Speaker 1: Two days after the main, Howard Letter calls me and says, Okay, Josh,
Speaker 1: we're putting Full Tilt together and we want to bring
Speaker 1: you in as team Full Tilt.
Speaker 2: Hey, this is Remco. Thanks for clicking on the video.
Speaker 2: This is my brand new podcast called Face the Ace,
Speaker 2: in which I talked to the most interesting people in
Speaker 2: poker and go a little deeper into the topics you
Speaker 2: most care about. Enjoy, Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to a
Speaker 2: new episode of Face the Ace. The Ace today, mister
Speaker 2: Josh Aria a career going back many decades, Lots to discuss,
Speaker 2: lots to talk about. First off, if you enjoy the podcast,
Speaker 2: please like the video, subscribe to the channel, leave a
Speaker 2: comment for perhaps an idea on a future guest. Josh,
Speaker 2: We're going to dive right into it. So as we're
Speaker 2: sitting here, we are hearing some of the buzz and
Speaker 2: the excitement of day eight of the main. To paint
Speaker 2: the picture for people when this is happening.
Speaker 1: A seven or day seven, I think sleep in the
Speaker 1: main same thing you went on a run this year.
Speaker 2: We talked on the bubble briefly. It seemed like you
Speaker 2: were completely in it. You were in it mentally you
Speaker 2: were totally making a run. Does it feel just as
Speaker 2: exciting every time you get some chips in this one?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this tournament's just different. I mean it's you start
Speaker 1: to sense, like the environment, the atmosphere. You see the
Speaker 1: media running around, like when the bubble, like it starts
Speaker 1: a little before the bubble, because it's like getting to
Speaker 1: day three and day four of a tournament is tough,
Speaker 1: like not going broke day in and day out is
Speaker 1: very hard. And then the media starts running around when
Speaker 1: we're on the bubble, and that's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: And you know, you start hearing stories from people that
Speaker 1: like this is their dream that there was one guy
Speaker 1: that he said that he spent twenty three hours flying
Speaker 1: here to play this one event and is actually the
Speaker 1: guy that beat my set of sevens. But no, there's
Speaker 1: so many cool stories, and then like I just there's
Speaker 1: times that I'm playing that I kind of you know,
Speaker 1: zone out and uh start realizing just how fortunate I
Speaker 1: am and just reminding myself because you know, we do
Speaker 1: this every single day, day in, day out. We come
Speaker 1: in here and we do the same thing, but the
Speaker 1: main event's different. And then it's just like I remind
Speaker 1: myself how lucky I am to be in this spot
Speaker 1: and to be comfortable in this spot. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the main event is just a different animal, and there's
Speaker 1: no there's no close second.
Speaker 2: Would you have given me a similar response when you
Speaker 2: first was playing the main?
Speaker 1: No, No, I was a very naive young kid that
Speaker 1: expected you know, it was it's like my third or
Speaker 1: fourth main that I ran deep in and just even there,
Speaker 1: I mean, it was exciting being there. I remember the
Speaker 1: adrenaline just pumping through me. But the thought of, you know,
Speaker 1: soak it in you might not get to do this
Speaker 1: again never crossed my mind. It was just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: see you guys next year. So now I know how
Speaker 1: special this event is, so.
Speaker 2: You're able to appreciate the one run you did have. Ah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I love watching back and it's, uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: really cool thinking about, you know, things that happened along
Speaker 1: the way. There was one there was there was one
Speaker 1: story that so I got really lucky against UH. I'll
Speaker 1: think of who it was, but but like there was
Speaker 1: like a five six seven flop and I had eight
Speaker 1: ten and I jammed on the turn and I got
Speaker 1: called by UH. Set of fives and banked the straight.
Speaker 1: But I remember not even stacking my chips. I was
Speaker 1: like so overtaken by the moment, Like it was like
Speaker 1: two minutes before dinner break, I didn't even stack my chips,
Speaker 1: and I just went to dinner break, and the people
Speaker 1: that I was meeting at dinner thought that I had
Speaker 1: gotten knocked out, like they looked at me. I was
Speaker 1: like so shaken from it. But now it was there
Speaker 1: was there was It was a lot of fun. It
Speaker 1: was it was in the moment you forget, like you
Speaker 1: don't feel it, or I don't. I get into a
Speaker 1: zone and like when I'm making deep runs in a
Speaker 1: tournament and and and I don't really feel what's going on.
Speaker 1: I just play and it just time slows down. You
Speaker 1: get in that zone and just you just play and
Speaker 1: you're not thinking about You're staying in the moment. You're
Speaker 1: not thinking about externals. But afterwards, when when I look back,
Speaker 1: and it's just like, man, that was fun.
Speaker 2: So the moment in time that you chose to make
Speaker 2: your run probably a massive factor as well for how
Speaker 2: the rest of your career played out, because it came
Speaker 2: with so much attention on ESPN we're talking like that.
Speaker 2: The game was peaking, numbers kept going up year over year,
Speaker 2: and you were, all of a sudden, overnight sort of
Speaker 2: poker mainstay. If you were at a table, it would
Speaker 2: be like, oh, this is josh Aria's table, and that
Speaker 2: has sort of carried on for years and years. How
Speaker 2: was it to be sort of, you know, poker famous,
Speaker 2: if you will.
Speaker 1: Well, at first, it was really hard, like very hard,
Speaker 1: because that was back in the I don't know what
Speaker 1: was what would you call the forums, like the two
Speaker 1: plus two forums. It was really hard because that was
Speaker 1: I'd never really looked at the forums before. And now
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, like I'll hear from somebody and Josh,
Speaker 1: did you see what people were saying about you? And
Speaker 1: and I've never been I always liked people liking me,
Speaker 1: and as a kid, it just I wanted everybody to
Speaker 1: like me. It would just it made life easier. And
Speaker 1: I was an outcast as a teenager, didn't really have
Speaker 1: a group of people, so I just I had that
Speaker 1: pick me, uh vibe or whatever. So now I'm looking
Speaker 1: at these news and people are saying shit about me
Speaker 1: that I've never heard. This guy is a punk, this
Speaker 1: guy's an asshole. Screw him. I can't believe he would
Speaker 1: do that. He's poor sportsman. So now I'm seeing things
Speaker 1: that I've never thought about myself. I've never seen or
Speaker 1: heard anybody say this about me. Now I'm going to
Speaker 1: I have plans to go to the Borgata. It was
Speaker 1: the September, the final table was in May, and plans
Speaker 1: on my first poker trip after that and going to
Speaker 1: the Borgota. But I'm scared to go, Like I'm like,
Speaker 1: people hate me. It was hard. I went and got
Speaker 1: through it and realized that people are so much meaner
Speaker 1: on the Internet than they are in real life because
Speaker 1: I didn't experience any of that in real life. But
Speaker 1: I was young, and I'm a completely different person now,
Speaker 1: very secure with who I am. I understand and that
Speaker 1: you know people's views, people's views of me are through
Speaker 1: their lens, and you know their opinion of me is
Speaker 1: none of my business. And those are things that I
Speaker 1: wish I knew back then. It was cool because I
Speaker 1: was never coming up. I was never the best baseball player.
