Risk of Ruin
Audio documentaries about risk takers.
Risk of Ruin
The Road of Trials
Houyi went from Yale Law School to a job in finance before he left it all behind to become a professional advantage player. He talks about counting cards, learning to play hole cards, traveling the world, and a fateful poker game in Cambodia.
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It was like a feeling of pure liberation. Like I was having the time of my life living like a vagabond riverboat gambler sort of thing. Certainly my family was concerned and certainly some of my classmates thought I'd gone off the deep end.
SPEAKER_00:risk of ruin is a podcast about gambling and life and their intersection i'm john reader this is episode 16 the road of trials so An unstated premise of this podcast series is that when a person makes a choice to reject convention or follow an uncommon path and then succeeds in the face of long odds, it might be worth our attention because lots of things that happen in life aren't really the result of choice. We either fall into them or we were ushered into them. For example, As a child, no one dreams of becoming a real estate agent. So that goes into the fell-into-it pile. Conversely, some people are dentists because their parents are dentists and their siblings are dentists. They were ushered into the profession as much as they chose it. But no one is herded into being a professional gambler. And it requires so much effort that it's not really a fell-into-it job either. It requires choice and action. The guest for this episode is an interesting case because for most of his life, he would have fit the profile of someone whose path was the result of the power of suggestion. But eventually he made the very uncommon decision to become an advantage player, i.e. a professional gambler that makes his living off casinos. This is Hou Yi, and he's going to tell us how he started down one road and ended up pretty far from there.
SPEAKER_01:I grew up pretty poor. Uh... You know, my mom was a single mother. We lived with my grandmother in a pretty small apartment. I actually didn't have a bed until I was 16. I was sleeping on the floor. And it was kind of instilled in me from a very young age that I was going to have to be the one to sort of raise the family above our station. And so I essentially had two career choices. I could be a doctor or I could be a lawyer. Like those were the only two options available to me in my in my mother's eyes and my grandmother's eyes. And so, you know, looking at those two choices, I was just thinking, OK, well, being a doctor, that's going to take way too long. Law school is only three years and it's going to sort of guarantee me a upper middle class existence and I'll be able to help the family out. So it wasn't through any sort of like passion for the law or any sort of calling to, you know, the justice system or anything like that. It was purely an economic decision. And so perhaps because of that, you know, I sort of knew from the admissions weekend at Yale. that this isn't the place for me. I don't fit in here. These people come from a different background than me. I don't really understand their motivations. But this is the sort of path that's been laid before me. And maybe I can just go to big law, do it for a few years, and then exit with some bank and then figure out what I really want to do.
SPEAKER_00:Many of today's card counters cite the movie 21 as the thing that got them into blackjack. Hou Yi also fits this pattern. He saw the movie, did some research to figure out if card counting was actually a thing, and then practiced up and hit the tables.
SPEAKER_01:So when I was in law school, I was going several times a week because... Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods are only like an hour away from Yale, and there were a few casino buses you could take that would get you there. So I would be going like three, four times a week sometimes.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe the biggest challenge for new card counters is getting a large enough bankroll to make money. Players that start with something like$1,000 probably can't even make enough to cover expenses. And there's also a good chance they bust out before they make any real money. Hou Yi funded his initial bankroll with student loans, and then he was fanatical about not spending money.
SPEAKER_01:You know, I initially had a sort of bankroll by taking out more student loans than I really needed. Related to that is just like, I was very meticulous about saving money. I basically wasn't spending any money on food while I was at Yale because there was always some sort of student event going on. When I didn't have a student event. Oh, shout outs to the Federalist Society at Yale, by the way. They always had the best food. They got catering from this place. I think it was Zaroka, this Indian place. I think they had the best food because they realized that Yale is a very left-leaning institution. So they needed to have the good food to attract people to come. But I always used to get food from them. They were great. And then, you know, my girlfriend at the time was like cooking for me a lot. So I wasn't spending any money on food. And, you know, when I was at the casino, I could usually get a comp meal. My place was pretty cheap, so I wasn't spending money there. And, yeah, I mean, I was just very good at keeping everything that I earned.
SPEAKER_00:If there was a website that offered life hacks for card counters, it would have articles like, Seven must-have accessories for sleeping in your car or the cheapest cargo shorts for carrying your bankroll. A profession where a dollar spent is a dollar that can't be wagered means that practitioners go to extreme measures to save money.
