Digital Social Hour - Maria Ho Reveals The Greatest Poker Player Of All Time | Digital Social Hour #128

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

On today's episode of The Digital Social Hour, we sit down with Maria Ho and talk about the family struggles she faced becoming a pro poker player, why she doesn't stake other poker players & the most she's won and lost in a day playing poker. BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] APPLY TO BE ON THE POD: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 SPONSORS: Opus Pro: https://www.opus.pro/?via=DSH HelloFresh: https://www.hellofresh.com/50dsh AG1: https://www.drinkAG1.com/DSH Hostage Tape: https://hostagetape.com/DSH 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 megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up? Jason Tatum here. Ball up wherever you are with NBA 2K Mobile. Playing game events to collect NBA legends and rising stars to assemble your dream team and settle things on the court. Download NBA 2K Mobile now on the App Store and Google Play. I know you're friends with a lot of these guys and I don't want them to get mad at you. Oh no. But who do you think the greatest poker player of all time is? Oh well, this is funny because no matter what I say, every poker player that's on that short list is going to think they're the best anyway.

But I would have to say Daniel Negreanu is up there for me. I thought I always had a really good sense of judging people's character, but also a really strong intuition. So my friends call me the cheater whisperer because I've caught a few of my my girlfriend's significant others cheating on them and I feel like it's like because when someone sits down in front of me and they're talking to me I feel like I know when they're lying. welcome back to the digital social hour guys i'm your host sean kelly i'm here with an amazing guest today maria ho hey how's it going yeah Yeah, good. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So how have you been doing in the World Series this year?

Man, it's been, wow, it's like, what, four weeks in, and I'm tired. It's that time when you get burnt out. I'm playing every single day. Tournaments start at 10. We play until 1 in the morning. You wake up next morning, do it all over again. And it's definitely Groundhog's Day, but this is what we're here for, right? If you're a professional poker player, then this is the time where you need to be putting the pedal

to the metal you need to be playing every day because the most money can be won or lost i guess during this time yeah speaking of most money won what's the most money you've won in a single day so my biggest tournament score was over half a million. And then the most I've ever lost was less than that, which is good, right? You never really want to break even on those numbers. It was like a quarter million in a cash game. But it was just one of those spots where there was a lot of bad players in the game and you got to take your shot and sometimes it doesn't work out. Yeah, I heard the pros sometimes struggle against amateurs, right? Yeah. Cause I think the thing is, is amateurs are really unpredictable,

right? At least against a pro, you kind of know what their baseline strategy is. And for amateurs, they don't really have a strategy. So I think that's the element of poker that is really interesting because it's real time solutions. You know, you're going to be theorizing and adapting and adjusting to how your opponent is playing. But you have no idea what their poker knowledge is, what their background is. You know, kind of like when I played against you. I had no idea that was your first time. And I think that's the beauty of the game is, you know, I have to figure you out. And in some ways you have an edge on me because you know that I'm a pro and

you know that there's going to be certain things that I will be willing to do you know and that I won't and so you can definitely target me as well that's true you were right next to me so you were going after me and I was trying to tell if you were bluffing me or just you had it I mean I feel like naturally if I think someone is less experienced my default strategy is probably be more aggressive against them, right? Because they are more unaware of certain situations. And usually they're a little bit more timid and they're more passive and they don't want to, you know, risk a lot of money without having a good hand. So that's exactly how I played. So, so it works out because you can play

really tight. And then once you know that I'm playing really aggressive and I'm, I might be trying to bluff you a lot, then you're going to be calling my bluffs more often, right? Once you start figuring that out. So I think that there's a lot of ways for even amateur players to in real time gain some type of edge over a professional. Yeah, that makes sense. So what age did you start?

How long have you been playing? So I didn't pick up poker until my first year of college I was with a bunch of friends and during the weekends we'd always go party together but then somehow on Friday nights they had this secret little boys club get together that I was never invited to and then I found out they were playing poker and they were like yeah Maria it's kind of boys thing we don't really invite any girls but but you know, maybe some other time. And I just crashed their dorm room poker game. And I just made them let me play. And they didn't even think I'd be interested. And then the first time I played, I beat all of them. So naturally I was like, oh, I must be amazing at this game. But obviously