Speaker 1: My best friend was better than me. I was never
Speaker 1: the best pool player. I was always third or fourth
Speaker 1: in our group of guys. There was a couple guys
Speaker 1: in town that that that played better poker, you know,
Speaker 1: because they didn't go broke. I would go broke. I
Speaker 1: would run up bigger bank rolls, but I would also
Speaker 1: go broke. So so now all of a sudden people
Speaker 1: like me because I did good in a tournament. It
Speaker 1: was cool. A lot of cool things came with it.
Speaker 1: You know, I got a sponsorship from an online site
Speaker 1: that you know, provided for my family. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: was cool. It was I I've always been able to
Speaker 1: talk to people, so it did. It didn't It didn't
Speaker 1: really affect me negatively, but yeah, the cool things that
Speaker 1: came with it made it made it nice.
Speaker 2: Was the attitude that a lot of people remember you
Speaker 2: for in the for Maine. Was that almost more like
Speaker 2: a defense mechanism.
Speaker 1: No, it was just me. I mean I come from
Speaker 1: the pool hall. I come from gambling with drug dealers
Speaker 1: and and uh addicts and degenerates and and in the
Speaker 1: pool halls. You know, you have to, you know, have
Speaker 1: this bravado about you or you're gonna get run over.
Speaker 1: And it's just where I come from. I've never, like
Speaker 1: I said, I've never been the best at anything, so
Speaker 1: I have to like you say put. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's a defense mechanism, but it's almost like a
Speaker 1: costume where it's like I want you to feel it,
Speaker 1: like I want you to if I'm not your biggest fear,
Speaker 1: I want to make you feel like it. You know,
Speaker 1: I want to believe that I'm your biggest fear. So
Speaker 1: I mean, it's I'm just a competitor, and sometimes bad
Speaker 1: things come up, and still to this day, I get
Speaker 1: I get upset. I mean, and I did a good
Speaker 1: job biting my tongue a few days ago, like I
Speaker 1: took a six sick beat on day five. I think
Speaker 1: I was in a guy jammed with a seven off
Speaker 1: suit and I had two aces and I lost the
Speaker 1: pot and it almost came out. I was I was
Speaker 1: burning inside, like I couldn't believe that I lost this hand.
Speaker 1: But you know, at fifty one, you're I'm able to
Speaker 1: reel it back in and you know, a couple of
Speaker 1: minutes to vent and then you know, I'm back to myself.
Speaker 2: But isn't that fire perhaps also the reason for your success.
Speaker 1: One thousand perc one thousand percent, Like it's I'm a
Speaker 1: competitor in nature, no matter what I do It's like
Speaker 1: if if if we're leaving the house at the same
Speaker 1: time going to the same place, I want to get
Speaker 1: there first. You know, if if if we're leaving the
Speaker 1: tea box on the golf course at the same time,
Speaker 1: I want to get to my ball first. You know,
Speaker 1: it's I just I'm a competitor and I always will
Speaker 1: be like that's you know, that's what's allowed me to
Speaker 1: continue to compete at you know, this age that I'm
Speaker 1: at against kids that work a lot harder and a
Speaker 1: lot smarter. You know, there's I've got something in me
Speaker 1: that helps me compete with them. And that's what it is.
Speaker 2: It is really cool, and we'll get deeper into this.
Speaker 2: To have sort of seen your resurgence sort of twenty
Speaker 2: nine ish and then you sort of built on that,
Speaker 2: and for many years prior to that you were around,
Speaker 2: but you you didn't have that same sort of presence,
Speaker 2: and yeah, that the same result. We'll get into what
Speaker 2: turned things around, and I'm very curious how that wins.
Speaker 2: But what I'm curious about is purely from like a
Speaker 2: skill and a game level, what it is now that
Speaker 2: still makes you able to compete because all we ever
Speaker 2: hear are the stories of the studying and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: But what is it? Is it experience and perhaps the
Speaker 2: live element that make you successful. How would you define them?
Speaker 1: It's definitely the live element. Like I I'm good at
Speaker 1: live poker, like I when I get to look at
Speaker 1: a guy in the eye and you know, evaluate, And
Speaker 1: but also I've worked on my game a lot. Like I.
Speaker 1: I'm surrounded by the best players in the world. Like
Speaker 1: I talk to Daniel mcgran who every day. I talked
Speaker 1: to Sean Deep every day. I talked to Matt Glance
Speaker 1: every day, Dan Wyman every day. There's a laundry list
Speaker 1: of and even some of the people like with Poker Steak,
Speaker 1: I talk to these people that post on Poker Steak,
Speaker 1: and I have the best players in the world. At
Speaker 1: my dispense, I'd be a complete idiot it to not
Speaker 1: soak up everything that I can. And that's just one
Speaker 1: thing I've always done is my whole life. I've remained
Speaker 1: the dumbest person in the room and absorb everything that
Speaker 1: I can. So I ask a lot of questions. I
Speaker 1: work in the gray area. I question like, I ask
Speaker 1: a lot of questions, like when somebody that's not that
Speaker 1: good or isn't supposed to be that good is doing good?
Speaker 1: I want to know what they're doing, like I ask questions,
Speaker 1: and because they're doing something right, there's something there. It's
Speaker 1: not just pure luck. So I do my poker has
Speaker 1: definitely improved on a technical aspect, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: I've dealt with a lot of personal issues that I
Speaker 1: want to succeed. Whereas there were many times in the
Speaker 1: past where I was unwilling to accept the pain of
Speaker 1: trying hard, and that was a stumbling block that I
Speaker 1: got over where I was like it was so much
Speaker 1: easier just to dump off eternally, Like internally, it was
Speaker 1: easier just to punt because I could just tell myself, oh,
Speaker 1: I punted it and it didn't hurt that bad. But
Speaker 1: I was afraid of feeling the pain of trying my
Speaker 1: best and failing. But now it's I try my best
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm happy with the result and I'm not
Speaker 1: afraid of the pain.