SPEAKER_01:When I was at Mohegan Sun, there was more than one night where I was playing on the weekend, so I couldn't get a comp room because you know uh i was just card counting i was mainly wonging so my theo must have been trash but uh in lieu of getting a hotel room for you know three hundred dollars i just found a uh bathroom stall and like took a little power nap for a few hours and i actually had it uh Calculated where, like I knew where, I mean, at what time the stalls were being cleaned. So I just came right after that and then, you know, no one bothered me. I was able to take a few hours. I initially tried to sleep in the bus station, but they always woke me up when I tried to take a nap at the bus station.
SPEAKER_00:Eventually, card counters are forced to accept that the thing they're doing is easy to spot. In Hou Yi's case, he got into trouble doing something called wonging. That's standing behind a table and counting the cards, then jumping in when the edge favors the player, and leaving when the count drops. It got its name from the famous gambling author Stanford Wong.
SPEAKER_01:I was doing purely counting most of my time in law school. And then what happened was I was seeing a girl... in New Haven. And she, for whatever reason, you know, she knew I was a gambler. And for whatever reason, she wanted to see Atlantic City. I have no idea why anyone would want to see Atlantic City. Maybe she saw some videos of Atlantic City from like the 70s and she thought it was a cool place. But she wanted to check it out. So I had a host at Mohegan who said she could set me up with, you know, a stay at resorts in Atlantic City because the two are connected. And so we went to Atlantic City, stayed at resorts, and, you know, I wasn't going to play that much, but I figured I should show them a little bit of action or my host would be upset with me. So I showed them some action, but apparently, you know, horror upon horrors, I was, like, wanging into a shoe at, like, 2x200 or, you know, whatever, and the pit boss was... Over
SPEAKER_00:the years, Ho Yee became an accomplished professional, reliant on exercising good judgment to make money. But the Atlantic City story is about a player burning himself with a strategy that wasn't even going to accomplish its stated goal. He was trying to show the casino action to justify his comp, but he was playing just a few hands at a time. He may have gotten heat for counting cards, but that just sent him looking for other ways to make money.
SPEAKER_01:I was thinking like, well, I guess maybe this is the end of my blackjack career. I'm playing some poker now, but I guess I'm done with table games. But then I thought, no, wait, I'm giving up too easily on this. Let me try to figure something out. So... I started looking at the other games in the casino, and I started thinking about, okay, so Blackjack is beatable through counting because of X, Y, Z. Could there be other ways of beating these other games? And so I remember the first game that I played that wasn't Blackjack was Texas Hold'em Bonus. And at Mohegan, it was a handheld game. And so... I started thinking like, okay, so what are the qualities of this game? There's 52 cards, the dealer's dealing cards to everybody, they're taking two cards themselves, and then they deal the community cards out. In what ways would this be beatable? And so I started thinking, well, the reason why there's a house edge at all is because the ante doesn't pay what it should be, but the advantage to the player is that you can bet when you think you have a strong hand. But you've got incomplete information, right? Because you don't know what the community cards are going to be before the community cards are dealt out. And you don't know what the dealer's cards are going to be. So what if you could know that? And so I started thinking, well, let's see. How could I know that? Well, the dealer could expose their cards. And do dealers do that? I don't know. Let me see. And so I started looking at the way dealers were dealing their cards. I noticed that You know, every dealer had a particular way of dealing cards. And, you know, some would deal them, you know, high. Some would deal them low. Some would be very careful, very methodical. Some would be sort of lackadaisical. And, you know, that's when I spotted my first whole card game. And so I just started playing the hell out of that. You know exactly where you are throughout the entire process. You know when you're beat. You know when, you know, the dealer has outs. You know when the dealer is drawing dead. Because it's just your two cards against the dealer's two cards. So, I mean, I knew the edge had to be pretty substantial. And then I, you know, I want some more specificity. So I started doing my own calculations on that. And that was pretty simple because, you know, all the information is out there for you.
SPEAKER_00:In the world of advantage gambling, it's not uncommon for casinos to be painted as big evil. The charge is that they engage in shady business practices like gambling. refusing to pay winners, and they profit from the misery of their customers. But Ho Yee's parallel life in the square world, where he went from law school to finance, didn't provide him with a lot of faith in the ethics of corporate America.
