June 12, 2025 • 42 mins
Nate and Maria are back in Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker 2025. They discuss a key rule change that will have a major effect on their strategy. Then, they’re joined by a Risky Business listener who gets a crash course in tournament play. Finally, they look back on their own early days at the WSOP.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova and I'm made Silver.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Did we mix that up? You should we go the
other way? Oh, I don't know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
See, okay, perfect start to This is a perfect start
to the segment.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I'm Nate.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Welcome to Las Vegas, and Maria me, Welcome to Las Vegas.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Beautiful Las Vegas. Is it beautiful?
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Las fig fabulous, fabulous, beautiful.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
It's impressive.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
No, but but but Las Vegas is actually gorgeous For
people who haven't been here, Just go off Strip, go
to Red Rock, go to the Spring Mountains, like there
is some absolutely breathtaking beauty out here. Anyway, So on
the show today, Nate, during this twenty twenty five World
Series of Poker, we're going to be all in on poker.
So you and I have just played our first event.
(01:14):
We're going to be talking about changes in the World Series,
your ability to know your opponent, and then we're going
to have a special guest on whom neither one of
us has met, and it's a poker newbie, and we'll
be offering some poker lessons.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, I've been here for forty six hours. I've played
I think twenty two hours of poker in those forty
six hours I have. You know, you've already had something
which is increasingly common America day. There was a shooting
on the Las Vegas Strip the first night I got in,
which was terrifying to everybody involved. So I feel we're
(01:51):
a bit or worse very fully immersed in the Las
Vegas experience already. But yeah, the as Sensible well, yeah,
the as Sensible origin story of our meeting and the
show is poker, and so we're going to lean a
little bit into poker. It was also recently out at
the Manifest conference in Berkeley, California, downloading with people on
AI and effective algorism and other things. Maybe we'll talk
(02:13):
about that next week. One thing I've been looking forward
to this year is like it's not an election year,
so I can focus a lot more and I want
to talk about some changes or we want to talk
about some changes to how, yeah, how the World Series
actually played. I think it's a very fundamental change that
players are downplaying that has profound effects for the strategy.
So should I explain or do you want to explain it?
Speaker 1 (02:35):
No, go ahead and explain, But first, can we just
give a congratulations to us. So Nate and I, Well,
Nate played one event while I still wasn't here. But
yesterday I played my first event and Nate played his second.
We both cashed. You know, we had a nice dinner
and then went back to play. And Nate, you ended
up busting at the very end of the day, but
you did cash. You did make the money, which is great.
(02:56):
We're taping this on Tuesday. I'm about to restart day two.
I apologize to all our listeners and our viewers. I'm
going to be caffeinating this entire time because I've gotten
all of like four hours of sleep. But I have
really cute elephants on my on my coffee cups.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
I have a sugar free read. So I'm joining you, beautiful.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Okay, so cheers to the risky business poker caffeination. But yeah,
this year, so I arrived and my experience registering and
getting to my tabil was completely different because there's kind
of this new component of the world series which is
all online and it actually gives you access to all
the players. So, Nate, do you want to talk a
little bit about this and what it actually means for
(03:39):
you know, how you approach your day one table, which
has never been possible at the World Series before. I
just want to say it's always been possible at Poker Stars.
I am a Poker Stars ambassador, but the Poker Stars
Live app has been light years ahead. However, at the
World Series this has just been introduced.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Yeah, the app is called wslp Plus. You can sign
up now with bonus code risky business for Twitter. No, No,
that's not true.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
That would be funny.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
So to have a new app. The word Star's poker
brand was bought by gg Poker, which is an online
poker provider. You don't have to care about that detail. Well,
what's interesting is that it's de anonymized poker in a
way that I think is kind of radical. Right, So
you show up at your table, you're on the app,
by the way, make sure your phone is charged fully.
It's a big disadvantage to have your phone shut off.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
You can play, but you lose info and you know
the names of almost every player at the table. There's
a weird loophole where you're kind of allowed to be
quasi anonymous, which maybe we'll talk about maybe not, which
I think is like unfair. But yeah, before you show
up to dates, wasn't there.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
I'm sorry, I just want to interject here with a
bit of humor. I think one of the first final tables,
there was some I don't remember what his name was,
but it was something like Big Balls sixty nine. Yeah,
made the final table. It wasn't actually that, but like
it was very very close to that, and everyone was like, hey,
w sop, what's going on? And he ended up making
it like to the top three. He almost want to break.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Like a D four twenty or something. It is like,
can you.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Can you imagine, like you know, Big Balls sixty nine
winning his first World Series of Poker bracelets anyway, please
contain mostly.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
For eighty or ninety percent of the players, it will
say Maria Kinakova, and I can google Maria kind of Kova,
right or look apprehended mob. That's basically the database if
you're a baseball fan, the Baseball Reference of poker, where
every cash you've ever had in a live tournament is
contained there your bio. You can infer age and things,
(05:30):
I mean can for age in real life. Right, So,
but like but all of a sudden you start out
with a lot of information about people. And I find
this quite radical, Like I said, because from the start,
I'll speak for myself. Right from the start, I'm thinking
in terms of what are the flaws likely to be
(05:50):
in this person's game, as opposed to starting out from
a default where you're like, Okay, I'm playing some game theory,
optimal style relative to like the population, You're like, okay,
I know this type.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
You know.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Let's take some prototypes, for example, Right, one prototype is
a guy most Pooka players in the World Series are men, right,
who had a big cash in a World Series event
a few years ago. You look at his results and
they've been mediocre since then, and that might give you
certain prototypes. Right. You know, here's a guy who might
(06:24):
be a little bit tilty potentially, at the same time,
if you get deep in the tournament, it's not his
first rodeo. That might matter to some degree. Right, you know.
There are some older players who can play a little
bit and just kind of look like generic old guys. Right.
If you just played against them, you might fold too
much in the first couple of orbits. Typically, older players
(06:45):
are less inclined to bluff by stereotype. At least Trapp.
You're like, Oh, this guy is like four million dollars
in lifetime tournament winnings and he's still cashing regularly and
probably pretty good in things like that. And so you're
relying in some sense less on crude stereotypes and more
on solid information. It's also an experience where I mean,
both Marie, you and I are public figures by like
(07:08):
the slander libel definition, right, it removes some ambiguity and
awkwardness about like, oh, do you know who I am?
Or do I know who you are? Right? As a
person who's like slightly socially awkward, I'm like, oh, I
think that's so. For example, the poker player Lexi Gavin,
who is a terrific player, but I don't think i've
(07:29):
met in person before, right, friends and friends, She's like, oh,
your Nate. I'm like, oh you're Lexi, great to meet you. Right,
It's nice to have that instead of being like are
you when you're in the middle of a poker.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Hen, yeah, So I think that, you know, there's a
really interesting shift that happens when you actually know who
somebody is so normally like and this is what you're
I think implying when you're talking about kind of the
the ability to adjust to who's at the table. So
(08:00):
normally when you sit at the table, And this is
always my advice when you know, when people ask me like, oh,
you know, how do you play? Like, well, the beautiful
thing about like actually studying and knowing your GTO or
game theory optimal way of playing is that you have
a baseline, right, you have kind of this baseline that
you play like your your solid poker game. And I
always say, I always caution people like, don't deviate based
(08:22):
on too little information because it's too easy. You know,
if someone's raising, like the first ten hands at the table,
you're like, oh my god, this person's a maniac. Well
like maybe, but maybe they've just been getting you know,
really good card distribution that happens, or if someone has folded,
they might not be a knit like there might be
other things going on. And so I always say, like,
don't over adjust immediately and make sure that you're adjusting
(08:44):
based on solid data because it's so easy. So night
you actually bring up one of the you know, one
of those there are poker stereotypes, and one of them
is that you know, the the nitty old guy who
never who never bluffs. And then but those guys, by
the way, if you're ever at a table with them,
they're then capable of once they'd been card dead and
they get frustrated, they will go crazy with eight three offsuit.
(09:04):
That's I just picked a random hand. That's not a
good poker hand. But like they're also capable of doing
that all of a sudden, like they'll blow up anyway.
So one of the stereotypes is like that, there's the
older guy. Then you also have like I've made this
mistake when you have like the really jacked dudes who
look like they're on steroids, you know, the big necks, tattoos.
I'm like, well, you're going to be super aggressive, right,
That's not always the case, Like sometimes they're actually really
(09:27):
tight players like you. Normally, what our brain does from
the psychology standpoint, is it stereotypes based on how people look.
Like that's the first thing, that's the first available information
that we have. People do it to me all the
time because I'm a female, right, Like that's the most
striking thing about me, because Nate, as you say, most
players are male at the World Series in any given event,
(09:47):
it's under ten percent in most events, under five in
some events. You know, it's tiny percentages of females. So
you know that's something that really stands out about me.
