Daniel Negreanu: Poker | Lex Fridman Podcast #324
- You could be the seventh
best player in the whole world, like literally seventh best player. But if you're playing with the other six, you're the sucker. You are the like the worst
player in the game, right? So like there's a lot
of players, for example, like the Dan Bilzerians
of the world, right? He's not a top level
player, like, you know, these guys you see on TV. But he probably makes
more money than they do because he plays with people that are far below his skill level. So part of the skill
of being a poker player is finding situations where
you're profitable, you know, regardless of your skill level. - The following is a conversation
with Daniel Negreanu, of the greatest poker players of all time. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please
check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends,
here's Daniel Negreanu. Everything everyone
does at the poker table conveys information. So let me ask sort of the
big overview question. What are the various sources
of information that you project and others project at the
table that convey information? - Well, there's several different things. There's the ones that are conscious, and then there's the ones
that are subconscious, right? Like on the conscious level, it might be something someone says, right? You know, you ask them a question, and they say, ah, you know,
you shouldn't call me here, you should. So there's the verbal tells. There's also the more, you
know, subconscious stuff, body posture, right? The eyes, the throat, the
pulse, various things that are, you know, less controllable. I find I use a combination of both to try to gain information. But generally when I have
somebody more comfortable, they give off more. When like everyone has
a different approach. Phil Ivey likes to intimidate,
I go the other way. I want my opponents to be relaxed so that they'll give
me more in that regard. - So Phil Ivey likes
to perturb the system, like mess with it to see what comes out? - I think Phil has an aura about him where he wants you to know
that he's watching you, be afraid, be uncomfortable, because when you're
uncomfortable, I got you, right? And that's sort of his
shtick where he, you know, and people do, like when you
sit at a table with Phil Ivey, it's intimidating. - He likes to rule by fear, and you like to rule by, what is it, love. - That's a really good way to put it. I never anyone had put it like that, but it makes a lot of sense, yeah. You know, fear, Phil Ivey, and then with me, that's
fine, don't worry, I'll take your money, but
you're gonna enjoy it. It's great. - So that's what the talking
at the table is about, is get 'em to be relaxed, and get some of that gray area between the conscious and the subconscious to reveal something, yeah. - There's that too, and
also just, you know, and this is just part of who I am anyway, like I like to talk to people, but one of the byproducts is
the more I know about you, the more I likely know about how you think about
different situations, right? So what do you do for a living? Oh, I'm a lawyer. I defend criminals. Okay, so this guy probably
spends a lot of his time twisting the truth. He's trying to find, you
know, and then, so then, you know, you already
have a mindset of like, this guy might be more likely to bluff, or he is probably comfortable doing that. Very subtle things like that. - And you start to pick up cues on what nervousness looks
like for this person, what the nervousness communicates,
all that kind of stuff. So we're talking about
physical tells here. - Yeah, physical tells is
a secondary thing though. I was more specific of like
player profiling, right? And sort of understanding the type of mind that I'm dealing with, right? So again, somebody who's a
lawyer is used to trying, is fine with being deceptive
as part of a game, right? Whereas maybe somebody's
a Sunday school teacher, and you know, they don't feel comfortable, they maybe they think bluffing
might be dishonest, right? So they're less likely to try
some shenanigans against you, so, and then the other thing too is what type of person is this
in terms of their, you know, like view on life, right? Are they positive? Do they feel like things go their way, or they're not, right? There's those people that always, well of course I lost, I
always lose with this hand. And those types of people
you can manipulate, because when a card comes, that you don't have them beat, right? But you can pretend,
'cause they'll believe it. Like of course you beat me, so you bet all your chips against them, knowing that you can scare them because they already feel
like they're gonna lose. - The inherent, like the cynicism. - [Daniel] Exactly. - Cynicism is easier to play against, 'cause you can convince
them that their cards suck. - Yeah, when somebody believes that they're a loser or
they're unlucky, right, and that bad things happen to them always, and they never catch a break, well, you know, you can
just help them make it true. - What do you think about
the "Rounders", Teddy KGB, when he does the Oreo tell? Do players at the high level
communicate that kind of stuff? Do you think it's realistic to be able to have a tell like this that's partially subconscious? - So first of all, I love Brian
Koppelman who made the film, and I think what they were going for is something obvious to
the general public, right? Like, okay, it's very clear, you know, he eats the cookie, he
doesn't eat the cookie, and it means one or the other. At the highest levels, something
that, you know, blatant, you're not gonna find. You're gonna find a lot more subtle things maybe with posture or timing, or, you know, different things like that. But at the lower levels, you
know, you might see some, you might see, you know,
with a lot of people, when they're in a hand and they've bet, whether they drink water in the hand is going to tell you
something, generally speaking. - It's such an intimate
part of the human experience that I feel like if you have food, you're gonna reveal
something about yourself through the way you eat. I feel like that's a dangerous
thing to have at the table. - Well, the thing is, generally speaking, people don't eat food
in the middle of a hand. Like they're not gonna
bet, and then just like, and eat a burger, right? What they will do though is, you know, they bet, and it's up to you, and then they're, whether
they're, you know, uncomfortable or they do it unconsciously, they just wanna do something to make themselves look
relaxed or whatever, and, you know, they grab a water where they don't really
need it in that moment, but they're trying to take
your mind off of the situation. - So they, in the movie, wanted to show a simplistic version of
something that does happen. Something that's visually sort of clear. - Yeah, 'cause I think one of the things "Rounders" got right is that
it's a poker movie, right? But you don't have to be great at poker or really understand
poker to enjoy the movie. And that, you know, Oreo cookie tell, like everyone gets that. They're like, okay, that's simple. If he would've went with
something more subtle, you know, like licking your lips
or looking to the right, and I think it might've
been lost on the audience. - And they didn't actually explicitly say that that was a tell, I don't think. - I thought they did everything
to let you know, right? With the music and slow motion, and he's staring at it and
he's like, aha, you know? - Yeah, but they didn't
actually say, you know, this is an obvious tell, like Matt Damon's character didn't-- - At the very end of it, you know, after he says, "How the
fuck did you lay that down?" The monster, right? And he's like, "You're not hungry? "Not hungry, KGB?" He's like, he sort of references it, and then he takes the cookies, he notices, he's like, ah, he got me, and he breaks the, you
know, the rack of cookies. - Well, probably if you had
that kind of tell on him, you wouldn't, in Matt Damon's
character would not reveal. - Well, he says in the movie, he says, "Normally I
wouldn't reveal a tell, "but I don't have that much time." Like, I've gotta rattle him some way. So that was one way to do that. - How hard is it to do
that to, in a KGB accent, to lay down a monster in those situations? In general, how hard is it to
lay down a really strong hand, just psychologically? - Yeah, no, I mean, I think
it's incredibly difficult for the vast majority of people. You know, part of what makes professionals really, really good is
recognizing a situation that's very, very dangerous, and they need to, you know, jump ship. Like what happens to a lot of players is you get married to a hand. Let's say you have pocket aces, which is the best possible hand, right? But the board runs out where
it's seven, eight, nine, and then there's a Jack,
and then there's a six. It's like you have a great hand to start, but you don't anymore. So one of the difficult things
for the average player is, you know, once they've put money in, cutting their losses and saying, okay, let's move on to the next hand. It's very, very difficult
thing for a lot of people. - At every stage of like
pre-flop, All the way through, be able to just make a
decision at that moment. - So yeah, essentially not being attached, okay, I've already put
in $40,000 in this pot, and this guy's bet another 20. Well, I mean, I gotta
get my 40 back, right? Except, you know, in some cases, you have to reassess
individually this situation and realize, all right, well
this is a bad investment, so I gotta cut my losses. - By the way, I should mention that you have an
incredible YouTube channel where you explain a lot of stuff. You do a podcast, you do a
lot of really awesome stuff. My probably favorite thing that you've done is your masterclass that people should definitely check out, masterclass.com/lex. (Daniel laughing)
- There you go. - No, but it really is one of my favorite masterclass courses, but also just a great
introduction overview of poker. It's great for people that like me who are beginners essentially, but it's probably really good
for intermediate people too. I mean, there's a lot of
really good detail there. Anyway, what are hand ranges, and how do you begin to
estimate the range of hands that your opponents have? - Yeah, so I actually,
speaking of YouTube, I did a video on specifically this, getting familiar with ranges. And essentially, you know,
back in my day, the old days, we didn't talk about poker that way. We're like, ah, I think he's got this, or I think he's got that, right? Nobody thought of like, the range of hands a player can have. So I guess the best example, is imagine like all the potential hands as being a part of a grid, right? So the first player to act, they could have any one
of those hands, right? Anyone randomly dealt, right? But let's say now that that
player raised to $3,000, okay, well, you can
eliminate now from this grid, a whole bunch of hands that
this player can no longer have. Because if they had a two and a three, they wouldn't do that. So you can say, okay, he
probably has a big pair, he has Ace, King, you know, you've narrowed the range
of hands down, right? Now, through every action,
on the flop, on the turn, and on the river, based on the decisions they make, you narrow it down even further. So the range of hands is the whole, the entirety of all the possibilities that this player you believe could have. Sometimes they fool you, or they have a hand that you
don't expect them to have in their range. And you know, maybe a
little bit unorthodox doing some things you don't
expect to throw you off. But a range is essentially
all the possibilities. And it narrows as by the time, before the flop, it's endless. Player raises, okay, it's minimized. Now player bets the flop,
okay, it's minimized further. And then by the river, you know, you can narrow down the
entire range to, you know, just maybe even a few hands. - Is it always shrinking,
or is there sort of, as you get surprised, I mean, it's always just an estimate. So does it ever expand based
on sort of chaotic unpredicted surprising behavior of the players? - It really should never expand. The range of hands should
always get smaller, right? Like, again, we start with the full scope. And then you should factor in like, okay, these are all the possible hands you can have on the flop now, right? We can't have new hands on the turn. And if you get to that
point where you think, oh, well maybe he has this hand, then you sort of
misjudged his range prior. So you're not thinking clearly. It should always shrink
from the full scope to, you know, hopefully just a couple. - Well, in that video you also talk about, it used to be that you
would play your hand, but now you're playing a range, that you're representing a range, you're now you even
just playing your hand. So what does it mean to
represent a certain range? - Yeah, so that's another big thing that's different about poker from, you know, my day to today, is that back in our day, we would like put people on one hand, I'm like, you probably have King, nine, or you have Jacks, or something like that. Now people are cognizant of the idea that you could have an
entire range of hands. So then you ask yourself in situations, all right, I know what I have, but what I could have in his
mind, or my opponent's mind is any one of these hands, what would I do with the
entirety of these hands? And so a lot of people that
are trying to play optimally, you know, game theory, optimal, they think in terms of what
their range of hands would do, rather than their very specific hand. - So is bluffing in that context essentially misrepresenting
the range of hands that you have? Is that how you think about it? - Not exactly. 'Cause so an optimal range, like if I bet the river, if I'm
playing game theory optimal, a portion of my range is going to be, I have it, I got the best hand, and a portion of my
range is gonna be bluffs, and they'll be balanced. So in theory, no matter what you do, no matter what you do,
you call or you fold, in theory, it's just the, you're
printing a zero, as we say, you're not gaining or losing any EV if you were to do it that way. - [Lex] What's EV? - EV is expected value, okay? So every play that you make, you know, it either is going to in
the long run, you know, make you some money, or
it's just a losing play. And as a professional, you try to make the fewest
amount of minus EV plays you can. And the only reason you would
make these minus EV plays is potentially if you were
trying to set up your opponent for something later, right? So I might make some
minus EV plays, right, so that I can exploit you later, right? - [Lex] So you're
building up building up-- - Building an image. - A player profile
that's false in some way. - Something that, I'm gonna
plant seeds in your mind so that I can exploit them later. So for example, why would
players like show a big bluff? Like what would be the reason for that? They show a big bluff so that you know that
they're capable of it. But maybe in their mind, they're
never gonna do that again. But now they think, ugh, you know, he bluffed me last time,
maybe he's doing it again. But that's a, what we
call like a leveling war, because it, you know,
you can go back and forth with whether or not, okay, this guy might know that. Like he showed a bluff because he's never gonna bluff me again. So that's where it gets a little. - So that's a little bit different though when we're talking about hand ranges, that's different than
building up a mental model of what your opponents think of you, and what your opponents
think that you think of them, and so on, so forth. Are you trying to construct
those kinds of meta models, and is that separate from the hand ranges? - They go hand in hand, right? So if any, in a given situation, right, my range has this many value hands, and this many bluffs, okay? So in theory, if I wanna
be balanced, you know, this is my range and this
is what it looks like. I'll bet this 50% of the time
bet this 50% of the time. However, if I know that you think that I bluff too much, right, then I'm not gonna bluff as much. I'm gonna start, instead
of betting these hands that I would 50-50, now what I'll do is I'll do like 70-30, where I'm basically value betting most of the time against you, you know? Or vice versa, if I know you always fold, because you think I have it,
I'm gonna veer the other way. And instead of bluffing 50%,
I'll bluff 70, 80% of the time to take advantage of
your perception of me. - So to be successful,
do you have to construct a solid model of all
the players in the game, or can you ignore them? - I think it's really important. Like when I play, I have in my phone, I have a player profile of
everyone that I play with whenever I pick up, whether it's physical tells
or tendencies they like to, you know, that they have. And overall, that's just gonna, you know, that's gonna allow you
to exploit more, right? So like if I played with somebody
I've never played before, I'm probably just going to play optimally, or at least as optimal as I know how, until I start to, you know, gain some
information on that player so that I can start to exploit them. - So what's the, when you say optimally, what does optimally mean? Versus, so game theory
optimal versus exploitative? - Yeah, so that's like sort
of the big debate in poker, we call it for short,
GTO, game theory optimal, versus exploitative play. So GTO, game theory optimal,
is the idea that no, like I'm gonna set up my play
so that no matter what you do, you cannot exploit me. So essentially that's playing
rock, paper, scissors, right, and throwing 33% of
each every time, right? Nothing you do can beat that, nothing. You'll never be able to beat that, right? Exploitative play is
starting to notice that, okay, well you know what,
this guy loves rock, he loves playing rock, so I'm
gonna go paper a little more, so I'm gonna take advantage of him. So I won't be through, but now all of a sudden when I do that, I'm no longer playing optimal, because if you knew that I
was making that adjustment, now you can exploit me. So that's where the sort of what we call the leveling war happens, where people veer from, you
know, the optimal line of, okay, 33% each for each one. You can't beat that, but you also can't win with that either. - So you're always trying
to be at the cutting, at the leading edge of suboptimal play. - Yeah, you're going back and forth, and listen, at the highest levels, like online, that these guys play, like they're trying to play pretty close to like game theory optimal, because it's very difficult
to do, first of all. No human being will ever be able to compute at the level
that computers can. It's just never going to happen. So that's where like the human
mind has to come into play and say, all right, well, you know, if I was playing against a
robot, I would do X, but I'm not. I'm playing against you,
so I have to adjust. - So does game theory optimal
only look at the betting and the hands in the current hand? Or does it look at the history? So if you were to play
optimally, optimally, would you need to look at the history of the individual players, or just every hand is taken afresh? - See, that's why I love
playing exploitative, for the most part, because with GTO, anything that's happened in the past has no bearing on this situation. It's simply based on
what is the optimal play in a vacuum in this spot. Whereas exploitative, okay, this guy bluffs way
too much in these spots, so now I can make an
adjustment and call more, you know, based on past information. GTO doesn't take into
account history at all. - So like in a tournament, how quickly can you
construct a player profile that you've never played before? - Depends on the level of
the buy-in really, right? So the higher the buy-in, generally speaking, you can
assume if they're professionals, that they're gonna have
pretty similar profiles, 'cause you know, everyone's
playing, you know, if you're playing this game
well, it looks similar, right? At the lower levels, you know, playing, say, in a 1,000 or
$1,500 or less, you know, within a half an hour or an hour, I have an idea of, all right,
just by seeing how some, a player's played a few hands, that, you know, so here's
the thing with poker, it's like I can see one
clue of what he did, and it tells me so much
about what he'll do in a vast number of scenarios. - And you're saying at the high level, people don't give too many clues? I mean-- - Well, at the highest level is people are so much more similar in terms of their style of play. - They try to find some kind
of balance between the GTO, and they-- - Well, and now with all
that we've seen on TV, right, like people get to watch
streams and whatever, so you get to watch all
the top players play. So if you wanna learn how to
play better, guess what you do? You copy what they're doing essentially. Like, oh, he's only raising this much, I'm gonna do the same. They're betting this much,
I'm gonna do the same. So as a result, what you
end up having is sort of, you know, everyone deciding, like I guess it's similar in
chess with openings, right? People figure out, okay,
this is an opening, this is what you do,
and that's it, you know? And then everyone's similar to that. And then you have of course the outliers who try to do things a little differently and confuse people. - It seems like the outliers,
like we talked offline, that Magnus, in order to win, Magnus Carlsen has to play suboptimally in the openings to take his opponents out of the comfort zone so he can play what he calls pure chess as quickly as possible. Which just, both short
and deep calculations, purely what you're looking at the board versus memorized openings
and memorized lines. Is it the case that the best poker players are the ones that are able
to, at the right time, play really suboptimally or really-- - Unorthodox.
