Odd Lots - Poker Legend Phil Hellmuth Has Advice That Traders Should Hear

Episode Date: May 26, 2017

Phil Hellmuth is one of poker's biggest stars. His success is undeniable, as he's won 14 bracelets at the World Series of Poker, more than anyone else. And his outsize personality at the table has earned him the nickname "The Poker Brat." But while Hellmuth may be known for his outbursts and colorful behavior, he's actually one of the most disciplined players the game has ever seen. On this week's Odd Lots, Phil explains how he manages risk, how he avoids going on "tilt," how he prepares for big tournaments and how he keeps a fundamentally optimistic outlook on life. He also offers three simple words of advice for everyone who trades.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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CIT offers commercial lending, leasing, and treasury management services for small and middle market businesses. Learn more at CIT.com. Put knowledge to work. And welcome to another edition of the Odd Lot podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthal. And I'm Tracy Allaway. Hey, Tracy. Remember our episode a couple months ago with Peter Borish,

about investing and trading? Of course. It was a great episode. Yeah, that was a really fun one. But there was something he said that really stuck with me. I mean, there was a fascinating conversation, but one of the things that has really stuck with me in my mind that he said when he was talking about the great hedge fund traders of all time,

whether there's people like George Soros or Paul Tudor Jones, he said what they really had in common even more than some sort of uncanny neck was just a real discipline about survival, a real instinct for risk management, not getting blown up, not destroying themselves. Yeah, I remember he said specifically the worst thing that can happen to you is basically if you lose all your money because then you're dead, right? You're out of the game. You're out of the game.

Exactly right. And so a lot of the people that we call legends these days that we venerate are people who primarily have survived this long. And somehow they figured out a way to not die, not blow up. And of course, in markets, pitfalls abound. Yeah, I would broadly agree with that. What's the point? Today, our guest is someone else who has done an extraordinary job of surviving,

of not blowing up, of risk management, bankroll management, except they're not a traitor per se. Okay. I'm starting to get a little bit nervous. Who is it? You should be nervous because I know we're going to be talking about one of the topics at which you feel the least at ease. But I'll just jump right into it. Today we're going to be talking to one of the most successful World Series of Poker participants ever.

He's Phil Helmuth. He's won 14 bracelets at the World Series of Poker across multiple tables. He has made 54 final tables. And in his poker career, according to an AMA he did on Reddit, last year. He's made $18 million playing poker. That number is probably higher since that was a year ago. And I think anyone who has had this much success in poker clearly has something to teach people about risk management and bankroll management and discipline and keeping their emotions in check and many of the skills that a poker player or that a trader needs to survive.

So, Joe, I'm totally on board with the analogy, but let me say, in all, honesty due to my complete ignorance of the game of poker, as well as the fact that I looked up Phil's bio online and saw that he's called the poker brat. And then I made the massive mistake of watching a YouTube video featuring his top five table side explosions. I'm a little bit nervous about this one, but I trust you. I'm sure it'll be a good conversation. Well, hopefully we won't be at the receiving end of any tirade. Phil Holmew, thank you very much for joining us. Okay, first of all, those tirades have tens of millions of views, so that's a good thing, I think. Second of all, I don't walk around like that every day, so those are good tirades, so get entertainment.

And in this day and age of televised poker, I'm sure it doesn't hurt to have a reputation as being one of the more colorful players at the table. I watch those, it's like a train wreck, but I think traders can kind of, you know, I mean, you're in a great position, And everything, all indicators, could be the best position you've ever seen. And then all of a sudden, for some reason, I don't know, there's a forest fire in your stock turns and goes the other direction. I would be throwing a tirade at that point. So that's the interesting thing is that you do have this reputation for throwing tirades. As Tracy mentioned, your nickname is the poker brat. But you're obviously very successful at poker.

