October 4, 2025 • 36 mins
Nate and Maria discuss their favorite topic: poker! In this episode, they dive into the nuanced strategy of online poker: how to manage your schedule, how to prioritize information, and whether quantity trumps quality as you strive to improve.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions.
I'm Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
And I'm Nate Silver. What's on tap today? Maria? Maybe
a little maybe little pokey pokey poke Sorry, please hit
it up?
Speaker 1 (00:39):
No, no, do not, do not.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
We haven't talked about poker in a while. This is
a Saturday episode. It's supposed to be more fun, so
we're gonna talk a little bit about poker and more
particularly online poker versus live poker. I think this might
reveal more than you think about how we process information,
how our brains work. And Maria is a Sika who
still likes online poker. I do not. You'll see that
difference come out too.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah. I'm excited to get started. Nate.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Let's uh, let's get into it. This past weekend was
the start of the online Bracelet series, which the World
Series of Poker has been doing for a few years now,
(01:26):
basically starting during COVID when bracelets were moved online when
there was no World Series of Poker live during the summer,
and it's become more and more of a thing where
these highly competitive events with you know, coveded WSOP bracelets
have moved to the Internet, and there's a lot of
(01:48):
we're not going to talk about kind of is this
a good thing? Is this a bad thing? We'll leave
that question alone and instead we'll talk about just in
general thoughts about playing online and playing live.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Maria, you seem to like online poker more than I.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Do, well, Nate, So you know, we do some disclosure
on the show, and as listeners of the show note,
I am an ambassador for Poker Stars. I'm a Poker
Stars team. Pro poker Stars is an online poker company,
So I have had to get used to playing online,
which is not my preferred method of playing. By the way,
(02:25):
I far far prefer playing live to playing online. But
I learned to play poker playing online because the beauty
of online poker is the sheer quantity of hands that
you can get in and so the experience that you
can acquire is much faster. So I used to, you know,
(02:47):
when I just started playing for the Biggest Bluff, I
would reverse commute to New Jersey multiple days a week
to play online because in cafes I would play.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Noan on McDonald's we talked in lat episode about how
you've never fucking been to McDonald's.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
So no, not not out of McDonald's. But I have
definitely explored the world of online cafes that are open
late in Hoboken and Jersey City.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Do they know what you were doing?
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yes, they knew what I was doing because I had
my laptop out and I was playing online. There was
one cafe that I started going to. The owner loved
online poker and at some point was like, can I
play a few hands? When I was playing a tournament
and I was like, uh, no, you're not allowed to
do that, but he was.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
He was very excited.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Was it that you were not allowed that you thought
he was a fish?
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Well, you're not allowed to have someone else play for
you on your account.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
But if like phil Ivy, is he from New Jersey, Yes,
if phil Ivy on the cafe, would you let him play?
Speaker 1 (03:48):
No? I would not.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
My next book is about cheating.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
What if phil Ivy would kick you out of his
cafe unless you unless you unless you let him play?
I would say, so it's a the best player in
the world and be you can no longer use a cafe.
I mean, I feel like, doesn't that outweigh the No.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
I would say, I would say, Phil, I cannot believe
you do not value your reputation because you know, I'm
a journalist and I'm going to write about this in
my book about cheating. How phil Ivy basically said that
he wanted me to cheat And this is not a
good look for you, Phil.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
So what you're saying is that when you won your
online bracelet, phil Ivy was ghosting for you, right, but
you agreed not to disclose that.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
In exactly exactly so, Nate, I actually think that this
is probably one of the most djened things that you
will hear me do.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Nate.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Last weekend, so I was in Vermont for a long
weekend Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Sunday. After driving back from
Vermont and you know, listeners of the show have heard
my wasp story. After all of this happened, I went
back to Brooklyn, you know, dropped all my stuff off,
and then took the Path train to New Jersey, where
(05:06):
I had booked a hotel room for Sunday night to
hop into the first two events of the World Series
of Poker Online Bracelet series. So went, for the sole
reason you know, of playing these events, did that, and
then you know, went to work in the morning from
(05:27):
a nice hotel, HIGHTT Regency, right on the water in
Jersey City. Nice enough, great great views, Highly recommend for
online poker, stable internet connection, no no issues with geolocation,
which can be problematic when you're right on the water,
as I found out, because sometimes what ends up happening
(05:49):
is they pick up Wi Fi from New York and
suddenly we'll kick you off. So High Regency did not
have any of those issues. But I can't tell you
much about the hotel because I checked in, you know,
went to my room, fired up the tournaments, went to sleep, and.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Woke up and left, and that that was.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
But you know, it actually made me think about so
many differences right between playing live and playing online, and
especially with series like this when it starts so incredibly late.
So for people who aren't as d Jenny, these events
start at three thirty and four thirty Vegas time Pacific time,
(06:34):
which means six thirty and seven thirty pm East Coast time.
So now imagine if you actually go deep in the event.
So when I won my World a series of poker
online bracelet, I was playing in Vegas and we finished
the final table. I want at like three thirty am,
which would have been six thirty am East Coast time.
(06:58):
So if you think about that, it's insane, right, that's
actually a crazy, crazy time to start a tournament, and
it probably freezes out a lot of people who would
have otherwise played. Like, for instance, this past Sunday, I
was like, you know what, I don't know if I'm
going to do that again because it's exhausting to do that.
(07:18):
So I didn't cash one of the events. I cashed
the other one, so ended up, you know, busting at
like two am.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
And I was like, was it really worth.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
It for just you know, a few grand to do
something like that? And you answered it. But so there
are a lot of different considerations when you're playing online
that you don't have to deal with when you're playing live.
We talked back when it was the summer and we
(07:51):
were playing the live World Series of Poker events. We
talked about using you know, this new software that showed
who was going to be at your table and how
you would how it gave you extra information right, and
how you could then rate the players rank them. Nate,
you had this very complicated spreadsheet which I love, and
you actually gave the players. Yeah, you had a rating scale,
(08:15):
so you had all this extra stuff that you normally
wouldn't have. But online there are if there are several issues.
One is people don't use their real names, right, So
there are screen names that people use. So you see this,
you know, you see the people at your table, but
(08:35):
you may or may not know who those people are.
People do track screen names, and there are communities of
poker players that study together that have these big spreadsheets
of people's online screen names and say, oh, this is
this person, this is this person. So then Nate, they
(08:56):
can do what you did during the World series because
they have the real name to go along with the
screen name. But if you're someone who's not in that community,
you might have no way of knowing, right, So you're
actually missing that whole big piece of information. And you
used to play online poker for a living. We never
really talked about your experience of doing that and how
(09:17):
you thought about kind of those you know, informational edges,
informational asymmetries, and how the value of data, how it
shifts between live and online. Because obviously, like live, one
of my big edges is the fact that I'm a psychologist,
Like there's and there's this wealth of data. I don't
have any of that online, but I'd love to hear
(09:40):
about your experience and kind of that contrast.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
So when I played online, I played limit hold them primarily.
