Digital Social Hour - Poker Legend Exposes the Hidden World of High Stakes | Daniel Negreanu DSH #688

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

🎰 Welcome to the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly, where Poker Legend Daniel Negreanu exposes the hidden world of high stakes! 🎲 Join us as we explore the exhilarating highs and challenging lows of professional poker, diving deep into the mind of a true champion. From the glitzy tables of Las Vegas to strategic insights that could change your game, this episode is packed with valuable insights you won't want to miss!   Discover the fascinating dynamics of luck versus skill 🎯, the realities of high-stakes tournaments, and the challenges of staying ahead in an ever-evolving game. With anecdotes that reveal the unpredictability of poker and candid discussions on the poker community's culture, this episode will keep you on the edge of your seat!   📺 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! 🚀 Join the conversation and let us know your thoughts in the comments below. Don't miss out on this exclusive peek into the world of high-stakes poker!   CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 05:00 - DraftKings Sportsbook 06:00 - Laptop Gate 08:32 - Turning 50 10:28 - Politics 14:35 - Communism 17:19 - Growing Up with Your Brother 19:03 - Poker Player Recommendations 21:43 - Facing Superior Players at the Table 24:23 - Haunted Poker Hands and Games 25:06 - Early Days in Poker 27:03 - Playing Sober vs. Drunk 28:57 - Predicting Cards Before They're Revealed 32:06 - Chess Insights 33:20 - Justin Bonomo 36:40 - Israel-Palestine Conflict 44:06 - Critical Thinking Deficiencies 44:56 - Social Media Algorithms Impact 47:20 - Kamala Harris and Media Interviews 50:40 - Issues with DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) 54:15 - Brain Health and Dementia Prevention 55:38 - Daniel Negreanu’s Coaching Techniques 56:35 - Evolution of Poker on TV 57:45 - Finding Daniel Negreanu Online   APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail]   GUEST: Daniel Negreanu https://www.instagram.com/dnegspoker https://x.com/RealKidPoker https://www.youtube.com/DNegsPoker https://danielnegreanu.com/   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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with people who are not actually trying to have their mind changed. Nobody is. They're just trying to make you change yours. So it ends up with this need, this endless stream of, I'm going to send you this article, read this, I'm going to send you this, I'm going to send you this, I'm going to send you this. And then you realize you just spent 13 hours wasting your time,

like banging your head against the wall. All right, guys, we got Negronu on today. Poker legend, thanks for coming on, man. Absolutely, no problem, man. How was your World Series this year? So good and bad, right?

I won, like, the most prestigious mixed game event you can the one that i want to win it's called the poker players championship for like 1.2 million so that was the good news the bad news is i played some other big ones and i actually didn't even make money but yeah but i'll still take it because you know winning that one was fun yeah that's huge i saw that one congrats how often are you profiting on the world series every year so most of my life i profited but i had like three well last this year was very small but i've lost like three years in a row wow i don't think people don't understand what poker is like it's a small sample size right you're only playing like 30 40 events and you're more often than not you're going to have a losing

period of 30 40 because the way it's structured right you rarely come first second or third and that's where the big money is when you do it it more than compensates. So let's say you won like one out of every three years, you probably could still make money doing that. And do you think since players are getting so good now that that's also a part of it? It definitely makes it more difficult because your edges are smaller, right? Like 20 years ago, you know, luck wasn't as big of a factor. But let's say you and me are equally skilled. Let's say we're dead equal, dead equal right well luck is going to make it look like in some cases i'm way better than you right because i'll be up like you know a million on you and then all of a sudden you know it comes down because of just like distribution and luck so at the highest levels uh i think it's a lot more difficult

for people to discern like who's the best it isn't like you know golf we're like okay he shot the lowest score he's the best he played the same course everybody else poker doesn't work that way so it's more like who's hot that day or like well you know people go through streaks right so there's these situations that come up in a poker tournament right where like my equity is 50 your equity 50 whoever wins this pot has a very good chance to win the tournament now right and it's totally 50 50 you go through a streak where you win a lot of those, like you win 80% of them, you're going to all of a sudden,

everyone's going to think, oh, he's the best, right? Whereas if you go the other way and you just lose like 80% of them, people think, well, that guy isn't very good. He never wins. It's like, they don't understand that so much of like what separates at the highest levels, the difference between the best

and like the ones underneath, we'll never really know. Wow. Because of luck. Like we have, you you know your peers say a lot right like sometimes your your peers will look at a certain player and be like this guy's really really good but it's very difficult for people to separate how they play the decisions they make and the results that they have but the results actually especially in a short run don't tell you much at all right they can deceive you right like you might play a poker tournament and you win and you think i'm so amazing at it when everyone around is like this guy's terrible

wait till rate till reality sets in you know yeah well i'm thinking of phil helmuth when you talk about that all the all the professional high stakes guys say he's like average or whatever or like good but not like the goat you know what i mean so the way i always describe phil is simple right and he hates it because he can't i don't know why he wants me to acknowledge him anymore i'd say he has the best track record in the world series of poker history ever the most bracelets you know great roi he's done so for years now that doesn't make him the best player especially now there was probably a period of time where he was you know um and you know was dominant that's not the day that's not today it's like it's almost a little bit disrespectful to say to these young kids who work their asses off 12, 15 hours a day studying that

like you at 60, you know, who are not studying anything are better than them, you know? And the only way to really know, well, there really is no way to know is you got to play against them in the high stakes events. He doesn't, he shies away from that. You know, he just says he's better than them and he's better than these people, but he doesn't actually play against them to prove it. Right. Cause the best people are in the high stakes ones, right? Basically. Yeah. Like it's a different animal.

The World Series of Poker, you get random yahoos, small tournaments, $1,000, $1,500. But then you got this high, high circuit, you know, which is like Triton Series over in Europe. Right now, the super high roller bowl, 300K buy-ins and stuff like that. He doesn't really, even during the World Series, we have big events, 250K, 100 hundred K Bynes. He doesn't play those. He usually just stays in the mid stakes. Right. If you made the final table of the main event, who would you hire as your coach? Well, I probably wouldn't specifically hire a coach. Oh yeah. Yeah. Not anymore. The ones on the edge of watching. I would definitely have people like,

um, I would talk to for sure. Like just the group of friends that I already do. Maybe Phil Ivy would be one of them if he's willing. because he's just really good at certain specific things. But there's a small group of people I talk poker with. And I would have people just telling me what's been going on, right? More so than say like here's what I want you to be doing. I just want to know what they've been doing and I'll figure it out for myself. Got it. But I'll definitely have like a group, you know.