What this does is it actually allows you to use
real data and real information as opposed to cognitive biases
and cognitive shortcuts, some of which can be meaningful, but
(10:08):
most of which are just noise, and yet our brain
doesn't process them as noise. We're like, oh, you know,
I've met this kind of person all the time. Yeah,
but you haven't met this person, right, and they might
just remind you of someone incorrectly. And so when you
have the name, if you're not lazy, and by the way,
a lot of people are like, oh yeah, if you're
not lazy, and you shouldn't be lazy. If you're listening
(10:29):
to this, well, actually, excuse me. If you're playing at
my table, please go ahead and keep being lazy. If
you're not at my table, don't be lazy. Like take
the five minutes that it takes to look up these people,
because their lifetime earnings matter how they're doing recently. So
if you understand the psychology of this, you know, like, oh,
(10:49):
did this person just have a huge score, right, Like
they're going to be playing very very differently from someone
who's made a lot of money, but their last big
score was ten years ago. Right, How has this person
been playing this world series? Have they cashed every event
or have they had zero cashes? That, by the way's
information you can see in the app. So there's so
much valuable information that is actual data. And then Nate,
(11:10):
as you were talking, then you can start adjusting, right,
because I think that the World Series of Poker is
actually somewhere where exploited of poker is much more meaningful
than just like being absolutely game theory optimal. And what
that means is that you want to start adjusting your strategy.
This is such good advice, by the way, for just
life in general, where you should have a baseline way
(11:31):
of behaving and acting and negotiating and making decisions, but
then when you get into situations where like you're at
a table of fish, you're going to adjust. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Look, I actually kind of have become more critical of
like a lot of poker content on the web, right,
especially the more expensive content that you pay more for.
And I'm friends with some of the content creators. It's
geared toward this environment where it's elite players versus elite players.
It's very driven by solvers and game theory, and I
(12:02):
just don't think that's where you make the money in poker.
For ninety nine nine percent of the poker playing population, right,
I have played more live cash games in the past
two years, probably spent as much time doing that as
tournaments ranging from low stakes to prett high stakes. And
in cash games, the game doesn't happen if you're in
(12:23):
some gto optimal world, because no one would play just
to pass chips around and give the casino k or
the home game rank or whatever else. So from the
start you're in like an exploitive environment where you're looking
for people's backstories, you're looking for fiscal read, you're looking
for game flow, meaning what's happened recently. People can really
overweight right, what happened in the last fifteen minutes, right,
(12:46):
whereas like they were like, oh, well that hasn't raised
in an hour, he's been well behaved, you know. And
I also think kind of as a person who's now
forty seven years old, like I think my comparative strengths
are actually in soft skills in poker, you might think that,
like Nate's a math guy, right, well, all these people
are math nerds, or not all of them, but many
(13:06):
of them. Right. You know, I think that I, in
a poker context like read people pretty well. I think
I'm pretty good at like kind of like how much
should you update? Okay, does a Brazilian play better than
a guy from Boston or a guy from Israel or
a guy from Japan or whatever else? Right? The stereotype's
not worth nothing, Let's be honest, right, if you're trying
(13:28):
to play poker, you can't. You have to like take
any information you can, but it's worth not very much.
And how much are you adjusting to that? How much
are you type casting people?
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Yeah, it's so funny Nate yesterday, you know when you
say that people, So the recency bias is a really
strong bias in psychology where people overweight recent information, right,
what just happened? And in poker that happens all the time,
where people just really overweight like the last ten minutes,
the last half hour, the last hour, and they'll think
(13:58):
that you fall into a bucket. And it was very
funny because there was this one player at my table
that you know, I got into kind of several confrontations
with and got the better of him, and those confrontations
took some of his chips, and then you know, I
was kind of I was well behaved for the most part.
It's not like I was going crazy. And then like
(14:19):
three orbits later, like I raise and he is in
the small blind and he kind of looks around because
he's getting a massage, so he's not necessarily like paying
attention to everything, and he's like, oh, there's a raise.
He's like, it's Maria again. I was like, I haven't
raised for three orbits, Like literally, this is the first
hand I've played in like three orbits means like three
(14:39):
rounds of blinds, like I've just been completely but in
his mind, I'm a maniac right like, and it's Maria again,
and he just like his mind just didn't even process
that I actually haven't been raising that many hands. And
because he's taking this kind of recent information against himself
and just skewing completely the data set that he has,
which prompts people to make big mistakes. So this is
(15:03):
something that I mean, it happens to the best of us,
and it's very like I actually always have to remind
myself not to do that, because it's easy, especially when
it's against you, to start taking it personally. Right, if
someone has only three bet three times, three bet means
raising kind of your your bet. So if someone raises
and someone else re raises, that's called a three bet,
and that's kind of an aggressive It's a good thing
(15:24):
to do. But say there's a player who's only done
it three times in an hour, but every single one
of those times has been against you.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
It's it's tricky because players moods change a lot. Right,
Some people play very different when they're winning them, when
they're losing, on when they have a big stack, where
with a small stack. Right, some people are playing attentively.
And then you know why I think people do they play.
Other tournaments are online tournaments that you can play while
you're playing, which I think is stupid for various reasons. Right,
But like all of a sudden, someone's playing online.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
I have to I'm going to have to make a confession, Nate.
I sometimes do that. I sometimes engage in that stupid behavior.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Again, to me, I felt like I've had like a
trance because like I was so distracted by the election
at the last World Series, right that, Like, Okay, I
feel like I'm in taking like fifty percent more information, right,
and it's just a totally different game you're doing it. Also,
I'm fresh off off the boat, so to speak. Right,
I'm sure by two weeks from now, I'll be grizzled
(16:18):
and the beer will be longer and things like that.
But like, I really think that, like there is a
reason that there are certain players who crush live tournaments
and live cash game, which is there's so much fucking information, right, Like,
you know, yes, there is. I know I'm becoming kind
of like an anti gto guy, I think.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
So.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
I think that the moral of the story when it
comes to kind of this new capability on the WSOP
app is it's giving you real actionable data with which
to make decisions and help make your decisions more tailored
to this specific environment, which is really important, right, Like
there's a way of quote unquote making good decisions in
(16:58):
a vacuum, but you're never making decisions in a vacuum.
And one of the things I always say is you're
not making decisions in a vacuum. So how do you
use data to accurately evaluate the situation in which you
find yourself and this is such a great tool for
doing that, so don't be lazy, actually use it and
then adjust according to.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
It really makes it clear you are going to play
better if you do more work at the table. It's
less fun when you get there, you get switched tables,
you're looking people up right, It's definitely more work, but
like I think, it's a huge advantage or someone who
is good at working with incomplete information and willing to
treat poker seriously to try to maximize their expected value.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Yes, and with that, let's take a quick break and
then we will introduce our guest for today who's a
newbie poker player, and we'll be giving him some tips
for the World Series of Poker. We actually had a
(18:03):
call out if you remember listeners a few weeks ago,
where we were looking for an amateur poker player who
was coming to the World Series and wanted some pointers
from me and Nate. And as we told you, it
was the plus ev move to write in and so
you wanted to do this and some people did. And
today we have a person who you know, we have
(18:26):
chosen or our producers have chosen to get some coaching
advice for this World Series of Poker, which is really exciting.
His name is Tim Sunstock. So he's already spent one
weekend at the WSP this year and he'll be returning
in a couple of weeks. So Nate, let's see if
we can help Tim improve on his performance.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
Welcome Tim, Thanks for having me. It's cool with me.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
You guys, Tim, where are you from? You want to
give us a little bit of about your background in
poker life, et cetera.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
Yeah, so I grew up in Southey, California.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
I kind of probably came into the poker boom during
the two thousand and three Chris morning Maker thing. I
was playing a little bit as a kid, you know,
but that was kind of like the spark. There's a
lot of Indian casinos around here, so we're able to
go play when we're eighteen. And I did alright, because
I was a tight player when I was younger against
just a whole bunch of crazy geles. So I did alright.
(19:16):
I thought I was probably a lot better than I was,
but I you know, I played, We played the house
games and things over time. The only tournament I ever
really played there was a WSOP event was twenty twelve,
I was out in Vegas. It was around fourth of
July and I played a daily Deep Stack one of
those little, you know, kind of.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Catch all kind of tournaments, and I went pretty deep.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
I actually had a pretty bad cour to get out
of the tournament, but I finished like in fiftieth and
I was like, maybe maybe I'm better than I think.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
Maybe I could do so. But I never really played
much after hardly. I just here and there. But I've
I feel like my.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Time now, I have more time, and I'm like, I
kind of wanted to go and I'm okay in cash games.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
That's the problem. I do well in cash games.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
I think it's part of the nature of like the
way I play, and I need to get a lot better.
But in tournaments, I just feel like a fish out
of water, so, you know, And the thing is, I
really want to go play these WOFP events. So that's
kind of why I was reaching out. I wanted to
see if there's maybe a couple of pointers that you
guys could give.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
And I did read I have read.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
I just you know, I think what sparked me into
this whole thing as I read your book, Maria, and
then I read Nate's new book and I started to
getting a fever.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
You know, there we go.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Yeah, yeah, yes, wait, mission accomplished.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
I got all our play.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
So so, Tim, you mentioned that you were kind of
that you did decently well when you just started because
you were a tighter player. Do you feel like that's
kind of still the case? Are you someone who kind
of airs on the side of being a tighter player
in your cash games? And also, I think this question
is relevant for Nate who plays cash. I don't really
play cash, so he'll be able to kind of read
(20:49):
a little bit more into this. But can you tell
us also a little bit about the cash games that
you're used to playing, Like do you play, you know,
in a low stakes home game? Like what what's the
environment that you'll be coming to the World series from?
So those are two questions, but I think they're both important.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
My I think I think I've done a long cash
games because I was uldt to tight. I think looking back,
now that I know a little bit more and I've
been reading it lately, I'm like, oh my god, I
was playing so bad. I was playing really tight, you know,
I was probably leaving kind of money on the table.