SPEAKER_01:And while I was at Yale, you know, I figured out that, okay, well, at least with this sort of like pedigree, I can do other things and still make a good living and still be able to support my family. So I went into finance after law school, but upon going into finance, I quickly found out it was basically more of the same. I was still doing the bitch work. I was still fiddling with PowerPoint decks, doing little flag icons to represent different countries on our PowerPoint decks. It was really not the kind of work that... I could feel passionate about. And I understand that, you know, when you're entering that kind of career, you're going to be doing bitch work. I mean, that's understandable. But it's just, you know, my managing directors were not respectful of, you know, lower level employees. And my whole thing was, you know, either, you know, treat me very well and make me feel valued as an employee or just overcompensate with money. And so when I first came into the job, they told me, oh, well, you can expect a bonus of multiple of your base salary. And that was appealing to me from a monetary standpoint. But then my first year there, it was quite the opposite. It was a fraction of my base salary. And I asked them about this, like, oh, did you not feel like my work was good? I had good performance reviews. Like, what's What's wrong here? And, you know, they came up with some excuse like, oh, well, the year before, you know, our partners, our MDs, you know, they take a bonus hit so that we could give higher bonuses to the lower level employees. But this year we felt we had to do the opposite. And, you know, that didn't sit right with me. And then my second year was sort of more of the same. So, you know, that sort of like made me feel like, Okay, the system is corrupt. I should just like go out and do my own thing.
SPEAKER_00:Lots of people either aren't happy at work or think their employer failed to deliver on some promise, but they also don't leave their jobs because it's not an easy thing to do and it requires an admission of the sunk costs involved. In Ho-Yi's case, the sunk costs involved years of education. Also, he had a family that was counting on him.
SPEAKER_01:I think, you know, initially I was kind of hesitant to even talk to them about it but you know the firm kind of you know screwing me over in terms of my bonus sort of made it easier to broach the subject with them I essentially told them look I had this expectation going in that I was going to be compensated thusly and they didn't fulfill their obligation and I really feel like you know I'm good enough at this and Check out my results. You know, I've been doing very well at this sort of like side hustle, which was, you know, advantage play. And I think like this is my opportunity to sort of try something new. And initially, you know, my stepfather was supportive of it and my mother was against it. But, you know, he was like, oh, let him try it. And I think. you know, looking back on things that he had a sort of expectation that I was going to eventually get led back to a sort of corporate career or whether it be in finance again or in big law, that sort of thing. And, you know, he thought it would be one of those things to get out of my system. And then, you know, when I started really succeeding at Advantage Play, And, you know, I was taking them on these vacations and I was sending money back home. And, you know, I bought my my stepfather a new Harley that he always wanted. And, you know, I was doing a lot of things for them. And so that sort of made them look the other way. I mean, it still wasn't something I'm sure they were enthused about. And, you know, when asked by their friends or coworkers or whatever, I think, you know. They definitely didn't want to say I was a professional gambler. They just talked about like, oh, he's doing very well. You know, he he got us X, Y, Z. So. I think. You know, just I sort of bought my way out and I had hoped that would be good enough for them, but, you know, apparently they were never fully accepting of it.
SPEAKER_00:The conflict that was inherent between Hou Yi's life as a gambler and the expectation of his family was compounded because he took his responsibility seriously.
SPEAKER_01:But from my perspective, it was more like, you know, I've lived my whole life in terms of this idea of filial piety. And just now I'm starting to realize be able to do what I want in life. And I'm still, you know, making a good living at it. And you know, everything leading up to this, like, Of course, I had, you know, growing up, I had ideas about what I really wanted to do. I was a pretty successful competitive fighter for a while. I thought about wanting to do that. I thought about wanting to be an actor. I got some callbacks for some commercials. But, you know, those were the sort of dreams that my family would always shoot down because they were very insistive that I had a certain path that I needed to be on. And to deviate from that path would be to dishonor them and sort of make it so that I couldn't fulfill my obligations as a son. So when I was on the road living this vagabond lifestyle, completely removed from what I had ostensibly prepared my whole life for, it was just more of a feeling of freedom for me.
SPEAKER_00:Freed from the constraints of a normal life, Ho Yee set out to find riches and glory.
SPEAKER_01:After I turned pro, you know, it made all the sense in the world to just hit the road. And I actually spent like a few years just strictly on the road, not having sort of a home base and just sort of living out of my car and living out of casino hotels.