- Unorthodox. - Yeah, specifically there's
one guy who last year, sort of took the poker world by storm, and his name's Michael Addamo. And he was doing things, like I said, you know, most of the top
pros play very similarly with the way that they,
you know, construct ranges, and their bet sizing and
all these kind of things. He was doing some crazy things
that nobody else was doing. So he studied, you know, sort
of a different form of poker, and it was unorthodox, and it, you know, it throws people off 'cause he's in his comfort zone with these bet sizes and different things. Whereas everyone else, they're not well studied in those spots. So as a result of him being unorthodox, he became like a monster and
very difficult to play against, 'cause he really knew
what he was doing with it. - In tournament or cash games? - He was tournaments, yeah,
he was crushing tournaments. He was going against the norm
in terms of what is like, you know, this is what you
should do as a poker player in this spot. He wasn't doing that. He was doing what he thought was best, and he was doing things outside the norm, that, again a vacuum
you could look at that, and you go, that's incorrect. That, he should not do. That is a clear cut mistake. Even, you know, the
solvers, or the computers, or game theory would say this
is wrong what he's doing. But it's not wrong if
he's doing it in a way that he's exploiting
other players' tendencies. So for example, with him, say he's playing far
too aggressively, okay? That's not good unless your opponents are
playing way too passively. So if your opponents
are playing passively, the answer's to be more
aggressive with them. And that's, I think one of the, you know, biggest advantages he had was
he was willing to do that. So bet big pot, bluffing. - Huge. So in a spot where somebody
would make it a thousand, he's making it 22,000. Like, what? What is this? This makes no sense. - And then people kind
of know he has nothing, but they're too afraid to call him on it. - Well, and then
sometimes what happens is, this is where the leveling comes in. You're like, man, this guy's crazy. He's bluffing like nuts. Then he bets the 22,000, and you say, ah, I'm
taking my stand, I call, and then he shows you like, you know, four of a kind
or something like that. So he gets people out
of their comfort zone, and I really enjoy watching him play. He's probably my favorite
player to watch today. - Watching a guy like that,
what aspect of his play have you been able to
incorporate into your own? Like what do you learn from that? Because you're constantly learning, you're constantly adjusting. - Yeah, well, no, and I love it. And as I said, so I think a lot of players sort of come to the
same conclusions about, this is how you play the spot. But he doesn't, and I
love watching and thinking in terms of like why he's doing this. And one specific thing, for example, is he's willing to really go for it. So in a spot where,
let's say he bets 2,000, he knows he'll get you
to call 2,000, right? But he wants it all. He wants it all. So he says, you know what, I'll give up the 2,000 that's guaranteed, and I'll bet 50,000, and maybe if you call that,
now, you know, so listen, you lose the 2,000 seven, eight times. But if I get called for the
50, just once, you know, I'm profiting from that. And it also sets the, you
know, the template for you to really sort of be a player that people are afraid to play against. He knocked me out in a
tournament very early on in a huge event. And he had, he was so far ahead, he was one step ahead of my
thought process in a hand. And he did something that
makes no sense whatsoever. I looked it up on the computer, huge mistake, if you
will, but not a mistake, 'cause he was taking
advantage of my tendency. - Do you remember the cards? Is there an example? - I remember the whole thing, yeah. I remember like just yesterday. - Can you take it like
through an example hand that really demonstrates it? - So I'll explain the hand here. So I'm on the button, and I have Ace, King,
which is a very good hand, and I raise, and he
calls from the big blind. The flop is nine, seven, five, so I have nothing really here. He checks, I check behind. The turn card's an Ace. He checks, I bet half the pot. There were 6,000 there, I bet 3,000, okay? Now this is not a typical
thing you see people do, but he raised me to 36,000. Massive raise. Bigger than the size of the pot. - What was the flop again, sorry? - [Daniel] Nine, seven, five. - Okay. - [Daniel] Turn, an Ace. - So what is he representing exactly? - Well he could have a straight, he could have three of a kind. He could have, you know, Aces up. He could have a whole bunch of hands. So he check raises me big to 36,000. I call the bet. So now there's something like 75,000. The river is a five. So the board pairs, okay? He thinks for a while,
and he bets all of it, which is three times the pot. He bets 225,000. There's only 75,000 out there, right? And in theory, he should
never ever have a hand that can do that, right? So it confused me, and I was like, okay, well this guy's aggressive, he likes to bluff and
all this kind of stuff. So I made the call with the Ace, King, and he turned over six, eight. So he had a straight,
but here's the thing. In theory, that river card is bad for him. When I call the turn, I
have, a lot of the time, three of a kind, two pair
that just made a full house. So he was risking that. And the reason he did it, was 'cause he thought I would perceive him to be bluffing a lot. So he just went for it, and it worked. He was able to double up right away and knock me out of the
tournament, like an hour in. - Do you think he thought you might fold? Like what is it? - I think specific, I think
it was, it came down to this, it's as simple as this. He was cognizant of his image as being a wild aggressive bluffer, right? And he was fully taking advantage of me, knowing that my tendency in
these spots is to be curious, and I wanna call and I wanna see it. So he was fully taking
advantage of the fact that he thought I would call too often, because otherwise, his
play makes no sense. A small bet, a medium-sized
bet, those make sense. But the bet that he made,
in theory, is indefensible. It's just like clearly a mistake. But that's why poker's so fascinating, because he makes this play
and it wasn't a mistake, it was above the rim is what it was. - Do you think he put
you on Ace something? - I think exactly what he thought I had was Ace, King or something
like that, you know? - Oh that is so fun. That is so fun that the two
players at such a high level were able to mess with each other's mind. How old is he? Is he young? - [Daniel] He's in his 20s, yeah. - I feel like that takes a lot of guts to take risks like that. - Well that's what's great about him. He's certainly never accused
of not having the guts to put it in. And that's scary to play against, right? The easiest opponent to play against is one who's just
straightforward, passive, you know, not wild and crazy. Playing against him, he's gonna put you in
the blender, as we say. - How can you control what
you're perceived as representing, what hand you're perceived
of as representing? So is if we're, if the
game of modern poker is, others are representing certain hands through the information they convey, and you're representing a
certain hand range, sorry, through your play, how
can you control that? Or is that not, is that the
wrong way to think about it? But isn't bluffing and bet sizing and all of that kind of stuff essentially controlling
what others perceive as the hand range you have? - Ultimately, in terms of like controlling people's perception of you, you can't fully control it, but you can do things to sway it, right? As I said earlier, showing
bluffs and things like that, you know, leads your opponent to think, maybe you do this more often
than you're supposed to, or whatever the case may be. But in terms of like
controlling, you know, what your opponent can
think about your hands in certain spots, I don't really think it equates that way. It doesn't really, you know, I think what people do
when they're playing a hand is they think in terms of, all right, what does my
range look like here, okay? So my range has value. So you look at what, you know, the actual hand you have secondarily. So you say, okay, well I could
have this, I could have this, I actually have this, right? But I could have all these hands. So my opponent, if he's
thinking on a high level, he knows I could have all these
hands, and I have this one. So what do I do with this one, right, in the bigger scope of things. - I guess I'm trying to understand, if you're betting, isn't a bet, pre-flop, your bet, doesn't that
narrow the hand ranges? It doesn't matter what
you have, it narrows the-- - [Daniel] Absolutely. - And if you bet big,
combined with the perception of you at the table, doesn't
that represent the hand range? - [Daniel] Absolutely. - So like you can, would
betting essentially control what people estimate you to have? - Sure, so that makes it,
so, yeah, so that's true. So for example, one of the
most extreme examples is, we have, we do. Like there's spots where there's a bet that's considered polarizing, right? So let's say there's
a thousand in the pot, and you bet 10,000, which
is crazy big, right? That's saying one of two things. I either have the absolute
best possible hand, or absolutely nothing, because any of the hands in the middle, I wouldn't do that with. So I'm essentially telling
you when I bet that, I'm like, I either got it, or you know, I got, I don't have a mediocre hand, like just a pair of
nines or a pair of tens. I have a royal flush or have nine high. So with my bet sizing, I can control how my
opponent is perceiving what my range is gonna be. So for example, you know,
similarly if I bet small, right, well that could be a lot of hands, right? That can represent a big part of my range. - The bigger the bet, the more
the narrower the range is. - The more polarized it is. - Yeah. How far could you get without
looking at your cards, do you think? How well could you do? - It depends on who I'm
playing with, right? So if I was playing in a tournament with mediocre or weak players, I think I could probably do pretty well. - [Lex] But even like world class. - World class, I don't think you'd have much
of a chance, really, I mean. - The question is trying to get at like how important is it the
actual hands you have versus the hands you're representing. - Right, so that's the question of essentially if you're not
looking at your hand pre-flop, you're basically giving up a
fundamental advantage, right, where you're gonna be
playing way suboptimally in terms of your hand selection, right? Because if you don't look at your hand, you might have a two and a three. That's not good, but
now you're playing it, so you've invested
whatever, 2, 3,000 bucks with absolute garbage, and it's very difficult
to climb that hill, right? So it's much better to actually
look at your cards and go, okay, I'll throw away the two and three, and I'll play the Ace, King. - Speaking of garbage, you've said that 10, seven
is your favorite poker hand to play. Is that still the case, and what aspect of it is that you enjoy? - Yeah, so it's one of those
viewer discretion is advised, like, 10, seven I've just
noticed throughout my life, you know, it's a tendency thing that I've been lucky with it. So that's just sort of, but it's not like I'm gonna
look at 10, seven and go, oh wow, you know, I'm gonna call it all in
or anything like that. I'll play it in situations
where it makes sense, but you know, it's rare 'cause
it's not a very good hand. - But is there some aspect of belief in the magic of this hand
manifests quality of play? Or is that a little-- - There should be, but
so here's the thing. It's, you know, poker players, some have said it's unlucky
to be superstitious. But we're all a little bit superstitious, a little bit, you know? And so, I don't know, maybe it is a case where when I have 10, seven, I feel somehow energetically
that, you know, I'm more likely to catch something, which may actually make me more apt to be aggressive and
confident in the hand. But you really shouldn't
let yourself do that. Like, you're not supposed to fall in love with any specific hands. - Yeah, but, you know,
uncertainty is ruthless. It's, you know, the fact that
it's a game of statistics, it can be too painful
for the human psychology. So maybe you have to hold
onto certain superstitions, because, you know, I mean
there's a cold absurdity to the fact that you can play
extremely well and still lose. I mean the, actually this
year, you've played the, what is it, 50 days of
World Series of Poker. And it seems like, at
least from the perspective of me looking at it through the internet, it seems like there's a lot of hands that you were like 70-30,
80-20, all in hands that you just did not, you
were not going your way. That can sort of break you mentally. - Absolutely. Yeah, one of the hardest things,
especially about playing, 'cause cash games and
tournaments are different. One of the most difficult
things about, you know, being a tournament player is resilience. Because more often than not, like so if there's a tournament
with a thousand people, to win the tournament, you
have to get all of the chips. That means there's one
winner and 999 losers. So it's, you know, it is very rare that you actually like win all the chips. So you're essentially at some point, in every tournament you play, gonna deal with like really
bad luck and disappointment. And sometimes those streaks
can have you question yourself and be introspective about,
okay, so I think I'm 47 now. I think I've gotten
better as time went on, between distinguishing,
okay, am I losing right now because of bad luck, or is it fundamentally
decisions I'm making are not very good, right? And that's one of the
hardest things for anyone who plays poker to get to, right? Why am I losing? Am I losing because of my
opponents being better, I'm not playing well, or am I losing just because of luck? And because there's so
much variance in poker, a lot of players can be confused with on both sides of the coin. One guy's winning and
he thinks he's great, and he's really not. Wait till the cards break
even, as we say, you know? - I think there's a lot of
parallels to life as well. You don't, if you get
screwed over, over and over, it's hard to know if you're
doing something wrong or if it's just bad luck. - Yeah, I think they did a study, I remember there was like a study, it was supposed to be related
to gambling, but it was mice, and they put 'em in a little maze, and they go down these three tubes. And they go down this one tube, and there'd be cheese, right? And then they'd go down again, cheese. Three times in a row, there
was cheese there, right? The next time, there was
an electric shock there, not cheese. The rat went, you know, the
mouse went to get zapped. He got zapped, okay? Came back, he kept going back
to get zapped until he died. Like he kept going because he found cheese
there, he has won there. So he continued to go chase that wind despite it being, you
know, now all of a sudden, not worthwhile till they died. And essentially what they said was, that is essentially how they
compared it to like, you know, the gambling brain and how
people think about gambling. - You're chasing the wins. You learn too much, you sort of overgeneralize
the lessons learned from the times you've won. - Yeah, like beginner's
luck can be detrimental. If you have some early luck, and you believe that this is just the way it's supposed to be forever, you know, it can put you in a delusional
state where, you know, you feel like I'm just great. But no, you're not, you were
just lucky in the beginning. - I actually played poker once in Vegas. It wasn't a tournament, but it was a kind of
tournament-like style. I already forgot what it was. But what I do remember
is I had four of a kind. So the last hand I've ever played in poker was I got a four of a kind, and there was a couple of
others with really strong hands, so everybody went all in, and I think you get some kind of bonus for getting four of a kind. - [Daniel] Bad beat jackpot
you were playing in. - Yeah, so something like this, I apologize if I don't know the details, but I just remember
winning a lot of money, and I walked away from the table. I said, I'm not playing
poker again, this is great. I'm gonna, up top. Because I started to feel
like this is, you're, I started to think even though I haven't really played
poker at all, that I'm good, and that was a really dangerous feeling,. And everybody was really mad for walking away from the table. - One of the other things that I think is
interesting about poker too is good is relative, right? So you could be the seventh
best player in the whole world, like literally seventh best player. But if you're playing with the
other six, you're the sucker. You are the like the worst
player in the game, right? So like there's a lot
of players, for example, like the Dan Bilzerians
of the world, right? He's not a top level
player like, you know, these guys you see on TV, but he probably makes
more money than they do, because he plays with people that are far below his skill level. So part of the skill
of being a poker player is finding situations where
you're profitable, you know, regardless of your skill level. - Another connection to life, do you think Dan Bilzerian
is telling the truth about having made, what is
it, 50, 100 million dollars? Just a huge amount of money playing poker. - Considering what I know
about the private games, and the types of players who
play in these private games and the stakes that they play, I absolutely believe,
you know, Dan has made, I don't know how many millions, but you know, whether it's 50, whatever. But it wouldn't surprise me that if you play in these
games within a year, or you know, you find
the right businessman who has way too much
Bitcoin money, you know? And you know, in one night
you take him for 20 million, I absolutely could see it. I don't see any reason why, listen, where he got his
money initially, you know, that's up to interpretation
from his father, whatever. But has he made a bunch