But the games I come from particularly are like one three,
no limit, you.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Know, cash games. I've been told it's funny I had.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
I had some dealers one time to tell me that
you need to move up to the two five game,
and I'm like, no, I don't think I'm gonna lose there.
You know, I played like twice at a two to
five game, and one time I sat around for like
four orbits before I entered, and I played at really
big hand, I one big pot, and I jumped off
and everybody was peoper mad. Okay, yeah, yeah, so one
three is where I've lived.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
No, I mean cash game if people are playing, I mean,
in general for our listeners, right, you want to do
the opposite of what most other people are doing. I
mean it's a kind of very rough guide.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
But like in cash games, if everyone is too loose
and they call too much, right, then you can make
a lot of money by what we call nut pedaling,
meaning only playing the best hands. I think you can
make much more money than that by like also taking
advantage of the fact that they have weaker ranges, by
doing some select the bluffing, a by doing some dinner
value betting. But but yeah, tim, you get up like
(22:12):
two five man, what so what are you playing? What
are you playing out here?
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Are you?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Are you? You're still California hour? What's your World series schedule?
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Like?
Speaker 2 (22:19):
How many events are you playing in? Which events are they?
Speaker 3 (22:21):
So? Yeah, I could. It was funny because I had
help plan. Then it got kind of blown out. But
I go back in July. I want to go back
in July and play some stuff.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
We'll see.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
I I was looking at like the deep Stack tournaments,
like the there's like a six hundred dollars deep Stack
and our eight hundred dollars Deep Stack. Some of the
other games don't really make sense for my schedule too much,
and and maybe my skill level. I don't know if
I really want to jump in yet, but I was
out there. I was out recently. I played, I came early,
played some cash games, did pretty well, you know, you know,
made enough money to cover everything. Then I played the
(22:51):
six hundred dollars Deep Stack, and I just didn't play well,
you know. But yeah, so, But ideally what I would
like to do is get some more time in, play
some more, read a little bit more. Now go back
and read some more, because I think I just completely
glazed over stony concess and then go back and I
want to try to see if I can make it
deeper run in those deep stack tournaments.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Yeah, Tim, I want to actually caution you a little
bit that sometimes that name deep stack is actually a
little bit of a misnomer. It gets a lot of
people to want to play, but those are really fast structures, right,
So most of those are half hour levels, and it
becomes a turbo very quickly. So there are other tournaments
that have a much slower structure that might be actually
(23:33):
better suited to a cash player. So I would actually
like as one of my pieces of advice, I would say,
potentially look at the schedule a second time, to look
not just at the name, and how many chips think
A lot of players make the mistake of being like
I start with four hundred big lines, that's amazing, right,
but within two hours you're going to have fifty big lines,
(23:55):
Whereas there's another tournament where you start with two hundred
and in two hours you'll have you know, one hundred
and twenty. Right, Like, the blinds move in a very
very different structure, and it's actually it actually plays much
deeper for much longer and I think that, and Nay,
you can correct me if I'm wrong, But I think
for cash players, one of your big advantages is kind
(24:18):
of knowing how to be patient in those slower structure
events as opposed to kind of the more turbo structures
where I think tournament specialists really thrive because they know
how to actually keep building their stack. You have to
be aggressive in those tournaments. Those are tournaments where being patient,
being kind of a little bit tighter is not rewarded
(24:38):
because of the way that the structure works, like you
have to constantly be fighting against the rising blnes. And
so I think those are two considerations that you should
think about as you kind of consider what are my strengths.
Because one of the things I learned when I was
starting is don't try to reinvent the wheel at the
beginning for a tournament series. So even if there are
(25:00):
things you want to work on, like if you try
to implement twenty new things into your game as you
enter a new tournament, it's not going to go well
because you haven't practiced, you're not comfortable with it, And
so I would say, instead, try to optimize on your strengths. Right,
figure out what am I best at as a poker player.
I'm a patient cash player, right, and so how what
are the tournaments where that's going to be more of
(25:22):
an asset.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
I think it's funny because I feel pretty comfortable in
cash game. And then I hopped into that tournament. Immediately
I felt like the clock was like burning behind me.
Now I was just doing or like not typical of
the way I would play.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
And it was weird too.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
We started we started five handed in that tournament for
a while, and that was different. So five handed, I
was like, I need to push these people around right now,
you know. And I was just getting caught. I was
getting caught with I was really I was in hands
where just they just had bluffs, you know, And and
I was getting in the spots like what am I doing?
And I was so uncomfortable. I think that was the
reason why. So that's a good point. I'll I'm going
(25:55):
to look back at the structures and see I'll take
a little bit of a deeper dive into some better
tournaments for sure.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Yeah. Look, let me let me say a couple of things.
One is that like if you're used to generally playing
tighter relative to the players at the table, right, Like,
I'm not super tight, but in these cash games, they're
really splashy. They're New York City cash games for the
most part, right, And so I'm like, I think playing
correctly about one of the tighter players. And when you
have a tighter range pre flop, then it's just such
(26:22):
an advantage if you know how to press it post slop,
you can bet thin for value, you can make bluffs
because they miss so many flops when you have a
tighter range, right, you can obviously try to extract money
when you have very strong hands the nuts in various ways.
But yeah, if you are one of the looser players
at the table, then that requires a lot of adjustments
(26:43):
post flop. I'm usually not on that side, so I
can't speak as much from experience, but I want to say,
like one thing that Maria was hinting at, like is
like so one thing I literally did before this world series,
and I haven't done it in the past, and maybe
I will. But like I made a list of like
what I think my comparative strengths and weaknesses as a
poker player are relative to the field, and then how
that translates in a substantive way in terms of strategy, right,
(27:07):
But you're trying to think about, like what are my
big overriding objectives here? Right, the kind of mantras that
you repeat to yourself, because I find those can be
quite powerful. But tim, what do you want to achieve?
So why are you playing? Why are you coming back
in July? Why are you out here before? Why are
you playing the World Series?
Speaker 3 (27:24):
I think I know I could go deep. Maybe I'm
a little too presumptuous, but I think I could go
deep in the tournament and it would just be fun
to get there. Because it's like I feel like when
I play cash games, and maybe this is part of
my delusion, is that I feel like I'm like, okay,
I'm better than these players pretty much all the time
I play these these these lower limited cash games. It's
probably a lot of difference between the type of player
(27:45):
that are in these deep stack of events and these
cash games. But just to prove to myself, I could
go a little deeper. But I think I got into
this situation where, like you're saying, I think your point
is really good because what I did was I read
a bunch of poker books, some advanced strategy books, reading
stuff on solvers, and I just info dumps so hard
into my head. I was thinking about so many things,
(28:06):
and I've already been thinking I just need to boil
it down.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
To like just two strategies I'm going to look at.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Yeah, and I was looking at just like full equity calculators,
and that was really helpful for me because now I
feel like I know exactly where I am in certain
spots against certain ranges, and that was something that I
hadn't really even looked at before. A lot of the
solver stuff. I think it's going to take a minute
for me to kind of show all that, but yeah,
(28:32):
I feel like there's I feel like good thing is
that I feel like there's not so much that I
need to do, so I don't need to jump.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
These big leaps and understanding.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
I just need to kind of get really like Nate
was saying, get really sharp at the things I know
that I could do better at, and then incorporate there.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah. Yeah, No, I mean I think that should be
kind of your your number one focus is to just
like focus on a few things for the next few
weeks before you come out here. But one thing that
you said kind of jumped out at me. So one
of the most important things is mental game, right, and
is trying to kind of remain present and be able
to execute the strategy that you've already thought about and
(29:08):
not melt down when it comes down to it. And
one of the things you said, you said kind of
you felt like the clock was kind of burning, right,
that was burning behind you. And that's a really common
feeling and I've experienced it too. I think we all have.
And if you're feeling like you're kind of making decisions
with like this ticking time bomb right like this red
(29:30):
countdown behind you, you're not going to be thinking as
clearly and you're going to be making poor choices. And
so what I would also say is, yes, you know,
obviously like focus on a few things strategy like I'm
going to be you know, three betting more, I'm going
to be doing this, I'm going to be doing that,
but also take some time to like think about the
mental game execution, be like, Okay, you know what, I
(29:51):
Am just going to constantly like be focused on how
many big blindes I have relative to the table, how
my table, my table only is playing, and how I
can kind of be a good presence here and I'm
not going to worry about the clock and the chip
averag and all of these external things that are going on.
(30:12):
I'm going to just kind of remain focused on what's
going on here at my table. And there's never a
need to panic. As soon as you start panicking, that's
when you start making mistakes. And so I think just
focusing on that and trying to make sure that you're
not the player panicking, but that you're taking advantage of
the players panicking will go a long way. Yeah, so
(30:32):
that you feel more comfortable.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
I think one that you can do, too, is do
some degree of picking your targets. Right the players that
you're much better than in a one to three or
two five game, right Like, there're going to be a
lot of them at the table, and they're usually pretty identifiable.
Maria and I were just talking about the WSP app.
We can see their names now, and like, you know,
but if you're playing as someone who's a little trickier
or less known, maybe someone from you know, a different country,
(30:57):
different environment and things like that, I mean, then you
might want to be a little bit more careful. I
still think doing like I still think doing your best
tim is going to be better than doing like your
C plus impression solver or play unless you've taken more
time to studying it right. And then if you are
making a deep run, I mean it's tough. Poker's a
(31:17):
tough game, right, probably some degree of tightening up is correct.