I've gone through that route where I hired some young guys to, you know, coach me on how to use these tools. Cause it's like, listen, I'm 50 now. If you're in need of quality new tires and have been searching the internet for a good deal, look no further than your local big O tires for a limited time. When you buy three tires, you'll get the fourth free on select set of tires. And because we know that tires can be an unexpected expense, take advantage of no credit needed financing made easy. They work with multiple lending partners. So the financing is tailored to you. Remember that when you buy three tires, you'll get the fourth free only at your locally owned big O tires, the team you trust. And I saw like these solvers. I'm like, I don't even know how to turn the thing on. I was like,

so I needed help, you know, but now I feel like I havevers. I'm like, I don't even know how to turn the thing on. I was like, so I needed help, you know? But now I feel like I have a decent grasp of all that and use it to my advantage. Yeah. And this year there was a solver at the final table. Yeah, that was a mess. That was just like such a mess because, so we call that, what do we call that?

Laptop gate. I don't know if that's what they're calling it. Like there's all, the thing is last 10 years, there's always been laptops at the main event because you know people are watching the stream and they want to tell the guy hey here's what this guy had this hand or whatever so they've said quite clearly in the announcements like you're not allowed to use any of this stuff in this room right so yeah and you're not allowed to use any stuff when you play online poker they're all banned right so it was really disheartening to see that it was used and nobody said anything. I think like a lot of people put the onus on the World Series of Poker, but like how can they like go up to your laptop?

It's like if you had it on your phone, I'm like, let me see your phone. That's like Gestapo type stuff. You can't really police it that way. But they broke, Frank, they broke like Nevada gaming laws. They're very clear. But they're not going to do anything about it. Yeah, nothing happened, very clear. But they're not going to do anything about it. Yeah, nothing happened, right? No, they're not going to do anything about it,

nor do I think anything should. But the response from one of the guys who was like in charge of it was so obnoxious. Everyone in the poker community is like, bro, it's a bad look. This isn't good, you know. And he sort of stuck both fingers up and double down and triple down and kind of made an ass out of himself. I didn't see that.

Yeah, it was all over, you know, Twitter or X or whatever the hell we call it. Poker guys love Twitter, I noticed. Poker guys? both fingers up and double down and triple down and um kind of made a mess i didn't see that yeah it was all over you know twitter x or whatever the hell we call it guys love twitter i noticed poker guys yeah yeah i think that's like the main spot where like discussion happens instagram i find to be i have an instagram account i find the app frankly from a usability perspective shit i've always thought it was terrible yeah like the font is small I can't follow replies I don't know what's going on there and TikTok I just I've never gotten I never set one up so and Facebook I don't use so for me I'm like

Twitter exclusive or X X exclusive yeah Elon would be mad if you said the T word I mean Woody though because it's like nobody calls it X do they no I've never met someone it'll always be Twitter to me yeah it'll always and i think he's fine with that like i mean listen when you go to twitter.com it still takes you there yeah so

you just turned 50 the big 5-0 i did any uh life revelations to be honest with you nothing specific it was actually just like a day like any other but what i would describe sort of the last 30 40 years of my life looks something like in my 20s, I cared what people thought about me. Very much so, right? In my 30s, you know, you don't think you care, but you still do. Then when I got into my 40s, I really give no fucks. And I really don't care.

Like, this is me. If you like me, great. If you don't, that's fine too. I'm gonna have opinions. And listen, you're not gonna agree with all my opinions and that's totally okay. I might not like some of yours, but that doesn't stop me from saying we could have a beer or me look at you and say you're a bad person. We live in a society now, I think, where people are so quick to judge someone.

It's like, oh, look what he said in 1997 about these types of people, right? It's like under a different barometer. Like I use the R word. Like, okay, who cares, right? Is that even like the R word? I don't know. You know what that is? Yeah, I don't want to say it, but yeah.

I'm going to say it. I used to say it growing up. The word has a function, you know? The word retarded has a function, okay? You know? Yeah, anyway. No, I used to commonly say it growing up. Yeah, so did I.

I mean, if you watch TV, you watch Californication, for example, which has been off the air for maybe six, seven years. That's like very commonly thrown around. So it's all recent. You know, the sort of like demonization of specific words evolves over time. And that one's sort of like – that one and the other – there's another one too that I definitely won't say. G-A-Y?

No, it starts with an F. F. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Because like there's a South – okay, so there's a South Park episode about that, how the F word is not actually used for the prominently for people that you would think the F word is for. It's for people that are just jerks or assholes are the ones that's how I used to use it. Yeah. You cut me off in the street like, you know, but it was never meant in that way. But I can understand why that word specifically is charged for people that are from that community i will say because i've been following your career for probably 10 years now you are a lot more outspoken especially on politics recently i noticed you're tweeting a lot about politics i always have like frankly you know i i've always sort of never been shy to share my opinions on things and like common sense and i think it's funny because i think a

lot of people are like oh look how much you've changed your chain your positions change i'm like actually no what position is have i changed on in the last 10 years what happened was both extremes It's funny because I think a lot of people are like, oh, look how much you've changed. You're changed. Your position's changed. I'm like, actually, no. What position have I changed on in the last 10 years? What happened was both extremes, as far as I'm concerned, went absolutely bonkers. Like, I don't identify. Like, I've always been like a, you know, center left liberal with common sense ideas. Okay, let's make sure people have health care. You know, gay people want to get married.

Go for it. You want abortion? Do your thing. You know, it used to be quite basic rich people got to pay taxes whatever all the new stuff that's sort of like the the far progressive left has adopted is like being really important is in a lot of ways absolutely insane and crazy so i don't i don't i feel like more and more like i by by default they've pushed me to the right where i didn't even move it's like that meme you've seen elon where he's like he's here and then you know the line moves

over this way you know that's what happened to me too yeah i grew up democrat yeah i mean listen i literally became a citizen so that i could vote against donald trump wow into i just like literally the reason that was your main reason that was my key like that was one of the main reasons i wanted to be able to vote and contribute and have an opinion. That was one of the key reasons. And like fast forward now and they throw Kamala at me, right? And you're literally saying like, what the hell? It's going to come full circle.

Am I really going the other way? And again, it's about priorities and what you prioritize. Right. And I'm not a fan of either choice. I'm really disappointed, frankly, in the idea that sort of Democrats decided we have to like save democracy by doing the most undemocratic thing possible, which is to anoint someone who won zero delegates, got zero votes, who weeks before the election, everyone was talking about replacing her because she's the most unpopular VP to all of a sudden gaslighting us into going, rah, rah, she's the best. She's a man. Like, what the hell? Just because Meg Stanley was shaking her ass at a concert.

Now we're supposed to be like all gung ho. It's kind of a bizarre flip in such a short period of time. Pretty wild. So are you even going to vote this year? Well, I'm either. I'm not voting. I can say that I'm actually, I was considering RFK. He's no longer an option.

Yeah. So I'm still like an undecided, but one thing I've decided is I cannot, like, listen, a lot of Kamala's policies that she just recently released, she wouldn't get anything passed. It's literally like the sixth grade kid who was running for class president saying, I want to give you free cake. Everyone gets lollipops and pizza for lunch, breakfast and dessert. And everyone's going to get a thousand bucks to spend on toys. Yeah. Right. It's all baloney, but it's pandering to people who don't know any better. Like a lot

of the things she's supposedly, you know, trying to implement. But some of them I find just frankly scary that she would even consider going down this route of like, you know, equity versus equality. The idea that you want everyone to end up in the same place. Do you know what that is? My parents grew up in communist Romania. Everyone's in the same place with bread lines because there's no food on the shelves and everyone gets to the same place.

