The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #526 - Isaac Haxton

00:00:03.000 Why...

00:00:04.000 Hello, ladies and gentlemen.

00:00:06.000 This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Audible.

00:00:10.000 Audible is the internet's leading provider of digital audio entertainment.

00:00:17.000 As far as audiobooks, radio broadcasts, lectures, comedy specials, basically...

00:00:26.000 They have no peer.

00:00:27.000 There is no one like Audible.

00:00:28.000 Audible rules.

00:00:29.000 It is my favorite place to download audiobooks.

00:00:32.000 They have over 150,000 titles.

00:00:36.000 So essentially, you could probably do it until the day you die.

00:00:41.000 If you really thought about it, like how many books do you read in your life?

00:00:45.000 Do you think you read 150,000 books?

00:00:49.000 Probably not.

00:00:49.000 But you could have 150,000 books read to you and it's much less effort.

00:00:53.000 And you can help people you read, but you're not really reading.

00:00:55.000 You know what I mean? 0.99

00:00:56.000 It's like you can read while doing other shit. 0.98

00:01:00.000 And that's the cool thing about audiobooks. 0.99

00:01:01.000 If you're commuting, if you're on a plane.

00:01:03.000 I have stopped in my driveway and listened to a book for like an extra 15-20 minutes.

00:01:11.000 Why?

00:01:11.000 I don't make the best decisions in this life, but I enjoy it.

00:01:16.000 I really enjoy Audible, too.

00:01:17.000 If you go to audible.com forward slash Joe, you can get a free audiobook, and you can get a month, a free month of Audible service.

00:01:25.000 It is really an excellent, excellent resource when it comes to audiobooks.

00:01:32.000 If I could recommend one to you, hmm, what's a good one to recommend, Jamie?

00:01:36.000 Burt Kreischer's Life of the Party was pretty good.

00:01:38.000 What a great suggestion!

00:01:41.000 Read by Burt.

00:01:42.000 And the audiobooks, by the way, are crushing the reading books. 1.00

00:01:47.000 Because much like Burt, his fans do not read shit. 0.98

00:01:52.000 But again, you can get all the information. 0.99

00:01:54.000 It's exactly as if you read it.

00:01:57.000 So go there, pick up The Life of the Party by our pal Bert Kreischer and enjoy the 150,000 plus other titles at Audible.

00:02:06.000 A fantastic resource for people who enjoy audiobooks.

00:02:10.000 That's audible.com forward slash Joe for your free audiobook and 30 free days of audible service.

00:02:18.000 Like how I did that?

00:02:20.000 Audible service.

00:02:23.000 Welcome to my show!

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00:02:55.000 Like when people say that, like the beginning of comedy clubs, they do this thing where they go, alright everybody, you ready for the show? 1.00

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00:10:02.000 And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes the commercial aspect of this podcast.

00:10:08.000 Now, we are going to talk to Isaac, a.k.a.

00:10:12.000 Ike Haxton, super wizard poker player.

00:10:15.000 Strap yourself in, ladies and gentlemen.

00:10:17.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:10:20.000 Train by day!

00:10:21.000 Joe Rogan Podcast by night!

00:10:22.000 All day!

00:10:27.000 Alright!

00:10:30.000 Isaac Haxton, a.k.a.

00:10:31.000 Ike.

00:10:32.000 We're going to go with Ike.

00:10:33.000 Ike is good.

00:10:34.000 Is that what your friends call you?

00:10:35.000 Yeah.

00:10:35.000 I want to be your friend.

00:10:36.000 All right.

00:10:36.000 Let's go with Ike.

00:10:37.000 Let's go with Ike.

00:10:39.000 One of the things, you are a big-time poker player, travel all over the world, and there's a lot of people on my message board that are big poker fans and very excited to have you on the podcast.

00:10:50.000 One of the things they asked me to differentiate, because I bring this up all the time, That a lot of poker players are gamblers.

00:10:59.000 And a lot of poker players are kind of degenerate gamblers.

00:11:01.000 But poker is not really a gambling thing.

00:11:06.000 It's more of a game of intelligence and a game of information and a game of strategy.

00:11:13.000 Is that true?

00:11:14.000 Yeah, well, it's gambling in the sense that on any given day, you win or lose money.

00:11:21.000 If you're playing for high stakes, you win or lose a bunch of money.

00:11:24.000 But it's not gambling in the sense that...

00:11:30.000 It's outside of your control.

00:11:32.000 It's not like going to the roulette wheel and saying, I'm in a red sort of mood.

00:11:37.000 Let's bet on red and see what happens.

00:11:40.000 So it's gambling in the sense that there's money at stake.

00:11:44.000 It's not gambling in the sense that you are submitting yourself to chance and just seeing what happens.

00:11:51.000 How did you get involved with, well, first of all, you're, what are you, 28 years old?

00:11:55.000 Yeah.

00:11:55.000 28 years old, and you are a world-traveling poker player.

00:11:59.000 I mean, that is, first of all, awesome.

00:12:01.000 I love it.

00:12:02.000 Congratulations.

00:12:03.000 It's been a lot of fun.

00:12:03.000 I'm sure.

00:12:05.000 Congratulations on really being able to craft that kind of a life, because I think that's excellent.

00:12:09.000 It's really cool.

00:12:11.000 So, how did you get started, and how did you make this leap to becoming this, you know, internationally known professional?

00:12:19.000 Well, I've been sort of an obsessed game player my entire life.

00:12:24.000 I started playing chess when I was four.

00:12:26.000 I started playing pretty seriously in tournaments when I was like six.

00:12:30.000 Played chess pretty seriously from six to maybe thirteen or so.

00:12:36.000 I was never really great at chess.

00:12:39.000 Probably my greatest accomplishment as a chess player is 8th place in the New York State 3rd grade and under tournament.

00:12:47.000 So I played chess seriously for a while.

00:12:50.000 Around 13, I reached this point in my chess career where it got really boring, where I was just really solidly the second best player in the county.

00:13:00.000 And every time I'd go to a chess tournament, I knew what was going to happen.

00:13:03.000 I was going to beat all these kids I was a lot better than.

00:13:06.000 I was going to play this dude, Nick, in the final, and I was going to lose.

00:13:09.000 Why would Nick beat you?

00:13:11.000 It was better than me.

00:13:12.000 He studied harder and he had a sharper chess mind than me.

00:13:16.000 Something that I never really got past in chess was that it's really easy to make one small mistake and end the game.

00:13:28.000 And poker is a little more forgiving of slight oversights. 0.98

00:13:32.000 Like in chess, You think through a move, it looks pretty good, you make the move, and then right after you made the move, oh fuck, bishop takes knight and I lose.

00:13:44.000 And poker is not quite the same. 0.97

00:13:47.000 In poker, you make a comparable blunder, And you bet the river and you think this is a pretty good bet.

00:13:55.000 You're going to beat a bit more than half the hands that call you. 0.96

00:13:59.000 And then you think, oh shit, actually he can also have played King Jack of Spades this way. 0.97

00:14:05.000 This was a slightly bad bet rather than a slightly good bet. 0.97

00:14:08.000 And it doesn't end your tournament to have made a slightly wrong play in poker the same way it does in chess.

00:14:16.000 So I think my brain is set up...

00:14:19.000 It's better to be an extremely good poker player than an extremely good chess player.

00:14:23.000 Would it be a relevant analogy to say that playing poker is more of a game where you restart every time, whereas chess is like a sword fight.

00:14:38.000 You get one chance to not get stabbed.

00:14:42.000 If you get your arm cut off, you're gonna die.

00:14:44.000 Yeah, that is actually a pretty good analogy.

00:14:46.000 So when you play poker, are you the type of guy, like, when you, like, read a person and you have an idea that you have a big advantage, will you then take a big chance?

00:15:01.000 Will you then gamble?

00:15:02.000 Or are you a conservative, calculated sort of a guy?

00:15:07.000 Um...

00:15:11.000 You don't want to give up your hand.

00:15:13.000 He doesn't want to tell people how he thinks.

00:15:15.000 I see what he's doing.

00:15:16.000 I see what you're doing.

00:15:17.000 You're playing chess right now.

00:15:18.000 You're going back and forth. 1.00

00:15:19.000 Hmm, I should maybe shut the fuck up. 0.98

00:15:23.000 No, I'd say I'm more in the former category. 0.98

00:15:27.000 I mean...

00:15:28.000 So you're more of a gambler guy.

00:15:30.000 In poker, you have to make the best of the edges that you're given.

00:15:37.000 You...

00:15:39.000 Aren't presented with constant unlimited opportunities to get an advantage, so when you are presented with one, yeah, you have to...

00:15:49.000 So there's a certain amount of courage that's involved in playing the game of poker.

00:15:53.000 It's not something that you chip away at necessarily.

00:15:56.000 It's something that when the opportunity presents itself and you believe that you have it, do you have like a green light that goes off in your head or do you have an instinct that you sort of rely on?

00:16:07.000 In terms of like the risk management part of what you're talking about, a lot of that is actually...

00:16:15.000 Yeah.

00:16:26.000 Yeah.

00:16:27.000 Yeah.

00:16:37.000 That's a game where losing one hand for the maximum amount isn't going to ruin my life, isn't going to have a big impact on anything.

00:16:48.000 So in that context, I can go ahead and risk the full $5,000 that's in front of me on a half a percent edge because that's how you make money playing poker.

00:17:02.000 You identify an edge and you exploit it.

00:17:08.000 So, in terms of, like, courage and risk management, the, like, risk management thing comes in before you're actually playing a hand.

00:17:16.000 And then, in the course of playing a hand, you have already made decisions that put you in a position to be comfortable taking the maximum amount of risk that you could be confronted with after that point.

00:17:31.000 Is what I'm saying making sense there?

00:17:33.000 Yes, totally makes sense.

00:17:34.000 So, you're more inclined to take a big chance if you're betting a small amount of money.

00:17:38.000 That's what you're saying.

00:17:38.000 A small amount of money going in.

00:17:40.000 Now, when you go...

00:17:41.000 What's, like, the biggest buy-in that you've ever had to play?

00:17:46.000 For a tournament, it would be a million dollar buy-in.

00:17:50.000 Oh! 0.60

00:17:51.000 Jesus, Louisa! 1.00

00:17:54.000 Wow!

00:17:55.000 So, when you do that, I see you're sponsored by PokerStars.net.

00:18:00.000 Does PokerStars pay for a portion of that?

00:18:04.000 Do they give you a piece of the action?

00:18:06.000 How does that work?

00:18:08.000 PokerStars does not.

00:18:10.000 But what I... Well, part of my contract with PokerStars does involve getting a certain amount of money per year that is earmarked toward buying into poker tournaments.

00:18:21.000 But they're not like...

00:18:25.000 It's not explicitly staking me in the poker tournaments.

00:18:27.000 It's just my compensation for representing the company.

00:18:32.000 So your compensation is essentially up to your management discretion.

00:18:35.000 So when I play something like a million dollar buy-in poker tournament, what I do is I take on investors who are typically other professional poker players and they buy shares of me in the tournament.

00:18:48.000 They put up a fraction of the buy-in and if I win, they get a fraction of the winnings.

00:18:53.000 Oh, that's fascinating.

00:18:55.000 So you guys kind of back each other?

00:18:57.000 Yeah.

00:18:58.000 Hmm.

00:18:58.000 So if you go into a poker tournament and there's maybe 20 guys, it's conceivable that you and the guy you're playing against in the finals have a piece of each other?

00:19:08.000 Yeah.

00:19:09.000 That happens somewhat often.

00:19:10.000 That's a big thing in the world of pool.

00:19:13.000 But pool, they do it in billiards, professional pool, because they don't make as much money.

00:19:18.000 So they kind of make a saver, that's what you call it.

00:19:24.000 So say if you and I were to play in the finals and it was a major pool tournament, It depends on the agreement, but we might make a 50-50 or 60-40 split.

00:19:33.000 So we would play our best, but you would know that no matter what worst case scenario, even if you lost, you were going to get 40% of the purse.

00:19:40.000 Right.

00:19:41.000 The same thing also happens in poker tournaments, in addition to what I was describing where people sell action before the tournament starts.

00:19:49.000 There are also often deals made toward the end of the tournament.

00:19:53.000 So I was recently playing a tournament in Las Vegas, and when we got down to three players left, it was me and two other guys who I think are also really strong poker players.

00:20:03.000 And we agreed that rather than play it out, we are going to just divide up the remaining prize money according to how many chips each of us have and call it a day.

00:20:17.000 Wow.

00:20:19.000 Does that bother people?

00:20:21.000 Is there an ethical quandary involved in that?

00:20:26.000 I would say there's a vocal minority of people who are bothered by that, and that most people are not bothered by it at all.

00:20:34.000 That's something you see happen everywhere from the very highest stakes tournaments in the world to a weekly $20 tournament that...

00:20:43.000 At some point, people will agree to a chop.