And so those tirades don't seem to translate into terrible play. In fact, you play quite well. So the popular term is you go on tilt. You start getting emotional. You start making bad bets that are driven by emotion. It doesn't seem like your tirades lead to bad bets. Well, that's true. I mean, I think I get rid of a lot of the emotion in the moment.

And the past in my 20s, when that happened, I would definitely get on tilt. And, I mean, of course, there's huge similarities there. between trading and, you know, and poker and getting emotional. And, you know, even more analogies when you're talking about, when you're buried in poker, when you're stuck, same thing in trading. You know, when you've lost a lot of money in a particular day, you might make some bad decisions near the end of that day. When you're losing a lot of money in a poker game, you might make some bad decisions, you know, near the end of that game.

And there's some definitely similarities there. Yeah, interesting, as I was hearing you guys, open the show, I was thinking that a lot of the guys that have been around forever, both in your industry and somebody like a Warren Buffett, all kind of share the same thing. And that's not to risk too much of their money on any given day. And that's something that, you know, I've been made fun of or criticized in the poker world, especially by people that don't understand. So the criticism is not fair because I wouldn't risk enough a higher percentage of my network. worth, choosing instead to be staked. For example, there's a series of six poker tournaments I'm about to enter, and I needed to raise $667,22. It's a very specific number. I emailed my friends.

I raised it in four hours to play poker tournaments. Now, it's a very high-risk investment, including a 300K. But, you know, I'll probably get criticized because, you know, I'll probably have 25% of myself in those tournaments, opting to look a little bit more like a hedge fund and taking a 15% free roll and then putting some of my own cash in. Joe and I have spoken about this on this podcast before, and that's the idea of a mathematical formula that basically dictates the ideal amount of money that you should bet on each trade or each hand of poker, and that's the Kelly criterion. Is something like that, something that you would use? when you actually play poker?

Kelly criteria is very interesting. You know, we've discussed us for a long time in poker as well. I mean, I'm probably even more conservative than that. So, you know, I've understood for a long time, you know, I was married. I've been married and have, you know, kids for forever, basically. My sons are now 26 and 23. And, you know, I couldn't, if I made one bad decision at the table, it could really affect my life.

And I had a wife and two kids depending on me. And I couldn't make those decisions. I remember playing poker. I remember strolling into a poker room in L.A. in around 2004. And, you know, it kind of feels like all eyes are on me. When I walk in a poker room, I feel like a U.S. president when I'm in the World Series of poker, everybody staring at me. And, you know, I remember walking in and sitting down at like 100, 200 game.

There was a 8 and 600 game, and there was a 4-and-800 game, and there was a 3-600 game, and here I sat in this game, and everybody's watching me, and I know they're all judging me. Oh, my God, Phil's playing 100, 200. And it was a real, it was a real, you know, kind of hurt my pride a lot. And I said, listen, you're doing this for your wife and your kids, and you're just being really smart. And, you know, if people want to, you know, judge you, that's fine, be judged. you know um and so you know i was willing to to do things like that rather than rather than risk too much money on any given day i think this is this is really interesting a few things here

one is maybe a lot of people don't realize this but tell us a little bit more about how it works the idea of being staked so you're entering these six tournaments people are of essentially invested in you they're playing with their money explain how that how that works Well, I've been lucky to have some really amazing friends who have wanted to invest money in me. And I've been extraordinarily lucky in that over the years I've probably had 50 people invest money. There's one or two that are losing, and maybe they've lost a combined total of 70,000. On the other hand, I've made $4 or $5 million for everybody else. So, you know, I try to invite anybody who's lost into my next deal.