Speaker 2: So when you have that massive success at the start
Speaker 2: and sort of launch you into poker fame, also coming
Speaker 2: into a lot of money, having to sponsorships on top
Speaker 2: of that, you you know, have like another big almost
Speaker 2: million dollar score, you know nine, it seems like, you know,
Speaker 2: unstoppable in a way of cashing the fifty k in
Speaker 2: twenty eleven. So everything sort of seems to be rolling forward.
Speaker 2: But from the way you say it, it's almost like
Speaker 2: you were slowly fading or slowly falling. When did the
Speaker 2: sort of the falls start and how deep did you fall?
Speaker 1: I mean, I felt pretty hard because I didn't care.
Speaker 1: I was in a marriage that I hated. I was
Speaker 1: stuck there because I loved my kids immensely, and I
Speaker 1: was afraid of the situation that my kids would fall
Speaker 1: in had I left. So it's a horrible decision. Like
Speaker 1: if I could go back, I would have left a
Speaker 1: long time ago. I don't know. I'm extremely happy. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying I wish I would have done something different,
Speaker 1: But it was a bad decision to put my ex
Speaker 1: wife through and to put my kids through in a
Speaker 1: very unloving relationship. What I was doing was really bad,
Speaker 1: Like it was destructive. It was extremely destructive to me,
Speaker 1: to my ex, to my entire family, my kids. But
Speaker 1: I went through the motions, and you know, finally, when
Speaker 1: my kids got a little older, I left the relationship,
Speaker 1: and that's when life turned around, relationships, career, everything, it was,
Speaker 1: it was, it was. It was really muddy for a
Speaker 1: little while, Like it was really muddy, but you know,
Speaker 1: relationships with my kids and my family, my dad, my brother,
Speaker 1: my sister. It's a hundred x of what it was
Speaker 1: like from two thousand, two thousand to twenty nineteen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was everything came together. I got the most positive
Speaker 1: human being on the face of the earth. Like my
Speaker 1: wife now is an incredible, incredible human that I love
Speaker 1: spending time with, and like I can't imagine how she
Speaker 1: was attracted to the person that I was in twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen because I was a fucking disaster.
Speaker 2: When you say disaster, give us like an example. Was
Speaker 2: it your attitude? Was it?
Speaker 1: Just everything habits, like everything. I was on drugs or
Speaker 1: not drugs. I was well, yeah, drugs. I was taken
Speaker 1: adderall every day. I was taken adderall every day. I
Speaker 1: was taken ambient to go to sleep, and thought that
Speaker 1: I needed it. You know, I thought I was diagnosed
Speaker 1: by a doctor with ADHD, and you need to take
Speaker 1: thirty milligrams of adderall in the morning, you know, take
Speaker 1: another fifteen out at another fifteen milligrams of adderall and
Speaker 1: then and then you know you have that much adderall
Speaker 1: pumping through your system, how are you going to go
Speaker 1: to sleep? Well, just take an ambient. Same doctor prescribes
Speaker 1: the same ambient. I didn't care about my poker results.
Speaker 1: I mean I had you know, I own a bar
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, and I'm not a big spender. Uh so
Speaker 1: I don't need that much money. I was fine, But yeah,
Speaker 1: I was. I was just a disaster. I was. I
Speaker 1: would look at things very negatively, but yeah, just like
Speaker 1: it was just it was so awesome meeting. I couldn't
Speaker 1: wait to introduce Rachel to my kids, and it was.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's been we've been together. We met shortly
Speaker 1: after I was separated, and we've been together like seven
Speaker 1: years now, and it's, uh, it's it's it's a pleasure
Speaker 1: waking up every morning and living life with her, and
Speaker 1: and like, uh, it's it's made me a different person,
Speaker 1: and it's made me in my old days or in
Speaker 1: my young days. I should have wanted to impress my kids,
Speaker 1: impress my dad, even if I even if I didn't
Speaker 1: like my partner, I should want to impress my dad,
Speaker 1: my kids. But I didn't. I guess I wasn't mature
Speaker 1: enough to so there wasn't anybody that I was really
Speaker 1: responsible to except for myself. But now it's like, I
Speaker 1: want to live life to impress my wife, Like when
Speaker 1: I do something cool, like I mean, she sees it
Speaker 1: before I say, oh did you see that or whatever
Speaker 1: and like and so it's I just I want to
Speaker 1: impress her every day and I want to I want
Speaker 1: to be a better person for her because she deserves it,
Speaker 1: and it just makes me so much happier with myself.
Speaker 2: So when I look at your your career arc as
Speaker 2: far as tournament results, the one thing that does stand
Speaker 2: out is that throughout all those years, as you mentioned,
Speaker 2: you know it it was like a steady decline from
Speaker 2: two thousand onwards, the results are still there. You're still
Speaker 2: playing all these events. You're still you know, getting in
Speaker 2: the mix, and you know, lots of close calls in
Speaker 2: big events. So what was it that did motivate you
Speaker 2: to keep doing that? Because it almost sounds to me
Speaker 2: as though you might as well have couldn't just you know,
Speaker 2: driven off to Alaska to go fishing for a couple
Speaker 2: of years.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean I love competing. Vegas is fun, you know,
Speaker 1: it was I was younger and I was doing the
Speaker 1: wrong things in Vegas. I uh, you know, I was.
Speaker 1: I was around like there was like a six or
Speaker 1: seven year stretch where like I had a locker at
Speaker 1: Shadow Creek, I was gambling really high in the casino.
Speaker 1: So I was having what I thought was fun, very destructive,
Speaker 1: Like I mean I was, I was winning or losing
Speaker 1: two to five hundred thousand a year in the casino.
Speaker 1: And now I don't cammel at all. I was having
Speaker 1: fun and h it was, you know, taking my mind
Speaker 1: off you know, the other stuff that was not right
Speaker 1: in my life.
Speaker 2: Was there a turning point as far as the gambling goes,
Speaker 2: where you realize, like why am I doing this still?