And she said this multiple times that, you know, the difference between equality, you know, she doesn't believe in equality of opportunity. She believes in equality of outcome. So no matter how hard you work, everyone ends up in the same place. And I don't like that, obviously. I'm not a fan of that. Huh?

I'm not a fan of that. No. Yeah. Capitalism has its bad sides too, though. Of course. So, you know, I think who is it that said this? The capitalism is like, is a terrible system, but it's the best one we got. Like is there a better one?

Has there ever been a system that has worked more efficiently than capitalism with some checks on it, right? You can't have unfettered capitalism where things get out of hand, and that's fine. You have regulation for stuff like that. But the idea that there's another system, like can you name one? I can't. That's a good point. I can't. Yeah.

That's the thing. So until somebody comes up with anything better, right? And it's certainly not communism. It's been tried many times. Yeah. Usually ends the same way. Bread lines and people. It never benefits the people, these ideas.

Have you been back to Romania since you left? I've been to Romania a couple times. Things were better. When I went there originally, when I was 10, it was under communist rule at the time. And I remember just like being in a restaurant and I was 10 and I was going to tell a joke about Ceaușescu, who was the rule at the time. And I remember just like being in a restaurant and I was 10 and I was going to tell a joke about Ceausescu, who was the leader at the time. And I said his name and my mother and ladies were with me, just shut me up. They were genuinely afraid. And I sensed it because they don't know who's listening. And, you know, you're not allowed

to have that sort of, you know, free speech, much like what you see in the UK now, which is people that are shitposting or sometimes saying things that are totally vile and inappropriate. But they're saying – they're retweeting a Facebook post and then they end up in jail for two years. Like that stuff scares me too. It is scary. Is it still like that there? Because I'm going there later this year. In the UK? In Romania.

Oh, no. Romania is great now. I mean, yeah. They're liberated. It's a lot of fun, frankly. I really enjoyed going back. I went back a few times since. But yeah, and it's evolved, obviously, from where it was when I was 10. But I remember being 10 and driving by like areas and there's literally like, you know, three, four hour wait for whatever loaves of bread were in the street. There's nothing else. Right. There's nothing else nothing else. Because like one of the precepts of communism,

and this is why when people talk about price gouging or price controls, first when I saw this, I'm like, it instinctively made sense to me, right? If the government tells a grocery store how much they can charge for a cucumber, right? Most you can charge is a dollar. Okay, well, I'm a cucumber farmer.

Cost me about 45 cents. I got labor costs. I got fuel costs. I got all these other costs associated with it, right? So there's a margin. Cool. We make a little bit, you make a little bit. Well, what happens when my fuel costs and labor costs go up? And I sell, say to the grocery store, listen, I need to charge you 65 cents. And they're like, we can't afford it. So what happens? Either one, the government has to subsidize the farmer, which the taxpayers pay for, or B, there are no more cucumbers. They don't make cucumbers. There's no more profit

margin for cucumbers. Wow. Right. So it's like, it's a small thing. It sounds for, or B, there are no more cucumbers. They don't make cucumbers. There's no more profit margin for cucumbers. Wow. Right? So it's like, it's a small thing. It sounds like, you know, nice to say, oh yeah, groceries are too high. They are, right? People feel that. But the idea that the government is going to decide they're going to be the arbiters

of what price gouging is based on what parameters that we don't know. It's just like a very vague thing. That's kind of scary. And that's, again, that's like the precept to kind of communist ideals. Yeah. It is pretty high right now. My grocery bill is looking pretty ugly lately. Yeah. I saw a guy, I saw him do this. He said he had like, you know, on Amazon, when you like say you do a whole foods order or whatever, you can like reorder, you just click the reorder button. So he's like, I'm curious. He, he had an order from like three years ago. And he's like, I wonder what that would cost now so he clicked reorder and it was like three times more wow it was like 80

bucks and now it was like 240 that's a lot for the same exact order three years yeah in three years yeah that's nuts you came here at 10 years old you said from romania no i was born in toronto oh you're born in toronto yeah i visited romania when i was 10 oh got it yeah and you had no you have an older brother, right, Mike? Were you close with him growing up, playing a lot of poker with him? He didn't play any poker. He's very different than I am. He's like the tall, big, you know, guy who could fix things with his bare hands.

You know, he can build a house from scratch, right? I'm not that guy. He never got into poker. But he was always like my protector, you know? He was like six foot in the sixth grade. Wow. He was a big man. That is tall.

Oh, yeah. He was a basketball player. No was he didn't play sports either it was like if i had his height bro i would have been something you know but i remember like distinctly when i was in the first grade i had a really big mouth yeah shocker you know he was like in the sixth and when like i remember one time these kids in the third grade were picking on me that didn't last long my brother literally just picked them up and just bounced them against the wall and said like you know don't leave my brother alone and that probably garnered more like confidence in my ability to talk shit because i'm like yeah you want to mess with me yeah i got big brother right here he's gonna take care of me i love that you bring that to the game of poker

because a lot of tables these days are just quiet yeah i think it's a different vibe right like a lot of the younger players when you think of poker sometimes you don't necessarily think of like gregarious personalities now you think of people who are like into math into games very methodical and they've sort of followed a pattern of the younger player which kind of fits that demographic right and they're afraid to give anything away so they're very stiff wearing a scarf you know in a hoodie and all this kind of stuff so from that perspective i think it makes it a little less entertaining we've done stuff to improve it which is for one we put a shot clock in for all the high rolls right so you get 30 seconds you know but still some guys will just stare at the wall for 30 seconds before acting it's just like it is what it is yeah yeah you've

been in the space for 20 30 years now would you recommend uh being a poker player to like up-and-coming people i would recommend people do whatever they're passionate about and if poker is what they're passionate about understand one thing you're gonna have to work hard it's not as simple as like oh poker i know poker i'm gonna go into the casino and make some money you know you actually have to study you have to work hard you have to like take your lumps. And I would suggest for anybody who has like a day job already, supplement with poker first before you make the switch. Make sure that this is something that you can handle emotionally because when you get a paycheck every month, you know like you're going to get your rent paid, right? Well, if you have rent and you have bills and you play poker, your paycheck may be negative this month. So like if that happens a couple months in a row what do

you do then so there's like risk and for a lot of people you know they're comfortable when they're not under financial pressure but as soon as they are they no longer pull the trigger on moves that they should so for example there's slaves at this spot they should be bluffing for like 10 000 bucks but they're like oh shit if i lose this pot i don't have money to pay rent they don't do it right so they end up costing themselves ev because they're playing scared and when you play against people that are playing scared so it's quite easy to pick them apart right it's just easy yeah yeah you play scared you just know they're gonna have it right there's not a lot of people that are still around from your era man no no very few people like made it if you will yeah um for me i think the reason that I'm still around is,