I had no idea what I was doing and I still had a lot to learn. But I think that's what hooked me was just the idea of playing for the first time and winning. Nice. And then from there, did you start playing online or more events? Yeah. It's, it's funny because during college, you know, after school, I would just drive straight to the casino. There was a lot of native American casinos. I went to college at UC San Diego. So a lot of those places you could be 18 and up to play. And so after school, I'd be like, oh, I really want to play poker. And I would go and I would end up being there all night. I would stay until 1 a.m. and then I would sometimes have to like do my homework,

you know, write my papers and then go to class without sleeping. And so that was just something I kept doing over and over just because I loved the game so much. But I had no idea I could make a living from it. You know, it's not something that you don't grow up in along the list of occupations. You know, it's not like it's like it's not doctor, lawyer, poker player. It's a it was just something that I stumbled onto. And then once I realized, oh, maybe I can make a living doing this. After I graduated college, I decided to pursue it full time. Wow. And then what was your parents reaction to, hey, guys, I'm going to be a poker player? Well, obviously, I'm Taiwanese.

I come from a very traditional, very conventional, strict Chinese upbringing. So that was not at all in the cards, so to speak, for my parents. They immigrated here from Taiwan and obviously very much pursuing the American dream. And so they wanted us to have a better life than them. And one of that is getting a great education and then having a really good job. And so when I had to tell them

that I was going to play poker for a living, they were really upset. And at one point, they even tried to disown me, basically, just saying, you know, we're not going to help you out. Like, we paid for your college. We paid for you to go to school, and now you're just going to throw it all away. And so they didn't want me living at home anymore. They didn't want me to rely on them for anything.

And I was like, okay, that's fine. This is my decision, and I respect that you guys are upset about it. So, you know, there was a couple of years where there was a lot of tension in our home only because of my choice of career. And so, you know, I get that it wasn't an ideal place for them to see their daughter, you know, being in a casino late night till 2 a.m. They didn't like that. They didn't feel safe. And I kind of get that. That environment is not something that you probably want your kids to be in all the time But I just kept pursuing it because I've always been a rebel and so when someone tells me I can't do anything or I shouldn't Do something it makes me want to do it even more. Mmm. You were a troublemaker in school a little bit

I was like a rebel without a cause like I had no reason to be getting in trouble But I just I think I always wanted to push the boundaries, which is probably why I loved poker so much. Yeah, I have a similar story, because my mom is Asian and she was all about school. And then when I told her I'm gonna be an entrepreneur, that didn't go well. I'm dropping out, mom, I'm gonna start my own business. Right, because in Chinese culture,

they want that steady paycheck and they don't want you to go, you know, color outside the lines or do something outside of the box. They want you to just, they rather you show up for nine to five and know every day you're gonna, you know, color outside the lines or do something outside of the box. They want you to just, they rather you show up for nine to five and know every day you're going to get a paycheck, even if that's not what makes us happy. Right. Yeah. They stress the importance of education a lot. Yeah. So did you repair that relationship eventually? Yeah. It's funny because I love my

parents. Um, but we don't see eye to eye on a lot of things. Probably culturally, generationally, there's a gap there. But they can't really say anything about what I've done with my poker career because I've had a lot of success. I've never had to rely on them for anything. You know, I never had to go crawling back to my parents and be like, oh, my God, I went broke playing poker. I need you guys to support me now financially. And so because of that, I think they've accepted. It's a level of acceptance, but it's certainly not encouragement.

It's not support in the traditional sense. They're not the, oh, do whatever you want as long as it makes you happy parents. They're the, okay, well, we have to accept that this is what you've chosen. But if any day you want to quit poker and you want to do something else, we're going to support that this is what you've chosen but if any day you want to quit poker and you want to do something else we're going to support that you know wow even still because it's been some time since you were in college yeah um it's it's it's at the point where we just don't even talk about it right i don't really tell them what's going on in my poker career they don't ask me how much i win how much i lose um if i have you know a really great tournament score or i make a final table i'll let them know but they don't know any of the in-betweens. It's just something that we don't

talk about. That's crazy. So after college, you just started playing. Were you making money right away or did it take years to become profitable? It's a funny thing because I think people always ask me, OK, how did you know you were good enough to go pro and i'm like well poker is different from a lot of things because there's not some type of standardized test that you could take to know how well you're going to perform once you're out there playing for a living um and it's not that you know there's some type of official ranking system where someone's gonna be like okay now you have qualified for the pro tour. Poker is a game where if you play professionally, it just means that you're able to make a living from it. Right?