SPEAKER_00:By the time Ho Yee quit his day job, he had a number of ways to make money. He could count cards, he could play poker, and his ability to read hole cards meant that he could play the games most people assume are unbeatable. These are games like Mississippi Stud, Three Card Poker, and Ultimate Texas Hold'em. Against most gamblers, the casinos win a large percent on these games, they have a decent house edge, and recreational players tend to reject the very idea of basic strategy. But advantage players flip the house edge by getting access to information the casino doesn't expect them to have.
SPEAKER_01:I remember the first time I banked quads at Mississippi Stud for like$40K. That was a big moment for me. And, you know, I'd won a few thousand dollars before I hit that big hand. So, you know, from that perspective... You know, you can point to certain moments where like, oh, I hit this big hand. I remember the first Royal Flush I got for 20k in video poker.
SPEAKER_00:The climate for casinos is highly competitive, which means they're in constant search for new players. The problem is that the same promos attractive to the average Joe are also vulnerable to exploitation.
SPEAKER_01:You know, I was playing several different casinos and I was playing around the same limits for each casino, but I was getting different marketing offers. So I started thinking like, OK, well, some casinos must have a different sort of marketing formula than others. And, you know, maybe depending on how strong the marketing offers are, maybe I can think of some way to just beat the game straight up. I don't even need to be card counting at Blackjack. And that's what sort of got me started thinking about video poker, because I just knew video poker. you know, was a, uh, relatively low house edge again. And so then, you know, I started looking into dancers books, uh, Dan Paymore, that, that sort of thing. And, uh, I started thinking like, oh, okay, well maybe this could be like a good side hustle for me sort of, uh, I could, if nothing else, I could, you know, be getting free, uh, free rooms and food and stuff. And, you know, I could pick one place in a certain area and use that as like a base. And then, Hard count on other things or, you know, later on whole card on other things. It took me, you know, a few years to get more heavily into machines and beating promotions.
SPEAKER_00:Early in his career, Hou Yi says that he almost never encountered other card counters and he never saw people doing more advanced things. But then he ran into a crew of advantage players at a table. This can be a valuable thing. But as Hou Yi says, relationships with other APs can be tricky.
SPEAKER_01:I had this whole card game essentially to myself for quite some time. And then one night I'm playing and this guy in his 60s and this young kid show up at the table. The guy in his 60s is very openly talking like, oh, you're here with a crew? Oh, you know other games here? And I was just completely taken aback because I was thinking like, what, what is this guy doing? Okay. He knows I'm an AP, but like, shouldn't an AP be quiet? Like, what, what is this guy possibly thinking? And then Beardo shows up and, you know, Beardo, you know, he's a lot more of what I thought an AP would be like, you know, he's got the hat on. He's, you know, kind of, he's kind of suspicious looking, but he's like, he's always seems to be observing his surroundings and, And, you know, he's like quietly discussing things with me so that, you know, we know what the deal is, how much to bet. You know, he said he didn't want to step on anyone's toes. And so we're playing all night. And then, you know, we have a discussion about the surrounding area, if there's other games around. And Beardo tells me, oh, yeah, there's this great game in this spot, you know, a couple of states over. Man, you should definitely check it out. It's this amazing spot. You know, something about that made me a bit hesitant. I was like, I don't know. This guy, you know, he's kind of sketchy. Maybe it's a play, whatever. So I held off until, you know, that game at Mohegan was dead. And, you know, I later on, you know, tried this game that ostensibly existed in this place a few states over. Of course, the game was nowhere to be found. So either he completely bullshitted me, or the game just never existed. Maybe he burned it, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:This likely deception wasn't a problem for Ho-Yi. Eventually, he and Beardo became real friends.
SPEAKER_01:Now he's one of my best friends, and a great mentor, and he's given me so much great information since then. And, you know, he's shared plays with me, you know, shares information with me. It's pretty much an open book now, but it just goes to show in this industry, like, you're competitors until you're friends.
SPEAKER_00:Hou Yi has access to a network of other players now, but he says that shared information only goes so far.