one, I love it. I just love to play, and I love to compete, and I always like being doubted. It fuels me. I love haters. Thank you so much for all of you. You really drive me. Because I've heard so many times how many times I'm washed up, and it's like, oh, baby. I'm going to prove them wrong. I see those comments, too. I love it. It's super fun for me. I don't care. I really don't. It's just kind of fun for me to be able to say, I told you so. But one of the key reasons, I'm going to prove them wrong. I see those comments too. I love it. It's super fun for me. I don't care. Like, I really don't. It's just kind of fun for me to be able to say, I told you so. But one of the key reasons I think that I've been able to stay relevant at the high stakes is because of two things. Self-awareness, like always being honest with myself about where I stand against my

opponents. Like, are there things they're doing that is just like outplaying me? Are there things that i can improve upon and then the humility to like take on knowledge from younger people that haven't been there yet right so combining you know my 30 years of wisdom in playing poker with also the new technology and the new sort of techniques and things that people are using and sort of figure it out that way rather than like just poo-poo it and be like, ah, these kids, they don't know better. You know, that's kind of what my buddy Phil Hellmuth does. He's like, oh, they don't know. Nobody knows how to play. He always says these things. He's like the most fun guy to play with because he's always talking about how

they don't even know how to play. Nobody knows how to play except you, Phil. Got it. I love it. Have you ever been at a table where you felt like someone was just way better than you? It happened. So here's what I look at. I look probably happens every couple of years where I sort of like take a refresher. OK, where am I at right now? Is this stuff I'm doing working really well? There was a poker masters, which is a big event here. I was playing against some German players, one guy named Stefan Sonheimer.

It was very, very good. Right. And he was talking about poker in a way that I didn't even understand what he was saying. He was talking about combos. So I don't know what that is. I'm a professional. I should know, shouldn't I? And there were a couple specific spots that he really just outplayed me in. So that was like a wake-up call to go, oh boy, you got work to do, right? So that's when I started down the path of like getting more up-to-date on modern theory, you know, using solvers and things like that and really trying to drill it in. And I'll be honest with you, when I started, it was intimidating. I felt like it was above me. I couldn't figure it out, but you know, I'm motivated. And I, once I got it, I started to

go, okay, now I see, now I see. So I'm going to use this computer, this AI to sort of figure out how it thinks and why it does the things it does. Not a memorization technique, which I think a lot of people misuse them because they think, I'm going to memorize what the computer would do in this spot. No, no, no, no. That's not what you want to do. You want to use the solver to sort of understand,

you know, why it chooses certain strategies that it does and then implement that. And then I know when I play against players that are studied, I know what they study. So I also know how they misapply it in some ways. So I take advantage of them that way. The idea between being like a game theory optimal is that you can't exploit the person, right? But no human being will ever be able to do that.

It's not possible unless we get Neuralink or something like that. But there's just no way that you can like replicate what a solver does. Wow. So it's like a game within a game because you know they know GTO. So you're thinking, oh, he's thinking this and you're trying to counter that.

In a way, sure. So like I guess a good analogy and I've used this one before, but I'll use it again. It's like you play rock, paper, scissors. Okay. So let's say, for example, I notice that you're playing rock every time.

What should I do? Paper. How often? Every time. What would happen then after about 10 in a row? They would switch the rock, right? Well, they would know, right? So I'd wake you up. If you're playing rock every time, and I play paper every time, you might go, hey, wait a minute. He keeps playing paper every time.

So now you're going to switch your strategy. So what a better play might be is for me to like play rock 60, 70% of the time. So you don't know that you're, and then you leave thinking, ah, man, I was just unlucky, right? Where in reality, I just was like taking advantage of you, exploiting you without you even understanding what was happening.

Wow. Right? That's interesting. Are there still any hands or games you think about that haunt you or do you come to peace with everything that happens in the past? Yeah, there's always ones, you know know there's always ones from way back when and like i think the year 2000 damn yeah yeah yeah well you know there's always

those ones where you look back and you're like what if right right um but the bottom line is this like i'm at a place where i'm like super happy in life so i don't live with regret ever like i really don't regret anything I did now. That doesn't mean I wouldn't go back and do things differently with the knowledge that I have. But if I regret things that I've done in the past, then, you know, that would mean like I'm unhappy now, but I'm not. So all the mistakes I made led me to here. So who knows? Maybe if I would have not made those mistakes, maybe I wouldn't have been here. You know, who's to say? Right. Because on my research of you, it said you came to Vegas at 22 and went broke. Oh, many times. Yeah. Many times,

man. That didn't stop you. No, I mean, losing money stopped you. But like, luckily by that time, I sort of, you know, developed a group of friends who knew that I had talent. Yeah. But I was a little bit, you know, overzealous with my bankroll. Like I took shots that you're not supposed to take, but listen, when you're in, how old are you? 27. Yeah. So you're young, right? Like the way I looked at it back then was, okay, if I have a thousand bucks, if I lose this, that's rep, you know, I can replicate that. I can get a thousand dollars again, right? That evolves and changes once you start to have like a million dollar bankroll or something. Now that's not as easily replicable. So when you're young, I think that applies to business and all sorts of things. It's okay to take shots because worst case scenario, you're still at your mom's. She's still cooking for you and all that sort of thing.

So I took a lot of chances that were probably too aggressive when I was young. But again, I look at those mistakes as learning opportunities. And that's the interesting thing with poker because I know some phenomenal players you do as well, but they're broke. Oh, yeah. It's pretty common. Yeah, and I'll tell you, it used to be even more common in my day, right? Today, a lot of the younger players are a lot more methodical and they're much more calculated with their bankroll or in addition to that had leaks whether it be drugs alcohol women or other forms of gambling whether it's sports craps all this sort of stuff right so like you could be the best poker player

in the world but if you're gambling at all these other games in the casino and stuff you end up broke and there was a lot of guys who were really great players that were getting staked because everyone knew they're great but they also knew they had no discipline stew hunger was a perfect example right like he was a phenom you know he was back in his time he was just like next level but he had so many demons and made so many you know other mistakes that you know other people would be able to make money off of them absolutely are you when you play are you sober every time yeah i am but i mean listen that how here's the thing okay and i'm don't recommend this but if i do drink a little bit i'm actually

like deadly really yeah there's like a line there was a guy named bill smith he's a world champion many years ago like the 80s or something they used to say about him when he was sober he was the weakest tightest easiest player to be when he was drunk he was a sloppy mess but when he was sober, he was the weakest, tightest, easiest player to beat. When he was drunk, he was a sloppy mess. But when he was a little drunk, he was the best player in the world. Wow. Yeah. There's something about alcohol that there's like – but there's that little period in between that loosens your inhibitions, allows you to sort of trust in what you just know. You play on feel and you feel things.

