High-stakes PLO Strategies Revealed | Gruffudd "d.apollo777" Jones

[Music] foreign [Music] what's up my fellow poker enthusiasts it's Renee aka the weko here and together with my co-host Adam Carmichael we present to you the mechanics of Poker podcast in this podcast we deconstruct high-stakes poker players figuring out what it is about them how they think what they do that makes them so Successful with an extra focus on the obstacles they faced and the skills they had to develop to surpass them over the years me and Adam have gained a lot of experience in both reaching high stakes poker ourselves and teaching other players to

do the same we have bundled all this knowledge together in our coaching program the mechanics of Poker which is the most complete poker coaching product on the market if you want to have a chance to work with me And Adam so you can get unstuck and make more progress in your poker career go over to mechanics of poker.com to apply but without further Ado let's learn from another high stakes players journey in today's episode [Music] welcome to another episode of the mechanics of Poker podcasts we are very excited to start chatting with today's guest but

before we introduce him a quick announcement because we are Accepting a small group of players for our mechanics of Poker 2.0 pre-launch if you want to be part of the pre-launch group go over to mechanics of poker.com or click the link Down Below in the description and add your email to the priority list and maybe we will pick you to join the mechanics of Poker pre-launch okay so priority list and we will contact you and maybe you'll be part of the pre-launch of the mechanics of Poker 2.0 Now for today's guests we have a Premiere

because we will be talking to a player who only plays with four cards in his hands instead of two we're gonna be talking with Griffith Apollo Jones he's our guest and he plays between 5K and 40K heads up PLO against the best in the world including lioness love he has been a very fast Riser through the stakes reaching these limits after only four years into his professional career as always the road to success did not go in A straight line and he had learned various skills along the way in order to become successful and what

those are we will be trying to explore in today's episode as always we are joined by my co-host co-mechanics of Poker coach Adam Adam when I do you four cards instead of two on a scale from one to ten how clueless are you 10. I like to ditch too and just start back with Tim again reset the game tray at the base level but yeah it's gonna be Very interesting I'm gonna play a low player I know a lot of our audience have been waiting for a payload player hopefully this encourages some more pillow players

to come out but yeah obviously the pocket journey is quite similar among sticks but also there's going to be some unique obstacles that he's out of the face uh yeah a very quick rise in terms of when he went professional but he also has a very terrible in time before he went pro uh When he kind of dropped out of University or graduated from uni and did some challenges kind of picking up poker and where to go with it so we're going to dive into his storyline how he was able to overcome those obstacles and

become the high stakes player that he is today yeah very excited for today's guests all right well before we start I would like to give a big shout out to GTO wizard for sponsoring today's podcast GTO wizard has made studying poker accessible for everyone and is in my opinion one of the best places to go to if you are serious about improving your poker game next we're having access to all GTO solutions for every spot and having the ability to upload your hands and let wizard find it for leaks you get access to weekly coaching

webinars in which various coaches including myself educate you on the most important spots to start crushing the game so go over to Gtowizard.com mechanics to get started and you will get 10 off on your first month that is GTO wizard.com mechanics now without further Ado let's get into today's episode with Griffin Mr Jones thank you for coming on the pots great to have you hi I wanted to I wanted to start off the the conversation uh at your studies you studied physics in University you mentioned and even though you think it Suited your personality well

it did not come extremely easy for you which is actually unlike most of the players we have had on so far they usually mentioned school being very easy for them throughout your youth both in your studies but also in sports and video games that you've played did you always had to work hard in order to succeed and if so did this help prepare you for dealing with adversity in your poker career Um there's a few things I guess firstly I guess in school I would say um in general the subjects that I was good at

I didn't have to work entirely hard at but if you just look at as a whole I would have had to work hard at the subject I wasn't initially say inspired to to learn um to say if it was like a Like for for more science or maths based subjects if I could if it was the questions based on solving an answer that I could figure out how to do and answer quickly I would like I would I would very much find that maybe not easy challenging but also fun to do and like I think

I would excel at that but then in other aspects at school where you had to sort of read a lot of books or um like maybe write essays or something like That I definitely struggled a lot more with um so yeah so it's maybe more like on the whole of school like like I was okay but for certain stuff that I liked and was good at like I excelled up and then the other stuff like I didn't really like I found it hard to motivate myself to to study certain stuff and then yeah I don't

know I don't know how to explain it entirely uh I think I think That's quite common right if you if if your National Natural Curiosity gets and you're interested get triggered your your brain suddenly turns on so to speak yeah um and then in University like I would say I struggled with University as a whole but it was kind of like the same the same um sort of issue I guess so physics like Is physics but there's a lot of uh different subjects in like different modules in the physics and um like certain modules that

I found enjoyable I would want to study more and more and more like I would do okay app but then the ones that were again more book learning and stuff like um I would also study more but at the same time in my first year of University I did actually fail it because at that time I was Playing so much poker um and I almost dropped out actually I packed all my bags up within four months um and then decided to go back like my parents sort of um like had a talking to me basically

um and we're like what are you doing like what do you mean you want to be a professional poker player so I ended up going back I failed that first year and then Um sort of got my got myself together I guess and then finished then the next three years and passed so I think a lot of players can relate who started to play poker when during goonie that as every time when you focus on uni poker ghost [ __ ] then they focus on poker and then the unigo [ __ ] and it's very

hard to to balance the two I would say right yeah I mean I would say like for me Like it obviously wasn't easy enough that I could just like physics especially like it wasn't easy enough like I didn't find University East enough that I could just play poker all the time and then still pass like yeah um like I still had to work very hard at certain points in University to get through it because like it was it was hard like certain topics like I did find very hard and you couldn't you couldn't Really cut

take shortcuts in certain modules like the modules where you could figure out like once you would solved this equation once you could figure out how to do it any way they give you the question so in effect you could answer most of the exam after studying very little if you got the concept of it but the subjects the modules where you had to just learn a lot of um Like a lot of information basically on on that subject like you couldn't really cut the cut the corner and I did struggle with those ones as well

like thermodynamics or something was less math space less um derivation based and more just like learning stuff from a book and like I didn't really enjoy that either I guess also like those last three years it sounds like you were a bit more Forced back into school and you were talking about that if you're naturally interested in learning a certain subject it's easier for you so I guess also those three years were a bit more difficult because maybe it was actually poker that you wanted to do not to University yeah I think there's like 50

50 in there like I mean actually like my like I did struggle at that time like the first year like it was quite hard mentally Like dealing with like oh should I leave or like like I wasn't so happy either and um just trying to balance them poker and like moving out of home for the first time and then also getting very good at poker and moving up to stakes and then finding success in something then when physics is not going so well you kind of get pulled into just playing poker all the time as

like an escape almost from everything else and then when you gain success in that you're Almost like it almost drags you even further right um whereas then in later years in physics like like I actually found enjoyment in sales topics and my grades were very I don't know how you say like polarized like in some subjects some modules I'd get like barely a pass and then some of them might get 90 or something it was it was very really like a 60 and old but like um the ones I liked I did very well At

the ones I didn't really like I did quite poorly out um so the ones that you could bother showing interest in those were the ones that you excelled in did then these topics that you excelled in you you did also mention there's a crossover of certain traits that University this universe has taught you that crossed over to Poker you already mentioned like maths solving certain equations this Seems like it probably has benefited in your poker career as well yeah I mean like I said like I'm not sure like entirely because it's like like what comes

first to check in all the ACT sort of thing like did me being good at poker and that sort of brain thought process make me predisposed to like like I love the quantum mechanic stuff and certain General activity steps where like like it was a lot of deriving equations and Mathematics based um but Whether that like helped first or whether the other stuff helped me be good at that I'm not quite sure yeah that that that makes sense I also heard you mentioned uh you said two words which was challenged and you it's straight away

followed up with fun so that that you associate it like some people who who face a certain jealous or difficulties they kind of shy away from it you know they might interpret it as oh I'm not good at this I don't want to Be confronted with that but you had uh an interpretation of hey I'm being challenged this is actually fun did you always have that interpretation or was it something that you developed at a at a later age um I think I always had it but then I think poku was just a unique game

and Circumstance where like it was complex enough that you could always learn more like we're still learning that right like like you play a hand and you're Like oh I don't know what to do there like can you go and like solve it and you you figure out like oh was this good was that bad like 10 years after selling plane or something whereas a lot of other stuff maybe the ceiling for learning would be a lot lower and maybe also then the competition ceiling would be like harder to get to whereas poker you sort

of just log in on your computer and there's like a leveling up system all the way to the high stakes ready for You there and then you can do as much as you want to try and learn the game and figure stuff out so it's kind of like like an almost infinite at that point when you start progression level like um to to get into which which then motivates you to sort of do better and do better and and learn more or something when you started out you you saw like okay because a lot of

players when they When they started also that we had on they mentioned Oh I thought you know this poker game it's quite easy like I only learned about the depth of strategy that actually goes in later on in my career but you actually now mentioned that straight away from the start you saw a clear sort of leveling system uh you know where you could rise up to the ranks you saw a very big learning curve you notice it complexity is that then what actually Drew you to the game Um maybe it was yeah I haven't

thought entirely on that um but I guess like sorry um like when you log into a poke site or something like you have 20 bucks in your account or 50 bucks in your account and you're playing like with bankroll management you're on like no4 or something but then you can see all the games running at nl10 NL 25 nr50 all the Way up to people sitting with like five thousand or ten thousand dollars and at the time you're like whoa like I could never imagine being one of them but then when you're playing your one

you're like and you're gaining success you're like oh like you're looking at the next one up your next one up the next one up and then that kind of drives you to like like yeah make progress I guess yeah the path is quite clear then what Do you think is the difference for example in people who follow a world quote no more career paths you also see you know you have a manager above you as a manager above him who has a buzz above him so you could say it's also sort of clear but this

is more like the game aspect that's the difference yeah I think it's also maybe more like self-driven whereas the other stuff maybe you have to be good externally but this maybe is more like if you're good At the strategy and you can implement the game then you will progress whereas the other stuff maybe there's more there's actually more chaos involved with like dynamics of people interactions or something like that um yeah yeah so so in a way we often think that maybe poker has a lot of like in a way you have it's under your

control if you're gonna progress right obviously there is some variance but if you maybe Compare it to real life yeah you know your boss has to like you or you need to know the right people there's actually quite a lot of variants in that involved as well if you want to move up through through the ranks where I guess poker is more within your control it's all about you obviously you're gonna face variants you're gonna deal with adversity but as we've seen with many players that we've had on so far it's more how they deal

with the challenges that they face how They overcome them that's actually going to determine the success yeah for sure you also mentioned that you play a lot of sports video games this is also not nothing new we we keep on hearing this coming back you're naturally exposed to you liked card games you like video games what was it about poker that triggered more that competitive side of you because you did mention correct me if I'm wrong that you know you didn't Take it as competitive as you take poker now I think maybe I did take

it as competitive but maybe in all sports like like I never really specialized in one like okay when I was later teens like like we play rugby in Wales and I was never that big in school like I was Tiny so it was like the progression for rugby or something we played every day on the yard we loved it like but at the same time the progression is more physically Limiting when you're a kid um and then like after that I got into tennis and played a lot and um like I was okay at it

but never like the but the best in the county or something like that like um I was then curious like if you would then play if you play rugby play tennis could you then already compare the competitive drive that you have now especially because you're you're a heads up PLO player so I imagine that's quite competitive because You're playing against one specific person mainly right you're trying trying to take his money the same level of competitiveness was already inside of you when you played tennis for example versus one opponent did you have the same drive

to try to beat them or was it something that really po the game of poker triggered in you um I think like I definitely have to drive um But maybe then it was just other limiting factors like skill or something like that um physics besides maybe yeah and also just like enjoyment also it's like in a team sport it's a lot harder to be good maybe as well I'll not be good but like it's less I don't know how to explain it actually but like if you're say a small player on The wing you can't

really show you like you you can't really do that much I guess um you're kind of just there like as one of them making the numbers up even if you put a lot of time into it like maybe you need to get big or something like and that's where it would be the the way to improve is like going to the gym or something but when you're still in school it's kind of like yeah not something on your mind so much Yeah you guys want to play because it's fun like so a bit more limiting

factors again outside of your control maybe yeah you you quickly mentioned that you know you planned on dropping out one year after University but your parents said like many parents did if their kid tells them no I have this poker game you know and I like to gamble usually their advice is not oh go go at it you know they usually say no choose to save up to Go back to school uh yeah how did you deal with an environment that was not necessarily super supportive with your decision or your motivation to go black poker