I did quite well for your period of a few years,
which I attribute not necessarily to deep study. But like, look,
poker and number one poker is a game where all
that matters for you win rate is how was your
(10:05):
strength relative to the players you're playing against. Right, I
can walk in the games where I'm the best player
at the tail by far. I can walk in a
game for I'm the worst player at the table by far.
I like think I'm closer to the best than the worst. Right,
the average team I'm sitting in, I think on plus ev.
But like that's what really matters. So in the poker
boom years, the moneymaker boom, the online poker boom, the
(10:27):
average person was quite bad. And then and then things
got tougher with party poker and other sites closed to Americans.
After the UIGEA passed in two thousand and six, a
lot of the better players, excuse me, a lot of
the worst players dried up and left the game. So, yeah,
my last six months were losing months after having felt
(10:48):
like it was an ATM for some period of time. However,
even then I was playing in you know, almost the
higher stakes available at that time, as far as like
as high as like one hundred two hundred dollar blinds,
which is a pretty big game for two thousand and five. Yeah,
not as big as an no limic game with those stakes,
but like it was a surreal game. I would impress
people by like eyeing in. I would like drop my
(11:10):
whole role down and put buying for sixty thousand dollars
just to look cool, because it's a fucking door and
it was in my twenties, right, and like, but even
then you had maybe a few dozen regulars, right, and
so like you did have some wreaths, right. I think
I like to get in like people's headspace with them
(11:32):
a little bit. What a lot of people do when
they play online is they will multi table, meaning playing
more than one game at once. And I would do that.
I would do that, but I would play three or
four tables as opposed to like some people literally play
eight or sixteen or twenty right where they're just playing
totally paint by numbers poker almost always playing like way
(11:54):
too tight, and I'd try to, like I try to
like be a little more focused on individual decisions. But like,
but you know, but like that's not the environment right now.
I mean, back then there was not RTA. RTA is
real time assistance where there are now solvers, and it's illegal,
it's illegal. And maybe I do get the props sometimes
(12:16):
I do play occasionally less and less and less and less,
but like I'll get the props sometimes saying prove you're
a human and not a computer. Maybe I maybe that's
a sign that I'm playing too mechanically or playing like
a solver.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Hey, Nate, I've never I've never gotten that prompt.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
What does that say about my.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
I don't know, But now it feels weird to say,
as like kind of a a math guy, right, you know,
I feel like my relative strengths in poker are actually
kind of like the soft skills, at least relative to
that like elite player population, right, Like, I think I
have a pretty good attitude about money. I think I
(12:55):
definitely am not always playing my a game. I don't
think I have super tilt problems. You know, I can
pick up not against Maybe you should forget about the
best pros, but against like amateurs, I can read players
pretty well, I can I can estimate pretty well and
piece some shit together right, and be more composed and like,
you know, online, I think those advantages are lesser number one.
(13:16):
And also, like I just find like, you know, when
I play poker live, there's an act of intentionality to it. Right,
It's like I decided today too, because there's no casino
within an hour and a half of me, Right, I
decided to take a trip to a casino to play
(13:37):
a tournament and take a week out. It'll cost me money,
it'll cost you money. You know, hopefully I'll make back
the entry fee and win. Most of the time, you don't, right,
but like, but if there's an opportunity cost there, I
could be doing something else right and like, but there's
an active intentionality there that gives me more presence. You know.
The other problem too is that kind of mentioned this earlier, Like,
because these tournaments start in the PM typically, right, or
(13:58):
you've just been playing a long time, and there's like
and there's fatigue because you don't get you know, live
poker is nice and frankly fairly slow until you get
to like shorthanded poker, Right, you're not playing most of
the time. You have your break for twenty minutes every
two hours, right, you have a dinner break like online,
even if you do start early, it's kind of a grind.
But like, you know, I've just had fucking times and
I'm like, Okay, I was bored tonight decided to fire
(14:22):
up like a fifty dollars hundred dollars tournament, right, and like,
is it really worth me staying up another two hours
to ladder up and win an extra couple hundred dollars
and expected value? Like I don't know, right, And so
you like, I find the whole thing kind of kind
of difficult.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
And we'll be back right after this.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
I think the lateness thing is a huge factor. I
actually think that the entire East Coast is at a
huge disadvantage to the West Coast because your cognitive function
is an not going to be as sharp, you know,
at when it's midnight for you, it's only nine pm
for the people who are playing from Las Vegas.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
That's a huge difference.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Yeah, I've looked at this in the context of so
here's a little actual actionable gambling tip. Although it's probably
accounted for in the point spot, so there's maybe not
edge there. Right. We have this NFL model we've been
working on for a couple of months now, right where
literally any every NFL games is like teen twenty is
account of four and all types of stuff, all types
of fancy shit.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
You know, teams playing at night when it's outside of
their time zone. So the West Coast team has a
big advantage versus an East Coast team in night games. Right,
it's about almost a full point, which is not huge huge.
That's like in the cost of NFL, where like if
you have a point edge, you will beat the point
(15:58):
spread on average. Right, that's pretty big. In fact, like
even when the game is on the East Coast, the
West Coast team can still be more fatigue or the
East Coast team rather can still be worft because they're
playing you know, you still have the West Coast team
playing at five pm locally till eight instead of eight
until eleven when you play most NFL games in the afternoon,
(16:20):
practice in the afternoon, et cetera. Right, a bit of
a reverse effect, by the way, where the West Coast
teams do a little bit worse in games that sort
up one pm Eastern ten am West coast time. But
it's a little asymmetric, right, people, I'm an id L,
so maybe I'm an exception, right, But like most people
stretch a little better in the morning if they have
to get up earlier than in the even at least
(16:42):
for physical types of activity. Right, So like, yeah, that
type of stuff like does matter quite a bit.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, No, I mean, for sure, there's a lot of
data on our cognitive function and time of day. And
let me just say that there are two factors that
are that really matter. One is just the actual light outside, right,
and how it affects are body circadian rhythms, because as
(17:12):
we evolved, light cues really matter and kind of make
a difference. And there are certain cues towards morning that
tell us to wake up, certain ques towards evening that
tell us to go to sleep. But your chronotype, so Nate,
you said you're a night owl. Your chronotype, that's what
that is, right, your own internal circadian rhythm that also matters.
(17:35):
So there are people who are who have an earlier
chronotype and so they actually function better in the mornings.
There are people who have a later chronotype. They function
better later. It's easier in modern society for early birds
to function because their chronotype is aligned more aligned right
with modern demands and also actually more aligned with the
(17:58):
with light. And I'm guessing there are no data on
this night because this is not the way that professional
sports work. But I'm assuming that the advantage will go
away if the West team has been on the East
coast for two weeks. We could look at but I
don't think that ever happens, right, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
I think in l teams would generally fly. But yeah,
I mean all the sports science stuff is getting better.