But again, it's very difficult to stay within that realm of like not too drunk right you know so i don't use it also as i got older too alcohol when i do drink which is not that often i'm like i'm feeling it the next day you know what i mean like when i was your age we drank no big deal no go out again you know when you don't drink often and then all of a sudden you do. Because here's the thing. I don't drink as often as I used to, but when I drink, I drink. Like I still drink like I would have if I was 25. But my body's like, nah, bro. You should not be doing this the next day.

At 50, did you have a little drink? I drank. Yeah, I had some wine. I felt okay. My wife, she's like, she used to party like crazy. Yeah. She was like Hollywood. She was a Hollywood girl.

You know what I mean? Yeah. And she used to party and all that kind of stuff now she doesn't drink anything nice no she's a changed woman well it's not even that it's just that it makes her sick you know because you get older and you know so it's almost like you got to microdose it to have the full effect for poker well alcohol yeah yeah again that's difficult i know this and like i said it's not something i recommend but um i mean especially when you're playing like a five-day tournament. Okay, so let's say I'm on day two and I drink. Well, now I got to play day three. How am I going to start day three without all my wits about me?

So we were talking about this off-camera, but there's so many clips of you calling out specific cards, even the suit and the number. What do you think that is? Is that just intuition? Is that something spiritual? What do you think that is? I'm a big believer in we don't know what we don't know, right?

Like we just don't. Like have you ever had like a premonition or like a feeling of deja vu or who knows? I don't know. But I tell you what, over the 30 years of poker and a lot of people are going to just say, oh, it's just your mind playing tricks on you. I've had many moments where I could feel everything in my body like an anxiety about what card's about to come and the the the percentage of times where it's actually right is astronomical like i wish i would have documented it throughout my history so who's to say i don't know like my mom used to take me when we were young to like those tarot card readers yeah and they would read my cards and stuff like

that and i've always had a fascination with cards and i felt like some sort of connection to the to the deck energy if you will and like i said i don't know we can get goofy new agey like universe stuff but like who the hell knows man we don't know we could be in them literally it could be as simple as like we're in a sim right somebody's playing me as a video game character and every once in a while they let me in on what's about to happen because they want me to do something different i don't know it could be possible who knows man yeah were any of those tarot card readers accurate yes really yeah oh yeah when i was eight well my mom took me to one of the coffee cup readers coffee cup readers you know like you never seen that i've seen in movies so there's a this thing where you drink a turkish

coffee and i was like eight and they made me drink a turkish coffee and then you turn the coffee cup upside down right and then you just let it sit for a while okay and then what you'll see is you'll see a bunch of lines in the coffee cup and then the lady will read your lines she said she basically said i was going to be famous and i was going to be very she's because i would be wealthy i'm going to be famous i mean sure you could tell that to a lot of different kids right um but she sort of hit on those you know basic points of like the type of person that i was so she had no idea your potential so that's no i mean i was eight middle class home like again maybe she told all the kids you know i don't know and just happened to get lucky with me just so you come back later to pay her right yeah or maybe

like she said that and i was like you know what okay then i'll you know then i'll do it yeah hard to know but yeah i've had some interesting i also had some bad ones man there are some bad apples no i had some like bad readings oh really oh i think it was the same one actually the coffee cup lady i think she also told me that you're gonna be in love three times okay but they're not gonna love you as much as you love them and you're gonna end up alone i was like what the hell why would you tell an eight-year-old that first of all right and i remember years ago you know the show millionaire matchmaker yeah so i did that show oh okay and i remember telling patty stanger that story and so she got like one of these

numerologist guys to come and read my numbers okay so he's there reading my number and he's and i told him that story i was like i kind of spooked out by people like you and he's there reading my number and he's, and I told him that story. I was like, I kind of spooked out by people like you. And he's like, okay, well what that person told you was true, but that chapter's closed now. And now you're starting this new, now you're ripe for a relationship and all this stuff. And I was like, okay, cool. I don't know how much I, you know, stock I put into it, but, um, you know, uh, yeah. It's just like, why would you tell an eight year old that?

That is traumatizing. Yeah. Jeez. Um, you still playing chess? I'm terrible at chess, but I still play it. Like every day I'll play a few games on chess.com. You're decent. You're 1300, right? I was. I saw your Instagram story.

Yeah, but I'm not anymore. Oh, you're not. No, I'm not. Well, what are you? I'm a 1450. Oh, you kill me. Yeah. Liv Bure is a 1300. She is? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I got worse.

Really? Yeah. I mean, when you don't play regularly and stuff, I their pogchamps thing that was a lot of fun yeah with some uh i remember that was actually a fun moment for me the pogchamps they asked me to do it and i was like i don't know am i like too big time i actually genuinely was thinking about my too big time for this then i play this person in pokemane yeah i'm like i didn't know who the hell this person was and then we got like 100 million followers right and i'm like all these people that i don't know this young generation of streamers and stuff i'm like they have like massive followings i think we live in a time today where there are more famous people in the world

that you've never heard about than ever in existence right there's like niche people like for me you know people are going to know me if they know poker but you're you know young streamers play video they don't know who the hell i am yeah you know so that was interesting experience and they had logic played and uh who won i don't i think i don't remember but i think it was dwight from the office it's right from the home yes i think he won the whole thing he was a ringer i think he was too good i need to look into entering the next one i've been practicing you should yeah you should absolutely play it was fun yeah um would you do chess boxing ever how does that work exactly you play i think it's a 10-minute game of chess,

but somehow you're boxing in between, and if you knock them out while you're boxing, the chess game ends and you win. But if you checkmate them, then the boxing ends. Okay, I think I saw Andrea do that. Yeah. Right, looks kind of fun. I mean, I would probably do that, yeah.

A million dollars versus Justin Bonomo in chess boxing, you would do that? No, because the guy's much bigger than me. He's just taller and younger. Like, that's not a fair fight. Even if he's completely uncoordinated and a terrible boxer. Like, I mean, I'm not like some freaking Mike Tyson over here. You know what I mean?

Let me have somebody my own size. Have you made amends with him or is there still some? I just, I ignore his existence. Whoa, it's that bad? I've always done that. Like, I find him to be loathsome in some of the things that he said and the positions that he's taken. Wow. So I don't have, like whenever, you know, he's at my table or whatever, I don't engage with him.

He tries to engage with me occasionally. On Twitter, I don't block him. I let him put his propaganda on my feet. I don't mind. I'm all for free speech, clearly, right? But I don't engage with him directly because I'm not interested. Got it. You know, it's just like beating your head against the wall. But like there was one

moment, one thing that he did that I found so vile. There was that soldier. I can't remember his name that like burned himself alive. Oh, I saw that. He just poured gasoline over himself. Clear. Nobody sane does this. Okay. This isn't about, you know, moral conviction. This is just you, you've been, you know, indoctrinate. You've been you know indoctrinate you've like lost your mind right nobody does this so he burned himself alive you know on video it's crazy that you can watch this stuff today and he talked about how brave it was how i couldn't be that brave you know but that was such a brave act what you're doing is you're glorifying suicide you know to a wide audience and like people see that what if it sparked somebody to say you know

what i want to be brave i'm going to do the same thing i'm going to needlessly kill myself aaron you know, to a wide audience. And like, people see that. What if it sparked somebody to say, you know what? I want to be brave. I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to needlessly kill myself. Aaron Bushnell or something was in there. Like, what did that do? Like, what did he help with? It didn't make a difference over there.