SPEAKER_01:On one hand, you know, at this point, I've got a little network, but I don't want to... sort of use up my social currency so I can't like be reaching out to my network whenever you know I want to have a game because it's one of those things where you know you can reach out to people and they're going to help you but you know you should be giving them stuff in return down the line so you don't want to be completely reliant upon you know outside sources and you know you sort of think of it in terms of like what you would want from other people because, you know, I've got a few people right now, they only hit me up when they're trying to get info on games. And, you know, I'm just going to ignore these people because, you know, they're very self-interested. So, yeah, you know, occasionally if I'm dropping by a town, you know, I might ask for, you know, a few questions about conditions or heat or that sort of thing. But for the most part, you know, And another thing is that, like, people are going to be most willing to share stuff that they've already burnt, right? So, you know, they're going to tell you, oh, yeah, we've got this dealer. You know, they're very good. But, you know, they're not going to mention, like, okay, well, this dealer has been burned before. You know, she's going to be a bit more careful in the future. Or, like, the pit bosses are going to be, you know, on the lookout. You know, so you're going to find the best stuff. Stuff just like traveling on your own and just, you know, finding these places where the fields have had time to, you know, regrow.
SPEAKER_00:The internet is awash with information that could be profitable. There are message boards geared towards advantage play. There are also message boards geared towards recreational gamblers. And there's no telling where the valuable information might show up.
SPEAKER_01:Sometimes people... try to be sly about it and they're going to you know they're going to mention a certain promotion and they're not going to mention the place but you know based on their posting history you're going to find where they've generally played and where their location is probably going to be and then you know sometimes they're going to mention a certain type of game that's more common in a certain area so you know the I find the best APs are very good at like taking a scrap of information and sort of extrapolating from there.
SPEAKER_00:Eventually, Hou Yi's travels took him outside the U.S., where he experienced the problem of carrying large amounts of cash as a stranger in a strange land.
SPEAKER_01:I was playing this game in South America, and I was carrying like, you know, 30,000 U.S. dollars. And, you know, the game was solid, and they actually had decent limits by playing. This country's standard, so I was firing a decent amount, so I needed to carry that much. And in this particular country, they've got stop and frisk, so the police can stop you for any reason, basically, when you're walking down the street and check what's on your person. So I had this man bag full of money, and I was walking down the street. The police stopped me. They fined all this money. And, you know, they're like, well, why are you carrying all this money? And, you know, well, the casino's right there. You can check with them. I was just playing in the casino. But, you know, they still got all my details, including the Airbnb where I was staying.
SPEAKER_00:Fast forward to the next night, and Ho Yee was getting back to his Airbnb when someone yelled out to him on the street. Also, that someone had a gun.
SPEAKER_01:My thought process was like, okay, the guy doesn't have his gun trained on me. The guy seems like... pretty quote-unquote unprofessional about robbing people, I think I can get away because I know there's a pharmacy two blocks down. If I can just get to the pharmacy, there's an armed guard there with an assault rifle, and I should be safe. So I book it. I start yelling like a madman, and then I notice only a block down, there's a guy walking back to his apartment. And so... I'm like zigzagging in the street because I'm like, oh shit, if the guy like starts firing at me, well, I'll make it harder on him to actually hit me. And so then I start yelling for help from the guy walking to his apartment. And he looks back and he sees me like booking it and he sees, you know, I guess he sees the people coming after me. And he starts running for his apartment. And I was like, oh shit, if he like closes the door on me, I'm screwed. But I was like, well... roll the dice. And so I get to his door and he lets me in and then we call the cops and I got away.
SPEAKER_00:Not all of Ho Yee's adventures involved matters of life and death, but sometimes the stakes were high in other ways.
SPEAKER_01:So I come to Cambodia and immediately I get rolled because at the airport, I just decided to exchange a little bit of currency and just in case I come to the casino that I'm staying at. I'm staying at Naga World in Phnom Penh. And I thought like, well, what if I find a game immediately? I want, you know, a little bit of money to play with. So I changed like maybe 2000 US dollars to the Cambodian currency. I forget what it's called. I think it's called the riel. So I changed it at the airport and they're like, really? You want 2000 in riel? Okay, whatever. And that should have been a tip off right there, but I wasn't thinking. So I changed the 2000 to riels and I get to Naga world. And I immediately find out, like, they don't accept reals. They only accept US dollars. So I essentially just wasted$2,000. I was like, okay, well, whatever. I still have like, you know, 28,000. I think I brought 30,000 with me. And so I'm scouting the place out and everything is just locked down tight. Like they've got... Excellent sort of game protection. And I'm just really disappointed because it's this huge, like, super luxurious casino, but I can't find any opportunities. And so I think, like, okay, well, this sucks, but I don't know, maybe there's poker.
