Tuesday, Sep 27, 2022 • 2h, 27min

#324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker

Lex Fridman Podcast
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Daniel Negreanu is one of the greatest poker players of all time. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Backbone: https://playbackbone.com/lex to get perks with order - Audible: https://audible.com/lex to get 30-day free trial - Shopify: https://shopify.com/lex to get 14-day free trial - InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex to get 20% off - Fundrise: https://fundrise.com/lex EPISODE LINKS: Daniel's Twitter: https://twitter.com/RealKidPoker Daniel's Instagram: https://instagram.com/dnegspoker Daniel's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dnegreanu Daniel's MasterClass: https://masterclass.com/lex (MasterClass is a sponsor, use link to support podcast) Daniel's books: Power Hold'em Strategy: https://amzn.to/3ByYtJg Hold'em Wisdom for All Players: https://amzn.to/3LpgXQG Book mentioned: Modern Poker Theory: https://amzn.to/3dkJIBK PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (06:43) - Poker hands (14:39) - Poker ranges (20:10) - Game theory optimal (36:25) - Winning (42:57) - Losing (48:58) - Mental game (53:17) - Day in the life (1:02:20) - History of poker (1:06:10) - Poker solvers (1:12:46) - Online poker (1:20:49) - Greatest poker player of all time (1:40:43) - Main Event of the WSOP (1:49:14) - Advice for beginners (1:54:44) - Cheating (2:04:43) - Movies (2:10:10) - Advice for young people (2:19:29) - Love (2:24:43) - The Gambler
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Speakers
(2)
Daniel Negreanu
Lex Fridman
Transcript
Verified
Lex Fridman
00:00
The following is a conversation with
Daniel Negreanu
, one of the greatest
poker
players of all time.
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Break
Lex Fridman
06:20
Please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends, here's
Daniel Negreanu
.
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06:43
Everything everyone does at the
poker
table conveys information. So let me ask, sort of the big overview question, what are the various sources of information that you project and others project at the table that convey information?
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Daniel Negreanu
06:56
Well, there's several different things. There's the ones that are conscious and then there's the ones that are subconscious, right? Like on the conscious level, it might be something someone says, right? You know, you ask them a question and they say, "Oh, you know, you shouldn't call me here, you should". So there's the verbal tells.
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07:10
There's also the more, you know, subconscious stuff, body posture, right? The eyes, the throat, the pulse. Various things that are, you know, less controllable. I find... I use a combination of both to try to gain information, but generally, when I have somebody more comfortable, they give off more.
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07:29
When like everyone has a different approach,
Phil Ivey
likes to intimidate. I go the other way I want my opponents to be relaxed so that they'll give me more in that regard.
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Lex Fridman
07:37
So
Phil,
he likes to perturb the system, like mess with it to see what comes out?
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Daniel Negreanu
07:43
I think
Phil
has an aura about him where he wants you to know that he's watching you be afraid, be uncomfortable because when you're uncomfortable, I got you right. And that's sort of his shtick where he, you know, and people do, like when you sit at a table with
Phil Ivey
, it's... it's intimidating.
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Lex Fridman
07:59
He likes to rule by fear and you like to rule by, what is it... love?
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Daniel Negreanu
08:03
That's a really good way to put it. I never put it like that, but it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. You know, fear
Phil Ivey
, and then with me, "It's fine, don't worry your money, but you're gonna enjoy it, it's great!"
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Lex Fridman
08:12
So that's what the talking at the table is about: is to get him to be relaxed and get some of that gray area between the conscious and the subconscious to reveal something.
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Daniel Negreanu
08:22
Yeah, there's that too. And also just, you know... and this is just part of who I am anyway, like... I like to talk to people, but one of the byproducts is, the more I know about you, the more I likely know about how you think about different situations, right? "So what do you do for a living?" "Oh, I'm a lawyer. I defend criminals." Okay.
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08:36
So this guy probably spends a lot of his time twisting the truth... trying to find... you know? And then, so then, you know, you already have a mindset of like this guy might be more likely to bluff where he's probably comfortable doing that. Very subtle things like that.
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Lex Fridman
08:48
And you start to pick up cues on what nervousness looks like for this person, what the nervousness communicates, all that kind of stuff. So we're talking about physical tells here.
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Daniel Negreanu
08:58
Yeah, physical tells is a secondary thing. I was more specific, like player profiling, right? And sort of understanding the type of mind that I'm dealing with, right? So again....
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Lex Fridman
09:08
Yeah.
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Daniel Negreanu
09:08
Somebody who is a lawyer is used to trying is fine with being deceptive as part of a game, right? Whereas maybe somebody is a Sunday school teacher and you know, they don't feel comfortable, maybe they think bluffing might be dishonest, right? So they're less likely to try some shenanigans against you. So...
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09:25
And then the other thing too is what type of person is this in terms of their, you know, out like view on life, right? Are they positive? Do they feel like things go their way or they're not, right?
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09:37
There's those people that always, "Well, of course I lost, I always lose with this hand!" And those types of people you can manipulate because when a card comes that you don't, you don't have them beat, right? But you can pretend cause they'll believe it.
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09:49
Like, "Of course you beat me!" So you bet all your chips against them knowing that you can scare them because they're, they, they already feel like they're gonna lose.
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Lex Fridman
09:57
The inherent, like the cynicism.
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Daniel Negreanu
09:59
Exactly.
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Lex Fridman
09:59
Cynicism is easy to play against because you can convince them that their cards suck.
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Daniel Negreanu
10:03
When somebody believes that they're a loser or they're unlucky right and that bad things happen to them always and they never catch a break. Well, you know, you can just help them make it true. Eheheh.
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Lex Fridman
10:14
What do you think about the rounders Teddy KGB when he does the
Oreo
tell? Do players at the high level communicate that kind of stuff? Do you think it's realistic to be able to have a tell like this, that's partially subconscious?
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Daniel Negreanu
10:27
So first of all, I love
Brian Koppelman
who made the film, and I think what they were going for is something obvious to the general...
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Lex Fridman
10:34
Visually...
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Daniel Negreanu
10:34
Right? Like okay, it's very clear, you know, he eats the cookie, he doesn't eat the cookie, and it means one of the other.
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10:39
At the highest levels something that, you know, blatant you're not gonna find, you're gonna find a lot more subtle things maybe with posture or timing or you know, different things like that. But at the lower levels, you know, you know, you might see, you know, with a lot of people when they're in a hand and they bet whether they drink water in the hand is going to tell you something, generally speaking.