I mean, if I were you, I'd be like trying
to build a big stack and or early try to
build a big stack. Be yourself. You can make some
feel and read different plays if you want, and targeting
weaker opponents right to build the big stacks. You can
maybe be a little bit more tight as you approach
(31:39):
the money, which you're supposed to be anyway, right, And
maybe you'll even have at the same table some reputation
from having been more aggressive and made some plays later on,
and because later on in a tournament you want full equity, right,
you really want people not to get into coin flips
with you when you're trying to make the money and
run deep and stuff. That may be my quick high
level diagnosis, I guess, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Yeah, I think that. I think that The one thing
that Nate said that I would just reiterate as like
your mantras be myself right, be tim like play your game,
and don't let anyone else, like, don't let anyone else
kind of shape how you think you're supposed to play.
I had a major breakthrough because I was always like,
you know, when I started out, I was a little
(32:21):
too tight, and you know, people are like, you have
to be super aggressive, blah blah blah. And I tried
being like super aggressive, and that's not me, right, and
it didn't work for me. And my bluffs didn't work
either because it was just so counter to my style
as a poker player, to my personality. And so something
that works for an at Michael Adamo, for instance, someone
who wore an Adrian Mateo's like two very aggressive players,
(32:44):
isn't going to work for me, right, because that is
just not me. And so once I figured out, okay,
I am much more aggressive now than I used to be,
but I'm doing it in a way that feels natural
to me, right, and that that actually works for me.
And I don't take the spots that you know that
Adrian Mateos will take, you know, God bless him, let
him take those spots, Like I'm not going to try
(33:04):
to out Adrian Adrian. And so that's I think. So
that's just so important to remember, because you're going to
become a better player. The best players are ones who
actually tap into what they're good at.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Yeah, do you guys try to stay away from rebuy
tournaments or is that like a thing that's not too
big of a.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
Deal for you guys?
Speaker 1 (33:24):
No, I mean I love freeze outs. I think they're wonderful,
and if it's not a freeze out, I would love
if it's a single re entry I do not like
unlimited re entry tournaments, but I will play them if
I think they're good value. But this is something I
don't know how Nate treats it. But so I always
do a budget ahead of time. So I have a
big Excel spreadsheet of all the events I'm playing, and
(33:45):
I put what my maximum number of bullets for each
event is. And I never go above that no matter what,
because I have gone above that in the past when
I was just starting out, and it's just never a
good idea, right when I'm like, oh, I budgeted four,
but it's such a good event, so I'm just going
to fire a fifth. I always regret it, right, Like
that's just it's never it's never good.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yeah, I'm trying to register earlier this year, meaning playing
maybe not for the very start, but I like playing
deep stack poker. It sounds like you do to tim
and so like. Look, some of the theory says that like, oh,
if you register late, you're more loocated cash and it's
more plus CV or less negative ev I'm skeptical of
that if you do have live deep stack cash skills.
(34:24):
And also there's a big filtering effect, right. You know,
I've played a medium event twenty five hundred dollars and
eight hundred dollars so far, right, And like the tables
you get when you sit down are fucking like a
wet dream pretty much, right, And by the time you
get to the to the bubble, then then those tables
get much tougher, right, I mean, there are there is
some dead amount of people who are just very very
(34:45):
bad at poker, who are almost for sure going to
gonna punt off chips, right, And so registering early, I'm
not concerned about rebiverse. Non rebuy people will call down
looser if there's a reby available. It's a game texture thing.
But playing real poker, like register early from the first
level if you want, I like that you're playing shorthanded
and pushing people around. I think that's attitudinally doing seriously,
(35:05):
even if, like because the average tournament pro is fucking
terrified of playing five had it poker right, I would
totally I'd love to do that. And if you overplayed
some thoughts, okay, you'll kinter just next time.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Yeah, I think that's great. Tim. We both wish you
so much luck. We hope to be able to check
in with you later this summer. But yeah, keep keep
this in mind. I hope this was helpful to you,
but it's it's a it's a pleasure to meet you,
and we hope that you crush it at the World
Series in July.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Well, man, Tim, we'll get it. We'll get a beer
with you in July for if we're still around with you.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah, absolutely yes. So thank you for joining risky business
and good luck. May the poker gods be on your side.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
You guys, take care.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Let's take a break and then talk a little bit
about our conversation with Tim and kind of what what
our takeaways are in general for poker players and for ourselves.
(36:13):
Big props to Tim for putting himself out there. A
lot of people don't want to put themselves in that spot.
And for me, you know, it's funny because I do remember,
because I was writing a book about it as I
was learning how to play poker. I do remember kind
of being in that in that mind frame and having
all of these overwhelming stimuli. And I think that it's
really useful to actually remember what that feels like, because
(36:37):
something that I talk about where people are like, what
the hell are you talking about? I'm like, poker makes
you a much more empathetic person, and people like, what
like poker's poker empathy? I was like, no, because you
need to learn how to actually take the perspective, really
take the perspective of other people at the table. And
so I think it was really cool for me to
actually hear Tim's thoughts because there are and this is
(37:00):
in no way like this is a good thing, Like,
there are lots of Tim's at the table who are
you know, who want to take a shot at the
World series, who do well in their local cash games,
who get there. They're thinking about it differently than you are, Nate,
or than I am, And that's just really good to
keep in mind. It's good to remember that there are
all of these different you know, all of these different mindsets,
(37:22):
and to me, it was really helpful to kind of
put myself in Tim's shoes for a little bit and
remind myself what it felt like the first time I
was out in Las Vegas. But Nate, I'm actually kind
of curious because for me it was much more recent, right,
Like I definitely remember my first w sopie when was yours?
And do you actually remember kind of your your memories
of your first trip and your first World Series of
(37:44):
Poker tournament.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
So when I played professionally, it is my main source
of income. From like roughly two thousand and four to
two thousand and six, I played limit hold them. I
played high stakes limit hold them cash games online, which
in every dimension is opposite from no limit hold them tournaments, right,
And so like, one thing that helped is my experience
(38:06):
early on in the World Series. I think there was
one trip I went that was kind of like there
was a meet ups for the two plus two forums.
I wouldn't even play the no limit events necessarily. It
took me a long time before I even like cashed anything.
And so I think one thing that does help is
like I can empathize with players who have like some
(38:27):
poker experience, but like are a fish out of water
at the World Series of Poker and are not quite
sure like what they want to accomplish from it, right,
So you're like relating to things in the back of
your head about the way they put chips in the fire,
the little things like, Okay, so after every X number
of levels, you have to get rid of the load
denomination chips, so blind sco ups, you get rid of
(38:47):
the hundred dollars chips and round them off to five
hundreds basically, right, And like, boy, if somebody's really unfamiliar
with that process, that's that they probably zero times ever
reached that stage of a live tournament before. And you
can and having been having not been a you know,
I was good at poker, I was not good at
live tournament poker, right, And probably a lot of people
are like that. Right. There's some poker environment, maybe's home
(39:10):
PLO game where it can be really loose, right or
maybe whatever where they can thrive and they're not thriving
in this environment. And understanding why they're not thriving and
what mistakes they'll make and what vulnerabilities exploit you can
make against them, I think is valuable.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Yeah, I think that's really good advice. And it's fun
to think of little Nate at the World Series having
not really played that much live before. By the way,
it's easy to tell, like it's easy to spot the
online pros because often, like sometimes I've seen some of
the best ones, like their first forays into the live tournament.
Seen they are much more expressive than they should be, right,
(39:49):
especially streamers who are used to kind of conveying a
lot of information. I was like, oh, you are, You're
kind of a toel box. Then they can yeah, they
can get used to it, they get over it, But
it is funny to see that transition. Nate, you have
definitely transitioned to a live player.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
I remember my first Vegas non World Series trip better right.
I remember having a lot of vodka Red Bulls, playing
probably pretty high stakes limit games at the Bellagio and
staying up all night, right, And like, yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
For PSA, for people listening, do not have vodka red
Bulls while you're playing poker.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Cancel out.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
This is a negative, evy thing to do. I don't
drink while I'm playing poker. Some people like to. And
then there's something referred to as the beer level late
in the night where people like to order beers. I
don't drink beer, but just try not to nate. You
and I had a glass of wine over dinner yesterday
and I often do that. That can be nice, but
(40:49):
try try to be present at the poker table and
not with a vodka Red Bull.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
You know what a good time to have a beer
is is when you're on this very long bubble, so
before when they're when you're waiting forever for other tables
to break, right, having a beer might make you a
little more relaxed and patient. People react different physiologically. I believe.
I believe it's not a sary re a bad time
to have a beer for what it's forth.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
That is good advice. And on that note, Nate, I
have to leave you to play Day two. You know
we're Tuesday, June tenth. I'm about to hop into my
first day two of the World series and I need
to get my ass over there without Red Bull. But
I did have some caffeine while we were taping this episode,
so hopefully that will help. And yeah, best of luck
(41:34):
to Tim, and best of luck to you and I Nate.
To the two of us, let's both do well today.
I hope everyone has enjoyed this episode and I am
going to head to the Lovely Horseshoe Casina. Let us
know what you think of the show. Reach out to
(41:56):
us at Risky Business at pushkin dot fm. And by
the way, if you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber, we have
some bonus content for you that's coming up right after
the credits.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
And if you're not subscribing yet, consider signing up for
just ninety nine a month. What a nice price you
get access to all that premium content and ad for
listening across Pushkin's entire network of shows.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
And by me Nate Silver. The show is a co
production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya Gerwit Sally
helm As our editor, and our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Thanks so much for tuning in.