And there's different barometers for what that is. You know, some people are maybe making minimum wage as an hourly playing poker, right? And they're okay with that because they just love the game so much. But then there's also players that are incredibly successful. They're making millions of dollars.

And so I just knew that I was beating the games that I was playing I just knew that every time I sat down at the table I was better than the people that I was playing against and so I started tracking my results and I was like okay well I need to find a way to to figure out you know what my hourly is what my win rate is in these games and so I started making a spreadsheet and every hour that I played you know ended up you know being where I was like okay if I do this over a month's period of time I can make this much money as an estimate and that is enough to keep going and so that's kind of how I got my start and I was really lucky that I had a lot of success early on in my career that I never had to look back. Some people end up second guessing themselves a lot,

but I had a big tournament score kind of early and then just went on from there. Did you ever have a period where you were just getting bad beats after each other and just were losing for months on end? Yeah, poker is so funny because you can have a significant skill edge, but on any given day you can lose, right?

And that's the variance of the game. And that's what you have to weather. Most poker players, it's like if you play 300 days out of the year, you are supposed to win, you know, 200 to 250 sessions. You're not going to win every day. So you have to be able to weather the times when you have losing session after losing session after losing session. And so there was a time when I was on a really bad run, probably was three months straight of losing sessions. I would show up, play, lose. And that's not sustainable, right? Unless you have a crazy bankroll. And so it was getting to the point where it was really dire and

I didn't know if I could continue on if things didn't turn around. And people always have different solutions for when that happens. Like when you're running bad, people are like, okay, well, some people say you should take a break. Some people say you should play through it, right? If you're a professional and you trust in your skill edge, you know you're good enough to beat the games you're playing, you need to just keep playing because you're just on the unlucky side of variance. Right. And you just need it to catch up. Right. You need, you know, your your EV to start being realized again. But for me, I'm again, maybe I'm stubborn.

You know, maybe I'm just one of those people that I decided to play through it. And pretty much it was at the point where my bankroll was completely decimated. But then things started to turn around. And it was the closest that I've ever been to going broke. Whoa. That must have been a scary time. There was a lot of thoughts rolling in my head of like, oh, my God, I have to go back to my parents. I have to tell them they were right.

That was the worst thing I ever had to do. And they still to this day have no idea that I almost went broke. I was this close to having to basically go back and tell them they were right and just find a traditional career path. That's crazy. Not a lot of people can profit off poker. What would you say, like how much percent actually make money off playing, you think? I think the problem with poker is, A, people's results can be really inflated, right? When you look at somebody's tournament history and their live tournament earnings, that doesn't count for how much they've lost.

That is gross money. That is not net. But when you look at just the cash game grinder who could just be playing down the street in the card room here in Vegas, they could be playing five dollar ten dollar no limit hold'em and they're making maybe you know a a 15 20 hourly right and so um there's different levels if we're talking about you know playing at the highest level of the game then i think you know you can expect to clear a million in a year pretty easily if you are an exceptionally skilled player but it all still comes down to volume because the variance will even itself out and will write itself the

more you play the sample size needs to be really big for you to realize your skill edge and to realize your your expectation in the games that you're playing. Yeah, that makes sense. What's your favorite structure of play? Do you like online? Do you like tournaments, cash games? I have honed my strategy specifically for tournaments. So I have to like it because I've spent the most time working on my tournament game. But cash game lifestyle is so much better. When you sit down at a cash game, you could get up whenever you want. You can today decide, I'm going to go play for two hours, and then I want to spend the rest of the day hanging out with my friends, going to a nice dinner.

But in a tournament, once you're there, you're stuck, right? Once you're in a tournament, you cannot – you can get up, sure, but you're missing hands and you're missing situations where you could potentially profit off of having a good hand. And so in a tournament, once you're there, you're there, and we play down to a winner. And sometimes that takes four, five, six days. So it's very, very grueling. And it's one of those things where you don't really have a social life outside of it. If you end up playing a tournament series, like I am here at the World Series, I'm playing every

single day, as I mentioned, from 10 to 1 in the morning. I wake up and I do it all over again. There's no time for anything else other than to sleep, eat, and play poker. And so you really have to be dedicated, and you also have to have that mental and physical stamina to do that. Because in a cash game, you don't have to stay if you don't want to. Those chips have real cash value, and you can go cash out your winnings immediately. But in tournaments, those tournament chips don't have value

until you end up getting to the point in the tournament where you're in the money so right so and do you have a game plan or strategy leading into it like because there's people like Phil Helmuth who are just amazing with tournaments so I'm curious like where your mindset's at with that yeah I I feel like if Phil is incredible he is you, the winningest player in terms of World Series of Poker Bracelets. And, you know, I would say that the difference is old school and new school poker players kind of have a different approach. I think nowadays when you look at the poker player that are coming up in the game in the last five to ten years, they have a much more holistic approach to the game. You know, people like Phil, they're naturally very skilled at poker.

