Phenom Poker's On the Button Podcast
Phenom Poker is a revolutionary poker site that makes every player an owner. It is built by the players, for the players, and governed by the player community.
This podcast series is brought to you by Phenom and aims to bring interviews with successful players on the platform, their journeys, and their unique strategies.
Phenom Poker's On the Button Podcast
#4 : Insights and Evolution with Alec Torelli
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Alec Torelli (@alectorelli) joins us to discuss the evolving landscape of poker, from the impact of new tax laws to the experience at EPT Barcelona and the innovations in online poker. We explore the importance of aligning incentives in the industry, the joys of mixed games, and how poker insights can enhance investment strategies, all while fostering community and enjoyment in gameplay.
• Alec shares his recent experiences at the EPT in Barcelona and the impactful energy of the city
• Discussion of new tax laws in Spain affecting poker players and community concerns
• Highlights from the first dedicated poker conference in Ireland focusing on the industry’s future
• Insights on the prevalence of bots and the need for alignment of interests with operators
• The benefits of mixed games for both recreational and competitive players
• Exploring risk management lessons drawn from poker that apply to investing
• Emphasis on creating a welcoming environment for new players in the poker community
• Future aspirations include a book about life lessons derived from poker
Phenom Poker Team Pro Alec Torelli (@alectorelli on X)
Matt Valeo (@phenomaly on X)
Filmed onsite in New York City, NY.
Also available on all major podcast streaming services.
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What's up everybody. Episode 4 on the button, coming from New York City, and I'm here with Alec Torelli. Welcome bro.
Speaker 2I know of all places to meet. We've definitely met up in a few cities. It's cool to be here. Wasn't expecting expecting this, but yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1With my spontaneous uh travel lifestyle. Uh, you never know, there's always like an opportunity in uh uh. New York city is just like long been one of my favorite places.
Speaker 2So I'm happy to meet up with you. Yeah, me too, I love it here. It's cool to meet up in this place.
Speaker 1Cool man. Um, oh yeah. So this came together like super last minute, so I don't have like a planned agenda here, but I just thought like man alex, alex in town, let's get together, let's talk about like what's what's going on with you lately, bro, yeah, um I'm trying to think.
Speaker 2Well, the last time we did this was we were in vegas. It was, uh, spring or summer, um. So I've been playing a bit of poker, mainly, uh, in europe, and uh, I went to barcelona for the ept. That was an amazing event. I I love the energy there. It's so cool to be in such an incredible city, but also at the most amazing time of the year, and then the tournament is right on the water, so it's just a really cool energy and vibe. And so it's like, in a way, you're like I want to play and compete and win, but you're like if I lose, I'm in Barcelona in the summer.
Speaker 1Yeah, play and compete and win, but you're like, if I lose, I'm in Barcelona in the summer. Yeah, I'm like, right, you're right next to Hotel Arts. You're right there on the, on the waterfront lots of good restaurants. Like. Barcelona has long been one of my favorite cities, as you know. I have, you know, ties to Spain, having lived in Madrid for the majority of the last year. But I am curious to hear about your experience in Barcelona because this year was particularly different in that, like EPT, barcelona has typically been one of EPT's most popular stops. Yeah, but I know there was a lot of players that were on the fence about going. Like, I was talking to a lot of like phenom ambassadors and just players in general who weren't sure if they were going to go because they were concerned about some of the new like tax laws and stuff in Spain. Did you get any like insight on any of that stuff?
Speaker 2Yeah, stuff in spain. Do you, did you get any like insight on any of that stuff? Yeah, I'm I'm not like an expert, so I it's hard to say definitively what, um how those would affect different people and, yeah, not change definitely.
Speaker 1Yeah, no legal advice or financial advice.
Speaker 2I just wanted to know, like, what your take on it yeah, my take was that um was that if you win an event or win a lot, you would be potentially subject to a tax local to Spain, but I think that it's not much higher than what you would pay in the US. So I think a lot of the concern that I heard that people that didn't want to go was from people that were in a jurisdiction where they paid no tax on winnings. So, for example, someone in the UK that's not a USs citizen, like you're a citizen, you have to pay taxes on worldwide income. So this is a complete moot point for I'm assuming, most people watching.
Speaker 2But like, if you are a, you know you're born in france and then you moved your residence to the uk and you have zero tax on poker, right, and then now you go to spain and suddenly, let's say, sp charges 30%, like just to throw out an arbitrary number. Now you have 30% only in that on that one tournament. So you're like your opportunity cost is like, well, I could pay zero anywhere I go or play online and 30 in Spain, whereas as an American if you like, again just throw out the number you pay 30 in Vegas as well, 30 and everywhere else, 30 in Florida, not really any different, so it's close. It's less different for an american, I think. Again it's like not my, uh, I'm not a lawyer like a tax accountant but like that my, my understanding was the people that were like the most concerned about it were from jurisdictions.
Speaker 2But anyway, on, on the poker side, um, yeah, it's amazing. I'm like it was a great event. I thought, uh, it was very well turned out. I think it was like 2 000 people for the main. The high roller was also, I think, ironically, softer than the main. I was expecting it to be a lot harder. Obviously, you have a bigger spectrum in the high roller because you have people with higher, obviously, the super pros. Right, you have the super pros. But then you have the more discretionary high net worth people that can just fire a larger amount, that care a lot less, and so those people are. So there's a bigger polarity on a spectrum of talent. You have, like, the super pros and then you have the complete vips. I maybe got good table draws. I played, I think, three days and I cashed in both events, which was, which was great, but, um, sick brag, yeah, like my, my, I'm in cash in both. So, and I punt, I I blew it in the main. I could have done better than I did. Um, I guess, one hand, you always make one mistake. Anyway, yeah, the events were soft and good and like a very well turnout.
Speaker 2Then it was in Ireland after that for speaking at a conference. We talked about this at Edge. There was like a poker. It was like the first ever for the audience, like it was the first poker specific conference, which I thought was super cool, because you have all these gaming conferences, you have marketing conferences, you have crypto conferences you have crypto conferences, you have business conferences, wellness conferences but there's not like a poker conference and it's like why is that? Why isn't there not even a poker conference at the WSOP where people can get together and give talks and give presentations and share ideas?
Speaker 2I was fortunate to speak at the event. I thought it was. We talked about Phenom, talked about the future of online poker, but a lot of people from experts from different parts of the industry came together and talked about different ideas the future of poker, where poker is going, how to improve the poker industry, grow the industry, and they also had a tournament there as well. The irish poker tour was happening during that time, so it was like a tournament as well. And then you're in you know beautiful hotel in the middle of dublin, which is a great city, and then there's also a conference.
Speaker 1So it's like really cool lifestyle poker, speaking like it was it's just a cool series of events in europe so for the people that, um you know, will obviously check out um alec terly's youtube, um, I think there's some highlights and maybe links to I did put the keynote um on the youtube.
Speaker 2Yeah, the whole talks on the conscious poker youtube. It's, it's free, it's all there and yeah check out, check out the conscious poker youtube.
Speaker 1Um to to get some of that. Maybe you can give us I mean, that's obviously stuff that's really relevant to our industry in this podcast, where we talk about almost exclusively poker um, maybe some highlights on like what's what your thoughts were, what stuff that you talked about.