It's just a needless, you know, suicide. And to glorify that, I found that repulsive. That is a wild take. I didn't see that. Brave. Call that act brave? Yeah. That, you know, you don't glorify stuff like it because there are plenty of people who deal with all sorts of different mental illness right who you don't know what small trigger will trigger them to do

something crazy you really don't we can't know so you somewhat want to be mindful of that and when you do that especially if you have a platform and you sort of throw that out there that wow this one this guy is now being glorified and people look at him like he's heroic what if you have a platform and you sort of throw that out there that wow this one this guy is now being glorified and people look at him like he's heroic what if you know you want to experience that or feel that and you don't put two and two together that well you're gonna end up dead so you're not gonna actually gonna get to experience it you know what i would yeah i just found that to be yeah there's other things too but that was for me like the whoa you've really you've gone so deep that there's no redeeming qualities left

like you can't come back from that yeah you know i find it interesting that the further left to the further right you go right you go to either extreme the horseshoe theory you end up agreeing on the same group of people are to blame for everything like either both ways you know like if you go in either extreme and you see that playing out when you see like Dan Bilzerian and Justin Bonomo agreeing on one specific thing, that the Jews are to blame for literally everything. Oh yeah. Dan's been going hard on that. They both do though. Right. I didn't see Justin. Well, they're both like literally at the other spectrum, other end of the spectrum. Like Dan Bilzerian's massive Trumper, you know, Bonomo's like Jill Stein, you know, like left of left. Right. But they agree on this. He's not,

you know, he's talking about how, oh, Dan's spitting fire right now, right? It's the one thing that they can come to agree on is that all the problems that exist in the entire world and that have ever existed are all because of Jewish people. Man, they're getting attacked right now. I've never seen-

Well, they are because they're, well, especially with Dan, like he was asked in the podcast that he did, you know, like, is this something that you've always looked at? He's like, no, it's recent. I'm like, yeah, no shit, it's recent. Because you literally read a meme of like a Talmud and you're like – you took it at face value as being like accurate without doing any deep research.

It's a very complex situation over there obviously. I looked into this five years ago in depth i spent hundreds of hours researching both sides of the conflict and what the needs are on both sides to make my conclusion so october 7th was by that point i already had a deep understanding of the conflict and what's going on over there and then to see on october 7th you know a bunch of innocent people being killed at a concert and then you know old people in a in a little village being murdered and slaughtered like on october 8th before any bombs were dropped you already had people in the streets marching not marching saying we we pray for your dead instead they were you

know they're they're like the free palestine uh protesters the day after right there's no bomb that even been dropped and that tells you it's more than just about you know what people want to say that it is yeah so did you publicly like pick a side or oh i have many i yeah i mean like i said i when i was doing my research years ago i was empathetic to both sides and i understood both sides ultimately i landed on the side of the one free democracy in the region the one place where if you are LGBTQ plus 1A, LS2, CES, whatever, then you can go in Israel and you can be in a pride parade.

You can't do that in Gaza, right? Justin Bonomo, if he went to Gaza with his boyfriend and his girlfriend and was walking down the street, right? What happens next, generally speaking, or often is he gets tied to a bike, is dragged through the streets and paraded through the streets

right before he's up on the roof. And when he's up on the roof, maybe in that moment, he would start to feel like, oops, maybe, you know, and then, you know, you're thrown off the roof after that. So, I mean, that's, I don't make that up. That's crazy. Like that's, that's a thing, right? So when you think about democracy and you think about, frankly, a lot of the values that supposedly like the progressive left stand for women's rights gay rights all these types of things like that's israel like they're an open democracy there right that's not the case you know in gaza you know they don't have that sort of freedom under hamas right but you and justin have had beef for a long time right that just sparked there ended it i guess well i've never like yeah it's been many years since i've ever you know wanted to engage with him directly because i find him i thought he it started with

like his obsession with microaggressions like you know saying to a woman that you like your hair you know and that being sexist and misogynist and all this kind of it was like bro so it started with that small thing it ended up to like full jihad you know it's like it was quite a stretch from there but yeah no he sort of went down the quote-unquote and i'll use the quotes because this word sort of has evolved in its meaning like he went like super woke right right he went down that path hardcore and i said this in a tweet the other day but i'm a believer that if you are 100 percent in agreement in agreement with any platform right then you're doing no critical thinking of your own.

It's near impossible for you to say, I agree 100% with what this party says or this party. If you do, what are the odds that you're actually thinking for yourself versus just taking in what you're being told to think? Right. Yeah, it's almost impossible to agree with. There's so many policies i mean yeah and there's like literally not one i've ever seen in the last whatever where he doesn't fully side with the most extreme view that you can possibly have of democrat even but he doesn't consider himself one he's like no left of that like left of that yeah yeah i didn't know there was a left oh yeah yeah jill stein wow yeah geez so you don't think there's any middle ground with you and him no i don't like i said it's not worth you know i've talked about him more with you just now

than i have in a decade wow right i don't i just don't acknowledge it like he's like he lost cause to me you know some people are too far gone yeah and i don't think there's any point like i think one of the worst ways we can spend our time is to have back and forth on twitter with people who are not actually trying to have their mind changed. Nobody is, right? They're just trying to make you change yours. It never works. So it ends up with this need, this endless stream of, I'm going to send you this article, read this, I'm going to send you this, I'm going to send you this, I'm going to send you this. And then it's this page. And then you realize you just spent 13 hours wasting your time, like banging your head

against the wall. Pointless. Now, some may argue, and there's truth to it, that like, well, there's other people that read that. And so you can influence them to some degree or whatever. But I just don't think it's the right form. Even though we can make longer posts now on Twitter, it's still not the appropriate form. I think this kind of situation, right? You talk to someone in person. Notice how different the interactions are versus online. 100%.

People are so much more brave online. I can't tell you how many people, I read them talk so much mad shit about me on Twitter, right? They're talking mad. Then they sit at the poker table and be like, hey, how's it going? Like, bro, I saw what you said last week. You know what I mean?

Now you want to be my buddy? What kind of shit is this, for real? People try to like talk on the internet. Oh, exactly. You know, and again, there's like, there's also a characterization of people. It's easier to demonize people when you just read their words versus like actually have the conversation.

Right. Like you take two people, you could take a Trump supporter, Kamala's most supporter. You put them here, right? At a table, let them talk. You'd notice that the conversation is going to be a lot more civil and respectful than it would be behind a keyboard. Absolutely. I've never engaged with a hater online.