00:20:46.000 It can be a partial chop where they just take out some of the money, like the saver sort of thing you were talking about, or it can be a complete chop where they just split up the prize pool and call it a day.

00:20:55.000 But the vocal minority, what is their argument?

00:20:57.000 Like, what do they say?

00:20:58.000 They say, you guys are ruining it.

00:20:59.000 This is like, poker's supposed to be about gambling and chance, and that's where the excitement comes in.

00:21:05.000 That, or it's supposed to be a pure competition.

00:21:08.000 It's not supposed to be about this deal-making.

00:21:10.000 It's supposed to be, you go in, you compete, the best or luckiest player wins, and that's the guy who gets all the money.

00:21:17.000 Now, the vocal minority, are they the spectators?

00:21:20.000 Are they the actual players themselves?

00:21:23.000 Are they the commentators?

00:21:25.000 More often, it's the spectators and the media than the people who are actually in there playing on a day-to-day basis.

00:21:33.000 Same thing with billiards.

00:21:34.000 Yeah.

00:21:35.000 That's interesting.

00:21:36.000 So the spectators feel like it's not as exciting for them?

00:21:40.000 Is that the idea?

00:21:41.000 Mm-hmm.

00:21:42.000 Hmm. 1.00

00:21:42.000 So they want to see one guy win a million bucks and one guy win dog shit. 1.00

00:21:46.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:21:47.000 I mean, that's understandable, right?

00:21:49.000 I guess.

00:21:50.000 Yeah, I guess.

00:21:52.000 Yeah, I don't know, man.

00:21:53.000 I mean, I think I'm too close to stuff like this to see it objectively because I'm friends with so many pool players and because I don't, you know...

00:22:03.000 I think people should be compensated.

00:22:05.000 I hate the idea of a winner-take-all thing.

00:22:08.000 Right.

00:22:08.000 There was a big pool tournament called the Tournament of Champions, and every year the winner gets a good pool.

00:22:16.000 I think it's like 50 grand.

00:22:18.000 It's not much for poker. 1.00

00:22:19.000 But everybody else gets dog shit. 1.00

00:22:23.000 So of course people do this. 1.00

00:22:24.000 They chop it up.

00:22:25.000 Yeah, they definitely chop it up. 0.99

00:22:27.000 So the people that are the commentators and the spectators, like, you say, a vocal minority, is it only a small percentage of the commentators and spectators?

00:22:37.000 It's hard to tell, because the people who don't object aren't saying anything about it, but I would guess, yeah, it's only a small percentage.

00:22:44.000 Now, there's no rules against it, though, right?

00:22:47.000 It's not like something you guys have to do on the sneak tip.

00:22:50.000 There are some tournament venues that won't enforce the chop, which means at the majority of tournament venues, you say to the tournament director, we've agreed to this chop, pay each of us this amount of money.

00:23:06.000 At a minority of venues, you can't do that.

00:23:09.000 You say that, the tournament director says, I don't want to hear it, you have to play the tournament out.

00:23:13.000 And then you do it on your own.

00:23:29.000 Very rare.

00:23:30.000 Very rare.

00:23:31.000 I can't think of a circumstance where it was like a handshake deal chop at the final table and then somebody just didn't pay.

00:23:38.000 That would be a disastrous thing for that person.

00:23:41.000 There have been a handful of cases where somebody has made a backing deal and then refused to pay out their backer.

00:23:50.000 Whoa.

00:23:50.000 There was a really high profile one with the guy who won the World Series of Poker main event several years ago.

00:23:56.000 Jamie Gold got taken to court by a guy who claimed to have a backing arrangement with him and had like voicemails saying, yeah, I'm giving you this amount of money for 50% of your winnings.

00:24:10.000 And then after the fact, Jamie Gold's like, nope.

00:24:13.000 Why did he say that?

00:24:15.000 I don't know.

00:24:16.000 He was a pretty weird guy.

00:24:18.000 Was?

00:24:18.000 Is he dead?

00:24:19.000 No, still is.

00:24:22.000 He's a pretty weird guy who I have considerably less exposure to lately because he has more or less moved on from the poker world.

00:24:30.000 Well, Jesus Christ, he won the World Series of Poker.

00:24:33.000 Won the World Series of Poker main event, had a big dispute with a guy who claimed to be entitled to a big share of his winnings.

00:24:40.000 And then just faded out of poker because of that?

00:24:43.000 Not because of that.

00:24:45.000 Lost back a lot of what he'd won playing in tournaments and cash games, and... 1.00

00:24:51.000 Just decided, fuck this game. 1.00

00:24:53.000 Pretty much, yeah. 1.00

00:24:54.000 How do you get to...

00:24:55.000 I just would imagine that if you got so good that you win the World Series of Poker, that's like a very profitable way to...

00:25:05.000 To spend your time.

00:25:07.000 Well, that's the thing, is that not everyone who wins the World Series of Poker main event is an excellent poker player.

00:25:15.000 Really?

00:25:15.000 It's one tournament on the order of 6,000 players, and the best player in the tournament is maybe 10 times as likely to win it as the worst player in the tournament, but it's one tournament.

00:25:30.000 So, it's possible that a middling tournament player can win the World Series of Poker?

00:25:35.000 Happens all the time.

00:25:36.000 Wow!

00:25:37.000 I never knew that.

00:25:38.000 Oh, yeah.

00:25:39.000 That's crazy.

00:25:41.000 See, that never happens in pool.

00:25:43.000 No. 0.99

00:25:44.000 Yeah, you're not going to beat, like, Earl Strickland in the finals if you suck. 0.99

00:25:48.000 That's so crazy. 0.97

00:25:50.000 And that's why you can play poker for high stakes, and it's pretty hard to find a high stakes pool game without some careful handicapping.

00:25:56.000 Yeah.

00:25:58.000 Wow.

00:25:58.000 I never knew that.

00:26:00.000 That's fascinating.

00:26:00.000 I always felt like the guy who won was the best guy, or there's like a handful of best guys, and they swap positions, and it's about who's focusing more.

00:26:09.000 No, I mean...

00:26:13.000 This year, a guy made the World Series of Poker final table for two years in a row.

00:26:18.000 That hasn't happened in about ten years.

00:26:21.000 Oh, that's interesting. 0.99

00:26:22.000 I need to pay attention more to this poker shit. 0.99

00:26:25.000 Now, what about gambling in Vegas? 1.00

00:26:27.000 Do they put a line on who's going to win?

00:26:31.000 Yeah, you can make bets on the outcome of the tournament, but they only...

00:26:38.000 Whereas for, like...

00:26:42.000 A football game, if the Giants are playing the Falcons, you can bet the money line and you can get 2-1 on the Giants if they're the underdog,

00:26:58.000 or lay 2-1 and take the Falcons.

00:27:01.000 For poker tournaments, the bookmakers are not that confident that they know the right prices, and they only put up one side.

00:27:08.000 If you want to bet on one guy to win the tournament...

00:27:11.000 They'll give you a price, but it's a really bad price, and you're going to lose making that bet, and you can't take the other side.

00:27:20.000 Betting on the outcome of poker tournaments is a pretty small market.

00:27:24.000 Yeah, because that's another thing they tried with Poole, but they took...

00:27:28.000 The one time they did it in Vegas, they had this big tournament, and this one guy, Mike LeBron, who's an excellent player, but was like the 40-to-1 underdog.

00:27:37.000 So they all dumped to Mike LeBron, and they all bet on Mike LeBron, and Mike LeBron wound up winning the whole tournament.

00:27:43.000 I can't. 1.00

00:27:43.000 And then, you know, of course, Vegas is like, alright, you fucking short-sighted assholes, we're done. 1.00

00:27:49.000 Right. 1.00

00:27:49.000 You know, oh, the 40-1 guy won, and everybody's missing balls they should never fucking miss, and it was just so ugly. 1.00

00:27:56.000 Yeah, that, I mean, that's a potential issue any time you're betting on the outcome of a sporting event that it could be fixed. 0.94

00:28:04.000 Especially a sporting event where the players don't make so much money.

00:28:08.000 That's the thing.

00:28:09.000 When you get to the small market stuff like pool where the players aren't making a lot and you can bet more on the outcome of the tournament than the tournament itself is worth, that's obviously creating a bad situation.

00:28:19.000 So if World Series of Poker comes along and Vegas puts up a line, I could bet on you to win the whole thing.

00:28:25.000 Yeah.

00:28:25.000 But that's basically it.

00:28:26.000 I couldn't bet on you against individual players and individual games or...

00:28:36.000 Right.

00:28:38.000 Right.

00:28:53.000 Now, a lot of these poker players...

00:28:54.000 Oh, you couldn't bet, like, 50 grand or something crazy.

00:28:57.000 Now, a lot of these poker players are, like, serious, crazy gamblers.

00:29:01.000 Like, they'll gamble on golf and they don't even play golf. 0.99

00:29:03.000 Like, they'll do shit like that. 1.00

00:29:04.000 Yeah, yeah. 1.00

00:29:04.000 Like, a million dollars on a game of golf. 1.00

00:29:07.000 Who's, like, the nuttiest when it comes to that stuff?

00:29:10.000 Um...

00:29:13.000 That's a good question. 1.00

00:29:15.000 Phil Ivey does a lot of nutty shit with that, right? 0.99

00:29:17.000 Phil Ivey comes to mind, but the thing with him is he's a real sharp guy when it comes to betting on stuff. 0.99

00:29:24.000 He is not as crazy as he'd want you to think.

00:29:30.000 With golf, for example, he started playing higher and higher stakes golf with people, and...

00:29:39.000 Was losing.

00:29:40.000 Everybody's like, Phil's terrible.

00:29:41.000 We all gotta gamble on golf with Phil.

00:29:43.000 He was dumping.

00:29:44.000 He wasn't dumping.

00:29:45.000 He was legitimately bad. 0.96

00:29:46.000 But then what he did was he went and got coached by Tiger Woods' coach and got really fucking good and came back and played for huge stakes against a couple of guys and smashed them. 0.99

00:30:02.000 And just midway through the round, they're like, this is bullshit. 0.99

00:30:06.000 What's going on? 1.00

00:30:07.000 When did Phil get good?

00:30:11.000 So how did he do it on the sneak tip? 1.00

00:30:13.000 Did he put, like, a mask on and fucking... 0.99

00:30:15.000 I mean, everybody knows what Phil Ivey looks like if you're a pool player, or poker player, rather. 0.99

00:30:20.000 What would he need to be sneaky about?

00:30:22.000 Like, where he practiced.

00:30:23.000 Oh, yeah.

00:30:24.000 I mean, I guess he, like...

00:30:27.000 Took a vacation to Hawaii or something.

00:30:29.000 Oh, okay.

00:30:30.000 See, wouldn't it take more than, like, one vacation?

00:30:32.000 Must be a really sharp dude.

00:30:33.000 I mean, like, a month-long plan every day.

00:30:36.000 Yeah.

00:30:36.000 And then came back and kicked some...

00:30:38.000 See, I don't...

00:30:39.000 The golf thing is so bizarre to me.

00:30:41.000 I would think there's so many variables involved in golf.

00:30:44.000 That, like, the courses themselves are variable, the wind is variable, there's so much going on, like, figuring out where the ball lies, and then trying to figure out the rolls of the hill, and all that jazz, and trying to get,

00:31:00.000 I mean...

00:31:00.000 Yeah, it seems pretty damn complicated.

00:31:02.000 I haven't played in a really long time, but...

00:31:05.000 Yeah, the mechanics of it seem very difficult to learn, and I understand that coaching could help that, but even just the variables.

00:31:11.000 When a guy like Tiger Woods was just dominating everybody, winning like crazy, it defied my imagination, because I was always like, how could this one guy figure out this weird game Where there's so many variables, so much better than everybody else.

00:31:28.000 What could it possibly be?

00:31:30.000 Is it feel?

00:31:31.000 Is it touch?

00:31:32.000 What is it that's allowing him to see the rolls of the hills?

00:31:37.000 And then how does it all go away with one divorce?

00:31:40.000 That's the really crazy part.

00:31:41.000 That's the craziest of the crazy.

00:31:43.000 I read this study on hedge fund managers that by far the most predictive variable of the performance of a hedge fund is whether or not the manager is currently going through a divorce.

00:31:58.000 Oh, yeah.

00:31:59.000 Because then your life just goes into a turmoil.

00:32:01.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:32:03.000 Or, if your wife's a cunt, you get out of that divorce and you're just fucking free and your thoughts are clear. 1.00

00:32:10.000 It really just depends, right? 1.00

00:32:12.000 Depends on whether or not it's a good divorce, whether or not you want it.

00:32:15.000 Yeah.

00:32:16.000 I mean, even if you want it, I bet it's still a pretty big disruption.

00:32:21.000 Depends, man.

00:32:22.000 I've seen both sides.

00:32:24.000 I've seen horrible, horrible divorces where the guy's just destroyed.