Speaker 2I mean, my talk was on, like, the future of online poker and how I think phenom's building a very unique model in to align incentives of everyone involved, and my argument was that a lot of the problems we see in online poker are a misalignment of incentive incentives between game operator, game like owners of the site and the players, and they have, you know, they have, frankly, a little bit different of interest. Right, the owners necessarily want the most amount of rake and the most amount of games and the players want the safest games and the fairest games. But sometimes those things don't have the same odds. For example, the use of bots. Um, bots generate a lot of rake. Yeah, so obviously an owner. I'm not saying owners are malicious of all other poker sites, but I'm saying, like, they benefit from bots directly because they generate more rake and therefore it's more profit. So it's like, how do you?
Speaker 1well, we Well, we don't hold back here in this podcast.
Speaker 2How do you kind of like rectify those two misalignments of incentives?
Speaker 1I'm going to challenge you a little bit on. Like owners, aren't malicious, because you know what we. Well, I don't know them personally, so I can't say that I've Well but we see the behavior, yeah, and something that we you see, the one. I had Brian Rast here on the podcast and we talked a lot about the industry paying lip service, and what I mean by that is like there's a lot of concerns around. People want to play poker. Poker is obviously alive and well. You just alluded to EPT Barcelona.
Speaker 2Like I was at EPT Monte Carlo Massive turnouts, dude the tournament, the turn, and it's not like all super pros, like it's not dude I mean there is, there is new blood exactly poker and there's soft fields and dude look at, look at wpt prime you know look at.
Speaker 1Look at wsop, bahamas, even where the price points were like 10 years ago, the thought of running like an entire series, um, of like 10 and 15 and 25 k's. You're like, well, how many people are going to show up for that? That's like you know, that's that's as soon as like 10 years ago. Now, dude, triton is like booming. Those fields are going crazy. They had almost 100 entries into the 500k.
Speaker 1Yeah, it was like 97 unique bullets, right, um, in a 500 000 buying tournament. And then you also just look at like the 25ks, which I it's weird to even say it out loud that like, oh, 25k is their low price point, right, but, dude, those get massive turnouts now, um, and so you know, I'm drawing this all back full circle to like poker is alive and well, people are interested and it's really a shame because, you know, online poker, which has been around now for 20 plus years, is kind of the gateway for the people who don't live close to a casino or who maybe can't fly to go play a Triton event or aren't ready to play 10K buying tournaments. For most people, those are like pretty high stakes.
Speaker 2Or they want the reps right. Like you can't get the experience. It's a very costly endeavor to get the experience in a 10k tournament such that you can be good enough to win. Like you have to go through.
Speaker 1It's just not. It's not a realistic entry point for someone brand new to poker for sure unless, unless you're like a successful business person and you're, you know, a vip or whatever, um, but for, like, the average person who's coming into poker and who's, like you know, kind of getting their beak wet, so to speak, and maybe ready to play some, you know, 10 cent, 25 cent.
Speaker 2Yeah, or $10 online tournaments, $50 online tournaments.
Speaker 1This is like your typical, like one, two or one three. No live player.
Speaker 2That's kind of the lifeblood of poker.
Speaker 1Yes, yes, you want to give them an easy entry into this wonderful game, and online poker is you know, supposed to be that Right.
Speaker 1And so you know, we talked about the industry paying lip service, because if you, if you listen to the operators, you'll hear things like, oh, we really care about this, we're doing stuff about it. But then if you look at, like the actual behavior of the operators, just for so long it's been like not really lining up with what that, like what they say and what they do, doesn't really line up, like there are very clearly bot problems.
Speaker 1In fact, I was on twitter, uh yeah, now x super recently and people are talking about ignition, um and again, I don't. I don't really like to call out people by by specific name or whatever, but like this is this. I'm alluding to specific conversations. I saw this thread too.
Speaker 2I think yeah, dude, and it's, and like every, single histories were wild, where it was like it's, someone had five big blinds and they put four and a half big blinds in the pot, yeah, and the guy raises him all in and they're like tanking their whole time bank and folding with like a half a big blind with yeah, but like they clicked it back four times, like it's just happening with a frequency where it's just not possible that it's random, it's just so absurd. Yeah, they also had.
Speaker 1I saw this thread yeah, they also had, maybe.
Speaker 2I'm not explaining it the best way, but it was absurd.
Speaker 1Dude. They also had it like in a hand-for-hand scenario, right, where, like max tanking, um and when I say person, I'm using that term very loosely here um, like it's like he's very clearly at a table full of bots, yeah, um, and, and some of these sites, they make it easy for bots by just making. Making it completely anonymous, yeah, right, like if who does anonymous poker benefit? That's like, just think about it as an operator or as a player. Like who does that benefit? Yeah for sure, like literally nobody, except for the operator, who maybe doesn't, doesn't want to make it hard for a bot to come on the site, because they generate a lot of break yeah, I mean they're like essentially free prop players, right, like casinos, and this was something I was talking about in the in the keynote.
Speaker 2Like casinos, uh, pay prop players. I've known people that have done this for a living or part-time side hustle. They pay them whatever 10, 20, 30 an hour, whatever they. They depends on the game and how frequency, how frequent they're playing. And they pay that person to play at odd hours or to start games or to sit shorthanded or to fill up games. And, like, the hardest thing is to get a game going three or four handed. And if you have a couple prop players that are willing to sit in shorthanded games and start games or play through the odd hours where the games typically break, where there's like a breaking point between, you know, 2 am and 6 am before it restarts, or whatever it is at a casino, those players you know essentially create the, the ecosystem, and so bots sort of fill that void in an online site where they'll play three-handed, they'll play four-handed, they'll start the games.
Speaker 2It's easy to get a poker game if you have ever been in a casino, right, there's seven or eight people in a game. You're always going to find the eighth or ninth player. It's very easy. The games fill up really fast. The hardest thing to do is start a game three-handed To get the first three people, then the fourth, the fifth, but sixth, seventh and eighth come very quickly and so bots sort of fill that need in an online poker site as well, and so it's very lucrative to have bots from an operator standpoint Absolutely and look as a rake risk reward.
Speaker 1EV standpoint. As someone obviously I've been a poker player over 20 years. Now I'm getting some experience with the Phen phenom poker project. On the other side of it, um, and it's something that you know, like I, I understand why the sites do it, but I can't understand that and then come back and say like, oh, it's not malicious because, listen, phenom poker um has prop players. Now they're not like permanent full-time employees or on the payroll, whatever. We put it out there to the community, open and transparent, we said, hey, we're looking for game starters for people that want to help start games. Obviously, we're a new poker site, um, and like early game availability and liquidity, like these are some of the challenges that a new site has for sure, um, so we just put it out there to the community and said, hey, we are willing to pay an hourly rate for people that are, you know, want to want to start games. Now, you have to play with your own money. The site has no vested interest in your winnings or losings whatsoever, right?
Speaker 1that's important, you know. So like you basically get increased rate back. You get an hourly rate, um, and it's for you know, starting games shorthanded right and so like these things were very important to put out there. Um, now listen, it would be so much easier if we were willing to go to like a bot farm and say like, yeah, just like, can you just get us a hundred?