of money playing poker? Absolutely, no question. - Do you feel like, as
somebody who loves the game, do you think there's something
almost ethically wrong in playing people much worse than you? - So, yeah, that's a good question, because, you know, part of
the reason I played poker and wanted to become
professional was like, I want to make my mother proud, right? And I don't think she would be proud of me taking like, Grandma Betty's
like last $5, you know? And again, down the street, you know, sending her broke and
taking her pension check. So I play at the high stakes against people who can afford it. They know who I am, I'm not a hustler. I'm not pretending I'm bad
at poker to squeeze in. Like, I was thinking
about this just yesterday, 'cause I played in a game, that if I played that sort of role where a lot of guys do pros, that sort of play down their skill level, pretend they're just one of the guys, these guys can make 20, $30
million in a year, legitimately. Like, I believe that like if I did that, if I said, you know what,
I'm gonna go down that path, get into these games in
LA you know, and travel, and do all this kind of stuff,
I can make 20 million a year. But it feels a little greasy, right? I don't like to kiss anyone's ass, I don't like to ask anyone for
a favor or things like that. So, but yeah, like I feel, listen, a rich guy who wants to sit
down with a million bucks and get drunk and lose it,
I have no empathy for that. I'm like, I don't have any moral qualms with that whatsoever. - [Lex] So if Grandma
Betty is a billionaire. - Send it, send it, right, you know? Absolutely, why not? - Well, let me ask you
about a tough period of your recent life. You had a rough, like we mentioned, the World Series of Poker, losing $1.1 million over 48 days. What were you going through
mentally during that? - So here's the thing, you
know, I do, like you said, I do a YouTube vlog every day. So I kind of share my thoughts, and listen, I can edit that thing and keep out the bad stuff. But I think it's more
authentic and genuine to show people the actual struggles, and the pain that I go
through, you know, without it. And I'd say the one
thing I'm most proud of throughout the entire
thing is the resilience. Because there are moments
you see me where I'm broken, I'm just like, I can't take it. I broke a selfie stick this year. Like I was filming it, 'cause you know, I do for my vlog, I smashed the stick, threw it in the corner, right? It's just, that was my like
hit rock bottom moment. And then I put the camera on me, and I was like, all right,
I let people see it. But mentally, it was very difficult because there was a
feeling of hopelessness, where you can, I was
making good decisions. Like I genuinely felt like I'm
playing really, really well. But every time my money went in, and my opponent's money went in, and say I was 60%, 70%, 80%, for about a two week stretch,
I lost every one of those. And you start to wonder like, I can't win if I never win,
you know, in these spots. So it was difficult. Luckily I have, you know,
20 odd years of experience, and how to deal with it. And so, as I said, I wake
up the next day ready to go. - [Lex] So as if nothing happened. - To a certain degree,
obviously, you know, the more it happens in the higher buy-ins, like the one where I
broke the selfie stick, I lost 500 in that tournament, right? And it was like the last
card, it was painful. - I think he lost. - Yeah, that was great, that video. I think he lost, good read. - What led up to the selfies, the gate? Like what, you just lost your shit for a like 100 milliseconds. - [Daniel] Yeah. - Like it was very brief. You're just like, what, the
world wasn't making any sense. Like how am I, do I keep
losing kind of thing? How did you, why did you lose your shit? - You should never really think like this. But part of me felt like I
deserve to win this thing, right? So part of me was like, listen, I've lost so many
in the last two weeks. All right, let you know the poker gods be kind to me right now, let me win this. And it looked good. I was in a great situation on the flop, great situation on the turn,
I'm about to be a competitor. I'm gonna be a contender
in this tournament to win a big prize pool and
turn the whole thing around. It's all there for the taking. And then boom, the last
card, it just, you know, it was couple weeks of frustration, in the moment of filming
that I just had, you know, sort of a visceral reaction, you know, and I smacked the selfie stick. And then like it was, I
see a corner, it's safe. I threw the selfie stick on the ground, and of course social media
blows up about how, you know, it was a violent act. You know, I mean it's like, have you've never ever watched sports? Have you never seen a guy on
the golf course smack his club or throw their helmet? Like, you know, there
was a guy, Justin Bonomo, who's a poker player, and he's super, how do,
for lack of a better word, offended by everything. And he was equating my
throwing a stick on the ground, to violence against women, domestic abuse, and the idea that like, this makes women feel
unsafe to play poker. And so that was kind of a running joke for the last two weeks, where
every time I sat at a table, the guys would be like, oh,
I feel unsafe, I feel unsafe. - Yeah, can you take me through the hand? Do you remember what the hand was? Like what was the-- - Yeah, so it was a, you know, the player on the button raised, David Peters, very aggressive player. He went all in from the blind, and I had a pair of pocket 10s. So I went with my 10s, and
he had Queen, 10 of spades. So I was good. I have the way the best hand, and the flop was like King,
nine, three, one spade. Turn was like the eight of spades. So now he has a flush draw, and
the river was another spade. So he caught spade, spade,
and he made a flush. - Wow, but statistically you
were winning the whole time. - [Daniel] Yeah, I was winning
it up until the last cut. - What did he go all in on? Was it a bluff? - He made what's considered
like a pretty standard play in modern poker where,
you know, a guy raised, and he was just trying to pick
up, you know, what was there. And he ran into a hand in the big blind, and, you know, he got lucky. - So what was the, throughout
the strategy of preparation, the strategy of play? So you're playing so many days, are you trying to ignore the results and stick to a particular strategy? - Yes, for the most part, you know, what I'm trying to do is like, if I formulate a strategy
for the whole seven weeks, 'cause there's a varying
degree of buy-ins too. Like you have small ones, like 1,500, then you got like $250,000 buy-in. So I map out the seven weeks and, right, I'll give a little bit of
mental energy to the 1,500, which means I'll be on my phone, I'm not gonna, I don't care
as much about this one. But the 250K, fully engaged,
fully focused, you know, up against obviously the
higher the buy-in, you know, super top competition. And you know, as far as strategy goes, focusing on each day,
playing the best I can. Not the result. Like, 'cause if you focus on the result, you're focused in the wrong place. Your focus should be on the decisions you actually make, right? And if you're making good
decisions consistently, you have to continue to do that. The frustrating part is this, with poker, unlike chess or other things, making the best possible
decision doesn't mean you win. Often you lose. You don't with chess. - Well, Magnus Carlsen has
also talked about that, there's some non-deterministic
thing about chess too, given the limited cognitive
capacity of the human mind. So he says that the World Championship should have 20, 30, 40, 50 games, not the few that they have. It's too low of a sample. So in that sense, the high
stakes poker tournaments are very too low sample. - Sure, yeah. Well when you think of
the World Series of Poker, so as you said, I lost
about 1 million, right? In one tournament, that was 500,000. So then, you know, like a few others here of high buying tournaments. So the sample or the amount was, you know, 40, 50 total tournaments
with, you know, high variance. And if you don't run well or do well in the highest buy-ins, you know you're gonna
have a losing summer. - So you did a podcast on the
mental game a few years ago, but then that's just something
you really care about. So what aspects of the mental game in poker
is most difficult to master? - I think the most difficult thing for people is self-awareness,
right, and resilience. Self-awareness to know, okay, so you know, again, is it, am
I not doing as well as I could because of luck, or is there things that I can learn? And I always look to mistakes
as opportunities, I really do. When I make a mistake
in a poker hand, right, call it a breakdown or whatever, that's where breakthroughs happen, where I'm like, oh, you know
what I could have done here? I could have done this and
that would've been really good, and I'm gonna do that going forward. So I think like with anything, you know, when you start out playing golf, like your goal is to
just hit the ball, right? Then you try to hit it in the air, then you're trying to hit it straight, then you're trying to hit it on the green, then you're trying to hit
it closer to the green. To the point where the
pros get where, you know, they're so finite, they're
trying to hit it 63 yards and spin it back three yards. They're, it's imperfect. Like they don't hit the perfect shot, 'cause the perfect shot
for them is it goes in. But they try and make the mistakes smaller and smaller and smaller. Poker's the same. We all make mistakes consistently. The goal is to minimize,
especially the big ones. - What was the lowest point
for you psychologically, in poker in general actually? Maybe it was this year,
maybe it was in general. Do you remember there
was times in your life, speaking of resilience, that were extremely
difficult to you mentally? - Yeah, so early on, you know,
as basically as you know, as a teenager, I was playing in Toronto, and then in my early 20s, I'm like, I'm going to Vegas, right? And I thought I was the best. I'm like 21 years old, I'm
like, check me out, right? Yeah, show up with $3,000,
24 hours later, you know, money's gone. And I remember the moment vividly, it was at the Binion's Horseshoe. It was about three in the morning. I was playing with seven other people. You know, I lost my last chips. I went to the bathroom, washed
up, got out, they all left. And it was like a moment
where I realized like, okay, in Toronto I was the big fish. But here, they were playing 'cause of me. I was the sucker. I remembered every one of their faces. And then I remember
not having enough money to get back to Budget
Suites where I was staying. So I walked, I didn't, you know, I walked, and in that moment I
was thinking about like, is this something that I'll be able to do? Am I good enough? You know, what am I gonna do now? I'm in Vegas, I don't know anybody, and I have no money, right? So that was certainly like, what felt like a low point walking back behind Paradise and Twain, which is not a great part of town. - Where did you find the strength to answer yes to that question
that you can still do good. - I think this has been sort
of a pattern in my life where, like in the evening after it
happens, like I don't have it, you know, I don't have
that feeling of hope, or, you know, resilience, if you will. I'm allowing myself to experience despair, which is exactly where I'm at. But then a good night's sleep,
wake up the next morning, and just within me, I have
that inner confidence to say, you know what? Fuck it, get back on the hobby horse. Find a way, make it work, right? But I do believe it's really
therapeutic and worthwhile to allow yourself to feel and vent. So many people today, the Instagram culture world, I call it, it's like they wanna act
like they're perfect. Nothing bothers them. Bullshit, right? You're pissed off, it's okay to show it. Emotion's fine, we all have it. There's no reason you have to suppress it. Obviously, you don't wanna have
guys throwing selfie sticks around the room every time
they lose a pot, right? - [Lex] Yeah. - But you know, a little-- - You're gonna make everybody feel unsafe. - [Daniel] Yeah, exactly. - If that happens. So you're saying, there
is a culture of saying, you know, stay positive,
all this kind of stuff, but you know, when you feel
despair, don't resist it, ride it out. - Because it doesn't go away, right? That feeling, you know, you think you put it away
in the pit of your stomach, and you think, you know, it's gone. It's not, it's still there. Let yourself go, "Fuck!" You know, it's all right. You know, there's nothing wrong with being a little bit emotional, because once you've
experienced it, you let it out, now you can move past it. - Yeah, and I feel like as
long as your brain chemistry can support it, you can usually learn
a good lesson from it. Like, you become stronger, you become more resilient through it. It's really interesting, and a good, nice sleep can really help. - Absolutely, yeah. - So through 2022, and in general, what is a perfect day in the life of Daniel Negreanu look like, when you're, like on a day when you
have to play a big game, big tournament game, and so on. So like, what time do you wake up? What do you eat for breakfast? - So my life is twofold. Like one, when I'm playing,
hardcore, and one when I'm not. And they look very different, right? So I'll give you a quick
glimpse of like, when I'm not, up at 10, you know,
breakfast, in the gym at noon, you know, post-workout meal, coffee, walk, like, you know, I try to get, that's what I do for cardio. You know, and it's very like home-bodied. I don't leave the house. It's very like, boring and mundane, right? - Long distance walk, so like, what do you
do when you're walking? You're thinking about stuff or? - Well, no, honestly, I
just walk on the treadmill. I try to get 15,000 steps a day, and I just walk for basically like an hour while I watch a show, or I'm on the computer
or something like that, you know, I'm on the treadmill. - Why walking, not running? - Well, I mean, I think walking, I mean, I
do a little bit of running, but hardly any, I don't enjoy it. Like, I just like walking. And frankly for fat loss, when
it's usually what I'm doing after big poker tournaments
is getting back in shape. Walking's ideal for it, right? So essentially it's like the tale of two, during the World Series of Poker, all my sort of structured
life thrown out the window. - [Lex] There's no walking. - There's very little walking, there's very little working out, there's very little anything. I go into the World Series, you know, like this year, I went in around 157, and I expected to gain about 10 pounds during the World Series. Not good pounds, wasn't muscle, but that's about what I did, 165. And then I spend the next month trying to, you know, lose it. But during the World
Series, when I'm playing, the most important
thing, without question, that I have to focus on, and this is why I stopped focusing on working out and all this stuff, is sleep. If I'm not rested, I'm useless. If I only get five, six hours, and I have to go back the
next day and play 14 hours, the chances of me being at
my best, very, very slim. So sleep is a priority. - What's the perfect amount of
sleep for you on those days? Eight, seven? - So eight hours is my go-to every night. During the World Series of
Poker, it's just not possible, because of the way that it's structured. Sometimes the tournaments end at 2:15 AM. I get home about three o'clock, takes me 30 minutes, 40
minutes to get to sleep. So now let's say I'm in bed by four. Well, the tournament's at, you know, two, so I have to get up and whatever. So it's very difficult to get exactly eight a lot of the time, you know, and also get back there in time. - Is there any hacks to quiet the mind? Because you're going on a
pretty intense rollercoaster mentally when you're playing. is there any tricks to getting into sleep, given the rollercoaster? - I've been very lucky. Like I'm blessed, I don't know if it's
because of the diet or what, but I've always been a very good sleeper. - [Lex] You just shut off. - I get to sleep and I
sleep like a baby, you know? And I also nap really well. Like during the World Series, sometimes what'll happen is that, let's say I get knocked out
of one event at 4:00 PM, and there's another
one that I can jump in, instead of jumping right into it, I'll go into like a private room and take 45 minute nap, and, you know, and give me
enough energy to continue and sort of reset my mind. - Yeah, and it solves a lot
of problems with the nap too. - [Daniel] It does. - Yeah, I feel like the nap
is a magical trick in life. What else? Diet wise, what do you, your mind is going, you know,
pretty intensely all day. What do you-- - Yeah, so during, like I said, when I'm not playing,
I'm super regimented. You know, I have, I
literally measure everything. You know, I count
calories, I count macros. I follow it to a T. - [Lex] Pretty balanced diet or any-- - I'm a vegan. - [Lex] Vegan, yeah. - So it's, you know, a vegan diet, like. - [Lex] But balanced in
terms of carbs and protein, all that stuff. - Yeah, no, I mean, I
eat a healthy amount. I'm doing probably 150 grams of protein, like 60 grams of fat, 50, and then about-- - [Lex] And try to measure it all out. - I do, yeah. I basically, I created a meal plan. So what I did for myself is, 'cause I'm really anal,
I made a spreadsheet with like a day's food, and
I have six different ones. So I just follow it. Like I don't, it actually
makes my life so much easier when I don't have to think about what I'm gonna eat for lunch
or what I'm eat for dinner. I already know what I'm gonna eat. I already wrote it down. And it doesn't get boring because I'm switching it up every day, you know, every six days. And, you know, occasionally
I'll, you know, splurge and do something different. During the World Series of Poker, I eat whatever the fuck I want to eat. - [Lex] Yeah. - Like it's at 2:00 AM, I don't crave like a
broccoli carrot salad. Like I want chocolate, candy, and chips. So I'll just do it. - So you listen to the cravings. - [Daniel] Yeah, I realized like-- - It's surprising, because
like you're so regimented. - Yeah.