00:32:28.000 And usually it's financial.

00:32:30.000 The financial stress of divorce is...

00:32:34.000 Really, for a person who's never been through it or never seen someone go through it, it's like you're being attacked by aliens that you can't see and they're stealing money from you.

00:32:46.000 And just like every second of every day, thousands of dollars are leaving your bank account and you're watching yourself go broke.

00:32:54.000 You're watching years of your life, all the work you put in.

00:32:57.000 I had a good friend that I've talked about on the podcast before, but Yeah.

00:33:24.000 We're good to go.

00:33:45.000 So, the only way it'll be different is if she remarries, which of course she never would, because, you know, she would lose her sweet paycheck that she gets every month. 1.00

00:33:55.000 I watched this guy, like, age 10 years? 0.96

00:33:59.000 In two years he'd probably age 10 and just was pulling his fucking hair out and going crazy and it was never over. 0.96

00:34:05.000 I was like, are you out yet? 0.98

00:34:06.000 Is it over yet?

00:34:07.000 He's like, no, no, no, no.

00:34:08.000 She's renegotiating.

00:34:10.000 She's changing the term.

00:34:10.000 And she was doing it because he had to pay for her lawyer as well.

00:34:14.000 So she just dragged it out as long as possible.

00:34:17.000 She dragged it out for almost two years.

00:34:19.000 This poor guy got destroyed.

00:34:21.000 So for him, yeah, I wouldn't bet on him playing golf. 0.99

00:34:28.000 That guy would be fucking knocking balls into the treetops and screaming and attacking birds with his clubs. 0.98

00:34:35.000 It's devastating for people. 0.99

00:34:36.000 And women want to know why guys don't get divorced. 1.00

00:34:40.000 Maybe they know somebody like that.

00:34:43.000 Or Tiger Woods. 1.00

00:34:46.000 Poor bastard. 1.00

00:34:47.000 Not really though, right? 1.00

00:34:48.000 He's still fine.

00:34:49.000 Yeah, I think he'll make it.

00:34:51.000 Yeah, he'll make it.

00:34:52.000 He's not Tiger Woods anymore.

00:34:54.000 How many golf tournaments has he won since the divorce?

00:35:00.000 I don't really follow golf, but I don't think it's many.

00:35:03.000 Wow, it's so weird.

00:35:05.000 Do you follow Jamie?

00:35:06.000 Yeah, he's won a few.

00:35:08.000 He's recently coming back from an injury right now.

00:35:10.000 I just saw something the other day.

00:35:12.000 They say he's got about 10 years left in his career to catch Jack Nicholson.

00:35:16.000 How do you get an injury playing golf?

00:35:20.000 I mean, there's a lot of torque in that swing.

00:35:23.000 I can see you throwing out your back. 1.00

00:35:24.000 Fucking pussies. 1.00

00:35:26.000 Jesus Christ. 1.00

00:35:28.000 You're playing golf.

00:35:29.000 I would surely get injured playing golf.

00:35:31.000 I'd just hit myself with the club.

00:35:34.000 Well, if you knew what you were doing, I bet you wouldn't.

00:35:37.000 So, you're 28 years old.

00:35:39.000 How long have you been a professional poker player?

00:35:42.000 I've been playing seriously and making money at it about 10 years, filing taxes as a professional gambler since I was 18. Wow.

00:35:50.000 I was in school and only sort of playing part-time for the first few of those years, so 6 to 10 years, depending how you count.

00:35:58.000 So you were doing it through college?

00:35:59.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:35:59.000 And at one point in time when you were in college and you were in the middle of some stupid course you didn't really give a fuck about, were you like, you know what, I think I could be a goddamn professional poker player? 0.99

00:36:08.000 Definitely. 0.99

00:36:09.000 That's what it was?

00:36:10.000 Second semester of my junior year.

00:36:13.000 Poker was going great.

00:36:15.000 School was not.

00:36:17.000 I was studying computer science, which at one point I was pretty good at.

00:36:23.000 I thought, this is the thing for me.

00:36:25.000 I'm gonna get my undergrad degree in computer science.

00:36:28.000 I'm gonna go to grad school, do some more computer science and become a professor, work in research, something like that.

00:36:36.000 I thought that was my career.

00:36:39.000 Second semester of my junior year, this thing started happening to me where I'd go to the computer lab and sit down to do a project and an hour would go by and I'd just still be staring at a blank screen.

00:36:50.000 Wow.

00:36:50.000 I just hit a wall.

00:36:51.000 I couldn't do it anymore.

00:36:53.000 Wow, what was that?

00:36:55.000 I don't know exactly.

00:36:57.000 I think it was some subconscious part of my brain realizing ahead of the more conscious and willful part that this was not what I wanted to do long term.

00:37:11.000 That's fascinating.

00:37:12.000 So you had a passion for it at one point in time, or at least an interest in it.

00:37:15.000 Yeah.

00:37:16.000 And was it just that the passion, the interest for poker sort of overcame it?

00:37:22.000 That it became an option?

00:37:24.000 I think that was probably only a small part of it.

00:37:27.000 I think that even if I hadn't found poker and decided to make a career of that, that I would have made myself get through undergrad computer science and somewhere around grad school or early into a career doing that,

00:37:42.000 I would have realized it wasn't doing it for me.

00:37:45.000 Yeah, that's something that some kids do when they're young and they're starting to try to pick a career.

00:37:50.000 They look at something that they think they can do.

00:37:54.000 Yeah.

00:37:54.000 And then once they start doing it, they go, this is not what I want to do, though.

00:37:58.000 Well, shit, you're 18, you get to school and they tell you, pick a major. 0.99

00:38:01.000 Yeah, how crazy is that? 0.99

00:38:03.000 And, like, I took an econ class, a math class, a computer science class, and a cognitive science class my first semester of college.

00:38:12.000 I was like, I really don't like the math class.

00:38:15.000 The econ's kind of boring.

00:38:18.000 I don't really think there's a career for me in cognitive science.

00:38:21.000 I guess I'm a computer scientist now.

00:38:24.000 But it's not what you were drawn to.

00:38:27.000 I mean, I liked it.

00:38:28.000 I thought it was interesting.

00:38:30.000 Some of the classes more than others.

00:38:31.000 I liked the theory and math side of it better than I liked spending 12 hours in the computer lab banging out code.

00:38:39.000 Isn't it so weird that we expect kids at 18 years of age to be able to pick their future?

00:38:44.000 To be able to pick a direction for their future?

00:38:47.000 Yeah.

00:38:47.000 It's just so bizarre.

00:38:49.000 I can't imagine...

00:38:51.000 Going through that again.

00:38:53.000 You know, for me, I took a year off when I got out of high school, and then I went to UMass Boston for three years, but I completely half-assed it.

00:39:02.000 Like, I just was doing it because I didn't want to be a loser.

00:39:06.000 So I was going to school with no idea whatsoever how I was ever going to fit into any traditional work environment.

00:39:14.000 And all the while, I had a sort of a career because I was teaching martial arts and I was teaching it at a high level.

00:39:20.000 I was teaching it in Boston University and I had my own school and everything like that. 0.98

00:39:24.000 I was still going to school and I was like, what the fuck am I doing? 0.90

00:39:28.000 But at least I had some things that I was interested in. 0.96

00:39:30.000 But I had friends that were going to school and they were like, well, I'm going to be an electrical engineer.

00:39:36.000 I'm like, is that what you want to do?

00:39:38.000 You know, I don't know.

00:39:40.000 I'm okay at it.

00:39:41.000 It's good money.

00:39:42.000 You can make good money.

00:39:42.000 I'm like, okay.

00:39:43.000 You can probably get a job.

00:39:44.000 Yeah, but that life is a weird life, man.

00:39:47.000 That's the life that the majority of people do.

00:39:49.000 The majority of people do this life where they start doing something because it's a job that they can do. 1.00

00:39:56.000 Fuck, man. 1.00

00:39:58.000 That's terrifying to me. 1.00

00:40:00.000 Yeah, it's a sad, scary thought.

00:40:02.000 For a guy like you.

00:40:03.000 So that's why when I hear about a guy like you, I go, yes!

00:40:07.000 Someone escaped.

00:40:08.000 Yes! 0.97

00:40:08.000 I fucking love when I meet another comedian. 0.97

00:40:11.000 I love when I meet a guy who makes a living as a musician. 0.98

00:40:14.000 I love when I meet a writer.

00:40:16.000 Absolutely. 0.99

00:40:16.000 I love people that have figured out a way to stay out of that fucking trap. 0.99

00:40:21.000 That weird trap of just doing something because you can do it. 0.97

00:40:25.000 And people who are doing something because they can do it and they're listening to this, I'm not criticizing you.

00:40:30.000 I easily could have been you.

00:40:32.000 Easily.

00:40:33.000 No one's better than you.

00:40:35.000 I'm just celebrating you.

00:40:37.000 You, Ike.

00:40:39.000 You did it.

00:40:40.000 You figured it out.

00:40:41.000 There's a lot of luck involved in a lot of different ways.

00:40:44.000 There's a lot of luck involved in being American. 0.99

00:40:47.000 There's a lot of luck involved in having good motor skills that you can walk and you don't have a disease and you don't have fucking cancer. 0.99

00:40:55.000 Your eyes work. 0.98

00:40:56.000 There's a lot of luck involved in a lot of different things.

00:40:59.000 So no doubt about it.

00:41:00.000 And there's definitely a lot of luck in finding a path, picking a path, and then figuring out that this is something you can actually do.

00:41:08.000 And that's when the courage and then the determination come in.

00:41:12.000 Once there's an opening, to just run.

00:41:14.000 Run through that door.

00:41:16.000 So when you were 18 and you started making money doing poker and then you realized that school was kind of whack, what did your parents think about that?

00:41:24.000 Well, the way that played out was, like I said, second semester of my junior year, I failed most of my classes after straight A's for five semesters.

00:41:36.000 Did your parents suspect drugs?

00:41:40.000 No, I don't think that was...

00:41:42.000 That's what I was expecting. 0.72

00:41:44.000 I'll give you a little piss test. 1.00

00:41:45.000 Come here, you little freak. 1.00

00:41:46.000 What the fuck are you doing? 1.00

00:41:48.000 All that college tuition. 1.00

00:41:49.000 Come here, son! 0.99

00:41:50.000 Piss in this cup. 0.98

00:41:52.000 What did they think? 0.94

00:41:55.000 Your board?

00:41:56.000 Yeah, board.

00:42:00.000 I think that they were a little skeptical of the computer science thing all along, that...

00:42:06.000 I just seemed to sort of pick something out of a hat and go for it, and it was not a huge surprise to them that I was getting sick of it.

00:42:16.000 And then...

00:42:19.000 By coincidence, over the following summer, some legal rumbling started in Washington that maybe it's time to crack down on online gambling.

00:42:32.000 And a bill called the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act got passed or was due to get passed that fall.

00:42:44.000 And... 0.99

00:42:46.000 I started thinking, shit, online poker might be going away. 0.99

00:42:50.000 I gotta get all the money while I can. 0.99

00:42:53.000 And I called up the school.

00:42:55.000 This was like late August.

00:42:57.000 I'm like about to go back to school.

00:42:59.000 And I called up the university and said, uh, I maybe want to take next year off.

00:43:06.000 What happens if I do?

00:43:08.000 Is there any penalty?

00:43:09.000 Can I come back the following year?

00:43:11.000 No issue?

00:43:12.000 And they said, yeah, it's fine.

00:43:14.000 You've got like one more week to let us know.

00:43:16.000 I said, okay, I'll call you back in a bit.

00:43:18.000 I called up my parents.

00:43:19.000 I was like, I'm pretty sure I want to take the year off and just play poker full time.

00:43:24.000 Wow.

00:43:24.000 And what did they say?

00:43:26.000 And they said, why?

00:43:28.000 And I explained the UIGEA thing and the...

00:43:35.000 Getting sick of computer science thing.

00:43:38.000 And my mom said, how much money do you think you can make if you take a year off and play poker full time?

00:43:43.000 I was like, my goal would be about a million dollars.

00:43:47.000 Whoa.

00:43:48.000 And she said, that sounds good.

00:43:50.000 I think you should do that.

00:43:52.000 Yeah, you gotta go high.

00:43:54.000 You can't get...

00:43:54.000 I hope to make about 30 grand the first year, but yeah.

00:43:58.000 A million bucks is a good call.

00:44:01.000 People like hearing that their kid made a million bucks.

00:44:04.000 Yeah.

00:44:04.000 Go for it, son.

00:44:07.000 And you were only 18, right?

00:44:08.000 No, I was about 21. 21?

00:44:11.000 Yeah, I'd been doing it for three years already.

00:44:13.000 I'd made a few hundred thousand bucks already by that point.

00:44:16.000 It wasn't an out-of-thin-air guess.