Speaker 1: I mean the turning point was when I got separated
Speaker 1: and it wasn't fun anymore. Like I didn't need to
Speaker 1: get that high from gambling. I didn't need. It wasn't
Speaker 1: doing for me what it did before. I wasn't escaping
Speaker 1: from anything. Yeah, just like as soon as I made
Speaker 1: the move in twenty nineteen, just like the desire to
Speaker 1: go gamble huge just stopped.
Speaker 2: It's funny because you you had that big moment happened
Speaker 2: in your life where separation, meeting your your now wife Rachel,
Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden, like a cascade, the
Speaker 2: results came pouring in. And I'm not one to say that,
Speaker 2: you know, momentum is real or you know, if you
Speaker 2: do good things you get nice, but in your in
Speaker 2: your sort of career arc or even even just looking
Speaker 2: at the pure results, everything just started clicking it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it did. That was when I started getting really
Speaker 1: close to Matt, Glance, Dan and Sean and so now
Speaker 1: I have these great players that I talked to, and
Speaker 1: I just you know, they're typing in hand histories and
Speaker 1: I half understand them, and I'm just like reading them
Speaker 1: through them, reading through them and like over and over
Speaker 1: and over and like not acting, you know, acting like oh,
Speaker 1: it's just a hand history, but like you know, then
Speaker 1: asking some questions about it and just absorbing it all.
Speaker 1: And I kind of had a new found desire for success.
Speaker 1: I found myself, you know, getting super short in a
Speaker 1: tournament and not giving up. I found myself noticing spots
Speaker 1: that I'd never noticed before, or because I guess my
Speaker 1: mental space was now clear for some strange reason. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I started caring and and you know, things started happening.
Speaker 1: And you know, the funny thing is is that in
Speaker 1: the beginning of twenty twenty, during COVID, I had plans
Speaker 1: of being done with poker, like I took a job
Speaker 1: at poker Steak. And the reason I took my job
Speaker 1: at poker Steak is because I was I mean, in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, I was like forty six, forty seven and
Speaker 1: thinking about this is the decline of my career. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't like to study. If I wanted to study,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have to be the decline of my career.
Speaker 1: But I understand that studying is part of improving in
Speaker 1: today's day and age. But so I took this job
Speaker 1: at poker Steak thinking that, you know, I'm going to
Speaker 1: cut down on the stuff that I do. And then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, so my job starts to August first,
Speaker 1: twenty one. I'm a head of Poker Steak World Series
Speaker 1: rolls around because it's in uh, it's in November and
Speaker 1: twenty one, and I just had this clarity that I
Speaker 1: hadn't had in many, many, many years. This desire to compete,
Speaker 1: this desire to want to be at the table and
Speaker 1: not at a video poker machine or not on the
Speaker 1: golf course or or at some club or I was
Speaker 1: one hundred percent content in where I was at any
Speaker 1: moment of the day, and things just started working. And
Speaker 1: I won a couple of bracelets in one Player of
Speaker 1: the Year, and I still wasn't sure that I was
Speaker 1: going to continue like this. This may have been my
Speaker 1: swan song. It might have been, you know, this is
Speaker 1: a good way for me to to start working my
Speaker 1: way out of poker. But then you know, twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two World Series rolls around and I make back to
Speaker 1: back twenty five K final tables and I win to
Speaker 1: I win one point two million. I'm one point two
Speaker 1: million winner the first week of the World Series. I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's just uh. I love my time at
Speaker 1: the table. It's a total different mindset and person that
Speaker 1: I was, and I will always love competing no matter
Speaker 1: what it is. Like we could go out there and
Speaker 1: see who could throw a bottle of water into the
Speaker 1: trash can first, right, I would have so much fun.
Speaker 1: I would look like a kid, and poker gives that
Speaker 1: to me. And as long as I'm able to compete,
Speaker 1: and as long as I'm able to continue to I
Speaker 1: love wreckon Havoc, and I love seeing these really smart
Speaker 1: guys struggle with me. So you know, as long as
Speaker 1: that's going to happen, I mean, I could see myself
Speaker 1: coming out and or I guess it's not coming out.
Speaker 1: I'm here now. I could see myself competing at the
Speaker 1: World Series and until they roll me out of here,
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 2: So then the competitive spirit was sort of reignited for
Speaker 2: to success. And then what I find fascinating with you
Speaker 2: winning POY Now you're seemingly in contention. Every year you
Speaker 2: play big volume, you get your chances at winning a bracelet.
Speaker 2: Of course, you know everything has to click, but at
Speaker 2: this point, as you mentioned, you know you're not a
Speaker 2: big spender, so we're not maybe chasing buying an even
Speaker 2: bigger house or living in a nicer place. What is
Speaker 2: now the motivation to show up every day?
Speaker 1: I just want to impress my wife. I just I
Speaker 1: love the I love the way that she sweats so hard.
Speaker 1: And it's like I give a lot of people, my family,
Speaker 1: my friends, like I have really good people in my
Speaker 1: corner and they love sweating it. And I love the
Speaker 1: fact that when I get deep, I bring so much
Speaker 1: excitement to the people that are following me, and that's
Speaker 1: like my happy place. Like I remember I was Pads
Speaker 1: on his story a week or a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1: He's like, what's your happy place? And and I was like, man,
Speaker 1: it's sad to say, but my happy place is at
Speaker 1: a final table with the World Series of Poker. Just
Speaker 1: because I'm bringing so much excitement and joy to all
Speaker 1: the people that have been following me for twenty five
Speaker 1: thirty years.
Speaker 2: That's that's amazing. And the one thing on the resume
Speaker 2: that I think might still be a goal to chase
Speaker 2: Es to win that fifty k PBC. You've had, You've
Speaker 2: had you've had more, probably more Casher than most people
Speaker 2: in that event. But more importantly, you've had two runner
Speaker 2: up finished. And I can tell by looking her face
Speaker 2: that one's things. But what does that event mean to you?
Speaker 1: It's fun, It's a different fun. It's rolling your sleeves up,
Speaker 1: running in the mud against the best players in the world,
Speaker 1: and it's fun. It's exhausting, it's it's it screws with
Speaker 1: your head, but you know it's that's my kind of fun.
Speaker 1: You know, let's get dirty, you know, it's uh playing
Speaker 1: cheap events. You know, that's a different kind of fun,
Speaker 1: you know, having fun, talking, laughing with a bunch of people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that. That's that's a small amount of fun over here.