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova and I'm made Silver.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Did we mix that up? You should we go the
other way? Oh, I don't know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
See, okay, perfect start to This is a perfect start
to the segment.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I'm Nate.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Welcome to Las Vegas, and Maria me, Welcome to Las Vegas.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Beautiful Las Vegas. Is it beautiful?
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Las fig fabulous, fabulous, beautiful.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
It's impressive.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
No, but but but Las Vegas is actually gorgeous For
people who haven't been here, Just go off Strip, go
to Red Rock, go to the Spring Mountains, like there
is some absolutely breathtaking beauty out here. Anyway, So on
the show today, Nate, during this twenty twenty five World
Series of Poker, we're going to be all in on poker.
So you and I have just played our first event.
(01:14):
We're going to be talking about changes in the World Series,
your ability to know your opponent, and then we're going
to have a special guest on whom neither one of
us has met, and it's a poker newbie, and we'll
be offering some poker lessons.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, I've been here for forty six hours. I've played
I think twenty two hours of poker in those forty
six hours I have. You know, you've already had something
which is increasingly common America day. There was a shooting
on the Las Vegas Strip the first night I got in,
which was terrifying to everybody involved. So I feel we're
(01:51):
a bit or worse very fully immersed in the Las
Vegas experience already. But yeah, the as Sensible well, yeah,
the as Sensible origin story of our meeting and the
show is poker, and so we're going to lean a
little bit into poker. It was also recently out at
the Manifest conference in Berkeley, California, downloading with people on
AI and effective algorism and other things. Maybe we'll talk
(02:13):
about that next week. One thing I've been looking forward
to this year is like it's not an election year,
so I can focus a lot more and I want
to talk about some changes or we want to talk
about some changes to how, yeah, how the World Series
actually played. I think it's a very fundamental change that
players are downplaying that has profound effects for the strategy.
So should I explain or do you want to explain it?
Speaker 1 (02:35):
No, go ahead and explain, But first, can we just
give a congratulations to us. So Nate and I, Well,
Nate played one event while I still wasn't here. But
yesterday I played my first event and Nate played his second.
We both cashed. You know, we had a nice dinner
and then went back to play. And Nate, you ended
up busting at the very end of the day, but
you did cash. You did make the money, which is great.
(02:56):
We're taping this on Tuesday. I'm about to restart day two.
I apologize to all our listeners and our viewers. I'm
going to be caffeinating this entire time because I've gotten
all of like four hours of sleep. But I have
really cute elephants on my on my coffee cups.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
I have a sugar free read. So I'm joining you, beautiful.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Okay, so cheers to the risky business poker caffeination. But yeah,
this year, so I arrived and my experience registering and
getting to my tabil was completely different because there's kind
of this new component of the world series which is
all online and it actually gives you access to all
the players. So, Nate, do you want to talk a
little bit about this and what it actually means for
(03:39):
you know, how you approach your day one table, which
has never been possible at the World Series before. I
just want to say it's always been possible at Poker Stars.
I am a Poker Stars ambassador, but the Poker Stars
Live app has been light years ahead. However, at the
World Series this has just been introduced.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Yeah, the app is called wslp Plus. You can sign
up now with bonus code risky business for Twitter. No, No,
that's not true.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
That would be funny.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
So to have a new app. The word Star's poker
brand was bought by gg Poker, which is an online
poker provider. You don't have to care about that detail. Well,
what's interesting is that it's de anonymized poker in a
way that I think is kind of radical. Right, So
you show up at your table, you're on the app,
by the way, make sure your phone is charged fully.
It's a big disadvantage to have your phone shut off.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
You can play, but you lose info and you know
the names of almost every player at the table. There's
a weird loophole where you're kind of allowed to be
quasi anonymous, which maybe we'll talk about maybe not, which
I think is like unfair. But yeah, before you show
up to dates, wasn't there.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
I'm sorry, I just want to interject here with a
bit of humor. I think one of the first final tables,
there was some I don't remember what his name was,
but it was something like Big Balls sixty nine. Yeah,
made the final table. It wasn't actually that, but like
it was very very close to that, and everyone was like, hey,
w sop, what's going on? And he ended up making
it like to the top three. He almost want to break.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Like a D four twenty or something. It is like,
can you.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Can you imagine, like you know, Big Balls sixty nine
winning his first World Series of Poker bracelets anyway, please
contain mostly.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
For eighty or ninety percent of the players, it will
say Maria Kinakova, and I can google Maria kind of Kova,
right or look apprehended mob. That's basically the database if
you're a baseball fan, the Baseball Reference of poker, where
every cash you've ever had in a live tournament is
contained there your bio. You can infer age and things,
(05:30):
I mean can for age in real life. Right, So,
but like but all of a sudden you start out
with a lot of information about people. And I find
this quite radical, Like I said, because from the start,
I'll speak for myself. Right from the start, I'm thinking
in terms of what are the flaws likely to be
(05:50):
in this person's game, as opposed to starting out from
a default where you're like, Okay, I'm playing some game theory,
optimal style relative to like the population, You're like, okay,
I know this type.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
You know.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Let's take some prototypes, for example, Right, one prototype is
a guy most Pooka players in the World Series are men, right,
who had a big cash in a World Series event
a few years ago. You look at his results and
they've been mediocre since then, and that might give you
certain prototypes. Right. You know, here's a guy who might
(06:24):
be a little bit tilty potentially, at the same time,
if you get deep in the tournament, it's not his
first rodeo. That might matter to some degree. Right, you know.
There are some older players who can play a little
bit and just kind of look like generic old guys. Right.
If you just played against them, you might fold too
much in the first couple of orbits. Typically, older players
(06:45):
are less inclined to bluff by stereotype. At least Trapp.
You're like, Oh, this guy is like four million dollars
in lifetime tournament winnings and he's still cashing regularly and
probably pretty good in things like that. And so you're
relying in some sense less on crude stereotypes and more
on solid information. It's also an experience where I mean,
both Marie, you and I are public figures by like
(07:08):
the slander libel definition, right, it removes some ambiguity and
awkwardness about like, oh, do you know who I am?
Or do I know who you are? Right? As a
person who's like slightly socially awkward, I'm like, oh, I
think that's so. For example, the poker player Lexi Gavin,
who is a terrific player, but I don't think i've
(07:29):
met in person before, right, friends and friends, She's like, oh,
your Nate. I'm like, oh you're Lexi, great to meet you. Right,
It's nice to have that instead of being like are
you when you're in the middle of a poker.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Hen, yeah, So I think that, you know, there's a
really interesting shift that happens when you actually know who
somebody is so normally like and this is what you're
I think implying when you're talking about kind of the
the ability to adjust to who's at the table. So
(08:00):
normally when you sit at the table, And this is
always my advice when you know, when people ask me like, oh,
you know, how do you play? Like, well, the beautiful
thing about like actually studying and knowing your GTO or
game theory optimal way of playing is that you have
a baseline, right, you have kind of this baseline that
you play like your your solid poker game. And I
always say, I always caution people like, don't deviate based
(08:22):
on too little information because it's too easy. You know,
if someone's raising, like the first ten hands at the table,
you're like, oh my god, this person's a maniac. Well
like maybe, but maybe they've just been getting you know,
really good card distribution that happens, or if someone has folded,
they might not be a knit like there might be
other things going on. And so I always say, like,
don't over adjust immediately and make sure that you're adjusting
(08:44):
based on solid data because it's so easy. So night
you actually bring up one of the you know, one
of those there are poker stereotypes, and one of them
is that you know, the the nitty old guy who
never who never bluffs. And then but those guys, by
the way, if you're ever at a table with them,
they're then capable of once they'd been card dead and
they get frustrated, they will go crazy with eight three offsuit.
(09:04):
That's I just picked a random hand. That's not a
good poker hand. But like they're also capable of doing
that all of a sudden, like they'll blow up anyway.
So one of the stereotypes is like that, there's the
older guy. Then you also have like I've made this
mistake when you have like the really jacked dudes who
look like they're on steroids, you know, the big necks, tattoos.
I'm like, well, you're going to be super aggressive, right,
That's not always the case, Like sometimes they're actually really
(09:27):
tight players like you. Normally, what our brain does from
the psychology standpoint, is it stereotypes based on how people look.
Like that's the first thing, that's the first available information
that we have. People do it to me all the
time because I'm a female, right, Like that's the most
striking thing about me, because Nate, as you say, most
players are male at the World Series in any given event,
(09:47):
it's under ten percent in most events, under five in
some events. You know, it's tiny percentages of females. So
you know that's something that really stands out about me.
What this does is it actually allows you to use
real data and real information as opposed to cognitive biases
and cognitive shortcuts, some of which can be meaningful, but
(10:08):
most of which are just noise, and yet our brain
doesn't process them as noise. We're like, oh, you know,
I've met this kind of person all the time. Yeah,
but you haven't met this person, right, and they might
just remind you of someone incorrectly. And so when you
have the name, if you're not lazy, and by the way,
a lot of people are like, oh yeah, if you're
not lazy, and you shouldn't be lazy. If you're listening
(10:29):
to this, well, actually, excuse me. If you're playing at
my table, please go ahead and keep being lazy. If
you're not at my table, don't be lazy. Like take
the five minutes that it takes to look up these people,
because their lifetime earnings matter how they're doing recently. So
if you understand the psychology of this, you know, like, oh,
(10:49):
did this person just have a huge score, right, Like
they're going to be playing very very differently from someone
who's made a lot of money, but their last big
score was ten years ago. Right, How has this person
been playing this world series? Have they cashed every event
or have they had zero cashes? That, by the way's
information you can see in the app. So there's so
much valuable information that is actual data. And then Nate,
(11:10):
as you were talking, then you can start adjusting, right,
because I think that the World Series of Poker is
actually somewhere where exploited of poker is much more meaningful
than just like being absolutely game theory optimal. And what
that means is that you want to start adjusting your strategy.