Home field advantage is generally declining, right, because they're like, yeah,
you want to show up in that environment a couple
of days beforehand, for sure. Yeah, I mean you're thinking
about on them.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
A couple of days, but not two weeks, and it
takes a while for your rhythms to reset.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
I mean, if you're trained for like as I you know,
the past several summers played the World Series for at
least a couple of weeks, right, you can you do
get training right. One of the advice people sudvice I
give is like, if you're playing, if you really care
about the main event in the World Series, which if
you love poker, you you probably should, right, Like, don't
have that be your first tournament. I mean, you want
to get in some reps. You want to kind of
know where the bathrooms are, literally, I mean, you know,
(18:57):
all that stuff. All that stuff matters. I Mean, one
thing I noticed is like I have an uncanny recollection
for live hands they played weeks, months, years ago, you know,
down to the color of you know, what suit of
the cards were, you know, Ace five of diamonds, even
though it might not matter or or whatever else, right,
(19:18):
the color of the chips or how But like I
you know, online I'm like, I think I played at
quads versus full house hand last night there or something
like that, right, I just don't know. I don't have
the tactile like recall.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
No, I mean, I'm sure that people who just play
online all the time, it becomes there probably is different
our brain architecture that is involved, because that's the where
our brains work right there. They're flexible and they do
kind of change according to how you're using them. And
so I'm assuming it's for someone who's an full time
(19:52):
online player. It's probably not the case. But One of
the things you said, Nate that really resonates that there's
so much science behind this is that our brain does process, retain,
and just work through information much much better when it's physical,
(20:14):
when we're actually doing it, when we're learning by doing
and not by you know, doing by pressing a button.
So work that I think is actually kind of related.
I hadn't thought about this until until now, but I
think that this is quite relevant. There's a ton of work,
and this research started, you know, probably several decades ago,
(20:35):
and it's only gotten more and more powerful in the
sense that replicated bigger studies. So there's a lot of
work that shows that the single best way of taking
notes right retaining information is to do it by hand,
to actually physically write, and that there's a huge difference
between taking notes by hand and typing on a computer.
(20:56):
And there are multiple reasons for this. One of them
is that there is this connection between you know, the
hand physically going through these motions and the brain that
strengthens the wiring. The other thing is that you don't
write as quickly as you type, so you already have
to process the information to know what's important enough to
(21:18):
write down. How do I write it down, how do
I take the different themes from it? How do I
actually distill this? And so you're not just passively listening.
You have to actively do this, whereas if you're typing,
you can basically type everything, but you retain that information
a lot worse. So this made me think that with
online poker there's actually a similar effect going on where
(21:39):
when it's live and also the way that our brain
retains information and encodes information, the more points of encoding
you can have, the better. So if you have like
a memory where you have you remember, oh, these were
the colors, right, these were the smells. This was what
I just had for you know, if you can encode
in a multisensory way, it's going to be much much
(22:01):
more powerful, much more lasting. You're going to take a
lot more from it than if you just do kind
of a one note type of thing. And when you're
playing live poker, you have that right because you are
in a multisensor, You're in the real world, you are
in an environment with people. There are dynamics, you can see, looks,
you know, it smells. Unfortunately, there are a lot of
(22:23):
things that are going on that will help you process
retain and actually kind of learn from this, whereas online
it's just buttons and it's just a screen in front
of you, and our brain just does not process information
well that way, So I think that there is a
huge disconnect.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
It's also from a strategy standpoint, like more points of estimation, right,
you just have more information that you're looking at. Yeah,
and like to me, I think my strength as poker
player in some ways are like triangulating different points of information. Right.
Not the best gto a player, not the best live talesperson.
(23:00):
You don't have the most poker experience. But if you're
a center of ten in all those categories, then I
feel like there's some added value there, especially in environments
where you're late in a tournament, or it's an unusual setting,
or this a usual player, or something's happening right, and
you kind of like are good at making like snap
estimates quickly and like adapting to that and like and
those skills all go away. You can kind of be
(23:24):
more I don't know how you put it. You can
kind of be more like specter me about playing online.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Right.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
You just have to focus on, like on like certain
things right obsessively, and you can block out other things,
whereas I like kind of the elements of surprise and
unusual elements to some extent. Right, that's where my like
life experience as I get into my you know, mid
to late forties, starts to matter more potentially. And we'll
(23:54):
be right back after this.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Break finally, to kind of wrap this up, i'd love
your opinion. So you know, I was playing when I
(24:17):
played these New Jersey events, it was the first time
i'd actually played on this new New Jersey client. So
I made a new screen name no one had ever
seen before, so no one knew who I was. I'm
not going to say what it is. I want to
preserve that information for as long as possible. But on
the other hand, I had zero notes. Like my Nevada account,
I actually know who a lot of the players are
(24:39):
and like I have notes on them, and here I
had none. Right, I actually was starting from a fresh
slate because even the names that I recognized, because it's
the same player pool now it's it's one player pool.
So I recognized that I'd played with some of them,
but I didn't remember right who it was because that
was on my Nevada account, which I couldn't sign into
(24:59):
when I was playing in New Jersey. It's not like
my notes transferred from one account to the other. And
so I was playing. One of the events I was
playing was a six max, which means for people who
don't play poke, it's six players. So it's more shorthanded,
you're playing more hands, it's more action. And so I
was torn. I was like, should I be really focused
on the table, paying attention to, you know, betsizing and
what people are doing, or should I frantically be googling
(25:22):
these screen names to figure out who these people are
and trying to find out some information? And am I
you know, basically, how do I how do I value
that right? Because I know that there's some people who
have that information by virtue of having played, and I'm
at a disadvantage. But I'm also disadvantaging myself by looking
(25:43):
it up while playing and trying to process all of
this other stuff. And so I was torn. Right, So
I'm actually curious to know what your thoughts are. Since
we've talked about this in Live poker, it's a slightly
different calculus when you're in a situation like that.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Yeah, Look, I think in general, Look, I got to
have other World Chairs of Poker, where you go in
and you spend the first ten minutes kind of looking
people up, right, you know, I think there's always a
question about how explicit you want your thought process to be,
including things I take notes about your hands versus like
quote unquote playing in flow, right, you know, every now
(26:19):
and then maybe every fourth or fifth session. I I'm
just gonna write down every hand I play today, I
look at with my coach later for my own gratification.