So as time has passed, last year I put together my first fund, and I wasn't sure how it would go. I'm like, oh, my God, I need to raise $550,000. You know, can I do it? So I designed a fund where I would get a 10% free roll, and I'd put up the first 10% myself, so I'd be playing for 20%. And, you know, the nice thing about this versus traditional deals are deals where you would have makeup. In other words, I would have someone staking me, and if I lost $150,000 straight, they would get their $150,000 off the top. So theoretically, if I'm a great poker player, I'm eventually always going to end up making that person money,

but they might have to carry a $300,000 loss for a couple of years. And so, you know, but in this case, it's just much cleaner. Just have your friends put in a bunch of money. So last year was my first kind of fund. my friends put in 550, I hit for 1.6 million right away. And I was a little bit unlucky to not hit for more. Now, for them, imagine this is beyond like the Kentucky Derby. The Kentucky Derby lasts for two minutes.

They were actually able to watch me live on television for three full days and a $300,000 buying tournament. And if I would have gotten there on the other two events, I would have been on a live stream where they could have watched me. So it's kind of fun when you have 10,000. percent of somebody in your rooting forum to be able to watch for three straight days if you want to. And so it was pretty cool. And this year, of course, last year I was surprised my funds sold out in like 23 hours.

And of course, this year, four hours. And I could have raised a million dollars in four hours if I wanted to. And of course, that will all go away if I'm not successful. So there's a lot of pressure on me because I took my friend's money in for the latest fund. And it's only six or seven events, I think. Phil, forgive me if this is a really simplistic question. But what happens if the worst occurs and you do lose all your money and you do lose your bankroll, then what's like the next step for you?

If I lost the fund, then several of my friends would lose $66,000 or whatever. It's okay. They're all super wealthy. But it's not really okay because I really want to win. I think next year, if I tried to raise $6 million and $4 or five hours, I would be able to do it again. So I think for them it's just really fun and they want to support and they want to be involved and they know how much money I've made my other friends. So it feels like I'm good for a while unless somehow my poker skills suddenly mysteriously disappear.

For me to lose all of my money is almost unimaginable. I'd have to, you know, I'm just way too conservative to. to put all of my money at play or even, you know, 10% of it. Right off the bat in our conversation, we talked about, and I said it was interesting, how you have this reputation for these tirades at the table, but you don't go on tilt. You don't let those tirades turn into a string of bad decisions. And you mentioned that when you played poker in your 20s, you used to go on tilt.

Explain what happened. How did you plug that leak in your game, so to speak? How did you turn it around and avoid this sort of mental mistakes? Really give us some of the details about how you've worked out. Okay, I'm going to answer that. I'll also say that, you know, with my autobiography, Pokerbrat, I'm also launching my next book. So Poker Brat comes out August 1st, and I'm doing this book right after that called Positivity. And positivity, I'm really excited about.

It's kind of like my How to Achieve Great Things in Lifebook. And so the number one principle is we're all in the right place at the right time, which I think is really interesting. You know, the second principle is hate hurts you, and I have five amazing principles. But let's go back to your question first. As far as being able to control yourself at the table, I do think that getting rid of all that negativity in the moment,

in other words, kind of going on a tirade, how could you do that? What were you thinking? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It seems like that kind of got rid of it, rather than I think some people keep all of those, internalize all of those bad beats. And then you have the new generation, which plays literally 200 hands per hour at sites and take bad beats all the time.

And so they just think nothing of it. They think my behavior is absurd. How could it matter do you, Phil? I played 1,000 hands today in five hours, and I took four bad beats, and I just didn't even blink. For me, what I try to do when I'm really emotional is I try to take stock of exactly where I am and exactly how many chips I have. what the blinds are. So after a really horrible beat, if I'm really on my game, I can count down my chips. Okay, I have 10,400 left. Okay, what are the blinds? 200, 400. Okay, how long till the break? There's three or four questions like that that just kind of puts me back in. And I realize,

oh, you know what, you're still all right. You still have a chance to win this. And three or four questions, you know, post-tirate. And then hopefully there are years where I don't have very many tirades for a couple months. And, you know, of course, that's disappointing to the fans and the players at the table. They all want to see that. And it's kind of like the John McEnroe show. I just want to say when I was talking to Tracy earlier, I said, oh, he's kind of like the John McEnroe of poker. So I already got that when we were having a conversation earlier, I got that in.

