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Speaker 4: The power of the Exorcist compels you.
Speaker 3: Hello and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Friends.
Speaker 3: If you've listened to pretty much any time myself and
Speaker 3: Paul Hoppy have talked, you've probably heard that poker is
Speaker 3: a big part of our lives. It's been Paul's primary
Speaker 3: form of income for a number of years. It's been
Speaker 3: mostly my hobby, but at times my primary form of
Speaker 3: income at various points and times. But more even than that,
Speaker 3: it has shaped a lot of the way that Paul
Speaker 3: and I talk about things, and then I think, at
Speaker 3: least for me, and I think somewhat for Paul, a
Speaker 3: lot of how we understand the world. It of course,
Speaker 3: also comes up from time to time in some of
Speaker 3: our favorite stories and TV shows and movies, sometimes portrayed
Speaker 3: well sometimes well not. So we're gonna be discussing that today,
Speaker 3: and we're not as much going to talk about poker
Speaker 3: on screen, although that will definitely reference it. We're more
Speaker 3: going to be talking about how what poker can help
Speaker 3: you on understand about the world and about things like
Speaker 3: probability and uncertainty, and why, at least for me at least,
Speaker 3: why I think that is such an important issue that
Speaker 3: does come up in the stories we talk about so
Speaker 3: much today. So, Paul, why don't you introduce yourself and
Speaker 3: talk a little bit about your background with poker.
Speaker 4: Hi, I'm Paul Christopher Happy Akas and Madman, formerly known
Speaker 4: as Giant Buddha in Poker Circles. I have been playing
Speaker 4: poker since since I was a kid. Actually, there was
Speaker 4: literally a Nintendo game called Casino Kid and I rocked
Speaker 4: to that, and it was basically you go around and
Speaker 4: you play like five card draw and blackjack against like
Speaker 4: five different dealers each and you have to bust them.
Speaker 4: And that's how I learned poker when I was like
Speaker 4: probably eleven or twelve or something, which I think is
Speaker 4: funny because you know, it's like, people think of gambling
Speaker 4: as like eighteen and up, twenty one and up and whatever,
Speaker 4: and I think for serious sums of money, that's reasonable.
Speaker 4: But I think the certain fundamentals behind gambling and wagering
Speaker 4: I think are actually fundamental to understanding reality and decision
Speaker 4: making in a lot of ways, and so you know,
Speaker 4: in high school we played some of those wild wild
Speaker 4: card games, you know. And then shortly after high school,
Speaker 4: Rounders came out and I saw the preview, actually the
Speaker 4: movie didn't even come out. I saw the preview and
Speaker 4: was like, I'm gonna do that. And you know, I
Speaker 4: was living on my own in New York City, in
Speaker 4: Manhattan and was playing live poker and supporting myself doing that,
Speaker 4: and which seems like a ridiculous thing unless you know
Speaker 4: what my rent was, which was not standard New York
Speaker 4: City rent. But but you know, I did that for
Speaker 4: a while, and then I played some online poker but
Speaker 4: kind of went away from poker when the poker boom
Speaker 4: happened in like two thousand and three. Came back to
Speaker 4: it in six and played super seriously from like six
Speaker 4: until twelve. I'd say, like that was my primary to
Speaker 4: only a source of income. I then did various poker
Speaker 4: related things, like I wrote some poker books, I made
Speaker 4: a lot of coaching videos, I coached individual students, and
Speaker 4: you know, a lot of my life was around poker
Speaker 4: at the time. This was right after I stopped teaching
Speaker 4: martial arts full time, and then I kind of went
Speaker 4: away from poker and kind of came in and out.
Speaker 4: But I did work at a casino actually for a
Speaker 4: year and a half and had almost every job in
Speaker 4: the poker room, including one that they didn't previously have,
Speaker 4: which was actually you play on your own money, but
Speaker 4: on certain hours to help keep games going. And then
Speaker 4: you know, now I play primarily online poker, but I
Speaker 4: enjoy all forms of the game, and I would say that,
Speaker 4: you know, poker really informs so much of my worldview
Speaker 4: to the point where I think there's a like, maybe
Speaker 4: a couple other things that are on a similar level
Speaker 4: in terms of sort of how they've affected how I
Speaker 4: view the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I can totally see that. I think that's
Speaker 3: gonna be the meat of what we talk about today.
Speaker 3: For me, I had kind of a similar start. I
Speaker 3: didn't play the Nintendo game, but my mother taught me
Speaker 3: poker at an early age. We played for matchticks, and
Speaker 3: her idea of it was, you know, she didn't want
Speaker 3: me necessarily to be a gambler, but you know, in
Speaker 3: the world she had grown up with and that she
Speaker 3: was part of as a as a professional, she was
Speaker 3: a lawyer at a time when it was still pretty
Speaker 3: new for women to be lawyers, especially for she was
Speaker 3: one of the first women to go to She was
Speaker 3: one of the first women to go to Columbia Law School,
Speaker 3: and in her mind, it was you know, look, you're
Speaker 3: gonna get invited to poker nights. It's a social thing
Speaker 3: that people do. It's a good game to know. And
Speaker 3: I've had kind of a very different journey around poker
Speaker 3: with Paul, but one that is often intersected in that.
Speaker 3: For me, as Paul said, there are many different reasons
Speaker 3: to play poker. For me, it has always primarily been
Speaker 3: a way to have fun. I was part of the
Speaker 3: high school games that Paul talked about. Many things will
Speaker 3: not be said about because in the case in the
Speaker 3: law enforcement agents, so listening to this, no, it wasn't
Speaker 3: that bad, but you know, and I really love those
Speaker 3: I started poker nights in college. At various points in
Speaker 3: my adult life, I've had a regular like Tuesday night,
Speaker 3: friends come over to play poker, And for me, it
Speaker 3: has actually served a very similar role in my life
Speaker 3: as friends come over to play D and D or
Speaker 3: friends come over to play matchic the gathering or a
Speaker 3: board game night. It is a way for friends to
Speaker 3: come together where the money was a way of helping
Speaker 3: making it interesting and creating stakes so that people weren't
Speaker 3: just you know, going crazy all the time. But it
Speaker 3: was never really about the money. As I said, I
Speaker 3: have had times where poker has helped supplement my income
Speaker 3: one point in about six months where it was my
Speaker 3: entire income, but I didn't have the skill level to
Speaker 3: really sustain that for that much longer than that, especially
Speaker 3: it's been a little more than months, but you know,
Speaker 3: various points in my life, but for the moment, like
Speaker 3: at one point when Paul and I were talking about
Speaker 3: doing a poker podcast or a poker website of different kinds,
Speaker 3: I would always infer to myself as the poker hobbyist,
Speaker 3: because for me, that's what I always loved, and so
Speaker 3: I love going to a casino. Last week, actually I
Speaker 3: was at a casino in Philadelphia, and I wound up
Speaker 3: playing six hours of poker and losing a total of
Speaker 3: four dollars because I went down and then I went
Speaker 3: back up, and then I went down and up, and
Speaker 3: and I didn't look at it as, oh, no, I
Speaker 3: had a terrible night. I lost four dollars. I looked
Speaker 3: at it as I just had six hours of great
Speaker 3: entertainment at a casino fore and paid seventy five cents
Speaker 3: an hour. Like that was you know to me, like
Speaker 3: and we also counted in like the drinks I was
Speaker 3: getting in the water, and then you know, all it
Speaker 3: it was worth it. It was a good price to pay.
Speaker 4: It's hard to find entertainment at that price these days.
Speaker 3: Yes, especially especially in a casino or something like that.
Speaker 3: You know, try going to downtown Vegas and find some
Speaker 3: way to entertain yourself for a better price.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or better yet don't yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no, don't exact cause.
Speaker 4: I'm sure there's but I'm not gonna necessarily recommend those.
Speaker 3: But certainly I think, as you mentioned, I think this
Speaker 3: is mostly from you, but also from a lot of
Speaker 3: my own observances. I have found how much poker has
Speaker 3: also helped me to understand life a lot better. And
Speaker 3: another think that it's poker's This is not you know,
Speaker 3: poker is the key to enlightenment. Meant by any means,
Speaker 3: it's that I think there are a lot of things
Speaker 3: in the world that that people really struggle with or
Speaker 3: that that and I think, especially like the writers and
Speaker 3: the characters of the stories we love often have trouble
Speaker 3: with around understanding probability and also understanding uncertainty chaos, if
Speaker 3: you want to call it that. That feels very relevant,
Speaker 3: and I think that's kind of what we're wanting to
Speaker 3: talk about today. And you know, I think this is
Speaker 3: a topic that can get a little self helpy, and
Speaker 3: we don't mean it like that, but I do think
Speaker 3: there's some elements of especially in this you know, probability
Speaker 3: and polls and statistics are becoming very important verations in
Speaker 3: our world today, and I know it's something that Paul
Speaker 3: and I have a lot of strong feelings about, and
Speaker 3: so that's certainly going to be an area of focus.
Speaker 3: But this isn't about, you know, trying to say you
Speaker 3: should live your lives the way we do. Don't definitely
Speaker 3: live your life the way I do, but just about
Speaker 3: like giving you some other ideas of how to think
Speaker 3: about these things, and particularly in terms of like the
Speaker 3: stories and the characters and also in our non world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I mean I would I would maybe say
Speaker 4: I do mean some things in a little bit of
Speaker 4: a self helpish sort of way, you know, just in
Speaker 4: terms of like I think the one of the biggest lessons.
Speaker 4: I don't know exactly where you want to start off,
Speaker 4: but like go for I think one of the biggest lessons,
Speaker 4: if not the biggest, is that you know you can't
Speaker 4: control everything through your actions. Right Like in poker and
Speaker 4: in life, it makes sense. It behooves you to try
Speaker 4: to make the best decisions you can right with the
Speaker 4: inform you have available at the time. You can't think
Speaker 4: about you should have made a different decision with some
Speaker 4: information you didn't possess or weren't able to acquire, and
Speaker 4: then the outcome, like, the better your decisions are on average,
Speaker 4: you'll get better outcomes. But there are also many things
Speaker 4: that are outside of your control. Right and poker, it's
Speaker 4: what cards you get dealt, what cards come out after
Speaker 4: your initial cards are dealt, how your opponents respond to
Speaker 4: your bets, what cards they get dealt, and these you
Speaker 4: can't control these things, and so there has to be
Speaker 4: an acceptance of I'm just going to try and make
Speaker 4: good decisions, take good actions given the information I have,
Speaker 4: and then the outcomes will be what they are. And
Speaker 4: if I keep making good decisions, the better my decisions
Speaker 4: are on average, the better my outcomes will be. But
Speaker 4: that doesn't mean a piano won't fall on my head, right, Like,
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, if you're walking in the forest,
Speaker 4: a piano probably won't fall on your head, but like
Speaker 4: a tree mte exactly that that might be more likely
Speaker 4: than a piano falling on your head anywhere than outside
Speaker 4: a piano throwing place, you know, I don't know, there's
Speaker 4: some game show where they like throw a piano off
Speaker 4: a conveyor belt or something, and like, if you're standing
Speaker 4: down there, you actually have a pretty high probability of
Speaker 4: having a piano land on your head. But so I
Speaker 4: would recommend like don't stand there, right, But I mean, overall,
Speaker 4: the main point just being like, you know, there's things
Speaker 4: you can control and there's things that you can't, and
Speaker 4: being able to figure out which of those are which
Speaker 4: and just do the best with the things you can control,
Speaker 4: and like that is kind of super self helpy, I
Speaker 4: think in some ways. But it's also just like it's
Speaker 4: also kind of obvious in a lot of ways, but
Speaker 4: it's not always obvious. What, right, the real ramifications of
Speaker 4: that are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think a lot of what we're gonna be
Speaker 3: talking about is about that idea of what does it
Speaker 3: meant the Captain Picard line for Star Trek that's so
Speaker 3: often quoted of sometimes you can do all the right
Speaker 3: things and still fail, And that doesn't mean you did
Speaker 3: something wrong. It mean that's just called life. Nor does
Speaker 3: it mean that something unfair or something like that. As
Speaker 3: well as I think there's also a lot of thoughts
Speaker 3: that I have about why is it that we have
Speaker 3: so much trouble accepting again, whether you want to call
Speaker 3: it randomness or uncertainty or chaos or whatever it is.