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Lex Fridman
11:01
It's such an intimate part of the human experience that I feel like if you have food, you're gonna reveal something about yourself through the way you eat. I feel like that's a dangerous thing to have at the table.
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Daniel Negreanu
11:09
Well the thing is, generally speaking people don't eat food in the middle of a hand, like they're not gonna bet...
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Lex Fridman
11:14
And eat
Oreos
.
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Daniel Negreanu
11:14
Then just like grab a burger, right?
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11:16
What they will do though is you know, they bet and it's up to you and then they're whether they're you know uncomfortable or they do it unconsciously, they just want to do something to make themselves look relaxed or whatever and you know, they grab a cup of water where they don't really need it in that moment, but they're trying to take your mind off of the situation.
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Lex Fridman
11:31
So they... in the movie wanted to show a simplistic version of something that does happen, something that's visually sort of clear.
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Daniel Negreanu
11:41
Yeah, because I think one of the things
Rounders
got right is that it's a
poker
movie, right? But you don't have to be great at
poker
, really understand
poker
to enjoy the movie, and that, you know,
Oreo
cookie tell, like everyone gets that like okay, that that's simple.
Share
11:54
If he would've went with something more subtle, you know, like looking your lips or looking to the right... I think it might have been lost on the audience.
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Lex Fridman
12:02
And they didn't actually explicitly say that that was a tell, I don't think.
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Daniel Negreanu
12:08
They thought they did everything to let you know, right?
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Lex Fridman
12:10
Yeah, yeah
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Daniel Negreanu
12:10
With the music and slow motion and he's staring at it and he's like, "Ha ha!"
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Lex Fridman
12:15
But they didn't actually say, you know, "This is an obviously tell". Like...
Matt Damon's
character...
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Daniel Negreanu
12:21
At the very end of it, you know, after he says, "How the fuck did you lay that down, the monster", right?
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12:27
And he's like, "You're not hungry, KGB?" Keep on... You know, he sort of references it and then he takes the cookies, he notices, he's like, "Ah, he got me!", and he breaks the, you know...
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Lex Fridman
12:39
Probably if you had that kind of tell on him, you wouldn't
Matt Damon's
character would not reveal.
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Daniel Negreanu
12:44
Well, he says in the movie, he says, "Normally I wouldn't reveal the tell, but I don't have that much time". Like, "I've got to rattle him some way". So that was one way to do that.
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Lex Fridman
12:53
How hard is it to do that to - in the
KGB's
accent - to lay down a monster in those situations in general. How hard is it to lay down a really strong hand? Just psychologically.
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Daniel Negreanu
13:06
Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's incredibly difficult for the vast majority of people, you know, part of what makes professionals really, really good is recognizing the situation that's very, very dangerous. And they need to, you know, jump ship. Like what happens to a lot of players is you get married to a hand, let's say you have pocket aces, which is the best possible hand, right?
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13:22
But the board runs out where it's 7-8-9, and then there's a jack and then there's a six, it's like you have a great hand to start, but you don't anymore. So one of the difficult things for the average player is, you know, once they've put money in, cutting their losses and saying, "Okay, let's move on to the next hand".
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Lex Fridman
13:39
It's very, very difficult thing for a lot of people at every stage of like pre-flop all the way through, be able to just make a decision at that moment.
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Daniel Negreanu
13:48
So yeah, essentially not being attached. Okay, I've already put in $40,000 in this pot and this guy's got another 20. Well, I mean, I gotta get my 40 back, right? Except you know, in some cases you have to reassess individually this situation and realize, "All right, well this is a bad investment. So I gotta cut my losses."
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Lex Fridman
14:05
By the way I should mention that you have, you have an incredible
YouTube
channel where you explain a lot of stuff, you do a podcast, you do a lot of really awesome stuff. My probably favorite thing that you've done is your
MasterClass
, that people should definitely check out
masterclass.com/lex.
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Daniel Negreanu
14:21
Ahah, there you go!
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Lex Fridman
14:24
No, but it really is one of my favorite
MasterClass
courses, but also just a great introduction overview of
poker
is great for people that, like me, who are beginners essentially. But it's probably really good for intermediate people too. I mean, there's a lot of really good detail there.
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14:39
Anyway, what are hand ranges and how do you begin to estimate the range of hands that your opponents have?
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Daniel Negreanu
14:45
Yeah. So I actually speaking to
YouTube
, I did a video on specifically this.
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Lex Fridman
14:48
Yes.
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Daniel Negreanu
14:48
Familiar with rangers and essentially, you know, back in my day, the old days, we didn't talk about
poker
that way. We're like, "I think he's got this or I think he's got that", right?
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14:57
Nobody thought of like the range of hands a player can have. So I guess the best example is imagine like all the potential hands as being a part of a grid, right? So the first player to act, they could have any one of those hands, right? Anyone randomly dealt, right?
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15:11
But let's say now that that player raised to $3,000. Okay, well you can eliminate now from this grid, a whole bunch of hands that this player can no longer have. Because if they had a two and a three, they wouldn't do that.
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15:23
So you can say, okay, he probably has a big pair. He has Ace King. You know you've narrowed the range of hands down, right? Now through every action on the flop on the turn and on the river based on the decisions they make, you narrow it down even further.
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15:37
So the range of hands is the whole... the entirety of all the possibilities that this player you believe could have and sometimes they fool you, or they have a hand that you don't expect them to have in their range. And, you know, maybe a little bit unorthodox doing some things you don't expect to throw you off. But a range is essentially all the possibilities, and it narrows...
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15:55
As by the before the flop, it's endless, player raises, okay, it's minimized, you know, a player bets the flop, okay, it's minimized further. And then by the river, you know, you can narrow down the entire range to, you know, just maybe even a few hands.
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Lex Fridman
16:08
Is it always shrinking? Or is there sort of as you get surprised? I mean, it's always just an estimate. So does it ever expand based on sort of chaotic, unpredicted, surprising behavior of the players?
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Daniel Negreanu
16:22
It really should never expand. The range of hands should always get smaller, right? Like, again, we start with the full, the full scope and then you should factor in like, okay, these are all the possible hands you can have on the flop now, right? We can't have new hands on the turn.
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16:35
And if you if you get to that point where you think, "Oh well maybe he has this hand", then you sort of misjudged his range prior. So you're not thinking clearly, it should always shrink from the full scope to, you know, hopefully just a couple.
