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Speaker 1

00:00

Evolutionarily, if we see a lion running at us, we didn't have time to calculate the lion's kinetic energy and is it optimal to go this way or that way? You just reacted. And physically, our bodies are well-attuned to actually make right decisions. But when you're playing a game like poker, this is not something that you ever evolved to do, and yet you're in that same flight or fight response.

Speaker 1

00:22

And so that's a really important skill to be able to develop, to basically learn how to meditate in the moment and calm yourself so that you can think clearly.

Speaker 2

00:32

The following is a conversation with Liv Bury, formerly 1 of the best poker players in the world, trained as an astrophysicist and is now a philanthropist and an educator on topics of Game theory, physics, complexity, and life. This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

Speaker 2

00:54

And now, dear friends, here's Liv Bury. What role do you think luck plays in poker and in life? You can pick whichever 1 you want, poker or life and or life.

Speaker 1

01:06

The longer you play, the less influence luck has. You know, like with all things, the bigger your sample size, the more the quality of your decisions or your strategies matter. So to answer that question, yeah, in poker, it really depends.

Speaker 1

01:22

If you and I sat and played 10 hands right now, I might only win 52% of the time, 53% maybe. But if we played 10,000 hands, then I'll probably win over 98, 99% of the time. So it's a question of sample sizes.

Speaker 2

01:38

And what are you figuring out over time? The betting strategy that this individual does, or literally it doesn't matter against any individual over time?

Speaker 1

01:45

Against any individual over time, the better player, because they're making better decisions. So what does that mean to make a better decision? Well, to get into the real nitty-gritty already, basically poker is a game of math.

Speaker 1

01:58

There are these strategies familiar with like Nash equilibria that term, right? So There are these game theory optimal strategies that you can adopt and the closer you play to them, the less exploitable you are. Because I've studied the game a bunch, although admittedly not for a few years, but back when I was playing all the time, I would study these game theory optimal solutions and try and then adopt those strategies when I go and play. So I'd play against you and I would do that.

Speaker 1

02:29

And Because the objective when you're playing Game Theory Optimal, it's actually a loss minimization thing that you're trying to do. Your best bet is to try and play a sort of similar style. You also need to try and adopt this loss minimization. But because I've been playing much longer than you, I'll be better at that.

Speaker 1

02:49

So first of all, you're not taking advantage of my mistakes. But then on top of that, I'll be better at recognizing when you are playing suboptimally and then deviating from this game theory optimal strategy to exploit your bad plays.

Speaker 2

03:04

Can you define game theory and Nash equilibria? Can we try to sneak up to it in a bunch of ways? Like what's a game theory framework of analyzing poker, analyzing any kind of situation?

Speaker 1

03:16

So game theory is just basically the study of decisions within a competitive situation. I mean, it's technically a branch of economics, but it also applies to wider decision theory. And usually when you see it, it's these little payoff matrices and so on, that's how it's depicted.

Speaker 1

03:38

But it's essentially just like study of strategies under different competitive situations. And as it happens, certain games, in fact many, many games, have these things called Nash Equilibria. What that means is when you're in a Nash Equilibrium, basically there is no strategy that you can take that would be more beneficial than the 1 you're currently taking, assuming your opponent is also doing the same thing. So it would be a bad idea, you know, if we're both playing in a game 3 optimal strategy, if either of us deviate from that, now we're putting ourselves at a disadvantage.

Speaker 1

04:16

Rock-paper-scissors is actually a really great example of this. Like if we were to start playing rock, paper, scissors, you know, you know nothing about me and we're going to play for all our money. Let's play 10 rounds of it. What would your sort of optimal strategy be?

Speaker 1

04:30

Do you think? What would you do?

Speaker 2

04:33

Let's see. I would probably try to be as random as possible.

Speaker 1

04:42

Exactly. Because you don't know anything about me, you don't want to give anything away about yourself. So ideally, you'd have a little dice or somewhat perfect randomizer that makes you randomize 33 percent of the time, each of the 3 different things. In response to that, well, actually I can do anything, but I would probably just randomize back too.

Speaker 1

05:01

But actually it wouldn't matter because I know that you're playing randomly. That would be us in a Nash equilibrium, where we're both playing this unexploitable strategy. However, if after a while you then notice that I'm playing rock a little bit more often than I should.