Speaker 1bots and start like all these different stakes at 24 hours a day, Like that would just open the floodgates to like massive amounts of more revenue. And you don't. It would be way cheaper, right? These guys, like bots, don't need an hour like a big hourly rate per bot. I don't know how they get paid. We've never done anything like this. We never will do anything like this, but I understand why a site would yeah, makes sense, but you, in order to do that, you have to cross a what I think is a very serious threshold of do you really care about poker? Yeah, the community about poker, the community player. I think you just have to choose. You know what. I just don't care. I'd rather make more money, and as long as I'm not going to get caught, then so be it. And again, I'm not speaking to any specific site or person that working for these sites directly, but I know that this thought process has been had.
Speaker 2Yeah, you see the results.
Speaker 1I mean, you just see the results right and it's, you know, it's come out and I I don't remember which pod it was, but there was another pod where we talked about, um, it might have been the brian rass pod where we talked about um, like the bloomberg article uh, that came out several months ago um, where they were talking about, you know, bot farms, yeah, and um, yeah, like there was. They basically found out directly that some of the sites were contracting with, like the bot farms were making money, obviously by putting bots on sites and beating up on, like, recreational players, but they were also making money by contracting with the sites to supply liquidity. Yeah, it's like, almost like a SaaS business for them. I mean, dude, it's wild and it's just absurd because it hurts the game so much, keeps so many would-be players from from coming in online.
Speaker 1Because, let me think about it, if you're interested in poker and your, your options are okay. I'm gonna go play live, which is maybe inconvenient for me. I'm gonna pay a higher rake. I have to travel. I, like you know, I have to maybe go through a smoke-filled casino, which, if you're a, a non-smoker, it kind of sucks.
Speaker 1Your clothes stink, yeah there's not food you want to eat, I mean there's just like a lot of things that there's so much, whereas if you get online, you could like.
Speaker 2Also, if you only have let's say you only have an hour at night between work and kids or whatever you have an hour, you can't a sit and go.
Speaker 1Which would be the equivalent of several hours Absolutely Of playing in the casino because you just see so many more hands. Yeah, that's where a lot of people start.
Speaker 2I had a lot of clients, like readers and stuff, come to me and they say same concerns, same problems, and they say where should I play online? And they have all of the legitimate concerns you would expect people to have Like I don't necessarily trust it concerns you would expect people to have like I don't necessarily trust it. Or I mean another one is and you know we didn't talk about this, but you know I have to custody my funds with that site and I have to keep the money on the site and I've shared this in the talk as well like I had issues cashing out from a site where it took like weeks. And there's all this like verification takes so long, it's such a hassle, there's so much back and forth and in that time there's a lot of intermittent stress Like am I going to get my money? What if they freeze it? What if?
Speaker 1you know you're not in control of your own money. I bet it wasn't difficult to get your money on that site though.
Speaker 2Yeah, exactly Of course. And so there's all of these bottlenecks and hurdles that people have, and rightly so right. They've seen the news articles, they've seen the reports, they've seen these threads on social media, whatever, and people you know getting uh, the short end of the stick and so they're skeptical of playing, but they want to like the demand is there, like we talked about poker?
Speaker 1poker is a great game and it interests so many different people. Um, I just I think it's sad that in you know, it's the year 2025, which is crazy to say out loud. Like I, I just turned 40 and like I remember as a kid, you like watch like the jetsons and you watch like some of the stuff where, like, the year 2025 seems so far off into the future, like it wasn't even, it was like difficult to even think about yeah, it's true, it's like referenced in movies and stuff like that as being like so far off.
Speaker 1And now we're here right and like, yeah, like this shouldn't even be a conversation. It should be like hey, I want to play, I can go play against anyone in the world at any stake. That should be available to me and the security measures should be there and the protections around money management, they should just be there.
Phenom Poker and Game Variety
Speaker 2Yeah, it should have been solved a while ago.
Speaker 1I think a lot of these systemic problems in poker, the technology has existed to solve these problems for a long time, but this industry has been super slow to adopt them, and the only answer I can really point to is like they don't care.
Speaker 2Yeah, well, I mean, the economics are very lucrative for having a lot of games running. No matter what, it is refreshing to play on Phenom, though I've played a lot of poker on there.
Speaker 1Well, we battled heads up, we played the other night. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2But I've played various stakes. I've played a lot of games, the games I don't know how to play because phenom is you've been jumping into the mixed game street. Yeah, I've been a mixed game fish. The phenom has all these, you know games that whatever. Seven cards, four cards, three cards discard this, yeah, draw.
Speaker 2So I mean sometimes those are the games that have action and I'm like, okay, this is a great way to learn. And so I'm kind of, in a way, like the person that we just talked about that wants to dabble, like, because I want to dabble in games I don't really play or I don't specialize in, and you know, it's a great place to do that there's. There's all sorts of stakes. I play some 25 cent, 50 cent, but I do it in the no limit streets too. So I've been playing, obviously no limit I'm I'm competent at, so I play 25 cent, 50 cent to play with the, the, the players that are playing.
Speaker 2There's always games that are running in those, those limits. And then I battled some high stakes, uh, no limit, some heads up games. We even got, like a we got a six max 510 game going the other day, but, um, some 10, 20 to 25, 50 heads up, no limit, some some decent stakes too. So I've, yeah sure, played across the spectrum and it's really refreshing, like you always, um, it's a very different energy. Playing on phenom um number one. It's very clear that you're playing against other people, like just based on their betting patterns, their timing patterns, and like it's kind of one of those things that you don't realize like you might, because I think online has changed so much, you get used to it.
Speaker 2Exactly. You get so used to playing at a certain tempo and pace and bet sizing and how everyone plays that you don't realize that perhaps that's not normal. And then so I played on Phenom and then I realized like, oh wow, this is totally different feel and flow. And then the second thing that's really cool is it's a bit of a community and so there's a lot of like people talking in the chat and chatting and like it feels like a little bit more communal playing on the site, in the sense that the people that are there there really are excited about phenom and what it has to offer, the potential, you know, the, the some of the paradigm shifts that it's it's offering. So, like the people in the chat are talking in there, it's cool to be able to connect to people, like some other sites don't even have chat. You can't even type in the chat yeah, it's just that's interesting, right like and so it's just like it's a cool energy to play.
Speaker 1Why did they get rid of the chat?
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean there's, I mean yeah.
Speaker 1I personally like it. They have all the emojis and stuff like that. Food for thought. Yeah, I like the chat.
Speaker 2I've liked my experience there so far I'm up to, which is good. I'm winning, I got I got. I play some five card heads up PLO the other day and just ran really good, which was really fun. That's a really fun game to run, good in yo god, because you just have like the nuts with a redraw, like four hands in a row, and the guy's like you can't have it.
Speaker 2I'm like no, I actually have it, just potting all the way down yeah so I've I've ran well in some of the uh alternative games I've played um well, speaking of which, uh, but then the no limit's been really fun too.
Speaker 1So, speaking of which, I'm mostly a mixed game player, so I I haven't. I know that the like five card Omaha, six card Omaha, the five and six card Omaha, high lows and even pot limit, four card high low, um, have been like really popular games that have that have emerged in the last, uh, you know, several years. Uh, but speaking of which, just side note, uh, six card Omaha, I believe, is going live on Phenom this week.
Speaker 2Yeah, I saw that. That's a.
Speaker 1That's cool, that's a that's a that's cool, that's a that's I'm getting my head around five card and, uh, I'm playing a lot of heads up. So it's like, well, the equities run so close, it's already a while I feel like it's harder for a seasoned professional to to pick up these games, right, because the equities just run way closer. Um, but I feel like it does for the, for the recreational player. They actually feel more comfortable at five and six card.