I mean I would say it was probably down to me that it wasn't supportive because I was very enclosed at that time like I didn't speak to anyone about it and when I came out with it my parents we hadn't really had a conversation much about like how much I was making at poker or like how much money I had or The decision it kind of came like quiet quiet and then out of the blue maybe um and they were like oh what's going on basically um and then inadvertently at the end of that first

year my dad actually said to me like like I don't want you to go back to University if you're gonna like just go as like and play poker in University like I'd rather you do something else Um but I I said to him like no I will go back and like I want to actually study because I do enjoy physics like I did enjoy um and enjoy learning about about physics but um actually he was the one telling me not to go back then after the first year because he was like what's going to change

so then I had to almost prove to myself and them that I could get through it and I could complete it I guess Um but did he did he say like okay you should go pursue this poker thing or did he want you to do something completely different um I guess we didn't really have that conversation um right but he was like first like oh well I don't think you should go back to to to doing the same thing again usually people get in touch with poker through friends was it the same in your Case

at University people were playing a poker game Griffith got invited started to take their money and it's like hey I'm pretty good at this game it was kind of like that in school I guess like when we were playing in school like just for dinner money on the um and then everyone else had Facebook I didn't have Facebook at the time so then I downloaded a book site called PKR I don't know if you remember it's the 3D one yes of course Um and like inadvertently it was probably one of the softest sites like ever

uh at that time sort of 2010 I guess 20. um and then I just started playing on there like in the evening and stuff like like to try and like get better basically and um yeah oh you actually yeah you actually played with the focus on getting better already not just out of pure enjoyment But just actually enjoyment as well yeah but getting better is actually something that you enjoy so for example if you take the video games take the sports and then poker you are already you have a bit more of an analytical mind

you would say that is constantly trying to look to improve yeah I think that's also why I don't really enjoy playing video games nowadays or not that I don't enjoy but I just don't put any time into because I feel like there's a in a lot of them Maybe you have to play it a lot to get very good at it whereas then it for me it feels like a waste of time if I have to put all that time to get good at a game when I could be put in the time to improving

my poker or I could be putting the time into doing something other than being sat on my computer chair which is not the best like way to spend all your time I think yeah that's kind of the I I I noticed Something similar as soon as I started to play online poker I kind of stopped playing video games because indeed you already spent so much time uh behind your computer right if you then for example go play a video game I mean and it's very understandable if you're very good at poker for example and you

go play this other video game there's probably a 12 year old kid who started to beat you because he's playing every day that's not it's not It's not really uh uh Isn't it nice would you say you have trouble playing sports or games that you're not good at because you know you could be so much better if you would only put the time in it but you're not going to do you find it then harder to to enjoy those things achieve for me nowadays not really like like I'm fine with playing a sport that I'm

not good at I actually enjoyed that because there's two types of sort of learning isn't it it's like that initial Learning tip when you start something new and you get this steep steep progression um I'm not super fun no matter what you what whatever new thing you try you see like a lot of improvement very very quickly um but then to then improve from that you see like oh these people are super good um and then you're like oh I know I need to put x amount of hours to get that Good but if you're

not like super into it or if you've already got like a lot of hobbies that take a lot of time you know like oh I can't get into that but you don't like for me it doesn't affect me like I still enjoy doing something like a little bit if if I know like oh it's just challenging and it's just something new to do something different to experience but then also poker or something or for now like cycling like like I cycle a lot Like maybe 15 to 20 hours a week and the progression you get

then when it becomes like a serious hobby or like a profession is is that learning curve when you've had the Steep bit you've progressed a long long time like you're finding like small increments to get better all the time um so for cycling maybe you get like a little more your position gets like a little bit more aerodynamic like you train in a certain different way Um or like poker you find like these small exploits or small stuff that you've been doing wrong there's no big leaps anymore but it's always like those small increments give

you a lot of satisfaction as well yeah is that kind of like different thing where like when you become very good at something the small stuff gives you a lot of satisfaction but then when you're starting out on something you also get a lot of enjoyment because it's New it's like it's exciting you can see a lot of improvement very quickly yeah that makes a lot of sense I remember I struggled a little bit with that and I think I was also a a part of it's also just accepting for example I play some Adele

I play some football I do some climbing but I do everything a little you know once a week once a week this once a week that so I kind of already accepted like listen you know this is how good I am but I still I Cannot help myself that that when I play something like I'm [ __ ] I want to get better you know I need to hire a coach I need to play more but then tell myself calm down you're just doing this yeah fun relaxation yeah yeah but I see and I see

this because I uh especially the sport I play with a lot of other poker players as well and they have exactly that drive you know they can't stand losing they have to improve they go hire a coach because they can't stand being [ __ ] they kind of just just do it for fun you know yeah I I'm actually okay with doing that for fun like I don't mind losing it like a random sport that we play um like it is it is like it's down to the time you have to put into it for

the most part when you got to the level like if you put more time into it you're gonna get better than all your Friends but is that something that you want to put a lot of time into or is it something that you want to just play for fun enjoy it while you play and then like do your Main Hobbies then um that's kind of also the acceptance part right like listen this is just a hobby you know I'm not trying to be uh trying to be a professional in business yeah exactly that's uh that

that's not gonna be uh my career you you mentioned you started out then playing poker in Uni did you have an example that you could look up to and be like hey these are guys that actually turn this into a profession they made a lot of money did you have someone that it's like a certain career path that you could follow and be like hey look they can do it so I can do it as well or were you just uh mainly mainly focus on yourself um at the time like I can't really remember that

time but like like I was like on Some certain forums like uh poker strategy I guess and then like also subscribe to maybe like blue fire poker um and then you would see like the players that do very well at that and then there's also quite a few poker documentaries at the time that sort of like went round I remember that um like Dr Jiggy or something like this Canadian yeah yeah the Canadian French guy yeah um and like like he did videos on Bluford folk and it was just super Inspiring like the way he

like thought about the game and like was just he was very creative though he was very creative and like I I did start off playing No Limit a lot as well so um like that sort of stuff was inspiring so I guess maybe from like certain Forum posters that I can't remember by now or like certain coaches that would then be like oh I want to get that good um did you did so you actually mentioned You started out playing No Limit told them did you start sort of playing professionally or at least semi-professionally you

know next to your University playing no limit hold on and when did you get in touch with uh getting dealt four cards PLO um I tried to play it both at the same time and then kind of like move up with both at the same time oh wow like I was playing like for the first part like 75 hold them for the First like few few years I guess especially back then it was way more popular I mean it's still I guess a more played Game No Limit Hold'em but yeah in the past I guess

it was the difference was even bigger I assume I think like uh like I pretty much moved up solely on PKR as well and then no limit games today were very good like they had Rim games and then when I got to 50 Cent one dollar I think then I moved to heads up a lot more as well Um all right Adam have you ever played uh PLO or if I do you four cards you're gonna be like I have no clue what I'm supposed to do with these four cards in my hand yeah four

cards gives me a bit of a panic attack two cards is my kind of limits um and yeah I think I mean you've already came around 2011 2010 sort of time no limit Holden was by far the most Popular at that time I think yeah over the last five or so years player laws become a lot more dominant force and yeah I think it's uh and all those all the players have never played it's got a bit scared by the extra complexity on the chaos that PLO provides yes I want to jump in on your

storyline when you graduated University so uh so far you've been telling us about Nixon poke out with uni which again sounds super difficult for me I had some friends who Played quite a bit of poker at Uni and it was very distracting for them super hard to not put too much time into poker and you've got this option to study or make money and when you're a broad kid at Uni and everyone around these broke it's very appealing to put extra time into uh to Poker so you came out of that you graduated you've managed

to balance those two well better than almost anyone I've come to speak with then you said you had a bit of a difficult period so I Want to dig into that part the story where you've graduated from University what was your mindset with polka and what were sort of your options you've got this Physics degree I'm guessing your parents are hoping you go into a graduate scheme and you've got this poker skill set which is you managed to keep up through podcast through what happens as you graduated from uni um actually like after graduating I

had a Like an idea that I wanted to travel um so like I kind of booked some flights to Australia I guess um and then I had in my head like I'll just like travel around countries I can play poker from and then like be a professional poker player while traveling on sort of thing as well but then like to brush through the years I would say like I had very very good enjoyment for like the next like two Years traveling say but the poker did take it like a big dive I guess um because

in those two years I think it was like 2014 2015 2016 even like the game developed a lot um and like by that time like in University say I'd got up to playing like I know 5K and pl of 5K like um not so much on stars but on like the Betfair sites and stuff like this um And then in those two years I kind of said to myself like I'll play when I have time and um like I didn't really make too much time for it and then I'd made even less time for improving

it was kind of like oh I'll do it like when I have some free time and then when I would play then like like I would try and focus some stuff but honestly like I was playing a strategy that was just outdated and like people were progressing and progressing And like I was out of touch with with the game because I was just traveling and like living my life basically um and then skip forward a few years like like I'd been through like a lot of money from traveling and then also like losing some back

and like like um trying to playing games that were then too tough for me um up into the point where then I had to be um be like looking like oh like Do I do I actually want to be still a professional poker player like um do I what like at the time like I was making like YouTube videos or something related to cycling I was into photography like drone photography and stuff like that and I had like other interests that kind of took over poker for for a few years and poker just took a

back seat but then the problem is when it's your profession that takes a back seat like that You don't really get to then be good at that profession like you like I was maybe never like super good after University to the extent where I could take three years off and still be like better than all the players that then be progressing like new players have been coming up and stuff so then at that time like um one of my friends like recommended like the I think nandez came out with this PLO lab course or something

Like um with Doug like one of his first ones that it was just before the solver maybe um and then I watched that and went back down to playing like 57 one dollar and then just sort of ground it back up again I guess um but that was sort of the turning point where then I took it more seriously and I was like okay I have to Like get my head down and learn how to play again um and it was hard like sort of not being in the games that you used to be in

and um yeah like realizing that you're not that good at it either like after playing like 50k hands like one two Zoom yellow and then like losing at three big blinds per hundred which like maybe is a normal variance run but it just felt like like I was opening like 70 on the button still like 80 on the button like I was playing the like a style that worked for me in the past but like like I remember speaking to uh my chair was French with Fanny at the time like just online um and he

said to me like like like he just said like I'm gonna three better [ __ ] out of you like he was a friend but he was like like you can't open this much like like I'm gonna punish you like and he said it almost like out of pity I Think he was just like what are you doing bro like you can't do this um and now we find like the open at that stack size that I was playing at that time was like like we only open 40 on the button there and I was

opening like 80 85 I was just like I can open this like [ __ ] them basically but in fact you can't like um so yeah it was it was quite a quite a long process of like changing the Strategy basically to to get better again and that's at that point then I was just playing yellow yeah yeah so how challenging was that from a mindset perspective so we've got you built Your Role you're playing after 5K on some of the sites then you've gone traveling and your skill sets kind of deteriorate a little bit

and the games will kind of move past you for those levels and then you've got to come back And almost like reinvent yourself and start from a much larger than your players I'm guessing from like an ego perspective and a mindset perspective that's quite challenging and what made you want to start again because you almost happened to reinvent yourself from the ground up at this point what made you think all right I want to do this pocket thing again but better rather than just go right I did the poker thing and I want to move

on to Something else what made you come back to poke and wanted to give it a real good shot I think at that time with that poker lab there was a clear progression to learn the game very well this course was super like um like it really taught you PLO from a fundamental way to play like six months um like what I'm Bluff with what to be track racing in certain lines it wasn't with the sulfur yet but it was just very Well put together um and then from that the progression to Lynn and then

after that the sofas just came out like man consolver and then that just opened up a new Wilt to sort of learn and get better so it didn't really matter to me that I was playing quite low because like there was that in progression thing again like similar to before where then you could learn and you would see Everyone making mistake so you're like well I'm gonna improve now with that so at this point you've got a clear lineopath you're excited again and you feel like you can basically go through this course and pick up

the fundamentals and you can see where it's going to lead you where will your business up at this time so if it's been traveling did you we live with the poker players right now or were you just put them back at home um actually at that point like I think I Had to come home for a bit so I was at home for maybe like three four months when I started then playing again um and then after that I think I moved to Thailand then that summer or something and I played a lot at home

and then a lot in Thailand four or five months I guess and how long did it take you to uh rebuild yourself and reinvent your game so we've got this outdated game that you Were currently using and now you're raising from the button 88 and you're having to reinvent from the ground up how long did it take you to get a winning strategy and start progressing through the stakes again um actually like for beating 50 Cent one maybe like a month or two um but then like it was it was a slow progression definitely like

there was certain um Stakes that were like very Hard and then at that time like I made a very good poker friends like who was um like at a similar level always one actually a bit above me but like sort of he was shotting when I would maybe be shotting that stake in like a month or two so we were playing Q5 at the same time and then he would move up like a bit before me to 5 10. so I always had someone to Chase and then we were talking a lot of fans together