I think you can make you play better too. You
have like a little bit of permanent record for yourself, right,
But there's time when like, look, now we're running fairly deep,
or there's a mule dynamic at the table, or people
are in conversation and the conversations giving me more information
than you know. So I think it's important to like
(26:40):
be able to play in flow. And it's also like
kind of like stressful, right, But I don't know. Look,
I'm not taking a very professional attitude when I play
online poker necessarily, right, I'm looking at it as like recreation,
whereas with a live poker then I take it quite seriously. Right,
I think information overkill can be a detriment. But again,
(27:01):
it's a very different fucking skill. It's like you're in
air traffic controller or something, right, And yeah, I mean,
you know, I think the best player online place isn't
They're like, yeah, I might not have player reads when
I have population reads. I know that the average player
doesn't check rays often enough when there are three flush
cards on the board, or when they do, it's never
a bluff kind of thing, right, Like that type of
(27:23):
mass data mining is probably yeah, very helpful, I would imagine, right.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Yep, no, absolutely, And yeah, in game, I made the
decision that so I told you I was playing two
bracelet events. One was a mystery Bounty which was full table,
and one was six max, which was a higher buy
and it was a one thousand dollars buy and thankfully
that was the one I catched in. So so it
was this, you know, one K six max, and I
(27:52):
made the decision that I would try to look up
the players at my six MACS tables, but not at
the mystery bounty because Mystery bounty first more players, but
secondly more population tendencies, right, because it's a mystery bounty format,
so people are doing things like try to build up
big stacks it's a smaller buy, and so you can
make some sort of generalizations right about how people are playing.
(28:15):
But then, Nate, I got incredibly frustrated because I spent
this time, you know, noting all of them, my six macs,
and then I get moved to a new table, and
all of a sudden, you know that the strategy that
you described for the World series where you spend the
first ten minutes doesn't work online because you might be
getting moved. You might be at the same table, you
might get lucky and be at the same table for
two hours, but you might get moved every ten minutes.
(28:36):
And it's incredibly frustrating. And I did feel like when
I was looking things up, I was missing hands and
missing some information and maybe it is more important to
just focus on Okay, this person seems to be you know,
three bedding too much or or or or whatever it is,
and this isn't an important thing. We're talking about kind
of the importance of information, But there's also psychologically you
(28:58):
can get information overload and you have to actually figure out,
like how do I prioritize and wait this information and
what information is the most valuable?
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Yeah, I mean, you know, we did play a pandemic
game online but with a fixed player pool where half
of the people are on zoom, right, and that's very different.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
You know.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Look, I think poker is a much more fun game
when you have the dynamic of playing repeatedly against the
same opponents. Right. That can be true in a World
Series poker event where you're there from noon to midnight.
You know what I mean, you actually develop some long
term equilibriums potentially, right, And if you're switching table all
the time, you don't get that. But look, Maria, I'm
going to have you close. Let's say that I moved
(29:41):
to a country where there's more acts to online poker
and no cash live poker, right, no live poker. What
would your three tips be? Because you're better at this
than me for forgetting or two tips even? What are
your one to three tips for improving as an online player?
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I mean, the reason I started off by talking about
the schedules, I think that that is actually incredibly important
that you should try to look at events and schedules
that will be more conducive to your sleep schedule and
when you're sharper cognitively. So I know people who don't
(30:22):
you know who live in the United States. When it
comes for big series like w Coop which just happened,
which was is one of Poker Star's kind of signature series,
they leave the country to play those series and they
actually game it to figure out, you know, where should
I be, which country should I be, which time zone
should I be in, so that the schedules are best
(30:43):
for my performance. So I think that that's important and
kind of knowing that about yourself and not playing a
schedule that is going to be somewhere where you cannot
perform at peak performance. And related to that, I think
there are lots of people who would disagree with me
on this who are online players, but I would actually
say limit multi tabling. I think it's more important to
(31:06):
focus on one, two, max three, you know, tables, but
your decision quality. I see some of some players I
really admire. So you know, Patrick Leonard Pads who constantly
posts on social media about his hands, and I love him.
I took you know, I took his course at run
(31:27):
at Once Poker. You know, I think he has absolutely
great content. He's an amazing player. But when I see
his computer screen like it, you know, it gives me
a heart attack. Like he's playing you know, ten, eleven, twelve,
all of these. He has this huge multi table setup,
and it just to me, if you're trying to improve,
(31:48):
quantity in that case does not trump quality and you
can't give as much focus too.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah, it's a weird thing in some ways to say, like, uh,
I mean, because your edges in online poker, most forms
of poker, but especially online poker, are like are very small,
you know what I mean, And it doesn't take very
much to like send you into break even or negative.
Right if you're giving away x amount of dollars per
(32:14):
hour in rake and x amount of dollars to vary
in some bad luck, right then like you know, you go,
you make one more mistake for one hundred hands, and
you might be a losing player, right, So, like, yeah,
it just seems weird to me that, Like, I mean,
unless you were in the kind of poka thing days,
we can play very mechanically, right. I think I'm much
better when I focus on one to sometimes two decisions
(32:38):
at a time.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
I don't know, so, so yeah, that would be my
piece of advice number two. And I think that that
actually goes hand in hand with how our brain works.
That our brains cannot multitask, and it's very difficult for
us to process all of this information. We're never processing
it at the same time. We're just you know, serially
task switching. That's bad, that's cognitively depleting. That's going to
actually make us even more tired by the end of
(33:01):
the session. And then the third one day would go
back to kind of what we were talking about with
information and notes, I would say, focus on the quality
of your notes and if you can, Like when I
play live, I take notes by hand, and I think
that that's sometimes I do it on my phone because
I don't always have a notebook, But when I do
it by hand, there's something really fun and interesting about that.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Do you do you have good handwriting?
Speaker 2 (33:24):
I have legible handwriting. It can be good if I
but when I'm when I'm writing quickly, it's not pretty.
But you could read it, which is important. And but
I'm used to writing by hand. I write all of
my drafts by hand when I'm even my books.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
So I didn't know that about you.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Yes, you didn't know.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Yes, with a fucking canon paper what?
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yes, this can be another episode night.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
What I would I'm going to give it a thousand
winning against that.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
So take take good notes and actually readview hands so
that you can you can learn from your sessions and
have them be something where you're you're actually actively learning information. Yes, Nate,
I have notebooks filled with drafts, and I type obviously too,
and I don't like literally write every single word, but yeah,
(34:20):
I write tons by hand, and like the biggest bluff,
I think the first draft of that whole book was
written by hand.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
It's just so much slower.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, so much slower, which gives you more time to process,
and also when you type it up, because then I
type it up after it's edit number one.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
I'm processing up here. I'm processing up here. The typing
is just the last step.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Well, here we go with that.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
With that confession, we will leave our listeners for this weekend.
So Nate, maybe maybe we can Maybe you and I
can plan a trip to New Jersey to play online
poker for a day, or maybe we don't.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
Some good what do they have there, Taylor? I think
we can find Italian food, Yes, some Sri Lankan and
shade over there.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Let's do it, Let's do it, let's have let's have
dinner and play some poker.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Okay deal, phil Ivey, You're invited.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
If you're in New Jersey, borrow.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
Tell.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
It'll be fun. You Me and Phil Let's do it.
Let us know what you think of the show. Reach
out to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot Fm.
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
And by me Nate Silver. The show was a Cool
production of Pushin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
by Isaac Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya gerwit Lydia,
Jean Kott and Daphne Chen are our editors, and our
executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
If you like the show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us too, But once again,
only if you like us. We don't want those bad
reviews out there.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Thanks for tuning in.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions.