Speaker 2

05:16

Yeah, you're the kind of person that would do that, wouldn't you?

Speaker 1

05:18

Sure, yes, yes, yes. I'm more of a scissors girl. But anyway.

Speaker 2

05:21

You are?

Speaker 1

05:22

No, I'm a, as I said, randomizer. So you notice I'm throwing rock too much or something like that. Now you'd be making a mistake by continuing playing this game theory optimal strategy, well, the previous 1, because I'm making a mistake and you're not deviating and exploiting my mistake.

Speaker 1

05:41

So you'd want to start throwing paper a bit more often in whatever you figure is the right sort of percentage of the time that I'm throwing rock too often. So that's basically an example of what game 3 optimal strategy is in terms of loss minimization, but it's not always the maximally profitable thing if your opponent is doing stupid stuff, in that example. So that's kind of then how it works in poker, but it's a lot more complex. And the way poker players typically, you know, nowadays they study, the game's changed so much and I think we should talk about how it sort of evolved.

Speaker 1

06:15

But nowadays, like the top pros basically spend all their time in between sessions, running these simulators using software where they do basically Monte Carlo simulations, doing billions of fictitious self-play hands. You input a fictitious hand scenario like, what do I do with Jack-9 suited on a King-10-4 two-spade board against this bet size? So you'd input that, press play, it'll run its billions of fake hands and then it'll converge upon what the game theory optimal strategies are. And then you want to try and memorize what these are.

Speaker 1

06:55

Basically they're like ratios of how often, what types of hands you want to bluff and what percentage of the time. So then there's this additional layer of inbuilt randomization built in.

Speaker 2

07:04

Yeah, those kind of simulations incorporate all the betting strategies and everything else like that. So as opposed to some kind of very crude mathematical model of what's the probability you win just based on the quality of the card, it's including everything else too. The game theory of it.

Speaker 1

07:20

Yes. Yeah, essentially. And what's interesting is that nowadays, if you want to be a top pro and you go and play in these really like, the super high stakes tournaments or tough cash games, if you don't know this stuff, you're going to get eaten alive in the long run. But of course, you could get lucky over the short run and that's where this luck factor comes in because luck is both a blessing and a curse.

Speaker 1

07:40

If luck didn't exist, if there wasn't this random element and there wasn't the ability for worse players to win sometimes, then poker would fall apart. You know, the same reason people don't play chess professionally for money against, you don't see people going and hustling chess, like not knowing, trying to make a living from it, because you know there's very little luck in chess, but there's quite a lot of luck in poker.

Speaker 2

08:01

Have you seen Beautiful Mind, that movie?

Speaker 1

08:04

Years ago.

Speaker 2

08:04

What do you think about the game theoretic formulation of what is it, the hot blonde at the bar? Do you remember?

Speaker 1

08:10

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2

08:11

The way they illustrated it is they're trying to pick up a girl at a bar and there's multiple girls. It's like a friend group and you're trying to approach, I don't remember the details, but I remember...

Speaker 1

08:21

Don't you then speak to her friends

Speaker 2

08:23

first, or

Speaker 1

08:24

something like that? Fame disinterest. I mean, it's classic pick-up artist stuff, right?

Speaker 2

08:28

And they were trying to correlate that somehow, that being an optimal strategy, game theoretically. Why? What?

Speaker 2

08:37

I don't think... I can't

Speaker 1

08:39

imagine that there is... I mean, there's probably an optimal strategy. Is it, does that mean that there's an actual Nash equilibrium of like picking up girls?

Speaker 2

08:46

Do you know the marriage problem? It's optimal stopping.

Speaker 1

08:50

Yes.

Speaker 2

08:51

So where it's a optimal dating strategy where you, do you remember what it is?

Speaker 1

08:56

Yeah, I think it's like something like, you know you've got like a set of 100 people you're gonna look through, and after how many do you, now after going on this many dates out of 100, at what point do you then go, okay, the next best person I see, is that the right 1? And I think it's something like 37%.

Speaker 2

09:15

It's 1 over E, whatever that is.

Speaker 1

09:17

Right, which I think is.