Speaker 1: But my kind of fun is in the fire. I
Speaker 1: want to be in the fire and I want to
Speaker 1: inflict pain. I want to feel pain. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: I just think about this clip I've seen I've seen
Speaker 1: before of like a boxer when they're like ten rounds
Speaker 1: deep in a nasty fight and he's like, this is
Speaker 1: my kind of fun. This is my kind of party.
Speaker 1: And uh, yeah, this that's my kind of party because
Speaker 1: it's it's grueling. You're staring down the best players in
Speaker 1: the world, guys that play three and six thousand limit
Speaker 1: poker every you know, every day you're playing Benny Glacier,
Speaker 1: You're I mean you're playing Uri Sewn Dee Daniel mcgron
Speaker 1: or you're playing the best of the best, And uh,
Speaker 1: that's that's my kind of party.
Speaker 2: So the two runner up finishes. When you think back
Speaker 2: of those now, and of course one of them being
Speaker 2: very very recent, is that a sense of pride or
Speaker 2: do you feel perhaps a sense of like, you know,
Speaker 2: what if and and and how much how much? How
Speaker 2: much emotion is attached to those close calls.
Speaker 1: Not much, because when I'm in the moment, I'm not
Speaker 1: thinking about anything other than that second in time. What
Speaker 1: does my resume look like with a first place instead
Speaker 1: of a second place? Yeah, it's a little bit more,
Speaker 1: but you know, I for me, it's so much more
Speaker 1: of the journey and enjoying and and and remembering the
Speaker 1: journey and accepting thinks that there's so many situations that
Speaker 1: that could have been different along the way, But no,
Speaker 1: I don't think of, oh what could have been? I
Speaker 1: don't think about anything other than, you know, enjoying the
Speaker 1: journey and giving it the best that I have. And
Speaker 1: in those two particular tournaments, I gave it my best.
Speaker 1: I brought everything I could to the table and accept
Speaker 1: the consequences if and luckily, I don't have to look
Speaker 1: back to any of to either of those two and
Speaker 1: and say, oh, man, I I didn't have my best
Speaker 1: And so I'm totally at peace with both results.
Speaker 2: In my sort of view, you're one of the few
Speaker 2: players with consistent good results in fifty K that is
Speaker 2: not synonymous with Bobby's room. I don't often hear you
Speaker 2: as part of a Bobby's Room story. Why did you
Speaker 2: never make that jump.
Speaker 1: Because two reasons. Number one, I don't like the feeling
Speaker 1: of feeling less than when I go in that room
Speaker 1: and see those players Jason Mercier, Eric Wass, Brian Rast,
Speaker 1: ray d Oppenheimer, I feel less than. I feel like
Speaker 1: the fish, and I don't like that feeling. I like
Speaker 1: the feeling of feeling like I'm the best player, and
Speaker 1: no matter what would happen, no matter how much money
Speaker 1: I won, I could not go into that arena and
Speaker 1: feel like the best player, and so I would feel
Speaker 1: like a fish, and I don't enjoy that feeling. That's
Speaker 1: the number one reason. Number two reason is I don't
Speaker 1: really enjoy poker that much. I don't enjoy what it
Speaker 1: takes to be the best. So playing poker is kind
Speaker 1: of boring to me. Playing I'm sorry, playing cash poker
Speaker 1: is boring to me. In less I'm playing higher than
Speaker 1: I can afford. And if I'm playing higher than I
Speaker 1: can afford, then then it's exciting. Obviously. I think I've
Speaker 1: played one cash game in the past four years, and
Speaker 1: that was because I texted ODB one night and they
Speaker 1: were playing like three and six hundred at the Bollagio
Speaker 1: and I was bored. I was into. It was before
Speaker 1: I lived here and I was in town by myself,
Speaker 1: and he's like, yeah, we have a fun lineup, come play.
Speaker 1: So I went played and I had fun. It was
Speaker 1: a fun lineup, like Nacho was playing he's always a goofball,
Speaker 1: and Nick Wright was playing and ODB and it was
Speaker 1: it was. It was a good time. But yeah, that's
Speaker 1: I think that was. That may have been in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, was the last time I played.
Speaker 2: That's crazy because the cash grind and those guys they
Speaker 2: always seem to be like the very very top of
Speaker 2: the game, and with your competitive spirit, I just assumed
Speaker 2: that you wanted to also measure yourself against those guys.
Speaker 2: But there's also a sense of like, like I don't know,
Speaker 2: humble nature in perhaps accepting that I don't have to
Speaker 2: step in that ring.
Speaker 1: If it was fun, like if it was a good
Speaker 1: group of guys and it was like but then it
Speaker 1: would be like seventy percent work, thirty percent social like
Speaker 1: it would be I would be going to make money
Speaker 1: in the end, but also enjoying time doing it. I
Speaker 1: just don't want to go sit at a table with
Speaker 1: a bunch of people that I don't really know. And
Speaker 1: I'm very like introverted. So this, like the social part
Speaker 1: of forty five days in a row is it wears
Speaker 1: on me a lot. Like Rachel will tell you, I like,
Speaker 1: she's the same way. We just we stay at home,
Speaker 1: we don't go out much, we we hang to ourselves
Speaker 1: and uh so, so putting more social stuff in my
Speaker 1: life is not a formula for a happy life.
Speaker 2: I'm just I'm just glad that on one of the
Speaker 2: final days of the summer, you're willing to sit down
Speaker 2: with me. Sure.
Speaker 1: No, You've always been great for poker.
Speaker 2: So the arc up has been established, and now it
Speaker 2: seems like you're just comfortable living and operating in this space.
Speaker 2: But I do want to jump back a little bit too,
Speaker 2: when you were sort of gambling and golfing and having
Speaker 2: that routine. And just for the people that are listening
Speaker 2: to this or even watching this, what an average day
Speaker 2: for josh Aria look like at sort of the heyday
Speaker 2: of your distractions as you as you call them.
Speaker 1: I'd wake up eleven thirty or twelve, probably grab a
Speaker 1: huge coffee, go play ornament, and not care what happened,
Speaker 1: kind of you know, try to spin it immediately. If
Speaker 1: the spin didn't work, then I'd head to Shadow Creek
Speaker 1: and you know, gamble playing golf. Maybe go somewhere else,
Speaker 1: go sit down on a video poker machine until I hit
Speaker 1: something big or I felt a lot of pain from
Speaker 1: the amount that I was losing. I was losing big numbers.