Speaker 3: Let me back up though and talk about because I
Speaker 3: think we're diving into some of the concepts from poker,
Speaker 3: but that some people who don't know the game may
Speaker 3: not understand as much because certainly poker is at least
Speaker 3: I don't want to get that. There's a whole bunch
Speaker 3: of debate about whether poker is gambling or not. And
Speaker 3: poker is distinctly different than most other games at a
Speaker 3: casino in that you're not playing against the house, you're
Speaker 3: playing against other players. So like if I sit down
Speaker 3: a blackjack or craps, I can tell myself I have
Speaker 3: a very good system, but statistically I am never going
Speaker 3: to be the favorite, whereas in poker, like there's there's
Speaker 3: different degrees of that.
Speaker 4: Right, except in blackjack if you count cards and yadaya YadA.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, yeah, and there's ways to different systems, et cetera. Again,
Speaker 3: no one from any law enforcement agencies, of course, we
Speaker 3: don't do that.
Speaker 4: No, that's that's completely okay, Okay, we're just gonna have
Speaker 4: to blackjack. You're allowed to count cards in terms of
Speaker 4: the law, but casinos will ban you because they are
Speaker 4: allowed to. But it's not illegal. Counting cards in blackjack
Speaker 4: is not illegal. Using mechanical advice devices and stuff is.
Speaker 4: But that's a that's a huge like movie pet peeve
Speaker 4: of mind.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's but well, most of the time they don't
Speaker 3: show you getting arrested. They sure you're getting you kneecaps busted.
Speaker 4: But they also often just say it's illegal, you know,
Speaker 4: like they literally say that, and that's just factually inaccurate.
Speaker 3: So that's fair, okay. But back to the poker point
Speaker 3: of it. Though, you know, in a given hand you've
Speaker 3: got certain cards, but at any point, you know, you know,
Speaker 3: the last card come out and give someone else the
Speaker 3: better hand or something like that. How is it that
Speaker 3: you can actually like, if there is that much randomness
Speaker 3: is it in it? How is it that you can
Speaker 3: make money at it? Like you'd think that it would
Speaker 3: be random in terms of who winds up getting different
Speaker 3: money and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: Right, Well, because I mean, poker is a game that
Speaker 4: combines skill and chance, and most games do that to
Speaker 4: some extent or another. But you know, the literal turn
Speaker 4: of a card is is chance as just a pure
Speaker 4: randomness right?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: But because there's certain constraints to that randomness. It's not
Speaker 4: like you're going to suddenly get you know, the eleven
Speaker 4: of purple horseshoes, like that's not You know what cards
Speaker 4: are in the deck to again with, right, So you
Speaker 4: know the constraints of the game, so you can understand
Speaker 4: how likely certain outcomes are and you can take actions
Speaker 4: that are going to be more advantageous based on what
Speaker 4: the possible outcomes are. Right. So it's like you don't
Speaker 4: know what the individual outcome is. But if you know
Speaker 4: what cards you have, you know what cards are left
Speaker 4: in the deck, right, you can know how likely you
Speaker 4: are to make a flush with one card to come.
Speaker 4: And if you're putting in, you know, one hundred dollars
Speaker 4: in order to win two hundred and there's one card
Speaker 4: to come, and you're trying to make a flush and
Speaker 4: that's the only way you can win the pot. That's
Speaker 4: not a good bet. But if you're putting in ten
Speaker 4: dollars to win one hundred, like, that's a very good bet.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So it's basically you can see you're getting odds, and
Speaker 4: you're just comparing what the odds are to you. The
Speaker 4: actual reality of the situation is much more complicated. But
Speaker 4: the other thing is that you know, we have this
Speaker 4: thing called no you want to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just want to focus on that first part
Speaker 3: for a second, because I think that's one of the
Speaker 3: things that a lot of people don't understand, is that
Speaker 3: part of the point of poker, and this is I
Speaker 3: think part of a lot of things in life, is
Speaker 3: that you're not trying to think about any one instance
Speaker 3: that take a situation like what you just described, where
Speaker 3: I'm just going to make up the numbers to make
Speaker 3: it roughly easier. Stand, you have a one in five
Speaker 3: chance of winning, but if you win, you will get
Speaker 3: ten times your money.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: Well, if you just sit down and do that four times,
Speaker 3: or even five times, or even ten times, you may
Speaker 3: well lose your money. Overall. Sure, but if you do
Speaker 3: that thousands of times, if you do that and you
Speaker 3: always do it the same way over the long run,
Speaker 3: assuming that the statistics are working. As the statistics are working,
Speaker 3: you know, the deck can fixed or someone isn't cheating.
Speaker 3: In the long run, you know, the one out of
Speaker 3: five times you get paid is going to make you
Speaker 3: more money than you lost the four times out of
Speaker 3: five that you lost, and so your profit is eventually
Speaker 3: going to come. And that that's what's different. Like, you know,
Speaker 3: to take the lottery, for example, you could buy an
Speaker 3: infinite number of lottery tickets and you still would wind
Speaker 3: up losing because the one time you hit the lottery
Speaker 3: it doesn't actually make up for all the other times
Speaker 3: you could. You could do it, and so that's and
Speaker 3: I think that's what you were kind of getting at before,
Speaker 3: about the like you do the small things all the
Speaker 3: time each time knowing that like that, this is about
Speaker 3: how you think about a repeatable, every day kind of
Speaker 3: a thing or you know, instead of just like the
Speaker 3: one decision you have to make once with with you know,
Speaker 3: without any repeatability.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the repeatability is a is a big
Speaker 4: deal of it, right, I mean even if you're only
Speaker 4: doing one thing one time. There's still a concept of
Speaker 4: expected value, right, which is essentially the average expected outcome. Right.
Speaker 4: If you took out up all of the outcomes and
Speaker 4: assign them basically a likelihood of each outcome, and then
Speaker 4: you figure out the average of that, that's your expected value,
Speaker 4: and in one instance you know it's either probably going
Speaker 4: to be a win or a loss. And if you're
Speaker 4: only doing one thing one time, then you know your
Speaker 4: chances it kind of it doesn't function the same way, right,
Speaker 4: Like there's when you play enough volume, when you make
Speaker 4: a large volume of decisions with certain you know, with
Speaker 4: positive expected value, over the long run, the likelihood of
Speaker 4: having a negative overall outcome just goes down and down
Speaker 4: and down until it becomes vanishingly small. You can be
Speaker 4: very unlucky, which would be you know, having negative outcomes
Speaker 4: for a very long time, like a length of time
Speaker 4: that's shocking to most people. Right. But the longer the time,
Speaker 4: the less likely it is, provided that you know you're
Speaker 4: getting your money in good that you're you're making positive
Speaker 4: effective plays, right.
Speaker 3: And just to go a little bit deeper on this
Speaker 3: idea of probability and how this all works. You talked
Speaker 3: about how the length of time it might take for
Speaker 3: the numbers to sort of average out the way people
Speaker 3: would expect is a lot longer than people might think. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so, for example, in that case of like, if
Speaker 3: you're expected to win one out of five times, it's
Speaker 3: actually statistically quite possible that you could do that five times,
Speaker 3: ten times, maybe even fifteen times, and lose every single time.
Speaker 3: One of the concepts that people playing poker or gambling
Speaker 3: or just talking about chance in general is the idea
Speaker 3: that dice have no memory. Right, talk a little bit
Speaker 3: about what that means in terms of like probability and expectation.
Speaker 4: Right, So there's and this is why you can beat
Speaker 4: blackjack incidentally in theory compared to a game like craps.
Speaker 4: But yeah, so there's the gambler's fallacy, right, which is
Speaker 4: I'm actually not even sure exactly which one it is,
Speaker 4: but basically, let's just go with a coin. Right. If
Speaker 4: we flip a coin one time and at lands heads,
Speaker 4: then you know, is it more likely to be heads
Speaker 4: on the second flip, or is it more likely to
Speaker 4: be tails or is it still fifty to fifty if
Speaker 4: we assume a fair coin. Well, it's still fifty to fifty, right,
Speaker 4: because the coin has no memory unless there's like something
Speaker 4: about the way you're flipping it, and actually there's something
Speaker 4: about like physics. It's not really fifty to fifty even
Speaker 4: with a fair cat. It's there's a whole thing apparently
Speaker 4: that's like recently been. But like if we assume just
Speaker 4: something's fifty to fifty, it happens once, then it's still
Speaker 4: fifty to fifty. You do it again, it's still gonna
Speaker 4: be fifty to fifty every time, right, And so that means,
Speaker 4: you know, the chances of heads heads is the same
Speaker 4: as tails. Tails is the same as heads. Tails is
Speaker 4: the same as tails heads, right, each one of those
Speaker 4: has has the same chance of being a sequence of events.
Speaker 4: Blackjack the reason it's a little different, and I'm not
Speaker 4: like saying like, oh, go out and learn to count
Speaker 4: cards and play blackjack. Casinos actually don't really mind people
Speaker 4: trying to count cards because most people are terrible at it,
Speaker 4: that's right. But so the thing in blackjack is the
Speaker 4: deck does have a memory unless it's continuous shuffle. Because
Speaker 4: they shuffle deck, you deal some cards, you deal a hand,
Speaker 4: and then those cards are dead. So now there's a
Speaker 4: new state of the deck, right, Like we're playing with
Speaker 4: a different deck, and I know Blackchick usually plays many decks,
Speaker 4: and there's there's a whole thing, and.
Speaker 3: More and more places are going to continue a shuffle
Speaker 3: for exactly this reason.
Speaker 4: Right, that's just an unbeatable game all of a sudden, right,
Speaker 4: And that's that to me seems like a more honest
Speaker 4: thing to do than to have a game that is beatable.
Speaker 4: But then when people are actually playing it, while you're
Speaker 4: like whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, you can't actually beat
Speaker 4: this game that we set up and allow you to
Speaker 4: be able to be profitable in. But most things, like
Speaker 4: in poker, you play one hand of poker and then
Speaker 4: you shuffle the deck, and the deck has no memory.
Speaker 4: It doesn't remember where the cards are as long as
Speaker 4: it's a fair shuffle, right and you know somebody's not putting,
Speaker 4: you know, an ace on the bottom and then dealing
Speaker 4: from the bottom or anything like that. The deck has
Speaker 4: no memory. So each you know, this is the concept
Speaker 4: of like independent events compared to the pendent events, and
Speaker 4: if each explain what those mean, right, So if each
Speaker 4: event is independent, it means that the outcome of the
Speaker 4: first event has no bearing, no influence on the outcome
Speaker 4: of the second event. Right, Like, if you roll two dice,
Speaker 4: you know there's a one in thirty six chance that
Speaker 4: you're gonna get snake eyes. Right, you're gonna get two ones,
Speaker 4: the same as the chances of two six is a
Speaker 4: three and a four is different, or it's rolling a
Speaker 4: seven is more likely, right, because there's more ways of
Speaker 4: doing that. But each roll of the dice is an
Speaker 4: independent event. Whereas, if I mean trying to think of
Speaker 4: a good example, there are things that are not as
Speaker 4: gambling related. But like let's say two people play a
Speaker 4: game and then you play a second game, you can
Speaker 4: view those as independent events. And if they're pure chance
Speaker 4: and everything's truly reset, they will be independent events. But
Speaker 4: let's say you and I play a game of chess
Speaker 4: and one of us wins, one of us loses, and
Speaker 4: then that affects the mental state of the two of us. Right,
Speaker 4: That can then make the second game not really an
Speaker 4: independent event because the first game, the outcome of it
Speaker 4: doesn't necessarily directly affect the second event. But we're human, right,
Speaker 4: and so our ability to play could be changed. Now
Speaker 4: largely I think games played after one another are considered
Speaker 4: kind of independent events, but they're probably not truly and
Speaker 4: if well, five in a row.
