Digital Social Hour - Avoid These Costly Poker Mistakes: Insider Tips | Phil Galfond DSH #786

Episode Date: October 6, 2024

Ready to elevate your poker game? 🎲 Tune in now for an exclusive episode of Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly, where poker pro Phil Galfond shares insider tips to help you avoid costly mistakes at the table. 🤯 Discover the truth about skill vs. luck in high roller tournaments and learn why field size matters more than buy-ins. 🏆 Packed with valuable insights into the psychology of poker, Phil's personal experiences, and the fascinating dynamics of the poker world, this episode is a must-watch! Join the conversation and gain access to secrets that only the pros know. Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🚀 Don't miss out on this engaging and informative episode that's sure to enhance your poker prowess. 🃏 CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:25 - Phil Galfond 02:06 - Skill in Poker Strategy 07:17 - Drama and Controversies in Poker 09:34 - Cheating Scandals in Poker 11:30 - Online vs In-Person Poker Experience 14:09 - Generational Poker Players 15:54 - Increasing Skill Levels in Poker 17:24 - Journey to Discovering Poker 20:59 - Privacy in Cash Games 22:05 - Friendships Among Poker Players 23:10 - Profitability in Poker Career 25:20 - High Stakes Poker Insights 28:14 - Phil's Heads-Up Record 32:00 - Understanding Omaha Poker 32:58 - Using Solvers for Poker Strategy 34:44 - Analyzing Losses with Solvers 36:53 - Intangibles in Poker Success 39:56 - Opponent's Range Analysis 41:08 - Warren Kimer's Influence 42:40 - Online Poker Challenges 46:00 - Where to Find Phil Galfond APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] GUEST: Phil Galfond https://www.instagram.com/phil.galfond https://www.youtube.com/philgalfond1 https://www.tiktok.com/@phil.galfond SPONSORS: Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You! With Admi on the new Google Pixel 9 Pro, never rely on a stranger again. Add yourself to any group photo through the magic of AI. Get yours with TELUS at telus.com slash pixel9pro. Would you say there's more skill, though, in the high roller tournaments than low tournaments? In a sense, there is. But it's not about the buy-in so much as it's about the field size. When you play in a tournament with 40 people, the it's not about the buy-in so much as it's about the field size.

When you play in a tournament with 40 people, the long run doesn't take as long. So if you don't get first, second, third, or fourth, you're not making money, and that takes a lot of luck to get there. All right, guys. Got a poker pro here, Phil Galfond. Thanks for coming on, man. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

During the main event, too, so I appreciate it. Yeah, no problem. Day one went well? Day one went really well, yeah. I mean, but, you know, it's a really long tournament. I try to not get excited about it until day four. Right. Because at this point, you know, 10,000 people or so play,

and it's just, like, if you're good, you have a lottery ticket to, like, you know, one out of 2,000. And if you're average, it's one out of 10,000. But it's just, it's such a long grind and, you know, any individual tournament

is so much luck that I try not to get, you know, emotions tied up in it. I try not to get too attached. Yeah, you were saying off camera, 96% luck

for these big tournaments. Yeah, I mean, I made that number up, but that's what, like any individual tournament that you play is like almost all luck. There's a little element of skill. And then over time, that little element of skill, you know, shows itself in the long run

where, where pros win over time. But especially as a tournament pro, which I've never been, you can go a long time without winning. Wow. And we just saw it with Negreanu, right? 10 years. Yeah. I mean, he, so he managed, he just came back and won like a really awesome bracelet. I think it's his seventh after, you know, winning six, you know, but way back. He's continued to win in tournaments, win money in tournaments most years. And he actually is one of the only people I know of that posts his results drought in the world series of poker. Um, and I mean, I think that's the perfect example of somebody who's a great player who's continuing to show that he's a great player because he's winning overall, but, but in world series of poker tournaments, even though he plays a lot of them each year, he didn't, he didn't win one for, he didn't win one for a decade. Um, and that's just, yeah, like luck, luck plays a big, big role. Would you say there's more skill though in the high roller tournaments than low tournaments?

So in a sense, there is, but it's not about the buy-in so much as it's about the field size. So when you play in a tournament with 40 people, the long run doesn't take as long because it's not as much of a crapshoot. The money's not all like... Like when you play, let's say, a 3,000-person tournament,

all the money is in the top four spots. So if you don't get first, second, third or fourth, you're, you're, you're not making money. And that takes a lot of luck to get there. But when you play a 40 person tournament, yeah, all the money is still in, you know, the top four spots, but you get there much more often. And so the long run doesn't take as long. Okay. I just assumed because the people are better if they could afford the higher buy-in. Yeah. Well, better and they're it's a it's a tougher field to plan by quite a bit but um you know in in the like in the in the huge tournaments a pro's edge can be really high um so you'll look at it like there are two two stats that you track as a tournament player again which i'm not, but one is ITM percentage, in the money percentage, and the other is ROI, so return on investment.

And so in like a high roller tournament, somebody's ROI over a long period of time, I mean, people are guessing their ROIs, but it's going to be, you know, they're making, you know, maybe 10%, so 110%, you know. A year? No, no, no.

So like an individual tournament. So let's say they buy in for 200K. Yeah. And they're one of the better players in the field. On average, they'll win 20K. Okay. But the average takes a long time to hit. Yeah.