Speaker 1: It was insane, insane the numbers that I was I
Speaker 1: probably lost one hundred and fifty thousand in a day
Speaker 1: playing video poker. Yeah, it's crazy, you know. I always
Speaker 1: I have a decent relationship like an I, but I
Speaker 1: haven't really gambled in Like I said before I was
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, really slowed down the gambling. But I mean
Speaker 1: I messed around a little, like win or lose thirty
Speaker 1: or forty thousand in a year in the casino. Now
Speaker 1: it's like zero. Like now I might win or lose
Speaker 1: five K in a year for like the past four years.
Speaker 2: I want.
Speaker 1: I want to ask my host for my lifetime because
Speaker 1: I'm interested, and I actually I don't. I know, I
Speaker 1: can go online and look at the P and L
Speaker 1: statements for the year, but I don't know if it
Speaker 1: goes back lifetime. I'm interested to see how much money
Speaker 1: I've lost in the casino in my life, because it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's pretty fucking disgusting.
Speaker 2: The fact that you're still afloat with that kind of
Speaker 2: habit that what does that speak for? Or Two, I
Speaker 2: put myself in good situations. I've always been a good gambler,
Speaker 2: except for video poker, because video poker was always like
Speaker 2: I could go zone out. I'd play poker, and I'd
Speaker 2: have to talk to people all day and I'd have
Speaker 2: to be social all day. Now like going in and
Speaker 2: playing like five ten k worth and video poker at
Speaker 2: the end of a poker session was always my like
Speaker 2: like I would decompress from the day and just sit
Speaker 2: there and zone out and I wouldn't have to talk
Speaker 2: to anybody. And people would always ask me, why do
Speaker 2: you play video poker?
Speaker 1: It's so boring. It's just the same thing over and over,
Speaker 1: but it just it It lets me gamble. It would
Speaker 1: let me gamble and remove all human interaction. I could
Speaker 1: sit there in my own little world, smoke cigarettes, drink
Speaker 1: diet cokes and just be a d J. I don't know,
Speaker 1: But like in every other aspect of life I had.
Speaker 1: I would always find an edge in whatever gambling I'm doing,
Speaker 1: whether it's sports or whether it's pool gambling or anything
Speaker 1: golf gambling. I always had an edge. So and I've
Speaker 1: always had a knack of finding my way in into
Speaker 1: affluent groups and people with money. So just that like
Speaker 1: old pool hustler in me that that I've never had
Speaker 1: a problem making money.
Speaker 2: So in world of high stakes gambling, you mentioned the host.
Speaker 2: What were the perks, the or the stuff that came
Speaker 2: that came with living that lifestyle.
Speaker 1: I had it all. I would stay in a two
Speaker 1: bedroom penthouse at the top of the first it was
Speaker 1: at the top of the belagio. Then my guys moved
Speaker 1: over to the area and I would stay in the
Speaker 1: two bedroom penhouse in the area. I had a locker
Speaker 1: at Shadow Creek. They bought me clubs that would stay
Speaker 1: at Shadow Creek, limos back and forth Shadow Creek, like
Speaker 1: I would stay there the whole summer. I would stay
Speaker 1: either since two thousand At first I used to stay
Speaker 1: with my friend during the summer up until like two
Speaker 1: thousand and five, But then like from two thousand and
Speaker 1: five to two thousand and twenty, I would stay in
Speaker 1: a two bedroom penhouse for the entire summer for forty days,
Speaker 1: and my bill at the end of the month was
Speaker 1: my tips. And even one year I was gambling so
Speaker 1: big they covered my tips and my dry cleaning. Most
Speaker 1: other years I would have to cover my tips and
Speaker 1: that was about it. Everything else was comped.
Speaker 2: For someone who wants to sort of use the word
Speaker 2: hustler in like a positive light, I've heard you say
Speaker 2: that before, that it's it's not supposed to have that
Speaker 2: negative content. No, it's not so for someone with the
Speaker 2: hustler mentality and always finding an edge, it's it's almost
Speaker 2: funny to me that you're accepting all these gifts because
Speaker 2: they know that the sucker will keep coming back.
Speaker 1: It was cool, like I would just like I understood,
Speaker 1: like the the theoretical loss, I understand. I always understood that,
Speaker 1: like I'm giving up like one percent or something or
Speaker 1: one and a half percent. So in my head I
Speaker 1: was I was may it was okay with me because
Speaker 1: all this other convenience stuff was worth it, and I'll
Speaker 1: give up that edge. You know. Now I'm staying at
Speaker 1: the area and I have transportation back and forth whenever.
Speaker 1: All I have to do is call down and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I need to car to the Rio, and I'd go
Speaker 1: downstairs to Sky Sweets and I'd have a car drive
Speaker 1: me to the Rio. I never had to make a
Speaker 1: reservation at any of the restaurants, so so I knew
Speaker 1: I was giving up a little the best of it,
Speaker 1: but all the cool things that came with it, like
Speaker 1: made me cool. I mean it was, I'd yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: I was definitely blinded by the glitter and the glamour
Speaker 1: and uh.
Speaker 2: Do do you think do you think it's It's almost
Speaker 2: surprising that you were able to stay in your lane
Speaker 2: with video poke Werd, because there's so many stores of
Speaker 2: people who start somewhere and then it starts to cascade
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden they find themselves on the outside.
Speaker 1: No, I I there was a part of me that
Speaker 1: there was a line, like I would never put my
Speaker 1: family at risk. I knew I had bills, I knew
Speaker 1: what I had to do, and I trusted my ability
Speaker 1: to make money. So when it got bad, when when
Speaker 1: when it when it was really sideways, I could draw
Speaker 1: the line and say I'm done. Like if I blew
Speaker 1: x them out, it's like okay, that's it. I'm done
Speaker 1: for the year. I'm done till my bankroll gets back.
Speaker 1: And and I was in on a lot of things
Speaker 1: that like I'm good at making money and uh so
Speaker 1: you know, it just it would take away, like but
Speaker 1: I don't care, like, uh as long as the bills
Speaker 1: could get paid, and and it didn't matter to me,
Speaker 1: like money is just money. It's I don't I don't
Speaker 1: have nice things, like I mean, I don't. I mean
Speaker 1: I have nice things.