SPEAKER_00:Unfortunately, the poker also looked like a bust. The only games running had low limits, and none of the players were sitting with any substantial money. Then Hou Yi met a guy in an elevator who told him, Go to the poker room at 9 and you'll find a real game.
SPEAKER_01:And then all of a sudden everyone gets up at the table and starts clapping. And I see this, you know, middle-aged Chinese guy. He's like 5'3". He dressed like a bum. Like, you would not pick him out at all if you saw him in a crowd. But, you know, he sits and immediately he like slams on the table like$12,000. I'm like... Okay,$12,000 in a 1-2 game. All right, maybe the British guy wasn't bullshitting. So I top off my stack, and immediately I see how this guy plays. He's blind raising preflop$500 in a 1-2 game. So I had never played this high before. But playing a 2-5 game or a 5-10 game, you occasionally get... some DJ who's like drunk and, you know, he, uh, he stacks off like, you know,$5,000 here or something like that. So, you know, I figured like, well, if I can get this guy to like me and I can show I'm good action, like maybe this is a potentially big opportunity because if he likes me, maybe I can get his number. Maybe I can play with him at a you know, a future date. Maybe he's going to be here a while. Maybe I can play with him every night. Maybe I can convince him for a heads up game. And so that's the way my mind was working. So, uh, he blind raises 500. I've got ACE five suited. I, uh, re-raise him 1500 and he calls and then, uh, flopped like, uh, ACE five three. So I've got top two, uh, I check to him. He opens shoves. I snap call, and he shows king-queen. So he's got no pair, no draw, but he just was lull, pressed the wrong button, whatever. So I stack him for like 12,000, and he's like one minute. And so he disappears for like two, three minutes, and he shows up with 25,000 in orange chips. I'm like, well, okay, I got a live room one here. So I'm trying to make all nicey-nice with him and trying to get him to like me. I was like, hey, mate, what's your name? He's like, you can call me Mr. Lim. And he just said it in such a condescending manner that I immediately just wanted to bury this guy as bad as I could. Obviously, I wanted to win money, but I just wanted to really crush this guy. I've always had a problem with... sort of bourgeois aristocracy looking down upon me. So this just, like, brought back memories of me as a kid, like, struggling.
SPEAKER_00:After Ho-Yi doubled up against Mr. Lim, he did it again. And then again. It was like he was playing against an ATM machine.
SPEAKER_01:So, next hand, I had, like, Ace-King suited. We get it in all pre, and, you know, he's got 6-7, he bricks out. So now I've got, like, around 50k in front of me he disappears again for another like four or five minutes he shows up with 50k stack and so this time i've got uh pocket nines and i i limp to him and he re-raises a thousand i i repot and then he just shoves 50k pre-flop and so i'm thinking here like okay well I'm definitely crushing his range because he just plays any two cards. And I want to show good action, but there's definitely better spots. Like, I don't think I should, like, you know, I'm contemplating folding, basically. And so I'm tanking, and he just flips an eight. And I see he's got, so he's got eight X. And I can't possibly be behind. I must be crushing him. And he's just like, oh, you big man? Oh, why don't you call? He just like tore into me a little bit. He was like, you know, I play much bigger than you. So it's OK. You fold. But I was just like, OK, well, fuck it. Gamble, gamble. And so board comes out eight X X. And then I was like, do you have pocket eight? He's like, he shakes his head. No. And then I forget what the term was, but I know the river was a queen. And I show I've got pocket nines. And I was like, okay, you don't have pocket eights, right? What do you have? He's like, oh, we tie. I was like, what do you mean we tie? It can't possibly be a chop pot. What do you mean we tie? It's like, you have 9-9 at natural eight. I have queen eight, natural eight. And everyone at the table just erupts into applause and everyone's like patting him on the back and telling him what a great player he is. And so I You know, this puts me on a short tilt and then I lose another big pot with him.
SPEAKER_00:Every poker player has bad beat stories, but that story is a kick in the junk on another level. Ho Yee's ATM machine had just stacked him. And in an attempt to be maximally annoying, Mr. Lim was calling out natural eight as if they were playing Baccarat. And then the worst part is that not long after that, Mr. Lim got up and went back to Hong Kong. So the money was gone forever. Fortunately for Hou Yi, he found good games in other parts of the world.
SPEAKER_01:And so we went to this South American country, and I was finding some amazing blackjack conditions. Great penetration, lost rebates, full early surrender. And I thought, oh, okay, this is pretty solid.
