— Okay. There were three hands that I jotted down that I want to ask you about.
One of them, the action doesn't really matter; it's more that I want to ask you about what was said after the hand or during the hand.
You'll know the hand immediately. It was against Barry Greenstein.
Yes. So, I think I just did the math wrong because so many people ask me this. I think I just did the math wrong like an idiot and thought I was, you know, 52% or 51%. I wasn't.
— Well, hold on, hold on.
Tom has , Barry has . The flop is with two spades. Tom has top pair and a flush draw. They get it all in, and there was immediately a conversation about how many times you want to run it.
Then Barry says, "I don't want to run it multiple times, but we can take money back." And then Tom immediately says, "Absolutely not. I'm not doing that, but we can run it three, four, or five times."
And then Barry says, "No, run it once." Tom ends up winning the hand.
I basically always wanted to run stuff as many times as anyone wanted, right? I thought lower variance was good. I also thought trying to make people uncomfortable... I think that's part of why Phil Ivey would run it once a lot of times back in the day. I thought that while it might have given you a very slightly larger edge at the table, it had off-the-table effects that were negative.
Let me tell you how I think of it. Usually, especially the first few years I was playing, if I was at a poker table, I was one of the best people at it, right? I think we can all agree to that. I was often lucky to be at the table, especially if there are some fish, some business guys, whatever. Now, if you're in that spot, why do you need... if you're making $1,000 an hour, why do you want to try to make $1,050? Keep everyone happy so you can keep making it, and then maybe you can get into the game where you could make $2,000, and now you make $1,900, etc.
Now, let alone when you start going and playing private games, right? I would basically always let the fish choose. But now, if one in 10 or one in 20 times I really ask, it becomes a little harder for someone not to do it twice or three times. And that's actually quite a bit harder to get cheated, right? It's not impossible, but it's a little bit of protection.
People who are thinking of it so narrowly are very tunnel-visioned. It would be like if you went up to a blackjack table and said, "The count's good. I can bet two hands here, right?" And you bet a few hundred bucks and made $50 equity, and then the casino kicked you out.
— Okay, let's go to a different hand.
— You raise Doyle Brunson, and Doyle three-bets you with in position. The flop is .
And then Doyle goes all in, and you call, call with .
I don't remember that at all. I mean, send it to me in the next month.
Wait, I got a good one. I'm going to tell you what I think was my last Doyle interaction. Doyle and I never really had an issue, right? There might have been some stuff we didn't see perfectly eye-to-eye, but I think we were always amicable. The only poker book I ever read, I guess I read Gus Hansen's recently, but when I was starting, it was Super System.
I'm pretty sure the last time I saw Doyle, it was shortly before he passed. He had played some TV poker thing. I think Ted Cruz was there. Doyle was coming back, and I'm pretty sure it was the Vegas summer. I think I was grumpy or didn't feel good; something was going on. He's coming back, and he had his chair, going to Aria from the show. It was like one of the hottest Vegas days I've ever seen.
I say hi to him. We chat for 30 seconds or a minute, and I'm happy to go. Not that I'm not happy to talk to Doyle more, but it's like 110 degrees out, and he's pretty old. Doyle just wants to keep telling me about Phil Hellmuth bad-beating him.
And he goes on for five or 10 minutes. I was happy to be talking to Doyle, but at some point, I'm like, "Do you want... I can walk in with you there. Do you want to go in the AC?"
He's like, "So I can't believe he does this, he does that." And we're just sitting there for 10 minutes, and I'm thinking, "Is Doyle going to be all right?"
– Even Doyle has bad beat stories, I guess.
All right, one more hand. It's against Rui Cao and I think you obviously know what I'm going to say.
(This video is age-restricted, so you'll have to watch it on YouTube.)
I'll just recap it really quickly.
Tom opens. They're playing the 7 2 game, and it's 10k per man for anybody who wins a hand with seven deuce. Tom opens . Rui three-bets in position. Tom calls.
Flop is . Tom checks. Rui bets. Tom raises big. Rui calls.