In a big tournament like the main event, I mean, people think that, people speculate that you can have, you know, 300, 400% ROI. I remember I was, I was sitting in a cash game, high stakes cash game at Aria. This was 15 years ago or so. And I, I believe it was JC Tran and I forget the other player he was talking to, but he was trying to back this other player for the main event. And the other player was asking the table,

like, is this a good deal? He was giving him 70%, which means I'm going to give you 10K and you get to keep 70% of the winnings. I'm only going to keep 30%, which means like, I think you're a huge, huge favorite to make that a profitable investment for me. And I was just like,

yeah, you have to take that. That's too good. And then JC took 10K out of his stack and pushed it towards me and like I could afford to play in the main event this was a big a big bigger cash game but I was just like yeah that's too good so I took it so the one year I was backed in the main event because uh because it just happened in a cash game he was offering a really good deal but that shows you um how much of an edge people think that that a great player can have in the

main how'd you do I didn't cash. Was he pissed? No, no. They're used to losing, I bet. Kick off an exciting football season with BetMGM, an official sportsbook partner of the National Football League. Yard after yard, down after down, the sportsbook, born in Vegas, gives you the chance to take action to the end zone and celebrate every highlight reel play. And as an official sportsbook partner of the NFL,

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Add yourself to any group photo through the magic of AI. Get yours with TELUS at telus.com slash pixel9pro. Yeah, and I mean, when you, like part of being a poker player, even if you don't back other players, a lot of times you'll take pieces of each other. So in tournaments, you'll often have like people swap 1% or 2% in these high roller tournaments, or like in a big field tournament, like 5%.

Oh, really? Yeah, and also, you know, people play in games, whether it's cash games or tournaments, and it's just a little bit too big for their bankroll and they're trying to be responsible. And so one thing they can do is sell a percentage of their action at a markup. I've seen that, yeah. But also, in my career, I've never done that. I've just sold the extra pieces to friends. And then when they play something that's a little too big for them, they sell me it back at face value. And what I always say, like sometimes when I buy action from somebody, they'll come back and say like, sorry, I lost. I'm like, come on. And sometimes they'll say, sorry, like I blew this. Like I made this mistake.

And I always say, every poker player makes mistakes all the time. And if I'm investing in you, I'm investing in the fact that I believe you'll make fewer mistakes than the time. And if I'm investing in you, I'm investing in the fact that I believe you'll make fewer mistakes than other people, but it's not because I don't think you'll make mistakes. I'm investing in, in the good and the bad. Right. Um, and so people in poker who have done enough of that understand that not only is there a lot of luck involved, but people have good days and bad days, good hands and bad hands. Yeah. I didn't know you could buy people's action in the same tournament as you. Yeah.

You can kind of spread your money out. Yeah, you can spread your money out. It happens a lot. There's like a – there's a – sometimes people, especially in the high rollers because there's kind of smaller fields, there are people who watch, who complain about it because they think it's like unethical. And if you were swapping like 40% in a 40-person tournament, I think that would be

because there are spots that would come up where it's just like, you would be incentivized to collude. Right. You could fold a good hand. Yeah. Yeah. But at 2%, at 3%, at 5%, it just, you're not going to run into them. It just, well, like you, you might run into them in a small person field, but if you've swapped 3%, it just kind of doesn't matter it doesn't change the way you play so it doesn't give other players an unfair disadvantage that makes sense yeah it's not like you're backing their whole yeah bankroll because that probably wouldn't be allowed right no i mean there are no rules against it because you don't need to disclose it oh wow there's no there's no way anybody would know unless you want them to so there are no technical rules against it but know, the poker community has a lot of self-policing and calling out. I noticed that. Yeah. People

that do that. Yes. Yeah. Doug Polk, man. There's drama. Yeah. There's drama, you know, every, every month there's a new, I know a new drama bomb. I was upset with the Tom Dwan one. Cause I grew up in Jersey where, where he grew up and that was like one of my favorite players. Yeah. No, I mean, Tom, uh, like early on, he was one of my best friends in poker. He, he, he taught me a lot, especially when I moved from no limit hold'em to PLO and like he had been playing it for a few years. I, I didn't know anything and it was actually, he's, he's a very generous person. And I just remember I had known him for like six months cause we ran in the same circle of, of poker friends, but I didn't really know him that well. And he, uh,

he was telling me I should get into PLO and I was like, well, you know, I don't know the first thing about it. He's like, Oh, just watch me play. And then he like, I sat down next to him as he played for six hours. Um, and that's something that, you know, someone of that stature, um, like to just give that away without thinking about it is, is, is really kind. Right.

That's interesting. So you got to know him personally. Yeah. Yeah. Were you shocked when all that stuff came out or? I mean, you hear things when you're part of the poker circles and there are people have different side of the story.

There was like the, the one, there were a few different things, but I think like two people involved in the drama, or, you know, Peter Jetten Peter Jetten and Horolibus. And I'm friends with both of them too. So it was all, I was sad to see it. Yeah, your own friends fighting.

Yeah, but yeah, I don't know. I feel confident. Like Tom and I don't hang out as much as we used to, but I just like, I got to know him so, so well back then. I'm confident that, that he's,

he's a good person who means well. And I think sometimes like what it sounded like happened, he can be like, he can be aloof. And so he can lose track of things. He can also like think that it's going to think that some things are going to come together and he's going to be able to like, yeah. So I think that it's, it's accidental. It's still, you know, like if, if we're to take, let's say Peter's story at face value, which I have no reason to distrust him. It's still not fair to Peter, but I don't think Tom does those things intentionally if that's, if that's what he did, which, you know, I don't know.