SPEAKER_00:Hou Yi was in South America to see a friend and check out the casinos. But his visit with his friend was cut short. Because in the course of doing the kind of things that young guys do, they had a falling out. To save time, let me just say that the beginning of the next story involves some girls from Tinder, a nightclub, and possible drug use. Although, that part is ambiguous.
SPEAKER_01:And then my buddy and this Tinder girl shows up and, you know, they're dancing next to us but the girl's still looking at me and so he notices that and then he starts, like, yelling at me, and he wants to fight in the middle of this club, and then, you know, we get escorted out of the club, but then we're outside on the streets, essentially, and he's, like, waving this bottle around, and I tell the guy, like, listen, buddy, if you really want to do this over some, like, chick you just met, okay, that's fine, put the bottle down, we'll do it, and, you know, that kind of took him aback, because he just kept talking shit and I was like, okay, I'm just going to leave. So I left with the girl I was dancing with and I decided like, well, after that, I don't really want to spend more time with this guy. I decided like, well, I'm already in this country and I found good conditions in this city. Maybe I can find good conditions in some other cities. So I went to this other city and sure enough, first casino I come to, I see on their They've got this flashing PowerPoint screen of their current promotions, and I see roulette special number pays 40 to 1. I was like, 40 to 1? There's got to be some catch to this. They're not going to be offering this every day during this month. And so I talked to the croupiers, and sure enough, they said, yeah, yeah, there's no limit. You can play it as much as you want. And so at this casino, it's a pretty small casino, but they've got two roulette tables. And so I'm just table maxing this one number and running back and forth between these two tables. And I'm doing that for 12 hours a day. And I'm getting an insane amount of spins per hour because the dealers understand what I'm doing. I'm tipping them a decent amount. And in this country, it's pretty unusual to get tipped at all. So they're all for it. They love it. You know, I'm just stacking thousands and thousands of dollars a day on this promotion. You know, most of the day, like the casino is essentially dead. So I'm just doing it by myself, basically. But, you know, maybe like around six, seven o'clock, people start getting off of work and, you know, the casino fills up a little. And so these floppies come to the tables. And they're like, oh, why is this guy only betting this one number? I'm just like, oh, no, it's my lucky number. But then the crew PAs will say to them like, oh, well, we've got this promotion. See, like this number today pays 40 to one. And the ploppies will be like, oh, that's cool. But then they'll keep betting their regular numbers and they won't even put a chip down on the special number. So go figure that one. I played it the entire month and I made a pretty substantial amount of money at it. And I was, to the best of my knowledge, the only one playing it.
SPEAKER_00:If there are 38 spaces on a double zero roulette wheel and one of the numbers pays 40 to one, it's easy to understand there's an advantage. But let me just dig in a little to illustrate why this was so valuable to Ho Yi and why the recreational players just can't get there. Let's say you're betting$100 a spin on the lucky number. On average, you will lose 37 of 38 bets. So that's minus$3,700. And then on the 38th bet, you win$4,000. So you're ahead$300 per 38 spins. To keep things simple, assume that each wheel also spins 38 times per hour. So 300 is also the hourly profit. If you can play two wheels, then it becomes$600 per hour. The casino allowed Ho Yi to play lots of hours over the course of a month. So a win greater than$100,000 would be right in the middle of the range of outcomes. That's the good news. But here's the bad news. Roulette wheels don't pay off every 38th bet. There's this little thing called variance. In the example we're talking about, it would be no big deal to be down 20,000 at some point. Not only are recreational players not prepared to deal with that kind of downswing, they wouldn't even make it that far because they can't feel the difference between 40 to 1 and 35 to 1. The conditions for learning, i.e. make a guess, get feedback, and then adjust based on the outcome, Those conditions are absent in roulette. The feedback has too much noise. It's overwhelmed by randomness. The advantage might be simple, but understanding even simple math is not something humans do naturally. In our introduction to Hou Yi at the beginning of this episode, we learned that he grew up poor, then his talent offered him a way out, but he rejected the stability of a regular job. So how did it all work out for him?
SPEAKER_01:You know, at this point in my career, you know, I'm pretty much set, you know. Bad things can happen to me, and I'm just going to not really feel it, you know, because it's a function of my bankroll has grown to a certain point that I don't really have to worry about finances anymore.
