Speaker 1: Usually when you watch the sport, you never think that
you could play with like an elite athlete and let
alone be at that level, and poker offers you that chance.
Speaker 2: Hey, this is remco. Thanks for clicking on a video.
This is my brand new podcast called Face the Ace,
in which I talked to the most interesting people in
poker and go a little deeper into the topics you
most care about.
Speaker 1: Enjoy.
Speaker 2: Welcome to a new episode of Face Das. My name
is Rem Krienkama, joined today by Philip Sternheimer, one of
my favorites to root for a very compelling story, will
dive very deep into it. I don't think you need
an introduction anymore, but I'll just give the brief rundown
for those who've been living under red rock. We got
a bracelet winner in our midst someone with a long
career in private equity, a father, two daughters, and a dog.
Many got to mention the dog and a drive that,
in my opinion, is hard to find for someone with
that level of success in the business world that I
don't also try to translate that into the poker table.
So first off, welcome to the show. Second off, how's
the summer been so far.
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, thank you excited to be here?
Am I the as are you the ace?
Speaker 2: At the end of the show, we'll decide, well, we'll
do the big reveal.
Speaker 1: Summer is going below expectations, I would say, but you know,
still have a bunch of events left, and you know,
I'm I'm at peace if it's not the summer that
I hoped it would be. And I have a lot
of events left where I can compete, so every event
can be the next big one.
Speaker 2: So I know that the emotions that you felt when
you won your bracelet, that is something that winning a second, third,
or fourth might never match again. But is that still
the drive to win more bracelets or are you just
here to make money, have fun, test yourself, Like, what's
the motivation?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say the main motivation is to play
as consistently as possible at my best level, and you know,
hope that that translates into good outcomes, deep runs, final tables,
ultimately bracelets. I did actually really had to think at
the beginning of the summer. You know, I just come
from competing a triton. I came second there. I realized, oh,
I kind of really want to win a tritent title,
and I'm like, do I want this as badly as
I did last year? And the answer is yes. And
you know, it's always a tricky balance between how much
do you want to attach yourself to outcomes or just
things that you can control and sort of I try
to focus more on the latter, but you know, you
want to have the outcomes ultimately correlate with that. But
you got to give it some time.
Speaker 2: With the long career in business that you've had and
poker coming in while you were already having success in
that world, what was it about poker that made you
motivate it to also reach the top?
Speaker 1: I mean the answer is, given the amount of sort
of effort and time that I devoted to it, it's
not just one thing. I Mean, what I like about
poker is that it touches on so many things that
I that I enjoy. You know, it's constant problems and
puzzles that you need to sort of solve. It's social
and that you have this kind of frontal competition against
people that are sitting at you table, some of whom
you might be very good friends with, some of them
you kind of like. Some of them have met before.
I also think that you know, in business, it's a
fairly homogeneous group of people. Sort of a lot of
them have gone through similar you know, university experience, work experiences.
They're all sort of you know, certain types of people,
I would say, which is amazing. But I think in
poker you have the chance to get exposed to more
heterogeneous kind of group of people. It can be you know,
age from really young to really old, it can be
from you very very different socio economic backgrounds. It's very international,
and so that I kind of enjoy as well. And
then maybe most importantly kind of I think what a
lot of people just appreciate. You know, I'm in my
late forties now, I played sports when I was young.
You know, that train is sort of left station. If
I could go back in life, I maybe would try
to see if I had a shot to become a
professional athlete. But it allows me to compete at something
at an elite level. And it's ultimately probably as much
as you're competing against other people, you're really competing against yourself,
and it's the battle against yourself and your own weaknesses
and fallacies and how to learn to overcome those. And
I just think it's very gratifying.
Speaker 2: When you make decisions in the private equity world where
you've worked your way up to become a partner, you've
since decided that you know, you had to step away
from that. We can get into that also, But when
you're in that highly competitive world making decisions that you
know can have an effect on revenue and we're talking
probably six seven eight figures when things go well or
when things go bad in either direction, how does that
compare to this decision making in poker where there's still
a part of it that is unknown. When you invest
as a private equity firm in a new company, yes,
you might believe that this is the right decision, but
the fact that the outcome is still unknown has some
similarities with poker. So how do you how do you
how do you look at that parallel and how how
are there perhaps still big differences?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I would say that there are a lot
of similarities between investing in poker, and there are some
pretty big differences. I would say the similarities are that
you do sort of have a deluge of information and
you kind of got to decide what is relevant, and
there is also a lot of incomplete information. So you
never really know for sure what the decision that you made.
I mean, there's some trivial decisions that are obvious, which
is you'll have a poker as well, But most of
the important decisions are actually quite difficult and against the
backdrop of uncertainty and incomplete information, and you sort of
triangulate to make the best decision, knowing that decisions and
outcomes also aren't always the same. You can make a
good decision has a bad outcome, and vice and versa,
and so you need to have the humility to recognize that.
So sometimes like we might have passed on a deal
which we thought for the right decisions at the time,
and it turns out to be you know, a home
run doesn't necessarily mean we made right the wrong decision,
and vice and versa. Sometimes you might have bought a
business and it turns out to being good investment. But
maybe actually we made the right decision. We just got
lucky in some ways. But it's always sort of against
the scenario or a range of outcomes that you're aware of,
and you do a lot of work to understand, you know,
how how might does look like and how why does
the range of outcomes and whatnot. And that's kind of
similar to just thinking about you up against the range
of hands and pokers, So that's actually quite similar. I
think what's different is, you know, poker is a very
solitary sport. In the end, it's you alone who's making
the decision private equity. As a team sport, you have small,
small teams that make decisions. Before you make an investment decision,
you just us it with a lot of other partners,
and so you know, there is less attribution to you know,
what exactly you thought or did at the time because
it's made as a small team. But I would say
the biggest difference is that you know, in poker, over
and over again, you make decisions of consequence, you know,
for chips money that are irreversible, and you do that
over and over again, sometimes at lower stakes, but higher stakes.