But if you ask me if Phil has been studying poker theory in the last five to 10 years, I would say he probably hasn't. And he's pretty open about that. And he's okay with that because he's relying on the X factor that he has, just that he is naturally skilled at the game. He has a good read on his opponents. A lot of the dynamics that you can't read in a book,

he's got it figured out. But the newer poker players, they are, you know, running solvers. You know, they are, you know, studying nonstop. They are doing yoga. They are, you know, between sessions, they're meditating. You know, they really feel like poker is so physically and mentally taxing that you have to be super well-rounded with every other part of your lifestyle. It's not just get up and play and that's it. And you're not doing anything else to better your ability to play your best. Right. And if you make a final table, are you studying the other players?

Are you watching film on them? Is it pretty intense? Yeah, it's just like other sports in that sense. And I think people don't even realize that is now with the advent of live streaming everything right and the whole card cam which was a huge invention for poker that now you know you can see people's cards when when they look at their hand um now you can easily study your opponents especially again the professionals lose that edge a little bit because they're the ones always on the live streams they're the ones whose game is always being broadcast to the world right so there's a lot of players that don't have a lot of information out there on their game

because they're not usually playing on these live streams right so i love it when there's more notable players at the table that i'm going to play at because then i can study them a bit more figure out their tendencies, watch tape. But there's all of that. You know, today I'm actually playing in day three of a World Series of Poker event and there's 24 players left. Wow. And half of the field I don't know and I haven't played with.

And so that part is, you know, the part that I can't really anticipate for. But the other half that I do, you know, I'm looking up the results. I'm kind of seeing how much experience they've had playing this game. And all of that information is out there. Nice. I want to talk about staking because that's kind of a controversial thing. Do you stake other players? I have in the past.

And, you know, I also buy action. So full-time staking versus buying action is a little different. You know, buying action is just like, I'll take a piece of you you in this tournament I'll take a piece of this other person in that tournament it's not a full-time uh deal but then there's other deals where okay I have I'm gonna put you in all of the tournaments you play for a year and you know then you have different staking agreements in terms of what percentage you're splitting with them if they're there's makeup or not makeup is basically you know meaning whatever they've lost so let's say if they've spent a hundred thousand dollars in tournament buy-ins and then they cash for a tournament for 120 000 they pay me back the 100 000 first and then we split the 20 000 to the

profit um depending on our particular staking deal so So, yeah, it's interesting because I've done it. A lot of players have, and it usually doesn't work out. That's what I heard, yeah. There's some shady things that could happen. For example, unless you have a signed agreement, there's been people that didn't pay their backers, right? Because your name's on the tournament ticket. When you go collect that money, that money's going directly to you.

And then it's up to you. You have to trust that person that they're going to pay out because casino records show that you know john smith played this tournament i'm going to pay john smith the money they don't have anything to do with the agreement that i have with john smith right so there's been times when people will get scammed out of money that way or you know when sometimes people will say they played a tournament that they didn't actually play and you gave them $10,000 to play a tournament. So now people are like asking for receipts and doing accounting more. But before people were so lax about it, it opened the door for a lot of people to be shady.

And then also there's the element of like when people are staking each other and then they all end up at the same table in a tournament. Is that going to affect the way they want to play against each other? Right. It's not in my best interest to knock you out if I have 50% of your action. And if we find ourselves at the same table, maybe soft play can happen. Collusion can happen. There's all of these things that you don't really know when there's so much. There's people sharing a lot of bankroll,

and there might be a lot of inner workings that you're not aware of at the table because you're not making it known. So generally speaking, I stay away from all of that unless I really trust the person. Yeah, that makes sense. So are you allowed to stay people that are playing the same game as you? Yes. Really? Yeah. And you don't have to disclose it to people in poker are trying to start making a rule of like, OK, well, if we all are at the same table and I have 30 percent of three people, then we need to disclose it.