Speaker 2Omaha, yeah, and, and that's why Omaha's in a way, in a lot of these games is more popular than hold them, because you're not drawing dead when you get all the money in like and hold them the equities are quite.
Speaker 2They're not like binary, but I mean it's, it's, it's a situation where, like you, can get it in like 70, 30 quite often, and that's most of the night you're just it's over, like you just can't win, uh, and that's a lot of hold'em. I mean it's rare that in hold'em you get it all in with you know an over pair to a straight draw on a flush draw. I mean that happens sometimes, but a lot, a lot of times it's some guy has top pair and the other guy has an over here and he's just value betting three streets and the guy has no hope of catching up, whereas in you know five card plo the guy has the nuts and you're calling him down like you can easily catch up even if he has you got to wrap in a flush, you're like okay, I know you have the nuts, but I have, yeah, I have enough equity I'm okay, yeah whatever, I'll call you down and try and hit.
Speaker 2So it is a, it is a more, it encourages more gambling, it's a more fun game and equities run closer, so the VIPs last longer, I guess. Yeah, yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I think that, generally speaking, is a good thing. Also, it's less mastered.
Speaker 2Like Hold'em is. So the consciousness of Hold'em has got so refined over the years and it's kind of a trickle-down effect, like what I noticed why I love playing. I've been competing quite a bit online in the last five, six months, in tournaments specifically, but what I really like is playing the toughest tournaments online because you notice things that are happening in betting patterns for example, that you won't see in the streets of a live tournament for another six months, a year, two years, because it takes time for a very small group of elite players to solve spots, whether it's exploits, whether they're, you know, to get technical, whether they're like node locking a sim to find out how people typically play, and then they're finding exploits to those spots, or they've just ran gto sims where they understand ways to play their ranges that other people haven't yet understood, because other people haven't ran those sims right. They're not as refined. So then you're seeing people find betting patterns that are unique, that you really don't see anywhere else, and so you see that first at the most elite games online, because that's where the best players are doing those those things, and then you start to see other players say wait a minute, why is this guy betting 10 pot and then more and more players see other players doing it and then they start to run the sims to understand that I'm just using a random example.
Speaker 2But why are people betting 10 pot? Then people start to run the sims and figure it out and then you start to see that trickle down and then you start to see amateurs seeing other people doing it and so then they default through osmosis, like empirical experience. They sort of default to doing those things. That's why, for example, in Hold'em, you know, over the years you've seen people c-bet a third of the pot. That's just become a thing right. So people c-bet smaller post-flop when it's heads up in position.
Speaker 1Like some people don't even know why they're doing it, they just see everyone else doing it. Or, for example, min raising I mean, that's that's how we learned back in the day. Is you know like we used to go into a real heaven on the big sites? Um, and like you know me, I was grinding, you know, um, in the earliest days I was grinding, you know, 25, 50 cent, 50 cent dollar, $1, $2, when I was like feeling frisky. But then I would go to real heaven and watch some of these. You know some of the up and coming crushers, and I would see them do stuff that I never thought about doing, and back then there was no Sims.
Speaker 2Yeah, of course, when we started playing online, there was no solvers and terms like node locking a sim.
Speaker 1I don't know if you guys caught that. If you hear a poker player say node locking a sim, um, don't play in that game, don't, don't play with that guy, uh, but maybe go and get some coaching from him. And alec trelli happens to offer coaching. I swear to you this is unscripted, but this is your time to plug go yeah, I'm.
Speaker 2I like I do offer coaching and most of it's not node locking sims by the way, I don't really do that. I mean it's not where people need to spend most of their time. So most people need to spend time on like fundamentals and like the basic ranges, c betting ranges, bet sizing. It's kind of like if someone wants to get in shape, they don't need like the perfect you know amount of this crazy supplement. They just need to like cut out sugar and eat healthy and eat more vegetable. Like that's kind of what most people need to focus on. So sometimes you do these crazy things and I've been doing a lot of this recently. I've created a system to basically do this more efficiently online by working with other, with other people, um, and it's really fun because there's all of these completely unintuitive spots in game theory and so, for example, like I mean I don't know if it's going to all of them, but like there's, there's certain spots where you're.
Speaker 1This is interesting man.
Speaker 2Let You're supposed to basically do things that would seem like not even a VIP would make this play Because it's just so asinine. But, for example, there's certain spots where it goes open 3-bet and your cold 4-betting range is supposed to have King-X offsuit Because the 3-betting range has a loss, a lot of ace x hands and the ace x blocks the. It's a good blocker to have to three bet with like ace three suited, ace four suited. That's also become collective consciousness. In the past that wasn't a thing. When we started playing online. Nobody was doing that. They were calling with those hands. Nobody was thinking about blockers. Nobody was thinking about if I three bet with an ace, they're less likely to have aces. I reduced their aces combos by half, like that wasn't a thing. Well, the, the I. I don't think those thought processes were that articulate because intuitively people understood it, I guess.
Speaker 1Well, you would see some of the some of like. For example, you'd see, like, maybe isildur, yeah, do things that were like that at the time seemed very counterintuitive, right, um. And then now you go back and review some of that footage and you're like, dude, was this guy just way ahead of his time? And I think, I don't think he was no lock and sins or anything like that, but I do think, um, that instinctively, he was doing things that were really tricky and tough to figure out. Yeah, um, and there was some, obviously, theory behind him. I mean, we have to like maybe, talk to victor. Like what were you doing, victor? Right, um, but the shit was like so ahead and different, um, that it would, it was throwing people off and he was and kind of triggered some of these super epic runs, um, and and this is kind of a weird transition, but, like, this is one of the reasons I really love mix yeah, um, and, and I and I encourage people to play more mixed games because, just this last like five minutes of conversation to a brand new poker player, they're like dude, what in the fuck are they talking about?
Speaker 1Node, lock and sims and merging ranges and, and you know, cold, cold four bet, like like. That's just. It's just like a lot of information and it feels like the barrier is maybe so high for them to come in and compete, even at lower stakes. So I I like to encourage people to maybe get in the mixed game streets a little bit, because something that you see in mixed games is you see new players come in, even very experienced poker players, but they've never played mixed, but they never played mixed and so you might see them make kind of an egregious mistake.
Speaker 1I had this experience actually very recently.
Speaker 2Yeah, I definitely would do that. As learning a Badoogie game, for example, I would make a play that's obvious to you. It seems good to me, but to you you're like that's terrible.
Speaker 1Yeah, well, you might be. Here's a good example I was playing I'm not going to call anyone by name here, but I was playing in a Table 1 game. Episode 3, actually our last episode of this podcast was with Justin Young and Art Parman who run table one at the aria.
Speaker 2Yeah, great game, great group of people. It's just really fun, really fun game.
Poker Variants and Game Evolution"
Speaker 1They play 25, 50 or 5100, no limit, uh, hold them, but they do a lot of really cool and interesting things. The seven deuce game is always on.
Speaker 2Uh, they play net game or the double board bomb pot. Every I'm getting to that.
Speaker 1So every push, um they do a double board bomb pot where the small blind gets to call the rules.
Speaker 2Yeah, that is fun, and they do the pineapple version where they don't show the turn until.
Speaker 1Dude, they do a lot of different things.