So you're sort of presented with this constant decision making
that you really can can take back. And that creates
a certain set of requirements that you really got to
be sharpened the moment, which is like a lot of
the way a lot of professional sports works. You know,
when Akara shows up on a tennis court, you know
he's got to hit that ball. The point he's lost
is lost forever. He's got to be you're going to
be able to perform in that window when he's able
to showing up on a court until the game is over.
And private equity, when you make very very significant kind
of let's say, investment decisions or even do you hire
someone or not, or do you raise your prices iterative like,
you usually do a lot of analysis and teams and
then there's questions that come up and you go back
and forth and they do some more analysis, and before
you make the decisions, you might have had seven eight
meetings over a couple of days, weeks or even months.
And even when you make the decisions, sometimes you could
technically go back and say, oh, I changed my mind,
you know, and I reverse it. So that is just
a very different kind of backdrop in terms of how
you end up making decisions, which I think is actually
a really fundamental difference in terms of their stings. Therefore
that I needed to get good at when it comes
to poker that were sort of quasi irrelevant in the
business world.
Speaker 2: Way you paint this picture and how you see the
parallels and how you see the differences, was that something
you noticed right away the first time you tried poker,
was that something that drew you to the game.
Speaker 1: I think what drew me to the game was, you know,
some combination of just I really just like problem solving,
and you know, I had a new competitive outlet. I
also you know, for me, it was I watched rounders.
Like we all have sort of our own you know,
framework or value system of things that we attribute value to.
So for me, it was like, this was this world
that I just thought was everyone has played poker as
a child that I just thought was fascinating. That's what
got me. For other people might have been online poker
or moneymaker. And then it's so funny in poker where
you know, I now play with my sort of in
a way set of childhood heroes, and it's it's almost
you know, I was just playing two days ago with Ivy.
You know, you're friendly with them, you compete with them,
some of them you realize you're better than them, and
it's kind of crazy. Like usually when you watch the sport,
you never think that you could play with like an
elite athlete and let alone be at that level, And
poker offers you that that chance and some of it
is the just the intrinsics of the game that some
of it is just that age kind of is a
little bit irrelevant. And now you have tools where you
can get better very very quickly if you devote yourself
to it. And so it's that combination of factors that
over time you sort of realize, hey, wait a minute, like, actually,
if I really care about being really good at this day,
there actually is a path. And it's not that you
wish you'd done this when you were seven year old.
Speaker 2: But then what I find fun from your sort of
career arc, if I can put it that way in poker,
is that you took sort of a route that forced
you to really work on your game even more because
you were trying to be competitive at high stakes, no
limit hold them. And then especially in the tournament scene,
you know lots of cases on the EPT and you
play some of the higher stakes there. And I think
it's safe to say that you wanted to jump into
the type of game that probably had the most competition.
Was that an active thought? Was that just where you
saw the action, was that something that you were specifically
drawn to?
Speaker 1: Yeah, no observation, I have a very sort of elitist
kind of mindset or expectation of myself when when I
when I try to do something, I aspire to be
the best. And the path that I chose, which everyone
goes about a different way, is that like, if you
want to be the best, you compete at the highest
level that is accessible to you that doesn't sort of
create financial ruin. Where so, like I played in games
where I was probably a dog, and my goal was
to say can I actually beat that game or sort
of be break even and through that process actually learning,
learn and get better. You know, I had the financial
flexibility that I could play a game if I was wrong,
it wouldn't be sort of you know, financial ruin for me.
But I put myself over and over situations where you know,
I was probably dog and I had to sort of
somehow find a way to survive, and through that, you know,
I got you know better. That was kind of my
my my pro which has sort of worked out for me.
But you know, as I said, everyone goes about it
in a different way.
Speaker 2: So then when I look at that early tournament resume,
which is the best record we have in poker, because
you know, we don't have a cash game handed mob,
so we can you know, pivot into that at some
point as well. But if I just pick out random results,
you know, it's guys like Ola Chmion, most of Neat
that you were battling with in sort of the earliest
Thomas Mulocker, guys that were all sort of crushers at
that stake. Was there a person or were there people
that you were influenced by or that helped you along
that journey to improve yourself, or maybe there was a
specific instance where you realized, if I keep going to
do this, I need to make X, Y and Z
changes because these guys do things that I am not
fully grasping yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah. What's always been an edge of mine in any
kind of you know sense, has been that like when
I sit at the table, I think I am about
as dollon as anyone at the table. I'm mentally prepared
when I when I sit down, and like the I
think that the discipline and the focus that you learn
kind of in private equity when you have to work
like several hundred hours a week you deal with really
really the problems at at very very high stakes with
difficult personalities. Like that's a toolkit that you can activate
in poker, and that's been that's been a huge source
of value for me that many other people, I would say,
fail to appreciate. I would say, So, the other asset
you have is I think for a long time in
my career, maybe even still today, I'm underestimated. And I
think that's a gift in poker. Whenever you're underestimated, it's
it's always an advantage if you if you know how
to sort of use it. So that's always been been
there for me. There was a second part. Part was
when I started playing poker at higher stakes, when I
started working with Elliott Rowe, where I had sort of
a couple of aha moments in terms of this whole
difference between business and poker, in terms of this sort
of like athletes based performance on demand mindset, sort of
what do I need to do to be at my
best when I show up? And that includes you know, sleep, exercise, nutrition,
you know, working your mindset and meditation that when I
when I show up, I'm even better, able, better able
to perform when those big decisions come up. And I
would say, and then the third was learning how to
actually get better through studying. And I would say there's
a common variety of people that you know, I talked
to that I try to copy from. But if I
name one, like, I know how some of the elite
guys are sort of studying, and I actually think that
very few have the level of I would say, sort
of discipline and consistency that I demand of myself. And
so that's been an AHA moment when I realized that
I'm probably studying as much as anyone, you know, and
how I study is as an intense form of study
that allows me to get better. And that's sort of
been maybe sort of the third dimension that I didn't
really have a chance to sort of use before I
really had had sort of the time, meaning before I
sort of quit my job.