Speaker 2

09:19

Yeah. We're gonna fact check that. Yeah, so, but it's funny, under those strict constraints, then yes, after that many people, as long as you have a fixed size pool, then you just pick the next person that is better than anyone you've seen before. Yeah.

Speaker 2

09:40

Have you

Speaker 1

09:40

tried this? Have you incorporated it? I'm not

Speaker 2

09:42

1 of those people. And we're gonna discuss this. And What do you mean, those people?

Speaker 2

09:50

I try not to optimize stuff. I try to listen to the heart. I don't think, my mind immediately is attracted to optimizing everything. And I think that if you really give in to that kind of addiction, that you lose the joy of the small things, the minutia of life, I think.

Speaker 2

10:17

I don't know. I'm concerned about the addictive nature of my personality in that regard.

Speaker 1

10:21

In some ways, well, I think on average, people under try and quantify things or try under optimize. There are some people who, you know, it's like with all these things, it's a balancing act.

Speaker 2

10:36

I've been on dating apps, but I've never used them. I'm sure they have data on this, because they probably have the optimal stopping control problem. Because there aren't a lot of people that use social, like dating apps are on there for a long time.

Speaker 2

10:51

So the interesting aspect is like, all right, how long before you stop looking before it actually starts affecting your mind negatively such that you see dating as a kind of...

Speaker 1

11:07

A game.

Speaker 2

11:08

A kind of game versus an actual process of finding somebody that's gonna make you happy for the rest of your life. That's really interesting. They have the data.

Speaker 2

11:18

I wish they would be able to release that data. And I do want to-

Speaker 1

11:21

It's OKCupid, right? I think they ran a huge, huge study on all of their-

Speaker 2

11:25

Yeah, they're more data-driven, I think, OKCupid folks are. I think there's a lot of opportunity for dating apps, and even bigger than dating apps, people connecting on the internet. I just hope they're more data driven and it doesn't seem that way.

Speaker 2

11:40

I think like, I've always thought that Goodreads should be a dating app. Like the-

Speaker 1

11:48

I've never used

Speaker 2

11:49

it. The Goodreads is just lists like books that you've read. And it allows you to comment on the books you read and what the books you're currently reading. But it's a giant social networks of people reading books.

Speaker 2

12:01

And that seems to be a much better database of interests.

Speaker 1

12:04

Of course,

Speaker 2

12:04

it constrains you to the books you're reading, but that really reveals so much more about the person. Allows you to discover shared interests, because books are a kind of window into the way you see the world. Also, the kind of places, people you're curious about, the kind of ideas you're curious about, are you a romantic or are you cold calculating rationalist, are you into Ayn Rand or are you into Bernie Sanders, are you into whatever.

Speaker 2

12:30

And I feel like that reveals so much more than like a person trying to look hot from a certain angle in a Tinder profile.

Speaker 1

12:36

Well, and it also be a really great filter in the first place for people, it's like for people who read books and are willing to go and rate them and give feedback on them and so on. So that's already a really strong filter of probably the type of people you'd be looking for.

Speaker 2

12:50

Well, at least be able to fake reading books. I mean, the thing about books, you don't really need to read it. You can just look at

Speaker 1

12:55

the CliffsNotes. Yeah, game the dating app by feigning intellectualism.

Speaker 2

12:59

Can I admit something very horrible about myself?

Speaker 1

13:02

Go on.

Speaker 2

13:02

The things that, you know, I don't have many things in my closet, but this is 1 of them. I've never actually read Shakespeare. I've only read Cliff Notes.

Speaker 2

13:12

And I got a 5 in the AP English exam. Wow. And I- Which book? Which books have I read?

Speaker 1

13:19

Well, yeah, which was the exam on?

Speaker 2

13:21

Oh, no, they include a lot of them. But Hamlet, I don't even know if you read Romeo and Juliet. Macbeth, I don't remember, but I don't understand it.

Speaker 2

13:32

It's like really cryptic.

Speaker 1

13:34

It's hard.

Speaker 2

13:34

It's really, I don't, and it's not that pleasant to read. It's like ancient speak. I don't understand it.