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Lex Fridman
16:48
Well in that video you also talk about, it used to be that you would play your hand, but now you're playing a range that you're representing a range? You're not even just playing your hand. So what does it mean to represent a certain range?
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Daniel Negreanu
17:01
Yeah. So that's another big thing that's different about
poker
from you know my day to today Is that back in our day we would like put people on one hand like, "You probably have King nine or you have jacks!" or something like that. Now people are cognizant of the idea that you could have an entire range of hands. So then you ask yourself in situations.
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17:18
Alright. I know what I have but what I could have in his mind or my opponent's mind is any one of these hands, what would I do with the entirety of these hands? And so a lot of people that are trying to play optimally, you know, game theory, optimal they think in terms of what their range of hands would do rather than their very specific hand.
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Lex Fridman
17:36
So it is bluffing in that context, essentially misrepresenting the range of hands that you have, is that how you think about it?
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Daniel Negreanu
17:44
Not exactly because so an optimal range. Like if I bet the river, if I'm playing game theory optimal, a portion of my range is going to be, I have it, I got I got the best hand and a portion of my range is gonna be bluffs and they'll be balanced. So in theory no matter what you do...
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Lex Fridman
17:58
Ah, OK.
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Daniel Negreanu
17:58
No matter what you - do you call or you fold - in theory, it's just you're printing a zero, as we say, you're not getting gaining or losing any E. V. If you were to do it that way.
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Lex Fridman
18:08
What's E. V.?
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Daniel Negreanu
18:08
E. V. is expected value, right? So every play that you make, you know it either is going to in the long run, you know, make you some money or it's it's just a losing play.
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18:17
And as a professional, you try to make the fewest amount of minus C. V. plays a you can. And the only reason you would make these minus C. V. plays is potentially if you were trying to set up your opponent for something later, right? So I might make some minus C. V. plays, right? So that I can exploit you later. Building up an image...
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Lex Fridman
18:36
A player profile that's false in some way.
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Daniel Negreanu
18:38
Something that... I'm gonna plant seeds in your mind so that I can exploit them later. So for example, why would players like show a big bluff, like what would be the reason for that? They show a big bluff so that, you know, they're capable of it.
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18:50
But maybe in their mind, they're never gonna do that again. But now they think, you know, "He bluffed me last time, maybe he's doing it again". But that's what we call like a leveling more, because, you know, you can go back and forth with whether or not, okay, this guy might know that like he showed a bluff because he's never gonna bluff me again. So that's where it gets a little...
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Lex Fridman
19:08
So that's a little bit different though when we're talking about hand ranges, that's different than building up a mental model of what your opponents... what your opponents think of you and what your opponents think that you think of them and so on so forth. Are you trying to construct those kinds of mental models, and is that separate from the hand ranges?
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Daniel Negreanu
19:30
They go hand in hand, right? So if any given in a given situation, right?
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19:34
My range has this many value hands and this many bluffs. Okay, so in theory, if I want to be balanced, you know, this is my range and this is what it looks like. I'll bet this 50% of the time, but this 50% time. However, if I know that you think that I bluff too much, right, then I'm not gonna bluff as much. I'm gonna start instead of betting these hands that I would 50-50. Now, what I'll do is I'll do like 70-30 where I'm basically value betting most of the time against you, you know?
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20:01
Or vice versa. If I know you always fold because you think I have it, I'm going to hear the other way and instead of bluffing, 50-70-80% of the time to take advantage of your perception of me.
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Lex Fridman
20:10
So to be successful, do you have to construct a solid model of all the players in the game or can you ignore them?
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Daniel Negreanu
20:19
I think it's really important. Like, when I play I have in my phone I have a player profile with everyone that I play with. Whenever I pick up whether it's physical tells or tendencies they like to you know that that they have.
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20:31
And overall that's just gonna, you know, that's gonna allow you to exploit more, right? So like if I played with somebody never played before I'm probably just going to play optimally or at least as optimal as I know how until I start to you know gain some information on that player so that I can start to exploit them.
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Lex Fridman
20:48
So what's the when you say "optimally", what does optimally mean versus so game theory optimal versus exploitative?
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Daniel Negreanu
20:57
Yeah. So that's like sort of the big debate in
poker
, we call it for short G. T. O.: "game theory optimal" versus "exploitative play."
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21:04
So G. T. O., game theory optimal, is the idea that, no, like I'm gonna set up my play, so that no matter what you do you cannot exploit me. So essentially that's playing rock paper scissors, right? And throwing 33% of each every time, right? Nothing you do can beat that. Nothing. You'll never be able to beat that, right?
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21:25
Exploitative play is starting to notice that, "Okay well you know what this guy loves rock, he loves playing rock. So I'm gonna go pay for a little more. So I'm gonna take advantage of them". So I won't be through...
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21:34
But now all of a sudden when I do that, I'm no longer playing optimal because if you knew that I was making that adjustment now you can exploit me. So that's where the sort of what we call the leveling war happens, where people veer from, you know, the optimal line of, okay, 33% each for each one, you can't beat that, but you also can't win with that either.
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Lex Fridman
21:53
So you're always trying to be at the at the cutting at the leading edge of suboptimal play.
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Daniel Negreanu
21:58
You're... yeah, you're going back and forth. And listen at the highest levels like online that these guys play, like they're trying to play pretty close to like game theory optimal. Because it's very difficult to do. First of all, no human being will ever be able to compute at the level that computers can, it's just never going to happen.
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22:16
So that's where like the human mind has to come into play and say, "All right, well, you know, if I was playing against the robot, I would do" x ", but I'm not I'm playing against you. So I have to adjust".
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Lex Fridman
22:26
So this game theory optimal only look at the bedding and the hands in the current hand or does it look at the history. So if you were to play optimally-optimally, would you need to look at the history of the individual players or just every hand has taken a fresh?
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Daniel Negreanu
22:42
See that's why I love playing exploitative lee for the most part because with G. T. O. anything that's happened in the past has no bearing on this situation. It's simply based on what is the optimal play in a vacuum, in this spot. Whereas exploitatively, okay this guy bluffs way too much in these spots. So now I can make an adjustment and call more you know based on past information. G. T. O. doesn't take into account history at all.
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Lex Fridman
23:07
So like in a tournament how quickly can you construct a player profile that you've never played before?
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Daniel Negreanu
23:12
Depends on the level of the buy-in, really. Right? So the higher the buy-in, generally speaking you can assume if they're professionals that they're gonna have pretty similar profiles because you know everyone's playing if you're playing this game. Well, it looks similar, right?