And a lot of cheating. Yeah, there's always, I mean, any activity where there's a lot of money to be made will bring some cheaters, scammers. Have you run into any in your games? You usually don't know when you get cheated. No, I mean, I do've been i've been not paid okay many times but as far as actual cheating other than going way back to like i don't know if you're familiar

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Other than that, no, nothing. I don't know of times I've been cheated, but I probably have been. There was a site recently online that got exposed, right? Doug exposed a site. There was, I'm trying to think. So there was a vulnerability that was exploited in GG's software. I mean, GG's the biggest site. And apparently, and I, again, I want to be careful

because this is my hazy recollection of what was said by all parties, but what I think happened was they pushed an update to the software and it it opened a vulnerability that somebody who was actually like a hacker a developer figured out how to exploit and because of this vulnerability he could see cards that were going to come before they came wow and it's a huge edge yeah yeah it's a massive edge and it's unclear how long he exploited that for, at least to me, I don't know. But they did figure it out and close it.

And so, yeah, the ultimate bet scandal was actually like an inside job, somebody at the company who could see everybody's cards. Wow. So that's like, whereas this more recent GG scandal was just an oversight, like an accident. Got it. By the developers that somebody, you know, like I'm not not a hacker i wouldn't have been able to exploit it but because

somebody had these skills and noticed it and yeah do you prefer playing online or in person i prefer online really yeah i i there's something about i mean part of it is that i'm introverted i just like being at a live poker table for like 12 hours and just like, even just the social element, I get burnt out. But there's also something about poker where like poker for me, I just absolutely love it. And I love diving into the problem solving of it. And so when I'm playing online and I'm just thinking through each and every decision, I get into this flow state that is just so fun. And when I'm playing live, I don't get into that because I'm just interrupted. I have to think about like, okay, my posture, what's my face look like? Am I moving correctly?

Oh, I have to talk to this person now. And I've talked to this person now. It just like breaks the flow and it break it. There are a lot of things that distract from just like the purity of the game that I have. Wow. I never saw that point of view but that makes sense there's a lot of factors in person right yeah because people are so good at tells at your level oh yeah so you have to like yeah it's funny like after a day of poker live like my body hurts i'm just like sitting stiff like this yeah you know i didn't even know they were looking at your posture yeah i mean here's the thing i think a lot of people are terrified like a lot of amateurs and even people who play a decent amount are terrified that players are going to pick up tells again i'm making up a number but

you know 95 of people out there who think that they're picking up tells are not they're just like they're seeing noise there's confirmation bias and you know like they say oh he he moved his like he moved his chips this way i think he's weak and then he shows down a weak hand they're seeing noise, there's confirmation bias. And, you know, like they say, oh, he moved his chips this way. I think he's weak. And then he shows down a weak hand. They're like, yes, I knew it. I was right. And then the next time it happens, they show down a strong hand and they like ignore that.

And so they think they have these tells that they don't. But there are some people who are very elite at tells and those people can be dangerous. Phil Ivey, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, that dude is a machine. Yeah, he is. I mean, so dude is a machine. Yeah, he is. I mean, so we all just have to guess who's great at tells by the way that they play.

And I mean, some people talk about how they're good at tells and how it's a big part of their game. Others don't. But I think Phil Hellmeath's another one. Just based on the way that I see him play, there's a lot of some way or another he's guessing pretty well what other people have. Interesting. I mean, there's no lot of some, some way or another, he's guessing pretty well what other, what other people have. Interesting. I mean, there's no arguing with his results. He might be the goat of tournaments. Yeah. World series of poker bracelets. Nobody's, nobody's close to him. And it's impressive. Um, I mean, it's impressive for many reasons, but it's impressive that, you know, he was somebody who did it kind of before my generation and continues to,

you know, every, I don't know how of before my generation and continues to, you know, every, I don't know how many, every year or two, I've managed to win another bracelet. How many people are still around from your generation? So my generation, I'm about to turn 40. And this, my generation was like the online boom, which was so 2003, Chris Moneymaker won the world series of poker. And that coincided with a lot of online poker sites popping up around you know within a year or two of that and just like that that event like it was a tv poker boom which led to the online poker boom and um there are a ton of players still around from my generation a lot of them and a lot of a lot of top players came like most top players these days i would say

is that true at least i think half came from my generation. Oh, wow. More or less. So they're still around. Yeah, they are. Because I look at the old TV shows and I'm like, which one of these guys are still around and making money? Because poker is a really tough game to be profitable in.

Yeah. So if you watch TV back then, poker on TV back then, like the high stakes pokers, which was just the best. A lot of those guys are not around anymore. And that was a generation before mine who kind of started, basically the way I split the generations is who started playing online by playing online and who started by playing live before online happened. And so a lot of people from that generation aren't around anymore, partially. I mean, some did very well and retired and moved on to other things um but others it got too tough because all players who came up online they had so many more tools to learn with and the natural selection process was just so much more powerful

because there were so many more people playing online so the ones that rose to the top had to rise to the top in a much tougher environment. And so they just got sharpened along the way. And when you're pulling from that large of a base of people who try, you're going to find more elite people. Absolutely. Have you seen the skill level go up every year? There was a big gap, honestly. So in 2011, we call it a Black Friday in the poker world where online poker shut down in the U.S. And at that point, there stopped being, I mean, basically that was kind of marked the end of the poker boom back then. The poker shows on TV were largely funded by the online poker sites. So in some cases, they actually just paid for the production. They paid like Game Show Network to put the show on. The poker shows on TV were largely funded by the online poker sites. So in some cases, they actually just paid for the production.