That's smart. I get a ton of hate. I would do it in person if they want to come on the podcast, but online, there's no point. Yeah. But here's the thing, though. In some ways, it's a lose-lose.

I always tell people this because I have a lot of experience in this arena. When someone's lying about you, right? They're literally just flat-out lying about some things you did or said or whatever, right? You have two choices. One, defend yourself, right? You have two choices. One, defend yourself, right? Get into the cesspool back and forth. Or B, you, I said one or B.

One or B, just let it go. The problem with both is this. Number one, you start going back and forth. People say, well, why are you defending yourself if you know it's not true or whatever like that, right? And then you're in the cesspool and you're in the back and forth and it's just a negative energy situation. The opposite option is don't say anything but then it becomes fact to people they just assume that this is true about you right right so it's a lose lose either way you go 100 yeah and those types of videos get a ton of views yeah exactly when they're hating on you so they can characterize you and they can start labeling you um i saw this teacher um recently he did this whole uh he got fired as a teacher he this teacher recently. He did this whole, he got fired as a teacher.

He was on X and he did this thing about JK Rowling or something. And he had a student in there and he was teaching the kid critical thinking. And the kid was saying things that like,

well, she's transphobic. She's this and he's like, well, what makes you say that? Like, give me an example. But so often once somebody's labeled something and this is what they do. You know, if you have a thought that, well, maybe COVID came from a lab, I don't know, you're a far right-wing

fascist. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, am I? You know, like on Twitter now, and I'm kind of proud of this, I still get called like a libtard. And I also get called like a right-wing fascist. And like, oh, boy, I like when both of you hate me. Then I know I'm in the right place. Do you think part of the reason why there's a lack of critical thinking these days is the public education system and the way they teach kids? I don't know so much if it's that. That obviously plays a role, I think, too, especially, you know, when specific teachers can come in within a specific agenda, right, where they're not just trying to teach, they're trying to teach ideology. I think it's

more of a problem in higher education, you know, in like universities where this, you know, universities and colleges used to be a place where, you know, there was diversity of thought. Like people could have different ideas and discuss them. That was quelched. Like, oh, you know, like if a Jordan Peterson or a Bill Maher want to go to a college, they get picketed and, you know, they don't let them speak. It's like, all right, you don't have to go listen, but maybe other people want to, right um and it's almost like monolithic in terms of what you're allowed to believe and if you don't you're kind of an outcast right so i think that's problematic i think the bigger problem though with the tribalization of both sides is just social media in general you know really the

algorithms themselves in this land i'm not an expert on this but there's no question that the more you time you spend on a specific topic the more of that you're going to get yeah right so as a result you're going to constantly be fed things that confirm your beliefs right you know and for me i actually think i'm one of the few maybe who think the platform of x has improved because um it's more neutral you know people because it's more neutral. You know, people say it's more right wing, right? I see a lot of that on X. Yeah, more right wing.

But then when you look at the balance, right? Like I think Elon said something to the effect of, I think 97% of the people that work there were democratic donators, right? So it was already, you know, far left, far left. So then those people, when they see anything that doesn't align with their beliefs, they, you know, they call it right wing extremism when a lot of it is just moderate common sense stuff. A lot of the things that you believe, maybe your eyes are open to the fact like, oh, that wasn't even true. I'm embarrassed to say this. I'm genuinely embarrassed to say this because I was fooled myself when Trump said there was very fine people on both sides. I took it as what they said.

All the media said, well, he's talking about white nationalists and neo-Nazis are fine people, right? Then I listened to it a couple months ago and went, oh, my God. He wasn't talking about them at all. In that same video that they don't put in the thing, he says, I'm not talking about white nationalists or neo-Nazis. He says that exactly. He's talking about, and this part is true, there are fine people. They were taking down monuments of like whoever, you know? And some people were for taking them down and some people were against that, okay?

Now, I'm sure some of those people on both sides were fine people, not the neo-Nazis who happened to come this way. But then I read on Twitter, because I said this recently, and everyone's like, well, if you're marching on the same side as the neo-Nazis, then you're on the wrong side. It's like, listen, they have nothing to do with me. You know what I mean? Like just because they believe something has nothing to do with me, you know, if I'm aligned with them or something. That's not how you evaluate whether people – but again, just the DNC this last little bit, I saw them repeat the lie. Like it's like you just keep telling the same lie and it's like, opens your eyes to

like, they don't even care. Like, every reporter reported on that, knew that they were spinning at the very least, distorting and lying about his position. You know, it was just blatant. They've weaponized the media. Kamala won't even do any interviews. No, and that's probably, here's the thing. It's so bizarre to say, but it's probably smart for her.

You think so? Probably. Like strategically, I get why they're doing that. It's because when she does – when she's off the cuff, like if you watch like her speeches, they're like word for word. She's just reading a teleprompter. Don't most of them do that though? No. I mean not really.

No. Like they have their different Trump – they have their speeches. They have like bullet points and things like that. But like Trump, I mean his rallies are just whatever. He just says stuff. You know what I mean? He goes off. But like with her, when she's gone off the cuff, she ends up in these word salads where she'll speak for two minutes without saying anything.

She'll say, I can see what can be unburdened by what has been, you know? And the significance of the passage of time is significant because the passage of time is significant. And you're like, wait a minute, you literally just spoke for 90 seconds without saying a damn thing, right? She's quite good at not answering questions in that way. But I think like from their perspective, they're curating her image.

They're trying to completely do a 180. Because like, as I said, weeks before, she was the nominee, anointed nominee, not voted in by the people, not democratically voted in. They were talking about getting her off the ticket as the lowest rated VP in history. And now they're like sort of just completely whitewashed or just changing the narrative.

And that, you know, like she's like the next coming or something like that, based on what exactly, like what flipped, what changed all of a sudden. And it really just was as simple as the machine getting behind her. And the only reason she was put in this place flat out is because there was $240 million locked up in the Biden-Harris campaign that only she could use. If they had their choice, I can't imagine they would choose the one who, when she ran, got less than 1%, didn't win a single delegate in those primaries. And frankly, Tulsi Gabbard ended her career as far as I thought or ended her campaign in 45 seconds. Should have. It was it. Well, she was done. And then, you know, then Biden says, I'm going to have a woman as VP, which is by definition

a DEI hire, right? It's like, so DEI is a thing where you're like, people get offended by that, right? Like, well, why are you offended by something if you believe it's good? If you believe in DEI, then why wouldn't you be supportive of this, right? But whenever you mentioned that Kamala was a DEI hire, they get offended by saying she's not qualified. Now, understand this. You can be qualified. Absolutely. I'm not suggesting that because she was hired that she wasn't qualified. I'm not suggesting that based on that alone. What I am saying is when you say I'm only going to choose from this demographic of people and you weed out all the other possible canons simply because of their race or gender. That is DEI higher. You're literally saying there are no white people or not white people. There are no males that can I want to win, you know, the Christian right. I'm gonna bring on Mike Pence, you know? So they do that. But when you break, when you just flat out openly say so that I'm literally going to hire, I'm only going to have a woman in this role. And then you do it. And then people say, well, that's not a DEI hire. Then what exactly do you

think a DEI hire is? Yeah. Did you see the DEI debate between Mark Cuban and Vivek? I didn't see the whole thing, but I should. Mark Cuban was defending DEI. He's a fan of it. And Vivek was against it, but it was interesting to me. I think I saw some of the effect of then why don't you have any like five foot nine Asians on your Dallas Mavericks basketball team? You know, if you really want to be diverse, you know, and then when you think of like the problems with DEI, there's this gentleman by the name of Coleman Hughes. I'm not sure if you're familiar with him. He wrote a great book called The End of Race Politics.