- Outside of that. - It's really difficult. Like, I've done it before where I played the World Series of Poker, and I made it a point
to work out every day. But what that did was it sacrificed sleep. - [Lex] Yeah. - So then I found like at 1:00
AM, I would be more tired, you know, because I've
expended more energy than I would otherwise. So I essentially like
look at the World Series, six, seven weeks where my body's
just gonna take a beating. Not like a UFC fighter, but like a different kind of beating. And that's okay because I
have so much confidence, that within six weeks of just like eating right and working out, I can get back to where I was. - It was just hilarious to me that you'd be eating chocolate, but eating chocolate in bed as you're trying and get to sleep. Is this? - Like literally a bag of
like chips or chocolate like on my way home and before
bed, you know, just whatever. This is what the professional athlete does at the highest, most
difficult event of his career. Okay, so what else is there in terms of mental preparation,
and focus, and meditation, those kinds of things
leading up to the games, is there anything you like to, like any rituals you like to follow? - So, yeah, I have dabbled in the past with like meditation and
different things like that. And I know that there's
health benefits to it. And I understand that a lot
of people get a lot from it. And I've done it for good amount of time, like long periods of time. I found that for me, I think
it was predominantly placebo. Like, it really wasn't
doing anything, for me, that it felt like I was doing something. But I really, I didn't see the
any specific results from it. So, I don't really do that too much. One thing that I will
do for me is leading up, is there's so much footage now, that I'll make it a point
to like watch my opponents, and then with like my phone, I'll take notes and I'll keep
track of different things that I'm seeing, and that sort of, and then what I'll do is
I'll formulate a game plan. Like I'm playing the Poker Masters coming up in about a week. And I'll look to see the tendencies of what my opponents are doing, and then I'll come up with like some things that I'm gonna do, some tricks of the trade, if you will. Not game theory optimal stuff. Stuff that I think, oh,
they're making a mistake here that I can exploit. And then I look to do
that in different ways, and always look to, you
know, throw curve balls. - How hard is that process? Do you enjoy it or is
it like really hard work to analyze the players
to try to understand what are the different holes? What are the different mistakes? What are the strengths to
avoid and that kind of stuff? - I think the only thing
that makes it harder is when you're young, right,
and you're in your 20s, and you're trying to make your nest egg, like you're trying to make
your retirement money, you're hungry, right? You're like Clubber Lang, and you know, the gym, you're hungry. Whereas, you know, Rocky's
in there taking pictures, and smiling, and doing
commercials, and stuff like that. So I am 47, I'm financially okay. I don't need to win. I don't need to compete
at the highest levels. So I think it was a boxer,
I don't remember which one, when asked this, he was
asked the question, you know, how do you get up in the
morning, you know, still, and do those morning runs? And he says, "You know what? "I'll be honest with you. "It's a lot more difficult
doing the 4:00 AM run "in silk pajamas." Right, it just is, right? But I've always been self-motivated, and I've always found a way. So it's harder in the sense
of like, it's not a need. I can still get by without it. But, so in that regard, it does feel like a little bit of work, or like, oh my God,
that's a lot of footage I gotta get through. And I don't know that I have the time, or I don't know that I wanna
spend 10 hours of my day doing that when I could
be doing other things. - I mean, what do you
still love about poker? When you said, when you enter, like the times you catch yourself, just being able to sort
of take in the awe of it. What aspects do you love? - I think that, like for me, I've always been really competitive, but I was never gonna be
a professional athlete, or a professional snooker player. I wasn't good enough at any of that stuff. I didn't have the body type, whatever. But poker, it sort of levels
the playing field, right? You're 6'5'", 240, big deal. You know, we're not fighting here. We're fighting a different type of war. So the competitive aspect, I also have always been
fueled throughout my career by doubters. So this is probably unhealthy, but every time people
say like, you're done, you're washed up, you can't win anymore. It just makes me want to
prove 'em wrong, right? So I have a little bit of that in me, which again, you reading the
comments and all these kind, like I've been told many
times throughout my career for the last 15, that I'm
done, I can't compete anymore. And I enjoy, you know, proving 'em wrong. - Yeah, the game has changed so much. The greats of the past surely cannot be the
greats of the present. That kind of commentary will
continue for every sport. And certainly for poker, 'cause poker really changed a lot over the past couple decades. Can you speak to how much it has changed? I think because you've been
at the top for so long. - Yeah, so complacency's a big issue for people who make
it, if you will, right? So in my era of the poker
boom around the early 2000s, there was a group of players
who were the big names, the stars of the game. Well a lot of them had
their egos out of whack, where they just felt like,
okay, I'm the best, that's it. Like, no, there's young guys
learning, there's new software, there's solvers, there's
all these kind of things. And if you're not keeping up,
then you'll get surpassed. And I remember myself at
a very early age saying, I never wanna be that guy. And it was one of my first
events in the late '90s. I was the young buck playing
with the Tom McEvoy's, and Brad Dowdy, the
guys of the era, right? And I was doing things more aggressively, and they were scoffing
at all these young kids with their aggressive
three and all this stuff. And they were sort of
mocking it, you know? And I thought, never be that guy. Always have the humility
to be introspective, and always have the
respect for your opponents, that while you're think
you've got it all figured out, they're learning new things
and you can learn from them. So I've always been willing
to sort of swallow my pride and get coached by younger players who I might even be better than, but they see blind spots that
I have, that I might not. And they, you know, they
help me improve my game. I've always been willing to sort of look every six
months or a year and say, is what I'm doing working, and if not, how do I
make, how do I get better? But most people from my
generation, they go the other way. I don't know, they just have this idea that they figured it all out. Once you feel like you've mastered it, there's nothing left to learn. That's the moment where everyone
else starts to surpass you. - That's the moment where
you lose the mastery, 'cause it's always evolving. How has the game changed? - So the game has changed in terms of the way
people learn it, right? When I started out, the only
way to learn how to play poker was to sit your ass on the chair and play. - [Lex] In person. - Yes, in person. Play, maybe you jot
down hands on a notepad. We didn't even have cell
phones back then, right? So I would write notes. I actually brought a notepad. And then, you know, analyze it, and sort of try to figure it out that way, and think about, you know,
maybe talking to friends and different players. Like when I grew up,
there was John Juanda, Allen Cunningham and Phil Ivey. And we would sort of create like a little bit of a mastermind. Well how would you play this hand? What would you do here? That was the extent of it, right? We never had the correct answers. We always had theories
about what might be right. Not until about five, six years ago where everything changed, where, you know, artificial
intelligence created solvers that will specifically say,
okay, this is the optimal play. This is the game theory optimal play. So now, it introduced poker to a whole new group of
like personality types. In my day, it was people
that were dregs of society that didn't fit in. Not college goers with a degree. These are people who were
street hustlers playing pool, they found poker, you know, and they had
these unique lives, right? But now, because poker can be studied, much like you study, you
know, university or college, you had, for example,
the German contingent, who was literally analyzing data and coming up with
strategies based on this. And it's like, what, you know? And the old guy, ah, you know, gotta play my field or whatever. And they're like, they're learning. So I guess the way that you describe, it's like in the old days,
it required skill and talent, a card sense, right? That was the only way to become good, and today that's not the case. Good study habits, a good
work ethic in that regard can make you like a really good player, even if you aren't all
that talented or gifted. Having a good work ethic
is a talent, right? Not necessarily card sense, but if you're able to put in the work and study from these solvers, you essentially have the
perfect study tool now, that, you know, that we
didn't have in my day. - So what do the solvers give you that do you start to
memorize the optimal play for every single hand? - You try your best. So again, solvers are imperfect as well in terms of the way the
humans utilize them, right? Because you can give solvers
a certain number of inputs in terms of what you want it to solve. But a solver can think
on many, many levels. So for example, the way
that a typical player would do a solve is to say, okay, what does a solver
think is the best play here? Bet one third pot, bet two thirds pot, or bet one and a half times pot, okay? You give it three parameters,
it comes out with an output, and it tells you what you should do with all the different
hands, you know, you have. However, that's a simplified version of what a solver would really do, because a solver might decide that seven times the pot
is best, 10% of the pot. But when you putting in a solve, you can only put in, you
know, specific parameters. So that's why, frankly, that's typically the number, one third, two third, and
one and a half times pot is what people often do. So they sort of have a vague
idea of what a solver wants. But again, imperfect in terms of the implementation of it, right? And memorizing all the variables, like that King, Jack with
the King of Diamonds is 13%. No one, no human brain can do that. So what you do is you bucket
it, like you bucket it into, say, instead of 10,000
variables, you have 10 buckets, and you say, okay, with these hands, we do roughly this and we do roughly this. And you try your best to, you
know, stay within those lines. But again, what I love
about live poker partly is that nobody will ever be
able to master game theory, you know, and mimic a solver. - But you also have to
incorporate your position where you are, and obviously
what cards you have, but also the size of your
stack, how much money you have, and also whether you have
the ability or desire to buy in all those kinds of things. So you have to calculate
all of that, right? - So the, yeah, so the
solver will do that, right? And essentially you don't input your hand. It tells you, you'll look
at the grade and be like, this is my hand, and it
tells you what it is, but it tells you what you
would do with any hand, right? It gives you the full output. - And that actually
gives you a better idea, 'cause you're ultimately, like you said, playing a range of hands, not a hand. - Yeah, and the solvers do things that are really interesting. You've seen "AlphaGo", I would imagine. Brilliant film, right, I thought. And I thought what was
interesting is there was, you know, accepted theory
from all the top Go players that this is what you do. But the AI was doing things way different, and they're like, this has to be wrong. But really it wasn't. So for example, a solver
may say this, right? Let's say you bet on the
end, and you bet a lot, and a solver may say, you should fold here with a pair of Kings and a Queen kicker, which is, you know, a pair of Kings. But call with a pair of
fours in an Ace kicker. So it's essentially telling you that you should fold this hand that is much better than this. So it begs the question why? Because what the solvers do is they use the information
of your own cards to formulate all the possible
hands your opponent can have. So if your opponent is, so basically if you had the King, Queen, you know, it may say, for
lack of a better nerdy term, it blocks potential bluffing hands that your opponent can have. So let's say if your opponent
would bluff with Queen, Jack, but you have a Queen, so there are less
combinations of Queen, Jack. So it will find a better
bluff catcher, if you will. So that's what's really not
intuitive to poker players. Poker players usually think like, well, this, my hand is pretty
good, so I got to call. But that's not how a solver would think. A solver uses, you know,
commonatrix, and you know? - And sometimes it's tough
to get the good why answers you just did for why a solver thinks
something is better. Or maybe in poker it's
a little bit easier, but in the case of Go and chess,
it's not always obvious why because it's not gonna
explain stuff to you. - But I think one of the
best ways to learn poker is when you see a solver output, and it tells you one of these things. Try to figure out why. Why does this solver do this? Why does it want you to call
with this and fold this? And try to think about
it on a deeper level. And you go, aha. Probably because this card
that I have here, you know, changes the range of my
opponent's, you know, potential. - I'd love to get your opinion on your relationship with solvers. 'cause for example,
Magnus doesn't use them, his team uses them 'cause he feels like he's
going to rely on it too much, and you can't use it when you're playing. What you really want is to build up extremely strong intuition without the help of a solver. Is there some aspect of
that that rings true to you? - Absolutely, I totally can
relate to what Magnus is saying, first and foremost, because when solvers was first introduced, I didn't come from that world. I didn't, I was so intimidated, 'cause I didn't know how to use it. I don't know how to do an input. So I had two guys, one
guy's a data scientist, and you know, another
guy's like a, you know, poker savant, if you will. And they coached me, and they did it. So today, if I was in
a tough spot, you know, and I'm like, I don't know
what would a solver do? I will send them the hand, and
they'll run the solve for me, and then sort of give me the
parameters of what to do. When I was playing, you know, regularly
using solvers with them, we were spending six to eight hours a day going over all these solves. So intuitively, I started
to think and learn about what the solver would want. But I sort of understand
where Magnus is coming from in that you don't wanna
become a slave to the sim, as I say, right? There's one kid I know, I joked with him, his name's Landon Thies, and you know, he made a
play that the sim, you know, would say, this is a good play. But I'm like, it's a good play, you know, in a simulated world against the robot. But it's not in practice
against the human, right? You don't need to be doing that. So if you become a slave to the sim and always do what the sim says, you're handcuffed to a certain degree. - Is there some, at the
highest level of plays, there's still a role
for feel and intuition. - Absolutely. If you're not doing that,
'cause here's the thing, right? No human being plays perfectly balanced in game theory optimal like a robot would. They're not, right? So there are opportunities there to take advantage of
the things that they do that are slightly too
aggressive or less aggressive. You know, for example,
say most human beings don't bluff enough in a certain spot. So you don't have to call with
the correct range of hands. You don't have to, because they're not bluffing
at the optimal frequency. So you don't have to call
at the optimal frequency. You'd be making a mistake
frankly, if you did. - What's the difference between
in-person and online play, given that context? - Yeah, well, online poker and live poker, it's the same game, right? Same, it's poker, but it's different in so many levels, right? I think playing online, you have to focus far
more on fundamentals, you know, on game theory, you don't have the added bonus
of looking across the table and getting any sense
of whether your opponent is strong or weak, they're
bluffing, whatever, you know? And also, because online
poker, those that play it, you play far more hands. Like some of these guys
are playing 10, 20 tables at the same time, right? So you're just, you're hitting
the long run really quickly, and you're creating a database
on your opponents, right? So let's have, you know,
online, I can see your data. I'm like, well this guy,
he's playing 40% of hands, he's betting the river 80% of the time. So now I can use that data, and you know, exploit you that way. When you play live, you don't have that. - Do you enjoy playing online? - I enjoy, so with online poker, I enjoy the convenience of it, 'cause you know, you can be on
your couch in your underwear, not leave your house. - Do you also play multiple