All right. We are going to take a short break for a message from our sponsor. But knowledge to work and grow your. business with CIT. From transportation to health care to manufacturing, CIT offers commercial lending, leasing, and treasury management services for small and middle market businesses. Learn more at cIT.com. Put knowledge to work. And we are back. Phil, before the break, you mentioned briefly the idea of some players nowadays playing like multiple rapid fire hands on online poker sites. And I have to say, in my extensive research of poker before we started this podcast,

I did come across some online players who seem to suggest that they don't really like you, they don't really like the way that you play poker, they think you make mathematically incorrect decisions. What's your response to that? No, I really, I do love that question, because it opens up a whole kind of fun can of worms for me. So you have to understand these guys are some really great players out there that are completely mathematically based, and they come up with amazing, elegant theories, and it's kind of fun to watch and see.

But I can read their elegant theories in about 10 minutes. Oh, you're doing this for this reason, that for that reason. And you can dig in a little bit deeper. Maybe it takes a couple of hours to fully kind of grasp it. But as a professional who studied this whole life poker, I see their theories in about 10 minutes. And then, but what they can never have, what I have, they can never have, you can't buy it. You can't, you know, it's not for sale. And that's, you know, great reading ability, which, you know, I sometimes term as white magic,

only because the black magic just sounded like it was so negative. I didn't want to be known as some wizard, you know, doing black magic. And it's like one of the really great young players I was trying to explain to him why I folded a hand. And I'm like, well, I thought he was really strong. And he's like, well, what? He couldn't even understand that I was using what it would call Reed's, white magic, you know, understanding what your opponents have,

understanding, you know, last night or a couple nights ago I was playing poker and my Reed's kind of kicked in. And it was great because sometimes they're not there all the time where I'd probably have, you know, 28 World Championship. I mean, 14's great, and I've got, you know, there's three people with 10 that are chasing me for all-time history, but I might have 28 if my reads were all there. So, yeah, poker's a very, it's just not encompassed entirely by mathematics. It's impossible. And so you can come a long ways with just math and poker, but you still have to stare somebody down, you know, and when anybody's trying to bluff,

a million dollars they're giving away signals that they're bluffing. And when I'm at my best, I read those signals better than anybody else. And so I think that's kind of the explanation. If you want to be great, great, great at Holden, at No Limit Holden, you have to be able to bet it all and not let them detect your bluffing. And you have to, even more importantly, be able to determine when they're bluffing all of their chips. and then make a great call. And sometimes that creates crazy situations where, you know, I'm calling like $3 million with bottom pair, you know,

because a really, really weak holding, you know. Yeah, sure, it's nice when you have, you know, four of a kind and someone bluffs all in. But, you know, oftentimes you're caught in these really weird spots. And so if you can make that amazing call, then you're going to win the tournament. And if you can't, you won't. So the World Series of Poker is coming up. You mentioned you're in the lead. You have 14 bracelets more than anyone else.

People are trying to chase you. How do you prepare it for this? And for people who don't know, the World Series of Poker is not just one tournament, but many, many tournaments, and you enter several. How do you prepare for what's coming up? What are you doing right now? Well, I mean, you know, so I make a lot of appearances. and I do, you know, I work for a lot of companies.

You know, I have pieces of, you know, Kimosbi-Mescal. We were the, you know, we were the official spirit of South by Southwest. I'm involved with music headphones. We signed Michael Jordan and Drake and Kevin Hart. I'm on the advisory board of that. So I'm a little bit, it feels like I'm a little bit busy. And then writing the book, for God's sakes, I was writing 1,500 words a day for months. I mean, it was just so grueling.