But that's also just trusting that people are going to be open and forthcoming with that information. Yeah. And who knows. Right. It's just trusting that they're going to be honest. That's interesting because athletes can't bet on their own games. Right. I think poker would be the same. Yeah. And I think that's also the problem with why poker is maybe not as in the mainstream perceived with the same respect that some other traditional sports or even chess is. Right. Because it's doesn't feel that regulated. Right. There feels like there's a lot of things that could happen that might be a little sketchy. And I think that it's so important for us as a community to try to clean up the image that poker has. Absolutely. Now, I know you're

friends with a lot of these guys and I don't want them to get mad at you. Oh, no. But who do you think the greatest poker player of all time is? Oh, well, this is funny because no matter what I say, every poker player that's on that short list is going to think they're the best anyway. So they're going to be like, oh, Maria, she just she doesn't know what she's talking about. It is me, but she just. But I would have to say. Gosh, I feel like Daniel Negreanu is up there for me, not just because he is the biggest or one of the biggest names in poker it's truly because again when we go back to that old school poker player new school poker player he's the one

that's been able to bridge that gap he's the player that came up back in the day when nobody really knew what the set strategy was nobody knew what game theory optimal in poker was and they just had to figure it out so you already had to be particularly insightful to be able to figure it out as you go but then once everybody started using solvers and once people were studying differently he also embraced it he didn't reject it he wasn't like he wasn't like oh no i already know what i'm doing i don't need to learn the way that these newer players are learning he wanted to know how to improve on his game. And he wanted to know how to keep up with the influx of new players that were having

so much success. So he's really been able to merge both styles and he still has success. To me, the most successful poker players of all time are the ones that stand the test of time because the game is evolving really rapidly and players are getting better and better and better and daniel has continually put up results over a long period of time and i don't see him slowing down because at the end of the day you have to love the game and i know daniel loves the game absolutely i notice there's not a lot of players that have stuck around for over like 15 years poker is a revolving door it's like you see people

and whether it's because they're not good enough, they can't hack it or they're losing money in the pits or they have life leaks, right? There's a whole slew of reasons why you'll see 10 faces and they're the most popular poker players. They're coined the best poker players. And then five years later, they're gone. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty pretty crazy one of the skills you have to develop as a poker player is being able to read people which you've gotten really good at have you been able to take that skill outside of poker and just know if people are like good people yeah I feel like that was one of my strengths even before I played poker was I thought I always had a really

good sense of judging people's character but also also a really strong intuition. Um, so I, I just always felt like there was a little bit of a sixth sense of kind of knowing something was wrong or something was off before something bad happened. And so when I started playing poker, I really tried to hone in on that and try to utilize that in my game. Um, and so off the table, it's funny because, uh, my funny because my friends call me the cheater whisperer because I've caught a few of my girlfriends, significant others cheating on them. And I feel like it's like, because when someone sits down in front of me and they're talking to me, I feel like I know when they're lying. It's like the same as when I'm sitting at a poker table and someone's

trying to tell me a story with their hand, right? Someone's trying to bluff me and I'm able to figure out, okay, this story that you're telling doesn't make sense for X, Y, and Z because of your bet size or because of your physical demeanor. And so I find myself, I feel like it's a bad habit, but I find myself every time I'm like, even just having dinner and conversationally and casually talking to someone, I'm always looking for that tell. I'm always looking for like the weakness in their story or, you know, poking holes in everything. Maybe that's not good. But I think it served me well in business as well because, you know, I've done a lot of business deals where I've always wanted to meet people in person. I don't ever like closing a deal over the phone because I feel like I get a lot of information by being face to face. And so that's definitely something that I think I've used a lot off the table.

Yeah, I agree. That's why I do these in person and not over Zoom because it's more real. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I feel like it's so nice to be able to just. Yeah. It's the eye contact. It's just certain things that I think people don't feel super comfortable with if they

weren't being completely honest. So what else do you do outside of poker? You're into business? Yeah, so poker was something that I just did because I loved it and I didn't really know where it would take me. But poker has opened the door to a lot of other opportunities and a lot of other business opportunities. And I have been able to also create a brand for myself within poker, where I think back in the day, poker was just, you know,

you play poker, you want money playing poker. There wasn't other avenues where you could use that skill set or use yourself to promote poker or to promote other brands. And so I've built up my social media following and I've built up kind of a lifestyle following based on travel and poker and all of that. And so that has led to a lot of different crossovers. And that part's been really interesting because that was not something I planned for. I got into poker just because I love the game.