Speaker 2

13:40

Anyway, maybe I was too dumb. I'm still too dumb, but I did-

Speaker 1

13:44

You got a 5, which

Speaker 2

13:45

is- Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1

13:46

I don't know how the US grading system works.

Speaker 2

13:47

Oh no, so AP English is a, there's kind of this advanced versions of courses in high school and you take a test that is like a broad test for that subject and includes a lot. It wasn't obviously just Shakespeare. I think a lot of it was also writing, written.

Speaker 2

14:04

You have like AP Physics, AP Computer Science, AP Biology, AP Chemistry, and then AP English or AP Literature. I forget what it was. But I think Shakespeare was a part of that. But I-

Speaker 1

14:17

And you game, the point is you gamified it.

Speaker 2

14:19

Gamified, well, entirety, I was into getting A's. I saw it as a game. I don't think any, I don't think all the learning I've done has been outside of school.

Speaker 2

14:33

The deepest learning I've done has been outside of school, with a few exceptions, especially in grad school, like deep computer science courses. But that was still outside of school, because it was outside of getting, sorry, it was outside of getting the A for the course. The best stuff I've ever done is when you read the chapter and you do many of the problems at the end of the chapter, which is usually not what's required for the course, like the hardest stuff. In fact, textbooks are freaking incredible.

Speaker 2

14:58

If you go back now and you look at like biology textbook or any of the computer science textbooks on algorithms and data structures, those things are incredible. They have the best summary of a subject, plus they have practice problems of increasing difficulty that allows you to truly master the basic, like the fundamental ideas behind that.

Speaker 1

15:19

I got through my entire physics degree with 1 textbook that was just this really comprehensive 1 that they told us at the beginning of the first year, buy this, but you're gonna have to buy 15 other books for all your supplementary courses. I was like, every time I just checked to see whether this book covered it and it did. I think I only bought like 2 or 3 extra, and thank God because they're super expensive textbooks.

Speaker 1

15:41

It's a whole racket they've got going on. Yeah, they are. You get the right 1, it's just like a manual. But what's interesting though, is this is the tyranny of having exams and metrics.

Speaker 2

15:56

CB. The tyranny of exams and metrics, yes.

Speaker 1

15:58

JG. I loved them because I'm very competitive and I liked finding ways to gamify things and then dust off my shoulders afterwards when I get a good grade or be annoyed at myself when I didn't. But yeah, you're absolutely right in that the actual – how much of that physics knowledge I've retained. I learned how to cram and study and please an examiner, but did that give me the deep, lasting knowledge that I needed?

Speaker 1

16:24

I mean, yes and no, but really, like, nothing makes you learn a topic better than when you actually then have to teach it yourself. I'm trying to wrap my teeth around this game theory stuff right now, and there's no exam at the end of it that I can gamify. There's no way to gamify and shortcut my way through it. I have to understand it so deeply, from deep foundational levels, to then build upon it and then try and explain it to other people.

Speaker 1

16:52

And you're about to go and do some lectures, right? You can't sort of just like, you presumably can't rely on the knowledge that you got through when you were studying for an exam to reteach that.

Speaker 2

17:04

Yeah, and especially high-level lectures, the kind of stuff you do on YouTube, you're not just regurgitating material. You have to think through what is the core idea here. And when you do the lectures live especially, you have to, there's no second takes.

Speaker 2

17:24

That is the luxury you get if you're recording a video for YouTube or something like that. But it definitely is a luxury you shouldn't lean on. I've gotten to interact with a few YouTubers that lean on that too much, and you realize, oh, you've gamified this system, because you're not really thinking deeply about stuff. You're through the edit, both written and spoken.

Speaker 2

17:52

You're crafting an amazing video, but you yourself as a human being have not really deeply understood it. So live teaching, or at least recording video with very few takes is a different beast. And I think it's the most honest way of doing it. Like as few takes as possible.

Speaker 1

18:09

That's why I'm nervous about this.

Speaker 2

18:12

Don't, don't. I'll go back and

Speaker 1

18:13

be like, ah, let's do that.

Speaker 2

18:14

Don't fuck this up, Liv. The tyranny of exams. I do think, you know, people talk about high school and college as a time to do drugs and drink and have fun and all this kind of stuff, but looking back, of course, I did a lot of those things.