Um so I think that was definitely a big big part in also the Improvement and also like like we were studying all the time together um and then it sort of motivated both of us I think to be like playing a lot and also learning a lot and then also discussing like certain regulars that we were playing a lot with because at the time it was on party poker I guess where they had like a lot of these uh two five Leaderboards and five ten leaderboards and stuff like that we like the person who raked

the most in a day gets like a thousand dollars or something like uh yeah so like you're playing a lot with the same people so if you have a friend that's also talking about these people as well as uh it's quite motivating then to then get good again yeah it sounds like you had someone at Chase it's always good when you've got a friend or someone Around you who you can have this friendly competition with it's actually really good to have someone just ahead of you because you can almost see the next step and also

you want to catch up it's like having a older brother I've got a brother who's a year older generally a year ahead of me in every sport and every game I was playing so I was like right gotta get better to catch up with you so uh there's this intrinsic motivation to meet your friend as well As the motivation to get better but your own needs as well so yeah creates a nice environment to learn and get better so this time were you one track minded on podcast so before like you've done your traveling very

much what other options are you all in a poker at this part at this point yeah pretty much like like I would still keep up my hobbies and like like meeting friends especially in Thailand and stuff like there's quite a good Community for cycling here like Very good uh I live in Chiang Mai which is in the north of Thailand um a lot of mountains around a lot of nature so we'd always go out riding in the morning and then I'd come back um in the like mid morning and then pretty much play like most

of the day then until the evening where I'd go out for food with some friends um yeah sorry is that something very health conscious Guy are you you're saying 15 to 20 hours of cycling that's not um a small amount have you always been into health and looking after yourself or did poker kind of spark a more professional approach to your life um I would say the first year of University was definitely not so healthy um but then after that like maybe like halfway through the first second year of University I think like um we

had Someone move into our flat that was like a mature student and he had his shed together and he was like like he came in and like the first day there first day in her house he actually just cleaned everyone's dishes that was just like a mess in the kitchen and we're like oh then it just makes you feel bad because he didn't say anything just did it like he's just like I'm just gonna clean this um And then it kind of makes you like just by example you're like oh he shouldn't be cleaning our

[ __ ] like and then he's out there doing exercise all the time and like he's like clean and like but eating healthy and like has its stuff together so then you're like oh like it was definitely a good remote role model at that time to then get like get healthy get cycling again and get studying again as well it's very interesting the role like one Role model can play it like this guy cleaning your dishes I'm guessing he was just doing it for his own kind of hygiene standards in the kitchen yeah but you

guys watching him you're like wait a second like we're slobs and he's picking up our our job together please yeah it's interesting how like the standards of one person can rub off under this yeah somebody who has good influences around you at the same time at the right time so in terms of Poker When you're you're trying to figure out your path right now how much is kind of your overall approach to life fitting into this so obviously doing all excise you're trying to look after yourself how much are you holistically thinking about what's your

your life overall are you how much you just grinding and studying um I would say like during the two years of covered I was actually planning on moving out here just before covert's diet basically and I ended up at home like in Wales in a small town in Wales um so then like I actually lived with my parents for like a year and a half during covid um and I was very focused on poker at that time like it's when I really sort of progressed the most probably um again I had a similar lifestyle where

I was cycling a lot in the morning and then playing a lot in the afternoon and in the day Um and I guess like maybe since moving here like I've balanced a bit more of like hanging out with friends and stuff like that but also the time zone is a bit worse with playing actually here so sometimes like it's in the middle of day there's not really much running so I'd rather just focus on like like living like living a good life as well here rather than being like Oh like this is the time to

work now like if Someone messages me and wants a game then yeah I would like set aside that day straight away but if there's nothing running or like if I like like Zoom basically never runs heads up now on PokerStars that I've seen uh whereas last two years it was like a lot of action in um heads up Zoom whereas that games pretty much died and the only action you get is sort of with like a specific player Maybe Um so then that definitely contributed to like a lot less broker hours probably now um yeah

so sounds like Corvette was a time to knuckle down focus on working there wasn't any distractions and that was actually the perfect time frame for you to get better poker and put a lot of time into it and then as things go back to normal you've decided by yourself in Thailand and live a more Balanced Life still playing a lot of podcast but also taking opportunities to see friends do fun stuff when it happens and also the games might not be as active at certain times so yeah it sounds like you come to this very

high work ethic part of it's growing the grinding to a more balanced and find out how you want your life to look like and as you have more success you get to uh to choose those options uh yeah more freedom so yeah it sounds like A good Evolution for yourself and ready for yourself if you've ever had to reinvent yourself uh so uh yeah Griff's talking about reinvented his game at the fall behind a few years traveling you had a look at your game about this girl wait a second I need a full game revamp

here yeah for sure I think uh I think would say most players have had that moment uh I learned a couple of Tricks quite early that worked quite well uh and kind of What Griffith also said at some point the game was just you know moving on and I wasn't and I think it requires like bad results for you to really realize that and to see the necessity of like I remember I had one bad year where basically only with rakeback I made something and I was like okay this is not very good I remember

also my banker was dropping quite significantly and yeah necessity at that moment is just quite High I think this was also the Point that solvers just started to came out so maybe actually I didn't really think about it this way but maybe my opposition I was I think mainly playing mid six five and I'll Zoom a lot as well maybe my opposition started to use a lot of solvers and I was just falling behind that could definitely be something uh I then moved back to the Netherlands and teamed up with uh with some other players

and we started to focus more on Solvers as well started to study more opponents study to yeah basically start progressing again from a strategic perspective I think also the guys that I started to hang out with we already completed each other very well one was really good in solvers our one was really exploitative one of them really had a uh like a very big mouth Big Dreams that we were gonna try to become the best players in the world I think it's also very important to have A certain character like that who kind of raises

your standards in a way right whereas I was always just like playing poker to live on a monthly basis I never really thought about trying to become the best but when he when he kind of put their belief in the group like hey guys we're gonna try to become the best you start to yeah become a bit more results for like okay if I'm trying to become the best what do I have to do okay and then we Should probably do this then we should probably do that and then from there basically uh I think

for me especially from my exploitative perspective I was already very good but I just lacked a lot of GTO fundamental knowledge uh that in that period I gained and yeah that's really skyrocketed my game because there were things there were exploits that I thought was I was making but I was just making that yeah I was just making mistakes these are not had nothing to do With exploits they were based on assumptions that were completely wrong they were just very biased uh so I think now playing from a more theoretical solid approach and from there

it's still trying to expose your opponents I think that was really a switch in my game that I had to make and then from there it just went up uh yeah yeah and never really I think I still see that a bit now where it's like some players are like saying Yeah they're exploiting but then they don't really know the Baseline is from and stuff like that but yeah I I I think uh I think I often use the example that I would attack guys who would fall to tree bat quite a lot and fall

to see bats in three of our parts out of position but actually it turns out just due to the the way the uh the rain the ranges are connected you should actually overfold other position versus the C bet in the three-bat pot whereas I thought Hey that's that's a mistake because you know you're not defending enough so I would be hammering on stuff and I would completely ignore the fact that they could actually fold a lot to three bets because there's still four players behind I could not exploit that in a ring game so I

was just exploiting myself you know I was just making making a lot of mistakes like that and indeed uh what Griffith also says yeah if you don't know the Baseline of what is Correct and how do you know that someone making a wrong deviation so yeah you just assumed something was wrong wow you didn't even yeah you didn't even know what it was right yeah so yeah those were definitely uh there were that was definitely a period where where I progressed a lot personally I'm curious you were uh mentioning that your game was simply not

good enough um that you had to move down you were trying to rebuild your game what were Some bad habits or leaks that snuck into your game that you think was costing you a lot of money you already mentioned the button opens of 85 do you recall anything else I think like the whole game was just off basically I was too passive like I basically had no churn checkpoints Bluffs or something like that um just even selecting like check race Bluffs on the floor like with the net Flash blocker or something so that you had

them in your range for when the flush hits on the turn like I just didn't have that knee that's like well not nearly to the extent that you should be like like it was just too weak um yeah pretty much that but then I was still trying to play like loads and loads of hands in position so it was like I was like in my head like oh I'm opening a lot so I'm gonna get them to Fold their search Nets and but then I was actually my post-op play was just super passive then and

then it was like like it was just catastrophic I guess loose passive does not seem like the most winning playing Star indeed no no exactly so then you you uh how did you then go around improving how did that how did that process look like you you mentioned you teamed up with a buddy you mentioned that you found the the course from Janandas any any specific aha moments that you had from that course or from study sessions which your buddies where you're like oh wow I mean from that course yeah like some of the Bluffs

that he was just implementing even pre-solver just like he thought about it like what needs to be in the range um and at that time that was enough to be like aha in a lot of spots and I was like oh this can be in that range this Can be in that range pre-solve it but then yeah with a friend I think like I definitely relate to what you said about like like when you're with with a few people that like you're motivated to learn and then you also then have like somewhere to aim for

so like you said like oh we want to be the best like even if maybe you don't reach it it's like there's that goal where you're like you see these people playing at 5K or 10K or Whatever and like you're like oh they're making mistakes here or like I think I can get there and I want to get there to try and like battle them or something um and and then maybe if you're not even thinking that high at this just like the next day stake above you oh these players are playing that state but

there's like five different other players that we haven't played against and then you get there and you realize Like oh it's kobus or something and like then he's doing a lot of stuff like very different to the players that you're against because he's like a sick Midstate player um at the time and like like he's doing stuff very very differently and then you're like you try and work out him then you try and work out like a different player and then there's always something engaging and then also motivate him to try and then Outwork them

or something to to then beat them is that still something that uh that drives you up until today like the that that you get inspired by uh by great players you see playing or that maybe that give you a small beating you're like nice because also remember in school you you match the two words challenge it's fun is that still something that that triggers you definitely like and I do find a lot more Enjoyment in heads up than six months like like I've always played both like even the last few years like like I moved

back up playing six Max um and then maybe in the last two years shifted mostly to headset but um now playing a lot more sex match just because of the action say on GG that's where you have to play and there's very big games there they're actually huge like they're too big for me like yesterday there was a 501k game Um so there's like then again that progression the only problem is with GG there's basically no reg battle in like the rake is just insanely High um and it's just a Pity because then like you

kind of have to wait around that for a good game like um I I have not been on there that long but like you hear stuff like oh you need like a good pvi or something I don't Even know how to work it out like like if there's a game like I'll play it most of the time but sometimes I'm not even sure like on that site like how good it would be um but at least there's some progression there where you're like like oh there's this this High stink but I would find by now

like the players that you see for the most part the players I really respected the last Two years mostly are not playing so more um so then the the guys at the top now are kind of like the ones that have a lot of money that have built a role but not might not necessarily be that good which is good foresight right it is good also but then it's also like um I don't know like I think some of the enjoyment was always like seeing like like some of the best players like um playing and

then seeing What they're doing and being like Oh like how's he doing this like what's he doing there um whereas when it's just like like a punter egg just like taking money from a whale at a higher stake you're like yeah you want to play in it but you're just like a bit like oh bye like it's yeah so it's not so challenging man you're like okay like you want to make more money so that you can play it but then it's not Like oh this person is really doing something interesting or he's put a

lot of work into this strategy and I think there are some players that are obviously doing that and like like there are them there but then maybe they're not the ones in that game all the time either so basically I think a lot of players would hear you say and they're like wait this makes no sense you said that You're a bit sad that there's only real games and that there's no wreck games and I think a lot of players would would think about it the opposite and you also mentioned challenge so you don't really

see a challenge in terms of accumulating most money or exploiting a will to the best of your capabilities for example that's not something that's challenging for you you are more intrigued by uh competition that play like a high level maybe uh Solver approved type of strategy and you're trying to outbeat their strategy that's something that way more drives you is that also the reason then why adds up maybe triggers you more than ring games because it's a bit more like a competition between your strategy versus my strategy let's see who's the best somewhere like that

like and definitely in the past like in certain ring games like when I was moving up on stars like I got battered at three hand done 5K like I think I'm down a lot still lifetime like um from like 2019 time trying to break into 5K um because I would just play three-handed with like gravy and action free or something and like at the time like I thought I was doing stuff well but then looking back like I was probably making like two passive mistakes again or something like that um but I just wanted to

fight like like Not because I thought I was bad at because I didn't know like obviously I thought like oh like like I'm playing okay but then you also just want to challenge yourself against the people who are like at the top and you're like well even if I don't succeed maybe I'll learn and get better from that and then be able to succeed better in the future whereas if you're kind of like for me if I don't play I don't study that much like I have to kind of Put in the hands to then

like go through them and see what I did wrong whereas like like just say now if there's not much heads up to action I won't go through like hands from like six months ago and study that much like like it's fun just to play like Linus like they're there and then like like even if it's a small session then like figure out like oh like go through all these hands basically and then learn from that like it's it's more Fun to to play and then learn from it rather than just sort of sitting there studying