They paid like Game Show Network to put the show on. In other cases, they were the commercials. So therefore, you know, the networks could make money from the commercials and then put the shows on. So when they got shut down in the U.S., which was far and away their biggest market, like half of revenue from online poker sites, which were global, came from the US. Wow. So when that was shut down, they got crushed and the poker boom kind of stopped and there was a long lull in new players coming up.

And only in the last several years has it picked up again. It's because of YouTube. So at first it was tv um but then the money was gone so the networks were not producing more shows um but then on youtube you don't need a network to put your show on and a lot of people kind of started well there were two there were twitch streamers and then there were vloggers right that kind of started it and now they're a whole bunch of different kinds of poker youtube channels. I have one that's more educational than,

than vloggy. Yeah. I feel like guys like Brad Owen really revitalized poker, right? Absolutely. And now when you like anybody, so my wife plays a lot of tournaments. She's a poker player too.

And I don't get out there as much, but she says like anytime she sees somebody who's like under 24, she gets curious. I like playing in a reasonably high buying tournament. She's like, how did you find poker? How did you start out? And then it's almost always YouTube. Wow.

Yeah. Yeah. And now there's like these lodges, right? Yeah. Streaming games. Tons of streaming games. Yeah. Yeah.

That's become really big. Yeah. So first it was the bloggers. And now, I mean, people still, still do those, those blogs, but I do think streaming is now getting, yeah, more. It's getting massive. There's million dollar games being streamed now. Yeah. It's insane. Yeah. I mean, people still do those vlogs, but I do think streaming is now getting more views. It's getting massive. There's million-dollar games being streamed now.

Yeah. It's insane. Yeah, and these are the types of games that used to be on cable back when I was younger, and now they just stream them for free. Nuts. What's the highest buy-in game you've played? I played in a game.

The blinds were 2,000, 4,000,s were $2,000, $4,000. So it was $400,000 minimum. Oh my gosh. Were you freaking out? A little bit. So it was like a, so I had regularly played in $500,000, $1,000, which is $100,000 buying. That was normal for me.

But I'd never played even double that. And this was quadruple that. And it was a private game, which I never get into, but there was just this, like I had a friend reach out and he's like, okay, this huge game was running, but people are leaving and they're actually open seats. So sometimes they run private games in casinos and they block people until there are just no more people

to fill the seats and then it's kind of open. And sometimes what happens is then pros fill the seats and the game breaks, people leave. But, um, but sometimes they continue for a while. And so friends were like, Hey, there's a seat. And I was like, okay, I don't have 400K right now. And I'm like, you need a few buy-ins. So like I had, I don't know, I probably had like 300K in my account there. And so I had to contact like six friends and was like, okay, uh, do you want a piece? I need some money right now. And it was like a huge hassle to get all of it together and get there. And then, you know, I lost a couple of small pots.

I lost like $150,000 and the game broke in like 20 minutes. 20 minutes? Yeah. Damn. That's nuts. Yeah. 400K buying. And that was just at a casino casually?

Yeah, it was Aria. Oh my gosh. I didn't know the games got that big over there. Yeah. They don't these days. They used to have a private game that ran there. I mean, semi-private game that ran there all the time. It was usually like $100,000 buy-in, but sometimes got bigger. But these days, I don't know of any that run in casinos

in the public poker rooms. A lot of them have gone into apartments or homes. Why did the casinos kind of get away from that, you think? I think it's more that the people who ran them, to avoid things like what happened. Seats would open and people would get in, whereas if you can go in somebody's home, they control the environment. Pros can't show up and knock on their door and get into the game. The benefit of having it at a casino, in addition to the amenities,

is that you can have more confidence that the game is safe. There are a lot of stories of home games being cheated. And certainly not all of them are. But it happens a lot more often in home games, whereas in a casino, they have all these security measures. And it's not that it can't happen, but it happens a lot more often in home games, whereas in a casino, they have all these security measures. And it's not that it can't happen, but it happens much, much more rarely. Especially with that much money involved.

Yeah. I mean, hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes millions. Yes. I've heard of home games getting in the millions. Yeah. Which is nuts. Yeah, no, they get huge.

The biggest games are, you know, run out of casinos in people's homes. Do you still play a lot right now? Right now, no, because I kind of have nothing to play. So, um, but before we hopped on, I was saying, I don't really play tournaments. Tournaments are not my thing. I play cash games and cash games have all gone private. And so the only thing,

if I wanted to play high stakes now in a public game, it's basically just tournaments are my only option. Wow. Cause you're too good. You won't get invited basically. Yeah. I mean, there are some games who You won't get invited, basically. Yeah. I mean, there are some games who they don't really care who they play with and they will invite you, but they haven't called me. And yeah, usually what happens is there's a host who runs a game and they either make money from the game like rake or they make money playing in the game or like maybe they

don't play in the game, but they back a couple of people in the game and they make money playing in the game or maybe they don't play in the game, but they back a couple people in the game and they make money that way. And so they don't want good players in unless you're going to have a good player that they have a piece of potentially. And so, yeah, they try to, sometimes pros get in, but usually it's just because they're friends

with the people in the game and they like their presence there. Makes sense. But not too many of them usually. In other sports, it seems like there's rivalries, but in poker, it seems like you guys are all friends. Is that true? Like all the top guys?