This is such good advice, by the way, for just
life in general, where you should have a baseline way
(11:31):
of behaving and acting and negotiating and making decisions, but
then when you get into situations where like you're at
a table of fish, you're going to adjust. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Look, I actually kind of have become more critical of
like a lot of poker content on the web, right,
especially the more expensive content that you pay more for.
And I'm friends with some of the content creators. It's
geared toward this environment where it's elite players versus elite players.
It's very driven by solvers and game theory, and I
(12:02):
just don't think that's where you make the money in poker.
For ninety nine nine percent of the poker playing population, right,
I have played more live cash games in the past
two years, probably spent as much time doing that as
tournaments ranging from low stakes to prett high stakes. And
in cash games, the game doesn't happen if you're in
(12:23):
some gto optimal world, because no one would play just
to pass chips around and give the casino k or
the home game rank or whatever else. So from the
start you're in like an exploitive environment where you're looking
for people's backstories, you're looking for fiscal read, you're looking
for game flow, meaning what's happened recently. People can really
overweight right, what happened in the last fifteen minutes, right,
(12:46):
whereas like they were like, oh, well that hasn't raised
in an hour, he's been well behaved, you know. And
I also think kind of as a person who's now
forty seven years old, like I think my comparative strengths
are actually in soft skills in poker, you might think that,
like Nate's a math guy, right, well, all these people
are math nerds, or not all of them, but many
(13:06):
of them. Right. You know, I think that I, in
a poker context like read people pretty well. I think
I'm pretty good at like kind of like how much
should you update? Okay, does a Brazilian play better than
a guy from Boston or a guy from Israel or
a guy from Japan or whatever else? Right? The stereotype's
not worth nothing, Let's be honest, right, if you're trying
(13:28):
to play poker, you can't. You have to like take
any information you can, but it's worth not very much.
And how much are you adjusting to that? How much
are you type casting people?
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Yeah, it's so funny Nate yesterday, you know when you
say that people, So the recency bias is a really
strong bias in psychology where people overweight recent information, right,
what just happened? And in poker that happens all the time,
where people just really overweight like the last ten minutes,
the last half hour, the last hour, and they'll think
(13:58):
that you fall into a bucket. And it was very
funny because there was this one player at my table
that you know, I got into kind of several confrontations
with and got the better of him, and those confrontations
took some of his chips, and then you know, I
was kind of I was well behaved for the most part.
It's not like I was going crazy. And then like
(14:19):
three orbits later, like I raise and he is in
the small blind and he kind of looks around because
he's getting a massage, so he's not necessarily like paying
attention to everything, and he's like, oh, there's a raise.
He's like, it's Maria again. I was like, I haven't
raised for three orbits, Like literally, this is the first
hand I've played in like three orbits means like three
(14:39):
rounds of blinds, like I've just been completely but in
his mind, I'm a maniac right like, and it's Maria again,
and he just like his mind just didn't even process
that I actually haven't been raising that many hands. And
because he's taking this kind of recent information against himself
and just skewing completely the data set that he has,
which prompts people to make big mistakes. So this is
(15:03):
something that I mean, it happens to the best of us,
and it's very like I actually always have to remind
myself not to do that, because it's easy, especially when
it's against you, to start taking it personally. Right, if
someone has only three bet three times, three bet means
raising kind of your your bet. So if someone raises
and someone else re raises, that's called a three bet,
and that's kind of an aggressive It's a good thing
(15:24):
to do. But say there's a player who's only done
it three times in an hour, but every single one
of those times has been against you.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
It's it's tricky because players moods change a lot. Right,
Some people play very different when they're winning them, when
they're losing, on when they have a big stack, where
with a small stack. Right, some people are playing attentively.
And then you know why I think people do they play.
Other tournaments are online tournaments that you can play while
you're playing, which I think is stupid for various reasons. Right,
But like all of a sudden, someone's playing online.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
I have to I'm going to have to make a confession, Nate.
I sometimes do that. I sometimes engage in that stupid behavior.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Again, to me, I felt like I've had like a
trance because like I was so distracted by the election
at the last World Series, right that, Like, Okay, I
feel like I'm in taking like fifty percent more information, right,
and it's just a totally different game you're doing it. Also,
I'm fresh off off the boat, so to speak. Right,
I'm sure by two weeks from now, I'll be grizzled
(16:18):
and the beer will be longer and things like that.
But like, I really think that, like there is a
reason that there are certain players who crush live tournaments
and live cash game, which is there's so much fucking information, right, Like,
you know, yes, there is. I know I'm becoming kind
of like an anti gto guy, I think.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
So.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
I think that the moral of the story when it
comes to kind of this new capability on the WSOP
app is it's giving you real actionable data with which
to make decisions and help make your decisions more tailored
to this specific environment, which is really important, right, Like
there's a way of quote unquote making good decisions in
(16:58):
a vacuum, but you're never making decisions in a vacuum.
And one of the things I always say is you're
not making decisions in a vacuum. So how do you
use data to accurately evaluate the situation in which you
find yourself and this is such a great tool for
doing that, so don't be lazy, actually use it and
then adjust according to.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
It really makes it clear you are going to play
better if you do more work at the table. It's
less fun when you get there, you get switched tables,
you're looking people up right, It's definitely more work, but
like I think, it's a huge advantage or someone who
is good at working with incomplete information and willing to
treat poker seriously to try to maximize their expected value.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Yes, and with that, let's take a quick break and
then we will introduce our guest for today who's a
newbie poker player, and we'll be giving him some tips
for the World Series of Poker. We actually had a
(18:03):
call out if you remember listeners a few weeks ago,
where we were looking for an amateur poker player who
was coming to the World Series and wanted some pointers
from me and Nate. And as we told you, it
was the plus ev move to write in and so
you wanted to do this and some people did. And
today we have a person who you know, we have
(18:26):
chosen or our producers have chosen to get some coaching
advice for this World Series of Poker, which is really exciting.
His name is Tim Sunstock. So he's already spent one
weekend at the WSP this year and he'll be returning
in a couple of weeks. So Nate, let's see if
we can help Tim improve on his performance.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
Welcome Tim, Thanks for having me. It's cool with me.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
You guys, Tim, where are you from? You want to
give us a little bit of about your background in
poker life, et cetera.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
Yeah, so I grew up in Southey, California.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
I kind of probably came into the poker boom during
the two thousand and three Chris morning Maker thing. I
was playing a little bit as a kid, you know,
but that was kind of like the spark. There's a
lot of Indian casinos around here, so we're able to
go play when we're eighteen. And I did alright, because
I was a tight player when I was younger against
just a whole bunch of crazy geles. So I did alright.
(19:16):
I thought I was probably a lot better than I was,
but I you know, I played, We played the house
games and things over time. The only tournament I ever
really played there was a WSOP event was twenty twelve,
I was out in Vegas. It was around fourth of
July and I played a daily Deep Stack one of
those little, you know, kind of.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Catch all kind of tournaments, and I went pretty deep.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
I actually had a pretty bad cour to get out
of the tournament, but I finished like in fiftieth and
I was like, maybe maybe I'm better than I think.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
Maybe I could do so. But I never really played
much after hardly. I just here and there. But I've
I feel like my.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Time now, I have more time, and I'm like, I
kind of wanted to go and I'm okay in cash games.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
That's the problem. I do well in cash games.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
I think it's part of the nature of like the
way I play, and I need to get a lot better.
But in tournaments, I just feel like a fish out
of water, so, you know, And the thing is, I
really want to go play these WOFP events. So that's
kind of why I was reaching out. I wanted to
see if there's maybe a couple of pointers that you
guys could give.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
And I did read I have read.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
I just you know, I think what sparked me into
this whole thing as I read your book, Maria, and
then I read Nate's new book and I started to
getting a fever.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
You know, there we go.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Yeah, yeah, yes, wait, mission accomplished.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
I got all our play.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
So so, Tim, you mentioned that you were kind of
that you did decently well when you just started because
you were a tighter player. Do you feel like that's
kind of still the case? Are you someone who kind
of airs on the side of being a tighter player
in your cash games? And also, I think this question
is relevant for Nate who plays cash. I don't really
play cash, so he'll be able to kind of read
(20:49):
a little bit more into this. But can you tell
us also a little bit about the cash games that
you're used to playing, Like do you play, you know,
in a low stakes home game? Like what what's the
environment that you'll be coming to the World series from?
So those are two questions, but I think they're both important.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
My I think I think I've done a long cash
games because I was uldt to tight. I think looking back,
now that I know a little bit more and I've
been reading it lately, I'm like, oh my god, I
was playing so bad. I was playing really tight, you know,
I was probably leaving kind of money on the table.
But the games I come from particularly are like one three,
no limit, you.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
Know, cash games. I've been told it's funny I had.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
I had some dealers one time to tell me that
you need to move up to the two five game,
and I'm like, no, I don't think I'm gonna lose there.