I'm Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
And I'm Nate Silver. What's on tap today? Maria? Maybe
a little maybe little pokey pokey poke Sorry, please hit
it up?
Speaker 1 (00:39):
No, no, do not, do not.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
We haven't talked about poker in a while. This is
a Saturday episode. It's supposed to be more fun, so
we're gonna talk a little bit about poker and more
particularly online poker versus live poker. I think this might
reveal more than you think about how we process information,
how our brains work. And Maria is a Sika who
still likes online poker. I do not. You'll see that
difference come out too.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah. I'm excited to get started. Nate.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Let's uh, let's get into it. This past weekend was
the start of the online Bracelet series, which the World
Series of Poker has been doing for a few years now,
(01:26):
basically starting during COVID when bracelets were moved online when
there was no World Series of Poker live during the summer,
and it's become more and more of a thing where
these highly competitive events with you know, coveded WSOP bracelets
have moved to the Internet, and there's a lot of
(01:48):
we're not going to talk about kind of is this
a good thing? Is this a bad thing? We'll leave
that question alone and instead we'll talk about just in
general thoughts about playing online and playing live.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Maria, you seem to like online poker more than I.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Do, well, Nate, So you know, we do some disclosure
on the show, and as listeners of the show note,
I am an ambassador for Poker Stars. I'm a Poker
Stars team. Pro poker Stars is an online poker company,
So I have had to get used to playing online,
which is not my preferred method of playing. By the way,
(02:25):
I far far prefer playing live to playing online. But
I learned to play poker playing online because the beauty
of online poker is the sheer quantity of hands that
you can get in and so the experience that you
can acquire is much faster. So I used to, you know,
(02:47):
when I just started playing for the Biggest Bluff, I
would reverse commute to New Jersey multiple days a week
to play online because in cafes I would play.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Noan on McDonald's we talked in lat episode about how
you've never fucking been to McDonald's.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
So no, not not out of McDonald's. But I have
definitely explored the world of online cafes that are open
late in Hoboken and Jersey City.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Do they know what you were doing?
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yes, they knew what I was doing because I had
my laptop out and I was playing online. There was
one cafe that I started going to. The owner loved
online poker and at some point was like, can I
play a few hands? When I was playing a tournament
and I was like, uh, no, you're not allowed to
do that, but he was.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
He was very excited.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Was it that you were not allowed that you thought
he was a fish?
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Well, you're not allowed to have someone else play for
you on your account.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
But if like phil Ivy, is he from New Jersey, Yes,
if phil Ivy on the cafe, would you let him play?
Speaker 1 (03:48):
No? I would not.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
My next book is about cheating.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
What if phil Ivy would kick you out of his
cafe unless you unless you unless you let him play?
I would say, so it's a the best player in
the world and be you can no longer use a cafe.
I mean, I feel like, doesn't that outweigh the No.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
I would say, I would say, Phil, I cannot believe
you do not value your reputation because you know, I'm
a journalist and I'm going to write about this in
my book about cheating. How phil Ivy basically said that
he wanted me to cheat And this is not a
good look for you, Phil.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
So what you're saying is that when you won your
online bracelet, phil Ivy was ghosting for you, right, but
you agreed not to disclose that.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
In exactly exactly so, Nate, I actually think that this
is probably one of the most djened things that you
will hear me do.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Nate.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Last weekend, so I was in Vermont for a long
weekend Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Sunday. After driving back from
Vermont and you know, listeners of the show have heard
my wasp story. After all of this happened, I went
back to Brooklyn, you know, dropped all my stuff off,
and then took the Path train to New Jersey, where
(05:06):
I had booked a hotel room for Sunday night to
hop into the first two events of the World Series
of Poker Online Bracelet series. So went, for the sole
reason you know, of playing these events, did that, and
then you know, went to work in the morning from
(05:27):
a nice hotel, HIGHTT Regency, right on the water in
Jersey City. Nice enough, great great views, Highly recommend for
online poker, stable internet connection, no no issues with geolocation,
which can be problematic when you're right on the water,
as I found out, because sometimes what ends up happening
(05:49):
is they pick up Wi Fi from New York and
suddenly we'll kick you off. So High Regency did not
have any of those issues. But I can't tell you
much about the hotel because I checked in, you know,
went to my room, fired up the tournaments, went to sleep, and.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Woke up and left, and that that was.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
But you know, it actually made me think about so
many differences right between playing live and playing online, and
especially with series like this when it starts so incredibly late.
So for people who aren't as d Jenny, these events
start at three thirty and four thirty Vegas time Pacific time,
(06:34):
which means six thirty and seven thirty pm East Coast time.
So now imagine if you actually go deep in the event.
So when I won my World a series of poker
online bracelet, I was playing in Vegas and we finished
the final table. I want at like three thirty am,
which would have been six thirty am East Coast time.
(06:58):
So if you think about that, it's insane, right, that's
actually a crazy, crazy time to start a tournament, and
it probably freezes out a lot of people who would
have otherwise played. Like, for instance, this past Sunday, I
was like, you know what, I don't know if I'm
going to do that again because it's exhausting to do that.
(07:18):
So I didn't cash one of the events. I cashed
the other one, so ended up, you know, busting at
like two am.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
And I was like, was it really worth.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
It for just you know, a few grand to do
something like that? And you answered it. But so there
are a lot of different considerations when you're playing online
that you don't have to deal with when you're playing live.
We talked back when it was the summer and we
(07:51):
were playing the live World Series of Poker events. We
talked about using you know, this new software that showed
who was going to be at your table and how
you would how it gave you extra information right, and
how you could then rate the players rank them. Nate,
you had this very complicated spreadsheet which I love, and
you actually gave the players. Yeah, you had a rating scale,
(08:15):
so you had all this extra stuff that you normally
wouldn't have. But online there are if there are several issues.
One is people don't use their real names, right, So
there are screen names that people use. So you see this,
you know, you see the people at your table, but
(08:35):
you may or may not know who those people are.
People do track screen names, and there are communities of
poker players that study together that have these big spreadsheets
of people's online screen names and say, oh, this is
this person, this is this person. So then Nate, they
(08:56):
can do what you did during the World series because
they have the real name to go along with the
screen name. But if you're someone who's not in that community,
you might have no way of knowing, right, So you're
actually missing that whole big piece of information. And you
used to play online poker for a living. We never
really talked about your experience of doing that and how
(09:17):
you thought about kind of those you know, informational edges,
informational asymmetries, and how the value of data, how it
shifts between live and online. Because obviously, like live, one
of my big edges is the fact that I'm a psychologist,
Like there's and there's this wealth of data. I don't
have any of that online, but I'd love to hear
(09:40):
about your experience and kind of that contrast.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
So when I played online, I played limit hold them primarily.