You're just not sleeping well. You're always thinking about the book. And then I made a bunch of appearances. I had to go to the East Coast, Vegas. And so about five weeks ago, I said, that's it, I'm shutting it down. And so basically I was trying, it might sound funny to you, I was trying to get myself into a state of boredom almost. So the first two, two and a half weeks, I just didn't do much,

but I felt like I was sleeping 11 hours a day, you know, just kind of getting caught up from a lot of intensity. and then, you know, three, four weeks in, I was a little bit bored, which I think was great. And you're just resting because I know that the World Series of Poker, for example, I go to Vegas Thursday, okay? And then I'm not leaving Vegas again until June 22nd. I'm going to do a bunch of live, you know, I think it was announced that ESPN's going to be doing the World Series of Poker. Today it was announced. And so either I'm going to be playing 12 days straight at the World.

World Series of Poker, or I'll be doing the commentary. So that's live on ESPN every day. So a very intense, long stretch. And so I try to rest up as much as I can. It's really funny that it seems like working out has been backfiring. I worked out in 13 and 16 and had my worst series. So I'm trying to, instead of working out. So no exercise this year. It's weird. It doesn't make sense to me. I'm like, this can't, and I was stupid because I just worked out for six weeks straight every day or whatever, every other day, just saying this couldn't possibly be hurting me. Well, you know, sometimes, you know, there's mysterious reasons and I'm not fully, you know, attune as to why that could happen. But this year, you know, I'll be doing a lot of walking instead of working

out. And then, you know, for me, I also spent 12, 14 days in February playing poker every day with kind of like maybe three or four of us talking about hands every day. I put in a huge amount of effort. I improved several of my games just by studying and playing, and I won two tournaments just messing around just trying to learn and get better. And so I put that working on February. I feel good about that, and I'm well-rested, so I think it's just going to be a lot of fun.

But, you know, when you're in Vegas, May 18th or July 20, that's a long time. It's pretty hot there too. It's a desert, man. Phil, I'm just curious. If so much of your skill set is about reading people, then when you prepare for upcoming tournaments, do you try to study the individual people that you think you'll be competing against? Or does reading people, like, are there basic things that apply to everyone? Or do you try to seek out specific weaknesses of your opponents? That's another great question. For me, in this case, what I was primarily trying to focus on, two things. The reading ability is it's a naturally there and it's a very strange thing

I think of it as like a baseball player. So sometimes you have to cover off the ball and then you go into a slump. And if you look at it, it's kind of like a sine wave, right? Up down, up down. And maybe that sine wave lasts over months and it's great for me when the World Series of

Poker happens to be at the top of one of our biggest sign waves where I'm really reading people well. Beyond that I spend, you know, we play say six different games. Okay, so we play Hold'em. We also play Omaha and seven-card stud, and, you know, seven-cards stud, low. And so I spent a lot of time playing the other games, learning.

And that's basically just what hand should I play, when should I play them. And so I learned a lot. And so after, you know, kind of in Texas, Holdham, I have 12 World Championships. Well, the next closest guy has three. So I'm so far out in front It's kind of scary And Holdom And so I've kind of been

You know a Holdom master for a long time But all of a sudden out of nowhere I started playing seven card low And I won two bracelets In a second in the last five years Which is the best record in history in that game And so I'm like you know what Why can't I have the best record in history

In all six games I'll just have to work really hard And just keep learning and absorbing And getting better And so now You know I'm kind of hoping to win in bracelets and other events and really do something special in the poker world. Do you avoid getting bored by mixing up your games and by setting new challenges

and games where you haven't previously been as successful or played as much? Yes, yes, yes, I think. And, you know, the last week's been really fun. I've gone to a bunch of Warriors games, and I sit with the owners on the floor. I haven't been bored the last few weeks because we've also been playing some high-stakes poker games in my neighborhood. So that's been fun. I call that the Masters of the Universe poker game.