Speaker 3: In the card games that I like to play, like
Speaker 3: Magic the Gathering or Lorcana, yeah, often the first time
Speaker 3: you play, you don't know anything about your opponent's deck, right,
Speaker 3: So it might be that like, at that point you're
Speaker 3: starting at it. But if like, my deck has more
Speaker 3: answers to your deck, now that I know what your
Speaker 3: deck is doing, in my second game, I'm going to
Speaker 3: be more focused on Okay, I need the kind of
Speaker 3: cards that are particularly good. So that I think is
Speaker 3: a good example of where, yeah, the second the second
Speaker 3: outcome is very dependent on the first outcome.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure. And in poker the same can happen,
Speaker 4: where the cards each hand dealt is an independent event
Speaker 4: in terms of how the cards come out. But as
Speaker 4: we play, if we're playing heads up, we're gradually learning
Speaker 4: one another's strategies, and that can affect our own strategies, right.
Speaker 4: We want to try and make exploits, we want to
Speaker 4: adjust to the other person's strategy, Who's then going to
Speaker 4: try and adjust to ours, and we're trying to counteradjust,
Speaker 4: and that makes hands not independent events in terms of
Speaker 4: the strategical approach give, assuming that we're actually adjusting to
Speaker 4: one another's play, but it does make them independent events
Speaker 4: in terms of the dealing of the cards.
Speaker 3: Which, by the way, I just want to throw in
Speaker 3: is why I think one of the most frustrating conversations
Speaker 3: to me and fandom is when two characters fight and
Speaker 3: then the two characters fight again and have a different outcome, yes,
Speaker 3: or when like character a character one defeats character two, right,
Speaker 3: character three defeats character one, and the character two defeats
Speaker 3: character three, when it's like every fight is not on
Speaker 3: like the number of variables that go into a fight,
Speaker 3: everything from just the energy level, the power level of
Speaker 3: the people, how they're feeling that day, how distracted they are,
Speaker 3: whether they're sick, what you know, does one of them
Speaker 3: fight better when there's a lot of like rubble around,
Speaker 3: or you know, do better when it's all clear ground, Like,
Speaker 3: there are so many variables that go into these kind
Speaker 3: of things, you know, And one of the most famous
Speaker 3: that gets talked about, or one of the ones that
Speaker 3: gets most infamously talked about, I think, is the fight
Speaker 3: in which in Phantom Menace sorry is the fight in
Speaker 3: the Force Awakens, the Force awakens, thank you, in which
Speaker 3: Ray defeats Kylo Ren, And people will often look at
Speaker 3: that and be like, well, but how could that happen
Speaker 3: because you know, Kyler Wren beat this other person all
Speaker 3: this kind of stuff, when it's like, well, he's grievously
Speaker 3: wounded already from something that happened earlier in the fight, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's not a fight in a particular. I think this
Speaker 3: is true in Cobra Kai as well. Is not just
Speaker 3: you know, this person's the seven, this person is the six,
Speaker 3: so the seven will always defeat the six. There are
Speaker 3: so many random variables that are going to be different
Speaker 3: every time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, I mean, and within fighting, there's also the
Speaker 4: concept of matchups where you know, you can have three
Speaker 4: fighters with different styles, and it can be kind of
Speaker 4: a rock paper scissors scenario where yeah, one person has
Speaker 4: a big advantage on a second person, Like one person
Speaker 4: might have really long reach and another person's really fast,
Speaker 4: and then someone else is big and strong, and like,
Speaker 4: the person with long reach might actually be able to
Speaker 4: keep the fast person at bay, who can then get
Speaker 4: in quickly on the person who's big and slow, but
Speaker 4: like the person who's big and slow can maybe get
Speaker 4: past the person with long reach because like the whatever
Speaker 4: the person long reach is using, like doesn't actually stop
Speaker 4: the big person. Right, Like this is a super contrived example,
Speaker 4: but like the point is, like you can have kind
Speaker 4: of a rock paper scissors scenario where it's like, yes,
Speaker 4: player A has an advantage on player B, player B
Speaker 4: has an advantage on player C, and player C has
Speaker 4: an advantage on player A. Not to mention, like, if
Speaker 4: someone's a six and someone's a seven on a good day,
Speaker 4: the six is better than the seven because like, performance
Speaker 4: is not constant either, right, when somebody's rattled, when somebody
Speaker 4: just didn't get a good night's sleep, when when somebody's injured,
Speaker 4: there's all sorts of reas.
Speaker 3: Someone fought ten henchmen in order to get to the other.
Speaker 4: Right, exactly, there's all sorts of reasons that somebody would
Speaker 4: be performing at a lower level than than their peak,
Speaker 4: right and as a result, like you know, like a
Speaker 4: two probably isn't going to beat an eight, you know,
Speaker 4: but like a five can beat like a seven on
Speaker 4: a good day. On the five's good day and the
Speaker 4: seven's bad day. Yeah, sure, you know, so One of.
Speaker 3: Other things that comes up a lot in these conversations
Speaker 3: is results oriented thinking, and I think that's something that
Speaker 3: we see all the time and the kind of stories
Speaker 3: we're talking about. Can you define that term and what
Speaker 3: it means both in poker and in larger things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you know, results oriented thing, Like the purpose
Speaker 4: of trying to make good decisions is by and large
Speaker 4: to get good results, right, Like, right, that's a goal,
Speaker 4: is a result, that's or it's a hope, it's a
Speaker 4: it's a desired outcome. But the problem arises when we
Speaker 4: choose a strategy that we thought was good, We apply
Speaker 4: the strategy, and then, because of chance, the strategy doesn't succeed,
Speaker 4: don't We don't get the desired outcome, right, And then
Speaker 4: there's a mental decision, Oh, well that wasn't the result
Speaker 4: I wanted, so that must have been the wrong strategy.
Speaker 4: Like as if you know, you put in ten dollars
Speaker 4: to one hundred dollars with a flush draw and you
Speaker 4: didn't get there. You said, oh, that was that was bad.
Speaker 4: I did the wrong thing. You know. It's like, no,
Speaker 4: you've got a very likely bad outcome after making a
Speaker 4: good decision, and that's super common and it's you know,
Speaker 4: the good decisions are not always going to get you
Speaker 4: good results. Like in poker, you can play well and
Speaker 4: get bad results. You can play poorly and get good
Speaker 4: results in the shorter term, right in the longer term.
Speaker 4: For looking at you know, poker over like a month,
Speaker 4: two months, six months, a year, five years, you know,
Speaker 4: a long run, tens hundreds of thousands of hands, millions
Speaker 4: of hands. Even if your results are bad, you're doing
Speaker 4: something wrong almost certainly right over a longer and the
Speaker 4: longer period of time and the worse the results, the
Speaker 4: more likely it is that you've got an issue in
Speaker 4: your strategy. And for what it's worth, basically everybody can
Speaker 4: always be improving their strategies like poker, in most games
Speaker 4: like outside of like Tic tac toe, usually there's more
Speaker 4: you can learn, right and you know, fighting, so you know,
Speaker 4: results oriented thinking is basically reasoning backwards from well, this
Speaker 4: was the result. Therefore there was something wrong with the strategy,
Speaker 4: you know, and sometimes there is something wrong with the strategy,
Speaker 4: but it was still the right decision because you didn't
Speaker 4: have the information right, Like you're trying to make a
Speaker 4: bluff and it's a totally reasonable spot to make a
Speaker 4: bluff given what you know. But then your opponent calls
Speaker 4: you with some hand that seems super ridiculous, and you realize, oh,
Speaker 4: this person just doesn't know how to throw away a hand.
Speaker 4: They're never folding if they called me with this hand
Speaker 4: right right. Therefore, in the future, I'm going to adjust
Speaker 4: my strategy. But that's not because it didn't work. It's
Speaker 4: because I've acquired new information and the information wasn't this
Speaker 4: didn't work, It was this person made some ridiculous call
Speaker 4: down that now I want to adjust my strategy. There
Speaker 4: are other hands they could have called with that we'd go, oh, okay,
Speaker 4: they're supposed to call with that. That doesn't mean this
Speaker 4: was a bad strategy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And how does that apply outside of poker or games? Right?
Speaker 4: So, I mean outside of games. It's like if you
Speaker 4: you get a like, say you're buying a car and
Speaker 4: you're like, I'm going to buy a super reliable car, right,
Speaker 4: and you do all everything right along those lines, and
Speaker 4: you get a car that's supposed to be super reliable.
Speaker 4: You get it from, you know, a trustworthy dealer. I'm
Speaker 4: certainly no expert in this, but you know I've bought
Speaker 4: one car and it's it's done okay so far. It's
Speaker 4: a Corolla, you know, and like that I heard from
Speaker 4: somebody that this was a reasonable car to buy, and like,
Speaker 4: if it had crapped out on the first day, that
Speaker 4: doesn't necessarily mean I made a bad decision, right, Like
Speaker 4: it maybe just is super unlucky.
Speaker 3: And because you just kind of connect the dots here,
Speaker 3: all that research you're doing is helping it be that,
Speaker 3: like you have an eighty or an eighty five percent
Speaker 3: chance or maybe even a ninety or ninety five percent
Speaker 3: chance to get something that's not going to break down,
Speaker 3: rather than like the fifty chance or the twenty percent chance,
Speaker 3: depending on like how reliable the person you were buying
Speaker 3: it from.
Speaker 4: Right, exactly exactly, Like there's with most things in life,
Speaker 4: there's some chance that there will be some information you're
Speaker 4: unaware of and perhaps did not have a way of
Speaker 4: acquiring that information. Now, if you did have a way
Speaker 4: of that acquiring that information, then you can't really use
Speaker 4: the you know, the explanation, Oh well I didn't have
Speaker 4: that information. It's like, well you should have, right, And
Speaker 4: then you learn that and you're like, Okay, in the future,
Speaker 4: make sure that I check this out, but like you
Speaker 4: can check all the boxes and then it's just like
Speaker 4: you're you're just trying to maximize your probabilities, right, like
Speaker 4: the odds of a good outcome, and sometimes you don't
Speaker 4: get the good outcome anyway, and sometimes like you do
Speaker 4: something bad. This is actually a big one. Is like
Speaker 4: somebody makes a bad decision and then nothing bad happens,
Speaker 4: and so then that reinforces the oh, yeah, I can
Speaker 4: keep making this bad decision. You know. It's like somebody
Speaker 4: drinks a lot and then they go drive and they're like, oh,
Speaker 4: I got home fine, you know, yeah, And that's I
Speaker 4: think a big danger with things that have a small
Speaker 4: chance of going horribly awry right right where you can
Speaker 4: everything can be fine time and time and time again.
Speaker 4: But then like the one time if you you know,
Speaker 4: if you do that one time, and say you have
Speaker 4: a one percent, five percent, ten percent chance of something
Speaker 4: going of getting in a wreck right and possibly dying
Speaker 4: or killing someone, but like the chances of that worst
Speaker 4: outcome are probably fairly small. But like, if you do
Speaker 4: that one time, I'm not saying that's fine, but the
Speaker 4: chances of getting away with it and being okay are
Speaker 4: much better than if you do it ten times or
Speaker 4: one hundred times, or if you do it every night
Speaker 4: for a year, Like, if it's a one percent chance,
Speaker 4: there's a really good chance. Now over three hundred and
Speaker 4: sixty five instances, you're gonna have a terrible.