And also being on the amazing race was one of those opportunities that i don't think i would have gotten if i weren't playing poker so i was just gonna ask about that i used to watch that show what was that like going on the amazing race well did you watch my season or i actually didn't okay well don't far right please don't you're not because it was not my finest moment i really don't like anybody knowing me personally to watch that because i'm like, oh, that's not the best light that I could be put in. But no, I mean, it's the hardest thing I've ever had to do.

Really? I am not a naturally very athletic person, but I am incredibly competitive, which is probably why I love poker, right? Because I don't have to be very athletic um to to play poker but but on that show it's the most nerve-wracking feeling to wake up every morning and to have no idea what you're doing for the day where you're going um they prepare you for nothing right you have to expect the unexpected um so it's just that intense anxiety that comes with having a type a personality and wanting control over everything and being like oh i need to know what's going on and then not knowing

yeah um and you know for all the armchair quarterbacks out there it's just one of those things where when you sit at home and you're watching people do things on on the amazing race you're like i could do that that looks easy and then when you get thrown into the mix you realize how hard it is and so it's also nice to put yourself to the test in that way and to challenge yourself because how often can you really say oh I pushed myself to the limits right so was there a lot of athletic involved with that show because I thought it was mainly mindset and no there's a lot of it's it's half physical and half mental. Like some of the challenges are, you know, brain gains. And some of the challenges are going to be physical. And there's also some running because in the end,

the last team that's on the mat for the day gets eliminated. So sometimes it comes down to a foot race, which I am not a runner. And so, yeah, it was really difficult for me. And it was really intimidating and scary. And it's one of those things where you always want to think that you're good at everything or that you'll, you'll of course try your best. And it's very humbling to realize how bad you can be at something in a very competitive environment. And especially because it's a show with teams and you don't want to let your teammate down. Whereas poker, you're very insulated. Poker is just a single person game. You never have to rely on anybody

solely yourself. It's you against every single other person. So it's a very different mindset that you have to shift into. Okay, now I'm on a team. I don't want to let my teammate down. I have to make my decisions with that in mind and considering that other person. Whereas in poker, you know, it's all, it's all me. So you wouldn't go on Survivor? Yeah. I've shied away from Survivor because I felt like Survivor is a little more physical and I'm really, really mean when I'm hungry. So I'm like, I don't know. It's a bad combination. I don't really want to go on a reality show where I can't eat. Yeah. Food is amazing, man. It'd be tough to eat rice for a month. I know. I mean, I don't even nowadays, they don't even really get rice.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. They're like, oh, man, they've evolved. Geez. Yeah. What are you working on next? So after the World Series, I will, you know, be traveling abroad. I do broadcasting for poker. That's another thing that I kind of found through poker. I was actually a communications major in college and I wanted to study broadcast journalism, maybe become a news anchor or something. And then, so in poker, it just was an opportunity that came up of, oh, do you want to do strategic commentary for this poker show? And I had never done it before, but I did have a little bit of my communications background and I'm always one of those people that I'll try anything once and if I fall flat on my face then you know it's okay I'm okay with being embarrassed a little bit and so I did it and

I loved it and I enjoy that part and that's become a big part of my poker career now is now I'm spending half of my time at the tables and then a big chunk of the other half doing broadcasting. So I'll be doing broadcasting for a couple of other tournaments outside of the U.S. And yeah, I mean, this is such a draining time for me that afterwards I just really need to take a little time to decompress. You know, I'll go home back to L.A. and just kind of regroup. And then, you know, a poker player's life never really stops. But it'll be on to the next tour basically after that. That's awesome. I see a lot of potential in live streaming. Twitter's taking it very serious. There's a lot of live streamers getting a lot of money. So that's a good path I think you chose. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know,

poker, there's so much content creation now with every industry. And poker is just one of those things where it's also really interesting and fun. And I love the idea of making poker more accessible to people because it's such a great game, but not a lot of people have found their way into it. And so all of those things, I think, are bringing more eyeballs. Absolutely. Maria, thanks for coming on. Of course. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Where can people find you? I'm on Twitter at Maria Ho and then on Instagram at Maria underscore Ho. There we go. Thanks for tuning in, guys. I'll see you next time.