I mean, yeah, it's kind of interesting how it works because you make friends with your peers and then sit down across the table from them and take a lot of money from them, lose a lot of money to them, and then go down across the table from them and take a lot of money from them, lose a lot of money to them, and then go have dinner. Yeah, I mean, there are, not everybody loves each other.

There are people who dislike each other, but I wouldn't say there are rivalries in the same way that there are in other sports, yeah. Yeah, I noticed that. It's fascinating to me. Like you take 100 grand from someone and go get catch right after it. Yeah, yeah.

Like nothing happened. Like I would imagine that, I guess I don't know, other than I don't know this world other than watching, you know, fictional TV shows. But I would imagine like lawyers might have the same kind of thing. There's that respect, right?

Yeah, it's just like, yeah, this is the job. I'm going to try my best. You're going to try your best. Like as long as we're playing fairly, this is the game. Like this is what we signed up for. We're two people. We understood the rules. We sat down at the table and we're going to try to take each other's money while we're at the game. Like this is what we signed up for. We're two people. We understood the rules. We sat down at the table

and we're going to try to take each other's money while we're at the table. But then, yeah, we can be friends. Makes sense. Have you been profitable the whole way through every year?

I had a, let's see, one or two years. I had like a break-even year. I had a slightly losing year, but yeah, it's been 20 years. That's impressive.

Mostly profitable. Yeah. That's like unheard of in poker, I feel like slightly losing year, but yeah, it's been 20 years. That's impressive. Mostly profitable. Yeah. That's like unheard of in poker, I feel like. In tournaments, it's actually not as unheard of as you might think. In tournaments, there are more losing years than in cash games. And you do kind of have some control over it. It's actually, it's pretty annoying if you live in the u.s because um if you have a let's say a winning year um you know you pay taxes on your winnings and if you have a losing year

um you know you can't carry those losses forward right so like if i lose 500k this year then i make 500k last year i'm actually down money because i've paid tax on the 500k i won and i didn't get any back on the 500k I lost. So you actually, there's an element of strategy where it's like, okay, it's October. How am I doing on the year? And like, what risks can I take? Because you just really don't want to have a losing year. That makes sense. Same with crypto though. I've lost it. I mean, it's down bad right now. Yeah. But you can, I think in crypto and I might be wrong, you can carry losses forward, at least like capital, like, so like capital gains, which is long, if you've held for over

a year. Yeah. I know that like capital gains, capital loss, you can carry forward. I think it's so minimal what you can carry though. Yeah. Like I think if, I don't know the exact number, I don't want to misquote it, but I remember I lost a lot and they were like, you can carry over this amount. And it was so little that didn't really matter.

You know, similar with stocks, I think. And it was so little that didn't really matter. Interesting. You know, similar with stocks, I think. Yeah. So that changes the strategy. Yeah. But 20 years and only one losing year, man. Congrats. Thank you.

For real. You've really found, and you love the game. It's like you found that perfect. I love the game. Right now I don't have games to play. It's kind of sad. But I'll like, it ebbs and flows especially the the kind of like very high stakes poker economy it just changes like what where the action is like the last few years it has been high stakes

tournaments and and home games cash games but in years past it's jumped around and and you know it might go back online and you never know have you played against against Alan Keating yet? No, actually. I mean, have we ever? Maybe like 15 years ago, but no. Wow. He's everywhere now. Yeah, yeah. What about Nick Erbel? I haven't played against him either.

I arbitrated a match between him and Matt Berkey, which was quite an adventure. Who won that? Matt Berkey won. It was a million-dollar heads-up match. Damn. Because they had a rivalry. Yeah. There was a lot of smack talk beforehand and finally someone issued a challenge. I suspect though. Yeah. Made the best man win. It's funny. So I've played a lot of heads up matches, never,

never stemming from a rivalry, but there are a lot of matches that have started as kind of like poker beef that, um, often what happens is they play and then afterwards they they gain respect for each other and um so like the biggest one that happened was down around who dug poke i saw that so like they they really disliked each other and after the match i think both gain respect for each other and i i don't really know their you know friendship status but i think it like certainly the way that they felt about each other changed yeah as a result of playing against somebody and i've played a lot of challenges like that's the main poker i've played in the last uh four years has been heads up really like months at a time challenges yeah wow um because that's like the most fun to

me so like i love i love hand reading across multiple streets i think i was telling you that before we hopped on but i also just love breaking down the tendencies of one person and like really trying to figure out how they think and how they feel and adjusting to them. And so a one-on-one match over like three months is just like, I love it. That's the most skill right there, right?

I mean, you could, it's the most interesting skill, I think like that's the part I find most interesting. Tournaments where, you know, you end up just, like, getting all in pre-flop a lot, I think that's a much less, like, I don't have fun with that. However, tournaments are super dynamic because the stack sizes vary all the time.

So, like, cash games, you're usually deep stack, and so there's not a lot of variation hand-to-hand in terms of how that affects strategy. But in tournaments, stacks change all the time. So you're always having to adjust the way that you play because, oh, now there's a big stack on my left. Oh, now I don't have as many chips. Got it.