Speaker 2: Poker is the zero sum game, and it can be
very predatory, you know, in the current climate. When you
look at cash games, for example, it's all about who
gets the invite who doesn't get the invite, and games
are private or semi private. But the tournaments is just
you know, show up, buy in, and you can just play.
So in a way, it's like the equalizer. Everybody can
show up, everybody can play at the same time. When
you play tournaments at a high stake. There needs to
be more personal awareness if you care about performance, as
to how do I evaluate my play, how do I
evaluate my opponent? And given the small sample size that
you deal with, how am I able to discern that
the path that I'm on or things that I'm doing
are actually progressing me to where I want to be?
How did you approach that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, look, you don't really know. I mean, I would
say you can even with a bigger sample set. There's
still ambiguity in terms of how much people are really winning,
how good there really are. And I think that's the
beauty of the game and that there's so much ambiguity
that you'll never really know. I mean, we can all
sort of there's a list of people depending on the
type of competition that you mentioned, mixed games and no
limit PLO, and it will come up, you know, and
you would think that because they come up over and
over again, it's more likely that they're winning. But there's
a lot of ambiguity. There's a lot of ambiguity as
to you know, if I'm playing a Triton, am I
actually winning or not? Like, look, I don't even know
if it matters, Like if I show up at a
tournament that I play. Let's say I'm playing a hunter KPLO.
Whether I'm slightly ev positive slightly ev negative depends, first
of all, is unknown. Second, it depends on factors that
are beyond my control. You know, do a couple of
bad players or really good players show up or not
so obviously and so, but I kind of think it's
besides the point. What matters to me is that, like,
I know what it takes to become elite at any
kind of form of poker, and I will focus on
the things that I can control to keep kind of
going up that hill and get like a little bit
better every time. Like when I study, like I feel
at the end of the day I've learned something I
didn't know before, or I have a conversation with an
elite player about mindset or you know, you name it,
like any ingredient to success that I feel I can
get a little bit better at. That's what matters to me,
and the rest will be, you know, sort of decided
over over time, and I don't spend too much time
worrying about it. I'm probably I think a lot of
players that I know are maybe ever so slightly delusional
or naive about the true level of skill. And I
think that's okay because it gives you that level of
confidence that you need to execute when it matters. And
are you really delusional if you think you're delusional? I
don't actually know, but like I do think that's that's
not an atypical kind of ingredient when you're competing, that
you think I can actually really win this and I'm
one of the best players.
Speaker 2: Does it matter to you how the people that you
see as elite view you as a player.
Speaker 1: I would say definitely yes, but I'm not sure if
the answer it goes to both ways. Of course, you
enjoyed the respect of your peers. I have a player
who I put in my top two top three who
wanted to draft me for the fantasy draft, and he said,
you know, this guy is much better in most thing
and he tries really hard. I think he's really good,
he's improve the blah blah blah. Of course that means
something to me, right as it would in any kind
of sport and endeavor. But then I'm also aware that
there's other people that underestimate me, and I I know
that benefits me a lot, and I can think of
very specific hands where I think I know what they
think about my game, and you know, I can use
that to my advantage. So it sort of goes both
both ways. I think you like the respect of your peers,
but you know a lot of people are just going
to always classify me as sort of the rich businessman
who tries hard, and that's that's that's a good thing.
Speaker 2: So then the rich businessman who tries hard was that
tough to sell at home and to friends and family
outside at poker, Because the pivot from what people see
as perhaps one of the more esteemed careers working for
a major firm to then be you know, for lack
of a better term, slumming it out at the rio
is kind of a big pivot, like how is that
being received?
Speaker 1: You know, it goes in phases. I think I didn't
quit my job to play poker. Sure, I quit my
job primarily to spend more time with my family. You know,
I was working maybe on average eighty hours a week.
Most importantly, I was traveling three four days a week.
So at some point I felt like I just wasn't
around when life happened for my family, and I didn't
think there was a way to perform the job at
the level that I that I think it deserved and
required if I had traveled less. And so I use
a somewhat morbid sort of regret minimization kind of framework,
kind of once or twice a year when I think
about if I died tomorrow and I was in my deathbed,
like would I have regrets? And it just became like
overwhelming and clear for me at some point that like
what am I doing? Like I'm missing how my how
my daughters are growing up. And it was reinforced that
you know, my older daughter, when she was you know, young,
like one, two three, I was traveling a ton. Then
we had COVID, Suddenly I was at home a lot.
And then we had a second daughter, and then I
started traveling again after COVID, and it felt like deja vu.