I did quite well for your period of a few years,
which I attribute not necessarily to deep study. But like, look,
poker and number one poker is a game where all
that matters for you win rate is how was your
(10:05):
strength relative to the players you're playing against. Right, I
can walk in the games where I'm the best player
at the tail by far. I can walk in a
game for I'm the worst player at the table by far.
I like think I'm closer to the best than the worst. Right,
the average team I'm sitting in, I think on plus ev.
But like that's what really matters. So in the poker
boom years, the moneymaker boom, the online poker boom, the
(10:27):
average person was quite bad. And then and then things
got tougher with party poker and other sites closed to Americans.
After the UIGEA passed in two thousand and six, a
lot of the better players, excuse me, a lot of
the worst players dried up and left the game. So, yeah,
my last six months were losing months after having felt
(10:48):
like it was an ATM for some period of time. However,
even then I was playing in you know, almost the
higher stakes available at that time, as far as like
as high as like one hundred two hundred dollar blinds,
which is a pretty big game for two thousand and five. Yeah,
not as big as an no limic game with those stakes,
but like it was a surreal game. I would impress
people by like eyeing in. I would like drop my
(11:10):
whole role down and put buying for sixty thousand dollars
just to look cool, because it's a fucking door and
it was in my twenties, right, and like, but even
then you had maybe a few dozen regulars, right, and
so like you did have some wreaths, right. I think
I like to get in like people's headspace with them
(11:32):
a little bit. What a lot of people do when
they play online is they will multi table, meaning playing
more than one game at once. And I would do that.
I would do that, but I would play three or
four tables as opposed to like some people literally play
eight or sixteen or twenty right where they're just playing
totally paint by numbers poker almost always playing like way
(11:54):
too tight, and I'd try to, like I try to
like be a little more focused on individual decisions. But like,
but you know, but like that's not the environment right now.
I mean, back then there was not RTA. RTA is
real time assistance where there are now solvers, and it's illegal,
it's illegal. And maybe I do get the props sometimes
(12:16):
I do play occasionally less and less and less and less,
but like I'll get the props sometimes saying prove you're
a human and not a computer. Maybe I maybe that's
a sign that I'm playing too mechanically or playing like
a solver.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Hey, Nate, I've never I've never gotten that prompt.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
What does that say about my.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
I don't know, But now it feels weird to say,
as like kind of a a math guy, right, you know,
I feel like my relative strengths in poker are actually
kind of like the soft skills, at least relative to
that like elite player population, right, Like, I think I
have a pretty good attitude about money. I think I
(12:55):
definitely am not always playing my a game. I don't
think I have super tilt problems. You know, I can
pick up not against Maybe you should forget about the
best pros, but against like amateurs, I can read players
pretty well, I can I can estimate pretty well and
piece some shit together right, and be more composed and like,
you know, online, I think those advantages are lesser number one.
(13:16):
And also, like I just find like, you know, when
I play poker live, there's an act of intentionality to it. Right,
It's like I decided today too, because there's no casino
within an hour and a half of me, Right, I
decided to take a trip to a casino to play
(13:37):
a tournament and take a week out. It'll cost me money,
it'll cost you money. You know, hopefully I'll make back
the entry fee and win. Most of the time, you don't, right,
but like, but if there's an opportunity cost there, I
could be doing something else right and like, but there's
an active intentionality there that gives me more presence. You know.
The other problem too is that kind of mentioned this earlier, Like,
because these tournaments start in the PM typically, right, or
(13:58):
you've just been playing a long time, and there's like
and there's fatigue because you don't get you know, live
poker is nice and frankly fairly slow until you get
to like shorthanded poker, Right, you're not playing most of
the time. You have your break for twenty minutes every
two hours, right, you have a dinner break like online,
even if you do start early, it's kind of a grind.
But like, you know, I've just had fucking times and
I'm like, Okay, I was bored tonight decided to fire
(14:22):
up like a fifty dollars hundred dollars tournament, right, and like,
is it really worth me staying up another two hours
to ladder up and win an extra couple hundred dollars
and expected value? Like I don't know, right, And so
you like, I find the whole thing kind of kind
of difficult.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
And we'll be back right after this.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
I think the lateness thing is a huge factor. I
actually think that the entire East Coast is at a
huge disadvantage to the West Coast because your cognitive function
is an not going to be as sharp, you know,
at when it's midnight for you, it's only nine pm
for the people who are playing from Las Vegas.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
That's a huge difference.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Yeah, I've looked at this in the context of so
here's a little actual actionable gambling tip. Although it's probably
accounted for in the point spot, so there's maybe not
edge there. Right. We have this NFL model we've been
working on for a couple of months now, right where
literally any every NFL games is like teen twenty is
account of four and all types of stuff, all types
of fancy shit.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
You know, teams playing at night when it's outside of
their time zone. So the West Coast team has a
big advantage versus an East Coast team in night games. Right,
it's about almost a full point, which is not huge huge.
That's like in the cost of NFL, where like if
you have a point edge, you will beat the point
(15:58):
spread on average. Right, that's pretty big. In fact, like
even when the game is on the East Coast, the
West Coast team can still be more fatigue or the
East Coast team rather can still be worft because they're
playing you know, you still have the West Coast team
playing at five pm locally till eight instead of eight
until eleven when you play most NFL games in the afternoon,
(16:20):
practice in the afternoon, et cetera. Right, a bit of
a reverse effect, by the way, where the West Coast
teams do a little bit worse in games that sort
up one pm Eastern ten am West coast time. But
it's a little asymmetric, right, people, I'm an id L,
so maybe I'm an exception, right, But like most people
stretch a little better in the morning if they have
to get up earlier than in the even at least
(16:42):
for physical types of activity. Right, So like, yeah, that
type of stuff like does matter quite a bit.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, No, I mean, for sure, there's a lot of
data on our cognitive function and time of day. And
let me just say that there are two factors that
are that really matter. One is just the actual light outside, right,
and how it affects are body circadian rhythms, because as
(17:12):
we evolved, light cues really matter and kind of make
a difference. And there are certain cues towards morning that
tell us to wake up, certain ques towards evening that
tell us to go to sleep. But your chronotype, so Nate,
you said you're a night owl. Your chronotype, that's what
that is, right, your own internal circadian rhythm that also matters.
(17:35):
So there are people who are who have an earlier
chronotype and so they actually function better in the mornings.
There are people who have a later chronotype. They function
better later. It's easier in modern society for early birds
to function because their chronotype is aligned more aligned right
with modern demands and also actually more aligned with the
(17:58):
with light. And I'm guessing there are no data on
this night because this is not the way that professional
sports work. But I'm assuming that the advantage will go
away if the West team has been on the East
coast for two weeks. We could look at but I
don't think that ever happens, right, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
I think in l teams would generally fly. But yeah,
I mean all the sports science stuff is getting better.