Speaker 3: Outcome, right, And kind of like that's the thing. Also
Speaker 3: where this this thinking, I'm gonna back up a second
Speaker 3: to kind of make a point here. But the here,
Speaker 3: I think is how applying to your life becomes the
Speaker 3: most important. We often talk in poker about having a
Speaker 3: bank roll, right where in that situation, like I said,
Speaker 3: where you're gonna win one in five times. Okay, So
Speaker 3: let's say it's a one hundred dollar bet. If I
Speaker 3: have one hundred dollars, well, I only I don't have
Speaker 3: enough to bet enough times that the money is gonna
Speaker 3: work out for me. And someone might say, okay, well
Speaker 3: if you have five hundred dollars, then you're okay. Even then,
Speaker 3: because like I said, the law of averages takes a
Speaker 3: while to catch up. You actually have to have you know,
Speaker 3: enough of that bank roll so that eventually the you know,
Speaker 3: the numbers will catch up with you. The idea of okay,
Speaker 3: well you know, I'm gonna spend my life savings on
Speaker 3: one particular bet, even if it's a like I have
Speaker 3: a you know, seventy percent chance to win. Okay, you
Speaker 3: may well wind up with a very good situation, or
Speaker 3: you may wind up you know, completely and utterly screwed,
Speaker 3: where the negative result is so big as to say, like,
Speaker 3: is it worthwhile a bet? And I think that's the
Speaker 3: kind of thing there where to me, it's not just
Speaker 3: that the the one percent is going to add up,
Speaker 3: but it's the if I have this very small chance
Speaker 3: to do something truly and utterly horrible that will end
Speaker 3: my life and someone else's life, you know, something like that.
Speaker 3: Then then again that that kind of the thinking of like, well, sure,
Speaker 3: it's not that it's the one chance. It's that even
Speaker 3: if the small chance, the damage of that small chance
Speaker 3: happening is enough to say the whole thing isn't worth
Speaker 3: it or whatever, in the same way of saying, like,
Speaker 3: is the chance of it happening make everything worth it?
Speaker 4: Right? For sure, one would say that you're under rolled
Speaker 4: for you know, such reckless actions, because your role is
Speaker 4: like one one life.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: And I think that's a really good example because there's
Speaker 4: something called the Keli Craian, which is a way of
Speaker 4: basically calculating the largest rational wager you can make given
Speaker 4: a certain chance of winning in certain standard deviation, and YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 4: It gets pretty mathy. It's actually pretty simple, but we
Speaker 4: won't dig into the math. But the point is there's
Speaker 4: like there's ways of when it comes to purely dollars, right,
Speaker 4: purely money, of calculating like what is actually a rational
Speaker 4: amount of your bankroll to wager? But then there's also
Speaker 4: real life considerations right where you know, there's some game
Speaker 4: shows where you can essentially, you know, wager. I think like,
Speaker 4: let's make a deal. I was like, anybody want to
Speaker 4: make a deal. Who thinks they're smarter than Let's make
Speaker 4: it enough, let's make a deal. And like some other
Speaker 4: shows where you can you basically you can calculate, like
Speaker 4: you know how much money is left out there, and
Speaker 4: you know your odds of each outcome, right, and if
Speaker 4: one of you know, there's a million dollars and a
Speaker 4: one dollar there and somebody offers you four hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 4: you can look at it and be like, oh, well,
Speaker 4: but my expected value is half a million and fifty cents, right,
Speaker 4: So like, of course that's a plus EV gamble, Like
Speaker 4: I get an extra one hundred thousand dollars, right compared
Speaker 4: to just getting four hundred k. But like if you
Speaker 4: look at it, and let's ignore tax implications and whatever
Speaker 4: for the moment, but like if you look at it
Speaker 4: just in terms of life ev basically it's like, well,
Speaker 4: depending on where you are in your life, Like, what
Speaker 4: is the difference between is the difference between four hundred
Speaker 4: thousand and five hundred thousand really twenty five percent of
Speaker 4: the difference between zero and four hundred thousand, And for
Speaker 4: a lot of people that's going to be No, it's like, well,
Speaker 4: with four hundred thousand, I can buy a house, you know, yeah,
Speaker 4: I can pay off my house, or I can send
Speaker 4: like I don't know these days, what is it like
Speaker 4: two kids to college or one maybe maybe one and
Speaker 4: a half. You know, one goes to community college, one
Speaker 4: goes to a four year But like, you know, zero
Speaker 4: to four hundred thousand for many slash most people is
Speaker 4: gonna be life changing. That extra hundred thousand. There's a
Speaker 4: diminishing utility, right right, And and so maybe it is
Speaker 4: rational to say you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 4: take this buy out. As a professional gambler. On some level,
Speaker 4: I find it appalling, but then I'm like, no, it
Speaker 4: makes sense, right, it's fair. Whereas if they're like, well,
Speaker 4: I'll take one hundred thousand instead of I'm like, look,
Speaker 4: you're gonna pass up four hundred thousand dollars in ev
Speaker 4: but it's like maybe that first hundred thousand is way
Speaker 4: more important than the next four hundred and and so,
Speaker 4: you know, in poker, there is this like desire to
Speaker 4: like lock up the win because there's this like dopamine here.
Speaker 4: There's like this like emotional boost from from having a
Speaker 4: winning session. There's like, you know, there's a oh, I
Speaker 4: don't want to bet too big on the river, Like
Speaker 4: you have a good hand, you're trying to bet, and
Speaker 4: you want to get called. But it's like the desire,
Speaker 4: the want to get called is a very emotional desire, right,
Speaker 4: the rational desires. I want to maximize the expectation of
Speaker 4: this hand, and sometimes that's going to be a much
Speaker 4: larger bet that's actually much less likely to get called,
Speaker 4: but still on average is going to net you a
Speaker 4: lot more money, right, And you know, these are the
Speaker 4: kind of things that can they can make more sense
Speaker 4: outside of the game than in the game. And sometimes
Speaker 4: you have to ask yourself, like within poker, it's like, well,
Speaker 4: why am I playing? Is my goal to make a
Speaker 4: lot of money over the long run? If so, I've
Speaker 4: got to go for the MAXIV option like every time,
Speaker 4: right yeah.
Speaker 3: And that's, for example, part of why I would call
Speaker 3: myself the poker hobbyist, because that wasn't always my goal,
Speaker 3: right no. And so for example, like for me, like
Speaker 3: takehow the situation where I have a one in ten
Speaker 3: chance to hit, but if I hit, I'm going to
Speaker 3: get twenty to one mm hmm. Or even even let's
Speaker 3: say I have a one and change one in ten
Speaker 3: chance to hit and I'm going to get nine to one.
Speaker 3: If my goal is to have enough money to keep
Speaker 3: doing that every single time, that's a crazy thing to do.
Speaker 3: I should never do that if my goal is to
Speaker 3: have a really fun time at the poker table. Actually now,
Speaker 3: because now it's not just the evy of the cash,
Speaker 3: it's the huge dopamine hit that happens when I do
Speaker 3: win that card, particularly if I'm playing against Paul, and
Speaker 3: Paul goes, how can you play that against me? Which
Speaker 3: is priceless as a dopamine hit, but also just like,
Speaker 3: honestly that the three seconds of anticipation as I'm waiting
Speaker 3: for the last are phenomenal. And I was gonna say
Speaker 3: it's kind of like a drug, and it actually is,
Speaker 3: which is exactly why gambling can become an addiction. And
Speaker 3: so again be very careful, like any kind of thrill
Speaker 3: seeking behavior can become an addiction. It's a kind of
Speaker 3: a form of dopamine addiction. Basically, maybe I don't know
Speaker 3: the neudro chemistry exactly, but like, so always be careful
Speaker 3: about that. But I think that that's another thing where
Speaker 3: you can say, like, hey, is it worthwhile to do this?
Speaker 3: You know? And for myself, I didn't always do this
Speaker 3: when I was young and stupid, but now I will
Speaker 3: always look at my budget and go, Okay, can I
Speaker 3: pay three hundred dollars for a night of like high
Speaker 3: quality entertainment When I pay three hundred dollars to go
Speaker 3: to the theater tonight and go have a nice dinner, Yes,
Speaker 3: my budget can afford that. So I'm willing to take
Speaker 3: the three hundred dollars to the casino, possibly lose it
Speaker 3: all or get those really fun dopamine hits. But when
Speaker 3: it becomes well, I'm playing with my rent money, or
Speaker 3: even worse, I'm playing with someone else's rent money or
Speaker 3: someone else's you know whatever money.
Speaker 4: Or with cash advance off a credit card or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, And here's where again I'll pull it back.
Speaker 3: One of my frustrations with a lot of superhero movies
Speaker 3: is I feel like a lot of times they gamble
Speaker 3: with other people's money or quite literally with other people's lives. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, and one of the conceited Like think about
Speaker 3: the ending of Avengers one where I think the rational
Speaker 3: ev move is to nuke the city, and and and
Speaker 3: if you assume that the nuking of the city will
Speaker 3: end the invasion, maybe it won't. But but if that's
Speaker 3: the best information, you have the chance that the Avengers
Speaker 3: will do it, even if it's like a sixty sixty
Speaker 3: or seventy percent chance, the chance that they won't is
Speaker 3: that the world is now conquered. You don't have a
Speaker 3: bankroll for that, you're under rolled. So like I'm not
Speaker 3: saying that therefore, like they should have nuked it or
Speaker 3: kept Nick Fury was wrong. But I think that's a
Speaker 3: level of thinking that I think we don't do in
Speaker 3: our own lives enough, and that people in because I mean,
Speaker 3: watching a person do the exact same thing ten times,
Speaker 3: fail nine times and succeed in the tenth does not
Speaker 3: make for good TV, to not make for a good movie.
Speaker 3: And so of course they have to do that. But
Speaker 3: that's why I think it's so important to understand that
Speaker 3: kind of thinking of Yeah, actually, sometimes the rational thing
Speaker 3: to do is the you know, the is not to
Speaker 3: take the big risk, because you got to think about like,
Speaker 3: what what is the what's the fallout of the big
Speaker 3: risk you're taking not playing out? And particularly and here
Speaker 3: I think is the biggest conceit of superhero movies a lot.
Speaker 3: If the reason that you think it is not a
Speaker 3: big risk is because it's you and you know you
Speaker 3: can do it, that's a problem.
Speaker 4: I mean, well, yeah, it can be a problem. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'll give you it can be a problem.
Speaker 3: Yes, there are people who know they are that good.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I would say the number of people who think that
Speaker 3: they are a.
Speaker 4: Good dramatically outweighs the number of people who actually who
Speaker 4: think they are Yes, who actually are yes exactly. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: so there's a lot there. One in terms of nuking
Speaker 4: the city, Why couldn't they just nuked through the wormhole
Speaker 4: or whatever? Wouldn't wouldn't that be the actual rational? Like
Speaker 4: wait a minute, wait a minute, why don't we do
Speaker 4: what Tony did?
Speaker 3: I feel like if there's any birth to this podcast
Speaker 3: other than the fact the the like team Tony verus
Speaker 3: team captivating that you've been having here for literal decades now.
Speaker 3: It's the number of times a character in a movie
Speaker 3: has had a choice and you and I have been like, wait,
Speaker 3: but what about the third option?
Speaker 4: What about the third way? Like why not that I
Speaker 4: was forced to do this? It's like there were other
Speaker 4: options there if you do just give it them all,
Speaker 4: you know, But you know, and then that brings up
Speaker 4: the well people are acting under pressure, and you know
Speaker 4: when when we're looking at poker decisions, like we also
Speaker 4: have to understand like, you know, I can sit down
Speaker 4: and analyze a hand for literally hours, but let's say
Speaker 4: you know, a tight fifteen minutes, and it's like you
Speaker 4: don't have that at the poker table, right, You're you're
Speaker 4: making a lot of decisions quicker. But the thing that
Speaker 4: you said that I most wanted to respond to was
Speaker 4: kind of about you know, I think it's super important
Speaker 4: if you play poker, if you do any kind of
Speaker 4: gambling that's less skill based, right, anything that involves wagering.