It's like I'm doing the same thing over again. So
I'm like stop. And then the second reason was that,
you know, I've been doing that for eighteen years. I'm
in my mid forties. Is this really all lying on
my deathbed? Like all I've done with my sort of
professional career, is this one thing which has arguably been
a fantastic career in so many ways, but I also
have many other interests and interests, and so that was
kind of what made me decide, Okay, I'm going to
jump off that like train, you know, which took me
sort of like ten years to decide at the point,
sometimes but definitely a while. I definitely had a lot
of I think for more than ten years, I had
thoughts about should I be quitting now or later? And
I'm super happy with the timing that I chose for
variety of reasons, but I'd been thinking about it for
a long time. Then I didn't pick up the phone,
I would say, for anything, for about, you know, almost
two years. So that was my sort of time to decompress.
I did play a lot of poker, but I would
say like I didn't really I studied a little bit,
I took it very seriously, but I would say I
sort of play poker as a way to decompress, finally
have the freedom to come here to play. And then
I sort of said to myself, look, I probably should
be I'm not sure. I'm still not sure if I
can play poker, you know, in any series form and
have the mental space and time to do something else.
So I sort of said, Okay, it's gonna be my
last World Series last year. We all know how to
work out, but I'm going to actually now start start
treating this like a job and study kind of like
five days a week across all the games, and you know,
sort of feel like, Okay, I'm going out treating this
like very seriously. And then to my surprise, I would say,
you know, the results have obviously been great in terms
of winning a bracelet and winning a lot of money
and doing well and very very competitive. It feels like
when you when the thing was when you when you
play you know, when when you when you play a
Triton or a super high Roll or No Limit or
PLO event, you're playing against people that only play no
Limit or PLO or maybe two. And so I try
to do that and then also compete like in all
the mixed games. So you know, I'm aware that what
I'm it's it's like it's a pretty crazy challenge. But
one was the results were good. The second was I
actually just really enjoy the grind. I just really enjoy
studying and learning, which most I think a lot of
people that's sort of a necessary evil, And I actually
really enjoy it.
Speaker 2: But then to interrupt you here the slow moving away
from the business life to being quote unquote a poker
player in your business world and also maybe among friends
and family outside of poker, that might seem absolutely insane.
How how was that conversation or how was that perceived
that you were I guess slowly pivoting, yeah, to operating
in this world and universe that is so far removed
from where you were.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the reaction wasn't I would say for them,
of course, the like if you take my mom, she's like,
you're gambling, You're going to dine a ditch. She has
this image that I'm going to die in a ditch
at the fucking rio. Excuse my French. You know, I'm like,
literally she can picture me, like lying next to got
her way to water is slowly dripping over my face,
and I'm just broke and begging. You know, they're living
in the tunnels exactly. And now she's like sends me
an article of you know, the German tabloid that her
friends have sent her that like, her son just won
two and a half million of tritent, and she watches
on YouTube and she's excited, and so that changes it
for her, you know, I would say for the family,
it's been and you know, my wife is less outcome
oriented than my mom, but but more so than me.
So she understands that there's a lot of luck in
the game. But she'll be like, you know, why are
you going there if you're not winning money? But she understood. Look,
she the family now sees more of a They see
the causality between daddy sitting and studying and working hard
and trying really hard, and you know, and he has
such a success so which I think is also really
important to me that you know, when when my daughters
are saying, you're going a holiday, I'm like, no, I'm
actually going to work. Like you see when I'm sitting
in front of my computer all the time and doing
this and this, like this is work for daddy, and
so that's important. So it's become a lot more acceptable,
I would say within the family. The business world, I'm
not sure, you know, I think a lot of them are.
It's definitely seen as an amazing level of accomplishment that
you have success in two unrelated fields. I think there's
also a lot of them that secretly are wishing that
they could quit or would have quit, and they don't
doing it because the money is so good, and maybe
there are some of them that are doing that are
thinking what the fuck is he doing? Because I think
the practical challenge is that you know, I've taken I've
turned down all opportunities that were presented to me. I
was very very close to take one about like at
the end of last year, which I ended up turning
down to be essentially like number two guy in a
very big company with the path that becomes COO. And
I think there is a risk that you atrophy both
in substance and in perception that like okay, Phil used
to be really experienced and really smart and whatnot, but
he hasn't been around for the last six years and
like Kenny actually come back right. So that that's just
the risk that I need to keep in mind as
I decide kind of what I might want to do next.
Speaker 2: And then so then in the field of private equity,
to me, as an outsider, it doesn't get much more
competitive than that. You know, people that go to fancy
business schools aspire to be in that environment. Why was
it that you were able to reach that level and
why were you approached even years later. You know, the
thing you mentioned about at the end of last year,
to be number two at a big firm, can you
actually sort of quantify it into maybe a few small
specifics or some details to give some color to the
fact that you know you were the guy or you
or you are seen as someone who can still be
the guy. Because clearly there's thousands of smart people out
there that would love to have those opportunities to try
and prove themselves. So what are some detail details or
intricacies that set you apart.
Speaker 1: I think you probably want to get someone else in
a podcast answer that private equity is kind of a
very multi faceted kind of role that you have and
that you know, it's it's very in terms of the skills,
it's it's very analytical, especially as you're younger and you
build complex financial models and you know you need to
sort of find a way to translate kind of business
insights into sort of financial outputs. That sort of the
first kind of job that you have, you know, as
you I would say, get older and become you know,
a partner. I think that at the heart is you
need to have investment judgment, which is you know, being
able to distill a investment decision into the three or
four things that really really matter that will decide whether
or not this will be a good investment or not.
And then on those you need to ask the right
questions and you need to be able to make the
right judgment again in a face of a lot of
ambiguity and and and on certainty. I'm not sure how
much of that can be taught versus how much of
that is there's probably it's probably fifty to fifty in
terms of like how much of that you can learn
versus like do you have it or not? Do you
just have that kind of judgment? I would say, you're.