Home field advantage is generally declining, right, because they're like, yeah,
you want to show up in that environment a couple
of days beforehand, for sure. Yeah, I mean you're thinking
about on them.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
A couple of days, but not two weeks, and it
takes a while for your rhythms to reset.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
I mean, if you're trained for like as I you know,
the past several summers played the World Series for at
least a couple of weeks, right, you can you do
get training right. One of the advice people sudvice I
give is like, if you're playing, if you really care
about the main event in the World Series, which if
you love poker, you you probably should, right, Like, don't
have that be your first tournament. I mean, you want
to get in some reps. You want to kind of
know where the bathrooms are, literally, I mean, you know,
(18:57):
all that stuff. All that stuff matters. I Mean, one
thing I noticed is like I have an uncanny recollection
for live hands they played weeks, months, years ago, you know,
down to the color of you know, what suit of
the cards were, you know, Ace five of diamonds, even
though it might not matter or or whatever else, right,
(19:18):
the color of the chips or how But like I
you know, online I'm like, I think I played at
quads versus full house hand last night there or something
like that, right, I just don't know. I don't have
the tactile like recall.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
No, I mean, I'm sure that people who just play
online all the time, it becomes there probably is different
our brain architecture that is involved, because that's the where
our brains work right there. They're flexible and they do
kind of change according to how you're using them. And
so I'm assuming it's for someone who's an full time
(19:52):
online player. It's probably not the case. But One of
the things you said, Nate that really resonates that there's
so much science behind this is that our brain does process, retain,
and just work through information much much better when it's physical,
(20:14):
when we're actually doing it, when we're learning by doing
and not by you know, doing by pressing a button.
So work that I think is actually kind of related.
I hadn't thought about this until until now, but I
think that this is quite relevant. There's a ton of work,
and this research started, you know, probably several decades ago,
(20:35):
and it's only gotten more and more powerful in the
sense that replicated bigger studies. So there's a lot of
work that shows that the single best way of taking
notes right retaining information is to do it by hand,
to actually physically write, and that there's a huge difference
between taking notes by hand and typing on a computer.
(20:56):
And there are multiple reasons for this. One of them
is that there is this connection between you know, the
hand physically going through these motions and the brain that
strengthens the wiring. The other thing is that you don't
write as quickly as you type, so you already have
to process the information to know what's important enough to
(21:18):
write down. How do I write it down, how do
I take the different themes from it? How do I
actually distill this? And so you're not just passively listening.
You have to actively do this, whereas if you're typing,
you can basically type everything, but you retain that information
a lot worse. So this made me think that with
online poker there's actually a similar effect going on where
(21:39):
when it's live and also the way that our brain
retains information and encodes information, the more points of encoding
you can have, the better. So if you have like
a memory where you have you remember, oh, these were
the colors, right, these were the smells. This was what
I just had for you know, if you can encode
in a multisensory way, it's going to be much much
(22:01):
more powerful, much more lasting. You're going to take a
lot more from it than if you just do kind
of a one note type of thing. And when you're
playing live poker, you have that right because you are
in a multisensor, You're in the real world, you are
in an environment with people. There are dynamics, you can see, looks,
you know, it smells. Unfortunately, there are a lot of
(22:23):
things that are going on that will help you process
retain and actually kind of learn from this, whereas online
it's just buttons and it's just a screen in front
of you, and our brain just does not process information
well that way, So I think that there is a
huge disconnect.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
It's also from a strategy standpoint, like more points of estimation, right,
you just have more information that you're looking at. Yeah,
and like to me, I think my strength as poker
player in some ways are like triangulating different points of information. Right.
Not the best gto a player, not the best live talesperson.
(23:00):
You don't have the most poker experience. But if you're
a center of ten in all those categories, then I
feel like there's some added value there, especially in environments
where you're late in a tournament, or it's an unusual setting,
or this a usual player, or something's happening right, and
you kind of like are good at making like snap
estimates quickly and like adapting to that and like and
those skills all go away. You can kind of be
(23:24):
more I don't know how you put it. You can
kind of be more like specter me about playing online.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Right.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
You just have to focus on, like on like certain
things right obsessively, and you can block out other things,
whereas I like kind of the elements of surprise and
unusual elements to some extent. Right, that's where my like
life experience as I get into my you know, mid
to late forties, starts to matter more potentially. And we'll
(23:54):
be right back after this.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Break finally, to kind of wrap this up, i'd love
your opinion. So you know, I was playing when I
(24:17):
played these New Jersey events, it was the first time
i'd actually played on this new New Jersey client. So
I made a new screen name no one had ever
seen before, so no one knew who I was. I'm
not going to say what it is. I want to
preserve that information for as long as possible. But on
the other hand, I had zero notes. Like my Nevada account,
I actually know who a lot of the players are
(24:39):
and like I have notes on them, and here I
had none. Right, I actually was starting from a fresh
slate because even the names that I recognized, because it's
the same player pool now it's it's one player pool.
So I recognized that I'd played with some of them,
but I didn't remember right who it was because that
was on my Nevada account, which I couldn't sign into
(24:59):
when I was playing in New Jersey. It's not like
my notes transferred from one account to the other. And
so I was playing. One of the events I was
playing was a six max, which means for people who
don't play poke, it's six players. So it's more shorthanded,
you're playing more hands, it's more action. And so I
was torn. I was like, should I be really focused
on the table, paying attention to, you know, betsizing and
what people are doing, or should I frantically be googling
(25:22):
these screen names to figure out who these people are
and trying to find out some information? And am I
you know, basically, how do I how do I value
that right? Because I know that there's some people who
have that information by virtue of having played, and I'm
at a disadvantage. But I'm also disadvantaging myself by looking
(25:43):
it up while playing and trying to process all of
this other stuff. And so I was torn. Right, So
I'm actually curious to know what your thoughts are. Since
we've talked about this in Live poker, it's a slightly
different calculus when you're in a situation like that.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Yeah, Look, I think in general, Look, I got to
have other World Chairs of Poker, where you go in
and you spend the first ten minutes kind of looking
people up, right, you know, I think there's always a
question about how explicit you want your thought process to be,
including things I take notes about your hands versus like
quote unquote playing in flow, right, you know, every now
(26:19):
and then maybe every fourth or fifth session. I I'm
just gonna write down every hand I play today, I
look at with my coach later for my own gratification.
