaker 1: will say at the end and some not great players, oh,
32:27
Speaker 1: I played I was just really on. I played really well. Um,
32:30
Speaker 1: I didn't make any mistakes. I played a very solid game.
32:34
Speaker 1: And try to find the number of times that people say,
32:37
Speaker 1: you know, I made a lot of mistakes, and I
32:38
Speaker 1: actually lucked out here here and here, these are the
32:41
Speaker 1: moments I should have busted the tournament, and these are
32:43
Speaker 1: the things I'd like to re examine. But I got
32:45
Speaker 1: really lucky. So here I am no one's No one
32:49
Speaker 1: really does that. You don't have an incentive to examine
32:53
Speaker 1: your process to find your mistakes if you lucked out,
32:56
Speaker 1: If you keep lucking out, you just think it's you
32:59
Speaker 1: you think are good, and so you don't learn. It
33:02
Speaker 1: doesn't teach you anything. And so yeah, maybe you actually
33:04
Speaker 1: made pretty good decisions, which is great, but maybe you didn't,
33:09
Speaker 1: and you're not going to know and you're not going
33:10
Speaker 1: to learn to tell the difference, and you're not going
33:12
Speaker 1: to learn the discipline to go back and examine your
33:15
Speaker 1: thought process. That's what you learn from disaster, not from triumph.
33:20
Speaker 1: So the the book ends, you write your last word,
33:24
Speaker 1: you turn it in. How often do you still play poker?
33:29
Speaker 1: How often do you think about poker? Did you end
33:31
Speaker 1: up liking poker? I absolutely fell in love with the game,
33:36
Speaker 1: and I think that, Um, in large part that's I
33:39
Speaker 1: have Eric to think. He taught me to see the
33:42
Speaker 1: beauty in it. He taught me how much you can
33:44
Speaker 1: teach me. And when I handed in the book, I
33:47
Speaker 1: had no plans to stop playing. It's one of these
33:50
Speaker 1: things where I love writing. I'm a writer. I'm always
33:53
Speaker 1: going to be a writer. UM. But I also started
33:56
Speaker 1: loving poker, and it was still teaching me so much.
33:59
Speaker 1: I was learning a lot about myself. I was becoming better,
34:02
Speaker 1: I was becoming a better decision maker. It was still
34:04
Speaker 1: giving to me, and I was still enjoying it. And
34:07
Speaker 1: so I thought, well, why can't I do both? Um?
34:09
Speaker 1: And I think that you absolutely can. You know you
34:11
Speaker 1: can write from anywhere in the world. UM. And so
34:14
Speaker 1: I had plans to keep playing UM, and my book
34:19
Speaker 1: is out June three, which was supposed to be the
34:21
Speaker 1: middle of the World Series of Poker, So it was
34:24
Speaker 1: slotted to come out in the middle of this big
34:26
Speaker 1: event that I was going to be playing UM, and
34:28
Speaker 1: then I was going to play the main event UM.
34:30
Speaker 1: And we were going to do all of these things
34:32
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas around the book launch. But unfortunately, you
34:35
Speaker 1: never know what cars are coming, and you can make
34:38
Speaker 1: the best decision you you can, but it's in complete
34:41
Speaker 1: information and you have no idea what's coming next. UM.
34:44
Speaker 1: No one could have predicted that, you know, we'd have
34:47
Speaker 1: COVID and that it would unravel the way that it
34:51
Speaker 1: did UM, and that Life Poker would be done UM.
34:55
Speaker 1: So UM. I was actually on my way UM to
35:00
Speaker 1: play in l a PC, which is one of the
35:03
Speaker 1: biggest World Poker Tour events of the year UM. In
35:06
Speaker 1: late February, UM, I was in New Orleans UM the
35:10
Speaker 1: week of Marty Gras. Not for Marty Gras. I was
35:12
Speaker 1: already actually a little bit scared of COVID UM, and
35:15
Speaker 1: so I stayed mostly in my hotel room. UM. I
35:17
Speaker 1: was there for to get an award for my writing
35:20
Speaker 1: and I was supposed to fly from New Orleans straight
35:23
Speaker 1: to l A. And the first cases started popping up
35:26
Speaker 1: in l A. UM, And my sister is a doctor,
35:28
Speaker 1: and she called me and she said, do not go
35:30
Speaker 1: to a casino right now. And I changed my tickets
35:33
Speaker 1: and I turned around and UM came back to New York.
35:36
Speaker 1: And I think that was a very smart decision. And
35:39
Speaker 1: so I ended up not playing my last what would
35:42
Speaker 1: have been my last live tournament. UM. So everything changed
35:47
Speaker 1: and the world changed, and my plans changed for a
35:51
Speaker 1: poker because I'm a live player. UM. You know that
35:53
Speaker 1: that's what I do. And so now we'll see, you know,
35:58
Speaker 1: we'll see one live poker comes back. I'll certainly not
36:01
Speaker 1: feel comfortable playing in UM. I think you have to
36:04
Speaker 1: be insane to go into a casino right now. UM,
36:07
Speaker 1: but maybe one. And in the meantime, UM, you know,
36:11
Speaker 1: I will keep writing and playing online. I actually made
36:15
Speaker 1: plans to go to New Jersey, UM in July to
36:19
Speaker 1: play the World Series online. So UM, I'll be doing
36:21
Speaker 1: that and that should be fun. So we'll I'm doing
36:25
Speaker 1: my best to adjust, right I don't. I'm not an
36:27
Speaker 1: online player, but I'm trying to do my best to
36:31
Speaker 1: learn the best strategies for playing online so that I
36:33
Speaker 1: can continue to do it. Well. Listen, I hope you
36:36
Speaker 1: get to play live again. I hope you get to
36:38
Speaker 1: play live again for all of us, because that will
36:40
Speaker 1: be good news for everybody that got into a place
36:43
Speaker 1: where we can be comfortable being next to somebody, but
36:46
Speaker 1: mortally more and more importantly, I just hope people read
36:49
Speaker 1: the book because it's fantastic and uh, really amazing job
36:54
Speaker 1: just sort of capturing so much cool information into into
36:57
Speaker 1: really thoughtful pros. So um, nice work. Thanks for coming
37:02
Speaker 1: on the favorites. Thank you so much for having me.
37:04
Speaker 1: It's been a pleasure. Thank you to Maria Kondakova. The
37:08
Speaker 1: Biggest Bluff is out now go get it. Download the
37:13
Speaker 1: podcast from Apple, from Spotify, wherever you get your podcast,
37:18
Speaker 1: rate review, subscribe until next time. I love you, Yeah, yeah,