00:44:18.000 It was like, I'm gonna be playing these stakes this many hours a week.

00:44:22.000 I beat these games for this much.

00:44:24.000 It was like a realistic target for me.

00:44:27.000 Wow.

00:44:28.000 Now, what is the difference between a successful online poker player and a non-successful when it was legal? 0.98

00:44:33.000 Because obviously now it's a big fucking mess, right? 0.91

00:44:37.000 You could legally gamble if you're a resident of Nevada online. 0.97

00:44:41.000 Isn't that the case?

00:44:42.000 The legal situation in the U.S. and worldwide is pretty complicated.

00:44:51.000 The really weird thing is that No laws actually changed.

00:44:56.000 How the government felt like enforcing them changed.

00:44:59.000 When the law is talking about, the UIGEA passed, I didn't know this at the time I was making the decision to take the year off, but the final language of the bill says nothing about what unlawful internet gambling is.

00:45:13.000 It assumes that that's something that...

00:45:17.000 Somebody else already knows and provides for enforcement against the banking and credit card transactions that facilitate illegal online gambling.

00:45:26.000 It's in no way clear what illegal online gambling in the US is.

00:45:30.000 What?

00:45:31.000 That sounds so crazy.

00:45:33.000 There are no federal laws about online gambling other than this anti-illegal online gambling enforcement act.

00:45:42.000 Online gambling is...

00:45:45.000 Treated as illegal by the Department of Justice on the basis of a law from the 60s called the Wire Act that says you can't play sports bets over Telegram.

00:46:00.000 Really? 0.99

00:46:01.000 A fucking Telegram? 1.00

00:46:03.000 A fucking Telegram? 1.00

00:46:04.000 Oh my god, how about smoke signals? 1.00

00:46:06.000 Is that legal still?

00:46:07.000 Jesus Christ.

00:46:08.000 And they're like, that's basically like playing poker on the internet.

00:46:12.000 Wow, that is so crazy.

00:46:14.000 So they decided that that's playing poker on the internet.

00:46:16.000 Yeah.

00:46:17.000 Wow.

00:46:18.000 Gambling on sports through a telegraph.

00:46:21.000 That's so loopy.

00:46:23.000 Yeah.

00:46:24.000 And was this like sponsored by the casinos or something like that?

00:46:26.000 Is that how it got weaseled through?

00:46:28.000 The Wire Act or the UIGEA? No, the UIGEA, whatever it is.

00:46:32.000 Them cracking down on it.

00:46:34.000 Had to be, right?

00:46:35.000 Probably.

00:46:35.000 It's hard to tell.

00:46:38.000 The casino lobby is really fucking powerful in America. 0.99

00:46:42.000 Oh, yeah. 0.99

00:46:42.000 I can imagine. 0.99

00:46:43.000 A lot of goddamn money involved. 0.99

00:46:45.000 A lot of money involved. 0.99

00:46:46.000 Donate a lot of money to both political parties.

00:46:50.000 Yeah.

00:46:51.000 And...

00:46:54.000 And then, of course, the unions, I'm sure, as well, right?

00:46:57.000 The unions, I'm sure, as well.

00:46:59.000 Yeah, the...

00:47:02.000 It's like, for instance...

00:47:05.000 There are...

00:47:06.000 I don't actually know what union represents casino workers, but I think it's one of the bigger, like, food service sort of ones and is a big deal.

00:47:14.000 Yeah, I would imagine that they would do it just to sort of strengthen their position as job holders, because, like...

00:47:21.000 The UFC has a big issue with the Culinary Union.

00:47:26.000 Yeah, I think that's who has a lot of the casino jobs as well.

00:47:30.000 I'm not sure.

00:47:30.000 I'm sure.

00:47:31.000 Well, that's what they're trying to do.

00:47:32.000 The reason why the UFC has an issue with the Culinary Union is because Zufa, the company that owns the UFC, also owns station casinos.

00:47:39.000 So there's this huge push to try to get them to turn their casinos into union casinos.

00:47:46.000 So they're keeping the UFC out of New York that way, like paying off politicians.

00:47:51.000 Right.

00:47:51.000 It's fascinating.

00:47:52.000 Yeah.

00:47:52.000 It's fascinating because it's so old school and so transparent, like the corruption.

00:47:57.000 So, I mean, New York State, the actual people themselves would benefit tremendously if they allowed mixed martial arts.

00:48:04.000 Sure.

00:48:04.000 They also have boxing already there, which is more dangerous.

00:48:07.000 I mean, it's all proven.

00:48:09.000 And they still, for whatever reason, have been able to bribe these politicians transparently. 0.99

00:48:14.000 Yeah, all that shit is just a power struggle over the money, it seems like. 0.98

00:48:17.000 Yeah, so they just try to keep online poker. 0.99

00:48:20.000 For online gambling, it was the same thing.

00:48:22.000 The casino lobby in the US has gone through a few stages in what they think about online gambling. 0.99

00:48:31.000 At first, they just ignored it, didn't give a shit. 0.98

00:48:34.000 That's not a real thing. 0.99

00:48:35.000 Nobody's gonna gamble on the internet.

00:48:37.000 Who cares?

00:48:38.000 And then around about 2005, 2006, they started saying, oh no, this is unethical.

00:48:47.000 We can't let people gamble from their homes.

00:48:49.000 They need to drive to their local casino and gamble, because that's where we make money. 1.00

00:48:53.000 And that's where we serve liquor, so we can be sure that they're fucked up when they're gambling. 0.99

00:48:57.000 And think of the children. 0.98

00:49:00.000 If you're playing online, it could be anybody, which, of course, is...

00:49:06.000 Wrong in both directions.

00:49:08.000 For one thing, people gamble underage in casinos all the time.

00:49:11.000 For the other, the identity verification stuff for online gambling is probably stricter than for live gambling.

00:49:19.000 Anyhow.

00:49:21.000 That's pretty interesting, is it?

00:49:22.000 I didn't know that.

00:49:23.000 So what's the online thing?

00:49:25.000 What do you use?

00:49:26.000 Do you have to show a photo of your credit card?

00:49:30.000 Your driver's license, rather?

00:49:31.000 It varies from site to site and ramps up if there's more money involved.

00:49:36.000 How would they know it's you and not just someone who has the information?

00:49:39.000 Like, if you're a 16-year-old kid, you grab your dad's information and just start entering it in.

00:49:43.000 You need more than a credit card.

00:49:45.000 What do you need?

00:49:46.000 It depends on the site, but, like...

00:49:50.000 Copy of photo ID. Utility bill.

00:49:54.000 You might need to answer a phone call on a landline associated with the address you claim to claim from.

00:50:00.000 Yes, this is Mr. Hexton.

00:50:02.000 My son Ike.

00:50:04.000 Why, Ike is not the one who's making this gamble.

00:50:07.000 It's me.

00:50:07.000 My name's George.

00:50:09.000 I'm 50. You're basing my voice, son.

00:50:13.000 Yeah, obviously you can get around anything, but...

00:50:16.000 Yeah, making an online... 0.90

00:50:17.000 I mean, making a phone call, that seems like so fucking old school. 0.94

00:50:20.000 Yeah. 0.97

00:50:24.000 That's such a weird way to verify, isn't it? 0.98

00:50:27.000 I mean, it's one layer of a whole bunch of different shit that they do to... 0.58

00:50:34.000 If it's on a landline, it demonstrates that you are physically in the place you're claiming to be. 0.96

00:50:39.000 Right.

00:50:40.000 Okay.

00:50:41.000 That makes sense, I guess.

00:50:42.000 But it seems like anybody could just be on the phone.

00:50:44.000 Unless you're FaceTiming.

00:50:46.000 Yeah.

00:50:46.000 I mean, that's why it's only one aspect of it.

00:50:49.000 Then you just have to hire a makeup artist to fucking doody up like your dad. 0.94

00:50:57.000 That internet gambling thing though, it was a big crackdown because I remember it. 0.98

00:51:02.000 I remember at one point in time you used to be able to gamble on sports online.

00:51:06.000 Oh yeah.

00:51:06.000 Guys used to play poker for money online.

00:51:09.000 It was really common.

00:51:11.000 And there was even some websites that were, I'm sure they're still around, Bodog.

00:51:18.000 Are they still around?

00:51:19.000 Yeah.

00:51:19.000 Bodog in the U.S. has become Bovada and still exists.

00:51:25.000 What is Bovada?

00:51:27.000 Bovada is the entity that they spun off of the main Bodog corporate entities because operating online gambling in the U.S. is so risky that they have basically set up their corporate fall guy of Bovada, 0.97

00:51:49.000 which is what gets fucked. 0.89

00:51:51.000 When inevitably continuing to take bets from the U.S. eventually goes poorly. 0.99

00:51:56.000 Oh, I see. 0.99

00:51:57.000 So they're just kind of like setting up a straw house to blow down when the shit gets... 0.98

00:52:02.000 But they're, meanwhile, taking money out of the straw house and putting it in this big stone mansion somewhere that's under a different name. 0.97

00:52:08.000 And yeah, Bodog, I shouldn't say any of this too confidently. 0.98

00:52:12.000 I haven't been paying close attention to it, but I think Bodog...

00:52:15.000 Welcome to what we do on the podcast every day.

00:52:17.000 LAUGHTER I think Bodog is continuing to operate around the world as Bodog and is Bovada only for its U.S. facing operations.

00:52:29.000 Oh, okay.

00:52:29.000 That makes sense.

00:52:30.000 That Calvin Iyer guy, he can't even come into the America.

00:52:34.000 Into North America.

00:52:35.000 Yeah, there are a bunch of people in the online gambling industry who that's true of.

00:52:39.000 They just live in Costa Rica now or something?

00:52:41.000 Yeah.

00:52:44.000 It's so crazy.

00:52:45.000 It's so weird that that's what gets you locked up.

00:52:48.000 And what is it?

00:52:49.000 Are they saying they're not paying taxes?

00:52:52.000 Why would they not want revenue?

00:52:55.000 See, it doesn't make any sense to me.

00:52:57.000 If people are willing to gamble, and then they'll pay taxes on those gambling debts, or gambling profits, or whatever it was, or even losses.

00:53:06.000 It seems like if the company wins money, or if the person wins money, taxes are going to be paid.

00:53:13.000 It seems like that should be pretty easy to...

00:53:15.000 Well, so, to go back to what I was saying about the stages that the casino lobby has gone through in their attitude on online gambling, around 2005-2006, they decided, okay, this is bad.

00:53:26.000 We need to shut it down.

00:53:28.000 Were they losing money?

00:53:30.000 They thought they were.

00:53:31.000 They weren't.

00:53:33.000 They weren't.

00:53:34.000 I mean, this is my opinion here.

00:53:37.000 I think that casinos saw online gambling...

00:53:44.000 As competition when it wasn't, that online gambling and casino gambling are not the same product.

00:53:53.000 If I'm the type of person who either likes to go play blackjack at my local casino or likes to play slots on the internet, I don't...

00:54:04.000 I don't know.

00:54:29.000 Yeah, that's how I would look.

00:54:50.000 In a lower pressure environment, I think, introduces people to the game who then go on to play in live casinos as well.

00:55:00.000 Now, when you go to a live casino, how many people are like me, that don't know how to play poker at all, but are still trying to play poker? 0.98

00:55:08.000 Do people get liquored up and just wander into the poker room and go, let's fucking give this a shot?

00:55:13.000 Every once in a while and more at lower stakes than at higher stakes, obviously. 0.83

00:55:19.000 Obviously.

00:55:21.000 At high stakes, it's pretty rare to see somebody who has never really played poker before.

00:55:28.000 But it happens?

00:55:28.000 It happens.

00:55:29.000 Oh, yeah. 0.99

00:55:30.000 What is that like when you see some fucking fish? 1.00

00:55:33.000 Some big fish that comes in. 1.00

00:55:35.000 What do you call them?

00:55:36.000 Whales?

00:55:36.000 Is that what you guys call them?

00:55:37.000 Fish, whales.

00:55:38.000 That's what they call them in pool. 0.99

00:55:40.000 Yeah, same terminology in poker. 0.98

00:55:42.000 So they come in and a lot of money, don't know what the fuck they're doing, and everybody slowly starts circling them. 0.98

00:55:48.000 Yep. 0.96

00:55:49.000 There's a long wait list to play at the table that guy's at.

00:55:52.000 If there's not a seat available, he walks in, he says, I want to play, everybody looks up.

00:55:56.000 That guy looks rich and we don't know him.

00:56:00.000 This game can become ten-handed now.

00:56:02.000 Pull up a chair.

00:56:03.000 So when you don't know a guy, so the world of poker, essentially you know all the elite players.

00:56:10.000 Yeah.

00:56:11.000 There's no one who can sneak up on you.

00:56:13.000 I mean, there are probably a few people.

00:56:16.000 There are probably a handful of guys who mostly play online, turn up at a casino, and I wouldn't recognize them, but they're among the best players in the world.