I think you can make you play better too. You
have like a little bit of permanent record for yourself, right,
But there's time when like, look, now we're running fairly deep,
or there's a mule dynamic at the table, or people
are in conversation and the conversations giving me more information
than you know. So I think it's important to like
(26:40):
be able to play in flow. And it's also like
kind of like stressful, right, But I don't know. Look,
I'm not taking a very professional attitude when I play
online poker necessarily, right, I'm looking at it as like recreation,
whereas with a live poker then I take it quite seriously. Right,
I think information overkill can be a detriment. But again,
(27:01):
it's a very different fucking skill. It's like you're in
air traffic controller or something, right, And yeah, I mean,
you know, I think the best player online place isn't
They're like, yeah, I might not have player reads when
I have population reads. I know that the average player
doesn't check rays often enough when there are three flush
cards on the board, or when they do, it's never
a bluff kind of thing, right, Like that type of
(27:23):
mass data mining is probably yeah, very helpful, I would imagine, right.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Yep, no, absolutely, And yeah, in game, I made the
decision that so I told you I was playing two
bracelet events. One was a mystery Bounty which was full table,
and one was six max, which was a higher buy
and it was a one thousand dollars buy and thankfully
that was the one I catched in. So so it
was this, you know, one K six max, and I
(27:52):
made the decision that I would try to look up
the players at my six MACS tables, but not at
the mystery bounty because Mystery bounty first more players, but
secondly more population tendencies, right, because it's a mystery bounty format,
so people are doing things like try to build up
big stacks it's a smaller buy, and so you can
make some sort of generalizations right about how people are playing.
(28:15):
But then, Nate, I got incredibly frustrated because I spent
this time, you know, noting all of them, my six macs,
and then I get moved to a new table, and
all of a sudden, you know that the strategy that
you described for the World series where you spend the
first ten minutes doesn't work online because you might be
getting moved. You might be at the same table, you
might get lucky and be at the same table for
two hours, but you might get moved every ten minutes.
(28:36):
And it's incredibly frustrating. And I did feel like when
I was looking things up, I was missing hands and
missing some information and maybe it is more important to
just focus on Okay, this person seems to be you know,
three bedding too much or or or or whatever it is,
and this isn't an important thing. We're talking about kind
of the importance of information, But there's also psychologically you
(28:58):
can get information overload and you have to actually figure out,
like how do I prioritize and wait this information and
what information is the most valuable?
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Yeah, I mean, you know, we did play a pandemic
game online but with a fixed player pool where half
of the people are on zoom, right, and that's very different.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
You know.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Look, I think poker is a much more fun game
when you have the dynamic of playing repeatedly against the
same opponents. Right. That can be true in a World
Series poker event where you're there from noon to midnight.
You know what I mean, you actually develop some long
term equilibriums potentially, right, And if you're switching table all
the time, you don't get that. But look, Maria, I'm
going to have you close. Let's say that I moved
(29:41):
to a country where there's more acts to online poker
and no cash live poker, right, no live poker. What
would your three tips be? Because you're better at this
than me for forgetting or two tips even? What are
your one to three tips for improving as an online player?
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I mean, the reason I started off by talking about
the schedules, I think that that is actually incredibly important
that you should try to look at events and schedules
that will be more conducive to your sleep schedule and
when you're sharper cognitively. So I know people who don't
(30:22):
you know who live in the United States. When it
comes for big series like w Coop which just happened,
which was is one of Poker Star's kind of signature series,
they leave the country to play those series and they
actually game it to figure out, you know, where should
I be, which country should I be, which time zone
should I be in, so that the schedules are best
(30:43):
for my performance. So I think that that's important and
kind of knowing that about yourself and not playing a
schedule that is going to be somewhere where you cannot
perform at peak performance. And related to that, I think
there are lots of people who would disagree with me
on this who are online players, but I would actually
say limit multi tabling. I think it's more important to
(31:06):
focus on one, two, max three, you know, tables, but
your decision quality. I see some of some players I
really admire. So you know, Patrick Leonard Pads who constantly
posts on social media about his hands, and I love him.
I took you know, I took his course at run
(31:27):
at Once Poker. You know, I think he has absolutely
great content. He's an amazing player. But when I see
his computer screen like it, you know, it gives me
a heart attack. Like he's playing you know, ten, eleven, twelve,
all of these. He has this huge multi table setup,
and it just to me, if you're trying to improve,
(31:48):
quantity in that case does not trump quality and you
can't give as much focus too.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah, it's a weird thing in some ways to say, like, uh,
I mean, because your edges in online poker, most forms
of poker, but especially online poker, are like are very small,
you know what I mean, And it doesn't take very
much to like send you into break even or negative.
Right if you're giving away x amount of dollars per
(32:14):
hour in rake and x amount of dollars to vary
in some bad luck, right then like you know, you go,
you make one more mistake for one hundred hands, and
you might be a losing player, right, So, like, yeah,
it just seems weird to me that, Like, I mean,
unless you were in the kind of poka thing days,
we can play very mechanically, right. I think I'm much
better when I focus on one to sometimes two decisions
(32:38):
at a time.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
I don't know, so, so yeah, that would be my
piece of advice number two. And I think that that
actually goes hand in hand with how our brain works.
That our brains cannot multitask, and it's very difficult for
us to process all of this information. We're never processing
it at the same time. We're just you know, serially
task switching. That's bad, that's cognitively depleting. That's going to
actually make us even more tired by the end of
(33:01):
the session. And then the third one day would go
back to kind of what we were talking about with
information and notes, I would say, focus on the quality
of your notes and if you can, Like when I
play live, I take notes by hand, and I think
that that's sometimes I do it on my phone because
I don't always have a notebook, But when I do
it by hand, there's something really fun and interesting about that.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Do you do you have good handwriting?
Speaker 2 (33:24):
I have legible handwriting. It can be good if I
but when I'm when I'm writing quickly, it's not pretty.
But you could read it, which is important. And but
I'm used to writing by hand. I write all of
my drafts by hand when I'm even my books.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
So I didn't know that about you.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Yes, you didn't know.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Yes, with a fucking canon paper what?
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yes, this can be another episode night.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
What I would I'm going to give it a thousand
winning against that.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
So take take good notes and actually readview hands so
that you can you can learn from your sessions and
have them be something where you're you're actually actively learning information. Yes, Nate,
I have notebooks filled with drafts, and I type obviously too,
and I don't like literally write every single word, but yeah,
(34:20):
I write tons by hand, and like the biggest bluff,
I think the first draft of that whole book was
written by hand.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
It's just so much slower.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, so much slower, which gives you more time to process,
and also when you type it up, because then I
type it up after it's edit number one.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
I'm processing up here. I'm processing up here. The typing
is just the last step.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Well, here we go with that.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
With that confession, we will leave our listeners for this weekend.
So Nate, maybe maybe we can Maybe you and I
can plan a trip to New Jersey to play online
poker for a day, or maybe we don't.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
Some good what do they have there, Taylor? I think
we can find Italian food, Yes, some Sri Lankan and
shade over there.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Let's do it, Let's do it, let's have let's have
dinner and play some poker.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Okay deal, phil Ivey, You're invited.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
If you're in New Jersey, borrow.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
Tell.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
It'll be fun. You Me and Phil Let's do it.
Let us know what you think of the show. Reach
out to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot Fm.
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
And by me Nate Silver. The show was a Cool
production of Pushin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
by Isaac Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya gerwit Lydia,
Jean Kott and Daphne Chen are our editors, and our
executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
If you like the show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us too, But once again,
only if you like us. We don't want those bad
reviews out there.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Thanks for tuning in.
Hosts And Creators
Maria Konnikova
Nate Silver
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