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23:27
At the lower levels. You know playing say in $1,000 or $1,500 buying or less. You know within a half an hour, an hour, I have an idea of, all right, just by seeing how some players played a few hands, that...
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23:40
You know. So here's the thing with
poker
is like I can see one clue of what he did and it tells me so much about what he'll do in a vast number of scenarios.
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Lex Fridman
23:47
And you're saying at the high level people don't give too many clues, I mean...
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Daniel Negreanu
23:50
At the highest level is people are so much more similar in terms of their style of play.
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Lex Fridman
23:55
They try to find some kind of balance between the G. T. O. and the...
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Daniel Negreanu
23:58
Now with all that we've seen on TV, right? Like, people get to watch streams and whatever so you get to watch all the top players play. So if you want to learn how to play better guess what you do, you copy what they're doing essentially like, "Oh, he's only raising this much, I'm gonna do the same, they're betting this much I'm gonna do the same".
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24:12
So as a result what you end up having is sort of you know every everyone deciding like I guess it's similar in chess with openings right? People figure out, "Okay this is an opening, this is what you do". And that's it you know and then everyone similar to that and then you have of course the outliers who try to do things a little differently and confuse people.
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Lex Fridman
24:31
It seems like the outliers like we talked offline and
Magnus
in order to win -
Magnus Carlsen
- has to play sub-optimally in the openings to take it... take his opponents out of the comfort zone so he can play what he calls "pure chest" as quickly as possible, was just both short and deep calculations purely what you're looking at the board versus memorized openings and memorized lines.
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24:54
Is it the case that the best
poker
players are the ones that are able to at the right time play really sub optimally or really...
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Daniel Negreanu
25:07
Unorthodox.
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Lex Fridman
25:07
Unorthodox?
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Daniel Negreanu
25:08
Yeah, specifically there's one guy who last year sort of took the
poker
world by storm, and his name is Michael Adamo. And he was doing things, like I said, you know, most of the top pros play very similarly with the way that they, you know, construct ranges and their bet sizing and all these kind of things. He was doing some crazy things that nobody else was doing.
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25:25
So he studied, you know, sort of a different form of
poker
and it, it was unorthodox and it, you know, it throws people off, because he's in his comfort zone with these bet sizes and different things whereas everyone else, they're, they're not well studied in those spots.
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25:39
So as a result of him being unorthodox, he became like a monster and very difficult to play again because he really knew what he was doing with it.
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Lex Fridman
25:47
In tournaments or cash games?
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Daniel Negreanu
25:48
In tournaments, yeah, he was crushing tournaments. He was going against the norm in terms of what is like, you know, this is what you should do as a
poker
player in the spot. He wasn't doing that.
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25:57
He was doing what he thought was best and he was doing things outside the norm that, again, in a vacuum, you could look at that and you go, "That's incorrect that he should not do that is a clear-cut mistake." Even, you know, the solvers or the computers or game theory would say, "This is wrong what he's doing", but it's not wrong if he's doing it in a way that he's exploiting other players tendencies.
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26:17
So for example with him say he's playing far too aggressively. Okay, that's not good unless your opponents are playing way to passively. So if your opponents are playing passively, the answer is to be more aggressive with them. And that's I think one of the biggest advantages he had was he was willing to do that.
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Lex Fridman
26:33
So bet big, big pots, bluffing...
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Daniel Negreanu
26:37
So in a spot where somebody would make it 1000, he's making it 22,000. What? What is this? This makes no sense.
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Lex Fridman
26:45
And then people kind of know he has nothing, but they're too afraid to call him on it.
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Daniel Negreanu
26:49
Well, and then sometimes what happens is - this is where the leveling comes in - you're like, man, this guy's crazy, he's bluffing like nuts. Then he bets the 22,000 and you say I'm taking my stand, I call and then he shows you like, you know, four of a kind or something like that.
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Lex Fridman
27:02
Yeah, yeah.
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Daniel Negreanu
27:02
So he gets people out of their comfort zone and I really enjoy watching him play. He's probably my favorite player to watch today.
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Lex Fridman
27:08
Watching a guy like that. What aspect of his play have you been able to incorporate into your own, like what do you learn from that? Because you're constantly learning constantly adjusting.
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Daniel Negreanu
27:17
Well, no, and I love it. And as I said, so I think a lot of players sort of come to the same conclusions about this is how you play the spot, but he doesn't. And I love watching and thinking in terms of like why he's doing this. And one specific thing, for example, is... he's willing to really go for it. So in a spot where let's say he bets 2000, he knows he'll get you call 2000, right?
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27:36
But he wants it all, he wants it all. So he says, "You know what, I'll give up the 2,000 that's guaranteed, and I'll bet 50,000." And maybe if you call that now, you know, so listen, you lose the 2,000 seven, eight times, but if I get called for the 50 just once, you know, I'm profiting from that. And it also sets the, you know, the template for you to really sort of be a player that people are afraid to play against.
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28:01
He knocked me out in a tournament very early on in a huge event. And he had he was so far ahead. He was one step ahead of my thought process in hand, and he did something that makes no sense whatsoever.
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28:13
I looked it up on the computer, huge mistake, if you will, but not a mistake because he was taking advantage of my tendency.
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Lex Fridman
28:19
Do you remember the cards? Is there an example?
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Daniel Negreanu
28:20
I remember the whole thing, I remember like yesterday!
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Lex Fridman
28:23
Can you take it like, through example hand that really demonstrates it?
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Daniel Negreanu
28:27
So I'll explain the hand here. So I'm on the button and I have ace king, it's a very good hand and I raise and he calls from the big blind. The flop is 9, 7, 5 so I have nothing really here. He checks. I check behind. The turn card is an ace. He checks. I bet half the pot, there were 6,000 in there. I bet 3,000, okay?
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28:50
Now this is not a typical thing you see people do, but he raised me to 36,000: massive raise, bigger than the size of the pot! 9, 7, 5 turning ace.
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Lex Fridman
29:02
What is it representing exactly?
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Daniel Negreanu
29:03
You could have a straight, you could have 3, 3 of a kind, you could have, you know, aces up, you could have a whole bunch of hands. So check raises me big to 36,000. I call the bet. So now there's something like 75,000. The river is a five. So the board pairs, okay?