And as you approach the money, there's ICM, it's called, which comes from independent chip model. It doesn't matter. But basically, if we're playing a tournament and there are three of us left and we all have even stacks and first place pays a million, second place pays 500K, third place 250K. If you and I get all in on a coin flip, we both lose because the player who's left automatically moves up into the top two spots.

And so in tournaments, you don't want to take certain risks. And depending on what the stack sizes are, how close you are to the money, how big the pay jumps are, it changes strategy all the time. So I think tournaments are extremely skillful. There's so much to think about, but it's not the skill that I find interesting. Right. What's your heads up record? So I issued a, it was called the Galfon Challenge. And this was kind of in my return to poker after focusing on business for a few years. And I played, I organized a series of matches that were extended.

And the first one was a really tough one against an online player called Benny Vidi. Nobody knew his real name. I know his name, but I don't think anybody does. Just because we talked to arrange the match. And it was a 25,000 hand match, which I thought was going to take a couple months. It took like three months.

And it started out terribly. Oh, yeah? It started out as bad as it could go. And it was really tough because this was like my return to the spotlight. That was your first match back? You know, just like lose and lose and lose. So this was a $20,000 buy-in, 100, 200 blinds. And I was down after like 10,000 hands,

I was down 45 buy-ins. Wow. Which was, well, it was 900K. We were playing in Euro. So like over a million US. Holy crap. And I, at that point, we had a side bet um where i was risking like 200k on the who wins the the match but at that point i'm like not going to come back

and win it's just too far uh out there were betting markets but they had closed at that point because it was just too astronomical and um i thought about quitting at that point i actually took some time off and decided if i wanted to continue and i continued um and kind of just it long story short um it was kind of just like it was seeming like this fairy tale where i started and i started winning and then continued to win and continue to win and i'll before i know it you know i'm not down a million, I'm down 500 K and now I'm down 300 K. And we got to a point with, uh, about 2000 hands left in the match and we were back to even. Wow. And so like obviously, um, at the beginning, there was a lot of luck going on in his favor. Um, we both don't know who the better player was, you know, usually when the swing is that big,

it's going to be because you're outmatched. But you never really know. Like the chances of that happening if I were the favorite were like 1% or 2%. Dang. But it's still possible. But then also on the return, the flip side is true. So anyways, then it was anyone's game. And it actually came down to the last like 50 hands.

Holy crap. So the way that the structure works, because there's a side bet, if you're up enough money at some point, you could just kind of like effectively take a knee and fold the rest of your hands. Like, so just pay the blinds and you're automatically gonna win.

You're gonna win the $200,000 side bet. And I thought that was gonna happen at like, 500 hands left or 1,000 hands left. But it was just so close throughout the whole time. And it was 50 hands left that I made a full house over a full house against him and won a pot that put me just over the edge. And I could fold the last 50 hands. Wow. And so that,

it was like, it was such a, a storybook ending. Like you couldn't have written it any better. What a comeback then. And so I won that and then I won the next four. So I'm five for five. Holy crap. In those matches so far.

I have one with Daniel Jungleman Cates. You beat Dan Cates? No, we're actually halfway through and we're like, we're like dead. Even, um, you'd be him. I mean,

not much better people than him in the world. Yeah. He's fantastic. He's fantastic at every game. So these, these matches were all in, um, Potlum and Omaha,

which is my specialty. Uh, if I played, if I played Dan and heads up, no limit hold them. He, he beat me up. Um,

I haven't, that hasn't been my game for like 15 years. Got it. So Omaha, what's, what's that game look like? So it's dealt like Hold'em, except you have four cards instead of two. And you have to use two of them.

Got it. So in Hold'em, you could end up using just one of your cards and the board. But in Omaha, you have to use two. And it's pot limit instead of no limit, which means you can only bet up to the amount that's in the pot. You can't overbet can't overbet. Interesting. And, um, I kind of found that game,

like I was saying earlier, um, I learned it at the very beginning from Tom, Tom Dwan. And, um, it was just because online, the highest stakes games had kind of moved from no limit over to PLO. And I liked to follow the high stakes games cause I wanted to keep playing big. And so I learned it and it just kind of stuck for me something about it. I don't know. Um, so yeah, that became my specialty and actually I love no limit hold'em, but I've had no opportunities to really like learn it again and play like no reason to learn it again and play it. Yeah. Do you use those analyzers? Yeah. Yeah. yeah you have you have to use solvers to play at a i shouldn't say that i think you should you'd be silly to not use them if you want to play

at a very high level oh wow but i also think that beginners should not start out that way it's too complicated for beginners it's too complicated they're going to misapply everything because what a solver will give you is it'll give you the exact strategy that it would play in any given conditions but poker is so big there are so many ways that the action can go there are so many different flop combinations with turn and river and so many different hands that you can have that there's just like nobody can memorize it there's no chance so what you have to do is not like look at the strategies and memorize them. You have to look at the strategies and say, okay, why is it doing this? Why is this the right way to play with these hands? And then what are those heuristics that I can take away? And then when I'm in a hand,

not try to think back, oh, what was the, what was it doing here? Think back to, oh, well, what like human logic can I use to figure this spot out? Interesting. So you're kind of thinking like an AI almost. Yeah. Because they don't tell you how, they don't give you reasons for what they do. They just say, play this hand this way. Um, kind of like, you know, the chess engines, I think I know chess engines are more advanced. Um, and maybe they explain more now. I don't know, but yeah, it's just like, this is the move. I don't know why it's the move. You got to figure it out. And so the way to study with solvers, in my opinion, to get the information out faster