Speaker 4: But I mean, really this is you can expand this
Speaker 4: to be true for like pretty much anything in life,
Speaker 4: but especially things that have a substantial you know, sort
Speaker 4: of cost, you know, risk reward, you know, cost benefit
Speaker 4: analysis is like, just have a good idea of why
Speaker 4: you're doing what you're doing. You know, are you going
Speaker 4: to the casino to play poker because you want to
Speaker 4: like play a poker for a living. You know, if so,
Speaker 4: you need a bankroll, you need a certain amount of
Speaker 4: money that is really just poker related, and you know,
Speaker 4: you have to do a lot of math to basically
Speaker 4: understand like, well, what's my expected win rate? Like what
Speaker 4: should what should I think? It is, like, what are
Speaker 4: the chances that I'm gonna go bust over this period
Speaker 4: of time if I play these steaks? Should I play
Speaker 4: these stakes? YadA, YadA YadA. Right, Whereas if you're playing
Speaker 4: either purely recreationally or you know, the kind of semi
Speaker 4: pro kind of like well, I would like to make
Speaker 4: money from this game, but I'm not. You know, if
Speaker 4: I lose the money I have allotted to it, that's
Speaker 4: not a big deal because I have, you know, another income.
Speaker 4: Then you know, then you need a budget. I think,
Speaker 4: you know, even that sort of semipro, I think it's
Speaker 4: not really a bankroll. It's a budget, you know. And
Speaker 4: you can say, Okay, I'm gonna play two five because
Speaker 4: I think that's the best game for me, and I
Speaker 4: have a thousand dollars budget a month. Like that's a
Speaker 4: large budget, you know for something that is entertainment. But
Speaker 4: if you're like, well, but it's going to be profitable entertainment,
Speaker 4: and on any given month, I might lose, but like,
Speaker 4: in the long run, I think I'm actually gonna have
Speaker 4: more money and worst case scenario, I have a good time.
Speaker 4: But to like have that budget and be like, yeah,
Speaker 4: when when the money's gone, it's time to go home,
Speaker 4: you know, it's that's it, the game's over. And you know,
Speaker 4: having like, Okay, my budget this weekend is three hundred dollars,
Speaker 4: then you choose the game accordingly, you know, and and
Speaker 4: if you're comfortable with like, yeah, I can get it
Speaker 4: in on a long shot, and if it hits, I'm
Speaker 4: going to be super excited, and if it doesn't, that's okay,
Speaker 4: and you know, then I'm just going to go do
Speaker 4: something else that's cool. Like you know that that's the
Speaker 4: fact that people enjoy doing That is one of the
Speaker 4: reasons that people can make a living playing poker, because
Speaker 4: there are people who are playing just for enjoyment and
Speaker 4: are fine with the fact that it's like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 4: they're they want to try to be a favorite mostly, right,
Speaker 4: Like most people playing poker are trying to win, right,
Speaker 4: but like are okay with not like maximizing every spot
Speaker 4: and maybe making some calls that just seem fun. And
Speaker 4: as long as you know, you have a concept of like, okay,
Speaker 4: what's the cost of this if I you know, if
Speaker 4: if I lose, it's like, well, the cost is literally
Speaker 4: the money, and then however you're going to feel afterwards, right,
Speaker 4: and then there's the upside and that's the money and
Speaker 4: however you're going to feel afterwards. And if those things
Speaker 4: balance out to you, then cool, do it, you know,
Speaker 4: And if they don't, then don't And if you have
Speaker 4: an issue with it, you know, if you're developing an
Speaker 4: addiction and then you know, seek help for real.
Speaker 3: You know, definitely, this is a topic I think we're
Speaker 3: going to come back to a bunch of times. I
Speaker 3: want to transition us into cognitive dissonance because that's kind
Speaker 3: of I think one of the biggest ones for me
Speaker 3: in terms of this, and give a definition of that term,
Speaker 3: because then there's a couple of specific ones I want
Speaker 3: to talk about.
Speaker 4: Right, So this isn't a definite dictionary definition, but basically,
Speaker 4: cognitive dissonance is like the ability to hold to contradictory
Speaker 4: thoughts in your mind at the same time and essentially
Speaker 4: think that they're both true even though they're not right,
Speaker 4: that like, they can't be right. And this is I'm
Speaker 4: trying to think of a good poker example. I feel
Speaker 4: like you had something in mind, so why don't.
Speaker 3: You Yeah, I mean, I think the poker example, but
Speaker 3: I think a life example that come off with me
Speaker 3: true is you know, for example, depending on your state
Speaker 3: of mind, you might be more likely to remember success
Speaker 3: or more likely to remember failure. And so it might
Speaker 3: be that you know, I take that one in five
Speaker 3: chance fifty times, but because a lot of times, you know,
Speaker 3: seven of those times, ten of those times it doesn't
Speaker 3: work out. What I remember it does actually work out
Speaker 3: from time to time, but I mostly I just remember
Speaker 3: all the times it didn't work right, or on the
Speaker 3: flip side, like, actually it didn't work all those times.
Speaker 3: But I tell the thing is, when I go to Vegas,
Speaker 3: I don't tell the story of when it didn't work out.
Speaker 3: I tell the story of when it did. And I
Speaker 3: remember when it did. And so part of one of
Speaker 3: to me, the thing that I'm getting at here is
Speaker 3: that one of the things I think that we find
Speaker 3: hardest to understand about probability, and it's particularly around like
Speaker 3: randomness and chance. The human brain is very very good
Speaker 3: at finding patterns. That's an essential part of the evolution.
Speaker 3: You know, we were able to understand like, okay, as
Speaker 3: it gets hotter, like these things happen to the plants
Speaker 3: around us, these things happen to the animals around us,
Speaker 3: these things happen to the water around us, and like,
Speaker 3: you know, like thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of
Speaker 3: years ago before we started having like what we understand
Speaker 3: is quote unquote civilization. You know, humans and our you know,
Speaker 3: nearest ancestors were able to discern patterns about the world
Speaker 3: around them and be able to learn things from them.
Speaker 3: The problem is that our brains are sometimes are so
Speaker 3: good at finding patterns that we absolutely hate the idea
Speaker 3: that things don't have patterns, So we look for patterns.
Speaker 3: So we look for Oh I always win, or even
Speaker 3: more often, I always lose. We look for, you know,
Speaker 3: and this is where it comes into other parts of life.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Well, it's always when like I go up against this
Speaker 3: other kind of person that I lose, or this other
Speaker 3: kind of person always seems to be the one who
Speaker 3: gets hired for the job instead of me, or you
Speaker 3: know this, this other kind of person always seems to
Speaker 3: be the one that the professor, you know, gives a
Speaker 3: good grade to, or whatever it is. This is a
Speaker 3: whole other range of things we can talk about. But
Speaker 3: I kind of what started there about the idea of
Speaker 3: like the human brains desire to find patterns even when
Speaker 3: they're not there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure. So first of all, I think I
Speaker 4: completely butchered the definition of cognitive dissonance. But I think
Speaker 4: I think we're talking more about confirmation bias here, And yeah.
Speaker 3: I guess I thought of confirmation bias as a kind
Speaker 3: of cognitive dissonance, but we can get away from the
Speaker 3: exact terms.
Speaker 4: So sure, But like the idea being that.
Speaker 3: There's some.
Speaker 4: Random selection of data, right, right, and we look at
Speaker 4: these random, truly random occurrences and seek to find a pattern,
Speaker 4: right because the brain wants a pattern, and because when
Speaker 4: you can find a pattern, when there really is a
Speaker 4: pattern and you can discover it, that can be extraordinarily powerful. Right.
Speaker 4: For instance, if we're playing poker, to bring it directly
Speaker 4: to poker, and you make this tiny bet at the
Speaker 4: end and I call you and you have a very
Speaker 4: marginal hand, right, I'm like, okay. Then you do it
Speaker 4: again and I call you in a very marginal hand.
Speaker 4: Then you make a big bet and I call you
Speaker 4: and you have a big hand, And this happens enough times.
Speaker 4: You know, we could say that I found a pattern
Speaker 4: that you know, you bet small with small hands and
Speaker 4: big with big hands, and that's super useful when you're
Speaker 4: playing poker. For this is called a bet sizing towel, right.
Speaker 4: I mean, similarly, you know you could have a big
Speaker 4: hand and be like, hmm, want the cookie. I brought
Speaker 4: props for people.
Speaker 3: No one's watching it, between nobody's watching it. So this
Speaker 3: is not on video. Paul just did the thing with
Speaker 3: an oreo cookie that John Malkovich does in the movie Rounders.
Speaker 4: So you know, having an actual physical tell right, that's
Speaker 4: a pattern that somebody does something physical and that corresponds
Speaker 4: to them having a certain type of hand, And that's
Speaker 4: very useful. However, if you're like, oh, two sevens came out,
Speaker 4: like on three different flops today, sevens are hot, Like
Speaker 4: there's totally a pattern. Every fifth hand we get two
Speaker 4: sevens on the flop. Now I'm gonna play do seven
Speaker 4: off suit because like I'm probably gonna make three sevens
Speaker 4: because there's a pattern. Right, It's like, no, those were
Speaker 4: random events. Those were independent events probably, you know, unless
Speaker 4: someone's cheating, unless something's rigged, which I think we always
Speaker 4: have to acknowledge our uncertainty about, like there are certain
Speaker 4: conditions that could be different from what we're expecting, but
Speaker 4: generally are very unlikely, and so those patterns. Patterns can
Speaker 4: be super valuable if they're real and you observe them
Speaker 4: and then you adjust accordingly, but super dangerous when you know,
Speaker 4: if you're thinking, oh, maybe sevens are hot and then
Speaker 4: they come out again, it's like, oh, that's it. It's
Speaker 4: definitely that's the thing, right, And that's where confirmation bias
Speaker 4: comes in, because it's like, every time it happens, the
Speaker 4: brain's like, ah, yes, I found a pattern. Good brain,
Speaker 4: good brain, you know, And every time it doesn't happen,
Speaker 4: it's just you know, yeah, it just kind of floats through, unobserved,
Speaker 4: unremarked upon. And and so there's this fixation on, you know,
Speaker 4: the data that confirms our assumptions. And that's something that's
Speaker 4: very real throughout all sorts of you know, aspects of life,
Speaker 4: but you know, in poker specifically, like it's and and
Speaker 4: all sorts of life, Like it's really important to observe, right,
Speaker 4: And once you're once we're aware of our own biases,
Speaker 4: it's easier to then kind of counteradjust for them, right,
Speaker 4: be like, Okay, I tend to think somebody always has
Speaker 4: the goods when they bet, and so now I'm going
Speaker 4: to be like, okay, I have this feeling of fear.
Speaker 4: Now I have to be like, okay, but that's my
Speaker 4: bias speaking. Now, let my rational mind come in and
Speaker 4: analyze the data that's like real, and maybe I'll still
Speaker 4: come to a conclusion. I think they have a strong hand,
Speaker 4: but maybe I won't and maybe I'll go You know what,
Speaker 4: I'm really not so sure about this. This is my
Speaker 4: bias coming into play, and I mean in other areas
Speaker 4: of life, I think it's more important right to be
Speaker 4: able to be like, no, you know what, I have
Speaker 4: a bias against people with this or that, you know,
Speaker 4: aspect or whatever, Like I have a bias against frat boys,
Speaker 4: and like, you know, like I'm friends with people who
Speaker 4: went to frats, like not a lot, but like some,
Speaker 4: and like I don't on a deeper intellectual level, like
Speaker 4: I have huge like I think legitimate complaints about the
Speaker 4: whole fraternity institution, right, but like in terms of just
Speaker 4: individual people, like I know, if I see someone I
Speaker 4: think they're like frat related, like I'm going to have
Speaker 4: an immediate kind of negative reaction that then I have
Speaker 4: to actually override and be like, Okay, this is just
Speaker 4: a person. Like let's just approach them as a person,
Speaker 4: knowing that this one thing about them is true. But
Speaker 4: that doesn't define who they are, you know, and you know,
Speaker 4: other people have some other biases that are maybe more pernicious.