Speaker 2

18:34

No, yes, but it's also a time when you get to like read textbooks or read books or learn with all the time in the world. Like you don't have these responsibilities of like, you know, laundry and having to sort of pay for mortgage or all that kind of stuff, pay taxes, all this kind of stuff. In most cases, there's just so much time in the day for learning and you don't realize it at the time because at the time it seems like a chore. Like, why the hell does there's so much homework?

Speaker 2

19:15

But you never get a chance to do this kind of learning, this kind of homework ever again in life, unless later in life you really make a big effort out of it. You get, like, basically your knowledge gets solidified. You don't get to have fun and learn. Learning is really fulfilling and really fun if you're that kind of person.

Speaker 2

19:34

I think some people like knowledge is not something that they think is fun, but if that's the kind of thing that you think is fun, that's the time to have fun and do the drugs and drink and all that kind of stuff. But the learning, just going back to those textbooks, the hours spent with the textbooks is really, really rewarding.

Speaker 1

19:54

Do people even use textbooks anymore? Yeah. Do you think?

Speaker 2

19:58

Because I- Kids these days with their TikTok and their-

Speaker 1

20:01

Well, not even that, but just like so much information, really high quality information, you know, is now in digital format online.

Speaker 2

20:09

Yeah, but they're not, they are using that, but you know, college is still very, there's a curriculum. I mean, so much of school is about rigorous study of a subject, and still on YouTube, that's not there. YouTube has, Grant Sanderson talks about this, he's this math educator.

Speaker 1

20:29

3 Blue 1 Brown.

Speaker 2

20:30

Yeah, 3 Blue 1 Brown. He says, like, I'm not a math teacher, I just take really cool concepts and I inspire people. But if you want to really learn calculus, if you want to really learn linear algebra, you should do the textbook, you should do that, you know, And there's still the textbook industrial complex that charges like $200 for a textbook and somehow, I don't know, it's ridiculous.

Speaker 1

20:56

Well, they're like, oh, but sorry, new edition, edition 14.6, sorry, you can't use 14.5 anymore. It's like, what's different? We've got 1 paragraph different.

Speaker 2

21:05

So we mentioned offline Daniel Negrano. I'm gonna get a chance to talk to him on this podcast. And he's somebody that I found fascinating in terms of the way he thinks about poker, verbalizes the way he thinks about poker, the way he plays poker.

Speaker 2

21:20

So, and he's still pretty damn good. He's been good for a long time. So you mentioned that people are running these kinds of simulations and the game of poker has changed. Do you think he's adapting in this way?

Speaker 2

21:33

Do you think the top pros, do they have to adapt this way? Or is there still like over the years you basically develop this gut feeling about you get to be good the way, like, alpha 0 is good. You look at the board, and somehow from the fog comes out the right answer. Like, this is likely what they have.

Speaker 2

21:57

This is likely the best way to move. And you don't really, you can't really put a finger on exactly why, but it just comes from your gut feeling, or no?

Speaker 1

22:09

Yes and no. So gut feelings are definitely very important. You know, that we've got our 2, You can distill it down to 2 modes of decision making, right?

Speaker 1

22:19

You've got your logical, linear voice in your head, system 2, as it's often called, and your system on, your gut intuition. Historically in poker, the very best players were playing almost entirely by their gut. Often they'd do some kind of inspired play and you'd ask them why they do it and they wouldn't really be able to explain it. And that's not so much because their process was unintelligible, but it was more just because no 1 had the language with which to describe what optimal strategies were because no 1 really understood how poker worked.

Speaker 1

22:54

This was before we had analysis software. I guess some people would write down their hands in a little notebook. But there was no way to assimilate all this data and analyze it. But then when computers became cheaper and software started emerging and then obviously online poker, where it would automatically save your hand histories, now all of a sudden you had this body of data that you could run analysis on.

Speaker 1

23:19

And so that's when people started to see these mathematical solutions. And so what that meant is the role of intuition essentially became smaller. It went more into, as we talked before, about this game theory optimal style. But also as I said, game theory optimal is about loss minimization and being unexploitable.

Speaker 1

23:47

But if you're playing against people who aren't, because no person, no human being can play perfectly game 3 optimal in poker, not even the best AIs. They're still like, they're 99.99% of the way there or whatever, but it's kind of like the speed of light, you can't reach it perfectly.