and actually have it usable as a human with our limitations for our weak human minds is to figure out kind of what it's thinking, even though it's not thinking in the same way we do. Do you analyze all your losses with solvers? Yeah, I mean, I look back at, not all of them, no. I tend to look at spots that I found interesting. So there are some times where, you know,

you feel like you played a hand really well and you're pretty confident that you understand the spot, but it just didn't go your way that time. But when I'm playing a hand and i find myself in a spot i'm just like i'm lost here uh that's when i i get really interested in my got it yeah when you get a weird bluff or something yeah something that just yeah you can't yeah it's confusing yeah it's unique you play chess too i don't i mean i know the rules but yeah i'm a chess player i notice a lot of them are switching to poker though right now a lot of

yeah a lot of chess players play poker. A lot of Magic the Gathering. Magic the Gathering? Yeah. Wow. A lot of pros started in Magic the Gathering a long time ago. Yeah. Interesting.

I guess it is strategy. Yeah. I don't know how that game works, but. Yeah, I actually don't know. I remember those cards growing up. They were all, like, shiny and stuff. Yeah. Wow, man.

So what's the next move for you? So right now, like I was saying, I don't have games to play. I'm playing the main event right now kind of for fun because, I mean, it's the most fun tournament of the year. But I've started doing group coaching. Okay. And I've really kind of fallen in love with it. So I've been a've really kind of fallen in love with it. So I've long taught, I've,

I've been a poker coach like, uh, through, through training videos for about 15 years. Like I, and I've always just taught like high level strategy to pros and through videos. And I, I love to teach and it comes naturally to me. So I've always done that, but this group coaching experience is new and I'm really focusing a lot more on teaching poker players instead of like the actual skills to play poker and strategy like everything surrounding being a professional and having a good kind of life and career while playing poker professionally because you know this I'm almost 40 now and I've kind of lived through it and I've gained a lot of experience that I wish I had had when I was 25 right and so catching some people when they are 25, when they're 30,

they haven't learned these lessons. And I mean, I've coached people older than me too, uh, in this program, but, um, I I've just like really enjoyed working with people more directly. That's cool. The intangibles, right? That's not really talked about or taught anywhere. I've never seen it taught. Yeah. It's rare. There are, there are, so there are mindset coaches that will focus on performance. Um, and they have, I mean, in a lot of sports, they'll have these, you know, like, um, sports psychologists or, um, and in poker, uh, one, the one who I work with now, uh, Elliot Rowe, he's the most well-known he's, uh, does like hypnotherapy. Um, and I would do that, you know, pre-session during my Galfon challenges to,

to get ready for the day. Um, but yeah, what I'm doing is not so much that, but it's more kind of just like holistic approach to like being efficient, productive, performing and studying and like not making mistakes. Right, because they're an athlete. That's the way I see it. You know, you got to take care of your body, your mental health.

You do. And that's something we didn't, a lot of poker players these days are very healthy. 15 years ago, that was not the case. case you know it was mountain dew and gummy worms and facts smoking at the table back then yeah yeah now i feel like any mental edge can give you a huge edge i i believe so especially when you're playing the type of poker i do where it's usually against a pro one-on-one and you And we both think we're the better player. One of us is wrong, who knows? But I know that I could show up on a given day

and be the better player by quite a bit and then show up on the next day and be the worst player. So much of the edge comes from figuring out these nuanced spots in a way that you can only figure out if you're just like reaching that top 10% of your, your brain. Um, and so, yeah, there are times where, you know, just in an individual hand, I'll, I'll figure something out and I'll be like, okay, this is like a figuring that out in this moment where in a 20 K buying game just made me eight K like just, just this one decision right here and so

and those are the decisions you miss if you're like auto-piloting if you're not all the way focused um and those just that's where the win rate comes from is in tough games now if you're playing in in softer games you can auto-pilot doesn't matter because people's mistakes are gonna just just kind of throw they're gonna throw money to throw money at you. Right. But when you're playing against pros who are really good, it comes from outmaneuvering them in some really tricky spots. Yeah, because they've seen everything, right? So have you. So it's about those little details.

Yeah. They're not going to make a huge mistake. Right. And I'm not going to make a huge mistake. So it's about figuring out what kinds of mistakes your opponent's making and adjusting to them, both like adjusting your overall strategy, but also then in an individual hand, think about, okay, so if he were to get here and play this spot correctly, he would have to bluff all of these hands and you'd have to value would have played these hands this way on a previous street. And I don't think he knows to bluff this, this, and this.

Cause like what I've, what I've seen from him, you know? And so then I realized something that goes from like a break, even call or fold decision goes to like a very clear fold and call would have been a huge mistake. Wow. So you're analyzing that many hands.

Oh yeah. Yeah. So like thinking about your opponent's range of hands, all the hands that they could play that way is kind of the name of the game in high level strategy. It's just, you know, there's an element, I think on, you know, poker on TV and movies, people think you just look at the person, you're like, I know you have ace king.

But those kinds of things are pretty rare. It's okay, I think you could have ace king or ace queen or ace Jack or Jack's plus, or I think you'd have, you know, middle set or, or bottom pair. I think you'd have a miss straight draw and you think of all of the hands that they could have.