00:56:28.000 But for the most part, yeah, I recognize most of the top players. 0.95

00:56:34.000 My friend Ari Shafir, who's a stand-up comedian, great guy, funny, hilarious motherfucker, but very smart. 0.54

00:56:40.000 And when he was struggling as a stand-up comedian, he was playing poker tournaments. 0.91

00:56:45.000 And he was making more money playing in casinos, playing poker, than he was doing stand-up.

00:56:50.000 Yeah, I've heard Ari talk about that before. 1.00

00:56:51.000 Yeah, I mean, he's making a living doing poker.

00:56:55.000 And I always found that incredibly fascinating, that he was doing that, that he was just going from place to place and playing poker.

00:57:00.000 And he said he could kind of tell. 1.00

00:57:03.000 He could kind of tell when people knew what the fuck they were doing and when people were just assholes. 1.00

00:57:06.000 Instantly. 1.00

00:57:07.000 I mean...

00:57:08.000 But does anybody ever hustle? 0.95

00:57:10.000 Like the way they do in pool, they pretend to suck and then they rope you in and... 0.94

00:57:13.000 Yeah, some.

00:57:20.000 It's more common, I'd say, at the mid-stakes than at the highest stakes, just because the world's too small to get away with it much at the highest stakes.

00:57:29.000 Yeah, the highest stakes, how many guys are there in the world that are just elite?

00:57:35.000 Dozens to hundreds, depending on how you're counting it, I guess.

00:57:37.000 Hmm.

00:57:38.000 So hundreds, maybe.

00:57:40.000 Maybe.

00:57:41.000 But out of those hundreds, you're aware of all of them, you think?

00:57:44.000 Pretty much?

00:57:44.000 And if you're not, other people are?

00:57:46.000 The overwhelming majority.

00:57:47.000 If I'm not, it's because they're playing in games that don't have a lot of intersect with the games I'm playing in.

00:57:53.000 What about places like Macau?

00:57:56.000 I mean, that's obviously a huge gambling spot.

00:57:58.000 Macau is really interesting.

00:58:01.000 I've played a couple of tournaments in Macau.

00:58:03.000 I've never played in a cash game in Macau.

00:58:07.000 Though I have played in-cash games with Macau guys a few times.

00:58:13.000 The UFC did some shows in Macau.

00:58:16.000 Yeah, I know.

00:58:16.000 And there's been some boxing out there, and I think they're doing another UFC out there.

00:58:21.000 Yeah.

00:58:22.000 But they said that it's just like Vegas times 100. They said it's madness, like the amount of gambling and craziness and the majesty of it all.

00:58:30.000 Yeah, it's real crazy.

00:58:31.000 Where is that exactly?

00:58:34.000 It's right next to Hong Kong.

00:58:35.000 It's like a one-hour ferry ride from Hong Kong.

00:58:38.000 And how long has this been around?

00:58:39.000 Macau?

00:58:43.000 I want to say maybe 15 years, maybe less.

00:58:48.000 That's so crazy!

00:58:49.000 I think it's gotten huge in less than the last 10. How does something like that happen?

00:58:54.000 How does something way bigger than Vegas just sprout out of China?

00:58:58.000 China says you can gamble here, and the millions of Chinese millionaires say, that sounds like a good idea.

00:59:06.000 Let's go gamble here.

00:59:08.000 And then you're just a building.

00:59:09.000 And there it is.

00:59:10.000 What is it like, like, as far as, like, the buildings and as far as, like, the atmosphere?

00:59:15.000 It looks like Bizarro Vegas.

00:59:16.000 It's creepy.

00:59:17.000 I lived in Vegas for three years.

00:59:19.000 So I go there and, oh, that's the win.

00:59:23.000 And it looks exactly like the win, only it's on exactly the opposite side of the world and everyone's Chinese. 1.00

00:59:31.000 Whoa, so they call it the Wynn?

00:59:32.000 Yeah.

00:59:33.000 Yeah, there's the Wynn, the Venetian...

00:59:35.000 But are they rip-offs, or is it the actual Wynn?

00:59:37.000 No, no, it's owned by the same people.

00:59:38.000 Oh, okay. 1.00

00:59:39.000 Because you know how China does, they do wacky shit like that. 1.00

00:59:41.000 They'll build, like, a fake Paris. 0.99

00:59:44.000 Like, it's really strange how their laws are over there, as far as what they can get away with.

00:59:49.000 Isn't there, like, a fake Eiffel Tower in Shanghai, or something like that?

00:59:51.000 Not only is there a fake Eiffel Tower, it's just, like, fake entire towns, like, European villages, towns, like, down to the brick...

00:59:59.000 They look exactly like them.

01:00:01.000 There was this story that was on one of the major websites.

01:00:05.000 I forget what it was.

01:00:06.000 I think it was Vice, actually.

01:00:08.000 They detailed all these different towns that have been constructed in China that were exact replicas of famous Swiss Alps towns and stuff like that.

01:00:19.000 Really weird. 0.99

01:00:20.000 China's fucking weird. 0.99

01:00:21.000 Oh, yeah. 0.99

01:00:21.000 Ari just got back from China, too, and he's talking about how crazy it was there. 0.99

01:00:24.000 He told us about gutter oil.

01:00:26.000 Did you hear about gutter oil?

01:00:28.000 I think I heard about it on the podcast.

01:00:29.000 And I was like, that can't be real.

01:00:32.000 And yes, it is.

01:00:32.000 I've eaten a lot of delicious food in Hong Kong.

01:00:35.000 You've eaten a lot of delicious poop.

01:00:38.000 Might not be as bad in Hong Kong as mainland.

01:00:41.000 Maybe.

01:00:42.000 I don't know.

01:00:43.000 So Macau has all the major players, like the Wynn and the Venetian and all that jazz.

01:00:49.000 And a bunch of...

01:00:50.000 There's like a Hard Rock.

01:00:52.000 The tournament I played there was at the Hard Rock Macau.

01:00:55.000 And does everyone speak English there?

01:00:58.000 No. 0.99

01:00:59.000 What about the hookers? 1.00

01:01:00.000 Speak English? 0.99

01:01:01.000 I didn't talk to any.

01:01:03.000 Good answer.

01:01:04.000 I bet there's certainly a market for it.

01:01:08.000 Oh yeah, you think?

01:01:10.000 I would guess that market forces force some hookers to speak English in Macau. 1.00

01:01:16.000 Yeah. 0.73

01:01:16.000 Yeah, my friend who went there said you couldn't get away from them. 0.73

01:01:18.000 They're just swarming you.

01:01:20.000 They're like flies.

01:01:21.000 He said it was like mosquitoes in a hot summer day in the Northeast. 0.98

01:01:25.000 He said it was crazy, like how many hookers there were. 0.98

01:01:28.000 But it makes sense.

01:01:29.000 I mean, a lot of people gambling, a lot of money, a lot of celebration, a lot of victims, a lot of drunks.

01:01:34.000 Yep.

01:01:36.000 I just can't believe that something like that can just explode.

01:01:39.000 I never even heard of Macau until maybe two or three years ago.

01:01:44.000 I remember peripherally reading about it online, something like that, and then I heard about boxing matches being held there.

01:01:51.000 Yeah, I basically didn't know anything about it until poker took off there maybe four or five years ago. 0.99

01:01:56.000 So you're 18 years old, you start playing poker, you're 21 years old, you tell your parents, you know what, fuck it, I'm going to give it a go. 0.73

01:02:03.000 I'm going to try to make a million dollars in the first year. 0.96

01:02:05.000 How much did you actually want to make in that first year?

01:02:09.000 Um...

01:02:10.000 1.6?

01:02:12.000 Kapow! 1.00

01:02:14.000 Jesus goddamn, son! 1.00

01:02:17.000 Whoa! 0.99

01:02:18.000 A couple months after I said that, I played in one of my first ever big live tournaments and finished second for like $850,000, so I got a bit of a head start.

01:02:29.000 Wow.

01:02:30.000 Jesus Christ.

01:02:31.000 So everyone's happy at the Haxton household.

01:02:34.000 Yes.

01:02:35.000 Yeah, they were okay with my plan.

01:02:38.000 So then from there, do you just go guns blazing?

01:02:41.000 I went back and I finished school.

01:02:43.000 I only had a year left. 1.00

01:02:44.000 Damn! 1.00

01:02:46.000 You went a million six and went back in school. 1.00

01:02:48.000 I would have told school to suck my dick. 1.00

01:02:51.000 I would have called them up. 1.00

01:02:53.000 Fuck you and fuck computers. 1.00

01:02:55.000 That was 80% what I did. 1.00

01:02:58.000 I went back and I decided to get a degree in philosophy.

01:03:02.000 I figured out that there was a particular track within the philosophy department called Philosophy of Science and Logic.

01:03:09.000 That I could count some of the classes I'd already done toward, and it was like five bullshit classes away from a degree in philosophy.

01:03:17.000 I was like, alright, I can do that. 0.83

01:03:19.000 I'll get my college degree before I have to be the creepy old guy who's back on campus in ten years when poker's done.

01:03:26.000 I'll be happy I have a degree.

01:03:28.000 Why did you think you were planning on failing?

01:03:31.000 You thought it was possible that it could all go away?

01:03:35.000 I thought it was possible it could all go away.

01:03:37.000 I thought it was possible it could get too hard.

01:03:40.000 I thought that maybe I'm really good relative to my competition now, but who knows about in 10 years.

01:03:47.000 You know, it's like competing in a sport.

01:03:50.000 At some point, you're older than the other people.

01:03:54.000 You're not as sharp as them.

01:03:56.000 They're hungrier than you are, and you can't keep up.

01:04:00.000 We talked about in the ads, I was talking about AlphaBrain, but there's a bunch of cognitive enhancing things that people take.

01:04:08.000 I know some folks take Adderall and some folks take NuVigil or ProVigil, like these different cognitive enhancing smart drugs. 0.99

01:04:18.000 Do you guys fuck with those things? 0.98

01:04:20.000 Poker players in general? 1.00

01:04:22.000 Yeah, absolutely.

01:04:23.000 What is the most common stuff?

01:04:25.000 I mean, caffeine has to be number one.

01:04:29.000 There are waitresses walking around serving coffee at poker tournaments.

01:04:33.000 Really?

01:04:33.000 Yeah.

01:04:34.000 And water and booze if you want it.

01:04:37.000 How many guys get liquored up while they're playing?

01:04:39.000 Seems like a bad move, right?

01:04:41.000 In terms of high-level competition, the biggest tournaments, essentially nobody.

01:04:48.000 Cash games in a casino on any given night, it's reasonably common.

01:04:52.000 Right.

01:04:53.000 So, what do most guys take besides...

01:04:57.000 There are plenty of people who take Adderall or Ritalin.

01:05:00.000 Ritalin?

01:05:01.000 That's a speed, too, right?

01:05:03.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:05:03.000 It's another one of the anti-ADHD sort of things.

01:05:07.000 Right.

01:05:09.000 Provigil is not unheard of. 0.90

01:05:12.000 I fucked with that a little bit in college for studying and found that I just didn't really like it very much.

01:05:18.000 I want to send you some Alphabrain. 0.93

01:05:19.000 See if you like it.

01:05:21.000 A bunch of my friends use Alphabrain.

01:05:23.000 Yeah, that's a good one.

01:05:24.000 Another good one is there's stuff called Neuro One.

01:05:28.000 Have you ever heard of Neuro One?

01:05:29.000 I've heard you talk about it before.

01:05:31.000 It's Bill Romanowski stuff.

01:05:33.000 It's really good as well.

01:05:34.000 There's a bunch of companies that are selling these cognitive enhancing formulas now, especially now that AlphaBrain has become really popular.

01:05:40.000 It's become super popular to sell these blends.

01:05:44.000 There's different things like paracetam and choline.

01:05:47.000 There's all these different things that have been shown to have positive effects on cognitive function.

01:05:51.000 A friend of mine at a tournament a couple months ago gave me something called Smart Caffeine, which is just caffeine and L-theanine.

01:06:00.000 I thought that was awesome.

01:06:02.000 I've been taking some L-theanine recently.

01:06:05.000 Do you press them?

01:06:07.000 You ever mess with that stuff?

01:06:08.000 I haven't.

01:06:08.000 I've heard good things.

01:06:09.000 A few of my friends use it.

01:06:10.000 I like it.

01:06:12.000 One of my closest friends in poker is JC Alvarado, who I think you know a bit.

01:06:15.000 Yeah, he's on my website.

01:06:16.000 I've met him a bunch of times.

01:06:18.000 Cool guy.

01:06:18.000 Yeah, he's an awesome guy.

01:06:19.000 Great things to say about you.

01:06:20.000 He said that you were probably the best heads-up player, one-on-one player in the world.

01:06:27.000 What do you think about that, fella?

01:06:30.000 There are...

01:06:31.000 I'm definitely in the running, I mean...