games at the same time, or do you try to play one game? - I typically like to play one or two, but I can play up to four. I find that past four, it's hard for me to keep up and keep track of what's
actually happening. You know, it's a different
mindset required. Like a lot of these young guys, they're accustomed to 20 tables at a time. - It feels like the purity
of the game is gone. - It's much more robotic, right? So if you're playing 20 tables, you're just making decisions
based on like what, you know, you're not thinking about the depth of the situation, and what just happened 15 minutes ago. You don't even know what happened, because you can't pay
attention to all that at once. - And some of the magic of
poker is the low sample. - I agree. - Like for example, and sorry to be bringing
up Magnus so much, but there's so much parallel
between the two of you and the poker and the chess world. He hates Olympics, and
World Championships, and all that kind of stuff
because it's so low sample. But to me, that's part of the magic of it. There's the World Series
of Poker, the main event. There's a magic to it. - I agree, yeah. - And I don't know what that is exactly because so much is at stake, it's so rare. So much drama and
heartbreak leading up to it that all somehow, yeah, it accumulates
to that magical moment when somebody wins. - Especially that event. The World Series of Poker
main event historically, like that's it. You know, that's the pinnacle. That's where like mainstream watches, that's where people are tuning in, and the gravity of the moment, you know, it's so much bigger than people, like everyone gets the opportunity to play armchair quarterback too, right? Oh, he should do this. You're not there. You're not under the lights,
you're not under the pressure. You know, it might seem easy
for you at home to be like, well, obvious, because you
can see the hold cards. You know, they can't. Certainly the idea of the
small sample with tournaments, I like the idea that you
don't have to worry about, oh, well if I do this now, then in the future, you
know, I won't be balanced. I have to be balanced here,
or anything like that. That's like really boring and lame, right? Again, that is kind of the way the younger generation
learns how to play the game, being balanced in every spot. And then randomizing, you know? Like, oh, I'm supposed to
do this 50% of the time. Okay, so if my left
card is red, I'll do it, and if it's black, I don't. So you're not even making, you're no longer making
actual decisions for yourself, you're just randomizing. And that's way less fun for me than tailoring it to the situation. - And the final table at the main event, there's none of that. You have to, I mean, it's all or nothing. - Well you shouldn't be, but there are. Like again, I think a
lot of the young guys, they are thinking in that regard. Like, oh, randomization. - Maybe at that table, the
final table at the main event, what's a hand that stands out to you that was especially gutsy
and powerful or memorable, or that you've seen in
the history of poker? - Well, for me, the one that stands out, and probably 'cause I was so
young and it was my first year, like one of my, well I
won a bracelet that year, was I was friends with Scotty
Nguyen, the prince of poker. And he was Heads Up against
a guy named Kevin McBride. And I was on the rail, you know, I'm like, wow, he's gonna, you know, he's Heads Up. And he was so cool. Like he had a mullet,
but it's perfect, right? He had the white shirt
with the black thing. Yeah, he's drinking a Michelob, smoking a cigarette,
whatever, you know, all chill. He bets it all in the river,
and the guy's thinking, and he psychologically owned him, and he said, he goes
with his beer, he goes, "You call, gonna be all over, baby." That's right. Okay, so this guy who was
an amateur, heard that, and was like, there's so much pressure
in this moment right now. I can't handle this pressure. But Scotty just told me, if I call here, the pressure's gone. I don't have to be under it anymore. So he sort of hypnotized
him into making the call. You know, and Scotty had it. Scotty had, you know, the full house, and it was over for the guy. You call, gonna be all over, baby. It was, I just, I love that aspect, sort of the table talk dynamic, which isn't as prevalent
today as it was back then, but that one sticks out, and it probably, 'cause
it was one of my first. - It's so, the few words
you say at the table can completely affect a hand like that. That's almost, that's scary. - It was just so cool to me. You know, like just how he was so calm, and I think that too added
more pressure to the amateur. And I think like, again, part of it is, even back then, it was 1998, there's still a big rail of
people, and there's lights, and they're, you know, they're filming and all this kind of stuff, and it's a lot of pressure for a guy who's never been in this environment. And now, I'm telling you,
it can all be over soon. It will all be over soon. Just call, it's finished. (Daniel laughing) - Something about that accent too. Now you're a master at table talk as well. Do you have, do you just
kind of go with your gut, you flow with it? Or is there a deliberate
strategy with this sometimes? - There's usually some sort
of strategy that I think about in terms of what I wanna say and whatnot. But a lot of the time I just
go, I go with it, you know? - The more you talk, the
more information you get. - Yeah, but in some cases,
against really good players, you're just giving away
information, right? Like if I'm playing against Phil Ivey, I'm not engaging in anything. 'cause he can read
through it, he can sense, based on what I'm saying, you know, the clues and where
I'm trying to take him, and he reads through, he sees
the tree through the forest, or whatever you wanna call it,
the forest through the trees, and you know, so then I would just be like allowing myself to be exploitable. - Is some of it just for fun? Because at the end of the
day, if you're having fun, you might be at the top of your game. - I've been thinking about
this a lot lately, actually. It's funny you bring this up because I've been thinking
about when I'm at my best, and I think I'm at my best when I am comfortable like that, right? Where I'm not so stiff. - [Lex] Yeah. - And worried about, you
know, checking properly, and worried about reading people. I'm like, no, I'm me, all right? I'm gonna play some poker,
what do you wanna do? You wanna call me? Call, go ahead, do what you want, right? Because then I realized, you know, ultimately it was like,
I'm comfortable in that, my opponents aren't as
comfortable in that. They're comfortable with this,
you know, the robot thing. But I thought more about that, and how, especially with
some tournaments coming up, I plan on really kind of, sort
of getting back to my roots in that regard. - I love it. From a spectator perspective, I love it. But it's also interesting you
see a Daniel Negreanu quiet. (Daniel laughing) That's an interesting, like, like it feels like a calm
before a storm of sorts. So I'm sure that's also part of it. - Yeah, like I've gone,
I've ebbed and flowed, and like I said, you know,
I took on some coaches, and that was really learning game theory, 'cause I felt like it was
important to always stick, you know, keep up with what's going on. And then I do feel like to some degree, it sort of took away a little bit of my own instinctual ideas in terms of what I should be doing, right? So I think like the most
dangerous version of myself is a deep understanding of the game theory with my wisdom of many years of, and comfort of just sort of
like being myself at the table. - [Lex] And being relaxed. - Relaxed. - Letting your mind flow. Let me ask you the
greatest, the GOAT question, greatest of all time. Can you make the case for a few folks? So first, you tweeted referring
to Phil Ivey as the GOAT, saying "The GOAT doing GOAT things". That's a recent tweet. So can you make the case for Phil Ivey, or maybe who is the greatest
poker player of all time? Would you put Phil? - For me, until someone
knocks him off the podium, the king of poker and the
GOAT is Phil Ivey, okay? So, and the reason I say that is I think of poker as more
than just one game, right? There's different variants, you know, there's Hold 'Em, Omaha,
Stud, Triple Draw, all these different types of games. And Phil, in every
arena, has been dominant, whether it was tournament
poker, dominated it, mixed game, high stakes poker
in Bobby's room, dominated. Online poker against all
the wizards, dominated. Made millions in every arena. And you know, he sort of took
a few years away from poker with his legal troubles
and things like that. But he's back, you know, he's been playing in the
High Roller Series again. And you know, he comes from, he's cut from a different cloth, but he has a tenacity and a focus that's unparalleled, I think. When he's in the zone. I mean, for lack, and this
has nothing to do with race, it really has to do with mannerism. But he does remind me
of like a combination of Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods in the way that he approaches it. He's very intense. - [Lex] Yeah. - And he outworks everybody, you know, and has, I think, frankly, a lot of his mannerisms do come from them, because he's young,
watching these guys on TV. And a lot of his ways of being, you know, is learned behavior, I think probably from people like that. - People at the top of their sport and people that are Tiger
Woods and Michael Jordan aren't just at the top of their sport, but they kind of dominate the sport. That's some kind of aura that-- - There's a uniqueness to them. They're not built like us. You know, they're not. Like, I wish I could
have the kind of focus that Phil Ivey has, you know, and see
everything that he's seeing. I just, that's not me, you know? I don't have that, and he does, he has that gene, whatever it is. - But they also look like
they're not having that much fun. They're more focused on the perfection, like a dogged pursuit of perfection. - And, you know, that might even be true. It might not be as fun,
you know, I don't know. Like I have fun at the table. When you look outwardly, you look at someone, like
maybe he is having a blast. Maybe that's just the way
that he likes, you know, - [Lex] That's the way. - Like is Tiger Woods having
fun when he's like on 17 about to win a major? Doesn't look like it, theoretically. - Yeah, well, if you
look at Michael Jordan, I don't know about Tiger Woods, but I think they're more focused on every single mistake they make. - [Daniel] Yeah. - I think they're more obsessed
about not making a mistake and hating every time they make a mistake. That's probably like 99%
of their mental energies. - I think that's part of
what makes them great, right? They don't look past the mistake and just let it, it's whatever. No, they're like, they wanna correct it. - Yeah, there's a tension
and almost like a trade off. I wonder if that's always the case between sort of greatness and happiness. - I remember Huck Seed, who, you know, when I was a kid growing up,
he was like the poker idol. He won the World Championship in 1996, and I was lucky enough to hang
out with him a little bit, and he would go through these streaks where he had an A game
and he had an F game. His a game was unparalleled. Nobody could beat him, right? But his F game was so terrible
that he was just a fish, you know, he was playing terribly. And I remember him saying, and it was exactly what you're saying. He'd make like one little mistake, right, and then he would go off. And I was like, "Huck, why do you do that? "Like, you know, your B
game would be just fine." He's like, "Well, if I'm
gonna make a mistake, "what's the point?" What's the point, right, of trying. Like, if you can't play perfect, there's no point in playing at all. So he was extreme in that regard, in the way that he viewed it. - And depending on the sport, those folks, like in chess, certainly the case, that kind of mindset can destroy you. - [Daniel] Absolutely,
no, totally see that. - A sequence of mistakes, like the kind of year you had
with the World Series of Poker can completely destroy a human being if you're not able to see
the bigger picture of it. - [Daniel] Yeah. - You said that Phil Ivey's the hardest, that your toughest opponent, the toughest person to play against. Why is that? And how do you beat him? - Well, because Phil Ivey's just, he's seeing things that
nobody else is seeing, really. Like subtle things, where I'm putting my
hands where I'm looking, you know, my pulse, like stuff that I don't
even know I'm giving off. He's so engaged and so focused, and has such a, just a,
he's fearless, right? A lot of people, you know, they'll play poker and
be like, you know what, I don't think this guy has it. But do they have the guts? Do they have the cahonas, if you will, to actually do anything about it, right, and stand up to this person? He does, you know? - I forgot the hand that you tweeted about the GOAT doing GOAT things. - That wasn't even that
big of a GOAT hand. - It was pretty impressive. - There's hands where like, there was a famous one in Australia where the flop was like, Jack, Jack, nine, and Phil check raised the
flop with six, seven, nothing, just absolutely nothing. And the guy re-raised him, right? And Phil just knew, he
went all in with nothing. If the guy calls, he's done, he's cooked. But he was so tuned in
that this guy's not strong, that he just, you know,
he did things like that. And it's tough to play
against a guy like that. - So he gets great reads and
is able to execute on them, has the guts to execute on it. - He's got experience,
he's got work ethic. He also, I think one
thing I'm underselling too is his strategic mind, right? Like, I believe that,
you know, like I said, the new age player, they learn how to play through a very systematic approach. Okay, let's look at the data. Make up a game right now. Three cards, we each get three cards. Jacks are wild, sixes are, you know, six of hearts is wild, right? Just make up that game. Phil will figure it out intuitively, very, very quickly, right, without having the answers for him, right? So that's like the difference between the players of my generation. We had to figure this
stuff out on our own. Today, well, I wanna know the answer, I go ask the computer and
the computer tells me. So I really believe like if
you created a game from scratch that Phil Ivey would be my
horse that I wanted play in it. - So he's in some sense, in tune with some deeper thing within. - He has what we would, what
we used to call card sense. - Card sense. Can you try to make the
case for some others, like Doyle Brunson, Phil
Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu, and maybe one of the modern guys like Justin Bonomo or somebody like that. - Sure. Oh, so let's start with Doyle, okay? Like what Doyle has going
for him above and beyond is twofold, really, longevity. I mean, he's in his late 80s. And last time I played with him, I was, I'm like, how is he getting better? Like I really felt like he was
playing better than he had, you know, in the previous years. But also with Doyle,
like Doyle had to figure, you know, we talked about my generation, having to figure it on their own. I mean he, they really had to
figure it out on their own. Like they didn't have
any computer stimulation to tell you if Ace, King was
a favorite over pocket sixes. They didn't. So we know what he did. He would take a deck of cards, and they would deal out,
and they with a notepad, write, okay, Ace, King won. And then they would do like a
hundred of them and be like, all right, Ace, King won like
53, so it must be a favorite. And he did it manually, you know? And he did it in a time when
it was very, very difficult. And he's seen poker evolve and
change throughout the years. Now listen, is he going
to be able to compete against the top players
in the world today? Absolutely not, you know? But how many, he's the best 88-year-old
player in the world by a mile, okay? That's not even close. And Doyle, again, he's another
guy who plays all the games. He's played high stakes cash
tournaments, you name it. He's iconic, you know,
he's the godfather, so. - But there's also an element
to the iconic element, like you're a personality in poker. I mean, not to romanticize
this thing too much, but poker is also a game of personalities. I mean, it's part of the greatness is like the uniqueness of the human being. - Yeah, I think also, yeah, I mean if you like looking
at it from that perspective in terms of like GOAT, like GOAT in terms of what you represent, like the cowboy, the godfather, you know, he's been around, you know, he played in the '60s and stuff like that. It's just something like incredibly cool. Like I often think about
if I could go back in time and like visit, you know, an era, I'd love to go like to Vegas in the '70s, and just like, I already, like, I can think of
what it would smell like, probably not ideal, cigarettes and you know,
the leather jackets, and just the vibe of what
it must have been like with the mobsters and things like that. You know, he's lived through all that, all the cool movies we've seen, like Doyle talks about
some of those films, and he is like, yeah, that guy off, he said he was gonna
stab me in my stomach. You know, he knows these people. It was, he's like a
source of history, really. - Yeah, when poker was a game for the mob and the degenerates and
all that kind of stuff before transitioning
into professional sport. - Yeah.