I talk about that in my book a lot. And I think last night I won $74,000, so it was a good... So, I mean, it's not... Well, I guess I'm sending too much time bragging. Let me switch directions here and answer your question and say, in order to learn new things in this game, in order to hit the next level, it's not just about reading books. Because you can do that and not learn enough.

It's about talking to the best players in the world. So I think that, you know, I think that Mike the mouth Mattisow is the best Omaha-Aderbetter player in the world. And so I spent some time with him and another great player kind of learning some new things. And so to me, I have access to the greatest poker players in the world, and they're all willing to give me information because I just want to ask me questions about Hold'em. And so there's a quid pro quo there. And so, yeah, to me, and then you also have to be in the same. the heat of the moment because if you're not, it doesn't matter, right? So that's why playing tournaments every day for 14 days in February and just studying with the best in the world at each specific

game was extraordinarily helpful for me. When you look to the future of poker, do you think, you know, in-person table games are here to stay or do you think increasingly it's going to be dominated by online players? Well, see, for me, very interesting. So when you, when I've been, When I came up in poker, the best players in the world were great at reading people. So there was a bunch of guys, I mean, I wouldn't use the word psychic, but there was a bunch of guys that were just great at reading people. And they just kept making great moves and rising up and winning all the money in poker. And then all of a sudden a blessing for me, really, in 03, 0405,

we had literally 100 million people throughout the globe start to play poker. And it turns out that the guys, the group that rose, to the top did not have great reading abilities and was not great at disguising themselves when they were betting. In other words, they were just sitting there playing 200, 300 hands an hour. They have great skill sets. They don't get tired easily. They don't go on tilt. But they didn't have great reading abilities and they couldn't disguise themselves. And so then all of a sudden, all these guys made millions and tens of millions of dollars and flooded into the poker world. but to me they were all super easy targets oh my god here's a guy that that can't read me so i can just

bluff him at will and he's not even looking at me and then here's a guy that here's a guy that every time he bluffs like his left finger shakes or whatever you know so it went from a very kind of sophisticated reading game to more just jammed up with math and so for me it was a bonanza and so you know i just made tons of final tables i mean we'd have You know, one tournament I won at 3,600 players, another one had 1,600 players. And it was just a matter of just beating the players at your table over four days. And so, you know, and I started, so it was great for me. And now there's been just a little bit of a shake-up because these kind of online phenoms

and talents have gotten better at reading. But there's still a huge percentage that's really not into basically what poker really is. And so it's still good for me. But can you imagine then, for some reason, all of the people that were great at reading people, some of them switched to online poker, and they couldn't compete with those guys. Well, I just stayed in the real world for the most part. And so, yeah, I like competing against that. Now, of course, there are a bunch of great young players now that have both, right,

that just know the math in and out and have great reads. So, Phil, I think we're going to wrap up. I want to ask you one more question. I know you want to talk about positivity. And so let's wrap this up. I mean, we all get into modes, whether we're at a poker table, whether we're trading, whether we're at work or something else. You get negative.

You make bad decisions. They feed on each other. You dig in. You burn out. I do think it's very interesting. that, you know, your focus on positivity does seem to contrast with your reputation. But real quickly, how do you snap into a positive mood? How do you maintain that? Because it's so easy to lose it. It is. And, you know, I mean, of course, I'm great at losing it, too, you know,

obviously. My nickname's the poker brat, right? But, I mean, the positivity stuff, for me, it's really important, you know, it's some little tricks like, you know, writing down on your bathroom mirror your blessings. Really important. And I can tell you if you think about it a lot, you'll always put at the top of your list, your health. If you have great health, that's always the number one thing. It goes above family. It goes above everything. Health. If you don't have health, you really don't have anything. So having a list and, you know, my list on my bathroom mirror, great health, you know, great wife and children and great health for them. And then 14 World Championships, and then the bestselling New York Times bestsellers and all the other stuff.