Speaker 2

24:00

So there's still a role for intuition?

Speaker 1

24:03

HANNAH Yes. So when you're playing this unexploitable style, but when your opponents start doing something suboptimal that you want to exploit, well now that's where not only your logical brain will need to be thinking, well, okay, I know I'm in the top end of my range here with this hand, so that means I need to be calling X percent of the time, and I put them on this range, etc. But then sometimes you'll have this gut feeling that will tell you, you know what, this time I know mathematically I'm meant to call now.

Speaker 1

24:40

I'm in the top end of my range and this is the odds I'm getting. So the math says I should call, but there's something in your gut saying, they've got it this time. They've got it. They're beating you.

Speaker 1

24:53

Maybe your hand is worse. So then the real art, this is where the last remaining art in poker, the fuzziness, is like, do you listen to your gut? How do you quantify the strength of it, or can you even quantify the strength of it? And I think that's what Daniel has.

Speaker 1

25:12

I mean, I can't speak for how much he's studying with the simulators and that kind of thing. I think he has. He must be, to still be keeping up. But he has an incredible intuition for just.

Speaker 1

25:26

He's seen so many hands of poker in the flesh. He's seen so many people, the way they behave when the money's on the line and you've got him staring you down in the eye. He's intimidating. He's got this X-factor vibe that he gives out.

Speaker 2

25:42

And he talks a lot, which is an interactive element, which is he's getting stuff from other people. Yes. Just like the subtlety.

Speaker 2

25:49

So he's probing constantly.

Speaker 1

25:51

Yeah, he's probing and he's getting this extra layer of information that others can't. Now that said though, he's good online as well. I don't know how, again, would he be beating the top cash game players online?

Speaker 1

26:02

Probably not. No. But when he's in person and he's got that additional layer of information, he can not only extract it, but he knows what to do with it still so well. There's 1 player who I would say is the exception to all of this.

Speaker 1

26:17

And he's 1 of my favorite people to talk about in terms of, I think he might have cracked the simulation. It's Phil Helmuth. He-

Speaker 2

26:27

In more ways than 1, he's cracked the simulation, I think.

Speaker 1

26:30

Yeah, he somehow to this day is still, and I love you Phil, I'm not in any way knocking you, he's still winning so much at the World Series of Poker specifically. He's now won 16 bracelets, The next nearest person I think has won 10. And he is consistently year in year out going deep or winning these huge field tournaments, you know, with like 2000 people, which statistically he should not be doing.

Speaker 1

27:00

And yet, you watch some of the plays he makes and they make no sense. Like mathematically, they are so far from game theory optimal. And the thing is, if you went and stuck him in 1 of these high stakes cash games with a bunch of like GTO people, he's going to get ripped apart. But there's something that he has that when he's in the halls of the World Series of Poker, specifically, amongst sort of amateurish players, he gets them to do crazy shit like that.

Speaker 1

27:28

But my little pet theory is that Also, he's like a wizard and he gets the cards to do what he needs them to. Because he just expects to win and he expects to get flop a set with a frequency far beyond what the real percentages are. And I don't even know if he knows what the real percentages are. He doesn't need to, because he gets there.

Speaker 2

27:54

I think he has found the Chico, because when I've seen him play, he seems to be annoyed that the long shot thing didn't happen. He's annoyed, and it's almost like everybody else is stupid because he was obviously going to win with this.

Speaker 1

28:08

He's meant to win if that silly thing hadn't happened. And it's like, you don't understand, the silly thing happens 99% of the time. And it's 1%, not the other way around.

Speaker 1

28:15

But Jianli Wenli, for his lived experience, only at the World Series of Poker, it is like that. So I don't blame him for feeling that way. But he does. He has this X factor.

Speaker 1

28:26

And the poker community has tried for years to rip him down, saying like, you know, he's no good, but he's clearly good because he's still winning. There's something going on. Whether that's he's figured out how to mess with the fabric of reality and how cards, you know, a randomly shuffled deck of cards come out. I don't know what it is, but he's doing it right still.

Speaker 2

28:46

Who do you think is the greatest of all time? Would you put Helmuth?