SPEAKER_00:Advantage Play gave Ho Yee financial independence, and it took him all over the world, where he had adventures that aren't possible, sitting in a cubicle. But he has clear eyes when it comes to seeing the opportunities and the costs involved in that life.
SPEAKER_01:There's like a intellectual feeling of being able to figure out a promotion or figure out a new way to beat a casino. And, you know, that can be fulfilling. And, you know, there's a sort of visceral pleasure in like winning money. And, you know, you see directly your labor being turned into money, which is something far removed from a lot of jobs. So, you know, there's some degree of intellectual interest in that. But in the end, it's just winning money. It's winning money from the casino. And there's no sort of like higher purpose to that. I've heard it argued before that it's doing a social good because you're punishing the casinos who, you know, take advantage of drunks and, you know, uninformed people. And, you know, casinos are a social evil and you're punishing them by winning their money. But I don't really buy into that. You know, I don't think casinos are necessarily evil. Sometimes, of course, they evil and immoral actions against people but I don't think they as a institution are evil so I don't really buy into that argument. And, you know, I had this conversation with Bob Mercesian where, you know, we were talking about sort of my pathway from the law and into AP. And, you know, he mentioned to me, like, you know, one day you're going to have enough money where you're not going to care about the grind anymore and you're going to have to find a purpose in your life. And, you know, a lot of people, they sort of have their purpose in life through their career. And so if I'm not feeling purpose in life through my career, The title
SPEAKER_00:of this episode is The Road of Trials, which is a reference to the phase of the hero's journey where the protagonist undergoes a series of tests. I've made reference to the hero's journey in other episodes because the call to adventure, followed by a series of challenges, maps so well onto the stories that gamblers tell. This episode offers another connection because the name Hou Yi, which, to be clear, is just an internet handle, is a reference to the Chinese mythological hero. In one of the myths, the world is at risk because there are ten suns in the sky and everything is about to become Death Valley, the hero Hou Yi is enlisted to deal with this threat. to humanity.
SPEAKER_01:So Hou Yi is sent to, you know, stop the Ten Suns. And, you know, at first he tries to negotiate with them, but then he ends up shooting nine of the suns with his arrow. He's the magnificent archer Hou Yi. And after he does that, then he meets his wife Chang'er and he gets rewarded in the story I like the best anyway. He gets rewarded by like these two elixirs of immortality. And, you know, he's warned don't take both of them you know just one for you one for your wife and so he wants to take it with his wife so they'll be together forever but he's called away to fight some monsters and while he's away his apprentice comes to his wife to try to steal the potions of immortality and so to sort of Out of panic, basically, to stop the apprentice, his wife Chang'er takes both of the potions of immortality as Hou Yi is coming back. And so because she took both, then she ascends to the moon and Hou Yi is sort of left behind. But in the story I like best, eventually he does ascend to become... you know, sort of the avatar of the sun. And so he's sort of together, but at the same time separated from his love. And I feel like that's sort of symbolic of the AP lifestyle when, you know, when you're away from home, you can't rely on, you know, people close to you to just be waiting for you because people are, going to be living their own lives they've got their own adventures to lead and you can't just assume that they're going to remain the same or you know remain how you remember them in your memories and you know I think it's important to understand that you need to be very you know careful to guard your relationships you know right now because of my travels I've got friends all around the world but It's difficult to maintain a relationship when you don't see someone for, you know, a year or more at a time. You know, texting isn't the same as like going out to dinner with someone or, you know, having a few beers with someone. And when you're always traveling, it's difficult because, you know, sometimes the player will be in Bumblefuck, Iowa. And, you know, if... You know, most of my friends are in New York. It's very difficult to sort of maintain that friendship. And, you know, while you're out adventuring, you know, people are growing. People are meeting new people. People are changing things about themselves. And then maybe you come back and they're not the same person, you know, as you remember them. And, you know, that's very difficult. And, you know, I'm... I'm kind of an introverted person, so I don't feel lonely necessarily on the road, but I understand the value in any sort of relationship and connection with someone who really understands you. And to lose that sort of thing, it's... not exactly distressing, but it's, it's something sad about the profession.
SPEAKER_00:Risk of Ruin is written and produced by me. Special thanks to Ho Yi for being generous with his time. If you want to get in touch with the show, you can email us riskofruinpod at gmail.com or you can follow us on Twitter at halfkeller.com.
UNKNOWN:Bye.