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29:19
He thinks for a while and he bets all of it, which is three times the pot. He bets 225,000, there's only 75,000 albums, right? And in theory he should never ever have a hand that can do that, right? So he confused me and I was like, "Okay, well this guy's aggressive, he likes to bluff", and all this kind of stuff. So I made the call with the Ace King and he turned over 6-8. So we had a straight.
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29:41
But here's the thing in theory that river card is bad for him when I call the turn. I have a lot of the time three of a kind, two pair that just made a full house.
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29:51
So he was risking that. And the reason he did it was because he thought I would perceive him to be bluffing a lot. So he just went for it and it worked. He was able to double up right away and knocked me out of the tournament like an hour in.
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Lex Fridman
30:04
Do you think he thought you may fall?
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Daniel Negreanu
30:06
I think specific... I think it was, it came down to this, it's as simple as this.
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30:10
He was cognizant of his image as being a wild, aggressive bluffer, right? And he was fully taking advantage of me knowing that my tendency in these spots is to be curious and I want to call and I want to see it. So he was fully taking advantage of the fact that he thought I would call too often, because otherwise his play makes no sense.
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30:29
A small bet. A medium sized bet. Those makes sense. But the bet that he made in theory is indefensible. It's just like clearly a mistake. But that's why
poker
is so fascinating because he makes this plan, It wasn't a mistake, it was above the rim. That's what it was.
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Lex Fridman
30:44
Do you think he put you on ace-something?
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Daniel Negreanu
30:46
I think exactly what he thought I had was a ace-king or something like that, you know?
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Lex Fridman
30:50
Oh that is so fun. That is so fun that the two players at such a high level, we're able to mess with each other's mind. How, how old is he? He's young.
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Daniel Negreanu
30:58
He's in his 20's, yeah.
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Lex Fridman
30:59
I feel like that takes a lot of guts to take risks like that.
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Daniel Negreanu
31:03
Well, that's what's great about him. He's certainly never accused of not having the guts to put it in. And that's scary to play against, right? The easiest opponent to play against this one who's just straightforward passive, you know, not wild and crazy. playing against him, he's gonna put you in the blender, as we say.
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Lex Fridman
31:19
How can you control what you're perceived as representing, what hand you're perceived of as representing? So if we're, if the game of modern
poker
is, others are representing certain hands through the information they convey and you're representing a certain hand range, sorry, through your play, how can you control that or is that not, is that the wrong way to think about it?
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31:43
But isn't bluffing and bed sizing and all of that kind of stuff essentially controlling what others perceive as the hand range you have?
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Daniel Negreanu
31:54
Ultimately in terms of like controlling people's perception of you, you can't fully control it, but you can do things to sway it, right? As I said earlier, showing bluffs and things like that, you know, leads your opponent to think maybe you do this more often than you're supposed to or whatever the case, maybe.
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32:10
But in terms of like controlling, you know what your opponent can think about your hands in certain spots. I don't really think it equates that way. It doesn't really, you know...
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32:20
I think what people do when they're playing a hand is they think in terms of, "All right, what does my range look like here?" Okay, so my range has value. So you look at, you know, the actual hand you have secondarily.
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32:31
So you say, "Okay, well, I could have this, I could have this actually have this", right? But I could have all these hands. So my opponent, if he's thinking on a high level he knows I could have all these hands and I have this one. So what do I do with this one, right? In the bigger scope of things...
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Lex Fridman
32:45
I guess I'm trying to understand if you're betting isn't a bet pre-flop, your bet doesn't that narrow the hand ranges? Doesn't matter what you have...
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Daniel Negreanu
32:56
Absolutely.
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Lex Fridman
32:56
Narrows the and if you bet big combined with the perception of you at the table, doesn't that represent the hand range?
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Daniel Negreanu
33:08
Absolutely.
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Lex Fridman
33:09
So like you can with betting essentially control what people estimate you to have.
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Daniel Negreanu
33:13
Sure. So that makes it so yeah, so that's that's true.
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33:16
So for example, one of the most extreme examples is we have, there's like there's there's spots where there's a bit... that's considered polarizing, right? So let's say there's 1,000 in the pot and you bet 10,000, which is crazy big, right?
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33:30
That's saying one of two things either have the absolute best possible hand or absolutely nothing, because any of the hands in the middle, I wouldn't do that with. So I'm essentially telling you when I bet that I'm like, "I either got it or, you know, I got..." I don't have a mediocre hand, like just a pair of nines or a pair of hands, I have a royal flush or have nine...
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33:50
So with my bed sizing, I can control how my opponent perceiving what my range is going to be. So, for example, you know, similarly if I bet small, right? Well, that could be a lot of hands, right? That could represent a big part of my range.
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Lex Fridman
34:05
The bigger the bet, the more the nature of the ranger, is it?
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Daniel Negreanu
34:08
The more polarize it is.
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Lex Fridman
34:09
Yeah, yeah. How far could you get without looking at your cards? Do you think? How well could you do?
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Daniel Negreanu
34:15
It depends on who I'm playing with, right? So if I was playing in a tournament with mediocre or weak players, I think I could probably do pretty well.
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Lex Fridman
34:23
But even like world class.
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Daniel Negreanu
34:25
World class, I don't think you have much of a chance, really. I mean...
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Lex Fridman
34:28
The question is trying to get it, like, how important is it, the actual hands you have versus the hands you're representing?
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Daniel Negreanu
34:35
Right. So that's the question of essentially, if you're not looking at your hand, pre-flop your basic, giving up a fundamental advantage, right? Where you're gonna be playing way sub-optimally in terms of your hand selection, right? Because you don't look at your hand, you might have a two and a three. That's not good, but now you're playing it.
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34:50
So you've invested whatever 2-3,000 bucks with absolute garbage and it's very difficult to climb that hill, right? So it's much better to actually look at your cards and go, okay, I'll throw away the two and three and I'll play the Ace King.
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Lex Fridman
35:01
Speaking of garbage, you're, you've said that 10-7 is your favorite
poker
hand to place, that's still the case, and what aspect of it is that you enjoy?
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Daniel Negreanu
35:09
Yeah, so it's one of those "viewer discretion is advised", like 10-7 I've just noticed throughout my life, you know, it's a tendency thing that I've been lucky with it. So that's just sort of...
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35:21
But it's not like I'm gonna look at 10-7 and go, "Wow, you know, I'm gonna call it all in", or anything like that, I'll play it in situations where it makes sense. But you know, it's rare because it's not a very good hand.
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Lex Fridman
35:31
But is there some aspect of belief in the magic of this hand manifests quality of play, or...?