01:06:33.000 So what is the difference between playing heads-up and playing, like, you know, a large tournament?

01:06:41.000 Like, 30, 40 people?

01:06:44.000 Well...

01:06:44.000 Besides the obvious.

01:06:46.000 Like, what's the strategic difference?

01:06:48.000 Like, how you approach it?

01:06:51.000 It's...

01:06:51.000 simpler.

01:06:53.000 Um...

01:06:55.000 Which doesn't necessarily mean it's easier.

01:06:58.000 It means it's easier to get really in-depth in how you're analyzing it, and the same situations come up over and over again, because it's only two players.

01:07:08.000 And if there are nine players at the table, that's nine different people who can do something different every hand, and similar situations don't come up nearly as often.

01:07:19.000 Whereas when I'm playing Heads Up, Two hours into playing a guy, I can be in the spot where I'm on the button, he's in the big blind, I raise, he calls, flop comes down, he checks, I check, turn comes down,

01:07:35.000 he bets, I call, river comes down, he checks, it's on me.

01:07:39.000 This exact situation, not the boards that have run out, but the betting action, that situation has come up already 20 times in the match that we're playing, and...

01:07:51.000 I can have a pretty clear idea of in this exact spot, this guy traps a little bit more than my average opponent.

01:07:59.000 He's going to take this line with a strong hand more than some other people will, so I can't bluff him as effectively, or I can't make a value bet with quite as weak a hand as I would against some other players, and Heads Up Poker is more amenable to that sort of detailed analysis Of how your opponent is playing.

01:08:23.000 By the way, I understood maybe 10 things out of 20 that you said.

01:08:30.000 I don't even think 10. Button, blind, flop, all that.

01:08:36.000 River, all that's poker talk.

01:08:39.000 Yeah, poker jargon.

01:08:40.000 So how much of it, like this expression, this is a big one, the...

01:08:46.000 The big one is a poker face.

01:08:49.000 Having a poker face.

01:08:50.000 How much of that is real?

01:08:52.000 Do you read a guy or do you worry?

01:08:55.000 In live poker?

01:08:55.000 Yeah, absolutely.

01:08:56.000 Totally.

01:08:57.000 Yeah, it's a huge factor.

01:08:59.000 So if we're looking at each other right now and we're playing, what are you looking for?

01:09:04.000 Do you feel it?

01:09:05.000 Do you sense it?

01:09:06.000 Absolutely, you do sense it.

01:09:08.000 There's just a gut thing that happens, for sure.

01:09:11.000 You just look at somebody and he just doesn't look that comfortable, or he does look comfortable, and...

01:09:19.000 Often there's just a general sort of feel you get from somebody that is difficult to put words to, but that the top players aren't confident when they get those gut feelings and go with them.

01:09:33.000 But there are specific things you can look for, too.

01:09:36.000 Like, you can...

01:09:41.000 Sort of baseline reading on people's posture, like look at them sitting at the table when they're not playing a hand.

01:09:47.000 And then having done that, you can...

01:09:52.000 Observe shifts from that.

01:09:54.000 Like, somebody will...

01:09:55.000 I'm bumping into the mic here, but somebody will get up closer to the table when they're interested and invested in the situation.

01:10:04.000 Or you can even see somebody make, like, a micro gesture of recoiling in frustration when a bad card hits the board or you make a bet that they don't like.

01:10:17.000 And you can see little movements like that.

01:10:19.000 You can read somebody's pulse in their neck.

01:10:23.000 What?

01:10:24.000 Yeah.

01:10:24.000 So you see...

01:10:25.000 So you're staring at someone's neck.

01:10:27.000 In that sense, it'd be good to be a fatso, right? 1.00

01:10:29.000 Yeah.

01:10:30.000 A bunch of people wear scarves while they play so that you can't...

01:10:32.000 What?

01:10:33.000 That's crazy.

01:10:34.000 All the top German guys now are wearing scarves while they play because... 1.00

01:10:37.000 Fucking Germans! 1.00

01:10:38.000 No joke. 1.00

01:10:40.000 That's so crazy.

01:10:41.000 So you look at a guy's pulse in his neck and what are you looking for?

01:10:45.000 The amounts of beats?

01:10:47.000 See if you can see how fast it's going?

01:10:49.000 Yeah, you can see it going faster or like the blood pressure raising when they're really tense.

01:10:54.000 Wow, that's crazy.

01:10:55.000 I never would have thought that.

01:10:57.000 Or how deep someone is breathing.

01:10:59.000 You can watch the rise and fall of their chest.

01:11:01.000 Wow.

01:11:03.000 One thing people do is people tend to be a lot more still and tight when they're nervous and move around a little more and are more relaxed.

01:11:12.000 When they're comfortable, and so when somebody is trying to just keep it together and put their poker face on, look the same way they always look,

01:11:28.000 but they're actually really comfortable because they've got a great hand and they're about to win.

01:11:35.000 Wow.

01:11:36.000 You can sometimes see their leg will start pumping.

01:11:40.000 They'll start tapping their foot real fast.

01:11:43.000 They'll be keeping everything above the table still, but their leg will start going real fast.

01:11:50.000 Wow.

01:11:51.000 Now what about someone faking all that stuff?

01:11:53.000 That happens all the time.

01:11:54.000 Does it?

01:11:55.000 Oh yeah.

01:11:55.000 Like in what way?

01:11:57.000 Any of those things.

01:11:58.000 Now that I've just said I look at people's legs while they're playing, I'm going to be playing against somebody in a couple weeks and he's going to be bluffing me on the river and he's going to start tapping his foot because I've just said that that's something I'm looking for for evidence that they're strong.

01:12:11.000 So when you see someone...

01:12:13.000 Or like...

01:12:13.000 I'm sorry.

01:12:14.000 A thing I used to do sometimes, I feel like I can't get away with it as much now because people know who I am and expect me to be pulling some bullshit and in control of my physical stuff.

01:12:28.000 But something I would do is I would sit like this while playing in general. 0.91

01:12:32.000 With a hand on your face?

01:12:33.000 And when I wanted to fake being nervous, I'd lean into it.

01:12:39.000 LAUGHTER And you can see my cheek go a little white where my knuckles are making contact with my face.

01:12:46.000 And that would make you look more nervous?

01:12:48.000 Yeah.

01:12:50.000 Do you practice this stuff in front of a mirror?

01:12:52.000 Yeah.

01:12:54.000 I mean, why not? 1.00

01:12:55.000 If you can make $1.6 million your first year, I'd practice a lot of goofy shit, too. 0.99

01:12:59.000 Fake tells can be real subtle. 0.99

01:13:01.000 What about guys who play with sunglasses on?

01:13:03.000 Is that super common?

01:13:05.000 It's very common.

01:13:08.000 Tells from your eyes are...

01:13:11.000 It's a factor, but it's not one of the biggest ones because you're used to people looking you in the eyes.

01:13:19.000 You're practiced at lying with your eyes.

01:13:22.000 You know people are looking at your eyes.

01:13:25.000 Isn't that an eagle song? 0.79

01:13:27.000 You can't hide your lying eyes.

01:13:30.000 Sounds like an eagle song. 0.80

01:13:31.000 I believe it is.

01:13:34.000 So the glass is not a huge factor.

01:13:37.000 Not a huge factor.

01:13:38.000 What's the biggest one?

01:13:39.000 The lips?

01:13:42.000 The neck?

01:13:43.000 Hands, general posture, legs and feet even.

01:13:49.000 People are not on top of that one.

01:13:53.000 How many times have you been faked out by fake tells?

01:13:57.000 It's hard to tell.

01:13:59.000 You don't necessarily know it was a fake afterwards because sometimes it's not fake and you're just wrong.

01:14:03.000 You're wrong with your hand, you mean?

01:14:06.000 No, you're...

01:14:08.000 The tell is genuine, but you interpret it incorrectly.

01:14:11.000 Somebody's not actively faking you out.

01:14:13.000 But, like, none of this is an exact science.

01:14:16.000 Like, I see somebody's pulse go up.

01:14:19.000 I know for sure their pulse is up and that they're feeling something intense right now.

01:14:24.000 It could be that they have a flush.

01:14:26.000 It could be that they're really excited about their great hand, or it could be that they're really stressed about the big bluff they're making.

01:14:31.000 Ah, right, right, right.

01:14:33.000 So you know something's going on.

01:14:35.000 So, yeah, you get these physical signs, but there's not a direct path from that to knowing exactly what they have.

01:14:41.000 Do you believe in psychic energy?

01:14:44.000 Do you believe that you can read something from a person, other than just tells?

01:14:51.000 That's a tough one to answer.

01:14:55.000 When you use the phrase psychic energy, I'm inclined to say no, because that sounds kind of magical and crazy, but...

01:15:05.000 I definitely believe that there is very subtle, nonverbal communication that happens between people that is sometimes involuntary,

01:15:20.000 that you just...

01:15:23.000 You know things about what's going through the mind of somebody you're sitting next to, and it's hard to tell exactly how and why you know.

01:15:32.000 I mean, I think that's...

01:15:35.000 Give an example.

01:15:36.000 In what sense?

01:15:40.000 I mean, whether at the poker table or in any other context, when you're...

01:15:46.000 You are reading people's moods and thoughts all the time.

01:15:54.000 You can tell when somebody is feeling relaxed and happy.

01:15:59.000 You can tell when they're stressed out.

01:16:01.000 You can tell when they're Focused and thinking hard, or when they're spacing out?

01:16:13.000 Right, that all makes sense.

01:16:14.000 Like, you just interpret regular human movement, communication, behavior patterns, and such. 0.98

01:16:22.000 But I would say that one of the best sort of pieces of evidence that being a psychic doesn't exist is that there's no psychics that just become poker players and start fucking cleaning up.

01:16:34.000 Yeah, I mean, clearly there's nobody who can just sit across the table from you and read your mind every time accurately.

01:16:41.000 Yeah, because I would think that if there were really psychics, that would be the place where it would show up as poker, right?

01:16:45.000 Sure, or, I mean, any of a number of other places where you could make a killing or otherwise be very successful and powerful based on that ability.

01:16:58.000 I mean...

01:17:01.000 Yeah, there'd be a lot of them.

01:17:03.000 Stock market would be a good one, playing the lottery, obviously.

01:17:06.000 Well, that's getting into predicting the future versus reading minds, which, I mean, I don't think anybody's doing either of those things, but reading minds seems marginally more plausible than predicting the future.

01:17:20.000 Yeah, right?

01:17:21.000 That's a different kind of...

01:17:22.000 But reading the future is kind of interpreted as psychic, right?

01:17:25.000 Isn't it?

01:17:26.000 Yeah, I mean...

01:17:29.000 In some way?

01:17:30.000 They're similarly crazy powers that some people claim to have.

01:17:35.000 Does, like, socially, does that, like...

01:17:37.000 It seems to me that, like, the ability to read tells and the ability to be so tuned into it because it's part of the game of poker, does that carry over to social communication?

01:17:49.000 Like, do you notice things more in the way people, like...

01:17:52.000 We all know when someone's a bullshitter, right? 0.99

01:17:54.000 We all know when someone bullshits you and tells you sorry that's like a little fucking screwy. 0.98

01:17:58.000 I mean, we kind of have this weird sense just based on the data that we've accumulated over a lifetime's worth of communicating with people that something's off here. 0.99

01:18:07.000 And also, if you've communicated with a bunch of bullshitters, you kind of recognize it.

01:18:13.000 So we feel like being a good poker player makes you a better social reader as well? 0.70

01:18:19.000 I think so.

01:18:20.000 I think...

01:18:21.000 Probably not by a giant margin, but yeah, I think I'm probably a bit above average at that.

01:18:28.000 I think I have a more studied and self-aware approach to it than a lot of other people do.

01:18:41.000 I think I may have started from a baseline of being a bit below average at that kind of thing. 0.96

01:18:49.000 Where somebody might say, that story felt kind of bullshit. 1.00

01:18:53.000 I'm more likely to say, well, he said I think and equivocated on a couple of things where that's not a way you would talk about it if you weren't full of shit. 1.00

01:19:05.000 His eyes were darting around a lot. 0.99

01:19:09.000 So you would look at it in an analytical sense instead of just basing just on your instincts.

01:19:15.000 You would use both, your instincts and analytical.

01:19:18.000 Yeah.

01:19:19.000 Yeah, there's something.

01:19:21.000 One of the main things that I'm fascinated with with poker is the ability to read minds.

01:19:26.000 Or read tells, rather.

01:19:28.000 The ability to sort of get this sense of where a person's going with things.

01:19:33.000 Get this sense.

01:19:34.000 I think that's fascinating because I know that that exists in real life.

01:19:37.000 I know it does.

01:19:39.000 I know it exists.

01:19:40.000 Like, that thing exists with human beings.

01:19:42.000 I just don't know exactly what it is.

01:19:44.000 I've always wondered.