You know, I played like twice at a two to
five game, and one time I sat around for like
four orbits before I entered, and I played at really
big hand, I one big pot, and I jumped off
and everybody was peoper mad. Okay, yeah, yeah, so one
three is where I've lived.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
No, I mean cash game if people are playing, I mean,
in general for our listeners, right, you want to do
the opposite of what most other people are doing. I
mean it's a kind of very rough guide.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
But like in cash games, if everyone is too loose
and they call too much, right, then you can make
a lot of money by what we call nut pedaling,
meaning only playing the best hands. I think you can
make much more money than that by like also taking
advantage of the fact that they have weaker ranges, by
doing some select the bluffing, a by doing some dinner
value betting. But but yeah, tim, you get up like
(22:12):
two five man, what so what are you playing? What
are you playing out here?
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Are you?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Are you? You're still California hour? What's your World series schedule?
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Like?
Speaker 2 (22:19):
How many events are you playing in? Which events are they?
Speaker 3 (22:21):
So? Yeah, I could. It was funny because I had
help plan. Then it got kind of blown out. But
I go back in July. I want to go back
in July and play some stuff.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
We'll see.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
I I was looking at like the deep Stack tournaments,
like the there's like a six hundred dollars deep Stack
and our eight hundred dollars Deep Stack. Some of the
other games don't really make sense for my schedule too much,
and and maybe my skill level. I don't know if
I really want to jump in yet, but I was
out there. I was out recently. I played, I came early,
played some cash games, did pretty well, you know, you know,
made enough money to cover everything. Then I played the
(22:51):
six hundred dollars Deep Stack, and I just didn't play well,
you know. But yeah, so, But ideally what I would
like to do is get some more time in, play
some more, read a little bit more. Now go back
and read some more, because I think I just completely
glazed over stony concess and then go back and I
want to try to see if I can make it
deeper run in those deep stack tournaments.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Yeah, Tim, I want to actually caution you a little
bit that sometimes that name deep stack is actually a
little bit of a misnomer. It gets a lot of
people to want to play, but those are really fast structures, right,
So most of those are half hour levels, and it
becomes a turbo very quickly. So there are other tournaments
that have a much slower structure that might be actually
(23:33):
better suited to a cash player. So I would actually
like as one of my pieces of advice, I would say,
potentially look at the schedule a second time, to look
not just at the name, and how many chips think
A lot of players make the mistake of being like
I start with four hundred big lines, that's amazing, right,
but within two hours you're going to have fifty big lines,
(23:55):
Whereas there's another tournament where you start with two hundred
and in two hours you'll have you know, one hundred
and twenty. Right, Like, the blinds move in a very
very different structure, and it's actually it actually plays much
deeper for much longer and I think that, and Nay,
you can correct me if I'm wrong, But I think
for cash players, one of your big advantages is kind
(24:18):
of knowing how to be patient in those slower structure
events as opposed to kind of the more turbo structures
where I think tournament specialists really thrive because they know
how to actually keep building their stack. You have to
be aggressive in those tournaments. Those are tournaments where being patient,
being kind of a little bit tighter is not rewarded
(24:38):
because of the way that the structure works, like you
have to constantly be fighting against the rising blnes. And
so I think those are two considerations that you should
think about as you kind of consider what are my strengths.
Because one of the things I learned when I was
starting is don't try to reinvent the wheel at the
beginning for a tournament series. So even if there are
(25:00):
things you want to work on, like if you try
to implement twenty new things into your game as you
enter a new tournament, it's not going to go well
because you haven't practiced, you're not comfortable with it, And
so I would say, instead, try to optimize on your strengths. Right,
figure out what am I best at as a poker player.
I'm a patient cash player, right, and so how what
are the tournaments where that's going to be more of
(25:22):
an asset.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
I think it's funny because I feel pretty comfortable in
cash game. And then I hopped into that tournament. Immediately
I felt like the clock was like burning behind me.
Now I was just doing or like not typical of
the way I would play.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
And it was weird too.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
We started we started five handed in that tournament for
a while, and that was different. So five handed, I
was like, I need to push these people around right now,
you know. And I was just getting caught. I was
getting caught with I was really I was in hands
where just they just had bluffs, you know, And and
I was getting in the spots like what am I doing?
And I was so uncomfortable. I think that was the
reason why. So that's a good point. I'll I'm going
(25:55):
to look back at the structures and see I'll take
a little bit of a deeper dive into some better
tournaments for sure.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Yeah. Look, let me let me say a couple of things.
One is that like if you're used to generally playing
tighter relative to the players at the table, right, Like,
I'm not super tight, but in these cash games, they're
really splashy. They're New York City cash games for the
most part, right, And so I'm like, I think playing
correctly about one of the tighter players. And when you
have a tighter range pre flop, then it's just such
(26:22):
an advantage if you know how to press it post slop,
you can bet thin for value, you can make bluffs
because they miss so many flops when you have a
tighter range, right, you can obviously try to extract money
when you have very strong hands the nuts in various ways.
But yeah, if you are one of the looser players
at the table, then that requires a lot of adjustments
(26:43):
post flop. I'm usually not on that side, so I
can't speak as much from experience, but I want to say,
like one thing that Maria was hinting at, like is
like so one thing I literally did before this world series,
and I haven't done it in the past, and maybe
I will. But like I made a list of like
what I think my comparative strengths and weaknesses as a
poker player are relative to the field, and then how
that translates in a substantive way in terms of strategy, right,
(27:07):
But you're trying to think about, like what are my
big overriding objectives here? Right, the kind of mantras that
you repeat to yourself, because I find those can be
quite powerful. But tim, what do you want to achieve?
So why are you playing? Why are you coming back
in July? Why are you out here before? Why are
you playing the World Series?
Speaker 3 (27:24):
I think I know I could go deep. Maybe I'm
a little too presumptuous, but I think I could go
deep in the tournament and it would just be fun
to get there. Because it's like I feel like when
I play cash games, and maybe this is part of
my delusion, is that I feel like I'm like, okay,
I'm better than these players pretty much all the time
I play these these these lower limited cash games. It's
probably a lot of difference between the type of player
(27:45):
that are in these deep stack of events and these
cash games. But just to prove to myself, I could
go a little deeper. But I think I got into
this situation where, like you're saying, I think your point
is really good because what I did was I read
a bunch of poker books, some advanced strategy books, reading
stuff on solvers, and I just info dumps so hard
into my head. I was thinking about so many things,
(28:06):
and I've already been thinking I just need to boil
it down.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
To like just two strategies I'm going to look at.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Yeah, and I was looking at just like full equity calculators,
and that was really helpful for me because now I
feel like I know exactly where I am in certain
spots against certain ranges, and that was something that I
hadn't really even looked at before. A lot of the
solver stuff. I think it's going to take a minute
for me to kind of show all that, but yeah,
(28:32):
I feel like there's I feel like good thing is
that I feel like there's not so much that I
need to do, so I don't need to jump.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
These big leaps and understanding.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
I just need to kind of get really like Nate
was saying, get really sharp at the things I know
that I could do better at, and then incorporate there.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah. Yeah, No, I mean I think that should be
kind of your your number one focus is to just
like focus on a few things for the next few
weeks before you come out here. But one thing that
you said kind of jumped out at me. So one
of the most important things is mental game, right, and
is trying to kind of remain present and be able
to execute the strategy that you've already thought about and
(29:08):
not melt down when it comes down to it. And
one of the things you said, you said kind of
you felt like the clock was kind of burning, right,
that was burning behind you. And that's a really common
feeling and I've experienced it too. I think we all have.
And if you're feeling like you're kind of making decisions
with like this ticking time bomb right like this red
(29:30):
countdown behind you, you're not going to be thinking as
clearly and you're going to be making poor choices. And
so what I would also say is, yes, you know,
obviously like focus on a few things strategy like I'm
going to be you know, three betting more, I'm going
to be doing this, I'm going to be doing that,
but also take some time to like think about the
mental game execution, be like, Okay, you know what, I
(29:51):
Am just going to constantly like be focused on how
many big blindes I have relative to the table, how
my table, my table only is playing, and how I
can kind of be a good presence here and I'm
not going to worry about the clock and the chip
averag and all of these external things that are going on.
(30:12):
I'm going to just kind of remain focused on what's
going on here at my table. And there's never a
need to panic. As soon as you start panicking, that's
when you start making mistakes. And so I think just
focusing on that and trying to make sure that you're
not the player panicking, but that you're taking advantage of
the players panicking will go a long way. Yeah, so
(30:32):
that you feel more comfortable.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
I think one that you can do, too, is do
some degree of picking your targets. Right the players that
you're much better than in a one to three or
two five game, right Like, there're going to be a
lot of them at the table, and they're usually pretty identifiable.
Maria and I were just talking about the WSP app.
We can see their names now, and like, you know,
but if you're playing as someone who's a little trickier
or less known, maybe someone from you know, a different country,
(30:57):
different environment and things like that, I mean, then you
might want to be a little bit more careful. I
still think doing like I still think doing your best
tim is going to be better than doing like your
C plus impression solver or play unless you've taken more
time to studying it right. And then if you are
making a deep run, I mean it's tough. Poker's a
(31:17):
tough game, right, probably some degree of tightening up is correct.