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Daniel Negreanu
35:41
So here's the thing, it's, you know,
poker
players, some have said it's, it's unlucky to be superstitious, but we're all a little bit superstitious A little bit, you know, and so I don't know, maybe it is a case where when I have 10-7, I feel somehow energetically that you know, I'm more likely to catch something which may actually make me more apt to be aggressive and confident in the hand, but you really shouldn't let yourself do that. Like you're supposed to fall in love with any specific hands.
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Lex Fridman
36:05
Yeah, but you know, uncertainty is ruthless. It's, you know, the fact that it's a game of statistics, it can be too painful for the human psychology. So maybe you have to hold onto certain superstitions because you know, I mean there's there's a cold absurdity to the fact that you can play up... you can play extremely well and still lose.
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36:31
I mean the actually this year you've played the what what is it, 50 days of
World Series Of Poker
and it seems like at least from the perspective of me looking at it through the Internet, it seems like there's a lot of hands that you are like 70, 30, 80, 20 all in hands that you just did not... we're not going your way. That can sort of break you mentally.
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Daniel Negreanu
36:58
Absolutely. Yeah, one of the hardest things, especially about playing cash games and tournaments are different. One of the most difficult things about, you know, being a tournament player is resilience because more often than not like...
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37:08
So if there's a tournament with 1,000 people to win the tournament, you have to get all of the chips. That means there's one winner and 999 losers. So it's very rare that you actually like win all the chips.
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37:18
So you're essentially at some point in every tournament you play gonna deal with like really bad luck and disappointment. And sometimes those streaks can have you question yourself and be introspective about. Okay, so I think I'm 47 now, I think I've gotten better as time went on between distinguishing, okay, am I losing right now because of bad luck or is it fundamentally decisions I'm making are not very good, Rright?
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37:42
And that's one of the hardest things for anyone who plays
poker
to get to, right? Why am I losing? Am I losing because of my opponents being better? I'm not playing well or am I losing just because of luck? And because there's so much variance in
poker
, a lot of players can be confused with on both sides of the coin, one guys winning and he thinks he's great. He's really not. Wait till the cards break even as we say.
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Lex Fridman
38:03
You know, I think there's a lot of parallels to life as well you don't, if you get screwed over over and over. It's hard to know if you're doing something wrong or if it's just bad luck.
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Daniel Negreanu
38:13
I think they did a study, I remember it was like a study, it was supposedly related to gambling, but it was mice and they put them in a little maze and they go down these three tubes and they go down this one tube and there'd be cheese, right and then they go down again cheese three times in a row, there was cheese there, right the next time there was an electric shock, they're not cheese, the rat went, you know, the mouse went to get zapped, he got zapped, okay, came back, He kept going back to get zapped until he died.
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38:40
Like he kept going because he found cheese there, he has one there. So he continued to go chase that win despite it being, you know, now all of a sudden, not worthwhile until, until he died.
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38:52
And essentially what they said was that is essentially how they compared it to like, you know, the gambling brain and how people think about gambling, you're chasing the winds, you learn too much, you sort of over generalize the lessons learned from the times you've won.
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39:06
Yeah, like beginner's luck can be detrimental if you, if you have some early luck and you believe that this is just the way it's supposed to be forever. You know, it can put you in a delusional state where you know, you, you feel like I'm, I'm just great, but no, you're not, you're just lucky in the beginning.
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Lex Fridman
39:21
I actually played
poker
once in
Vegas
it was a, it wasn't a tournament but it was a kind of tournament-like style, I already forgot what it was, but what I do remember is I had four of a kind, so the last hand I've ever played in
poker
was I got a four of a kind and there was a couple of others with really strong hands so everybody went all in and I think you get some kind of bonus for getting four of a kind.
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39:49
Yeah, so it's something like this, I apologize if I don't know the details, but just remember winning a lot of money and I walked away from the table, I said, "I'm not playing
poker
again, this is great". Because I started to feel like this is your... I started to think even though I haven't really played
poker
at all that I'm good and I was a really dangerous feeling, and everybody was really mad for walking away from the table.
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Daniel Negreanu
40:11
One of the other things that I think is interesting about
poker
too is good is relative, right? So you could be the seventh best player in the whole world, like literally seven best player, but if you're playing with the other six, you're the sucker, you are like the worst player in the game, right?
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40:26
So like there's a lot of players for example, like the
Dan Bilzerian
of the world, right? He's not a top-level player, like you know, these guys you see on tv, but he probably makes more money than they do, because he plays with people that are far below his skill level. So part of the part of the skill of being a
poker
player is finding situations where you're profitable, you know, regardless of your skill level.
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Lex Fridman
40:48
Another connection to life. You think
Dan Bilzerian
is telling the truth about having made... what is it, 50- $100 million, hust a huge amount of money playing
poker
?
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Daniel Negreanu
40:59
Considering what I know about the private games, and the types of players who play in these private games and the stakes that they play, I absolutely believe, you know,
Dan
has made, I don't know how many millions but you know whether it's 50 whatever, but it wouldn't surprise me that if you play in these games within a year or you know, you find the right businessman who has way too much Bitcoin money, you know, and you know in one night you take him for 20 million, I absolutely could see it, I don't see any reason why...
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41:24
Listen, where he got his money initially, you know, that's up to interpretation from his father or whatever, but what has he made a bunch of money playing
poker
? Absolutely! No question.
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Lex Fridman
41:33
Do you feel like as somebody who loves the game, do you think there's something almost ethically wrong in playing people much worse than you?
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Daniel Negreanu
41:42
So yeah, that's a good question because you know, part of the reason I played
poker
and wanted to become professional was like, I want to make my mother proud, right? And I don't think she would be proud of me taking like grandma Betty's like last $5, you know, and get down the street, you know, sending her broke and taking her pension check.
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41:58
So I play at the high stakes against people who can afford it. They know who I am, I'm not a hustler, I'm not pretending I'm bad at
poker
to squeeze in. Like...
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42:05
I was thinking about this just yesterday cause I played in a game that If I played that sort of role where a lot of guys do pros that sort of play down their skill level, pretend they're just one of the guys, these guys can make, $20, $30 million dollars in a year legitimately like I believe that like if I did that, if I said, you know what, I'm gonna go down that path, get into these games in L. A. You know, and travel and do all this kind of stuff, I can make 20 year.