Speaker 2: Not running solvers on on business decisions.
Speaker 1: Well, it's similar in that, like you know, like there's
always a financial model in the background that translates kind
of a question into into an outcome, like this is,
you know what the profitability of the businesses this year.
This is the return on the investment given certain given
it's all always given certain assumptions, right, So in some
ways it's similar to solvers, and that we never really
get to trend some of the outputs, and solvers we
can do ourselves. Some of them we might be aware of.
But I think poker players are quite lazy relative to
you know, people in business, because we sort of have
this kind of model that spits out the answer. Like
in business we always joke like every model shows a
twenty percent return because that's sort of the threshold return.
And it's sort of like it's a joke because I
can show you a twenty with certain assumptions, and right,
it's not about actually what the model says. It's about
being aware of the knobs that matter and what happens
when you turn them. And so that's really the way
I think you got to approach it. And that's also
the way the elite players kind of study. They look
at a certain situation, not like I played this hand
and did I make the right decision or not? Is
that what happens if you change certain assumptions. The second
thing is that in private equity, what happens is you
become the control share all the typically of a company,
but you don't run a company, which means one of
the biggest drivers of success is finding the right people
to run the business. Like you would say the best people,
but the best people is actually the right people, because
there is no such thing as one executive who's going
to be successful in every business. It's in my mind
horses for courses. So another big factor is for of course,
finding the right people, which takes a lot of judgment.
It's like you can't just like they can't just say,
oh we hire like Tim Cook or you know it's
it's usually and I'm sure actually put Tim Cook in
some situation or take Elon Musk in a situation where whatever,
he doesn't have control over everything, and he'll probably be
a fucking disaster. So it's all about making that judgment.
And then it's about finding a way to influence people right,
finding ways to get them to maybe direct them in
a certain way, but why they still feel empowered that
they're they're running to show and so it's a lot
of soft skills that matter that it might also be influencing,
like do you want to sell your business to me?
So there's a certain amount of salesmanship. So those are
sort of the two qualities that it takes to be
successful once you're more senior. But then just and the
abstract you know, poker, Private equity similar to poker, is
a game where you have to have extremely frustration tolerance,
and be extremely disciplined. Like you look at literally twenty
or thirty investments, some of them for several months, and
you might do one of them, and that one needs
to be like in your life as an investor, you
might make like just like I think I worked on
I did eight or nine deals over a career of
twenty years. And so those there's eras of omission to
the ones you don't do, which no one ever talks about.
But the eras of co mission like those, you got
to get down to a very low number or zero.
Like we had this thing in our job, which is
just be right. You make a decision, you fire your bullet,
want to be whatever, five or ten bullets, you better
be right in order to get there. You know you're
going to kiss a lot of frogs, and so that
there's a lot of you know, intrinsic qualities that like that,
that frustration tolerance that you need to have in order
to be successful at the job.
Speaker 2: Take me to the single biggest decision you made in business,
and please, you know, be as detailed as you want
to be. But I'm curious if you say you only
fired so few bullets over such a big career. The
decision making point where you know the bullet was fired
into something that became huge and successful. Do you recall
that moment and the specifics of it and what did
that turn into.
Speaker 1: The two investments that I spent the most time on
and that were felt very difficult at the time seven
and twelve year journeys for me, so and it turned
out to be very successful, like more than ten times money.
The most difficult decision was do we make the investment
or not? And you have to think about in private
equity like you spend you spent months diligencing in business,
and then you're at the end, you're in a competitive
auction and it's literally who pays the highest price at
the end, plus who who's over management more maybe, but
at the end, it's really about who pays the highest price.
And so it feels a lot like dog catches car.
You know what that means.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's like.
Speaker 1: The dog runs after the car that they never and
suddenly the dog catches the car. What happens now, like,
are we mock that paid the most for the business
or did we see something that the others did not?
And then once you own a business, do you find
a way to do something with the business, so that
when we made the investment decision, it felt very uncomfortable.
It was, you know, lots of adversity. European debt crist
at the time sort of a sector that we weren't
in love with, but we sort of just saw a
lot of things that we liked about the fundamentals of
the of the industry and what this business could do.
And yeah, that was a that always feels like I
could effectively sort of putting your career on the line.
But that felt very unnerving. And then there were a
lot of menagerial decisions, like who do we make the CEO?
Or there were two founders and they were they didn't
like each other, but they felt essential to the business.
And then we ended up firing one and keeping the other,
which was a big one. And then who do we
make CEO was a big decision. Then we were we
did it with a with another firm together and we
had made three times of money four years in which
was great. We were f to fifty. They wanted to
sell and then we just said, why don't we buy
them out and keep going? Like that felt really unnerving.
That wasn't my idea and I was against it at
the time, but then I came around, but that was
my that was a partner of mine. Then the business
actually really took off afterwards, So that was a huge
kind of decision. So those are sort of the types
of decisions that you know that you sort of make
along the way, and then you make a lot of
sort of business decisions like should we take down prices,
what do we do to get down churn? Should we
launch this new product, should we make this acquisitions, should
we open this new country? You know, like all of
these type of type of things that that sort of come.
Speaker 2: Up where we sort of left off the book conversation
is you progressing through the ranks, finding a sort of
new motivation and a competitive drive in a field where
you hadn't proven yourself yet or hadn't hadn't had a
level of success that you had seen in business, and
then to pivot again within that niche. Going from hold
Them to mixed games to me almost feels like is
he just constantly looking for a new challenge because he
gets bored? Because mixed games is the niche within the
niche where if you I mean I think it. Take
me for example, I love mixed games. I play all
the games. I play them to a degree that i'm
sort of you know, I'm okay at all the mixedgams.