Now, this is a black male who's been liberal his most of his life, independent thinker. And he wrote this book essentially pointing out, frankly, that DEI actually ends up hurting the communities that it's supposed to be helping because of a couple of reasons. Number one, if you went to a doctor, you have a choice between a doctor or a lawyer, right? And you can pick anybody, right? If you choose somebody who's a person of color, there's that extra element of wondering,

okay, did they qualify based on their merit or were they a DEI hire? And when you bring in that doubt, you offend those very people. What if I was a black man who worked my ass off i'm an amazing doctor right but because of the fact that this process happens people question and go eh i don't know i'm not going to take my chances here i'm going to go with somebody else just in case you know you were like lower on the bar in terms of you know and you know you were inserted into the top group because they needed diversity.

Yeah. It never made sense to me, race and gender. I've hired both men and women. Race never mattered to me. It shouldn't. It's all performance-based for me. Well, the other thing that really – I mean this is no longer allowed but I wonder how they do this.

One of the ways in which they were trying to deal with sort of this idea of inequality and race in school, in a higher education, was to help more black and brown people get into school. By doing what? By specifically being racist against Asians. If you're an Asian male, right, trying to get into one of the premier schools was incredibly difficult. Super hard. You couldn't get in. I mean, you could have SET scores and you could have more qualifications up the wazoo, but because there's a quota, right, you don't just get in.

And it's like, I'm just a big believer in merit. I believe there are ways in which you can help, you know, minorities and stuff, but that comes from education system. That comes from like revamping that and setting themselves up. Not based on like this idea that we are going to make these policies based on race.

What you should focus on is socioeconomics, right? Instead of saying, you know, we're going to help this specific race of people, we're going to say, how about this? Let's help poor people. Let's help disadvantaged people. And whoever falls in that group, that's disproportionately already going to help the people that you want to help. But it does so in a more honest and fair way. It gives the white trash kid from Alabama who lives in a trailer just as much chance as, you know, another kid. Like you shouldn't do it based on race because that is racist.

Oh, my gosh. When I was applying to college my senior year, so I'm half Asian, half white. If I said I was I said I was white on the application because if I said I was Asian, I don't think I would have got in. Oh, no. Because the average SAT score was like 2000 or something really high. So, yeah, they're essentially doing this. It's like you are battling just the cream of the crop, if you will.

You know, just a fact that Asians test higher. They do better in these things. So, so you're being tested against, you're being like compared to them rather than the whole. And there are people below you that don't necessarily need to be as qualified that will get in. That just seems unfair to me. Yeah. It's a weird system, dude. I'm not a fan.

And I don't think I'm sending my kids to college. I don't blame you. I actually have a close friend. I won't name him. But he's like – he keeps telling me to hurry up and have kids because he wants to build a school. Because he's far too afraid of his daughter going to school and then like when she's 10 coming back and now he's got a son or something like that you know i don't know oh man you want kids though yeah you know my wife and i've talked about it yeah we're looking at adoption we're looking

possible surrogacy stuff like that because you've held out for a while so that's yeah i still feel young you know you got young energy i do yeah the kid poker yeah you know kid rocks what like 60 and he's still kid rock i'm gonna stay kid poker forever you gotta rock that name until you're 80 yeah exactly you think you'll play poker the rest of your life i don't see why not wow you know it's one of those things where i think like especially as you get older using your mind um plenty of studies have shown that like you know people that play games people that exercise the brain um avoid dementia avoid like you know just losing it's like anything right if you don't work out you don't use your muscles they deteriorate well if you don't use your brain to you know think like i look at doyle brunson who passed away recently was 89 years old still

playing the highest stakes games in the world and had his wits about him i swear he was like i played with him but a year before he passed and he was doing new about him i swear he was like i played with him but a year before he passed and he was doing new stuff wow i'm like bro you're 88 and you're doing new stuff now it was pretty wild to see but i think like um as long as i can physically perform you know i'm always going to want to play play this game because i love it and i also i don't play all the time like i play now quality over quantity essentially where when I feel like playing, I go out there and I give it my all. And then I take plenty of breaks. Like I played hard this summer and I haven't played at all in like the last month.

Oh, wow. Okay. So you don't have that, I guess, you don't have that itch to play? I do have the itch, but here's what happens with the itch. I know it's time to play again when the itch needs to be scratched, right? So after a long series of seven weeks, I just dead i got no energy tired i don't want to play at all right give it a couple weeks all of a sudden a couple more and i start to see a little poker i'm like oh yeah and dude and i see tournaments going on and now i get excited

about it again i think like when you become successful um and it's not about the money anymore you can be complacent if you don't focus on playing when you actually really want to. Because if you just go through the motions, you're not going to be at your best and your results will show. What do you think of poker in terms of the new way it's shown on television with these streamers now?

You got the celebrity poker tournament. It seems like a new era, right, of content? Yeah, so I think it's really important that poker has new ways in which it's really important that like poker has new ways in which it's like absorbed you know and but i we have so many new media opportunities today that didn't exist when i was around when i was around if you wanted poker to be on like scene you had to put it on tv right now you can create shows that you live stream on youtube you can stream them on twitch whatever the case may be and there's so many different angles with

which people digest it i think one of the most innovative ways in which poker was shown was the game of gold. If you haven't seen it, watch it. You will love it. It doesn't matter if you're a poker player or not because it sort of creates the element of reality TV with poker, right? Which I think was really cool.

I do think it's always important to, you know, reinvent how it's done. Celebrity poker has its niche right like some people just love seeing people that they know you know playing poker and shooting the shit and they seem to have fun with it too right if you're a poker purist those broadcasts are probably not for you because it's like the level of poker is going to be what you'd expect from a bunch of non-pro celebrities right um but they have their place for sure. What's next for you and where can people keep up with you, man? Well, me, I listen, I'm on, my main thing is like, you know, I'm on Twitter,

Real Kid Poker. I also got a YouTube channel where, you know, I do vlogs. I do daily vlogs throughout the entire summer and I'll be doing them again this winter during the Bahamas series. And then I, you know, I throw some podcasts and videos up there once in a while just like a a passion like a hobby nothing I'm like I'm not trying to like

make money doing it I just you know enjoy it yeah well we'll link below next time on Daniel you got it cheers

thanks for watching guys as always see you next time