Speaker 2: But like there's not the goal to have nice things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like it, having a one hundred thousand dollars car
Speaker 1: doesn't make me any happier than my regular car or
Speaker 1: whatever normal car. I don't need designer things. I I
Speaker 1: wear one hundred dollars Nikes every day, and I wear
Speaker 1: T shirts and hoodies and and you know, once in
Speaker 1: a while, I'll go for an nice meal. I don't
Speaker 1: wear jewelry. I you know, it's so I don't need
Speaker 1: all that extra stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm going to put a hypothetical in front of you,
Speaker 2: and I might be way off here, but could it
Speaker 2: be that the best thing that ever happened to you
Speaker 2: was not getting a piece of full tilt.
Speaker 1: I've talked about that, so often, so yes one. So
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've told this story before, but
Speaker 1: so Full Tilt is in the later stages of building
Speaker 1: their ambassadors. Right after two oh four, two thousand and
Speaker 1: four main event, I'm on the phone. I'm living in
Speaker 1: I'm living in a house that I bought before the
Speaker 1: main event, and Howard Letter calls me. It's two days
Speaker 1: after the main Howard Letter calls me and says, Okay, Josh,
Speaker 1: we're putting Full Tilt together, and you know we want
Speaker 1: to we want to bring you in as team Full Tilt.
Speaker 1: Here there's our offer. You pay us four hundred thousand
Speaker 1: for X amount percent. I don't remember what it was,
Speaker 1: but it was a fair deal. Like it was it
Speaker 1: was whatever it was, Yeah, ownership would I would have
Speaker 1: had ownership in it. And then but we'll also give
Speaker 1: you a piece of the player's pool. So now I
Speaker 1: call my agent. He was my friend at the time.
Speaker 1: And then right after the final table, Brian Basbaw tells me.
Speaker 1: He's like, you know, I think we can make some
Speaker 1: money off you. And now he goes from friend to
Speaker 1: agent and so I talked to Brian and I was like, Brian,
Speaker 1: Howard just called me you know, four hundred thousand. And
Speaker 1: my dad had always taught me buy a house. If
Speaker 1: you can buy a hostle cash, just buy a house.
Speaker 1: So now in the two thousand and four made event,
Speaker 1: I was getting staked, so I had like one point
Speaker 1: two million. I'd never had more than one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: in my name my whole life. So now I'm weighing
Speaker 1: the decision buy a houstle cash, invest in full till, Like, look,
Speaker 1: why are we going to use your money to invest
Speaker 1: in full tilt when I can get a company to
Speaker 1: pay you three hundred thousand a year. Yeah, let's not
Speaker 1: go with full till. So I thought about it for
Speaker 1: a long time, and I was mad at Brian for
Speaker 1: a long time because I didn't realize it then. But
Speaker 1: now Brian is one of my closest friends. He was
Speaker 1: the efficient in my wedding. I'm so grateful for Brian
Speaker 1: in my life. Like he got me to the Choice
Speaker 1: Center back in twenty fifteen, which was a huge milestone
Speaker 1: in my life of realizing some things. I think my
Speaker 1: paycheck would have been two hundred and fifty thousand a
Speaker 1: month for like twenty four months before it got shut down,
Speaker 1: and I obviously would have moved to Vegas, and it
Speaker 1: would have been I was not prepared for that kind
Speaker 1: of money in Las Vegas at that point in my life.
Speaker 1: It would have been absolute distruction. It would have been
Speaker 1: bad on my kids. It would have been horrible for me,
Speaker 1: so as I'm so grateful to Brian for all that.
Speaker 2: And you bought the house.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I bought the house. Yeah, I bought the house,
Speaker 1: and yeah, yeah. I mean there's part of me that's
Speaker 1: like because I'm around Eric Lingern a lot. You know.
Speaker 1: Eric Lindren and I used to be really close friends
Speaker 1: until we had a falling out, and I'm seeing him
Speaker 1: just get two fifty a month, month after month after month,
Speaker 1: and he was fucking his money off like at warp speed,
Speaker 1: doing the dumbest things. And I wouldn't have been near
Speaker 1: on that like that level, but like it could have been.
Speaker 1: It would have been ugly and in more ways than
Speaker 1: just In more ways than just I would have been
Speaker 1: drugs for sure, women. I mean, it would have been bad.
Speaker 2: A lot of poker fans these days might not have
Speaker 2: been even around for the sort of heyday that you
Speaker 2: fully lived when the money was running from the sky
Speaker 2: in that period of time. What was that like, because
Speaker 2: because I'll give you one piece of context here, I was,
Speaker 2: I turned twenty one and eighty. First WSP that I
Speaker 2: worked was nine, and that's in nine it was still
Speaker 2: you know, five K patch deals where I had for
Speaker 2: ten k. You know, oh, you're on the main feature,
Speaker 2: we'll double it. And the agents Brian included were running
Speaker 2: like around like maniacs, patching people up. And then you
Speaker 2: know there was all the all the suites that they
Speaker 2: had at every single poker room had their own suite
Speaker 2: in the hallway. But prior to that, it must have
Speaker 2: been even crazier. What do you remember from that era
Speaker 2: and how wild it was?
Speaker 1: One main thing that that seeing the way that Eric
Speaker 1: used to gamble was just one of the wild memories
Speaker 1: that I have. Like I remember one time flying into
Speaker 1: Vague and called Eric, told him I'm headed out to
Speaker 1: the house and he's like, oh, we're at TPC Summerlin,
Speaker 1: just just come straight here. So I get to TPC
Speaker 1: Summerlin and i'm and find out where they are and
Speaker 1: I go out to number seven. Say so, I get
Speaker 1: out to number seven and I see Doyle Brunson in
Speaker 1: the bunker and then I see Doyle Brunson pick his
Speaker 1: ball up in the bunker, put a tee down, and
Speaker 1: put his ball on top of a tee in the bunker,
Speaker 1: and I was like, wait a minute, what the fuck
Speaker 1: is going on? So after the hole, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, that's Doyle gets to teaed up anywhere. And
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, okay, Doyle's seventy five years old
Speaker 1: or seventy years old whatever, you know, And Okay, Eric
Speaker 1: golf's pretty decent, so fine, it could be kind of fair.
Speaker 1: It's like, what are y'all playing for? We're playing fifty
Speaker 1: thousand a hole? Fifty thousand a hole, Like I'm just like,
Speaker 1: you mean to tell me you're playing fifty thousand a
Speaker 1: hole against one of the greatest gamblers that's ever lived.