You and I could have a good conversation about mixed
game strategy. However, if I were to have ambitions within
mixed games, my ceiling probably lies at like a ten
twenty twenty forty game, and the next game that I
can play is eight hundred and sixteen hundred or two
K four K. There is no there's no ladder unless
you play Wilster's book tournaments. So for you to have
the capital to try and say, I'm confident enough to
try this out. However, if I want to get better
at this, and if I want to play, the price
tag is really really high. Why did you feel the
need to venture into Bobby's room, table one, whatever wherever
those games were. Because in the hold them realm there
is much more game selection possible. And if you sit
down in these mixed games, you see all the guys
that you mentioned earlier that you probably were a fan
of back in the day. Yeah, and that's the only
way to compete.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a couple of reasons. I mean, how I
ended up playing mixed games, some of them are just idiosyncratic.
I literally I played a no limit event. I busted.
I was devastated. I wanted to jump in the next tournament.
And the next tournament that was going was a ten game.
I came third and sort of got the bug. I
would say, you know, I didn't know two or three
of the games even at the time I had never
played played before, but just got lucky and you know,
got the bug. But then the other thing is that
just for my we sort of talked a little bit
about like we all have our little sort of value system,
things that matter to us and whatnot. And somehow maybe
it was through the lore about the Bobby's Room games
and you know, guys like Nick Ground and whatnot would
play like I felt to me like, if you want
to really be good at poker for me, as like
you got to play all the games. That that was
just something that I sort of always that was sort
of that was sort of my has been my value
system really since I started taking poker like more and
more more seriously. I then also came to believe that
because there was virtually no kind of solvers for most
of the games at the time, that you know, the
playing field for me would be not having the time
to study would be a bit flatter, and that some
of these other qualities that I mentioned therefore on a
relative basis, are more relevant here and allow me allow
me to compete. But since I would say, I also
realized that look one is that there's a lot more
on all games available now mixed games are still there's
the amount of resources that are available for mixed games
relative to Nolment and PLO is it's a fraction, And
I kind of realized that it's actually really awesome if
you have the time to just arguably no Liment and
PLO are some of the games that have the most
i would say strategic depth, and there's just a deluge
of information that's available that allows you to get better.
And they are also just more tournaments to be played. Right,
if you want to play mixed games, you effect in
tournaments you have two outlets. Effectively, there's the PGT Mixed
series and there's the World Series. You know for Nolan,
with PLO you have a lot more. And so that's
why sort of about sort of two years ago, I
said I really want to be able to compete in
all these great kind of noliment and plo events, and
you know, they're sort of a path for me to
get there given the amount of resources that are available.
I'd say the last thing I would say is that,
you know, poker has just really changed since I started
playing that it used to be that all the best
players were playing cash games like that, do you want
to find the best players in the world that used
to be in cash games? And you know, tournaments would
sort of little be sort of the tournament people were
sort of poo pooed on and they're sort of fish
nowadays with the advent of private games, effectively all the
best players have migrated to tournaments, and cash games have
become at the high stakes level really sort of private
and built around a couple of weakers players, and like,
those are probably not the guys that would win against
the best in the world anymore. But there's been always
one exception in mixed games, which is the Bobby's Room
game has always stayed the game which has been essentially
public and still had the best players. And so that
for me always felt like the beacon, the shining beacon
on the hill is that like, if you can be
competitive in that game, like that's that's available. It's there,
and you're always going to play against the best.
Speaker 2: Were you're not worried that the fact that there was
a seat for you meant that they were very happy
to see you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I mean it's changed ever since this year.
It's now sort of semi private, but up until this year,
it's always been public and the person the person gets
to see to whoever's there on time. It doesn't matter
who you are, and so, but yeah, they were probably
happy to see me. And as I said before, you know,
I think I started in a game being negative ev
you know, finding a way to actually I would say
win small, break even, but learning a lot, you know,
And you know nowadays I don't know. I don't know
if I'm positive v I hope so bit.
Speaker 2: You're still allowed to sit down, You're still allowed to
sit down.
Speaker 1: We're still allowed to sit down. Well, effectively the game
is still run that anyone's allowed to sit down, but
it's no longer there are certain people that in that
game where people just won't really want it to be
playing a game. So, for example, I think two or
three years ago, first we played at the beginning of
summer and the game starts at ten, okay, and then
we sort of say, do you want to play again tomorrow? Okay, tomorrow,
We'll play again at ten, but nine thirty the game
is full. Okay, yeah, yeah, And like this ended like
on like a week later. The game was full at
six forty five in the morning, which is kind of
it's like mutual. It's like self assured mutual destruction. And
you know, now you can sort of say, okay, you guys,
have a seat. The game starts at a normal time,
you know, like whatever. Someone had a big losing session
to get to play. Someone is in talent for only
a couple of days they get to play, you know.
So by making the game private, you're allowed, you're able
to make some adult decisions.
Speaker 2: Like so, is there is there literally a a Bobby's
Room group chat?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean that to me is really funny. Yeah, because
we're talking about a group chat with some of the
most interesting personalities in poker as well, some of the
most successful people and perhaps also some of the richest
people in poker, all trying to figure out how can
we play our game.
Speaker 1: There's some interesting characters in that group and in that chat,
and so it wasn't necessary. It's more transactional, okay, And
a lot of times actually you don't use it because
the people that end the game the night before agree
when to play again the next day, and it might
even be an incentive to not let everyone know, even
though when the game was public, everyone could sit down,
like if you had got a good game going and
like a game that's full and they all agree to
show again next morning, there's no incentive to message to the
group chats, so someone else suddenly jumps in. So it
wasn't necessarily a chat that. I think there were some
summers where it was used more than others, and there
have been various iterations where some people were dropped off
that were the first group chat, you know, had people
that never never really played anymore, and then you have
new chats and whatnot. So but yeah, there's there's there,
there's there have been some chats.