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42:28
But it feels a little greasy, right? I don't like to kiss anyone's ass. I don't like to ask it for any, anyone for a favor or things like that. So... but yeah, like I, I feel... Listen a rich guy who wants to sit down with a million bucks and get drunk and lose it. I have no empathy for that. I'm like, I don't have any moral qualms with that.
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Lex Fridman
42:49
So if gramma Betty is a billionaire...
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Daniel Negreanu
42:52
Sendi it, send it! Right, you know? Absolutely, why not?
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Lex Fridman
42:58
Well, let me ask you about a tough period of your recent life. You had a rough, like we mentioned the
World Series Of Poker
, losing $1.1 million over 48 days. What were you going through mentally during that?
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Daniel Negreanu
43:11
So here's the thing, you know, I do, like you said, I do a
YouTube
vlog every day, so I kind of share my thoughts and... Listen, I can edit that thing and keep out the bad stuff, but I think it's more authentic and genuine to show people the actual struggles and the pain that I go through, you know, without it. And I'd say the one thing I'm most proud of throughout the entire thing is the resilience because there are moments you see me where I'm broken, just like, I can't take it, I broke a selfie stick this year.
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43:34
Like I was filming it because you know, I do for my vlog, I smash the stick through it in the corner, right? It's just, that was my, like hit rock bottom moment, and then I put the camera on me and I was like, "Alright, let people see it".
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43:45
But mentally it was very difficult because there was a feeling of hopelessness where you can, I was making good decisions. Like, I genuinely felt like I'm playing really, really well, but every time my money went in, my opponent's money went in and say I was 60%, 70%, 80%, for about a two-week stretch. I lost every one of those and you start to wonder like I can't win if I never win, you know, in these spots.
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44:10
So it was difficult, luckily I have, you know, 20 odd years of experience and how to deal with it. And so as I said, I wake up the next day ready to go.
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Lex Fridman
44:19
So as if nothing happened.
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Daniel Negreanu
44:20
To a certain degree. Obviously, you know, the more, the more it happens in the higher binds, like the one where I broke the selfie stick, I lost 500,000 in that tournament, right? It was like the last card, it was painful.
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Lex Fridman
44:32
I think you lost.
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Daniel Negreanu
44:34
Yeah that's right, that video! I think he lost.
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Lex Fridman
44:37
What led up to the selfies stick gate? Like what... You just lost your ship for a like 100 milliseconds, like it was very brief, you're just like, what the world wasn't making any sense, like, "how mike do I keep losing" kind of thing? How did you, why did you lose your ship?
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Daniel Negreanu
44:55
You should never really think like this. But part of me felt like I deserved to win this, right?
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Lex Fridman
44:60
Yes.
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Daniel Negreanu
44:60
So part of me was like, listen, I've lost so many in the last two weeks. Alright, let you know the
poker
gods be kind to me right now, let me win this and it looked good. I was in a great situation on the flop, great situation on the turn, I'm about to be a competitor, I'm gonna be a contender in this tournament to win a big prize pool and turn the whole thing around, it's all there for the taking.
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45:19
And then boom, the last card, it just, you know, it was a couple of weeks of frustration in the moment of filming that I just had, you know, sort of a visceral reaction, you know, and I smacked, smacked the selfie stick and then like I, it was... I see a corner safe through the selfie stick on the ground.
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45:35
And of course social media blows up about how, you know, i it was a violent act!
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Lex Fridman
45:40
Yeah.
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Daniel Negreanu
45:40
You know, he was like, have you ever watched sports, have you never seen a guy on the golf course smack his club or throw their helmet? Like, you know, there was the, there's a guy
Justin Bonomo
was a
poker
player and he's a super - for lack of a better word - offended by everything.
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45:55
And he was equating my throwing a stick on the ground to violence against women, domestic abuse, and the idea that like this makes women feel unsafe to play
poker
. And so that was kind of a running joke for the last two weeks where every time I sat at the table, the guy would be like, "Oh, I feel unsafe! I feel unsafe!"
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Lex Fridman
46:11
Yeah, can you take me to hand, remember what the hand was? What was the...
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Daniel Negreanu
46:15
Yeah, so it was, you know, a player on the button raised.
David Peters
, very aggressive flare. He went all in from the blind and I had a pair of pocket tens. So I went with my tens and he had queen 10 of spades. So I was good. I have the way the best hand The flop was like King 931 spade turn was like the eight of spades. So now he has a flush draw and the river was another spade. So he got spade - spade and he made he made a flush.
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Lex Fridman
46:41
Wow! But statistically you were winning the whole time...
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Daniel Negreanu
46:43
Yeah, I was winning up until the last.
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Lex Fridman
46:45
What did he go all-in on, was it a bluff?
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Daniel Negreanu
46:47
He made what's considered like a pretty standard played in modern
poker
, where, you know, a guy raised and he was just trying to pick up, you know what was there. And he ran into a hand in the big blind and, you know, he got lucky.
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Lex Fridman
46:57
So what was the throughout the strategy of preparation and strategy of play? So you're playing so many days... are you trying to ignore the results and stick to a particular strategy?
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Daniel Negreanu
47:10
Yes. For the most part, you know, what I'm trying to do is like if I formulate a strategy for the whole seven weeks because there's a very degree of buy-ins too. Like you have small ones like 1500 then you got like $250,000 buying.
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47:23
So I map out the seven weeks and right, I'll give little bit of mental energy to the 1,500 which means I'll be on my phone, I'm not gonna, I don't care as much about this one. But the 250K fully engaged, fully focused, you know, up against obviously the higher the buying, you know, super top competition. And you know, as far as strategy goes, focusing on each day, playing the best I can not the result like because if you focus on the result, your focus in the wrong place, your focus should be on the decisions you actually make right and if you're making good decisions consistently, you have to continue to do that.
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47:58
The frustrating part is this with
poker
, unlike chess or other things, making the best possible decision doesn't mean you win. Often you lose, you don't with chess.
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Lex Fridman
48:08
Well as
Magnus Carlsen
has also talked about that, I guess there's some nondeterministic thing about chess too, given the limited cognitive capacity of the human mind. So he says that the
World Championship
should have 20, 30, 40, 50 games, not not the few that they have, it's too low of a sample. So in that sense, the high stakes
poker
tournaments are very too low sample.
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Daniel Negreanu
48:37
Sure, yeah! Well, when you think of the
World Series Of Poker
, so you as you said, I lost about one million right In one tournament, that was 500,000. So then you know, like a few others here hi buying tournament. So the sample or the amount was, you know, 40, 50 total tournaments with, you know, high variance and if you don't run well or do well in the highest buy-ins, you know, you're gonna have a losing summer.