Turn's another . Tom bets big. Rui calls.
River's a . Tom checks. Rui shoves. Tom folds.
Rui and I have known each other like 10 years or something. We're a bit friends but also competed a lot. I think of almost anyone in the world, he's one of the people I've tagged the most with a dialed-in read and also that has tagged me the most with a dialed-in read.
He owned my soul in that hand. I was just like, "What's going on?" But in the week after he actually lost back and more to me. It happened. He had been winning a ton and he was in try to own everyone's soul mode. He obviously got it right sometimes. Sometimes when he goes like this on the river, it's met with an immediate call and then all the trips come. But yeah, that hand he was super dialed in. He just had it.
— Somebody said, "Oh, you've got to shove the river." And you go, "He's going to snap-call me." And then that's when he turns over his hand, and he goes, "I was calling the river."
He's obviously not calling. I'm not saying it's not 1%, but come on.
— All right. Question from Matt:
"Do you think that poker's academic landscape is shifting with public online forums being less of a thing?"
Early Two Plus Two was a bunch of poker people trying to figure stuff out together. Remember even pretty early on, there was a time people were posting graphs to try to get a ton of people on Two Plus Two, whatever, and people would post, "I won 50 buy-ins this month. I won 100 this month." There was a time I won 300 buy-ins in three weeks at $2/$4. I was like, "I'm not posting this stuff. This is twice as good as the best one anyone has posted in the last three months. I'm not telling anyone. I don't know what it means, but I'm pretty sure I shouldn't tell no one."
Yeah, you know, I think people didn't realize there was a cost to sharing stuff or information. Now that's proving out.
— All right. You have $50 to deposit. Could you do it all over again, or would you try something else?
Yeah, I mean, GTO Wizard and these other tools ruined everything. I'm not saying I couldn't. Give me $50 and in a few years, maybe I'd run it up to $50k. I don't know. But even getting it to a million would be hard. It's just different. I was in the right place at the right time. I also had some luck.
— When you were first moving up, did you do any mental game work to be ready for the large swings? You've always seemed fearless, so I wonder.
I would say that there's a lot of stuff I do to try to do mental work.
After some stuff I went through, I talked to a therapist for many years. That was mostly related to personal stuff, but I did end up talking to him some about other things. I also would try to listen to people that had bits of expertise.
— Do you feel that helped you at the poker table?
Yeah, but especially off the table. It helped at the table, yes, but I think it helped off the table a ton. We all have our own issues and vulnerabilities and once you tell yourself the truth about them, usually they don't go away, but maybe they get 60% better or 80% or whatever. More important than that, you can see the landmine coming.
— How different do you think your life would be if you had run like Galfond on High Stakes Poker instead of absolutely destroying everyone?" Phil ran really badly on High Stakes Poker, if you don't remember.
Well, I got to play earlier than he did. For reference, for a few years, Phil and I were pretty close friends and also two of the better people at both Texas Hold'em and Pot Limit Omaha. For a number of reasons, lots of them being luck, it happened that I got in those High Stakes Poker shows and stuff earlier than Phil did.
In some respects, I think I a little bit ruined it for him because by the time he played, they were like, "Oh, these online kids aren't completely stupid, you know?" I think when I was playing some of those, it was still when that was a question. I was playing those live games a lot more than they were.
And the skill difference between any of us online was not very much for a few years. We all were friends. We all talked a lot. I think we were quite honest with each other and stuff.
— Do you see yourself playing on High Stakes Poker in the future?
Yeah, I plan to play some shows. I almost played one in November last year, but I plan to play some in the next few months on TV. Hopefully, I'll give some clearer updates soon, but I'm hoping next month or two. I think to be clear, I think I've mostly healed from whatever that was. Still, the parking the car is a little different. The three times I played poker, it doesn't feel like a huge difference, but actually being on camera feels a little... I'm a little more nervous.
— I really enjoyed this!
Thanks, man.
— Hey, you got it, brother. See you.