I think I was actually planning on saving this topic for for a little bit later but I think the audience will will get angry if I don't follow up after you mentioned that you were playing against Linus uh you you also mentioned that you have to people message you for games and from what I understood in the heads up Environment it's a bit more the games are a bit more arranged you also mentioned uh playing Linus is it then Linus texting you hey Griffith you up for a game how does that work pretty much like

Linus is always up for a game I think um but then not many other people really ask for one I guess um but I think nowadays like I said the the games are somewhat dead on Stars Linus like from purposes was just plain To practice against me um I think he had lots of bigger games like bigger States but he just wanted like he's also someone that I think loves the game loves to like create chaos in the game and just try out stuff so like he would just always want to play like he's just

like bored basically like I just want to play like I want to learn stuff I wanna like that's that's how it felt from my end that that he wanted Um from my point of view like it's kind of similar like I wasn't sure that I was better than them um I'm not sure that I am I'm like I mean he beat me like the last few sessions we played quite badly so like yeah maybe he's doing some stuff that that I didn't really think of but like it on that that sort of topic like I

was quite disappointed in some of the other pillow regs that No one really played him like like he kind of just started asking for games I guess and like for the most part he just didn't really get any action and it was kind of like a bit like a like where are the guys like to to take on these No Limit guys um because like maybe his name just like made it that people wouldn't want to play him straight away whereas like you at least want to try like maybe he is Really really good but

like don't you want to see if he is don't you want to see like how he's playing to like I don't know like you might learn something as well but there wasn't really that many people that that actually played in um I think now he like he has some games like somewhere else maybe but on the whole path like yeah because I can imagine if someone comes from a completely different Background in this case uh no limit holder he also played obviously a lot of heads up bring games I guess you could learn something from

how he approaches spot differently obviously certain situations you'll be like okay this is clearly a mistake but other situations he might do something that because he thinks he comes from a different game and he might think have a different approach on it you might actually learn something is there is there something That you're like hey it's actually quite interesting thing that he's doing uh I might I might I might take I might add that to my own game has there been moments like that um for sure like sometimes like I mean his strategy is very

chaotic so like sometimes I don't know what he's doing like if he knows what he's doing or if he's just trying to be as chaotic as you can in the game tree to like get us both out of like out of book in a sense and Just be like like just embrace the chaos um I I don't know maybe he's just practicing stuff maybe he's got like a read against me that he wants to do it this way um I don't know but it's fun it's challenging like you never sit down and you're like you're

bored like it's super engaging normally I can only play for like an hour or something because it's like like it's intense you know like He's attacking every spot that you're playing like he's making you think like every bit of the game tree like oh am I balancing the spot like is he just going after this bad size like more than maybe other players would do so in certain spots it feels like he's a lot worse than maybe other eggs but then in certain spots it's like you're not sure if you're just getting taken to the

cleaners basically yeah we talked about this a little bit Upstream as well that it's that that it's a bit more difficult let's say you have someone who you know or has maybe less of a reputation as Linus and does [ __ ] that you're like okay this is probably not very good you have quite a big confidence in that read of it not being good whereas if in this case uh lioness or another very good player does something that you intuitively say oh this can pretty be good but then again you know you do give

A certain amount of respect to a very good player how how is that different in terms of dealing with a situation like that and also in terms of losing versus a player who who has a big reputation or who you know is very good in PLO compared to someone who you're very confident that you're beating yeah I mean like you can post a graph that I sent you if you want but like we played like quite a few K hands I guess and like it was in general like quite a Close match I think and

then like like I think I was up maybe five or six Pines and then I lost like 20 within 1K hands and um like like I said like I went through the hands and I think I played sort of okay in the big pots but then you're still evaluating it like like it's hard to then I don't know like continue from that because you in your head you're like Like is he just like completely exploiting me in certain other sports that like the self-doubt definitely Creeps in a bit so you want to take sometimes like

compose yourself before playing them again um especially when it's someone like Linus whereas if it would say a different player maybe you'd be like oh no like a bit more confident in your your play Um and how do you go about you you should like you have to compose yourself before going playing again how does that process look so from now until you play liners again what are you doing to make sure that you're ready I mean we played a little bit last week like for an hour or so but yeah I guess it's just

like like I guess I didn't study that much during the month but I just made sure I was in a good head space if I was going To play him and be like okay like now I'm gonna focus and like after playing him I'm gonna look at the hands and study them and then like progress from that again and like reevaluate basically like oh was that just variance a month ago or was he playing very well and destroying me yeah I think it's a very important skill for players in terms of sort of protecting your

own confidence both Towards the high side and the low side estimating variance is that something that uh that you naturally think you're good at so you stay in line so you don't have too big of a confident swings you realize that if you do very well that you know there's a very very big part that it's just positive variants and the same towards you yes it is tough because like definitely if like I have the same graph against someone I'm like I'm not starting to play them like if it goes the other way or something

but there's definitely something in the head where like it's hard to make good decisions when you lose a lot very quickly for me anyway like like I try and Implement my strategy but just taking a step away for a few weeks to then make sure you're not like holding on to this like oh this feeling of just getting battered and bad and bad because like Say if he's bluffing like a huge amount all the time but then he just shows you the nuts 10 times in a row psychologically then it's harder to click call even

though you should like like you want to implement the strategy but then you're like oh is he not bluffing enough against me or like this or that because you're just getting shown a very small sample size so you need to maybe like take a week or so to just be like okay Back to what what we know and do it then also try to maybe maybe better maybe kick the ass of someone else in the meanwhile you know get get some confidence to play if someone else wants to play then yeah yeah because that's very

interesting in in when I used to play a lot three and four-handed you kind of have sort of the same problem I remember for example Linus was always up to playing but if line is placed I was out You know that's that's just my my general rule for making money in poker um but in heads up it's probably like that as well as soon as someone invites you to a match it's probably going to be close or the guy is very delusional but you both think you can beat each other that's what I find very

interesting about heads up uh no one is gonna join you knowing that he's clearly the worst player so how it's it's you you need to be dependent on people being a bit too Delusional I think like this is this is what I respect a lot about the new limit guys like quite a lot of them are moving over to headset uh PLO or like PLO ring games and they've got a lot more fight in them than the PLO guys it seems like like they're always battling on Stars they're battling somewhere else like like they're just

throwing it down three-handed whereas that hasn't really Happened for a long time on stars um like in PLO um and then maybe there's a few players that would throw it down but no one actually wants to play with them um and they've sort of stopped playing because of that um like I'm so good or something like I haven't seen him online much recently but like like he was pretty much the best heads-up player like really really Well executing strategy but no one would really play him I think line has played him a bit um maybe

Linus would still like to play him um but then like like for the whole for the most part then it's like sorry I just need to regain my thought um like yeah the No Limit guys will just like fight and they'll work out later if they're better than them or not and say Like the ones they're moving over like make by Finn um or like Philly Smiles or like Stefan maybe like they'll throw it down with like a PLO guy and like like they're not thinking so much are they better they're just trying to like

execute some sort of strategy and like like they're just practicing and they're just like I think they've had a lot more experience in battling they know how it Goes a bit like maybe that's their progression to learn the game it's just by playing and seeing what the guys are doing and then they're okay with losing sometimes and winning sometimes because they know the swings involved in battling freehanded whereas like even me like losing 20 by and straight versus Linus was just like it was hard like there's not so many red battles that like I've had

this year where I've like lost 20 pounds or something so it's like The No Limit guys moving over I think they're a bit more like predisposed to that General poker sort of swings and variants and just fights and they're used to fighting like like you say like these three-handed games they're No Limit ones are always the ones that are getting posted on um on two plus two forums and stuff like that it's very rainy yellow ones they're the ones battling like even past Or something like uh past 72. like like they just come over and

fight they don't think like oh am I better than this person my worst like they just okay they'll play the worst player if they can but like they don't they don't care so much like who it is they're just like they just test themselves you know and they go from that and I respect that like it's cool hi guys it's Renee aka the weko here With a little mechanics of Poker 2.0 announcement because we will be giving the opportunity to a small group of players to get early access to the mechanics of Poker 2.0 update

and if you want to be part of that group you need to go over to mechanicsofpoker.com or click the link down in the description and add your information to the priority list this way you can have a chance to be one of the first players enrolled in our mechanics of Poker 2.0 program in Our program you will get access to 80 plus hours of content in which we will explain you all aspects needed in order to become a more successful poker player now one of these of course is the technical aspect of the game in

which I'll be explaining you all the mechanics behind poker strategies we'll be talking about GTO exploitive play with an extra focus on the why behind certain strategies and why the population has certain leaks and to increase your win Rate even further we've recently added a river love and Bluff catching section so you can increase your AV when those pots become very big our mindset and performance coach Adam Carmichael he took care of the mental game and performance section of this program in which he will teach you everything you need to know in order to break

through limiting beliefs better handle your emotions break free from tilt and play your A game more consistently and last But not least we've added the management and optimization section in the program in which we will give you various tips and tricks to make it more likely for your poker career to succeed and how to continuously improve as a poker player now on top of that this concept is continuously evolving based on feedback and suggestions we get from our community next to all this content you will have access to our exclusive Discord Community monthly live q

a calls And one-on-one coaching session in which we are going to be reviewing if you have been implant lamenting the stuff that we teach you in the mechanics of Poker correctly so do you think you have what it takes to master the mechanics of Poker go over to mechanicsofpoker.com add your details to the priority list and maybe you will get a chance to work with me and Adam and make more progress in your poker career but for now without further Ado let's get back into more Goodness in today's episode you mentioned a lot of players

transitioning over from No Limit Hold'em to PLO what in European not necessarily these players in specifically but what do you think are some common mistakes No Limit Holden players make when transitioning to PLO [Music] um I'm not sure um I think maybe like Certain stuff they do maybe like with a combo that like I don't know how to explain it maybe maybe like PLO players are more used to like executing the strategy based on every single component in the hand whereas the No Limit guys like they generally I see like all their strategy is balanced

like their frequency in a lot of spots are very balanced but the hands that go into the Certain spots are not the right ones whereas PLO ones can be a lot more imbalanced but the hands are normally like make more sense going into each spot does that make sense so like like I said No Limit player might always find like the 10 check raise versus the late C beta or something but they're not using the right hands um but they're finding the frequency very often yeah so I think you mentioned as well that in PLO

because you have more car to your disposal removing blocking becomes a bigger part of the game whereas in no limit hold them there's a bit more randomizing going on with certain combos whereas the randomizing here is being taken over by the fact that you have more information in terms of cars removal and blocking yeah so sometimes we might see like a certain combo that they use that like Would then make us think like oh they're doing this way too often whereas maybe they've just randomized that combo whereas if it were maybe a PLO player they

wouldn't have randomized it they'd just pure folded it but then chosen a different hand so in a sense the frequency would be the same but the hand selection would be different Maybe but I can imagine that uh even in PLO there's probably going to be spots where your Suits are just you have so many good uh blocker Unblocker properties in a certain line that you cannot use them all I assume those spots do exist and same vice versa like the problem with uh with this purely playing playing on your hand in no limit hold them

is there's going to be spots where you will have way too many good candidates and wait a few good candidates and that will lead to massively under bluffing and over bluffing certain spots I assume that Still applies to PLO as well so there is some randomizing in the situations where that's really the case sure um and like certain spots like it is pretty much a mix in the solver anyway so like maybe you would um or maybe you just like like see what the play is doing and then just decide based on the level but

it obviously depends who you play then Yeah that makes sense and it turns off you you mentioned you know the heads up environment there's maybe not a lot of action so you have also been switching to playing more ring games uh what were some things you had to work on in terms of transitioning from heads up to ring um I would say like I didn't stop entirely playing ring like I was playing both of them I guess um to fill the action so I'd still wait to ring games to To try and get action when