Speaker 3: Well, and that's the next thing I'll talk about, because
Speaker 3: I think it becomes super important to remember to find
Speaker 3: your own biases and where are you like taking note
Speaker 3: of the information that fits your bias, but ignoring the
Speaker 3: information that doesn't. But also what's the bias of the
Speaker 3: information that you're perceiving. Sure, if you grew up at
Speaker 3: the time I did, and you watch the news in
Speaker 3: the eighties, a lot of biases that people drew were
Speaker 3: that gay men in the eighties were all having crazy
Speaker 3: sex orgies with each other all the time. That's because
Speaker 3: HIV AIDS was a huge problem and there were gay
Speaker 3: al bath houses and things like that. Although a lot
Speaker 3: of people were very safe in those bath houses, a
Speaker 3: lot of people were not. But the point being that
Speaker 3: if you didn't know someone who is gay, the media
Speaker 3: stories about HIV spreading through anonymous gay sex was probably
Speaker 3: the main thing you heard about gay men. And so
Speaker 3: that's the bias you were fed in the same way.
Speaker 3: You know, when all of your depictions of Mexicans on
Speaker 3: TV and movies are as drug dealers or as other kinds, like,
Speaker 3: that's the bias that you're being told. And this, I
Speaker 3: think becomes really important as we analyze the movies we
Speaker 3: look at because you're right, you know, and I also
Speaker 3: think it's it's I also have some philosophical problems with
Speaker 3: a lot of things about fraternity systems. But I also
Speaker 3: know that the stories that I hear about hazing at
Speaker 3: fraternities are the most extreme examples, and that most fraternities
Speaker 3: probably have much milder hazing that no one ever tells
Speaker 3: me about because it's not newsworthy. You know, and I
Speaker 3: have the same bias that you do. And I think
Speaker 3: that's another point that becomes so important, is being able
Speaker 3: to remember, like, and I think this is so true,
Speaker 3: Like a lot of the stories I think we see
Speaker 3: are often about you know, people from like warning planets
Speaker 3: or warning nations or you know, warring groups or whatever,
Speaker 3: who have these biases about each other, and they can
Speaker 3: they actually see the evidence of things that are not
Speaker 3: fitting the bias. And often the heroes the ones who can,
Speaker 3: and the villains are the ones who can't. And it's
Speaker 3: not that clear cut. And I think a lot of
Speaker 3: times we're critical of heroes because they can't, or we're
Speaker 3: critical of writers because they can't. Yeah, but I think
Speaker 3: that's where it becomes really important. Thing is like how
Speaker 3: can you how can you break out of that confirmation
Speaker 3: bias to see the information that's in.
Speaker 4: Front of you. Yeah, for sure. You know. It's like
Speaker 4: if if you are fed one of these biases or
Speaker 4: acquire one through some other means, and then you know,
Speaker 4: you meet five people and one of them matches the description, Like,
Speaker 4: it's so much easier to have the one that confirms
Speaker 4: that bias just be the one that like comes to mind,
Speaker 4: you know, and and to kind of just be like, oh,
Speaker 4: but those other four were exceptions, like you know, and
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm actually reminded of the D and D movie,
Speaker 4: which I won't say too much about, but like, you know,
Speaker 4: there wasn't a ton about biases, but you know there was.
Speaker 4: There's at least one or two things, and you know,
Speaker 4: at least two of the heroes is like about, you know,
Speaker 4: they have certain biases against certain other heroes, and then
Speaker 4: they're like, I think one of the things that makes
Speaker 4: them heroes is that they do overcome those and they're like,
Speaker 4: you know, let's actually judge this person on their actions,
Speaker 4: not on what I know about people from this place
Speaker 4: or of this species or whatever right or race. And
Speaker 4: in Dungeons and Dragons terms, you know, which is different
Speaker 4: from from earth races.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. Let's talk then about what I think
Speaker 3: is often the correlaior to this, the concept of blame.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. I think about this very much because of
Speaker 3: the current state the United States is in right now
Speaker 3: and a lot of the world is in. One of
Speaker 3: the things that is very linked to finding patterns is
Speaker 3: finding cause. And you know, I haven't studied neuroscience at
Speaker 3: an an academic level. What I haven't read a lot
Speaker 3: about it and observed a lot about it. And the
Speaker 3: thing that I've learned from so many others who have
Speaker 3: studied it is that there is the idea that something,
Speaker 3: you know, the idea, you know, the kind of old
Speaker 3: joke of like happens that's incredibly hard for our brains
Speaker 3: to conceive of. Our brains really don't like that and
Speaker 3: want to come up with something. What has poker kind
Speaker 3: of taught you or what do you think the kind
Speaker 3: of the ideas of poker can translate to this, the
Speaker 3: idea that, like, when bad things happen to us or
Speaker 3: people we know, we want to find someone to blame.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think, I mean, I think it's a huge
Speaker 4: issue in life, you know. But to go specifically with
Speaker 4: the poker of it, I think losing a big hand,
Speaker 4: you know, making a bluff that gets called betting large
Speaker 4: for value and then the opponent folds, like there's there's
Speaker 4: this like, well, what did I do wrong? Why didn't
Speaker 4: this bluff work? You know, it's not supposed to work
Speaker 4: all the time, Like why didn't my value back get called?
Speaker 4: It's not supposed to get called all the time? You know,
Speaker 4: how come I made a call and then they turned
Speaker 4: over a better hand? Should I have called this orhoul?
Speaker 4: I folded? Like you're supposed to call and lose sometime.
Speaker 4: This is how the game is structured. Right. You're not
Speaker 4: supposed to only make perfect decisions. The only way to
Speaker 4: do that is you can literally see your opponent's cards,
Speaker 4: which you know is cheating, so don't do that. And
Speaker 4: you know you're you're supposed to be wrong some of
Speaker 4: the time in terms of getting the desired outcome. And
Speaker 4: that's that's different even from just chance, right, in terms
Speaker 4: of a card to come. That's like, we don't know
Speaker 4: our opponent's cards, We have uncertainty about the situation, and
Speaker 4: we made the best decision we could with the information
Speaker 4: we had available at the time. Right, poker is a
Speaker 4: game that relies on each person has their own private, hidden,
Speaker 4: secret information, and then there's public information. And we need
Speaker 4: to combine the things that we know that are factual
Speaker 4: about the you know, the cards that are out, what
Speaker 4: the action sequences, who bet, who raised, stuff like that,
Speaker 4: and we need to combine that with you know, thinking
Speaker 4: about well what could they have what would they have
Speaker 4: played this way? And then we just do the best
Speaker 4: we can. And I think a lot of times people
Speaker 4: do give their best effort, they make reasonable decisions, and
Speaker 4: things don't work out, and there's a well what did
Speaker 4: I do wrong? Like did I did I deserve this?
Speaker 4: Or oh, well this didn't work out. It's totally unfair.
Speaker 3: It's not my fault, right right, the dealer must have cheated, like.
Speaker 4: Right, or like just it's injustice, like a flush straws
Speaker 4: shouldn't have got there. I had the best hand, I
Speaker 4: should have won. It's like no, it's supposed to get there.
Speaker 4: Sometimes sometimes even two flowishes are supposed to hit against
Speaker 4: you in consecutive hands. You know, that's a thing. And
Speaker 4: so I think this idea of either there's the two
Speaker 4: extremes of wanting to take ultimate responsibility for every outcome,
Speaker 4: which is unhealthy. That's where results oriented thinking really right
Speaker 4: and never taking responsibility for any outcome and being like, well,
Speaker 4: I always play everything perfect and the world's just out
Speaker 4: to get me, you know. In the truth of you know,
Speaker 4: the best approach is it's hard, right. It's like, we
Speaker 4: need to take responsibility for our decisions and our actions
Speaker 4: while also understanding that they were made without perfect information
Speaker 4: about the world, and with the understanding that there's going
Speaker 4: to be some element of chance, and good decisions aren't
Speaker 4: automatically going to result in good outcomes, and bad decisions
Speaker 4: don't automatically result in bad outcomes, and just like trying
Speaker 4: to evaluate our decisions on their merits and based on
Speaker 4: what we knew at the time, and then as we
Speaker 4: acquire new information then being like, Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 4: use that to inform my future decisions without beating myself
Speaker 4: up about my past ones, but while also being realistic about, oh,
Speaker 4: did I have some information I was overlooking? Was I
Speaker 4: focusing on the wrong information? Maybe right? You know? And
Speaker 4: that Ah, that just makes poker a very difficult game
Speaker 4: to learn because you don't get pure feedback on like,
Speaker 4: oh you did good. It worked, you did bad, it
Speaker 4: didn't work. And I think life's a lot like that too, right,
Speaker 4: There's so many things you can give a great effort
Speaker 4: and it just doesn't work out, and vice versa.
Speaker 3: There's two things I want to say here. One just
Speaker 3: on the limited information in poker. You do not have
Speaker 3: to get to the showdown where there's no more betting
Speaker 3: and everyone starts to show their cards. And I think
Speaker 3: everyone's used to the kind of movie idea that everyone
Speaker 3: shows their cards. The reality is in poker a lot
Speaker 3: of times, especially at casinos or the kind of higher
Speaker 3: level things, once someone shows a winning hand, other people
Speaker 3: will throw away their cards and never show them.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: So someone might say every time I see their cards,
Speaker 3: they beat me, right, because yes, they only show you
Speaker 3: like you only gain an information in the situation, and
Speaker 3: so that's the bias. But the larger thing I want
Speaker 3: to get there is because to me that.
Speaker 4: I think is that that's a really good point. Though
Speaker 4: I want to underscore thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's again about like thinking about when are you
Speaker 3: getting information and when you're not.
Speaker 4: And you're getting information the other time, you know they
Speaker 4: had a worse haand than you had, or then whoever
Speaker 4: won whatever won, but it's hard to record that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have to put that in your mind. Is
Speaker 3: one of the times you saw their cards.
Speaker 4: Exactly, saw that you knew something about their hands exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But the other part of it is because to me,
Speaker 3: I think this is the thing that I think most
Speaker 3: applies to our own lives, to our own society, and
Speaker 3: to the questions that so many of these movies that
Speaker 3: and TV shows that we love bring up, which is that,
Speaker 3: like all that we were getting at is we want
Speaker 3: to find a reason why things happened, right. And like
Speaker 3: one of the things that I remember when I was
Speaker 3: I h one of the times where I'm sort of like,
Speaker 3: I wasn't like paying all my bills. I was getting
Speaker 3: like scholarship money and stuff, but I was paying my like,
Speaker 3: you know, day to day money by playing poker when
Speaker 3: I was in grad school, when I was in seminary,
Speaker 3: and I was a nice read do my homework at
Speaker 3: the table, and so people, you know, you're mostly playing
Speaker 3: a lot of the same people if you're going three
Speaker 3: days a week. People learned that I was a seminarian
Speaker 3: and right now that's would come over and be like, hey,
Speaker 3: can I talk to you for a second, by you
Speaker 3: cup coffee or something, and chat a bit, and they
Speaker 3: would start telling me about like their experience of God
Speaker 3: or their religious ideas, and I was like, okay, sure,
Speaker 3: you don't have to tell me this. What it would
Speaker 3: get at, though, is that they were having a lot
Speaker 3: of what they understood is bad luck. And they would
Speaker 3: one person literally said this, and other people said it
Speaker 3: in some other phrase, but they said, why does God
Speaker 3: hate me? Why doesn't God ever let me get the
Speaker 3: winning cards? Why does God always make the other guy win?