Speaker 2: Yes, if those chats were sort of public, it might
be like a good movie, your documentary in that realm.
And I think Bobby's Room is endlessly fascinating because of
the lore, because of the setting, because of the people
that are immediately associated with it. When you think back
of when you first sat down there, What stakes do
you guys play, what games were which, which people were
in the game, and what memories do you have of
those early days.
Speaker 1: Well, my first experience was not the official Bobby'soom game.
I was here for a day and I played Mixed,
and I think I messaged Scott, who I knew from
Burning Man, and I was, you know, I'm here, I
like to play mixed, happy to play high, and he
then messaged the Bobby's Room chat, does anyone want to play?
And I think we played like five hundred one thousand
or six hundred twelve hundred, So not the official Bobby'soom game.
I think it was like Angry John Hat my Cat,
maybe Keith Gibson and a couple of guys and ended
up ended up winning a lot after being down a lot,
and I'm like, okay, show up the next summer. There's
a game that Hanks ran six twelve hundred or eight
sixteen and ended up winning a lot there And suddenly
I had enough for one buying in a two four
K game. And in that game, where.
Speaker 2: Was it was? The buying for the two K four game?
Speaker 1: I mean the minimum at the time was I think
maybe even only like forty K, but I think I
kind of don't want to sit down with less than
two hundred, Like I think I bought in for one
hundred and then one hundred behind. And in the game
where Aaron Katz, Joizo, Doyle, Keith Gibson again at the
time my cat angry Gordo, guys like that Jason Mercier
old Jason Mercer at one point zero with overweight and
the long beauty frustration, and I just end up have
an amazing summer. I won like a twenty five K
mixed at Aria and I won a lot in that game,
And so that sort of got me. I mean, I
think I was like maybe ten times worse than now,
so I must have gotten very lucky.
Speaker 2: You're probably not winning now that you're better, works.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, But yeah, that sort of got That got
me started.
Speaker 2: The aura of someone like Ivy, And there's hardly anyone
like that, but that that Bobby's Room game has seen
probably the biggest auras that that poker has ever seen,
and probably like before your time, you know, someone like
Chip Reese. But then also you know, you still got
a chance to play with Doyle. You play with Ivy
and you saw ivy in various states. What can you
tell me, given your life experience and all the roads
you traveled to get to that game, what can you
tell me about what those guys possess, what they have
that makes them sort of successful at the highest level,
especially coming from an era where you couldn't just learn
as if you were going to University of poker. It
was basically life was the university of poker, and they
were the few that reached the top. What did you
see in them that made them so special?
Speaker 1: The composition of the Bobby's Room game has changed a lot,
even I think I've now maybe played for eight years.
Even over that reasonably short period, it's changed a lot.
And so I know a lot of players that are
no longer playing in Bobby's because they got torched. Maybe
not in the beginning, but you know, maybe stuff worked
out with them for them for a while until it didn't. Right.
So if you look at the people that actually have
had the staying power at that that's not a very
big group, right. I think one of the biggest factors
in that game is not necessarily poker talent. It is
actually mental fortitude and resilience and it's you know, you're
playing with a very small player pools actually finding ways
to sort of adjust to the various kind of playing
styles kind of successfully. And so that in my mind,
you know, drives longevity in that game. And I don't
think there's a lot of people that have it. You know, Ivy, Jason,
you know, also Patrick, those are some of the guys
that have really stuck around. You know, Dahl is interesting
in that I'm not sure if he was winning by
a time sort of in his final years in the game,
or let's let's say had positive ev but it was
really was inspirational. Is that, you know, as a as
a life lesson in a way, is that the guy
was arguably sharp until the very last day that he played.
And I just think it's so interesting. I was just
chatting with a fantasy draft team member of mine who says,
you know, his fifties, doesn't know how many years you
have left, Like you might have forty years left if
you if you keep on challenge yourself mentally every day,
I think, you know, I look like Buffett, I look
at Doyle, and to me, it's a very inspirational example
that you can compete mentally at the highest level if
you just don't stop. You know. The other thing Daryl
had is that he had that he had that dog,
I would say, and that he really wanted to win
and he would get really grumpy and a very in
a very humane and funny way when he would be losing.
And so that I really miss and I think some
of that, some of that kind of atmosphere has gotten
lost a little bit because you had these big personalities
like him that would just want to win really badly.
They will get really grumpy when they lose. Same with
Gus was great. You know, he also doesn't play the
game much anymore, and so that's some of that jovial, gambly,
kind of folksy nature of the game. Like make Meno's
no mistakes. There are huge sums changing hand, like that's
a little bit gone, someone's coming back. Because you have
guys like you know, Alberts and Wass and you know,
there are sort of also great personalities. But that was
quite special playing with Doyle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just to stay on Doyle for just one more
question here. He passed in twenty twenty three, so you
had a few years where you probably played with him
quite frequently. They have memories or examples of like you know,
some like a Doyle moment from those final years that
sort of stand out in your memory.