I was playing the heads up but the I think the main thing is like the the game tree is just so complex in six marks it's it's very very hard like um which is good because like like it's a complex game um unlike the studying process is a lot harder because like the game is like it depends so much on like the right size um or like the stack size of everyone and then if it gets like 300 or Something like it's very hard to then study and then find out what's right so you need

like definitely an extra bit of intuition I think to be very good at six months pillow comparatively like in certain spots it's like okay like it's very tight and like the range is a bit more compressed but then it gets to a certain point where it just becomes like pure chaos as well um where like there's an extra player in Or the stack sizes are a bit different to what you're used to unlike your inquire an unknown spot um and then maybe there's more because the ranges are more compressed maybe there's more exploits that you

can make in six months in certain spots as well like um like I know if the same few players that do like very very well in six months and they would say maybe they don't play Very GTO at all um yeah because I guess there's more more players involved and like you said the game tree is harder so if the game tree is harder probably are people are further away from GTO so exploitative lines will if you know where people are farther off uh of GTO you exploitative lines will probably make you more money and

it gets also the big differences uh the recreational at the table uh kind of The disturbing the equilibrium so to speak yeah yeah and you see like certain players will go after the recreational player way more exploitatively than some of the other players um so it's kind of interesting seeing like a lot of different styles in sex Max pillow sort of how they react to certain Dynamics in the game um for me I just don't find it quite as Enjoyable as a headset but there's definitely certain stuff in there that's like super interesting I guess

if you if you wanted to get into it is is it also harder because the I guess if you play wreck Wars Plo heads up trying to find the correct answer or the correct answer is a bit more within your reach whereas in ring games where there is so much chaos there is just no correct answer is it then also sort of the mental side that it's harder to Accept the fact that we just don't know and you're just winging it yeah I think there's a lot more winging it involved um and maybe you like

you don't know but you're pretty sure like oh this is good or this is not good like in certain spots you should just be like folding range versus someone that's not bluffing enough um or something like that um whereas maybe you'd have less of that In the headset um yeah because I guess if you significantly because in heads up you have to make the money from the your direct opponent whereas in six Max for example I can play a bad strategy versus the best sport try to avoid for example the best player at the table

and give away some EV but still be very profitable at that game because I'm maximizing versus the weaker players and Losing the minimum versus the better players so there's a completely different Dynamic going on in terms of where your money has to come from yeah yeah for sure also I think from uh a mental game perspective how do you find losing and winning a different experience if it's in ring games versus heads up I think like headset it's you sometimes a bit differently Because you can just I mean in both of them actually you can

just get smashed um but maybe heads up it feels like a bit more personal when you're like like if you're playing versus one player and they're smashing you you're like oh okay like maybe I should stop because they're better or maybe I should like take a break or something whereas in six months if like there's a big whale at The table you still want to carry on playing but then maybe there's like a certain player that's doing something that's really exploiting you at the same time that you kind of have to be like okay with

like you're like okay I'm losing in this spot but it's worth it to like play with the whale or something um I don't know yeah I I think I think that makes a lot Of sense um yeah go on um but like I do have a lot more experience losing at six Max I think like my Edge is a lot less than six months comparatively and then um like downswings can last for a lot longer so like if your Edge is less maybe then it's harder to evaluate like If you're playing a good strategy or

not because like the variance takes up like the the standard deviation and stuff is lower but that the The Edge is a lot lower for me anyway so in certain spots when maybe I was playing in games that I thought maybe I was beating especially sort of the reg battles maybe I was just steadily losing um But then evaluating that is quite hard sometimes as well going forward in terms of uh playing these ring games maybe more in the future what do you think is something that you should focus on improving from your perspective I

think it's just like for the most part like I would just improve by studying I guess like certain spots that come up Often and then going from there I guess but it is kind of hard because say if it's on GG um like a lot of the games are quite a unique spot all the time so you have to be very disciplined to then study the spots that are quite unique because they don't come up often then you're like oh well you throw it away you're like oh this isn't going to happen again but then

you you kind of Rob yourself of actually Learning because you're just like oh like this is just a random game that's going to happen this is just a random game that's going to happen once instead of actually like uh keeping the same discipline as you would in your other game to then learn and figure out stuff about it whereas like I have one friend that will like he'll click 20 hands from the session and he'll be like making this custom SIM for each spot and Like like figuring out basically I'm like he was doing this

for the last two years and now he's really really progressed this year at six months so it's like like I would say he was that skill two years ago but this progression of just always being super dedicated in in like trying to figure stuff out in six months and now he'll watch me play sometimes and he'll be like all right like you're completely off in this spot and I'm like oh [ __ ] like But previously maybe he looked up to me at six Max and be like oh you're very good but now he's almost

like oh he's like overtaken that stage of six months for sure and how does that then change because you you mentioned in general in the blower environment people play more when they're when they have a certain level of certainty that they can beat you right it's a bit a bit less just winging It like the No Limit Holden players going into a six-mex game knowing that you might be off in certain spots how do you think you deal with that knowledge the fact that you're not as skilled to six Max s in ring games uh

does it affect your yeah your confidence going into a game I think it's just like disrespect to some of the other players like that you're just like oh they're not playing very well either so like I trust myself to be better than That but knowing myself that I'm making a lot of mistakes as well and there's a lot of improvement to be had um yeah I think that whereas maybe in the past like in some of the tougher games that we played like it was more like uh let me just try and think about it

yeah I think maybe in the past maybe it was more out of a challenge where it's now like okay the skill might be Like we know we're making a lot of mistakes but then you also know everyone else is making a lot of mistakes and maybe they've put less time into it than you so you still hold a certain level of confidence but you realize like there's a lot of improvement to be made but these people are also just in the game because there's a big whale there so you're kind of like you'll put yourself

into it and then you kind of have to be then Um dedicated after the fact to then train them from that rather than being like doing it again and again and again because it's easy to then put off something that like like I said like uh the spots get quite unique maybe there's a whale at the table the stack size configuration is weird but after enough repetitions like you just gain knowledge about the sport and about the game in certain dynamics that then will help you further on but Maybe the you don't get the the

satisfaction of getting that spot again soon mm-hmm resin heads up maybe it will come up next week or something yeah and that does change obviously the frequency of spots and how often things occur will change the the way you study it right ring games a bit more holistic View and whereas in heads up you can go very specific Um sure I was wondering let's say for example you would be handed a low to mid Stakes PLO player what would be like and you would you would coach him in three sessions what would be like the

topics you would pick in in the first three coaching sessions in European the most important things that this player would have to learn in order to progress and maybe get get unstuck from lower mid Stakes this can be a heads up or ring game whatever you feel uh or you think the first three three coaching sessions can be just blow in general mistakes that they should avoid both heads up and ringing yeah I think like it would probably depend a lot on the player um and then maybe like I have coached a little bit in

the past and like yeah I would just watch them play and then like I think It depends maybe where they come from the mistakes I've seen players make can be quite varied depending on who it is so like one player does certain stuff very well one person does other stuff very well um I don't know what like mid-sex players are doing that differently I think they're just doing everything a little bit worse but some of them are probably executing very good strategies nowadays But maybe the games aren't there for them to progress or something so

I I'm not sure I can answer it that well but I would say like the most frequent spots like the the like the big one versus small blind symbol is Paul like three best spots small blind versus button like if you nail these you're just going to be in a better way to like a better spot to implement the rest of the game tree Because like you're nailing the most simple spots but not the most simple but the most frequent so basically if you would go to someone you would grab the most frequent spot to

start with that and work your way to the most unfrequent spot that's what you're saying yeah for sure yeah um and then maybe like go from hand to hand to figure out then like oh like Like um you would you wouldn't need to see too many hands to then like figure out what the person is doing and maybe you would like quiz them in a certain spot like in this check right spot like using some quizzing software or something like that like uh and see like the general mistakes they're making in like this spot um

because you can spot it quite quickly I Think um yeah and also what you mentioned right you want to hear how they think about a certain spot so you can kind of spot the flaw in their decision making um yeah yeah exactly um and like like like I said earlier like when I was not really s like when I took a long time from the game like there were certain spots where I was Just at like a zero frequency line for this sort of check raising type spawn like I've coached people who are playing up

to 5K and like they're sort of at that zero frequency spot for like some check races or like some of this or some of that and it's like it's kind of mind-blowing that they could be at that level but then it's like also you do get away with stuff in in PLO and yeah because they do need all the frequent spots I guess Sure sure which reconfirms your and then maybe maybe you can get away with being a rag like missing these spots because that's the difference between like three to ten but they can still

win at three big blinds per hundred because that's a very bad player there so it's like they don't have to worry so much about this other spot but for me and then some of my friends that are into poker like we want to nail That spot as well um because it is fun to to play to play better right not just be like oh there's a will in the game I'm maybe winning at three big points per hundred I think this says this really says something about what drives you in poker uh that you're way

more it's way more about the game and the challenge than necessarily the okay well my game is good enough I make money because I'm playing first as well I'm just here to To to make my hourly and then I'll leave and go on with my life you're really yeah intrigued by the game so to speak and progressing in it the challenge remember the word fun linked to the word challenge that's kind of what keeps on driving you uh yeah yeah for sure Adam you played a lot of uh heads up throughout your career as well

does it sound familiar that at some point maybe the people who want to give you action Are not necessarily the guys you want to play with and the guys who you want to play don't want to give you action very true very true you often get hooded by the guys who are slightly better than you and the guys you're trying to hunt want to avoid to you so that's upset and go well that was quite polarizing in terms of what you were doing you either established at a level and you bump on the fish or

you'll try to shot take the level above and you played pretty much 100 regs so yeah parts of your career where you're just battling battling battling you know the parts where it's just playing recreationals and it's all fun and games and in those moments when you're playing the shot take the higher level very often it's the top two or three guys at that level who are always available always want to play and they want to play long sessions it's the guys who are a bit weak at that level who play 30 minutes here 40 minutes

there so Your chest after them and getting basically chased by the other guys so it's a bit of an interest Dynamic and I'm sure it's quite common across formats where the more established players and the best players want to play anyone the other players are kind of duckling diving but yeah it's definitely I related to what um what group is saying about poker being a bit more of a personal thing let's start heads up being on personal There's something about sitting down across from one player even after online name where it's just is him there's

something a bit Primal about it either he's beating you or you're beating him there's no Escape God there's no maybe guys a break even but there's like there's gonna be a loser and a winner of a sample size and you're going directly at their strategy and they're going directly at your strategy and one of you is going to come out on top of that Integrate battle and it does feel quite personal and if you lose over a period of time during that you're like wait a second am I delusional is this guy getting the main

spots that I haven't figured out or is it just variants does this Dynamic like you're talking about that lightness battle in terms of is it just variance is it just pause the game trick he's attacking you what you're not sure of and Chris is dynamic of self-doubt but also uh you want to get To the bottom of it and kind of beat that player so yeah think heads up has a unique Dynamic like that I'm sure there's other formats that have components of that but it definitely gets air magnified in the heads-up environments it's one

thing I wanted to ask you to start out on your career in Wales and traveling the worlds with York and a poker Rule and if you've had a career path in terms of when you've got that gernandez course you had a path of Where you want to go how to learn poker I'm guessing you were quite a vicious guy who wanted to progress to higher levels is there anything that poker has taught you throughout your career or brought you to your life that you didn't expect um that I didn't expect um I'm not sure that

it's taught me anything that I didn't expect because like I've done it for so long I guess I'm not sure what I would expect like what I expected it from like what I expected from it um but I think it definitely like taught me like um like like most poker players will stay just like a very sort of like for me I'm quite calm like if something bad happens it doesn't affect me too much um especially in general life like and like when you see other people maybe Getting affected by like certain circumstances and like