I mean, if I were you, I'd be like trying
to build a big stack and or early try to
build a big stack. Be yourself. You can make some
feel and read different plays if you want, and targeting
weaker opponents right to build the big stacks. You can
maybe be a little bit more tight as you approach
(31:39):
the money, which you're supposed to be anyway, right, And
maybe you'll even have at the same table some reputation
from having been more aggressive and made some plays later on,
and because later on in a tournament you want full equity, right,
you really want people not to get into coin flips
with you when you're trying to make the money and
run deep and stuff. That may be my quick high
level diagnosis, I guess, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Yeah, I think that. I think that The one thing
that Nate said that I would just reiterate as like
your mantras be myself right, be tim like play your game,
and don't let anyone else, like, don't let anyone else
kind of shape how you think you're supposed to play.
I had a major breakthrough because I was always like,
you know, when I started out, I was a little
(32:21):
too tight, and you know, people are like, you have
to be super aggressive, blah blah blah. And I tried
being like super aggressive, and that's not me, right, and
it didn't work for me. And my bluffs didn't work
either because it was just so counter to my style
as a poker player, to my personality. And so something
that works for an at Michael Adamo, for instance, someone
who wore an Adrian Mateo's like two very aggressive players,
(32:44):
isn't going to work for me, right, because that is
just not me. And so once I figured out, okay,
I am much more aggressive now than I used to be,
but I'm doing it in a way that feels natural
to me, right, and that that actually works for me.
And I don't take the spots that you know that
Adrian Mateos will take, you know, God bless him, let
him take those spots, Like I'm not going to try
(33:04):
to out Adrian Adrian. And so that's I think. So
that's just so important to remember, because you're going to
become a better player. The best players are ones who
actually tap into what they're good at.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Yeah, do you guys try to stay away from rebuy
tournaments or is that like a thing that's not too
big of a.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
Deal for you guys?
Speaker 1 (33:24):
No, I mean I love freeze outs. I think they're wonderful,
and if it's not a freeze out, I would love
if it's a single re entry I do not like
unlimited re entry tournaments, but I will play them if
I think they're good value. But this is something I
don't know how Nate treats it. But so I always
do a budget ahead of time. So I have a
big Excel spreadsheet of all the events I'm playing, and
(33:45):
I put what my maximum number of bullets for each
event is. And I never go above that no matter what,
because I have gone above that in the past when
I was just starting out, and it's just never a
good idea, right when I'm like, oh, I budgeted four,
but it's such a good event, so I'm just going
to fire a fifth. I always regret it, right, Like
that's just it's never it's never good.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yeah, I'm trying to register earlier this year, meaning playing
maybe not for the very start, but I like playing
deep stack poker. It sounds like you do to tim
and so like. Look, some of the theory says that like, oh,
if you register late, you're more loocated cash and it's
more plus CV or less negative ev I'm skeptical of
that if you do have live deep stack cash skills.
(34:24):
And also there's a big filtering effect, right. You know,
I've played a medium event twenty five hundred dollars and
eight hundred dollars so far, right, And like the tables
you get when you sit down are fucking like a
wet dream pretty much, right, And by the time you
get to the to the bubble, then then those tables
get much tougher, right, I mean, there are there is
some dead amount of people who are just very very
(34:45):
bad at poker, who are almost for sure going to
gonna punt off chips, right, And so registering early, I'm
not concerned about rebiverse. Non rebuy people will call down
looser if there's a reby available. It's a game texture thing.
But playing real poker, like register early from the first
level if you want, I like that you're playing shorthanded
and pushing people around. I think that's attitudinally doing seriously,
(35:05):
even if, like because the average tournament pro is fucking
terrified of playing five had it poker right, I would
totally I'd love to do that. And if you overplayed
some thoughts, okay, you'll kinter just next time.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Yeah, I think that's great. Tim. We both wish you
so much luck. We hope to be able to check
in with you later this summer. But yeah, keep keep
this in mind. I hope this was helpful to you,
but it's it's a it's a pleasure to meet you,
and we hope that you crush it at the World
Series in July.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Well, man, Tim, we'll get it. We'll get a beer
with you in July for if we're still around with you.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah, absolutely yes. So thank you for joining risky business
and good luck. May the poker gods be on your side.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
You guys, take care.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Let's take a break and then talk a little bit
about our conversation with Tim and kind of what what
our takeaways are in general for poker players and for ourselves.
(36:13):
Big props to Tim for putting himself out there. A
lot of people don't want to put themselves in that spot.
And for me, you know, it's funny because I do remember,
because I was writing a book about it as I
was learning how to play poker. I do remember kind
of being in that in that mind frame and having
all of these overwhelming stimuli. And I think that it's
really useful to actually remember what that feels like, because
(36:37):
something that I talk about where people are like, what
the hell are you talking about? I'm like, poker makes
you a much more empathetic person, and people like, what
like poker's poker empathy? I was like, no, because you
need to learn how to actually take the perspective, really
take the perspective of other people at the table. And
so I think it was really cool for me to
actually hear Tim's thoughts because there are and this is
(37:00):
in no way like this is a good thing, Like,
there are lots of Tim's at the table who are
you know, who want to take a shot at the
World series, who do well in their local cash games,
who get there. They're thinking about it differently than you are, Nate,
or than I am, And that's just really good to
keep in mind. It's good to remember that there are
all of these different you know, all of these different mindsets,
(37:22):
and to me, it was really helpful to kind of
put myself in Tim's shoes for a little bit and
remind myself what it felt like the first time I
was out in Las Vegas. But Nate, I'm actually kind
of curious because for me it was much more recent, right,
Like I definitely remember my first w sopie when was yours?
And do you actually remember kind of your your memories
of your first trip and your first World Series of
(37:44):
Poker tournament.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
So when I played professionally, it is my main source
of income. From like roughly two thousand and four to
two thousand and six, I played limit hold them. I
played high stakes limit hold them cash games online, which
in every dimension is opposite from no limit hold them tournaments, right,
And so like, one thing that helped is my experience
(38:06):
early on in the World Series. I think there was
one trip I went that was kind of like there
was a meet ups for the two plus two forums.
I wouldn't even play the no limit events necessarily. It
took me a long time before I even like cashed anything.
And so I think one thing that does help is
like I can empathize with players who have like some
(38:27):
poker experience, but like are a fish out of water
at the World Series of Poker and are not quite
sure like what they want to accomplish from it, right,
So you're like relating to things in the back of
your head about the way they put chips in the fire,
the little things like, Okay, so after every X number
of levels, you have to get rid of the load
denomination chips, so blind sco ups, you get rid of
(38:47):
the hundred dollars chips and round them off to five
hundreds basically, right, And like, boy, if somebody's really unfamiliar
with that process, that's that they probably zero times ever
reached that stage of a live tournament before. And you
can and having been having not been a you know,
I was good at poker, I was not good at
live tournament poker, right, And probably a lot of people
are like that. Right. There's some poker environment, maybe's home
(39:10):
PLO game where it can be really loose, right or
maybe whatever where they can thrive and they're not thriving
in this environment. And understanding why they're not thriving and
what mistakes they'll make and what vulnerabilities exploit you can
make against them, I think is valuable.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Yeah, I think that's really good advice. And it's fun
to think of little Nate at the World Series having
not really played that much live before. By the way,
it's easy to tell, like it's easy to spot the
online pros because often, like sometimes I've seen some of
the best ones, like their first forays into the live tournament.
Seen they are much more expressive than they should be, right,
(39:49):
especially streamers who are used to kind of conveying a
lot of information. I was like, oh, you are, You're
kind of a toel box. Then they can yeah, they
can get used to it, they get over it, But
it is funny to see that transition. Nate, you have
definitely transitioned to a live player.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
I remember my first Vegas non World Series trip better right.
I remember having a lot of vodka Red Bulls, playing
probably pretty high stakes limit games at the Bellagio and
staying up all night, right, And like, yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
For PSA, for people listening, do not have vodka red
Bulls while you're playing poker.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Cancel out.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
This is a negative, evy thing to do. I don't
drink while I'm playing poker. Some people like to. And
then there's something referred to as the beer level late
in the night where people like to order beers. I
don't drink beer, but just try not to nate. You
and I had a glass of wine over dinner yesterday
and I often do that. That can be nice, but
(40:49):
try try to be present at the poker table and
not with a vodka Red Bull.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
You know what a good time to have a beer
is is when you're on this very long bubble, so
before when they're when you're waiting forever for other tables
to break, right, having a beer might make you a
little more relaxed and patient. People react different physiologically. I believe.
I believe it's not a sary re a bad time
to have a beer for what it's forth.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
That is good advice. And on that note, Nate, I
have to leave you to play Day two. You know
we're Tuesday, June tenth. I'm about to hop into my
first day two of the World series and I need
to get my ass over there without Red Bull. But
I did have some caffeine while we were taping this episode,
so hopefully that will help. And yeah, best of luck
(41:34):
to Tim, and best of luck to you and I Nate.
To the two of us, let's both do well today.
I hope everyone has enjoyed this episode and I am
going to head to the Lovely Horseshoe Casina. Let us
know what you think of the show. Reach out to
(41:56):
us at Risky Business at pushkin dot fm. And by
the way, if you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber, we have
some bonus content for you that's coming up right after
the credits.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
And if you're not subscribing yet, consider signing up for
just ninety nine a month. What a nice price you
get access to all that premium content and ad for
listening across Pushkin's entire network of shows.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
And by me Nate Silver. The show is a co
production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya Gerwit Sally
helm As our editor, and our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Thanks so much for tuning in.
Hosts And Creators
Maria Konnikova
Nate Silver
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