- Professional game. Yeah, so he was there
through the whole thing. He's been there through
the whole transition. - He's seen it all, yeah. - Yeah, and then to the online world. So what about, I can't even say without
smiling, Phil Hellmuth. - Okay, so Phil, here's
the thing with Phil. He takes it very personal when I say this, and he doesn't hear the compliment. He only hears the negativity. Because Phil wants to be considered the greatest of all time. - [Lex] Hashtag positive. - He wants to be the greatest of all time. - [Lex] Yes. - But I'm like, Phil, here's the facts. You have the best absolute greatest resume at the World Series of Poker
of anyone in the world. Is that not enough, right? That's what you have. You have that, right? Now, do I think you're the
best No Limit Hold 'Em player in the world today? No. Do I think that, you know, you can play high stakes mixed games with the best players in
the world today and win. No, right? So he wouldn't get as
much flack on this topic if he wasn't so boastful and
like, you know, demanding. Like, you never hear Phil Ivey say, "I'm the best in the world." Like his peers do, right? But Phil wants to make the claim, and I simply say I beg to differ, right? I beg to differ. Like, I don't think you are the, you know, the best player in the world. - If we can linger on the
compliment so he can hear it, what makes him so good? Because it seems like a lot of times, his play is not optimal. - Yeah, he definitely has his own brand of and style of play, right? He does not adhere to, he's never used a solver in his life. He doesn't know, he's
not in that world, right? Phil does, Phil has a lot of faith and a lot of confidence in what he does, and that it will be successful. And I think there's something
to be said about that, right? He doesn't ever lack in
belief that he can win, and he finds a way to do it his way. And frankly, a lot of what he does is very effective against
specific types of players who are intimidated by him, by whether it's his
resume, or his demeanor, or his attitude sometimes, right? Like if you're an average player, and then you know, you
beat Phil in a hand, you're gonna hear it. This idiot from Northern
Europe and beat me in this pot. Like, and for some people,
they don't like that, so he can use that against them. But I also think too, like
he cares so much, right? And that leads to trying
really, really hard. Like he sees these moments,
and he doesn't phone them in. Like whatever brand of poker he plays, he tries his best at all
times to succeed and to win. And there's some, even though like he's fundamentally flawed in a lot of things that he does compared to some of the bigger players, his effort and will, and like his determination
to stick around is, you know, is up there. - And he is somebody who
seems to really hate losing. - Yes, yeah, you know, he's got this, he feels like he deserves
to win, right, in all cases. And if he loses it's,
you know, it's not just-- - As he joked around that you and him might do an anger management. - [Daniel] He said that in one video. - Course. Now this is tough because
you're a humble guy, but objectively speaking, can you say what your strengths are? You're often listed as one of, if not the greatest player of all time. So what are the things
that make you stand out? - So for me, when I grew up, I admired the big cash game players, 'cause that's what I was. I love tournaments, but I
wanted to be, well-rounded. Like in my day, you couldn't
make the Poker Hall of Fame if you just played one game. You had to jump into the high stakes games in Bobby's room, as they say, right? And I was able to do that. When I was in my early, in my mid 20s, I was playing 4,000, 8,000 limits. You know, you could win or lose
a million dollars in a day. So I grinded it out. Like a lot of people think, oh, you know, he's lucky he's had sponsorship,
otherwise he'd be broke. He's like, I built
multimillion dollar bankrolls before any of that stuff existed. And I did it the good old fashioned way by sitting my butt on the table. I think probably one
of my biggest strengths is self-awareness. And in that regard, a level of humility that always allows me to say,
okay, well you know what? In this case with these
players, they're better than me. So what am I gonna learn from them, right? Rather than have this need to say, I'm the best because of history. And I'm always looking to guys and go, wow, he does this really well. Whether it's the Addamos or the
Iveys, or whoever it may be. So my willingness to adapt,
I think, and stay relevant by learning what the
young guys are learning is something I've always done. And I also pride myself on,
again, being well-rounded, like playing all the games. Like I don't feel intimidated in any game, you know, whatever the format is. - So always being a scholar of
the game as the game evolves, as the different games evolve, the different players
evolve, the culture evolves. Always adjusting by being a scholar, having the humility to be a scholar. - A healthy respect for
the younger generation. How they learn, what they learn, and what they can teach
me, rather than poo poo it. And say, oh these kids today, 'cause that's a what a lot of
people like the Mike Matusows and the Phil Hellmuths, my generation, they just poo poo it, because they don't understand it. On a level of one to 10, their level of understanding,
this is like a one, maybe, if I'm being generous by calling it a one. They really don't understand
it, so they poo poo it, right? It's easy to do that. Like, oh, that's not how I do it, so that's wrong or that's
stupid or whatever. I don't take that approach. I go, well let me learn. Let me see what there is to this. - But that said, the
crankiness that Matusow and Phil Hellmuth have is great to watch, especially when they're
on a table with you. - [Daniel] Oh, I love it, yeah. It's a blast, it's a blast. - And you're masterful of being able to get under their skin. So what about somebody
from the new school, like Justin Bonomo, who's
leading in terms of cash wins? Is there somebody like
that that stands out to you as a potential GOAT status person? - Yeah, so there's two different ones, but one is very, so they're
both just no limit, right? So I like, again, when I
think of poker, I think of, you know, a variety of games. But there's so many of the
young guys that specialize. Michael Addamo is one that
I've mentioned several times. And I love the way that
he approached the game. Another one that's highly respected because of his online prowess,
and people have like looked, and how close he is to game theory, and they say he's about
as perfect as you get. And it's a kid named
Linus, Linus Loveonline, Linus Loeliger. So he just came second recently,
I believe in the Triton, huge Triton event. - So he's primarily an online player. - Yeah, he's an online cash
player for the most part. But he plays some live. And he's, you know, he's, again, and I respect
the peers that I play with who say, yeah, he's tough as nails. There's another kid too, Russian kid named Timofey Kuznetsov, and he plays all the games, and he's well respected,
you know, in that regard. And same with a guy like
Jungleman, Dan Cates, who's a unique personality. I mean this guy showed up, won the poker players championship back to back years in a Randy
Macho Man Savage costume. And he was doing Macho
Man the entire times. Oh yeah, I'm gonna take all
the chips like I did last year. Bust them all. And he was in character for
the entirety of the tournament. - [Lex] This is great. - Like just unique. But yeah, I respect for
a lot of those guys. - Is it gonna take time to figure out who, you know, stands the test of time? - That's the thing, right? So a lot of these kids,
like there was a guy who beat me Heads Up in the
million dollar One Drop. I got 8.7, he won $15 million. Kid named Dan Colman. He was seen as like, you know, the next big thing in poker, right? He made his money, it just wasn't for him. So he's moved on, you know,
to doing what he's doing. Skiing in the Alps, whatever. You know, nobody's seen him
from like five, six years, so that can happen, right? Because there is a lot of burnout. You know, I think it
was actually GothamChess who mentioned something about
how difficult it is to like, I think it's true in poker, when you get really,
really good at something, to get this much better
takes so much work, and a lot of people don't
necessarily wanna put in that kind of work in order to do that. - That's just, even
staying at the same level takes a huge amount of work. - Yeah. Like, so if you wanna get better at chess, you're already like really, really good, and you're trying to get
like one little bit better. You have to study like in a
ridiculous amount, you know? And again, that's once you've already had, I think the toughest thing for anybody, once you've tasted success and
you've already achieved it, staying hungry, staying on the top. Reaching the top is much easier
than it is to stay there. - Yeah. Over years, what's your
training regimen in poker in terms of how you keep improving? So you said you study games, but that's mostly leading up
to a particular tournament. But is there kind of behind
the scenes daily activity you tried to do that kind of
over time keeps you sharp? - So for me, now that I'm 47, and I feel like the predominant
aspect of my poker game is going to be, in terms of my success, is gonna be my mental state, right? So I find it's really, really important for me, now at this age, to have balance. So when I'm not playing
poker and I'm out of it, poker's not even on my radar, - [Lex] You're able to
remove it from your mind. - Doing my fantasy hockey,
play a little chess, you know, play some golf, watch some hockey, whatever the case may
be outside of the game. And then I start to get the itch. Like after the World Series of Poker, the poker door was closed. - [Lex] Yeah, you took some time off. - All of August, I didn't
play any poker at all until just recently. You know, I started to get the itch again. Because that's what's important for me, is if I don't have the itch and I don't want to play poker, then I'm not gonna be at my best. Once I start getting the
itch, that's when I start to, so, okay, let's start watching
some of these streams. Let's see what my
opponents are up to lately. And you know, let's look at some solvers and
different things like that. - And you're doing pretty good. You came back and doing pretty good. - Yeah, so far. - Do you like being in front of the camera through the hell of the World
Series of Poker this year, you filmed every single
day you did a vlog. Does that energize you? Is that exhausting? 'Cause it's really beneficial
to a huge amount of people. It energizes the poker community, but do you see it as a service or do you purely just love it? - I've been comfortable on
camera since I was a kid. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an actor, like really, really young. And I was always comfortable
in that environment. And I think like that gives me
a little bit of an advantage sometimes too with these filmed events, 'cause I'm comfortable with a mic on and on camera with the lights. And I think a lot of people maybe aren't with the knowledge that other people are gonna see what
they're doing every day. So it's been so
comfortable and easy for me as far as the World Series goes, and the vlogs and all the shooting, it's kind of therapeutic for me. It is essentially my version
of journaling, right? So there's a lot of value I think in like, at the end of the day, doing a brain dump where you
just write out and journal. But doing it on camera
has this similar effect. And it also, you know, when
you make a mistake on your own, you're held accountable to you. But when I have to
explain it to what others, like, here's what I did, and
this is the mistake I made, or whatever the case may be, it actually, I think
that helps me, you know? - Yeah, so you're held
responsible by a larger audience. - Yeah, I think 'cause like,
so like I said, listen, I'm 47, my life is good. I don't have to be in this tournament. If I'm over it, I can just dump my chips
off and go home, right? But I can't, when I'm doing the vlog, like I have to actually
answer to that, you know? And keeps me in line. - How hard is it to win the main event of the World Series of Poker? So the main event of the World of Poker is the hardest event to win, simply because of the sheer size of it. You know, you're talking
7, 8,000 players, right? And a lot of landmines, and frankly, there are so many players that you've not played with before too. You play these high roller
events, like these super ones, you get 30, 40 people. You know everybody, right? So you have an idea. You sit at the main event,
there's, you don't know, have any idea. This guy wearing a Philadelphia Eagles
jersey and sunglasses, and he just raised you big, I don't know this guy, I
don't know what he's about. So there's a lot of
like, it's grueling too. And you're seven, eight days where you're in the blender,
as you might say, so. - So what's the structure? So it's $10,000 buy-in
or something like that. And there's a bunch of tables
and you just keep playing, and you like, when is it
over for a single table? Does it go? - So the way that it works is this, so there's, let's say, 8,000 players. And the way the main event
works, unique to others, is there's various day
ones you can play, right? So at day one, you're gonna play from noon till like midnight, right? If you're still in, you bag up your chips, and you'll come back for day two, okay? There's four different day ones, right? Now they'll all combine
essentially to play a day two. And at the end of the night,
they redraw the tables. So you don't just win your table. If players get knocked out, tables break, they continue to be replaced. So you start with 8,000,
then, you know, after day one, you've got 6,000, then you do the same, you play, you know, like a 12 hour day, and you slowly whittle down. Day four, day three, day
four, you're in the money. And then you continue to progress. And then what they do
now with the final table, is they, because they were
trying to do this for TV, these final tables can take,
you know, 12 hours to play. And what we were finding was, you know, you start the thing at 5:00
PM and it goes till 8:00 AM, and like nobody's watching anymore. So they separate into three days now. And so you're talking now
it's like six, seven days to get to the final table, and another three days to play it. So you're under, you
know, you're grinding for, you know, a week and a half. - But most of the time
you're playing against people you've never played against before. - Especially early on, yeah. And then by the end,
like who knows, you know? Rarely do you see. You see in the last a hundred, you usually see some notable names. Then in the last 27 you
might see one, maybe two. Final table, maybe one. But often it's gonna be, you know, some players you've never heard of before. - Is there strategies that maximize your likelihood of having a chance? - Yes, absolutely. Like I think the World
Series of Poker main event is a unique animal in that, you know, like we talk about game theory
and all that kind of stuff. If you're focused on
that, when you're playing, you're really not playing well, right? You need to just exploit because you're gonna have a lot of people who see this as a bucket list item. You know, they just
wanna play the main event in the World Series. And they might be scared, they
might be nervous or whatever. You don't have to worry
about being balanced, right? Oh, you know, I have to make
sure that I'm, no you don't. You're playing with this
guy now for three hours, you might never see him again. So make the play that
makes sense for you, right? So yeah, you're gonna, I approach that event very differently than I would like playing
against the high roller players that I play with too. - Does that mean more
aggressive essentially? - Less actually. So when you play against
really good players, you have to take small plus EV scenarios where you push the envelope, and you're playing really aggressive. You're bluffing off your
stack, you gotta do this, you gotta focus a little
bit more on being balanced, 'cause otherwise, you know, you're not gonna beat these guys. Whereas if you're playing with amateurs and you're playing with regular players, for the most part, risking
all your chips on a bluff, probably don't need to do that. You don't need to do that nearly as much. You can probably slowly
but surely build your stack without taking, you know, those high risk, high variance situations, 'cause you'll find better situations. - What mistakes do amateurs usually make in tournaments like that? Are they over bluffing? - Well, I think amateurs generally, the biggest mistake they make is they think that pros are
bluffing more than they are. So like a pro will bet
all his chips on the end, they're like, ah, I don't know, maybe you know, this Phil Ivey, maybe he's doing some crazy stuff. He's like, probably not. - [Lex] Yeah. - He's probably just got it, you know? - And then they lose all their money by calling or going all in as well. And so the right thing is
to be more patient for, so amateur is too impatient
or just bad reads? - So all the amateurs are built different. Some of the amateurs are
just too weak and passive. They're just waiting
for the nuts, you know? - [Lex] Yeah. - And then, you know, the
pros, everyone notices that. And then when they make their big hand, they don't get paid anyway. So in order to win the main event, I mean, you have to have
some components of your game that are aggressive. It's very unlikely to expect to just get the cards the whole way and just always have the best hand. You're gonna have to find ways
to win pots that, you know, where you don't have the best hand. - How do you win the final table? - The final table's unique now, especially because you're talking about, the way that poker works in tournaments is that if there's seven people left, and you have just a, you know,
you're very short on chips. But if one other player goes out, you just make like $300,000 for folding, like just for sitting out, right? The term for that that, you know, show kids use is ICM, independent, you know, chip model, right? Where it talks about
the value of each chip. Where what happens, what we see now is, let's say one guy has a big chip lead, and there's another guy
who's second in chips, and there's a couple that are short. These guys in the middle,
they just play super tight, and they wait for the little guys to go, while the big stack is just pounding them because he can afford to, right? He knows that people are handcuffed. So let's say I had 10 million in chips and you have 9 million in chips, and these guys have little chips. If I go all in on you, are you
gonna call me and risk like, you know, guaranteed pay jumps of like moving up a few spots? So really the question comes down to like, are you the type of guy
who just wants to inch up, or are you gonna go for it and
you're gonna go for the win? I think ultimately there's some value in being the guy who says, you know, I don't care if I come seventh. I'm not worried about going
from seventh to fifth. I'm here to win. - And so you're saying
like the guys that win will often be the ones that call there. So like, they're not just
bullying the small stacks, they're-- - Well, no, they're the ones that are willing to risk it, right? So there are some people who, you know, if there's five left, you know,
and they're third in chips, and there's two guys very short, and you know, they'll have
Ace, King and someone moves it, they'll just fold. They fold the hand because they wanna wait for those two other players to get broke, and that way they let you
know they make actual money. So I guess the thought process
between winning first place and winning the most amount
of money are different. They're conflicting, right? Because in order to like
win the, if you're just, if your focus is only on
winning the tournament, you will make mistakes financially where you had guaranteed
income for just folding, right? Let's say a guy has one chip
left, you know, one chip, and me and you have good chips, and I go all in with you and I lose. Now that guy, you know, got
the guaranteed, you know, he got the pay jump that
I wouldn't have got. So there's some extremely
stupid mistakes you can make from a financial perspective, but it's often at odds with, you know, giving yourself the best
chance to actually come first. - And in a tournament,
especially the main event, especially the final table,
it's all about coming in first. - Well, I know, because most
of the people who make it, so like, you know, when you
play these high rollers, these guys are accustomed to
playing for a hundred thousand, they're accustomed to this kind of money, so they're gonna play, right? But you're talking about guys that bought into a 10,000 tournament, maybe never had 100 K cash in their life, and now they're sitting there, and it's like 1 million for
fifth and 2 million for fourth. So like, they don't wanna be bipped, they're just gonna sit there
and go, ah, I don't want, so they'll be under
more financial pressure because they're not like your typical high roller type player. - Are you still able to find
the guts to take big risks? - Yeah, see, I'm trying to win. Like, I think that gives
me an advantage, frankly, where I might make decisions
that are financially suboptimal because I'm trying to win. But there's also an
inherent advantage to that. Like that, again, something
I watched and learned from a guy like Michael Addamo, where he takes advantage of these people playing so passively in these spots, where he is like, I don't,
I'm not trying to come, I'm gonna win. I'm just gonna bulldoze you, 'cause I'm not worried about, you know, the small financial mistake
of, you know, a pay jump. - What advice could you give
to beginning poker players, or actually at every level, how to get better, how
to improve their game? Obviously, as you said, it's easiest to get
better in the beginning, but what advice would you
give how to get better? - So one of the ways,
I mean I think way back to the how I started, right? And there's so many resources
and tools available right now to analyze hands. But when you play, right, and you find yourself in a situation or a hand that you're
not really sure about, not because you had Aces and
went all in and you lost. Like that's not interesting, but an interesting situation where you're not sure what you did. Jot the hand down, write it out, and then either, A, you
know, use some of the tools, whether it's the solvers, if you're, you know, advanced enough. Or ask your group, you know? Like have a couple friends at your level and talk through the different decisions and start to learn that way, right? 'Cause those mistakes that you
make, or those tough hands, that's where the real learning comes from. Like, so that next, so
basically if you're, 'cause you're gonna be
in similar scenarios. In poker, you're rarely gonna
have the identical situation, but you'll have situations
that are similar. You know, you raise with
Ace, King, someone three bet, another guy goes all in. Okay, well what do I do in that spot? You know, you're gonna
have similar situations in the future as well. So figuring that out, the more you can do that,
you chop away at, you know, different strategical mistakes, you know, you used to make
that you no longer make. - Are there resources, like your masterclass, is really is great. Are there books? - So there was a guy
named Michael Acevedo, this is my, again, for a little
bit more advanced players, but it's a book called
"Modern Poker Theory", I think it's called, which sort of explains game theory, right, to the novice, right? So it's a little bit, I
think if you're new to poker, it's probably above the rim for you. But once you start to get a little better and you wanna understand how to do it, it's probably a good
resource for as far as books. And there's also like tons of people who stream poker, professional players. And then you can get in there, and you get in on the chat
and you start talking. You ask them and you see people, you know, explaining their thought
process and things like that. There's so many free resources. And of course my masterclass,
I think does a good job of sort of compartmentalizing, like, you know, how to
attack it on a deeper level. And you know, we get it. I try to get into, well it's funny, when
I did the masterclass, I asked them, I was like, well, you know, how high end do you want
this in terms of poker? And they're like, we want
really, really high end. And I was like, okay, you sure? And then I started to explain
really, really high end. I'm like, okay, well maybe
the one below that, right? (Daniel laughing) So I try to explain really
complex, you know, theory in a more palatable way,
in English, if you will, because some of these kids, you hear them talk and you'd be like, huh? - But you also, which is
really nice, give example hands that really illustrate a
point, which is really nice. You also wrote a book,
I think 10 years ago, "Power Hold 'Em Strategy". It's interesting to think how
much of the stuff in that book still applies, how much doesn't. - Listen, I still think the book holds up to a certain degree. Obviously like, you know, it isn't optimal because there's like a
more advanced strategies, and if you played that way, people will figure out
a way to exploit you. But if you're like an average player playing an average buy-ins, like that's sort of what I coined, like small ball approach,
absolutely will work, you know? At the highest level, you
have to add much more, a lot more bluffing. But overall, I think it's still, you know, for the most part, there's a lot of real, especially with tournaments, there's a lot of really
good principles in the book. - What's the difference in the dynamics, if you could just comment
on between Heads Up poker, and when multiple people are in one hand, what are interesting aspects to everything we've been talking about, from game theory to
exploitative strategies, to all that kind of stuff. - So the biggest difference when you play, let's say, Nine Handed, you know, against eight other players,
and you know, Heads Up, is first of all, just the type of hands and the number of hands
you're gonna have to play. So the way that it works
is if there's nine people, two out of the nine hands,
you have to put in money. And the other seven you could
just fold for nothing, okay? When you're Heads Up, you're forced to put money
in every single hand, okay? And there's only one other
hand in front of you, which means the ranges
of hands that you play is way wider, right? So if you're nine handed, right, and you're in first position,
you're like, all right, what do I need to play? Like a good pair, you know,
two high cards, suited, a big Ace, you know, stuff like that. That's it, right? That's what you're gonna play, right? And you're gonna fold all the rest. When you're Heads Up, you
look at a King and a two, and you're like, well, I gotta play this. You know, you're gonna, you're forced to play a lot more hands and a lot more complex situations when you're playing Heads Up, because you're gonna be
playing much far weaker hands, Queen five, Jack three,
all these types of hands. And you're gonna see flops where you're not gonna have
the luxury of being like, I'm in there with a premium
hand, Queens, Kings, Aces. Those are easier to play, right? Very, very strong holdings. Heads Up, you're forced to dance and fight a lot more, you know? You can't sit in the weeds and wait. - What do you enjoy more? Heads Up is very intense. I like Heads Up. But I think if you had to
play Heads Up eight, 10 hours, it's so mentally draining, 'cause you're faced with
so many constant decisions, each and every spot. Like you play Nine Handed, you look at a nine and a
three, you throw it away. You hang out for a bit. - You get breaks.
