there's a cold absurdity to the fact that you can play off you can play extremely well and still lose I mean the actually this year you've played the what is it 50 days of World Series of Poker and it seems like at least from the perspective of me looking at it through the internet it seems like there's a lot of hands that you were like 70 30 80 20 uh all in hands that you just did not we're not going your way that can sort of break you mentally absolutely yeah one of the hardest things
especially about playing because cash games and tournaments are different one of the most difficult things about you know being a tournament player is resilience because more often than not like so if there's a tournament with a thousand people to win the tournament you have to get all of the chips that means there's one winner and 999 losers so it's very rare that you actually like win all the chips so you're essentially at some point in every tournament you play gonna deal with like really bad luck and disappointment and sometimes those streaks can have you question
yourself and be introspective about okay so I think I'm 47 now I think I've gotten better as time went on between distinguishing okay am I losing right now because of bad luck or is it fundamentally decisions I'm making are not very good right and that's one of the hardest things for anyone who plays poker to get to right why am I losing am I losing because of my opponents being better I'm not playing well or am I losing just because of luck and because there's so much variance in poker a lot of players can be
confused with on both sides of the coin one guy's winning and he thinks he's great he's really not wait till the cards break even as we say you know I think there's a lot of parallels to life as well you don't if you get screwed over over and over it's hard to know if you're doing something wrong or if it's just bad luck yeah I think they did a study I remember there was like a study it was supposed to be related to gambling but it was mice and they put them in a little maze
and they'd go down these three tubes and they go down this one tube and there'd be cheese right and then they go down again cheese three times in a row there was cheese there right the next time there was an electric shock there not cheese the rat went you know the mouse went to to get zapped he got zapped okay came back he kept going back to get zapped until he died like he kept going because he found cheese there he has one there so he continued to go chase that win despite it being you
know now all of a sudden not worthwhile till uh till they died and essentially what they said was that is essentially how they uh compared it to like you know the gambling brain and how people think about gambling you're chasing the winds you learn too much you sort of over generalized the lessons learned from the times you've won so yeah like beginner's luck can be detrimental if you if you have some early luck and you believe that this is just the way it's supposed to be forever you know it can put you in a delusional
state where you know you you feel like I'm just great but no you're not you were just lucky in the beginning I actually played poker once in Vegas it was a um it wasn't a tournament but it was a kind of tournament-like style I already forgot what it was but what I do remember is I had four of a kind so the last hand I've ever played in poker was I got a four of a kind and there was uh a couple of others with really strong hands so everybody went all in and I think
you get some kind of bonus for getting four of a kind bad beat jackpot you were playing it yeah so something like this I apologize if I don't know the details but I just remember winning a lot of money and I walked away from the table I said I'm not playing poker again this is great because I started to feel like this is your I started to think even though I haven't really played poker at all that I'm I'm good and I was a really dangerous feeling and everybody was really mad for walking away from
the table one of the other things is I think it's interesting about poker 2 is good as relative right yeah so you could be the seventh best player in the whole world like literally seven best player but if you're playing with the other six you're the sucker you are you are the like the worst player in the game right so like there's a lot of players for example like the Dan bilzerians of the world right he's not a top level player like you know these guys you see on TV but he probably makes more money
than they do because he plays with people that are far below his skill level so part of the part of the skill of being a poker player is finding situations where you're profitable you know regardless of your skill level another connection to life uh do you think Dan balzarian is telling the truth about having made what is it 50 100 million dollars just a huge amount of money playing poker considering what I know about the private games and the types of players who play in these private games and the stakes that they play I absolutely
believe you know Dan has made I don't know how many millions but I you know whether it's 50 whatever but it wouldn't surprise me that if you play in these games within a year or you know you find the right businessman who has way too much Bitcoin money you know and you know in one night you take them for 20 million I absolutely could see it I don't see any reason why listen where he got his money initially you know that's up to interpretation from his father or whatever but what but has he made a
bunch of money playing poker absolutely no question do you feel like as somebody who loves the game do you think there's something almost ethically wrong in playing people much worse than you so yeah that's a good question because you know part of the reason I played poker and wanted to become professional was like I want to be make my mother proud right and I don't think she would be proud of me taking like Grandma Betty's like last five dollars you know and again down the street you know setting her broke and taking her pension check
so why play at the high stakes against people who can afford it they know who I am I'm not a hustler I'm not pretending I'm bad at poker to squeeze in like I was thinking about this just yesterday because I played in a game that if I played that sort of role where a lot of guys do Pros they sort of play down their skill level pretend they're just one of the guys these guys can make 20 30 million dollars in a year legitimately like I believe that like if I did that if I said
you know what I'm gonna go down that path get into these games in La you know and travel and do all this kind of stuff I can make 20 million a year but it feels a little greasy right I don't like to kiss anyone's ass I don't like to ask it for anyone for a favor or things like that so but but yeah like I I feel listen a rich guy who wants to sit down with a million bucks and get drunk and lose it I have no empathy for that I'm like I don't have
any moral qualms with that so if uh Grandma Betty is a billionaire uh okay give me send it send it right you know absolutely why not