Speaker 2Yeah, they do all these crazy variants where you only show the first card of the flop and then you have to make a round of betting. They do all sorts of weird shit that people invent.
Speaker 1They just invent stuff. The small blind creates the fucking rules. I'm not just saying that.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1Sometimes they'll just say like, oh, optimus, and that's like half Potterfold. Or they'll say Cuckoo, cuckoo, roots, or whatever, and that's oh, that's fine, that's like Potterfold, right. But then, like I'm in the game and I'm like it's deuce to seven drama, ha, where you know, the the under the gun gets a, gets a six card, and everyone else can like, basically pot or fold, and they're just like what and it's fun for me because like I'm watching them trying to figure out the rules on the fly um, and so, like you know, we, we did it where the the under the gun did not get a six card, so everyone just got five cards. Deuce to seven drama, huh, yeah, even you might be like what's deuce of seven?
Speaker 1yeah, I mean I'm learning these things, okay, so basically it's five cards with a low in your hand, yeah. And then there's a board and so it's it's a split pot game, low in your hand, deuce of seven, low in your hand, and uh, like, basically, five card omaha on the board, okay, wow. And so one of the guys who's uh, you know, uh, not a regular, I I would say you know, a recreational poker player in the game is like, could someone help me with this? And one of the guys who's not a mixing player is like, yeah, sure, I'll help you. And he goes, oh, I would play that and draw two.
Speaker 1Um, and I happened. I actually happened to be the under the gun player. I potted and I had a made 10 low in my hand and I had flopped. Uh, I had flopped like the world. I flopped like the, the nut, the nut open and straight draw and flush draw. Uh, not nut flush draw, obviously, with the low on my hand, but like the 10 high flush draw. I was like super nutted. And so, once he got in and everyone else folded, I went and I was like I can look at your hand, see if you made a good decision. He had like three, five, six yeah, that's like a terrible it's yeah it's, but like to someone that doesn't play.
Speaker 2Those things are not intuitive. He has like. He has like no equity. But even in hold'em it's like that when you first start playing, too like you don't understand hand strengths, you don't understand like being dominated or like out kicked, like you don't. You just don't like. These things are not necessarily intuitive to how you would learn the game.
Speaker 1Yeah, but the cool thing about Mix is that it's just not like solved. Yeah, it's true, right? So even very good players are still learning because the game is only like. You might be playing a game like let's just talk about Deuce of Seven, dramaha. That game didn't even exist 10 years ago. I don't know, maybe it's 10. I started playing Mix around 2015. And just since then, new games have emerged. Yeah, like Drama Doogie was not a thing 10 years ago.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1And like Super Raz Doocy was maybe just getting introduced and any of the Super Studs were just barely getting introduced around that time. So like nobody knew what was going on, and even to this day, because you might be playing in a 18 game mix, in a cash game, for example um, you're not playing enough of each game and there's also there and like write sims, and there's also not coaching, there's not videos, there's not solvers, there's not the content out, there's not the collective consciousness, and I think this is why the I mean.
Speaker 2So I kind of enjoy the like sort of meticulousness of finding these random spots and hold them like at a level like it's. It's fun to kind of pursue that level of mastery, but it is very like in the weeds and meticulous, and you're like, yeah, incrementally getting 0.1 better every every day or whatever. Uh, the number is um. But I think this is why, even in hold'em, we've seen the rise of new formats of hold'em to keep the game, perhaps have more, more gambling in it, yeah, to let everybody, let other people have a chance of winning, but also to make it less solved. So, for example, mystery bounties have become a huge thing and it's like why, well, number?
Speaker 2one pko, yeah, I think, yeah, exactly, live more mystery bounties, but like it's something where you don't have to final table to make a lot of money.
The Future of Poker Excitement
Speaker 2And number two, you don't necessarily feel like everybody else knows every spot. You're like, ok, well, a guy goes all in for eight big blinds and the mystery bounty has a spectrum of winning you know a thousand dollars or a million, like you know. You have to kind of like, okay, well, should I call the five big blinds to try and win a thousand, or try and win a million, or how much is my stack? And so, like, everyone is in all of these new spots that nobody's really ever been in and so there's not a lot of content and data. I mean it's becoming like that. Now there's becoming more content. Obviously there's more incentive for people to get good at these formats as they become bigger and bigger and they, you know wsop bracelets. But there's always that catch-up time and in the in the beginning, uh, there's a period where there's a big inefficiency in the market and people with you know more work ethic or better intuitive poker minds can gain a lot bigger of an edge in a game.
Speaker 1that's, yeah, much less solved well and it's more fun for the average person because they don't feel like they're just getting wrecked yeah, and I I just think it's dangerous for anything to skew too much to one side or the other, and what I mean by it can't it can't be too grinder friendly and it can't be too wreck friendly.
Speaker 1And I feel, like the on, like the online sites, like particularly the really big online sites not naming names we can all figure out who it is um, they have moved things so heavily recreational that it's like it feels more like bingo than it does poker, and I think like we should celebrate what poker is. Poker is a strategic game, it's a game of, it's a game of thinking, it's a game of. Obviously, you know variance, but like we shouldn't stray away from. Like we shouldn't punish the people that want to get really good and want to study and want to away from. Like we shouldn't punish the people that want to get really good and want to study and want to. And I feel like if you just turn everything into like let's just, let's just level it, let's just level the playing field, turn it into giant bingo contests, um, and like I, I don't think that's good for poker.
Speaker 1I think keeping the, the, the old poker dream, alive is important and that's like hey, if I come in and I study and I might get my butt kicked in the in the in the 50 cent dollar streets for a while, that's okay, like I'm paying my, everyone does.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, you don't start out, nobody starts out winning. No, like you know, and I, I almost think that that's the worst thing.
Speaker 1Like someone comes into poker and they just jump in like some 500 tournament as their first experience and they win the thing, like that, that might be the worst thing that can happen to that person yeah right, because that person's going be convinced they're in for a world of short-term pain.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1Or like a, very like you know they might be trying to chase that result for the next 10 years.
Speaker 2Right, or just think that it. I mean, most people are taught to think in life that the outcome of a situation is correlated to the quality of your decisions, and that's true in a lot of things in life, and it's directionally true in poker over the long term true over large sample sizes. Yeah, but it's not true. I mean it's true over small sample sizes and things with no luck, like even in a chess game. It's a very small sample, but the outcome of that game is directly correlated to quality of your decisions.
Speaker 2But in poker there's there's almost no variance, yeah, there's no variant, or in a tennis match, like you know, the better player is always going to win. Basically yeah, um and so, but in poker it's not like that. So if you win that first tournament, which is unlikely, but if you even final table or cash, or you know, you're thinking that you're taught to think in life that I'm very good, because I got this result.
Speaker 1It does happen. It does happen. Oh, absolutely like somebody like I mean you see, you've seen it. I mean recently you see some of these like mega field events that are not super high buy-in like maybe, maybe like the5 million free roll is one or maybe the Prime you can get into that thing for $1K, you can satellite into that thing for $10 or $50.
Speaker 2Well, I mean, when Moneymaker won I'm not comparing him to someone that's never played. Obviously he had talent at the time, but it was clear that he wasn't a professional at the time. Oh yeah, and he satellited into the main event, which which partly told the story, because if he had just bought into the main event it wouldn't have been the same thing, because it was like, well, he was good enough to buy in, he won enough to buy in, he had the bankroll to buy in. Maybe he did have the bankroll, but the point is that Back then they're like, he satellited into the main and the marketing that the WSOP did after that was actually.