- Relax. You go, you get a little break. Heads Up, you're like,
it's like boom, boom. It's like you're in the ring. You know, you're in the Octagon, and you're facing like haymakers nonstop. - Since we talked about online a bit, is it possible to cheat in
poker, especially online? So we offline also talked
about the cheating controversy that's going on in the chess world, is it possible to use, what is it, remotely connected anal
beads to somehow cheat? No, is there, is that a
concern of cheating online? - So here's the thing, it's kind of like romanticized
from the old days. Like, you know, in the Western stuff, like people trying to cheat. - And have you ever killed
a man because he cheated? - No, I have not. But when I started out as a teenager, I played in a game with
a bunch of Italians, and I knew they cheated. And I didn't care 'cause they were so bad
that I could win anyway. I was like, I knew they would cheat, but I knew how they were cheating. So I was like, all right, you guys suck. But, so here's the thing. Anytime you're talking
about large sums of money, there will be people
looking to take advantage, whether that's live or online, right? And so it's like the job
essentially of the, you know, the online operators, or the, you know, live event staff to police it the best they can, and the players themselves being on the lookout for it, you know? Like a guy like Doyle
Brunson's a great resource 'cause he's seen it all, and he's seen all the tricks, you know? And so live, you know, he
probably could spot a few things, but online, there's various
ways people can try to cheat, but there's also really
good security measures in place to catch 'em, you know? And we've caught in like
about two years ago, there was a huge undertaking
of like 500 accounts that were banned for
doing different things. And you know, there's, and
again, you can't go in, they can't go into detail in
terms of how they're doing it, 'cause otherwise, you know, then you're sort of giving
the cheats the playbook in terms of how to take advantage. But it's always gonna
be a concern for poker wherever you play, right? But it's not something I'm
worried about personally. - So at the highest, in
person, and by the way, online, there is really interesting algorithms that do some of the work in
an automated way to detect, to flag things that are weird, but in person, it's just not
something at the highest level that you're super concerned about. So it's not, it didn't quite
infiltrate the poker world to a degree where it's a huge concern. - Yeah, like, so here's the thing. I don't play in private
games and whatever, right? - [Lex] Right. - But in private games, theoretically, you know, you could be in, if you don't trust the
people you're playing with, like, I've heard stories
of people where, you know, they have an earpiece in
that you can't see, right? And they have, you know,
like RFID on the cards or something like that, and
they have a phone reading it. So they have somebody
in a truck telling them, you're gonna win this hand,
you're gonna lose this hand. Like that happened in a
private game, you know? And the guy, what's often funny about some of these people who cheat, is they're so greedy and blatantly obvious that they get caught. Where if they use this
tool in a more subtle way, they could probably continue
to get away with it. But again, that's not
something I worry about in a casino environment, you know, in these tournaments and things like that. But if I was playing in private games, like if I came down to
Texas, and some guy named- I got cheated in a game by a guy named Blackie Blackburn and Tex. - That's a red flag right there. I was at the Chimo
Hotel, I was a teenager, and they saw me playing, you know, I was making good money as a teenager. I had like a $13,000 bankroll. You know, and I went and
played in this game with him in a private hotel room, and found out later that
the guy was a card mechanic. You know, he was dealing
and he could, you know, deal your hands, and he knew what you had and stuff like that. So yeah, I remember, you know, I lost a big number in that game. And it was a good learning
lesson in terms of, you know, being wary of who you trust. - Yeah, so if the dealer is in on it, that's one way you could cheat. It's fascinating. - That's part of the reason that they cut. So like, you'll see like
there's a burn card, because what would happen in, you know, maybe in the old days is like, if you're sitting in the one seat, I could lift the card
and you could see it, the next card coming, right? So what they do is they
have a card on top of it that you burn that isn't the card, and then the next card is
the one that comes face up. - I just learned about
the edge sorting thing that Phil Ivey and maybe
others were involved with. I just, reading it at first
was super interesting to me that you can exploit the imperfections in the printing of cards. - [Daniel] Yeah. - That was almost cool to me. That's almost not cheating
because it's like- - [Daniel] That needs to be a movie. - That needs to be a movie, yes. - Yeah, what happened with
Phil Ivey in that whole case is it's a catastrophe, really. - [Lex] Yeah. - It is such a horrible precedent, 'cause here's what he did. Phil Ivey shows up at the casino, says, I wanna play this game. They say, okay. All right, I wanna play with those decks. They say, okay. They agree to everything that he says. He never touches the cards. He doesn't do anything outside of the fact that cards that you supplied
have imperfections on them and he can see them, okay? So that increases his chances of winning. He could still lose theoretically, right? Probably not. But he can lose in theory, it just gives him a little bit of an edge. and it's all stuff based
on what you provided. So the idea that you offered a
game, I accepted, I beat you, and now you wanna free
roll me, that's disgusting. - So for people who don't
know, maybe you can elaborate, and it's just fascinating to me. But you're exploiting the
imperfections in the card patterns in the back, and then they look
different if you rotate it. And the fascinating thing
too, when you shuffle, usually you don't rotate the cards so that you can see the, sort of detect which
cards are the strong cards by marking them by through rotating them. And the way you know they're rotated is because of the pattern imperfections. - Yeah, so some of the
cards, like you said, like, you know, they have
those like, that pattern on it. And some of them, this
was faulty cards on their, were not cut properly. So like the eights and nines
had the card cut differently. And those are important
cards in this game, you know, the eights
and nines or whatever. So you could essentially, from looking at the back of the card, discern, you know, what it's gonna be. You do nothing in terms
of like cheating yourself. You're not rigging the game. All you're doing is taking
advantage of the fact that you're playing, you know, you've offered me cards that are faulty. - Can I just say that, of course, it would be Phil Ivey, who's the GOAT at the normal game will be to figure out
this particular thing. I mean, that's what,
if you're into soccer, this Diego Maradona has
that famous hand of God in the World Cup, where he scores a goal with his hand. And so, of course, the
referee didn't see it, they thought it was a header. So, I mean, part of the magic of the genius of the people
at the top of the game is they're able to exploit
all the flaws that are there. that's a beautiful thing to-- - Well see, like Phil had,
you know, in his heyday, he exploited weaknesses
in casinos, you know, systems all over the country. Like in one night, I don't
know if you know this story, in one night he would take
a plane, a private plane, and fly to 30 different
casinos all over the country, 'cause he would have these
deals where they're like, all right, we got this big rich sucker who's gonna come here and play craps, he's gonna lose all our money. So he'd have this deal
with one of the casinos where they'd be like, all right, you get 20% back
up to half a million, right? So if you lose half a million, we'll give you back 100K, okay? So he'd go to one casino in Tunica, he'd play half a million. He'd win, win or lose,
you know, he would leave. They think they're gonna get 'em to stay, they get him a big room or whatever. So let's say he goes to Tunica, he loses half a million, okay? Now he goes, he flies to Atlantic City, he wins half a million, okay? He lost half 1,000,00
and won half a million, but he got a hundred thousand back. So he's actually plus 100,000. Do that at 10 casinos a night, you're making a million
dollars in free equity. And they would give him promotional chips and all these kind of things, and free flights and stuff like that. So he took advantage of the image, you know, that they're trying to exploit. So this is why I don't have
any empathy for these casinos, 'cause they're giving you free drinks, they're giving you, why do
you think they're doing that? Out of the kindness of their heart? They're trying to exploit you. So guess what? You lost at your own game, pay the piper. And I think it was crazy 'cause
the judges in his case said, he did not cheat, but yeah,
it's probably not right. Hold on. You just said he didn't cheat. You know, that should
be the end of the case. - And then the casinos do the funny thing, I mentioned to you, I was just at the UFC, and Dana White is a huge gambler. He's a blackjack gambler, and there's that famous situation where he got kicked out of a casino, and the casinos do that kind
of thing when you win too much. So he won some ridiculous amount of money. He bets like, I mean he plays
like millions of dollars on hands of blackjack, it's insane. And so he won really big
and he got kicked out. - Was he counting? - No, no, he wasn't counting. - So counting in blackjack
here in Las Vegas is like the only game where they actually can
ask you not to play. So like basically if you're
counting cards, right, you could potentially
have an edge in blackjack, and there are some
professionals who do that, but they get caught pretty quickly. And then they say you can play craps, you can play whatever you want, but you can't play blackjack here anymore. - No, I think, I don't think
Dana White is counting. I think he was winning a lot. I guess they can claim that they believe you're counting, because how do you really
know if you're counting? - Well they easily, they figure it out. So basically they have an eye
in the sky and they can see. So if you're varying your bet size, right? So there's certain spots, where based in the cards that are out, let's say for example, a lot of the twos, threes,
and fours, and fives have been coming out. So the deck is rich in face cards. That's very good for the player, right? So imagine you were betting 500 bucks, and then all of a sudden, you up your bet to 2,000 or
5,000 when the deck is rich. They know when the deck
is rich in high cards, 'cause they keep a counter themselves. So if they notice a player
increasing their bet sizes when the deck is good for
them, it's a telltale sign. - Interesting. I don't think Dana
White would be counting. It's so casinos don't kick you out if you- Don't often kick you out, or do they ever kick you out
if you make too much money? If playing millions of dollars, they-- - Unless they would never kick you out for making too much money
unless they suspect cheating, 'cause why would they? They have an advantage,
they want the money back. It's not like you go in
there win 10 million, you're like, oh no, that's enough for us. - What about if he was
talking shit the whole time, I wonder. - I don't think that
would matter, you know? - Hey, because in the long run,
they'll get the money back. - Exactly.