Speaker 1

28:49

It depends.

Speaker 2

28:52

Now he's definitely, he seems like the kind of person when mentioned he would actually watch this, so you might want to be careful.

Speaker 1

28:58

As I said, I love Phil and I would say this to his face, I'm not saying anything. He is 1 of the greatest. I don't know if he's the greatest.

Speaker 1

29:11

He's certainly the greatest at the World Series of Poker, and he is the greatest at, despite the game switching into a pure game, almost an entire game of math, he has managed to keep the magic alive. Just through sheer force of will, making the game work for him. And that is incredible. And I think it's something that should be studied, because it's an example.

Speaker 2

29:31

LBW Yeah, there might be some actual game theoretical wisdom. There might be something to be said about optimality from studying him. Right?

Speaker 1

29:39

What do you mean by optimality?

Speaker 2

29:40

Meaning, or rather game design perhaps. Meaning if what he's doing is working, maybe poker is more complicated than we're currently modeling it as. So like-

Speaker 1

29:54

Or there's an extra layer, and I don't mean to get too weird and wooey, but Or there's an extra layer of ability to manipulate the things the way you want them to go that we don't understand yet.

Speaker 2

30:09

Do you think Phil Hellmuth understands them? Is he just generally...

Speaker 1

30:13

Hashtag positivity. He wrote a book on positivity. And

Speaker 2

30:17

he has? Yes.

Speaker 1

30:18

He did? It's not like a

Speaker 2

30:19

trolling book? No. A serious?

Speaker 1

30:22

Straight up, yeah.

Speaker 2

30:23

Phil Hellmuth wrote a book about positivity.

Speaker 1

30:26

Yes.

Speaker 2

30:27

Okay, not ironic.

Speaker 1

30:28

And I think it's about sort of manifesting what you want and getting the outcomes that you want by believing so much in yourself and in your ability to win, like eyes on the prize. And I mean, it's working.

Speaker 2

30:42

Demands delivered. Where do you put like Phil Ivey and all those kinds of people?

Speaker 1

30:47

I mean, I'm too, I've been, to be honest, too much out of the scene for the last few years to really, I mean, Phil Ivey's clearly got, again, he's got that X factor. He's so incredibly intimidating to play against. I've only played against him a couple of times, but when he looks you in the eye and you're trying to run a bluff on him, no one's made me sweat harder than Phil Ivey.

Speaker 1

31:08

My bluff got through actually. That was actually 1 of the most thrilling moments I've ever had in poker. It was in a Monte Carlo in a high roller. I can't remember exactly what the hand was, but I 3 bit and then just barreled all the way through, and he just put his laser eyes into me, and I felt like he was just scouring my soul.

Speaker 1

31:28

I was just like, hold it together, Liv, hold it together.

Speaker 2

31:30

He was like, folded. You knew your hand was weaker.

Speaker 1

31:32

Yeah. I mean, I was bluffing. There's a chance I was bluffing with the best hand, but I'm pretty sure my hand was worse. He folded.

Speaker 1

31:44

I was truly 1 of the deep highlights of my career.

Speaker 2

31:47

Did you show the cards or did you fold?

Speaker 1

31:50

You should never show in-game. Because especially as I felt like I was 1 of the worst players at the table in that tournament. So giving that information, unless I had a really solid plan that I was now advertising, oh look, I'm capable of bluffing Phil Ivey, but like why?

Speaker 1

32:05

It's much more valuable to take advantage of the impression that they have of me, which is like, I'm a scared girl playing a high roller for the first time. Keep that going, you know.

Speaker 2

32:14

Interesting, But isn't there layers to this, like, psychological warfare that the scared girl might be way smarter than... Like, to flip the tables? Do you think about that kind of stuff?

Speaker 2

32:26

Or is it better not to reveal information?

Speaker 1

32:28

I mean, generally speaking, you want to not reveal information. You know, The goal of poker is to be as deceptive as possible about your own strategies while elucidating as much out of your opponent about their own. So giving them free information, particularly if they're people who you consider very good players, any information I give them is going into their little database and I assume it's going to be calculated and used well.