Speaker 3: Right to me? And this is also about psychology as
Speaker 3: much as anything else. One of the ways in which
Speaker 3: I think this can happen is we'll start to blame
Speaker 3: ourselves and we'll start to think either a that like
Speaker 3: some supreme power is mad at me, or just be like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm so terrible. This I often see a lot of
Speaker 3: times in like I'm in a lot of like polyamorous
Speaker 3: websites and discussion groups, and a lot of times guys
Speaker 3: will post about like, oh I must be so terrible.
Speaker 3: No girl likes me. You know, I keep sending these
Speaker 3: messages and I never get responses. And the fact is,
Speaker 3: like sending a anonymous message to someone or like you
Speaker 3: know with your name but like you never had contact
Speaker 3: with them. The ev on that is just about zero,
Speaker 3: because it might be that like you could write the
Speaker 3: three most romantic paragraphs of dating site instant message, but
Speaker 3: if that person has already gotten eight dick pics and
Speaker 3: four things, they may just delete your message, or maybe
Speaker 3: you never see it. Like there's so many other factors.
Speaker 3: But where I'm getting to with all this is I
Speaker 3: think that this feeling, I think is one of the
Speaker 3: most dangerous things of not understanding probability, because either a
Speaker 3: can really turn to a place of self hate and like,
Speaker 3: ohthough the whole world hates me and I'm so depressed,
Speaker 3: and then it becomes like you know, recurring cycle and
Speaker 3: like you know, you can kind of make your own truth.
Speaker 3: But once you're in that place, you are now incredibly
Speaker 3: vulnerable to someone else coming along and saying, no, no,
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry you feel this way. It's not your fault,
Speaker 3: it's their fault. And the different racial group where this
Speaker 3: you know it's because women are so terrible, or because
Speaker 3: blacks are so terrible, or because you know, you know,
Speaker 3: the deep state has done all these things or you know,
Speaker 3: any of these things. And if you note like this
Speaker 3: is so often the villagion, the villain origin story is
Speaker 3: bad things happen to them and then either their own
Speaker 3: confirmation bias or someone else like giving them confirmation bias,
Speaker 3: you know, tells the bias. Yeah, yeah, don't. This isn't
Speaker 3: your fault. This is all the fault of the Jedi.
Speaker 3: This is all the fault of the Avengers, you know,
Speaker 3: this is all the fault of well generally it is
Speaker 3: always the fault of Tony Stark, So that's not really
Speaker 3: a confirmation. But yeah, either, Yeah, I think I think
Speaker 3: that's to me, that's almost the most important thing I
Speaker 3: want people to get out of this is thinking about
Speaker 3: in those terms, because I think that's where, honestly, so
Speaker 3: many of the problems we have in our society come from.
Speaker 3: Is bad things happen to people, and sometimes it is
Speaker 3: just random. Sometimes it is like like you know, I
Speaker 3: do think often big business and like the current economic
Speaker 3: structure and the patriarchy and things like that are much
Speaker 3: more to blame. But like blaming the patriarchy versus blaming
Speaker 3: like six individual people, patriarchy is such a large amorphous
Speaker 3: like what the hell do we mean by that? What
Speaker 3: do you mean by big business? What do we mean
Speaker 3: by you know, the force. It's much easier to have
Speaker 3: a specific group you can look at and point to
Speaker 3: and that you can hurt.
Speaker 4: Yeah. In in the poker game of life, the patriarchy
Speaker 4: is the fucking rake reframing worms iconic but not you know, and.
Speaker 3: I was given the misogyny of the original statement. That
Speaker 3: is actually the perfect way of flipping that up.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you. That was that was quite celiberate,
Speaker 4: which was actually the real life Kinish is the one
Speaker 4: who actually said that, Joel Bagels. But yeah, it's I
Speaker 4: mean it's hard because I do think people want things
Speaker 4: to happen for a reason, and I think a lot
Speaker 4: of things don't happen for a reason. You know, all
Speaker 4: of those organizational things like legit are the rake like right,
Speaker 4: because like the rake which for the for those who
Speaker 4: aren't versed, the house runs the game, right. They ensure
Speaker 4: or hopefully ensure a fair game where everybody gets two
Speaker 4: random cards or however many random cards, and the cards
Speaker 4: come out fair and everything's you know, all the betting
Speaker 4: takes place in according to the rules, and then they
Speaker 4: just take some of the money. I have some random
Speaker 4: other phone going off. I apologize for that. I don't
Speaker 4: know where it is either, I can't hear it, so
Speaker 4: no wordy about it. Good I found it. I'm turning
Speaker 4: it off. Okay. So basically, the house takes a little
Speaker 4: bit off the top, you know, and they never lose.
Speaker 4: I mean, they might actually lose money overall because they
Speaker 4: have to pay the dealers and they have to keep
Speaker 4: the lights on. Yah yah yahah blah blah blah. They
Speaker 4: don't make a ton of money off poker. They would
Speaker 4: just put in a bunch of slot machines a lot
Speaker 4: of places they do. But the point is is the
Speaker 4: house just takes money out of the game and then
Speaker 4: the players are left fighting for what's left. Right. I
Speaker 4: think this is like a kind of good good metaphor
Speaker 4: for like the vulture class and all this kind of whatever,
Speaker 4: and you know, and some people are gonna profit, but
Speaker 4: the average person is gonna lose. Like actually most people
Speaker 4: lose in a game with Rake because a lot of
Speaker 4: money just comes out of the game, right, Like it's
Speaker 4: it's people talk about poker being a zero sum game
Speaker 4: where somebody wins, somebody loses, somebody loses, somebody else has
Speaker 4: to win. But it's actually negative some once you account
Speaker 4: for the rake, unless you think of the house as
Speaker 4: a player. So you know, that's that's a tough situation
Speaker 4: where you basically have a bunch of people fighting against
Speaker 4: each other in a in a spot where everybody on average,
Speaker 4: if they're equally pitted or expected to lose. Actually right, right,
Speaker 4: But I think I think in life and and with poker,
Speaker 4: like really it's just you do want to hold yourself
Speaker 4: responsible for your own decisions, right, your decisions, your actions,
Speaker 4: that those are things you can control. And within poker,
Speaker 4: you know, as long as you're acting within the rules,
Speaker 4: it's like that's fine. You're you're supposed to be trying
Speaker 4: to beat the other players out of money, right, But
Speaker 4: in life, you know, maybe we actually can play a
Speaker 4: positive some game, you know, that's that's a thing. And
Speaker 4: but a lot of things just happen, you know. And
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm not gonna challenge people's metaphysical beliefs necessarily,
Speaker 4: like you can, you can see it however you want,
Speaker 4: but I'll share mine, which are basically things the world
Speaker 4: is how it is. People do what they do, you know,
Speaker 4: animals do what they do comments follow their trajectory. Like
Speaker 4: things happen, and most individuals are not in control of
Speaker 4: a very large number of things that happen to them.
Speaker 4: And right, we don't get to choose our starting spot
Speaker 4: in the world, you know, we only can decide how
Speaker 4: we proceed within the context that we exist. And dealing
Speaker 4: with things that happen that are completely out of our
Speaker 4: control is I mean, at times overwhelming, you know for me,
Speaker 4: Like the hardest thing is like people getting sick and dying,
Speaker 4: Like I don't like it, you know, Like I don't
Speaker 4: think a lot of people are like, oh yeah, no,
Speaker 4: that's cool, you know, but I do think people often
Speaker 4: try and come up with way of finding like a
Speaker 4: reason or like.
Speaker 3: God called them home or right time, or it was justice,
Speaker 3: you know, they shouldn't have lived anymore, you know, either.
Speaker 4: Way, And that I would say, never really resonated with me,
Speaker 4: you know, as someone who's whose father died at the
Speaker 4: age of forty one when I was eight, Like I
Speaker 4: you know, I find that point of view appalling from
Speaker 4: my point of view. You know, if that's your point
Speaker 4: of view, that's your point of view. I'm not telling
Speaker 4: you you should think it's wrong. I'm just telling you,
Speaker 4: you know how I feel, and that you know, if
Speaker 4: you really think about like everything in the world, it
Speaker 4: is kind of like, really, this this is all exactly
Speaker 4: how it's supposed to be, like, you know, but it's
Speaker 4: it's how it is. This is how it is. And
Speaker 4: then what's left to us is to decide how do
Speaker 4: we want to respond to how the world is? You know,
Speaker 4: Can we make some changes? Can we work with other
Speaker 4: people to try and create a more positive sum game,
Speaker 4: you know, outside of the poker table, and even I
Speaker 4: mean poker you know, from a financial standpoint, is a
Speaker 4: negative some game when it's raked, right, or a zero
Speaker 4: sum game if it's unraked. That doesn't mean it can't
Speaker 4: be a positive some game from a life ev standpoint, right, Yeah, Like,
Speaker 4: as you alluded to earlier stated out right, like the
Speaker 4: money changing hands is not the entirety of the game, right.
Speaker 4: There is the intellectual challenge, there's the social aspect, which
Speaker 4: I think is primary for a great number of people, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, even you who plays poker professionally. Yeah, tomorrow night,
Speaker 3: you and I are going to engage in an online
Speaker 3: game with a lot of our friends who haven't seen
Speaker 3: in a while who we like talking with. I'm almost
Speaker 3: positive that you're probably want to well, you are far
Speaker 3: and away the best poker player at that table. I
Speaker 3: would also imagine, though, just given the small amount of
Speaker 3: hands that will happen, the amount of extreme randomness from
Speaker 3: some of the crazy place people play, but also just
Speaker 3: the stakes, you would have a higher monetary ev spending
Speaker 3: that time playing poker that you normally do. Absolutely, so, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and it's yeah.
Speaker 4: I'm playing for fun because it's a lot of fun
Speaker 4: to sit around with friends and play a game I
Speaker 4: love like. And in that context, actually the poker is
Speaker 4: much is less fun for me than the poker that
Speaker 4: I play more seriously, but the experience is more fun
Speaker 4: because the conversation, right and catching up with people that
Speaker 4: I haven't talked to in a long time, and and
Speaker 4: so you know, for people their Thursday night poker game
Speaker 4: or or just going to the casino. Honestly, my two
Speaker 4: favorite places I ever played poker, aside from like home
Speaker 4: games or something, you know, and maybe there's a third
Speaker 4: one that's kind of tied, but like the Mayfair Club
Speaker 4: in New York, which was it was the same people
Speaker 4: all the time, you know, and I was like twenty one,
Speaker 4: twenty two, and like, you know, hanging out with people
Speaker 4: of all ages, I mean, almost all older than me,
Speaker 4: but like of all walks of life, and it was
Speaker 4: just super fun, like having this place to go and
Speaker 4: like feeling this sense of like kind of belonging and
Speaker 4: just it was it was a nice community for the
Speaker 4: most part, you know, and then more recently greaton casino
Speaker 4: in northern California and in Roonert Park north of you know,
Speaker 4: in the Bay Area, and I knew everybody there. You know.
Speaker 4: I would go in and be like, oh, hey, how's
Speaker 4: it going. You know, how's the one three? Oh it's
Speaker 4: a good game. Okay, yeah, I'll hop in that. Oh
Speaker 4: the two five is really good. Oh okay, I'll play
Speaker 4: that one, you know. And it's like people who I
Speaker 4: knew knew that I was like there to make money,
Speaker 4: like that's that was my primary goal in going there,
Speaker 4: but it was like it was also always a social
Speaker 4: experience as well, and hanging out with people I knew,
Speaker 4: and the combination of those things, especially for a lot
Speaker 4: of online poker players where the pace of live poker
Speaker 4: where you're playing in person is so slow, like you'll
Speaker 4: get maybe thirty thirty five hands an hour, whereas online
Speaker 4: I can get three hundred, three hundred and fifty you
Speaker 4: can play over a thousand hands an hour. The interacting
Speaker 4: with people, you know, it's the upside in the downside
Speaker 4: some other people sometimes you know it's like I could
Speaker 4: do with that, but but overall, it's like there is
Speaker 4: this additional aspect to the experience that can make it
Speaker 4: in life, ev you know, a positive some game collectively.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, No, I think it's such a good point,
Speaker 3: and I think that's a good place to wrap up
Speaker 3: the main part of the discussion. There's one more question
Speaker 3: that I want to ask you that I think I'm
Speaker 3: gonna give it your chance to talk about for just
Speaker 3: a few minutes now, and I think will be the
Speaker 3: primarily will be what our bonus section is about for members.