And then you think of their actions and say, okay, well, which of their actions have, have led me to want to eliminate some of these hands. And so you're like, okay, so we did that on the flop,

cross that one out, cross that one out. Okay, on the turn, he did this. He wouldn't do that with this hand. He wouldn't do that with this hand. And I think the biggest edges in poker by far, and actually like the most fun for me, is when my opponent is trying to represent a hand

that they think they can have that I know that they can't have. So like when you know better than your opponent how they would play a certain hand, that's when the huge edges come. And that's like what I love. It's really cool. Wow, the game within the game, man.

Yeah, I didn't know that much went into it. Holy crap. I got a player for you after your match with Kate that I think would be a good match. Yeah, okay. Maren Cabral. Have you heard of him? Yeah, yeah, I know.

Yeah. He laughs, so is there some story there? No, no, he's just like, sometimes I've played with people like live who i think i've had an edge on but just the kind of just sitting across the table from them for that long is kind of unpleasant enough that i don't think it's worth it i think that's part of his game though i do too i think he does it on purpose it's it's unclear to me i mean i think that's likely yeah you have to have some element of that in your personality to like but yeah i think he plays well.

Yeah, because what he did last year was hilarious. I mean, I know a lot of people were pissed, but when he was standing and looking at the cards. I mean, the thing about that, I was, I mean, I wouldn't say I was pissed and I wasn't playing in the tournament. I didn't have any, I didn't have a dog in that fight. But I do think like, I felt like that was crossing a line because it's one thing to annoy people.

And I mean, that's annoying, but it's, it's one thing, but I felt like what he was doing there was making people feel like he was cheating. And so I think he probably wasn't cheating, but I feel like that's a, that's over the line to make people feel unsafe in the game. I could see that. Yeah. Dan Smith, I think said said he might be cheating. Someone called him out.

A lot of people thought, yeah. Like, a lot of the things that he did seemed like somebody who was cheating. Right. I mean, I'm obviously speculating. I don't think he was, but I think he was making people think he was. Yeah.

I wonder how he'd do in your style. I've never seen him play that style. Like online. Oh, PLO or online? Or both. Online, yeah. I've only seen him in that style. Like online. Oh, PLO or online or both? Online, yeah. I've only seen him in person. Yeah, yeah.

Because some people suck online, right? And they're really good in person. Yeah. So yes and no. The thing about that, a lot of people say that. They're like, I'm good live and then I go online and I lose. And they either say it's because I'm bad online or because the game's rigged or something like that.

Really what it is is that online games are much tougher at the equivalent stakes. So like the rule of thumb that I use is that the online games are like the equivalent of 10 times higher the stakes live. So if you're playing like one, two blinds online, that would be like 10, 20 live. And those are more equivalent. And so what happens is people play 5, 10 live,

they go into 5, 10 online and just, they get massacred because like five, 10 online is like 5,100 live. Why is it so much like 10 X? Um, I think the best way to think about it is from the perspective of the player and kind of like my earn rate. So when I play live, um, I play maybe, you know, 30 hands an hour. And when I play online, depending on what I'm playing, but I could play like if I'm playing six handed games and I could play like six of them, then I'm probably playing, um, like 500 hands an hour. You're playing six games at once. Yeah. Holy crap. And so if I had the same win rate, you know, playing 30 hands an hour

versus 500 hands an hour, I'm, you know, I'm making almost 20 times as much playing online. And so that's kind of why you, because then if the games were the same quality, everybody would go online. Right. And so the games get tougher.

And so it reaches this equilibrium of where, you know, okay, I can make kind of the same amount playing live or online. You know, I could play all of these tables of five, 10 online, or I could play that one table of 5,100 live and it kind of equals the same hourly rate. That's a good way of looking at it. Wow. I never would have thought that to be honest. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people, yeah, they think it's, you know, online's rigged or everybody's cheating or just like, I just, when I don't see the person, I can't figure it out. Um I think it's just, no, they hop into the same stakes online,

and it's much tougher. They probably have really good anti-cheat by now, because I know on the chess.com app, they ban cheaters within minutes. Yeah. They do have, it depends on the site. So the bigger sites have very good security, generally. People still get away with it for a while, sometimes. Generally, that happens at the highest stakes only because I, I think so when people are, when people are cheating at lower stakes,

um, they're usually like, there's a bot ring. So they have, they have a bot that like a hundred accounts have. Yeah. And that is easier for the site to detect because they can see patterns that like all these accounts are playing similarly. they can look at financial data and like account identities and just see patterns and so like those can get caught easily the the cheaters that have gone on and cheated for a longer period of time are players in high stakes games who have you know paid a developer 150k to build them something custom um that nobody else is using and so their patterns are a little different. They also can like, they don't have to always listen to what,

what the bot tells them to do because they can use their own mind as well. If they're decent at poker. And so that does become harder to detect. The sites are pretty good at it. They catch most cheaters for sure, but there's a risk. Yeah. Where can people find you,

man? And keep up with your world series run. Yeah. Probably the best place is Twitter or X. All the poker guys are on X. Yeah. It seems to be the place we, yeah.

Poker players hang out. Yeah. That'd be x.com slash Phil Galifant and I'm on YouTube as well at Phil Galifant and Instagram Phil dot Galifant and Phil Galifant.com for the newsletter. Perfect. We'll link everything below. Thanks for coming onalfond. And Instagram, phil.galfond. And philgalfond.com for the newsletter. Perfect. We'll link everything below. Thanks for coming on, man. Oh, yeah, my pleasure.

That was fun. Thanks for watching, guys. See you tomorrow.