be it something that you can control or can't control like like yeah it would make me a bit annoyed or something but like I feel like I can deal with it quite well now um and like I don't stress out about it or like um like I don't like get mad at it or something like like you can kind of like pick it apart and then like figure out How you're gonna deal with it like when it happens and then then carry on without it affecting your life too much whereas you definitely see some other

people because like like okay in my general life now I'm not hanging out with poker players in daily life and like something will happen that then really puts them off for the day and you're like oh like like you feel a bit uncomfortable sometimes saying like don't think too much about It but like like because you want to empathize with your friend or something and like be like oh this this sucks and like it does suck maybe but but then there's also a way to like progress from that and you don't need to well in

it or something um that's a very good one yeah that's a very good one yeah it almost almost putting things into perspective focusing On things that you control run things you're doing control and when bad events happen putting that into the context of okay it's about events let's move on from it or yeah put it into kind of perspective that's healthy for you yeah it is interesting when you uh look at non-poker players and it is as a poor playoff we often think like very logically very analytically we can often be very a matter of

a fact about situations and a lot of people will Freak out when things go out of their control and adversity strikes such as corvid or any Dynamics which create a extreme negative in their environments it's very easy for a lot of people to freak out obviously poker players aren't robots we still have our ups and downs but generally multiple players develop a skill set of going okay that's variance that's about scenario how can I move past it and what do I control in this situation so even for yourself when you Talk about corvids in that

period of time you couldn't go out and see people like mostly in the world but you control your work time and you basically played a lot more podcast a lot more grinding a lot more in so you took a negative scenario or it actually progressed through the stakes and made a generally bad scenario to something good because that's what you control so I think it's like having that context of being able to uh focus on what you yeah what you Can control in those situations I think I think for myself that poker taught me was

if you work hard towards something you can keep progressing with it I think myself like at school I was similar to you I was good at some things when I was engaged generally Sports and maths other things I was really bad at uh but even the things I was good at I didn't really cap out I always go to a good level but not great I did a lot of middle distance running I was always like good but not Like really good and I had this kind of mindset where Talent prevails and it can only

go as far as you're telling it pushes you but then poker taught me something different it was like actually almost like the playing fields level obviously there's people who get into poker who have had stars but generally if you put the work into it poker rewards you over and over and you can keep progressing and keep progressing and there's no limits there's no Obviously there will be some Geniuses who are pretty hard to be in pocket but generally like you can progress and keep progressing with work ethic I think a lot of players the progressive

book I get the same sort of feeling that if you put time and energy into something uh you get better and on your questionnaire you said you believe that if you put talented energy into something that you can get better at it so yeah I think that's a another strong thing that poker Teaches you as a life lesson I think just to like caveat that one thing like like I cycle a lot at the moment but like at the moment I would say like I've reached a level where like like I'm a good good cyclist

but there's sort of a ceiling in in sports that you get maybe that is not there in poker sometimes or I haven't experienced so much in poker where like my level as a cyclist say it's harder to progress now like it's harder to get that much Faster like maybe I would see my friends get faster than me then and I'd be like Oh I'm putting all this time in like I'm doing sort of the same stuff but maybe like maybe your body genetically isn't adapting to something maybe it's like something that you aren't doing right

still um but then being okay with that like is also very important like like just not everything is about getting to be the best or getting like because it offers a Lot more than just Improvement like oh I just want to be faster or something like like certain stuff that maybe you put a lot of time into that you don't gain like Improvement in is still very fulfilling to your life even though you're not getting specifically better at it so like cycling say for me is like like a time to like hang out with friends

the time to be outside like in nature like experiencing a new place or something like that and sure like part Of it is like you want to get better at it but if you're not it's still giving you all this stuff so like you don't need to focus too much on like like ah I didn't get better at this one thing like it's not it's not good or something I don't know if that makes sense well in the sense yeah it's like the activity itself brings more than just being good at it the exception of

cycling like Being outdoors the health benefits there's a there's more to the puzzle than just like improving obviously one of the most um exciting Parts about doing anything especially with sports is getting better at over time and very often if you stagnate for a long period of time you generally get bored with that so Fitness and progression at the same time being realistic that it definitely in physical Sports genetics play a bigger role I'm Sure if I trained the perfectly for all my life I would never beat Usain Bolt in 100 Sprint when he's in

good shape let's just send things that you need to accept physically and I know myself as a real nice that I trained from the age of 13 to 23 and there's some guys are really really talented two of the guys in my training group went to the Olympics and yes I could make the excuse that I was using the talent kind of excuse that I just wasn't working hard enough the same Like kind of physical their bodies was more designed to run at middle distance speeds quickly I they responded better to training than me and

those Dynamics maybe I could have closed that Gap a little bit more but I was always up against it against certain people and I think you need sometimes accept okay I'm not going to be the best and possible at this but then you've got your own Quest and what I like about poker and sport is it's often you against you and you Choose the game rules as long as you're like trying to beat yourself and get better whatever that means to you there's an individual Pursuit that only you really know at the moment I'm trying

to do like like weightlifting no one really cares what I do but myself I'm very particular in my log books and trying to get better it's fun it's just a fun game of trying to get better and a variable for you cycling I'm sure you've got a lot of cyclone metrics that you're Keeping track of right now and for you you'll you'll be aware that okay these are getting better and over time that's very engaging see I think having a Pursuit and I think often poker players it'd be healthy for most players to have some

of the suit out of Pokemon which has more controllable variables that you can pursue and get better routes and I think what you talked about earlier in terms of learning curves was really interesting for me when you're talking About when you when you start something new you a very fast learner curve almost anything within the first 20 hours of learning something new you've learned very very quickly then as you get to a good level you get a very very small increase for a large amount of time like it's smaller and smaller smaller it's called The

Law of diminished returns in terms of improvements and for some people that's very demoralizing but for like high Achievers that's actually Really exciting and obviously you see a decimal move on something you're like yes that moved one little bit after like 20 hours of really trying so I think for something like yourself a place high stakes I'm sure you get a lot of kind of pleasure and satisfaction from the small improvements now and that allows you to keep going yeah definitely all right so I want to ask you of all the levels you've tried to

crack into I think I've got a rough Idea based on what you thought so far which of the stakes that you've currently managed to establish yourself at was the hardest to break into and why was it so challenging um 5K yellow for sure like I'm still down like maybe like 150k Lifetime on that steak I think like on six marks specifically um like I run like a lot under EV but just The game was just so much harder because you're playing versus like at that time like every end boss in PLO was like if you

wanted to play in that or like open set you had to like battle three-handed with like better players basically and like I sat and battled but they knocked me down for sure um and like I think actually half of the problem was initially I gained quite a lot of success like the first month of Something I'm shooting like 5K I think I made like like 130k or something um so then like what you said about earlier like evaluating your Edge and stuff like I would see them making mistakes when I won and then when I

started losing back and like not doing so well in that game it was always maybe then like like a like a how do you say like a limiting belief where then like I thought I was Better than I was against them I thought they were making more mistakes and maybe those mistakes just didn't count really in the grand scheme of things um so then like like I had quite a big downswing after that um where then I had to eventually move down to like two five and five ten again um from like sort of battling

a lot of 5K in like 2019 that would have been um and it was tough like sort of like Getting to that 5K battling with these tough tough guys to then sort of going back and just grinding sort of like the like two five five ten games on party poker at that time um I'm like reevaluating your skill like realizing oh like after unfortunately after losing like a lot back realizing that like I wasn't playing that well even though I thought I was using the solvers to study I think it's then easy to make crutches

In your own game where like you're like ah yeah I wasn't far off here but you're actually taking that line like like if it's like only a small error but actually frequency wise you're you're doing it all the time and you're always in your head like oh like by taking this line passive because of this um this reason but you don't realize like okay in that specific isolated spot like it's not That big a mistake but then you look at the whole game plan and like you're just passive passive passive passive which was my problem

at that time um and in in isolation none of them were big mistakes so I would go through the hand in the solver and be like oh I haven't done anything wrong but then there's a whole game plan it was just losing like little bits here and there but it took a long time for me to Realize that like I lost a lot basically like just from that and then like when you're running under review like okay like I probably wasn't losing much it was close but I wasn't I wasn't beating them for sure um

and even if I was like there I was making a lot of mistakes but I didn't actually see at the time even though I thought I was like being super dedicated I was like I was studying a Lot and like trying to figure out how they're playing but um even then like I had a mask over over my play I guess it sounds like running good to begin with with that sample size created a lot of obstacles for you and the mind got very biased towards your initial sample size which happens very often and you

almost like labeled guys as bad and you're beating them quite comfortably to begin with then all of a sudden you get anchored to that kind of Kind of viewpoint almost that label it's the same like with the first impression you meet somebody and you like them very often you like that person for a longer or if you hate somebody it's very hard to change that and as he was seeing more information coming back at you it took you a while before you started to go wait a second maybe it's my strategy that needs to improve

and it's it takes a lot because you've got this confirmation advice that I'm beating These guys and like you said your your mind trying to protect you by kind of marginalizing some of the mistakes so you didn't have to deal with the fact that potentially these guys could be better and it's really hard because you go from this one point to where the ego is very satisfied because you're winning and you've beaten these guys and now you need to go wait a second actually I'm losing their beating me and you need to go from like

the dominance I'm beating People too wait a second I need to learn I need to get better so it's like a humbling experience and often like if you run good for a period of time and have to reflect there's a takes a bit of time for the mind to catch up in sounds like for yourself that was part of the kids ironically at the time also like I gained like like people wouldn't play me either at that time but ironically I was probably losing in some of the 300 games but players still Wouldn't play they'd

be like oh no like don't want to play through your hand but like like it's just kind of funny sometimes like I was there probably the one losing but in my head I was winning but then like these players were probably beating me and then they were like no we don't want to play like three-handed and it's like like you're like what was going for the heads like they should have been Grinding me out like taking me for everything um but they maybe like that Killer Instinct so like like okay certain players would would carry

on playing but like certain others for them would be like Oh I'm not sure about this spot instead of actually playing and then like seeing they would maybe Edge out of it and then maybe me at that time was I just had too much humorous but I didn't Maybe even get punished enough for it because like the guys weren't they weren't fighting enough you know there's no limit if you had a few risks like that I think you'd get pegged down like they wouldn't stop playing you it's probably quite confusing for yourself as well because

you're like well these guys must be worse than me they're running away they won't play me yeah trying to think what the hell it's it's super like tough sometimes isn't That like I think even now like sometimes in the game like I'm a dog but like like I'll just play because like I just want to play you know like you you want to try it like you want to you want to see what they're doing like and and have a challenge rather than just being like Oh I'm not sure if I'm winning like I don't

want to play at all like it's just it's a bit sad if the game gets like that yeah so when you realize potentially you Were losing in those games how would you reapproach shooting those games and playing them in order to get better and establish yourself at that level um I think like once I moved down okay like at that time I wasn't playing very well compared to the best best wrecks but that losing helped me get better for when I was playing lower then and like only then a small few changes realizing that I

was too passive in certain spots that made me very very Good at mistakes and then like I progressed very very quickly then back up to it and then when I played it again like I it just stuck then but but it took that like moving down and then realizing also that okay like I'm not better than these guys but then it helped me get better than everyone else even though I lost like ideally you wouldn't lose the money to then learn that mistake but but like I think that journey of losing a lot at 5K

then Helped me get back there and make it stick because I was like like I had had this success finish with them a bit and I was like oh like I want to get to that spot again I want to then beat them like it's a goal to them to then get there and try and try and do better than them um and I think that's a very like drove me but then also like like when you go back down you realize how far you've come and maybe like oh Then like these games feel a

lot easier and then you you adapt a little bit and change a little bit because in the whole sense like you're not that far off you're just making the small mistakes everywhere Maybe um yeah that sounds like a very challenging experience to go through from a mindset perspective because obviously you've shot those higher sticks got some good results then you've had to reevaluate And then drop down stakes and stop battling at lower Stakes to get your strategy up to speed learn the lessons that you need to learn from the higher Stakes but for a lot

of players that's very challenging like in if you just objectively look at it you go right well just go downstairs and play a low end but it's very hard because now all of a sudden you're like your confidence has been knocked you're thinking am I good enough now you think there's a gap Between where you are and where you want to be you're going in five kids a few months ago and now you're grinding 200 500 games and all of a sudden it's like oh [ __ ] like I'm so far away from where I