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Lex Fridman
48:59
So you did a podcast on the mental game a few years ago, but that's just something you really care about. So what aspects of the mental game in
poker
is most difficult to master?
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Daniel Negreanu
49:08
I think the most difficult thing for people is self-awareness, right? And and resilience.
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49:13
Self-awareness to know, "Okay, so, you know, again, is it, am I not doing as well as I could be because of luck or is there things that I can learn?" And I always look to mistakes as opportunities. I really do when I make a mistake in a
poker
hand, right? Call it a breakdown or whatever.
Share
49:29
That's where breakthroughs happened. I'm like, "Oh! You know what I could have done here, I could have done this and that would have been really good and I'm gonna do that going forward."
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49:38
So I think like with anything, you know, when you start out playing golf, like your goal is to just hit the ball, right? Then you try to hit it in the air, then you're trying to hit it straight, then you're trying to hit it on the green, then you're trying to hit it close to the green, to the point where the pros get where you know, they're so finite, they're trying to hit it 63 yards and spin it back three yards.
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49:60
It's imperfect. Like they don't hit the perfect shot because the perfect shot for them is it goes in, but they try and make the mistakes, smaller and smaller and smaller.
Poker
is the same. We all make mistakes consistently: the goal is to minimize, especially the big ones.
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Lex Fridman
50:16
What was the lowest point for you psychologically in
poker
in general? Actually, maybe it was this year, maybe it was in general? Do you remember there was times in your life - speaking of resilience - that were extremely difficult to you mentally?
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Daniel Negreanu
50:30
Yeah. So early on, you know, as basically, as you know, as a teenager, I was playing in
Toronto
and then in my early twenties I'm like I'm going to
Vegas
right? And I thought I was the best 21 years old and like, "Check me out", right?
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50:42
Showed up with $3,000. Later, you know, money is gone. And I remember, I remember the moment vividly it was at the
Binion's Horseshoe
was about 3:00 in the morning, I was playing with seven other people, you know, I lost my last chips, I went to the bathroom, washed up, got out, they all left. And it was like a moment where I realized like, okay in
Toronto
, I was the big fish, but here they were playing because of me, I was the sucker.
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51:09
I remember every one of their faces and then I remember not having enough money to get back to the budget suites where I was staying. So I walked, didn't you know, I walked and in that moment I was thinking about like, is this something that I'll be able to do, am I good enough? You know, what am I gonna do now? I'm in
Vegas
, I don't know anybody and I have no money, right? So that was certainly like what felt like a low point walking back behind Paradise and Twain, which is not a great part of town!
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Lex Fridman
51:35
Where did you find the strength to answer yes to that question that you can, you can still do good?
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Daniel Negreanu
51:42
I think this has been sort of a pattern in my life where like in the evening after it happens like I don't have it, you know, I don't have that feeling of hope or you know, resilience, if you will, I'm allowing myself to experience despair, which is exactly where I'm at. But then a good night's sleep, wake up the next morning and just within me, I have that inner confidence to say, "You know what, fuck it, get back on the hobbyhorse, find a way to make it work", right?
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52:08
And I do, but I do believe it's really therapeutic and worthwhile to allow yourself to feel and venice so many people today, The
"Instagram
culture world", I call it, it's like they want to act like they're perfect, nothing bothers them bullshit, right? You're pissed off, it's okay to show it.
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52:23
Emotion is fine, we all have it, there's no reason you have to express it. Obviously you don't want to have guys throwing selfie sticks around the room every time they lose a pot, right? But you know...
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Lex Fridman
52:34
You don't want anyone to feel unsafe.
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Daniel Negreanu
52:35
Yeah, exactly!
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Lex Fridman
52:37
You're saying, there is a culture of saying, you know, stay positive, all this kind of stuff. But you know, when you feel despair, don't resist it, write it out.
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Daniel Negreanu
52:46
Because it doesn't go away, right? That feeling, you know, you think you put it away in the pit of your stomach and you think, you know, it's gone, it's not, it's still there. Let yourself go, "Fuck!" you know, it's all right. You know, there's nothing wrong with being a little bit emotional because once you've experienced it, you let it out now you can move past it.
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Lex Fridman
53:03
Yeah, and I feel like as long as your brain chemistry can support it, you can usually learn a good lesson from it. Like you become stronger, you become more resilient through it. It's really interesting and a good night sleep can really help.
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Daniel Negreanu
53:16
Absolutely, yeah.
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Lex Fridman
53:17
So through 2022 and in general, what is a perfect day in the life of
Daniel Negreanu
look like when you're like on a day, when you have to play a big game, big turnaround game and so on. So like what, what time do you wake up, what to eat for breakfast?
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Daniel Negreanu
53:34
So, my life is to fold like one when I'm playing hardcore, and one when I'm not and they look very different, right? So I'll give you a quick glimpse of like when I'm not up at 10:00 you know, breakfast in the gym at noon, you know, post-workout, meal, coffee, walk, like... you know, I try to get, that's what I do for cardio. You know, it's very like homebody. I don't leave the house, It's very like boring and mundane, right?
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Lex Fridman
54:03
Long distance walks. So like, what do you do when you're walking? You're thinking about stuff?
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Daniel Negreanu
54:07
Well, no, honestly I just walk on the treadmill, I try to get 15,000 steps a day and I just walked for basically like an hour while I watch a show or I'm on the computer or something like that, you know, I'm on the treadmill.
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Lex Fridman
54:16
Why walking, not running?
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Daniel Negreanu
54:18
Well, I mean, I think walking, I mean I do a little bit of running, but hardly any. I don't enjoy it. Like I just like walking and frankly for fat loss when it's usually what I'm doing after big
poker
tournaments is getting back in shape. That walking ideal for it, right?
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54:33
So essentially it's like the, during the
World Series Of Poker
, all my sort of structured life thrown out the window.
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Lex Fridman
54:41
There's no walking.
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Daniel Negreanu
54:42
There's very little walking, there's very little working out, there's very little anything. I go into the
World Series
, you know, like this year I went in around 157 and I expected to gain about 10 pounds during the
World Series
.
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54:53
Not good pounds, wasn't muscle, but that's about what I did 165 and then I spend the next month trying to, you know, lose it. But during the
World Series
, when I'm playing, the most important thing without question that I have to focus on - and this is why I stopped focusing on working out all this stuff - is sleep. If I'm not rested, I'm useless.
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55:11