Speaker 3: By the way, I should have said this at the beginning,
Speaker 3: but if you want to support this podcast, I feel
Speaker 3: like what we're talking about. For only five dollars a month,
Speaker 3: you can become a member. You get bonus content at
Speaker 3: the end of it. With all of the episodes, you
Speaker 3: get free bonus episodes. We're gonna be starting those in
Speaker 3: the fall and also, you just get to help support us.
Speaker 3: We're using that money to help get better sound equipment,
Speaker 3: do a whole bunch of things to improve things. Really
Speaker 3: make it possible for keep bringing you this content. So, Paul,
Speaker 3: in term of probability and particular polling, Yeah, if something
Speaker 3: should happen seventy five percent of the time, but the
Speaker 3: other thing, the thing that was only supposed to happen
Speaker 3: twenty five percent of the time happens, doesn't that mean
Speaker 3: that that seventy five twenty five percent thing was wrong. Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, that's a terrible prediction. Give me And that
Speaker 4: was that was sarcasm for the uninitiated.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the reaction to the twenty sixteen polling and an
Speaker 3: election is kind of the thing that I know Paul
Speaker 3: has talked about this the most with But I want
Speaker 3: to give you a chance because I think one of
Speaker 3: the other human fallacies that we can do is if
Speaker 3: we know that something is eighty percent even if sometimes
Speaker 3: it's like if we think something is fifty five percent
Speaker 3: likely to happen, but even if it's eighty ninety ninety
Speaker 3: five percent likely to happen, when it doesn't happen, our
Speaker 3: reaction isn't oh, well, that should happen every now and then.
Speaker 3: Our reaction is that's wrong. It must have been fixed,
Speaker 3: It must have been broken. That couldn't have happened. Yeah,
Speaker 3: talk about this, give me your rant.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's absurd, as like flipping a coin
Speaker 4: twice and it ends up tails twice and you're like,
Speaker 4: that's it rigged. This was an impossible outcome. Like literally,
Speaker 4: that's a twenty five percent chance assuming a fair coin,
Speaker 4: and like, I mean that happens a lot. Like just
Speaker 4: just think about it. Like you roll a four sided die, right,
Speaker 4: it's gonna land on one, two, three, or four. You
Speaker 4: probably had to play D and D to like picture
Speaker 4: a four sided die. It's a little pyramid, but like
Speaker 4: and they're actually honestly, it's funny because a for sided
Speaker 4: die is really easy to kind of rig because they
Speaker 4: don't tumble quite the same. But like, that's exactly what
Speaker 4: it is. And I remember during the twenty sixteen election
Speaker 4: people talking about, first of all, Nate Silver of five
Speaker 4: thirty eight professional poker player who turned baseball forecaster, who
Speaker 4: turned political forecaster, et cetera, et cetera. And I think
Speaker 4: it's important to remember that those are forecasts, they're not predictions.
Speaker 4: And I think the Huffington Post had Clinton at like
Speaker 4: ninety nine percent or something, and then five point thirty
Speaker 4: eight had Clinton at like sixty three percent, maybe just
Speaker 4: before the election, and I think people looking at that
Speaker 4: were like, oh, okay, good, she's gonna win, and like
Speaker 4: that's just a really inaccurate assessment. That would be like, well, okay,
Speaker 4: you only have a one in one thousand chance of
Speaker 4: dying from the flu, right, so clearly nobody ever dies
Speaker 4: of the flu, Like that would be because that's even
Speaker 4: less likely than the twenty seven Like that doesn't make
Speaker 4: any sense. You know, if something's twenty seven percent likely,
Speaker 4: it's it's gonna happen about two times out of seven, right,
Speaker 4: Like that's that's that happens. Things that happened to out
Speaker 4: of seven. Like like somebody who hits like two eighty
Speaker 4: six in baseball, Like they they get hits, they don't
Speaker 4: bet zero, they're not like a pitcher hitting right two
Speaker 4: eighty six is actually pretty respectable these days.
Speaker 3: But what that means is that like you're getting a
Speaker 3: hit twenty nine percent of the time. Round up, sure,
Speaker 3: and sometimes that person will get a hit. It will
Speaker 3: go three for five in a.
Speaker 4: Game, Right, that will happen?
Speaker 3: You actually think of the statistics that shouldn't make sense,
Speaker 3: but actually it does totally make sense. Right A because
Speaker 3: it is entirely satisically possible. B Because and I think
Speaker 3: this is very true about polling as well, but other
Speaker 3: things like that doesn't mean twenty nine percent. It means that,
Speaker 3: like it's going to be that. You know, if that's
Speaker 3: like one out of four one out of like fourteen,
Speaker 3: I don't know what how the numbers would be that
Speaker 3: it's going to be like thirteen. It's because there'll be
Speaker 3: a bad hitter and they'll get a couple of hits
Speaker 3: and then they'll have a couple of oh for five
Speaker 3: days and like et cetera.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I didn't know when you wanted to do the
Speaker 4: break or whatever. Oh I can, I can ramble, I've known,
Speaker 4: give us.
Speaker 3: Give us like the the bullet points, and then we'll
Speaker 3: talk about the more than the inverseection.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So I mean the main thing is just that,
Speaker 4: like something that's unlikely isn't something that won't happen, Like
Speaker 4: you have to understand that something can be fairly unlikely.
Speaker 4: Like I'll just give you a hand of poker. To illustrate,
Speaker 4: this has happened to me four times, I think in
Speaker 4: my career, now a hand similar to this. I have
Speaker 4: pocket aces. This is the best hand you can have
Speaker 4: in Texas. Hold them, I raise, they re raise, I reraise.
Speaker 4: The board comes out ace nine to four. I have
Speaker 4: three aces. That's the best hand you can have on
Speaker 4: this Bet on this board, I bet they call the
Speaker 4: next cards a jack, They check, I bet, they raise,
Speaker 4: I raise, they raise. The river's another jack. So I
Speaker 4: have aces full of jacks. The only hand I can
Speaker 4: lose to his pocket jacks. And of course my opponent
Speaker 4: has pocket jacks. And the chances of them catching two
Speaker 4: jacks on the you know, one on the turn, one
Speaker 4: on the river, is roughly one in a thousand. It's
Speaker 4: one out of nine hundred and ninety. And I've had
Speaker 4: this happen four times, this one in one thousand chants.
Speaker 4: Do I think I'm cursed because some one in a
Speaker 4: thousand things has happened to me four times? That would
Speaker 4: be like dying of the flu four times. No, I don't,
Speaker 4: because I've played millions of hands of poker, and it's
Speaker 4: not like that should happen. One out of every thousand hands, No,
Speaker 4: it should only happen one out of every thousand times
Speaker 4: that a scenario like that that extreme occurs, which isn't
Speaker 4: that often. But you know, when when you have a
Speaker 4: lot of instances and things like presidential elections, you don't
Speaker 4: you have won every four years, right, so whatever the
Speaker 4: actual outcome is, you're only getting one. It's like you
Speaker 4: don't have a big bankroll of like presidential slots, right,
Speaker 4: Like your role is one per four years. There's a
Speaker 4: small budget, so you know, it's just it's like people
Speaker 4: even a forecast that said ninety nine percent something was
Speaker 4: going to happen, Well, that one percent means we're not
Speaker 4: saying that can't happen. We're saying, you know it could, right,
Speaker 4: it could happen. It's pretty unlikely, but it could.
Speaker 3: And if you know, four days in a row, say
Speaker 3: something is ninety nine percent likely to happen, and it
Speaker 3: doesn't happen at any of those times, Okay, maybe you
Speaker 3: start to ask about, you know, is that person very
Speaker 3: good at their job be forecasting? But even then four
Speaker 3: is not actually a very high sample size. So we're
Speaker 3: gonna get into a lot more of that in the
Speaker 3: bonus section for now though, Paul, for people who want
Speaker 3: to find actually you wanting to do a where to
Speaker 3: find you or yeah, that's fine, let's actually do that
Speaker 3: because you have written books abou poker and stuff like yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: So we're gonna get into all that more in our
Speaker 3: member section again. Become a member only five dollars a month,
Speaker 3: very easy. All the informations on our website. Also there
Speaker 3: is all the ways to contact us, so please do that.
Speaker 3: But Paul, you have actually written a number of books
Speaker 3: about poker. If you want to find those, please let
Speaker 3: us know.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So what I've listed as I'm Zen Madman on
Speaker 4: all the like social media stuff, and I have Zen
Speaker 4: Madman Poker YouTube channel. But my books, my first book
Speaker 4: was The Poker Warrior. It has some dated language in
Speaker 4: it and some dated poker advice was from twenty ten.
Speaker 4: That was my first book. It's available on Lean pub
Speaker 4: And then I wrote a couple with Dusty Schmidt, who
Speaker 4: I had a bit of a falling out with after
Speaker 4: we had some political disagreements you could say. But we
Speaker 4: wrote Don't Listen to Film Helmeth and another book that
Speaker 4: was called Critical Concepts. But I think got retitled like
Speaker 4: how to Crush No Limit Hold Them or something ridiculous
Speaker 4: like that, both available from Cardos of Publishing, I believe.
Speaker 4: And then I've got some if you just search for
Speaker 4: Paul Christopher Hoppy on you know your least favorite bookseller online.
Speaker 4: They you know, I've got some like low content poker
Speaker 4: books as well, and some fiction and whatever. But that's
Speaker 4: the poker content I'm available at the moment.
Speaker 3: And what I'm gonna do is, if you want to
Speaker 3: find better ways to help support this podcast, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: any of those that we can, I'm gonna well, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna put links to all of those on our show notes,
Speaker 3: and those that you can buy through booksellers and things
Speaker 3: like that, we'll put an affiliate link. The information will
Speaker 3: be in the show notes. You may have to use
Speaker 3: a specific affiliate code, but that way, you know, Paul
Speaker 3: will get full money, but we'll get a little bit
Speaker 3: back to help support the podcast. I'm also gonna do
Speaker 3: that with the movie Rounders. If you haven't watched that,
Speaker 3: you probably can find I think I'm certain you can
Speaker 3: rent it through Amazon. We have an affiliate link with them,
Speaker 3: so I'll get you a way to do that. Even
Speaker 3: if you don't care about poker. It is a phenomenal,
Speaker 3: phenomenal movie.
Speaker 4: But it is just you know, from a platter standpoint,
Speaker 4: it's almost the only good poker movie. Yeah, exactly, That's
Speaker 4: how I would say it, which is.
Speaker 3: I'm sure we're going to return to this topic, especially
Speaker 3: gased on feedback, and that'll be a bonus content for
Speaker 3: some other episode. But today I think we're gonn talk
Speaker 3: a little bit more about probability. Cool, So I'm having
Speaker 3: myself and Paul, thank you so much. Please give us
Speaker 3: our feedback. Chick chick, chick.
Speaker 4: Keeps check all nights check chick check.
Speaker 3: That's it. Actually, wait, I'm gonna take it one more time.
Speaker 4: Am I supposed to?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 4: No, you can respond, but you would know that's not why.
Speaker 4: Here's yuney.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's talking about missabuff and Paul. Thank you all
Speaker 3: so much. Does this look like a man beaten by jacks?
Speaker 3: We've spoken