wanted to be so um are there any character traits that you feel like you have that allowed you to uh see the situation about what it was that you just need to get better and learn and shoot again if there's anything that's helped you to uh make that jump in the End yeah I think initially there's definitely like some ego involved where like you're like oh I'm a 5k right now and then you're like oh these players won't play me I don't need to play two five and five ten because like like this is where

you're at but actually you're not there and then also you think like oh what will these players think if you drop down like oh they're gonna be like oh like he got smashed he has to play these Stakes again like um so then in your head you're like you're sort of in a way like a little bit worried like what the player is gonna like think about you because you're like back playing low and then you feel a bit like oh like I failed but I think very quickly then I was just like well this

is where I have to be at the moment because like this is the bank world this is Like this is what I have to play this is my skill level and then you progress again from that so I think like it's very important to be adaptable like like even if you have been at one stake in the past it doesn't mean you're like you're good enough to play there in the future but like like at the same time then then also like reevaluating and just being okay with like where you are in the journey and

like like if it is that you're good Enough to beat the Midstates at the moment and like not good enough to be the high stakes maybe we'll try the high stakes and and try and beat it and like if it goes badly then then be okay with going back down like and then trying to get there again or something like that amazing advice really really good I like that trying to be adaptable and it's easier said than done because like you said the ego gets attached to playing a Certain stake and as you were kind

of telling that story there you are thinking about what other players at that level might be thinking of your decision to move down it's really interesting as individuals we put a lot of attention on what other people might perceive of us when in reality they live in their own lives doing their own things they've got their own right battles going on if you don't show up for a few months they're probably not Worried or thinking about it too much but you know might as well like this guy thinks I'm weak now he thinks I'm backing

down we create this whole narrative when in reality it's quite a simple situation where we build your role the law sticks get better and try again if that's what you still want to pursue see I like that adaptability and almost like not getting your identity to attach to the level you're playing because you might have to you might be Great at one part of your career at a certain level than the start of it they get too good for you you know to move down and learn the game to get back so I think that

adaptable flexible with your your buying into yeah that's definitely a great lesson to kind of learn from podcast but also it's challenging I know for yourself it sounds like you naturally were able to do that where a lot of players who I've worked with have struggled when they've had a failed shot Take they've had to rebuild their role especially like one or two levels lower than what they were shot taken because you've gone from living the dream playing the States you want to to now we build it and it's very humbling experience so yeah I

think having that adaptability to be able to do that to rebuild because poker's not linear we're not going to be able to progress in even sticks every time ends yeah sometimes you're going to try and feel and sounds Like the 5K level for you was a big learner curve to figure out what you need to do yeah 100 yeah all right last reflection question for me if you could go back in time and you could learn one lesson in advance that would speed up your journey to the current Stakes that you're playing is there anything

that comes to mind that you'd be like you had some hindsights on your in your favor that would have sped Up your journey to the state of currently plan um yeah I think similar to the point that that you you mentioned just now I guess like where you have to be like a bit more adaptable and a bit more like honest in your your own ability but then like like I I don't know I think you also need to be like you need to be willing to fight and like just try and test Yourself and

not be like too scared to actually like pay people because I think certain players are very very good but they're not like they're not putting themselves in games with maybe they would be because they're like oh like I don't want to play I Don't Want variants and it's like maybe their goals are different but if you want to get better like I think it's always important to try and challenge yourself and like going back to the Point I made earlier about the No Limit guys coming over to PLO like they just want to challenge themselves

all the time and it's very inspiring like like it's cool to see because it's something that's lacking a bit in PLO at the moment like um like the sort of guys that are just like they don't care maybe if they're losing maybe if they're winning they just want to like test themselves and Learn by that that method I guess yeah I think It's quite afraid don't be afraid to like try and fail instead of not trying and then um not really knowing like if you could have achieved if you could have achieved that or not

but they're just at Mid Stakes or sort of 2K and they're like oh these players are better than me and in actual fact like I respect some of the Mid-States guys game more than the high stakes guys the guys that are playing like the 100K game But they're okay like there's a big difference in Rome you need but then they're also not putting themselves in a game that they're probably beating um great advice yeah I think you see it basically don't be afraid to fail and put yourself in challenging scenarios where you might be the

underdog and Philly has a very strong likelihood like there's no important guys coming to a place with the best PLO players they Just want to play and learn and I think the main thing is because it's quite a thin line you've got to throw a walk across where you want to put yourself in games where obviously you can beat over the long term return pause your career you want to actually challenge yourself and stretch knowing that wait a second I'm the worst player at this table and I'm gonna learn so I think it's having the

right intention of why you're going into these games obviously every day you Put yourself in tough lineups that you're the the fish you're gonna bro pretty quickly at the same time you've got to go up your comfort zone and take on challenges and be aware I may feel like this this a lot so uh I think mistakes players listen to this a lot of players will form their category where they're very good in their level they've got really good win rates but the thought of trying the next level and feeling it's pretty scary so they'll

Tell themselves that the level of books really good these guys are amazing but they haven't actually tried they haven't actually built a sample size against these players so don't really know us I think it's a a good like kind of reminder to players who might be playing a safe to try and feel is part of the game and even the best players in the world put themselves in situations where maybe they're not the best player in those games so they can learn and get Better I think that's definitely true and like I think we do

put certain players on the pedestal a lot where like like you're like oh this play is like super sick he's so gdo and like this and that and it's like maybe you actually played them and you realize oh they're actually making mistakes here here and everywhere and you're like oh they're not that good but they almost get promoted higher because of everyone just being scared of them They get in this Aura and then it's like like I think don't like Doug Paul talked about it years ago like when he plays Source or something like Source

was just playing stupidly this is him and like Doug in the end like worked out how he played and crushed him but but like Source had this aura about him that like he was like amazing and then like like you don't know until you try and like certain players like like me and my friends like definitely found the same We're like oh this player's meant to be super good but he's making actually a lot of mistakes that are like fundamental and then you're like like it's it's inspiring because then you're like oh there's room for

everyone to to actually get there because no one is actually playing that well still like if you look through your hands that I play like I'm making mistakes one more time you know like like it is what it is but but like People get put too high on a pedestal and everyone's sort of too afraid to then like poke it a bit instead of just poking it and then see like see what happens you know yeah it reminds me of what our podcast guest who said everyone's a fish no matter what game you go into

it everyone's a fish to some degree basically trying to mean everyone makes mistakes and don't put anyone in a pedestal like you think there wouldn't beat a bull there's some amazing player They're all they've all got leaks that you can attack and yeah like I said like a lot of players will not move upstairs especially at a certain level in the cash games where the players are almost like celebrities in terms of they've been around for five ten years and everyone knows their names you've watched them for a long time there's all around them where

you just assume they're amazing picture my former heads of sitting goes the 1K level we had like 10 regulars at that level who didn't play another regular for about a year and all the other levels were just Carnage just regulars non-stop but these guys were on this pedestal going oh don't touch those guys they're they're unbelievable they'll just beat everyone but they have some practice for you right exactly exactly also we started scratching I had to go in they haven't played a regular yeah and the game's Advanced a lot so a few break people Started

proud of them and go wait a second this guy's not that good all of a sudden you're like ah these are just normal players obviously they're real stickers haven't played good regulars and yeah there's no there's no like kind of geniuses that are just solved the game and there's convey beats everyone's a human you've got leaks in their game and obviously the game's evolving so if you're not battling every day you're probably not going to be as good see I Think it's a pretty reminder to not particular pedestal but at the same time you don't

want to be delusional you don't want to like think you're some unbelievable player to beat any player there's a level of humility that needs to come with that at the same time like I said prodding the like the prodding somebody too correct is he good let's build a sample and just see where am I yeah yeah for sure ready for yourself have you had seen what about a list Issue yourself we had to do uh almost like force yourself to move up a stake where you're maybe a bit resistant I know you've got to play

some of the the online thoughts of the game like when you were playing so if you like any of those levels of players were intimidating to to prod so to speak yeah for sure and I think it I was I was reflecting on that and I think a big leak throughout my career and I would say still up until today I think it's It's it's more of a mental game error like how much weight and meaning you give to losing I think you you talked about how much your identity is attached to losing the more

your identity is attached to losing the more you're gonna try to play it safe and I think a lot of players they they find reasons why they're not yet ready to move up you know they might have a great win rate and when they have 4bb they say no but I need 6 BBM and They have 6bb they will find another reason why they're not ready right and then the other players who take the pokes they find reasons why they are ready it's just a matter of perspective right it's do you highlight the leaks of

your opponents that are playing higher Stakes or are you gonna highlight the the better spots of your opponents playing higher Stakes there's there's one player like actually the dead sort of main Chronicle progression Um he's called stars like um at the start of the year like he basically ran up from like sort of I think he was mainly grinding like one two and two five Zoom and he ran up to basically just fighting everyone and got up to like 5K um and like I played a lot with him and like inadvertently I did okay versus

him but but that sort of just Swedish like never die attitude like he was fighting Like it didn't matter if it was I'm so good or gravy and like suddenly like certain players weren't playing it even though like like he just moved up you know and like like it's like he just wanted a game um and it was quite interesting to see like like this guy that just wanted to fight and like wanted to uh like just test himself against everyone and no matter who it was like he would try And like like I think

sometimes even like I'm so good was quitting him because he was just like running him over basically with like an an orthodox sale um and like like it was quite inspiring to see that like someone sort of progressed at the stakes again in in heads up pla with that sort of attitude yeah and he had that right he had that mentality right I think also something that you Mentioned is to realize I think it was when I asked you about you playing ring games you said yeah I make a lot of mistakes but so does

everyone else right so so you're focused more in terms of your relative skill compared to your opponents and realize that everyone is human that everyone tries to make mistakes I think another important one is also your need for certainty I think I always had and still have quite a high need for certainty before I jump in that I actually beat the games so let's say for example uh there was a guy coming over from another game or a bit of an unknown type of player who suddenly started to battle I would usually be the first

one actually to jump out of the game and sort of watch it from the sideline first and then I first had to see him do various things wrong and then I would jump in now on one side that did prevent me from having big downswings or playing In games that I wasn't beating but on the other side I missed a lot of volume uh versus in games that I most probably an end I would have made way more money if I would have you know jumped over that and and tried at least but yeah I

just had it too high of a need for certainty which I think is attached to uh being afraid to lose because losing means that not only you lost your game but you take it like as I'm a loser I'm not good enough and especially if you Have like if you don't try it and lose but then it's like exactly so so I I think the more the more afraid you are of losing due to for example certain trauma that you have because in the past you know you were labeled not good enough and that comes

up again if you lose the the more you're gonna try to prevent losing and I think I personally really relate to that uh that you're then gonna try to do everything within your control in order to not lose now That resulted for me in a very high win rate but the volume obviously way lower because I would only play if I would feel my best I would only play if I was very certain I would only play versus a guy who I've studied the whole day yeah let's say so I was I wanted to kind

of predict the future so that I wouldn't get into spots where I didn't know what to do or didn't know what to expect but obviously the flaw in that is it's way more about embracing the fact that you Could screw up it's embracing the fact and accepting reality that you could be losing it's accepting the fact that you will get into spots where you don't know what to do and kind of not seeing that as a threat but more as an opportunity like these guys probably do like yeah okay uh best question area win worst

case scenario they confront me in a part of my game that I'm not very good at that I have to improve in order to progress so they their mentality kind of Make that shot a sort of win-win situation if you get what I mean definitely um going back or going back now going to present moment I'm curious okay going forward Griffin what are your uh what are your goals in poker what are you trying to still achieve um I think now like just trying to if I guess get better at six marks um if that's

going to be the game that's Available to play on GG like there's very big games to play there um just try and progress on there but then also like like I would like to just like maybe like play some more heads up versus some people um but but like I I would cover that like the like I mentioned off the podcast earlier but like the progression is quite hard sometimes that like the Stakes now where there's not much action and maybe the only action is like maybe off like one or two players and then like

getting to the level above that is then hot because there's no games to them get better or not to get better to to like increase your role to then play against like like someone at a higher stake um so I guess like the the goal has to be Bending increasing the role like either by getting a good game and headset like at the stakes I'm already playing or like um progressing on the stakes on GG um because like the other games they're a massive in terms of motivation we talked about in the beginning you saw

a clear letter you know ranking to move up now you're at the top what keeps you then driving do you do you notice that you have to Fire yourself up a little bit more maybe especially in ring games where your natural uh competitiveness your natural challenge get less triggered how do you then go about keeping yourself motivated um yeah I think the heads up stuff motivates me a lot more um and then for ring games just like being a bit more professional about it being like okay like Like this is this is where you want