Speaker 1

32:51

So I have to be really confident that my meta gaming that I'm going to then do, oh they've seen this so therefore that, I'm going to be on the right level. So it's better just to keep that little secret to myself in the moment.

Speaker 2

33:04

So how much is bluffing part of the game? Huge amount. So yeah, I mean, maybe actually, let me ask, like what did it feel like with Phil Ivey or anyone else when it's a high stake, when it's a big, it's a big bluff?

Speaker 2

33:18

So a lot of money on the table. And maybe, I mean, what defines a big bluff? Maybe a lot of money on the table, but also some uncertainty in your mind and heart about self-doubt, about maybe I miscalculated what's going on here, what the bet said, all that kind of stuff. Like, what does that feel like?

Speaker 1

33:38

I mean, it's, I imagine, comparable to, you know, running a, I mean, any kind of big bluff where you have a lot of something that you care about on the line. So if you're bluffing in a courtroom, not that anyone should ever do that, or something equatable to that. In that scenario, I think it was the first time I'd ever played a 20.

Speaker 1

34:05

I'd won my way into this 25K tournament. So that was the buy-in, 25,000 euros. And I had satellited my way in because it was much bigger than I would ever normally play. And I wasn't that experienced at the time and now I was sitting there against all the big boys, the Negranos, the Phil Ivies and so on.

Speaker 1

34:28

Each time you put the bets out, you put another bet out. I was on what's called a semi-bluff. So there were some cards that could come that would make my hand very, very strong and therefore win, but most of the time those cards don't come.

Speaker 2

34:40

So it's a semi-bluff because you're representing, are you representing that you already have something?

Speaker 1

34:47

So I think in this scenario I had a flush draw. So I had 2 clubs, 2 clubs came out on the flop, and then I'm hoping that on the turn in the river, 1 will come. So I have some future equity.

Speaker 1

35:00

I could hit a club and then I'll have the best hand, in which case, great. And so I can keep betting and I'll want them to call. But I've also got the other way of winning the hand where if my card doesn't come, I can keep betting and get them to fold their hand. And I'm pretty sure that's what the scenario was.

Speaker 1

35:17

So I had some future equity, but most of the time I don't hit that club. So I would rather him just fold because the pot is now getting bigger and bigger. In the end, I jam all in on the river. That's my entire tournament on the line.

Speaker 1

35:33

As far as I'm aware, this might be the 1 time I ever get to play a big 25K. This was the first time I played 1. So it felt like the most momentous thing. And this was also when I was trying to build myself up, build a name for myself in poker.

Speaker 1

35:46

I wanted to get respect. So this could

Speaker 2

35:47

destroy everything for you.

Speaker 1

35:49

It felt like it in the moment. I mean, it literally does feel like a form of life and death. Your body physiologically is having that flight or fight response.

Speaker 2

35:55

What are you doing with your body? What are you doing with your face? What are you thinking about?

Speaker 1

36:02

More like a mixture of, okay, what are the cards? In theory, I'm thinking about, okay, what are cards that make my hand look stronger? Which cards hit my perceived range from his perspective?

Speaker 1

36:13

Which cards don't? What's the right amount of bet size to maximize my fold equity in this situation? That's the logical stuff that I should be thinking about. But I think in reality, because I was so scared, because at least for me, there's a certain threshold of nervousness or stress beyond which the logical brain shuts off.

Speaker 1

36:33

Now it just gets into this, it feels like a game of wits basically, it's like of nerve, can you hold your resolve? It certainly got by that, by the river. I think by that point I was like, I don't even know if this is a good bluff anymore, but fuck it, let's

Speaker 2

36:49

do it. Your mind is almost numb from the intensity of that feeling.

Speaker 1

36:53

I call it the white noise. And it happens in all kinds of decision making. I think anything that's really, really stressful.

Speaker 1

37:00

I can imagine someone in an important job interview, if it's a job they've always wanted and they're getting grilled, Bridgewater style, where they ask these really hard mathematical questions. It's a really learned skill to be able to subdue your flight or fight response. I think get from the sympathetic into the parasympathetic, so you can actually engage that voice in your head and do those slow, logical calculations. Because evolutionarily, if we see a lion running at us, we didn't have time to calculate the lion's kinetic energy and is it optimal to go this way or that way.