But you have to have, that's a really great thing to have, you know, a list of blessings on your mirror. And next that I have a list of goals. And so, you know, when I'm brushing my teeth, I can see my goal list, and that's for that year. 2017 goals, you know, win three World Series of poker bracelets. You know, make sure that poker brets on New York Times bestseller. You know, make sure that I write positivity and get it out by the end of the year. You know, just some of my goals. And so I think when I look at that bathroom mirror and whether I'm consciously or

unconsciously seeing it, number one, it's shifting my mood towards, wow, there's a lot to be thankful for, and this is what I want to accomplish today. And this is just some of the tricks that I use to kind of keep me, you know, positive. So, yeah, staying positive, I think, is huge, and of course, you'll probably see me on television whining way too much, acting like a poker brat. But that's really about 1%, 2% of my poker life is like that, maybe 3%. And it's, you know, 1 tenth of 1% of my regular life. But the poker brat has been very good to me.

You know, being the bad boy has a lot of perks. All right. Phil Holmeath, this is a great conversation. I think people listening to it will come away not thinking you're a brat at all. Really appreciate you coming on. And, of course, we wish you good luck in the... upcoming World Series. Thanks, guys.

All the traders out there, risk less money. I love that. Perfect ending. So, Tracy, I know you went into that conversation feeling nervous, but how do you feel now? I have so many questions, Joe. What is no limit hold on? Oh. No, I'm joking.

No, I thought it was fascinating. He wasn't nearly as braddish as I thought he might be. And I think some of the things he was talking about, you know, when it comes to, you When it comes to playing humans versus playing mathematically oriented competitors online definitely applies to modern markets, right? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because, I mean, obviously people could take a quantitative approach and on a day-to-day basis, that quantitative approach might work fine. But eventually you get into a position where there's some extreme. Maybe you're looking at a potentially huge loss or there's a huge run-up in markets.

and it just seems unavoidable that emotions are bound to take over the markets. And so the ability to sort of read where we're at to sense the emotions that are coursing through the markets out there is hard to imagine that I'll ever really go away. Yeah. And I thought it was interesting what he was saying about the influx of people who started playing poker online and then the idea that they all tried to move into the real world. And he was able to take advantage of them. And I think there are some people out there now who would look at markets and say so much of it is quantitatively driven right now and valuations have gotten so far out of whack with some fundamentals that maybe we are nearing the point where human beings that are taking a sort of fundamental analysis could come in and perhaps make some money. Yeah, it is encouraging that there's still a role for humans and just in general. For humans. For us, for us mere humans.

I loved what he said, too, about how to avoid going on tilt. So the idea of asking yourself a few questions. Because, I mean, I've played poker at low stakes with friends and even losing very tiny amounts of money had the ability to really mess you up mentally and cause a bad decision. So the idea of having a routine, getting back into the sort of analytical framework by asking yourself a few questions. I don't know. The whole thing I thought was very interesting. and definitely I think there's more to fill than just this sort of poker brett image

that you see on YouTube. Yeah, and now we also have a good excuse to go to Vegas, right? We're going to do an odd lots poker episode from Vegas, yes, that's the plan. Oh, we should do like all the different games maybe. That would be a fun one. And I love that thing at the end, risk less money.

That's like a great motto. Yeah, and I mean, it goes back to exactly what Peter Borish was saying about the fact that the people who stay in the market are actually relatively conservative, even though you think about them as these massive risk takers. Right, they're survivors. All right, Tracy, at some point we do need to play poker, though. I will see you in Vegas. This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthall. You can follow me on Twitter at The Stallwart. And I'm Tracy Allaway. I'm on Twitter

at Tracy Allaway. And Phil's on Twitter at Phil underscore Helmuth. Thanks for listening. Put knowledge to work and grow your business with CIT. From transportation to health care to manufacturing, CIT offers commercial lending, leasing, and treasury management services for small and middle market businesses. Learn more at CIT.com. Put knowledge to work. The news doesn't stop on the weekends.

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