01:19:45.000 I've always wondered what exactly is going on when people are looking at each other.

01:19:49.000 You know something's off.

01:19:51.000 Yeah.

01:19:52.000 Just a sense.

01:19:54.000 There's a perfect story. 0.99

01:19:56.000 I've told this before, but my friend Brian Callen, he's a great guy, but he used to date some of the craziest fucking people of all time. 0.97

01:20:03.000 He's had a bunch of crazy people in his life, too. 0.59

01:20:06.000 And I would hang out with him, and he would have this guy over, and I'd be like, what do you do? 1.00

01:20:09.000 This guy's a fucking bullshit artist. 1.00

01:20:11.000 He couldn't see it. 1.00

01:20:12.000 For whatever reason, just couldn't see it.

01:20:14.000 Yeah.

01:20:14.000 And he introduced me to this girl...

01:20:17.000 Within five seconds.

01:20:19.000 He goes, hey, this is blah, blah, blah.

01:20:21.000 This is my friend Joe.

01:20:22.000 I go, how you doing?

01:20:23.000 And she goes, oh, hi.

01:20:25.000 I go, come here, Brian.

01:20:27.000 I pull him aside. 1.00

01:20:28.000 I go, she's fucking crazy. 1.00

01:20:29.000 I go, get out right now. 1.00

01:20:31.000 Whatever you're doing.

01:20:32.000 He goes, no, she's not crazy.

01:20:32.000 She's nervous to be around you.

01:20:34.000 I go, dude, trust me. 0.91

01:20:36.000 I have a spidey sense for real crazy. 1.00

01:20:39.000 I go, that girl's fucking crazy. 1.00

01:20:42.000 Turns out, of course he didn't listen, moves her in, blah, blah, blah. 1.00

01:20:45.000 Turns out she's on meth. 1.00

01:20:47.000 Completely out of her fucking mind. 1.00

01:20:48.000 Is a prostitute. 1.00

01:20:51.000 Has these Johns in her life and fucking pimps in her life. 1.00

01:20:57.000 And then he gets rid of her. 1.00

01:20:59.000 And then years later, he's at a bar on Sunset and about to walk in.

01:21:05.000 And she walks by and she's streetwalking.

01:21:08.000 Geez.

01:21:09.000 Yeah.

01:21:10.000 I spotted it like that.

01:21:12.000 Yeah.

01:21:13.000 He didn't spot it at all.

01:21:15.000 Fascinating. 1.00

01:21:15.000 He would be a suck-ass poker player. 1.00

01:21:17.000 I don't think I'd be a good poker player. 1.00

01:21:19.000 I don't have the patience.

01:21:20.000 It's just not something I'm interested in.

01:21:21.000 But if I was interested in, I wonder if I'd be able to pick up tells.

01:21:26.000 I find that so fascinating.

01:21:28.000 I feel like with all the experience in martial arts, you would have a leg up on learning that stuff.

01:21:35.000 I mean, picking up tells has some in common with looking at somebody's stance and picking up that they're about to throw a kick.

01:21:46.000 Hmm, that's interesting because looking at someone's stance and whether or not they're gonna throw a kick is based on data You know like like sometimes I'll say like during a broadcast like he's about to throw a left high kick and someone will go how you know and Because there's a very small but perceptible rise in his heel like his heel came up off the back foot and Which means usually that a guy's trying to get a little bit of a head start throwing a kick with his back leg.

01:22:16.000 And you just...

01:22:16.000 You see it because so many guys have thrown kicks at you.

01:22:19.000 Or because you've tried to hide it on people when you've thrown kicks at people.

01:22:23.000 You know, there's a thing that you see.

01:22:26.000 But it's...

01:22:26.000 There's...

01:22:27.000 There was a book on this.

01:22:29.000 And it's not about martial arts, but it's about just acquiring...

01:22:34.000 Massive amounts of data about very specific things and then being able to see these things coming.

01:22:40.000 I forget the term that they used, but it was just about that, about how for a person who doesn't have this data in their mind, it seems like, how's this guy seeing this?

01:22:49.000 But for someone who has all that data, it's like, oh, there it is.

01:22:55.000 Yeah, it's exactly the same thing with picking up tells in poker, because just thousands of times, I've sat across the table from a guy, I've looked at him, I've thought about whether or not I think this guy has a good hand, and then I've put out my call, and he shows me his hand, and I've just been through that routine thousands of times,

01:23:11.000 and so now I find myself in that spot, and the guy's bet, and I'm looking at him and thinking about whether or not to call, and...

01:23:20.000 I have a big sample of what people look like right before I call them, and then whether or not they show me the winning hand. 0.99

01:23:27.000 So a guy like Doyle Brunson, who's been around for a hundred years, he would be a wizard at that shit, right? 0.97

01:23:32.000 I would guess so, yeah. 0.99

01:23:33.000 That's really interesting, man.

01:23:35.000 That's really interesting.

01:23:37.000 That guy should teach tells, right?

01:23:41.000 If you're that old, you've been around for that... 0.60

01:23:44.000 How long has that guy been playing?

01:23:45.000 A long time.

01:23:47.000 50, 60 years or something?

01:23:49.000 50 years.

01:23:50.000 More like 60, yeah.

01:23:52.000 60 years.

01:23:53.000 Dude's in his 80s, I'm pretty sure.

01:23:55.000 That's amazing, man.

01:23:58.000 All those years of accumulating that data.

01:24:02.000 And a guy like that has really been around for the transformation of poker, too.

01:24:06.000 It was a real different thing back in the 60s.

01:24:09.000 Yeah, it was like you'd go over people's houses, right?

01:24:11.000 Yeah.

01:24:11.000 That was all it was.

01:24:12.000 Did they have it in casinos back then?

01:24:14.000 I want to say the 60s was when poker in casinos began picking up.

01:24:20.000 The 60s?

01:24:21.000 Yeah.

01:24:22.000 What led to this poker revolution that we find now? 0.99

01:24:26.000 I mean, fucking everybody plays poker now. 0.96

01:24:28.000 Yeah, there were a few stages of it. 0.99

01:24:31.000 The earlier parts, like what happened in the 60s and 70s, I know less about.

01:24:37.000 But they started running the World Series of Poker in Vegas in the 60s.

01:24:46.000 And have every year for...

01:24:51.000 I guess World Series started in 69, I think.

01:24:54.000 So they've run it every year for 40-some years now.

01:24:56.000 Well, the big one on television was when they started showing those cameras for television of the cards.

01:25:03.000 Being able to see people's hands.

01:25:04.000 That was huge.

01:25:05.000 That was huge in making it spectators.

01:25:07.000 Making it exciting.

01:25:08.000 Even for a guy like me who doesn't play.

01:25:10.000 If I'm sitting at a bar and I look up and there's a poker thing on, you see each guy's hand.

01:25:15.000 That's, to me, it's very exciting.

01:25:17.000 Yeah, that was a huge leap forward.

01:25:20.000 They had tried televising poker tournaments before that, but it's, especially to a casual viewer, a lot less interesting.

01:25:26.000 But you see less of it, at least for the non-involved observer like myself, you see less of it on television now.

01:25:33.000 In the U.S. In the U.S. It hasn't fallen off nearly the same way in other places, and the reason behind that is that In order to make a profitable TV show, you have to sell advertising space.

01:25:48.000 If you're making a poker TV show, who do you want to sell advertising space to?

01:25:52.000 Online poker sites.

01:25:54.000 Online poker sites can't advertise in the U.S. anymore. 1.00

01:25:58.000 Motherfuckers. 1.00

01:25:58.000 So in Canada or England or France, poker on TV is still huge. 1.00

01:26:06.000 So in Canada it's legal to bet online?

01:26:10.000 It is ambiguous.

01:26:12.000 Ambiguous.

01:26:13.000 In most of the world, it's ambiguous.

01:26:16.000 It would seem like if you were a poker player and you live in America, you just moved to Vancouver.

01:26:22.000 You play online in Vancouver, travel down to America, give up U.S. citizenship.

01:26:27.000 Giving up U.S. citizenship and getting citizenship somewhere else is a lot tougher than you might guess.

01:26:33.000 Yeah, I would imagine.

01:26:35.000 In 2011, when it became clear I was going to have to leave the U.S. to keep playing poker online...

01:26:41.000 I was very startled that I can't just go wherever I want and set up shop and stay there indefinitely.

01:26:47.000 So you live in Malta now?

01:26:49.000 Is that your move?

01:26:51.000 Mostly.

01:26:52.000 I can only spend about half the year there for visa reasons, so I spend about half the year in Malta and do a lot of traveling around to other places as well. 1.00

01:27:00.000 You fucking pimp. 1.00

01:27:01.000 Look at you. 1.00

01:27:02.000 Kid goes from... 0.70

01:27:04.000 Hating school, trying to figure out, gets the love of his parents, fucking bolts, makes 1.6 a year the first year, and then from there on, when you got your degree, and then you decided to just dedicate yourself to being a professional poker player, how many years was it until you kind of had to make this move out of the United States? 0.55

01:27:24.000 Three. 0.95

01:27:26.000 I graduated in 2008, moved to Vegas, and lived in Vegas from 2008 to 2011, and then moved to Malta.

01:27:32.000 What was living in Vegas like?

01:27:34.000 It was pretty great.

01:27:36.000 I lived in Panorama Towers.

01:27:39.000 You spend a lot of time in Vegas, you might know it.

01:27:41.000 It's the apartment complex next door to Vanderlei's Gym.

01:27:44.000 Oh, okay.

01:27:45.000 Yeah, I know where that is.

01:27:46.000 Yeah.

01:27:46.000 Nice spot.

01:27:47.000 Yeah.

01:27:47.000 And it was just full of poker players.

01:27:50.000 Oh, really?

01:27:51.000 So it was like a big poker player party.

01:27:52.000 Some friends of mine from college moved out there with me at the same time.

01:27:57.000 I had two friends from college who...

01:28:01.000 One still is a professional poker player.

01:28:03.000 One was for a couple years and went to law school.

01:28:05.000 They moved out to Vegas with me.

01:28:07.000 My girlfriend then, who's now my wife, came out with me.

01:28:11.000 And then I met a bunch of poker players who were already living out there.

01:28:15.000 And Panorama Towers in 2008-2009 was just insanity.

01:28:23.000 The whole building was just poker players and strippers. 1.00

01:28:27.000 And empty apartments.

01:28:30.000 Wow!

01:28:31.000 What a party that must have been.

01:28:32.000 Poker players and strippers.

01:28:35.000 How'd that work out?

01:28:36.000 Must have been a lot of money being exchanged in those towers.

01:28:39.000 Allegedly.

01:28:41.000 Allegedly.

01:28:41.000 I don't know any details of that sort of thing.

01:28:43.000 Good for you.

01:28:44.000 Stay on the straight and narrow, son. 0.99

01:28:46.000 Avoid the divorce that fucking traps hedge fund managers and sends them to their doom. 0.98

01:28:52.000 So you live in Vegas. 0.99

01:28:54.000 You're doing the poker thing in Vegas.

01:28:57.000 In Vegas, but mainly online.

01:28:58.000 Mainly online, still.

01:28:59.000 Why is that?

01:29:01.000 Is it more profitable?

01:29:03.000 Easier?

01:29:05.000 More profitable for me at that time, given my personal skill set and inclinations.

01:29:14.000 There's money to be made doing both.

01:29:17.000 The advantages with online poker are you can get a lot more hands an hour in.

01:29:23.000 You don't have any of the cost or wasted time associated with going somewhere to play.

01:29:30.000 There's not...

01:29:31.000 The drive to get there and the drive back and the time spent waiting for a seat in a game.

01:29:37.000 Playing live poker, live cash games, involves a lot of waiting around for your turn to get to play in the game.

01:29:43.000 Yeah, I would imagine.

01:29:45.000 And then once you get in the game, you play 30 hands an hour.

01:29:49.000 Online, I'm playing 300 or 400 hands an hour, and that's not even particularly high volume.

01:29:56.000 Are you playing more than one game at a time online?

01:29:59.000 Oh, I see.

01:30:00.000 So you run multiple computers?

01:30:02.000 No, you can...

01:30:04.000 It's just multiple windows on one computer.

01:30:06.000 Okay, so there's different sites.

01:30:08.000 No, you can play multiple tables on one site.

01:30:10.000 Really?

01:30:10.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:30:11.000 You're not doing anything sneaky or bad by playing multiple tables.

01:30:42.000 That seems like, yeah, why would anybody go anywhere if you could play it online like that?

01:30:49.000 The games are tougher online, because you can get so many more hands in, the best players are winning so much, that the competition to be the best player in the game online is stiffer.

01:31:04.000 Whereas live...

01:31:07.000 It's more fun for many recreational players, people who are losing at poker.

01:31:15.000 Not all of them, many, prefer to play in a live game where they can see and hang out with the people.