- Yeah. You tweeted, "If you watch
Jersey Shore Family Vacation, "we would probably get along really well." What is it about, because I
lived in Jersey for a while. What is it about Jersey Shore
characters that you love? - I just love that they're
sort of, I love the debauchery. I think Pauly D's a fun guy, you know, and just like, it's
just something like in, it's just, it's what do you call it? It's trash TV, it's a guilty pleasure. But you just watching Snookie get drunk and falling all over herself or whatever. - So is that part, do you love
that part of Vegas as well? - Not really. Like, I don't go out and stuff, but I kind of, I just like the characters. I like that they have, you
know, unique personalities. And I think like we live in a world now where people are more and
more careful of what they say and afraid of backlash and all that stuff. And it's kind of like
an old school version of just like say what you feel. It's okay, as long as your
intent is good, and you know? Like they haven't been
canceled, if you will, which is good. But I feel like their type of behavior, slowly but surely, like 'cause they got a
lot of flack originally for misrepresenting like Italian Americans or something like that. Like there was a lot of backlash about this isn't how Italian
Americans really are, and blah blah blah. So they sort of were representing
that group of people, and you know, they received
some backlash back in the day. - I'm a huge supporter of diversity in all the beautiful forms that the human species
is able to generate, and that's certainly one dimension. What's the greatest Vegas
movie would you say? I don't know if that's
a difficult question. "Fear and Loathing Las Vegas",
"Leaving Vegas", "Casino". - I watch, 'cause anytime
"Casino" is on randomly, I always watch it. - Such a great movie. It could be one of the Sharon Stone. - Frankly, Sharon Stone reminded me, every time I would watch the movie, reminded me of my wife, Amanda. It's like totally, I would
see like the character, and I was like, I'm the
Robert De Niro character in the film. It was, I used to watch it
through that lens, you know? - From a like the depth
of love that you have. - Just kind of, she was, I
remember that she was like, she lit up every room. She does light up every room. She goes there, everybody's
attracted and drawn to her, and she was kind of, when she was younger, she was a little wild
and crazy and whatnot. So she reminded me of the
Sharon Stone character, and then the Robert De Niro character was trying to like have a stable life, you know, and be that. Now that was me. - Who was the Joe Pesci in your life? - Well there was a guy named, there was a James Woods for
sure, who was the Lester. We actually called him Lester. A few of my friends called him Lester, you know, the greasy guy try
to get back in and all that, but yeah. - Yeah, one of my favorite scenes is when they meet out in the desert, and it's like a 50-50 odds if you're gonna make it out alive. And that, I mean they're, yeah, there's an epicness
to that portrayal of Vegas. - I love, I mean it's
just, you know, totally. I mean it's obviously more
corporate now and it's different. But I love those movies. I love all those movies,
just seeing that life. And like I said, if there
was a period in time that I could go back
to and just experience, it would be that, you
know, right around then. - That would be that, with
playing with a mob and not-- - I think of like these crime shows today, like they're so unrealistic now because if they're in an era that is now, like none of this stuff can happen, 'cause there's cameras everywhere. You can't like get away with
these like killing somebody and jumping in a car. And you're gonna get caught, you know? But in the '70s, you
know that stuff happened. - [Lex] Cross the line,
you die is good old days. - Yeah, Lake Mead is
recently like losing water, and like every couple days, they're finding more and
more bodies from that era. - [Lex] Oh no. - They really are, yeah. - You're close with your mom. What did you learn about
life from your mom? - My mother was very generous. My mother, she experienced
joy through giving people. Food for the most part, my
dad would get 'em drinks, and that was how she
felt fulfilled, right? She felt good when she
like would cook for you, and like she'd be that
person, you'd come over, she'd be like, are you hungry? And you'd say, oh no, no I'm okay. She's gonna put 15 things in
front of you, and you'll eat. You know, you're gonna eat. Because everyone does that to be polite. No, no I'm good. But you know, they will start to eat. And just her hospitality in that regard, and just being generous, and like being a good host to people and things like that, like. - How did that like help
define who you are as a person, that generosity? Did it rub off on you? - It made me think about in my life, when it comes to like any sort of business
deals or things like that, I don't wanna get the best of it in such a way where I
screw the other person. I genuinely don't. I'd much rather you owe
me, than me owe you. So if I hire people, they get paid more than
they're supposed to. And I'd rather them do
that and work towards it rather than feel underpaid. 'Cause if they're underpaid,
they'll likely under deliver. Whereas if they feel overpaid, then if I need them to
do something special, they're not gonna be like, hey, I don't get paid for that. Like, yeah, you do, you really do. So that's certainly like
played out in my life where I set it up in such a way
where I don't owe, you know? I'm owed, but that's okay, 'cause I can handle taking
the worst of it in spots. I don't like being the
person to, you know, feel like I'm indebted to others. - Yeah, and in some way the karma of that tends to pay dividends
in the long term somehow. Somehow there's somebody up there that's keeping track in some kind of way. What advice would you
give to young people today in high school, in college, how to have a career that can be proud of, or maybe how to have a life in
general they can be proud of? - I would say like, your
20s is a good opportunity to set yourself up for the
rest of your life, right? So while the 20s are a period
where you wanna have fun and you wanna experience youth, it's also a good opportunity
to start thinking about what do you want your life to look like in your 30s and your 40s, right? So I feel like it's the best time to really put yourself
out there and take risks, and try to hit it, you
know, whatever, you know, like to work really, really
hard to set yourself up, because, and I said this at
a event I was speaking at, when you're like with poker, when your bankroll is very, very small, it's replenishable, right? You don't need to protect
it as much as you do once you've got something, right? Once you have a brand or you have money, you have something like that, that's when you wanna start protecting it. But in your 20s is an opportunity to just really sort of get, you know, to work really, really
hard to set yourself up, you know, for the future. I am concerned a little bit, like every time I talk to kids today, I'm like, what do you wanna be? They all wanna be YouTubers,
or Instagram stars, or rappers, right? Like, okay, it's like that's cool, but like there's only so
many of those that, you know, that there can be. So it might be worthwhile having a little bit of a backup plan. - I think it's easier to be successful on Instagram and social media
if you do something else. - I would say this too, one
other thing I would say is, don't choose a profession or an idea because you think it'll
make you rich, right? Pursue something that you actually love. Because if you love it, you're way more likely to become rich. If you don't, you do something that
you don't actually enjoy, now you're spending a
lot of your life unhappy doing something you don't want, and if you're not passionate about it, you're probably not, the chance of you being
successful are much lower. - And also becoming rich, and I've talked to a lot of rich people, hang out with a lot of rich people, is not going to be as
fulfilling as you imagine, if you arrive there by not doing the thing
that you love doing. - [Daniel] That's true. - Ultimately the thing that
you love doing is like, that's what makes life worth it. - There's another quote, and
I can't remember who it was, otherwise I would quote them. But it says something
to the effect of like, if we believe in the lie
that more is always better, then we can never truly arrive. Because wherever we are,
more is better, right? I've never understood, and I've been around rich
people like, you know, you said, you know, I never got,
I can't, I don't get it. Like if you have a billion dollars, why do you give a shit about money at all? Like, and they're still
like, oh we made this deal, and I'm like, you know, we picked up 300. Who cares? Like your life is set. Like there is that bell curve, right? Where obviously being
in poverty, you know, there's obviously a high
rate of unhappiness, but there's a certain amount
of money where you reach, you know, where you reach
a level of happiness, and then too much, you find that people that are searching for money
to fulfill these holes, it starts to go back down again. - Well the getting more
money could become a game, like a sport that's fun to play as long as you directly
or indirectly acknowledge that what you love is the game of it. - [Daniel] Sure. - Versus the actual attainment of money. - And I think that's what it is, right? For me, I've never cared
about money that much. I just never did, otherwise I
would have a lot more of it. But it's always like, it's
always been strange to me how people that have that kind of money, like are cheap in any way, you know? Like they wouldn't donate
5,000 to a worthwhile charity 'cause it's like, buddy. Like when it changes your life not, and even like small things like taxes. Like okay you have $20 billion, and you're worried about
paying 33%, 30% or 31. I get it, I get the point of it all. But like it literally has no
effect on your life whatsoever. Your life is unchanged
whether it's 31 or 33. - Yeah, that's the
negative of a lot of money is if it corrupts the
way you see the world, you start to be protective and so on. I mean part of the challenge
of when you get a lot of money is people start to treat you differently. And so navigating that
correctly is very challenging, so don't change. Remain the same person you always were, 'cause if you change, you start to, I mean that's why power corrupts
is you get a lot of power, you get a lot of fame,
you get a lot of money, you start to distrust people, and you start to push away people that are actually really close to you. - And you also think,
you developed some biases where you think like
you're just this, you know, you think like it was all
you, and you're a genius, and you're so great, and all these other people who don't have, it's just 'cause they
don't have what you have. And like you just, then you start to like view that group of people, whether they're impoverished or whatever as like less than, and that you're some like great guru, or you could have just got
lucky and bought Bitcoins, that you know, could have done anything, and then you became like super wealthy. And then you have this
like Dunning-Kruger Effect where you think you know
everything about everything. And a lot of poker people have that. And I, listen, I'm probably
guilty in some ways too, you know, thinking because
you can figure out poker and be, you know, great at that, that you could figure out anything. So there's like, it's true, right? I mean we sort of, we genuinely feel, like people that reach the
highest levels of poker feel like they are intelligent. So they will look at problem solving and think that they have answers. - Well, you have to remind
yourself that you're not. It's best to see the world
as you did just get lucky, or at least from my perspective, that you're not better than anybody. - Yeah, I don't think there's
anything wrong with like acknowledging that you worked
hard to get where you were. Like there isn't, but at the same time, like it's not available to
everybody in the same way. You know, right time, right place. Like for me, my poker career could have gone very
differently, you know? If things didn't work out, you know, if I had some bad
luck in the wrong times, like who knows where I'd be. - So you said your brain crawl is pretty small in your 20s. I'm sure you've been around a lot of people you care a lot about who've lost everything in poker. What's that like? What's those low points
of losing everything? - I think because I've been there, I have more empathy than I
probably should for those people. I really feel for them, 'cause
I remember being in Vegas and being totally broke, and like a guy loaning me $400, and me like turning that 400 into 20,000. 400 bucks, and it was like
eternally grateful of that. So when I have friends
who go through that, like I always try to consult them. Obviously what they really need
is money, for the most part. But I remember saying no to one friend because he didn't have a plan. So I like to try to help
them in that regard. Like my buddy's like, can
you stake me in this game? And I was like, all right,
well how much do you, then I was like, let's
break down the math, bro. You want me to stake you so you get 50% of the profit, right? So I said, how much do you
think you can make in this game? How much does the biggest winners make? He's like, well I can, you know, I could probably do like
20,000 a month in this game. So, okay, so you get half of
that, 'cause I get 10, right? What is your monthly nut? How much are you spending? It's like, well I'm renting
this thing for 8,000. You're spending 17,000 a month. So like, no matter what,
you're set up to fail, like this isn't gonna work. So I actually didn't give him the money, and I was like, what you
need to do to earn more money is lower your monthly nut,
because it's too high. It just, you know, it just
doesn't mathematically add up. So trying to set them right in that regard is something that like, I feel obliged to do,
especially if they're friends. - But what about the mental aspect of the struggle they're going through. that struggle you were
going through, just, I mean, it's really
rough to have no money. - It's not for everybody. This really isn't. Like a lot of people might,
you know, listen to this and think like, oh I wanna play poker. It's like, most people fail. Most people who wanna play in the NFL, you know, they spend their college years. Like most of them are not gonna make it. Most of you who try to
play poker professionally are going to fail, and you're gonna experience despair, okay? There are those, like in anything, that have the passion, have the know-how, have the luck and all that sort of stuff, and it all pans out. But you know, they're the minority. - And so for the low
points, if you remember, what does it take to
sort of overcome that, overcome the mental struggle? I mean, you're making it
sound like certain people are just genetically able
to than certain others. - I do think some people are
more apt to being able to deal with like adversity and having resilience, and some people just can't hack it. But like, I generally, what
I would advise, you know, people that are, let's say
a guy's playing, you know, really high stakes or
whatever, you're doing badly, is step number one is take a
little bit of a break here, let's recalibrate and
let's start small again. Let's, you know, let's restart
and let's play smaller stakes and let's get our confidence back. Because in poker, without confidence, you cannot be successful. It's incredibly important to have almost an inflated
level of confidence in yourself, because you're up against it, right? As I said, the majority of people fail. So why are you special? Why are you different? You have to be pretty
confident about your, you know, yourself to think that you
are one of the chosen ones. - And then don't resist
the despair and take a nap. - Definitely take a nap.
- Feel better. - Listen, it's okay to
experience it, like I said. Yeah, you're gonna
experience the, what else, what should you be feeling, you know, if things are going poorly and you just lost all your money? Excited? Maybe like, okay, have
your moment of grief. Allow yourself to experience it so that you can, you know, reassemble. - There's a fundamental way in which you haven't really lived life if you haven't experienced
periods of despair. - You have a jaded view
of the world, right? - It's the weird thing
about the human condition that the both the highs
and the lows are important. - [Daniel] Yeah. - What role does love play
in the human condition, Daniel Negreanu? - That's a good one. - What role has love played in your life? - It's, yeah, that's, you
know, you sort of talked about the ups and downs of, you
know, the human condition, and love has been that for me, right? (Daniel laughing) Like I'm in a good place now. But you know, even with my now wife, years ago, you know, she was young, she was, you know, new to poker, and she wasn't ready to settle down. I was like, when I met her,
I think I was 31, she was 21, and I was ready to like
lock her up, if you will. You know, let's do this. And I bought a ring way back, when she was like not about that. She was living the Hollywood life. She was living, you know, partying in LA, doing that kind of stuff and wasn't ready. And we split, and that one hit me hard. So I didn't realize how much of a hit that had on my confidence,
in everything, really. In poker, with other women. It had me a little jaded
about women too, you know, resentful, you know. And it took a lot of like self, I did like a lot of personal
growth work and workshops and things like that. And then didn't see her for years. And she came back to town, I
was a much different person. It was just, you know, four years ago or something like that. And she was too. Went to dinner. A few months later, we
were married, you know, it worked out so different, 'cause we both had to grow, you know, and become different people. - Huh, and that love
was still there somehow. - Yeah, like she went
through her relationships, I went through mine, you
know, we experienced life. And I was married once
before too, you know, called my starter marriage, if you will. Which, you know, we just, you don't know. I think like until you do
it, until you get married, and you know, experience
like the sacrifice, not necessarily the sacrifices,
but your value systems. If they don't align identically,
which they're not going to. Someone like me, probably
one of my strengths in poker, but my weaknesses in
relationship is judgment, right? When I play poker, I need to judge you. That's essentially what I'm doing. I'm gauging who you are, and what you're good at
and what you're bad at. And that can have repercussions, 'cause it leads, that's
how I, you know, view, that's the lens I look at everyone with. Based on how you live your
life. I'm judging you. This guy's this, this guy's
that, this guy's that. And that's not healthy. - [Lex] You have to shut that off. - You have to learn to like-- - [Lex] Personal relationships. - And the thing I finally
realized, what love is, frankly, for me, with her
is no judgment, right? - [Lex] Yeah, acceptance. - [Daniel] She's, so like, yeah, so I have my way of being, right? If she wants to have cereal for dinner, babe, that's the best decision for her. I was living in a framework
of better and worse. - [Lex] Yeah. - The way that I do things
is better and yours is worse. Do things more like I do. That's a recipe for disaster. True acceptance and true
love is accepting someone like exactly as they are. You know, if she wants to
do something different, I'm gonna support her, whatever it is. Even if I disagree with it personally, and like the way that I would do things, learning to just realize that
she's had a different journey and a different walk towards
where she's at than I have. So I can't pass my judgments
on other people like that. - I believe it is ethically wrong and probably illegal to
eat cereal for dinner. - Listen, if she wants it, she wants it. - [Lex] Acceptance. - Like when she goes to bed,
like all these little things about my regimented life. She's not. Like, our motto at our wedding was like, you keep me wild, I'll keep you safe, you keep me wild. I keep her safe, she keeps me wild. She's like not organized and anal and all those kind of things. I am. She helps me like let loose. You know, I'm, oh no, I'm eating this, she's like, have some popcorn. I'm like, all right,
let's do it, you know? She keeps me freed. - And accepting that, embracing that. The difference is the chaos of it. - Yeah.
- That's what makes it. - Like I literally do
think about with her, how important it is, and how much I try to like
just come from neutral and like compassionate and never judge, 'cause she's got other things
that she deals with, right, that I don't, she's bipolar, right? So with that, I've studied
and I've learned a lot about, you know, sort of mental
health and what that means, and ways in which a lot of
characteristics about somebody is completely out of their control when they're bipolar, right? And their swings, like there's
no cocktail for bipolar that solves the issue, right? So there's medications
that work to, you know, level you out for periods of time, but then they start to fade
and they don't work as well. So they constantly need readjustment. It's an unsolved mystery
to a certain degree. So in some sense, you know, her diagnosis made our relationship easier because I don't take
anything personal, right? I realize that sometimes
she's gonna be in a mood, and, you know, I mean, she's so good about
communicating it though. She tells me. Some morning, she'll be like, bad mood trying to get out of it, babe. I'm like, okay. So I leave her alone. - Well, that's great. That means she's grown to
be able to communicate, to understand, to self-reflect,
understand where she is. I have people in my life
who I love who are bipolar. It's a beautiful ride. - It is, right? Yeah, the highs and the
lows are like, are there. So, but yeah, like, because
like, I feel like a protector, and for me, I just wanna be a rock, right? And that's part of the whole cereal thing. If she wants to eat cereal, don't make a wrong for
anything she wants to do. - What have you learned from life from the song, "The
Gambler" by Kenny Rogers? You gotta know when to hold them. Know when to fold them. Know when to walk away. Know when to run. You never count your money when
you're sitting at the table. There'll be plenty of time for counting when the dealing's done. Is that, do you live by those words? - The first part of it, for sure. - What do they even mean, 'cause-- ♪ You got to know when to hold ♪ So basically it's like, all right, you know, in life, like, you know, let's say, let's use a whatever,
the market, for example. You bought a stock, right, or you bought Bitcoin and you're like, it's gonna go the moon, right? It's like, okay, well,
maybe things have changed, new scenario, new
circumstances, new situation. Are you going down with the ship, right? Or are you gonna lay the hand
down, are you gonna fold it? Whether it's a relationship, you know? You're with this woman, you're like, all right, I think
it's time to fold this one. I think, you know, I don't
think that we're gonna be able to make this hand work right now. - When to fold them and when to run. - [Daniel] Yeah, to run. - Every gambler knows that
the secret to surviving is knowing what to throw away
and knowing what to keep, 'cause every hand's a winner
and every hand's a loser. That's a stoic philosophy. And the best that you can hope
for is to die in your sleep. Every hand's a winner
and every hand's a loser. What does that mean? - I like that one. Like, for me, that's like the difference between victim and responsible, like the way that I think about it, right? You can be a victim of circumstance, or you can be responsible for everything in your life, right? So an event happens, the event itself is neither good or bad until
you assign it value, right? So like an event happens
and can be traumatic, it can be, you know, painful, but you know, how you respond to it is ultimately gonna be up to you. Like you actually do have a choice. - And that's the thing you can control. The fact that you, Daniel Negreanu, took my commentary about
"The Gambler" seriously, shows once more that you're
a beautiful human being. Thank you so much for being who you are, for inspiring millions
of people about poker, about how to live life. And thank you for giving me
your valuable time today. This is amazing. Thank for talking. - It was fun, man. It was great to have the conversation. - Thanks for listening
to this conversation with Daniel Negreanu. To support this podcast, please check out our
sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some
words from Doyle Brunson. Poker is war. People pretend it is a game. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.