Speaker 1: He really wanted to play tournaments. But what you did
notice with Doyle is that even like just in a
cash game, he would get tired, and he was aware
of that, and of course that makes playing tournaments very,
very difficult for him, and that's why he played so
much cash because he could. He could start and end
whenever he wanted to. I think that the best moments
that I can remember would be when someone would get unlucky,
you know, on him, lucky on him like in draw
or in raz or. He would kind of mutter, sort
of under his breath, like motherfucker, or you're gonna be
a big star, and he would make these just various
sarcastic comments, or when he would play props. My favorite
story is actually not one where I was there for myself,
but as my friend Gordo, who was I'm probably gonna
butcher it, but I think this is just the most
hilarious story. I think they're playing like four handed or
so it's like him, Gordo, Doyle, Keith Lear and a
couple of other guys and Keith, Gordo and Doyle are
playing props like the normal props, reasonable level, you know,
probably a couple of thousands of point, you know, and
most of the games. And at some point Gordo suggests, like,
why don't we do a prop. They're just about to
start the Bedougie round, and why don't we do a
prop for a pat wheel? Do you play boogie? How
many times in your life have you gotten a pat wheel? Never? Okay,
I little I think one time and they're like, sure, whatever,
how much? And I think Gordo throws out like a
huge number, like one hundred, because it never happens, and
then they say that's too much, and I think they
agree on still some substantial number, like like forty thousand. Apparently,
like one or two hands later, Gordo wins a huge
hand and shows the pet wheel, and so Keith's just like,
how the hell does this happen? You know this and
that we just agreed, you know, I've never gotten a
pet wheel and just throws in the money. Doyle does
not pay, and it goes on. You know, they still
keep playing. There's this tension in a room, you know,
Doyle just has the forty thousand next to the stack
for like a long time until finally, and Gordo is
smart enough not to say anything until finally he's like,
I'm gonna pay you, and I promise I'm not going
to do anything to you. I just want to know
how did you do it? Tell me how you did it?
Obviously know that Doyle has been through a lot of
things in his life where I'm sure it has been
some funny business on both sides. But the way I
can I'm not doing justice to the story the way
Gordo tells it. Also since I wasn't there, but I
can very well imagine sort of girl's kind of reaction
to that. It just makes me laugh.
Speaker 2: That's a fantastic story. Now that you've become I would say,
a feared player in mixed games, and you have results
both terms in cash across all games, what is left
and poker that satisfies you?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Do you feel like you have something to prove? Do
you look at things like winning a lot of bracelets?
Is there something that is now this new drive and
motivation as we've seen you pivot quite a few times
already even within this game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm struggling a little bit kind of with myself
in terms of how many specific goals like that I
want to set for myself. I would definitely like to
win another bracelet. I mean, if I would kind of
win the PPC one day, that would be amazing. That
would probably be the one would be the one I
would like to win the most. You know, I'd love
to win a trite entitle. But I also realize that
a lot of that, if you're being honest with yourself,
it just depends on how much volume you could you
can put him. I mean, sure, I can show up
in two years only for you know, a one week
trip play the PPC and win it. But you know,
volume is obviously gonna gonna be a big kind of
factor here. I mean, I might wake up next year
and say, look, I'm going to go back to just
playing whenever I feel without studying a lot, and just
that obviously will change my goals. But I'd just like
to just keep on getting better and feel like I
can be competitive at the elite level whether I'm feared
or not, or you know, whether I win, embrace it
or not, and you know, try to accept that, you
know the outcomes will ultimately follow, or I might not.
I think one of my my issues my leaks is
and you have had this debate you said the summer
is not going the way I was hoping it would go,
is that you know, I'm very very competitive, and I
think i'm two results in outcome oriented, and you know,
I think some of that is good, but too much
of it is not. And so I'm trying to be
a bit more focused on the things that I can
that I can control, And so in my mind, I
don't go in and say I have to win a
couple more braces I have to win. This is just
I want to just keep on getting better and try
to play at the level that I think I'm capable
of as often as I can, and you know that's
most important to me, and hopefully good outcomes will be
associated with that.
Speaker 2: Final question, is poker harder when you're so financially successful
that you can decide when to show up because you
play against people where the result week to week, month
a month will decide you know how their lifestyle evolves
or what their future looks like, and for you, you
don't have that us So in a way it's almost
irrelevant whether you win.
Speaker 1: I think for me, it's probably neutral or an advantage.
Everyone's different. I know people that play really best when
it backs against the wall. I know people that play
better when they've sold a lot of action and the
financial stakes for a given tournament are much lower. I
don't think I've gotten to the point where, like I
messaged my wife yesterday, I played in a cash game,
and you know, I won what you might think as
a trivial number from my net worth. But I also
know how much money that is, and so I don't
think i've lost sort of the sense of how much
is a dollar worth. I wouldn't be playing if I
was losing money. But I'm not playing to make money,
if that makes sense. So that's not my primary motivation.
And I think anyone who devotes most of their time
to tournament poker, as I am right now, I mean
I've played four cash sessions the entire summer so far,
I'm here to play a tournament poker. Like, if your
objective is to make money, you're not going to play
tournaments unless you're never getting to any good private games.
But and so I think tournament poker is an extraordinarily
difficult way to make money, uh in anything, and and
and and and in poker, and so that's I'm lucky
enough that that's not my primary motivation. I think it's,
if anything, helpful if you're sitting in a in a
big spot and you're making, you know, a play that is,
you know, maybe high variance, but you think has higher
expectation but could as more likely to lead to to
bust out in a high sticks tournament. I think it's
kind of helpful that you don't have to necessarily worry
about your immediate p and L. But again, everyone's different.
But for me, I think it's neutral or helpful.
Speaker 2: I think it's pretty obvious who the ace is here
at the table. Philip Sturneimer, thank you so much for
being on the show. Really appreciated you guys. Thanks for
listening and watching. Please make sure to like the video
subscribe to the channel. If you listening to this on
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you next week on the next one. Thanks for watching.