Speaker 1: And yeah, So that like shit like that was all
Speaker 1: the time. I mean there was times that like the
Speaker 1: Golden Nugget took on like a new owner at one
Speaker 1: point where it was like a dude, I don't remember
Speaker 1: who it was that bought the and he was trying
Speaker 1: to make Golden Nugget in downtown cool again and invited
Speaker 1: some poker players down there to shoot dice. Well, we
Speaker 1: go down there and shoot dice and it's just a
Speaker 1: few poker players and Eric blows like a big number.
Speaker 1: And so it was like, I mean, money just wasn't
Speaker 1: a thing like nobody. Money was so easily to you know,
Speaker 1: came about so easily. Poker was really easy to the
Speaker 1: guys that were really good, and there was just money
Speaker 1: being thrown around from sites that like websites were paying
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty thousand and for a main event
Speaker 1: patch just just if you made the final table of
Speaker 1: the main event. For like two years, there was like
Speaker 1: five different companies that if you put their patch on,
Speaker 1: they'd pay you two fifty And that's just for one tournament.
Speaker 1: You're not an ambassador for the year. All you're doing
Speaker 1: is sticking and patch on for two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: And you were with Bodog.
Speaker 1: I was with Bodog, and I got to do some
Speaker 1: really cool things with Bodog, like I, uh, that was fun.
Speaker 1: I got to experience it with David and uh and
Speaker 1: then uh, you know that was for three years and
Speaker 1: that but that ended up going away. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it was it was fun. We we I mean,
Speaker 1: we were I was friends with you know, all the
Speaker 1: suits in the casino and so like we would go
Speaker 1: to a club and we would just have a booth
Speaker 1: and we would never pay a thing, and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of debakery. It was. It was the things
Speaker 1: that I'm not proud of you.
Speaker 2: You were also much younger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the.
Speaker 2: Sharp contrast between the big win and the money you
Speaker 2: came into and then all of a sudden the opportunity
Speaker 2: that led to is is kind of crazy when you
Speaker 2: mentioned just in the same sentence saying I never had
Speaker 2: more than hundred thousands of my name prior to that.
Speaker 2: What was the initial you know, struggle or grind, like
Speaker 2: to even get to Vegas to play in the WSOP
Speaker 2: And did you did you forget where you came from
Speaker 2: once you got rich, because it feels like you hit
Speaker 2: the ground running being a successful guy once the money
Speaker 2: showed up.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I just I don't think that I was that
Speaker 1: cerebral about it, Like I didn't think about it like
Speaker 1: I didn't I took a lot of it for granted,
Speaker 1: Like I never took a I never like stared at
Speaker 1: into space and was like, wow, this is just me
Speaker 1: every year now. I never thought of it like that.
Speaker 1: I was a very cocky kid that thought I was
Speaker 1: the best and thought I was always going to win,
Speaker 1: and thought that I belonged there. Yeah, it was. It
Speaker 1: was very contrast to my later years where I'm so
Speaker 1: grateful for every opportunity that i have, and I look
Speaker 1: around and I see all these people that you know,
Speaker 1: they come and they play the main event because it's
Speaker 1: a once in a lifetime dream and it's just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really nice to see that stuff, and because I
Speaker 1: get to be grateful about it.
Speaker 2: But then like when you first came to Vegas, there
Speaker 2: must have been perhaps a dream or an ambition, and
Speaker 2: how did you put together whatever the the idea was
Speaker 2: for the trip, because we're talking you're win your first
Speaker 2: bracelet in nineteen ninety nine. Yeah, and that was also
Speaker 2: prior to the poker boom, so poker wasn't as visible.
Speaker 2: It wasn't as it wasn't as obvious to go through
Speaker 2: the world troops.
Speaker 1: Of pokel I had been. I had been any time.
Speaker 1: So I was hustling the games in Atlanta, and anytime
Speaker 1: that I had a bankroll of like one or two K,
Speaker 1: I would get in my car and I drive to
Speaker 1: Biloxi and I'd play ten twenty until I went broke,
Speaker 1: and then eventually I'd stop going broke. Eventually I got
Speaker 1: to be good enough to where I could beat those people.
Speaker 1: And then and then a friend of mine that I
Speaker 1: knew from Atlanta, he had moved to Biloxi and he
Speaker 1: was playing a lot of poker down there, and he
Speaker 1: would go to the World Series and play cash for
Speaker 1: the whole World Series. So I talked to him, and
Speaker 1: he's like, Josh, you should really come out and try
Speaker 1: the World Series of Poker. So I came out and
Speaker 1: I won the second tournament that I played. The first tournament,
Speaker 1: the first tournament that I played, I stayed up all
Speaker 1: night playing video poker, went and played the tournament and
Speaker 1: lasted like two hours, and then slept for twenty hours,
Speaker 1: and then won the next tournament. So success came quick.
Speaker 1: Success coming quick to a kid that's already cocky and
Speaker 1: thinks that he's better than everybody else is not the
Speaker 1: best formula. I instantly thought I belonged, and instantly, no
Speaker 1: matter who I was against, I thought that I would win.
Speaker 2: That's kind of uh the attitude that will drive a
Speaker 2: lot of people to successes well in sports, right where
Speaker 2: they think they have an edge, and it also makes
Speaker 2: them carry that and and makes makes them successful in
Speaker 2: a way because it keeps them, you know, chasing whatever
Speaker 2: is coming up. I just.
Speaker 1: And one thing that I've been thinking about with lately
Speaker 1: is I'm okay with being wrong. So like and being
Speaker 1: wrong and being wrong or losing is very good for
Speaker 1: me because I learned from it and I grow from it.
Speaker 1: If you just win every time, and you just you,
Speaker 1: you have this mindset that everything I'm doing is correct.
Speaker 1: I don't need to change, I don't need to improve.
Speaker 1: But when you when you're wrong and when you lose,
Speaker 1: that's when you That's when I start questioning and and
Speaker 1: and you know, questions and questioning my my theory and
Speaker 1: my my gameplay and whatever I bring to the table evolving.
Speaker 1: That is very important for me and for me to succeed.
Speaker 2: Awesome, Well, it's been great having you on the show.
Speaker 2: Love all the stories. Hope you guys at home listening
Speaker 2: watching enjoyed having Josh. Are you on the show? I
Speaker 2: would say, please like the video again, subscribe to the channel,
Speaker 2: leave a comment down below. Follow this guy on social
Speaker 2: media for whatever he goes deep in next and I'll
Speaker 2: say until next week, we have a new guest on,
Speaker 2: so thanks for watching and we'll see you soon.