to get to then you have to put in the time here um and that you have to just sort of take giant the the other parts of it that maybe like it's not super super what you want to be doing but it's still like it's still fun like it's still interesting it's just in a different way than you used to um and I think like I think maybe sometimes Like like when you actually start getting into it and like actually being disciplined about it you actually gain like a progression like you find the ways to

progress after you start trying or say at the moment or like in the last few months at six marks like I wasn't trying so much to find that progression but then once you actually like get your head down a bit like then stuff opens up The more you go into it like the more windows open to them progress whereas if you're like half-heartedly doing something because you're focused on something else maybe you don't see the maybe I'm here like oh like there's no way to progress like this game is too big this like there's no

one to play but actually that's that's an excuse I think like like um if you go down and look through the hands like that you played last session and then like like like you You quickly notice that you're playing far from perfect like far from well and like like you quickly realize like oh there's a lot of good games to play but you're just not putting yourself in there you've gone and done something else instead um so I think like maybe for me just being a bit more professional and playing a bit more at the

moment would be also good so it sounds like it's not necessarily The game you play it's more the approach to the game that you play that determines how motivated you are if you're actually in that game not going through the motions but actually looking to improve that kind of Sparks that challenge in you and that makes you more motivated yeah I think that's definitely true if you like you just have to put yourself in their fist and like be professional in that approach when you Start to then try and improve or something what would be

your biggest threat going going forward in these ring games that you would have to be aware of I mean yeah are you are you going to be too passive uh I don't know like maybe I'm just making mistakes like like the the game on GG is very high rake so you have to be careful about bee pipping in certain spots Um I'm like like it's definitely a bit sad like not to moon on that but like like in the game that is so so volatile to the rake and like your pvi or something like like

you do have to be more careful in selecting on a game like that um but say like on ACR like the the game's there and not very very they're very very low rate Um but there's maybe a bit less of them I guess then um but then also just dealing with that like that circumstance and then also being realistic in like certain ones where maybe you're not winning if there's like everyone's 20 big blinds deep and you're paying like 14 big blinds per hundred probably not the best game either um and being realistic in your

Edge in that Spot as well all right so those are a couple of things to to to look out for I'm sure you you you mentioned right you you have some friends around you that can help you I think this has been a theme throughout all the players that we've had on everyone works together with certain other players they can they can hold you accountable they can point you out on certain leaks that might slip into your game Um I think my last like just on that point sorry just on that point I think it

is kind of cool like uh with poco like it is in general quite an isolated thing where you don't want to give like me coming on here now it's giving information to competitors right but just the fun aspect of that like like when it's like your little group versus someone else's little group versus someone else's little group and each of them are doing stuff better than Us I'm worse than us like they're doing some stuff very well I've had a like finish route playing or like like some Norwegian group of guys playing like Canadian group

like like a high stakes wrecks like they're doing certain stuff better than our group but they're also doing certain stuff worse and it's kind of fun like like all the differences and the different approaches with like different groups of friends and then like the different regulars involved in That group then how they're playing compared to the other people and like like probably a lot to learn from each other but we never actually talk to each other about the game because we don't want to give away our stuff to that or something like that I just

it's kind of cool though yeah it's a very interesting Dynamic that you are sort of enemies but in the same time also in in like for example if you want to meet up with people who are like at your level Sort of it's also the people who have most in common with in terms of building friendships for example right so your enemies are sort of also your friends in the same time right let's say for example you are your professional boxer at the top uh yeah there's not a lot of professionals boxers who are also

at the top so automatically you're gonna be hanging out with the guys who are also at that level right so it's it's very interesting in these type of sport Environments uh that this can happen um one of my last questions for you that I have is you know you're you're you're trying to get better in these ring games you would like to have some more heads up action what is what is like the end goal in terms of how what what is like your definition of success right that's in the end what we all strive

for in in your definition what would be success in the end Um like it's a good question because sometimes like if you ever look like progressing from poker like like at what point you then stop um like my dad even asked this recently like like he was like oh like like we never questioned it after University like you've gone and done your own thing and but like um like when are you gonna do something Different like do you want to do something different do you want to carry on like doing this at the moment I

guess I still find a lot of pleasure in working out stuff that I'm doing wrong I'm like progressing like that we're like there's a certain drive that like it's interesting you know there's still challenge involved in it but say if like in six months time there's no games or like it's very sporadic and like it's only a ring game here and there like Maybe at that point like you would then get less motivated to carry on playing the game um but at this point like there's still a lot of action like for ring games or

something there's still progression to be made there's still a lot of areas in your game that you're making mistakes so it's kind of nothing's really changed in that aspect just you have to like change what you're doing like what games you're playing a little bit but the the same The same challenges are still there I guess I guess so for me it's still fun because you're still finding stuff out um but I guess like it I guess it's not so much due to down to success like is when I would stop or like what I

would Define as success is when that like drive to carry on playing those is when I would also play a little less or stop when the pleasure kind of Fades away would you maybe also I think what is the most Growing market now in poker I would say No Limit Holdem tournaments is probably the most growing environments currently in poker would maybe switching a game at some point or I don't know mix I I have no clue about the mixed game environment or other type of games would that be something that you could find pleasure

and interesting I mean I guess starting sort of from zero in a new game does offer offer a lot of these big learn curve opportunities again for you yeah I Think probably at this stage after playing poker for so long maybe I would not go into that um because also like I value a lot like lifestyle and stuff and like tournaments are just not really something that like I could see myself doing maybe like a few live swaps or something um I think it definitely would be super interesting to get into but Like at this

time like haven't played very good for so long maybe like I would be less interested in doing in doing that um anything else that's currently uh currently interested you um into crypto or something like crypto is just like something you withdraw into I guess but not really something that I actively do Um or like like take a huge amount of interest in the moment just because like I think for anything that I like to do well it requires a lot of head space and if you're into crypto and like like if you think about it

if you have to be like if you want to make a living on it or something or like you want to like trade it I don't know what like what people are doing but like I feel like you have to kind of be all in on that Um and then doing it also while trying to be very good at poker is quite hard I don't I don't know how some people like juggle being very good at like a lot of different stuff because this is really a lot for me um yeah I I I feel

like that's like being very good at yellow or like very sweet going over to No Limit like crushing everyone there like being like Oh anyone can play me a PLO and like like it's Impressive right um I mean I I I haven't played any PLO I don't you probably recently haven't played any in the limited but I guess there is a very big overlap in terms of mechanics in terms of how to learn the game how the game works like the fundamental rules about you know Equity distributions Equity realization denial Etc I think the the

broad Concepts would still apply so I I would say you Probably learn fast if I'm not maybe but maybe so so maybe maybe cash games heads up cash games that could be something that you could transition to at some point as well we'll see I think I think probably not but yeah unless someone asks for like half and half maybe and it would have to be like I think that they're No Limit guys P play PLO a lot better than we were playing at the moment so all right yeah that that doesn't seem Fair in

that case it no this is gonna be all for me do you have any last words that you would like to add or something that you would like to educate our listeners on or any final words um just that maybe like some other PLO players would like to come on the podcast would be cool to listen to other people's stories um yeah I don't know thanks for having me I Guess like I was absolutely quite like uh oh I'll just say it anyway like I was initially quite hesitant to come on um but like like

um I think I watched like just before coming on this one I rewatched like another one of your podcasts maybe and like just like hearing I think maybe it was Stefan or something or just hearing him say like talk about like oh like the enjoyment he gets from just Talking to other poker players and like hearing their different inputs and outputs um just in life in general is always like quite fulfilling so it's good to have a conversation with you guys about poker um and like maybe someone else will as well come on and do

some more yeah and if you'd like to listen to play I think this is also something that you Mentioned you like to listen to guys coming on podcasts but if everyone says no there's no one to listen to right sure like um like a lot of the podcasts nowadays are like a lot of coaches say that I try and like sell a course like I'm not trying to sell anything like like like I'm just a poker player I guess um and there's a different perspective maybe there but like you wouldn't get from someone who's Like

trying to sell a course but then at the same time like we're a lot less incentivized to come on and do a podcast um but yeah like it's always good for him all right so this is a call out to all the high sex poker players who have declined my invitation to come on the podcast reflection reflection moment Adam do you have any final questions or words that you would like to add before We let Gryffindor go I think we've come to a great closing points I did have a few questions lined up but I

think they would take us onto a part two of the podcast so I'll leave those maybe for around two yeah thank you very much Griffith for your time it's been a great happy as a guest and yeah I'm sure our audience are gonna love all the insights you've shared okay thanks very much another great episode in the books thank You Griffin for sharing all this knowledge with us and the audience was a great conversation Adam your main takeaways from today's episode one of the things I liked about his story was not being afraid to take

on challenges and to put yourself in environments where you might be the underdog but you can learn from it I think throughout his career he's shown that put himself in tough lineups so you can learn and get better has been very Advantageous for his career yes it's pointy over did that and maybe he played himself in tough games but he should have potentially moved down quicker but overall being able to uh take on challenges and not be scared to fail is a huge huge skill set that he's developed or he's always had throughout his career

I can imagine today he gets a message from Linus and says he wants the player he's the kind of guy who says yes let's play a lot of games where a lot of People would just be intimidated and maybe overthink should I play should I not can he beat me he's somebody who jumps into challenging environments and that allows him to learn a lot quicker alongside that in order for that to be effective for him he mentioned in being very adaptable and having adaptability which allows him to move upstairs and downstairs without too much of

negative consequence so for example let's say he's playing in one case and he should Shot six five kids if he loses x amount of buy-ins he's someone who can take the lessons from that go back to the law sticks rebuild his role and then shot take that again so there's adaptability to not get too attached to the levels you're playing so you can fluidly move between buy-ins take opportunities as they arise and challenges as they come up at the same time also be able to move back and rebuild without the ego getting too involved so

yeah those are some of The the Memoirs I thought were really really powerful and yeah I think that's allowed him to uh play the stakes he currently does today how about yourself running one of the main things that you took from that conversation yeah to continue on that point that he mentioned about when he took the the 5K shot and he also mentioned like it's not now that you're there you know like what I wrote down as a note is like permanence this is a delusion it's not like you're now Going to be there forever

there's hungry people trying to take your place and also what you mentioned about the moving down he was very um there was no emotion attached to the fact that he had to move down so he could see reality as was he I think he said like yeah your bankrolls now actually you cannot play the stake and there was no ego or emotion around it so seeing reality as is and acting accordingly and not get it let it have Being blurred by emotions or the ego I think is a very important skill um indeed also the

uh also for other people I think this has been a repeating thing as well throughout a lot of players um the conversation that we had with a lot of players that they say a very big problem that a lot of players have is they don't move up even though they might already be ready but they find reasons that they're not ready so this Is just a returning thing that I noticed in a lot of our conversations so if you struggle with that probably there's a good chance that you have too big of a fear of

losing there's basically too much on the line so it's good to do some work around that like what are your uh I think you mentioned it Adam the idea if your identity is too too much linked with your results in poker then you might want to play it safe so definitely some work you can do around in that area In terms of technical I asked him at some point what would a coaching session look like if he would uh have to coach someone and he talked about studying the most frequent spots I think this is

uh this is actually the same philosophy that I used in my cfp uh when I was coaching people we took it spot by spot and we started with the most frequent one and ended with the less frequent one because some people are intrigued by studying the less frequent spots because They don't know what to do there however in my opinion if you study the most frequent spots nildos you will actually play better your confidence is higher and then you actually be able to figure out less frequent spots as you go because you're in a higher

confidence State because in a loss but you do know what to do another thing that always comes back and I think he even mentioned like oh you have the Norwegian group you have to finish group Nowadays and especially in high six poker you're not playing against individuals anymore you're playing against small groups of players so if you're listening or doing it by yourself you should go find a group to study with to to talk strategy with to improve for it because no one at the top does it alone okay and if you're maybe looking for

a good Community mechanics of Poker 2.0 comes with a great Discord Community pre-launch go over to Mechanicsofpoker.com put your name on the priority list and maybe we will pick you to join the pre-launch for the mechanics of Poker 2.0 I want to thank everyone for listening I want to thank my co-host Adam for providing us with his summaries and his wisdom as always if you like this podcast leave some main takeaways Down Below in the comments Raiders 5 Stars follow us etc etc and I will see you guys in the next episode [Music] [Music] foreign

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