Speaker 2I enjoy marketing as an area of interest, but I think that their slogan anyone could win was one of the greatest marketing campaigns. It was brilliant Not just in poker but just in general. It was brilliant across the spectrum because it captured that moment in a phrase, in a tagline that sold the poker dream. Right, you call it the poker dream. It's true that poker dream got sold to a whole generation of people and so like it, it was that ability to move up through, and that is the American dream to move up through the ranks of society and to be able to do that in poker is important. But think, think about this too.
Speaker 1If you were to tune into ESPN, you know, 20 years ago, to watch poker, that's how I started, yeah, started, yeah, I was there, you you would see a super like wide array of personalities yeah at the table people talking, people getting emotional, people wearing all types of different clothes, like now.
Speaker 1If you tune into popular poker streams like now some, you know there's disparity here. But like if you tune into triton, you're just seeing like super pro after super pro, no emotion. Oh uh, get it in and dominated, there's like literally no change whatsoever on their face and just like, okay, I lost yeah, I mean in a way. I get it because I, that doesn't attract.
Speaker 2I get it too because, like I, totally, I see the, the, the conundrum. Because as a pro, I'm like so much of my energy is spent trying to be indifferent so that I can stay locked in. And so it's like I try and train myself to be a certain level of composure and stoicism so that I'm indifferent to the outcome because I could focus all my energy on what is the new strategy? How do I focus on, like the next hand, who's going to be in the big blind? What is the stack size changing? So I'm like on, like the next hand, who's going to be in the big blind? What is the stack size changing? So I'm like I'm not even thinking about the results of the hand. Obviously I want to win the hand Totally, so I understand where those people come from, but I agree with you that, and I'm not.
Speaker 2I'm not criticizing Objectively it's better to have Amir Validi or what was dude and like complete og all.
Speaker 1Of all of it. I mean like the characters and the emotion, the cigar in the mouth like let's, let's go baby like or or you know how was the prince scotty win right? Yeah like, like there's just so many, like, so many interesting personalities even, and these were like, but also that it's not only showing emotion.
Speaker 2I agree with you on this one and, like I said, I'm guilty of it and I understand all the pros are, and it's part of the level of training you do to get to that point.
Speaker 2So it's like it's a double-edged sword. But it's not only the stoicism when they're all in for large amounts of money that to like, I understand it. Especially in a cash game too, like to the average viewer it's potentially life-changing money, even watching you know the hustler, whatever, um, but that's actually a better version of that, because people are actually talking a lot whatever, but, like in some of these shows, you know you're all in for a lot of money, right, six figures or whatever, and people are indifferent to the outcome, and so it's like that's one side of it. The other side of it is that in between the hands right, if you watch the high stakes streams people are so laser focused on the strategy that they're not talking. There's not like a table talk, there's not a conversation, there's not the personalities being expressed and maybe these people have great personalities the players, the high-six players.
Speaker 1I know a lot of those guys. I know a lot of them too.
Speaker 2They're great and they're very interesting and they're totally different people in combat versus at a dinner party.
Speaker 1But you don't see that side of them and so it's like just seem like, oh, there's nothing happening in poker and the point that I was really getting at was not not that like the trying guys are doing anything wrong, like they're doing their jobs. These are professionals.
Speaker 1They're playing for lots yeah, they're playing at the highest level there's an entire ecosystem built around the super high roller and trying and, and, and, and. There's nothing wrong with that. The problem is I'm talking really more about like, let's face it, the average poker game in the world, whether it's online or live, is not a triton event, it's the average poker table is not filled with, you know, ben heaths and and uh, yeah, of course these guys right, um.
Speaker 1So what I'm, what I'm really getting at, is making sure that, like the person that's new to the game because, like, let's face it, it's good for us if the game grows in a healthy way, and we want to show people that poker is not just about going and playing a 50K at try-in and mimicking their behaviors and what they do. Poker is about, like, it's a social game. It's a human versus human experience. It's coming in. It's meeting new people. It's a human versus human experience. It's coming in. It's meeting new people. It's learning how to use different parts of your brain. It's this endless challenge of trying to master something that can't be mastered. It's keeping that dream and that like array of personalities and possibilities and opening doors. It's keeping all of those things in play and that, I think, is what makes poker interesting to most people. Yeah, because most people let's face it will never go play 100k triton. Yeah, of course, even me.
Speaker 1I've been in poker over 20 years. I play high stakes, I play mix, I put I've never played 100k at try and I don't know if I ever will play 100k at triton, right, um, for a variety of reasons. One is because, like I, at this stage of my poker career. Like I don't play poker for a living anymore. I'm not really aspiring to play each and every day. I have other goals in life. Poker still very much a part of my life, but when I play poker, I really like to enjoy the social element of it. I still like the strategic and obviously I'm very competitive, like to win money, but I want, I just I like to enjoy all aspects of poker and I and I like as this is one of the reasons why phenom poker even exists, by the way is we really want to stress bringing online poker back to be fun, to be human versus human, get rid of the bots, get rid of the scandals, get rid of, like, the greed behind the operators. Like, let's just remove those elements, align things with the players and build a really healthy poker ecosystem.
The Transformative Power of Poker
Speaker 1And that's one reason I push people towards mixed games, because when you play at mixed games cash or tournaments it is very different than playing high stakes. No limit hold'em and I'm not trying to say no limit hold'em is bad, I'm not saying that at all it's the most popular variant in poker. I think it will probably continue to be the most popular for the foreseeable future, but if you want to learn other games you want to learn stud, you want to learn draw, you want to learn some of the circus games like the Badasis, badusis, the Dramahas, the Archies, the Captains. You know, it's really fun to learn these new games and you can do it in an environment where, guess what, there's almost no mixed games. You can go play in where someone has all the games solved. You know what I mean yeah, like no one's I mean very few people are great.
Speaker 2You're gonna play against good players right, you know, and bad players.
Speaker 1I think that's true in all any poker game but, like for the most part, people don't have a 21 game mix solved.
Speaker 1They're not studying, they're not merging ranges, they're not node locking anything like yeah, for sure, they're just playing these games, they're learning them, they're there, look, there's, it's competition, your people are going to try to find an edge, but it's a lot more fun. People are talking, people are drinking, people are, you know, like maybe maybe they like hey, today we're going to play a little bit different, like we're going to. We're going to do this and just just for fun, and I think making poker fun again is part of going back to like keeping that old dream alive, because if, if you make the start to finish journey of a poker career like not fun and interesting, I just think you push a lot of people yeah, I've talked to multiple people that uh are drawn to playing events, for example.
Speaker 2But then the atmosphere of certain live tournaments where you see people incessantly tanking, for example and it's fine to tank when you have a big decision, but people that like habitually tank, not not necessarily to get closer to the money. That's a separate side of tanking.
Speaker 1They're doing it because they see it on tv.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think that's what they're supposed to do or they just, like you know every decision is, like you know 15 seconds to do something that, like you don't have decision is like you know 15 seconds to do something that, like you, don't have a decision in every spot. Sometimes you have instant decisions which like fold pre, but like they'll like look, and then they'll like look at their cards and put their card down, then put the thing on the cards, then sit there and then fold. So it's just like there's little things that just put people off and I mean sometimes I take too long as well, like it happened to everyone. I understand, but like to be incessant.
Speaker 1The incessant tanking is a function of people watching poker on tv and they see like, well, that's what the pros do. So that's what I'm gonna do. Yeah, because maybe I only play. You know, maybe I'm a recreational player, maybe I, but I love poker and I'm taking it more seriously. I've watched a bunch of tritons. I've watched a bunch of you know poker on tv. So when I go and play in the World Series I'm going to do what they do and then it just makes it super, not interesting to watch.
Speaker 2So I think poker's got to be fun and I think, yeah, we talked a lot about it at the EDGE conference too, just about how to grow the game and what draws people into poker. You touched on a lot of really good elements, but I think a lot of people are, of course, everyone wants to win and everyone plays to compete.
Speaker 1Winning is a lot more fun than losing. It's a lot more fun than losing.
Speaker 2And the competition side and the iteration of mastery of the game, also mastery of self. You have to be able to handle losses, able to manage your capital, able to perform well when things aren't going your way. That is like a level of self-mastery that doesn't have to do with the talent of the game. You have to be able to perform in the middle of adversity right, which is, like you know, character building. So I think there's a lot of elements to poker that really could be used to grow the game and I think the strategic side is one that's really compelling. And you know we're here in New York. It's a huge finance capital of the world. I have some clients here and a lot of them are in finance whatever, with hedge funds and trading and options. They're the whole gambit and a lot of them in their free time they organize poker games. They play poker and they're playing for fun. They play for a small amount of money relative to the money that they're actually playing with yeah, real in their business world.
Speaker 1Hey, you want to talk about gamblers? I mean wall street man, those guys are, and they love poker.
Speaker 2Those guys are some serious camp but they like it for the camaraderie right. They can get together with all of their business colleagues and they can do something that is still competitive, which of course these people love to do. If you're like, it's a social if you're a high stakes trader.
Speaker 2You're a competitive fucking dude, right. You're a competitive fucking dude, right. You're a competitive woman. You're just that's what you're drawn to that daily adrenaline, fast-paced action in a competitive way. But then you also can like refine your thinking skills. So I have some friends in you know, VCs that love poker and they like it because, for example, they learn about things in poker that help them make better decisions in investing. They think in terms of things they learn in poker because they get so many repetitions. Right, If you're in VC, you might make one bet a month. You bet on one startup a month. That's a lot for a lot of most people, right? Even if one a year is a lot for most people, that's a lot. Most people don't bet on startups, but anyway, people in the VC space, whatever- Well you and I bet on startups.
Speaker 1That's true.
Speaker 2So you do one bet a month, you don't get that many swings. But in poker, every single hand you're thinking about okay, well, if I call preflop with a pair and I hit a set, I could make 100x my money, which is kind of like investing at a startup. If you hit a home run you 100x, if not you go to zero. So you're kind of thinking in terms of these asymmetric terms and principles, and so I think a lot of people in other areas of life not just trading, not just finance and investing, but a lot of facets of life they find interesting elements of poker that can then extrapolate to where they are in their personal life or their real world and help them make better decisions or see things through a different lens. Or they just learn to think like oh, okay, well, things don't always go my way.
Speaker 2Sometimes there's luck, and how do I? You know how do I get back up tomorrow and still compete? You know how do I bring myself back up? And like being able to recover from losses is a really important life skill. Like everyone has setbacks, but in poker you just get hammered down all the time, even if you're the best in the world, it doesn't matter, you're going to lose a lot, and so you learn to deal with losses, especially if you're a tournament player oh yeah I can't do it man I don't know.
Speaker 1I don't know how mtt players do it like I was where. Even if you're the best in the world like you, might you know what a episode two on the button was with ben heath. Yeah, so this is a guy who grinds the super high roller stuff. He basically only plays for the most part, only plays like 25ks and up yeah right, it's funny.
Speaker 2He like I talked to him and he's like I wouldn't play like the ept main, which is like a dude, incredibly high ev tournament because he's so focused on wouldn't play the just the high rollers exactly like 10 million dollars up top. Because he's so optimized for those high rollers but that just shows his work ethic and his focus. Like he's only studying he understands one format to just be a competitive level at that one thing.
Speaker 2He's not trying to do 20 things. He's just like I'm going to be the best at this one thing, but even, but like okay, so this is.
Speaker 1in my opinion, he's one of the best in the world. Yeah, I mean, can we agree on that?
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, next level.
Speaker 1Last year he was getting absolutely crushed for the whole year and then at the end of the played, you know, triton million, 500k buy-in and being 8.1 million, right um which?
Speaker 1and it's a good one to recover from, because that's a, that's a big one, I mean pretty good, right, but uh you know like, look, we know, we know, if he plays enough, if, if he has an edge he's, the money's gonna wind up in his pocket one way or the other. Um, but to go through that amount of pain to get there, yeah, I just like, I it just, it's like well, the thing is like in in live, first of all, live tournaments, the variance never evens out.
Speaker 2But in, uh, there's also, like, the human scope of measuring your reality. And so, when you play online, you know, you can look at your graph and if you play, you know these guys play 10, 12 tables and they do it every day, and at the end of the month you have thousands of tournaments and you can see your graph directionally going where it should go. Because you're realizing your edge, because your sample size is so big, right, sure, but if you play a lot and so like, you might only suffer for a shorter amount of time and, like, humans are very sensitive to the duration of things, right. So like, if you suffer for a week or a month, you can handle it. But if you're playing live tournaments and you play, a tournament a month.
Speaker 2It could go on for years. Yeah, if you play two tournaments a month, that's 24 tournaments a year. You could easily. You can not cash for 24 tournaments.
Speaker 2So like now in the grand scheme of things, like you can try to rationalize that and say well, it's only 24 tournaments, it's not a big deal, it's. It's just variance and maybe you're playing not as efficiently as you could be and there's some things you need to do to improve. But even within playing well, you can, you can try and justify it. But at the end of the day, you're still living as a human, with emotion for a year while losing. You're losing for a year of time. So it doesn't matter to you that it's 24 tournaments.
Speaker 2That only matters for your bankroll and your ev and all that but dealing with the human experience of losing for a year is is very challenging to do like that is. That is really tough and that's a phenomenon of tournaments, right, you can have great players that are losing tournament players for a year, or even if they are winning slightly or winning decently, you can have you know one or two all-ins. Right, let's say you play 30 tournaments a year, which is a lot. That's a lot of tournaments In live poker. I mean, if you play meaningful size, you might have you know 30 tournaments. You might have six, seven deep runs, you might have one or two runs down the stretch, one or two final tables, and so now you have a couple all-ins. Even if you get it in behind, right, or if you get it ahead, whatever, you might have one or two or three all-ins that if they went different, you could have doubled or tripled your result, yeah, or 10x, or you know whatever.
Speaker 1Easily.
Speaker 2I mean, dude, it's just a complete mindfuck when you really think about the variance and how sensitive all those hands are.
Speaker 1At the highest levels. They they're flipping a ton in late stage Um, because you know, try, try ends are pretty, pretty turbo structure Um they are actually I don't.
Speaker 2I mean I don't really like the structure. I mean some of the main events have good structures, but the other ones have like 35, 40 minute levels, and that's they're, they're, they're, they're.
Speaker 1It's pretty turbo-y. They're playing a lot of 10 to 20 big blind poker in the other stages which means they're often flipping and racing. You're seeing a lot of A-sec suited against King-Queens and you're seeing a lot of pairs versus.
Speaker 2Queens Pairs versus Ace-Jack, sevens versus Ace-Jack.
Speaker 1You're seeing tons of flipping for stacks and the variance one way or the other is massive. But let's digress a little bit because we're running out of time for this one. We're on a little bit of a tighter schedule than we do most episodes. I do want to chat with you a little bit about just like we can go on about the variance all day.
Speaker 2It's a mind. I mean dude. We can talk about Fascinating subject Like listen.
Speaker 1We could have a whole episode on it. I think we can do another one.
Speaker 2I know we should, because it's something people underestimate and it's like everyone underestimates it until it happens to them. We can go down that rabbit hole, go ahead.
Poker Player Talks Life and Investing
Speaker 1Well, no, I just wanted to. You're an interesting guy. I've gotten to know you a lot over the last year plus.
Speaker 2Yeah, thank you, you too. Yeah, we have gotten to know each other quite a bit, yeah, yeah, from not knowing each other at all.
Speaker 1But you do a lot of stuff outside of poker, yeah, which is very interesting. Like what have you been up to lately? Like what are your upcoming goals? Like I know you've been playing a lot lately, both live and online.
Speaker 2And, by the way, thanks for the feedback on Phenom. Like, your feedback and playing has been very, very useful to the team. Yeah, thank you. So that's the cool thing.
Speaker 2But I'd say, like about, I'm kind of like a part-time, full-time poker player. So when I'm in poker mode I'm playing full-time. My whole life and energy is dedicated to poker. But you know, tournaments are sometimes in between. Like, I play on. Like, sometimes, when I'm playing really focused online, I will be playing in between events to stay sharp and study as well. But in between, let's say, you know, barcelona and Ireland uh, there was there's a month and a half so I might play, you know, the Sundays online and then, um, depending on where I am in the world, uh, and, and in the meantime, I have other things going on. So I have, of course, I'm coaching and training and producing content, writing about poker, uh, creating content about poker, um, so that's, that's fun.
Speaker 2But then the other side is, um, you know, the investment side has been something I've been focused on over the past number of years as well, and that's really um, it's, it's really cool, because I think my edge in that comes from the things I've learned in poker and my ability to see uh patterns and understand psychology and sentiment and like where, um, what people are thinking, and learn about asymmetry and trading and so being able to dissect things quickly. I think a lot of that comes from some of the skills I have in poker and I think it sort of plays to my personality in the sense of, like being able to handle risk and understand how to manage capital, like. Those are things that I learned the hard way in poker and I made a lot of mistakes, but now that I've been in poker 20 years, segwaying into another industry, that's very similar. It's kind of like okay, well, you speak Spanish and you want to learn Italian. It's like, okay, it took a long time to learn Spanish, but if you're fluent in Spanish, going from Spanish to Italian is a lot less than going from English to Spanish, and so it's sort of like that with you know, I'm not starting over in investing because I already speak this other language that is very corollary to the language that I'm trying to compete in.
Speaker 2So making investments and things like that, it's very intuitive in a lot of ways. Obviously, there's certain things you have to learn, and there's I make plenty of mistakes, don't get me wrong. I have plenty of strikeouts, but overall you know more base hits or home runs or whatever.
Speaker 1So it's like no, I can relate because I it's a fun game.
Speaker 2It's a new challenge after poker been in 20 years Like, yes, I want to get better and keep mastering those four bet spots with the King X offsuit. It's interesting, but it's really also stimulating to play a completely new game that is a bigger game and it's a more competitive game, right.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, there is a lot of overlap, because I also trade and I also do angel investing and, at the end of the day, it comes down to collecting data and optimizing your decision making process.
Speaker 2That translates well to almost everything in life, and thinking about your risk reward too and quantifying that in terms of an EV. So, if you know, okay, I invest 10 and it has a 30% chance of going to 100, Well, your EV is positive, even though most of the time you're going to lose. But like being able to make that equation of okay, well, I understand, and then you could sort of create your bet size based on the probability.
Speaker 1Now you're coming into my stomach and that's basically like what you do every hand of poker.
Speaker 2Yeah, oh, that's awesome.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's all about pricing risk.
Speaker 2Yeah, and that's such a good topic.
Speaker 1That's how I think. Well, because I think most people fundamentally don't understand how to manage risk. They don't take enough risk and it's a function of they don't understand how to price risk, and if they switch their decision making to being able to price risk, it would allow them to take more risk because they would understand more like what is it, is it you're actually buying and risking? And like what is your expected return? And and switching your mindset into that will help people build more. Build wealth will help people understand, like how to evaluate opportunities better and manage capital better.
Speaker 1Ultimately would result in you. Know, like most, most people, if they don't understand something, they just stay away from it would result in you know, like most, most people, if they don't understand something, they just stay away from it.
Speaker 2Yeah, but also I think with risk taking, no risk is also taking a risk because you're your default.
Speaker 1Well, taking, taking no risk is is like the formula to just like stay poor yeah, there's, there's a.
Speaker 2There's a risk to taking no risk, right so?
Speaker 1society is is designed so that, like, if you don't take risk and then you don't, you know, uh, actively, uh, try to build wealth, um, you're, you're basically just going to get caught up in the rat race and there's there is no escape from that yeah, the game is sort of rigged, which is a topic for another conversation, but yeah, it is unfortunate.
Speaker 2Could write a book on that. Yeah, that is yeah, exactly. But you do have to know the game you're playing, which poker torture teaches you like, hey, are you playing mixed games? Are you playing hold them? Like what are the rules of the game I'm playing and how do you, you know, exploit those rules to gain an edge? And that's kind of like, okay, when you think about life from that principle, you think use that as a heuristic that you learn in poker. You're like, okay, these are the rules of the game, this is the strategy to beat the game. And, you know, are certain things that are arguably unfair? I agree completely. There are things that are like unfair about the game, but that is the game. So you have to understand the game and you have to be able to play the game.
Speaker 1And know the game you're playing Super interesting topics that I really think that we should talk about more on like on camera. Are you down to come back and do another one? Yeah?
Speaker 2we should do it. Maybe not just poker. Yeah, we should do it. I'm also, um, also working on a book proposal about lessons from poker that apply to life, and so I'm segmenting into the different chapters um of like lessons I've learned in poker of, you know, mistakes I've made or stories I've had or things I've learned, and then kind of extrapolating principles that I think apply to generic decision-making. So that's something else. Yes, what I'm working on.
Speaker 1That's something else I'm working on. Hopefully I love it. Well, let's all right.
Speaker 2Come back to it another time.
Speaker 1You heard it from Alec. We're going to have him back on. We're going to talk about other non-poker related topics. He's obviously, like Alec's, a really sharp guy. Appreciate it, thank you. If you want, follow him on X at Alec Torelli, or it's everywhere at Alec.
Speaker 2Torelli.
Speaker 1Just make sure you're following at Alec Torelli and then, if you, want to get on his newsletter or get in touch with him about coaching and poker stuff? Consciouspokercom.
Speaker 2Sorry, I did all your plugging for you. Thank you, better for me. I appreciate it. No, man, good to have you. Yeah, this is awesome. Thank you for watching. I'll see you guys next time.