01:31:23.000 When you're playing online, do you have to worry about bots, or is that nothing anymore?

01:31:27.000 That was something that people really worried about for a while.

01:31:30.000 It's a concern for sure.

01:31:34.000 The biggest and best sites, I think, are doing a pretty good job at enforcing against it.

01:31:40.000 You can do various things to detect when it's a bot rather than a human playing and shut it down.

01:31:49.000 How do you do that?

01:31:50.000 Do they run programs or something like that?

01:31:54.000 The site has various data to work with based on what you're giving them.

01:32:02.000 They're not scanning your computer to see what other programs you're running or anything like that.

01:32:09.000 They're not invading your privacy in that way.

01:32:11.000 But what they can do is they can keep track of your mouse movement Around the screen and the speed and timing that you're clicking on things and they can detect the difference between a human moving a mouse around the screen like a human and a computer program that just jumps from button to button and acts instantly.

01:32:37.000 So, at this point, if you're running a bot that plays for you, part of your challenge is that you have to code up software to move the mouse around the screen in a convincingly human-like fashion and evade this detection.

01:32:54.000 They track your...

01:32:57.000 Playing hours, if you're just regularly playing for 48 hours straight, that's pretty suspicious.

01:33:03.000 Right. 0.99

01:33:04.000 Unless they get a nice fucking webcam video of you doing crank sitting in front of your computer. 1.00

01:33:09.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:33:10.000 Occasionally it comes to that sort of thing.

01:33:12.000 Like, a guy I know was playing 60 tables at once, and they're like, that's...

01:33:20.000 You're a bot.

01:33:21.000 A person can't do that.

01:33:23.000 And so he uploaded a video of him doing that. 0.97

01:33:28.000 And he's like, no, I fucking can. 0.95

01:33:29.000 This is what it looks like. 0.98

01:33:30.000 What does he have, like a bank of screens in front of him?

01:33:32.000 No, I think it was just all on one screen, all the tables stacked on top of each other so that whichever table you have to act on pops to the top.

01:33:40.000 And you just click, and it goes to the side, and the next one you have to act on pops to the top.

01:33:44.000 And he's just pow, [...

01:33:46.000 Oh my god.

01:33:47.000 He was a competitive StarCraft player before he came to poker, so he was just, like, sick at speed clicking.

01:33:54.000 Oh, yeah, and multitasking.

01:33:55.000 Those StarCraft players, it's amazing.

01:33:57.000 You watch that.

01:33:58.000 That's insane.

01:33:59.000 I don't know what they're doing, so it's even more amazing to me.

01:34:03.000 Yeah, same.

01:34:03.000 Duncan.

01:34:04.000 Every now and then I watch those videos, and it's nuts. 1.00

01:34:07.000 Duncan's obsessed with that shit. 1.00

01:34:09.000 He was a silver whatever the fuck that is. 1.00

01:34:11.000 On Starcraft for a while, and then he lost his silver standing. 0.97

01:34:14.000 He's very, very upset.

01:34:15.000 He's very embarrassed.

01:34:16.000 But I would watch him get obsessed with that stuff, and he would watch the videos, and his eyes would light up, and his pupils would dilate.

01:34:24.000 Oh, yeah.

01:34:25.000 Those videos are insane.

01:34:27.000 And it's a huge spectator sport in Korea, right?

01:34:29.000 Yeah, it is.

01:34:30.000 Huge.

01:34:30.000 There's, like, TV stations devoted to just that, I'm pretty sure.

01:34:34.000 Yeah, I need to talk to one of those pro StarCraft dudes.

01:34:38.000 Apparently, it's a very, very, very difficult game, too, that is, in a lot of ways, very chess-like in that sense.

01:34:45.000 It's very strategic.

01:34:47.000 But also, like...

01:34:49.000 Almost athletic in the sort of speed-clicking demands.

01:34:54.000 Well, 3D games are very athletic in that sense.

01:34:57.000 The hand-eye coordination that are involved in playing games like Unreal or Quake or Doom or any of those crazy fast twitch games.

01:35:05.000 There are quite a few competitive gamers who transitioned to poker and are now professional poker players.

01:35:12.000 But imagine that people that just have this inclination towards figuring things out in a game sense, they would have that towards a lot of things.

01:35:23.000 Absolutely.

01:35:23.000 Yeah, poker's full of people who were in some other game or sport before poker.

01:35:29.000 The pool thing is huge.

01:35:30.000 A lot of pool players go into poker because they can actually make money doing it as opposed to pool.

01:35:34.000 It's very difficult to do.

01:35:36.000 So when you live in Vegas for a little bit, hanging out with strippers and poker players and strippers and poker players, so you decide how do you go with Malta? 0.99

01:35:51.000 It's a weird story, actually, how I ended up in Malta.

01:35:56.000 Originally, it had a lot to do with...

01:35:58.000 Where is Malta?

01:35:59.000 It's like right next to Sicily.

01:36:02.000 Oh, wow.

01:36:04.000 It's like a couple hours on the ferry to Sicily.

01:36:07.000 Hmm, okay.

01:36:09.000 That's where my grandparents are from.

01:36:11.000 Oh, cool.

01:36:13.000 Malta's real nearby.

01:36:14.000 I drink a lot of Sicilian wine and need a lot of Sicilian pizza there.

01:36:17.000 I bet, man.

01:36:18.000 The food there is supposed to be sensational.

01:36:20.000 The seafood is supposed to be amazing.

01:36:22.000 The local red king prawns in Malta are some of the most delicious things I've ever eaten.

01:36:27.000 Wow, okay.

01:36:28.000 So what makes you live there?

01:36:30.000 Is it a tax thing?

01:36:31.000 Is it a gambling thing?

01:36:33.000 A residency thing.

01:36:34.000 It's easy?

01:36:35.000 It looked like it was going to be when I started looking into it at the time.

01:36:40.000 It was basically just, you need to pay some relatively small fees for the process.

01:36:45.000 You need to fill in a bunch of paperwork, mainly stuff like...

01:36:50.000 Demonstrating that you have enough money to support yourself, that you haven't been convicted of any crimes in the country you're coming from, basic stuff like that, and they will give you a permit to stay there as long as you like.

01:37:03.000 So do you speak Spanish or Italian?

01:37:05.000 We have to speak there.

01:37:07.000 In Malta, they speak Malti and English.

01:37:10.000 Malti.

01:37:11.000 And what is Malti?

01:37:12.000 It is a Semitic language, so like closest to Arabic.

01:37:15.000 Jesus Christ.

01:37:17.000 But it's written in like Roman characters, like the alphabet you're used to.

01:37:24.000 Oh, okay.

01:37:25.000 Not like Roman numerals.

01:37:27.000 No, not Roman numerals.

01:37:28.000 I'm thinking like V's instead of U's. 1.00

01:37:30.000 No, the alphabet we use for English and French and Spanish and Italian.

01:37:33.000 Wow, but it's a Semitic language.

01:37:35.000 But it's a Semitic language, so it's just full of X's and Q's and G and H's that you can't pronounce at all.

01:37:43.000 I needed to go to the post office to pick up a package that had been sent to me, and I don't have a car there, so I need to take a taxi.

01:37:50.000 So I get the address of the post office, I write it down, it's in a town...

01:37:54.000 I thought it was called Cormi.

01:37:56.000 It's spelled Q-O-R-M-I. I get in the taxi.

01:37:59.000 I say, I need to go to the post office in Cormi.

01:38:01.000 The guy looks at me like I've just told him I need to go to the post office on the moon.

01:38:05.000 He's never heard of Cormi.

01:38:07.000 It's not a big island.

01:38:08.000 There are like 500,000 people there.

01:38:09.000 You can drive from one end to the other in an hour.

01:38:14.000 I say it again.

01:38:15.000 I show it to him on the piece of paper.

01:38:16.000 He says, Oh, Ormi!

01:38:18.000 Yes, we can go to Ormi.

01:38:20.000 It starts with a silent Q. A silent Q. Q would have guessed.

01:38:25.000 Silent cues?

01:38:26.000 Why use it?

01:38:28.000 How weird.

01:38:29.000 What a strange thing.

01:38:30.000 That whole part of the world is so bizarre because it's sort of the echoes of the conqueror movements of thousands of years ago.

01:38:38.000 Oh, yeah, and you can really see it in Malta.

01:38:40.000 I mean, it's been conquered by so many people over the years.

01:38:44.000 Obviously, the language is...

01:38:47.000 Semitic because at one point it was under Moorish or Arabic control.

01:38:52.000 Which is why that scene from True Romance with the Moors in Sicily.

01:38:56.000 Yeah. 0.91

01:38:57.000 With, you know, where it's saying that, yeah, it's a racist scene for all the black people.

01:39:04.000 I mean, that's the reason why so many Sicilians have dark skin and curly hair.

01:39:08.000 Maltese people look roughly like Lebanese people or something.

01:39:13.000 Wow.

01:39:14.000 They're pretty dark skinned.

01:39:17.000 They speak a language that sounds a lot like Arabic with an Italian accent, basically.

01:39:22.000 So did you do a lot of research before you decided on Malta?

01:39:26.000 Medium amount.

01:39:27.000 Did you know anybody living there already?

01:39:29.000 I knew a few people who had been there. 0.98

01:39:32.000 So you just fucking moved to some strange island? 0.77

01:39:35.000 Well, what happened was the Department of Justice cracked down on the poker sites happened in April 2011, and a few weeks went by. 0.98

01:39:47.000 We're thinking, maybe this will all just blow over and everything will be back to the way it was in a month or two.

01:39:53.000 It became pretty clear that was not going to be the case by late May.

01:39:59.000 And the World Series of Poker is about to start in Vegas.

01:40:02.000 I'm going to be playing a poker tournament every day for six weeks.

01:40:08.000 But I'm beginning to plan ahead to what I'm going to do after that so I can get back to playing online.

01:40:14.000 And...

01:40:16.000 Talking to my girlfriend about where we're going to move, and the idea of Malta comes up, and we decide she's going to go there by herself and check it out while I'm playing the World Series.

01:40:31.000 And she's like, not really that enthusiastic about this idea at the time.

01:40:37.000 She's like, we're going to go to this little shitty island in the middle of nowhere. 0.51

01:40:41.000 I don't know about this. 0.89

01:40:43.000 Yeah, that sounds weird.

01:40:45.000 But she went over there and ended up loving it.

01:40:48.000 It's like, Malta's great.

01:40:50.000 Let's go there.

01:40:50.000 Wow.

01:40:51.000 Yeah, it came back.

01:40:52.000 Where'd the other poker players go?

01:40:55.000 Anybody follow you over there?

01:40:57.000 Two other guys came with me over there and didn't stay.

01:41:03.000 What a fascinating vagabond lifestyle you guys have.

01:41:06.000 Yeah, it's nuts.

01:41:07.000 All my friends who were living in Panorama Towers in Vegas are now scattered all over the world.

01:41:13.000 So no one stayed in Vegas?

01:41:14.000 One dude stayed in Vegas.

01:41:16.000 One dude out of how many?

01:41:18.000 One dude out of my...

01:41:26.000 But isn't it legal now to gamble online on some sites if you live in Vegas?

01:41:32.000 Yes, there is online poker in Nevada, but it's Nevada only.

01:41:38.000 Playing against other people in Nevada?

01:41:40.000 Right.

01:41:40.000 So there's a limited group of people to play with?

01:41:42.000 Yeah, you can't play very high stakes, there aren't a lot of games.

01:41:45.000 Playing full-time from Nevada is not a very appealing proposition.

01:41:51.000 The guy who decided to stay is playing mainly in casinos.

01:41:56.000 Now, is there any movement to change this as far as the online laws?

01:42:01.000 Yes.

01:42:02.000 What year was this all implemented?

01:42:06.000 The UIGEA passed in 2006, but it's not really even clear how much that had to do with anything.

01:42:12.000 What happened right after the UIGEA passed in 2006 was that some poker sites voluntarily pulled out of the U.S. market, and that doing transactions with poker sites became more complicated.

01:42:26.000 Remember what I was saying about the UIGEA? It didn't change what was illegal.

01:42:31.000 It's not like online poker was legal before that and then it wasn't.

01:42:35.000 It's not like online poker was clearly illegal the whole time.

01:42:40.000 Nobody really knows.

01:42:41.000 It's up to prosecutors to decide that they want to prosecute a case against an online gambling site on the basis of the laws that are on the books, which are pretty vague, and then courts to decide if it's fair to apply those laws to the case in question.

01:42:59.000 So has anybody from the U.S. that's a poker player tried playing online poker from the United States and been prosecuted?

01:43:08.000 Players don't really get prosecuted.

01:43:10.000 So it's essentially the site owners?

01:43:12.000 The sites are the ones that are exposed to legal risk.

01:43:17.000 So if you just decided to stay in Vegas and keep playing online, what would be the risk?

01:43:22.000 The sites wouldn't take my business.

01:43:24.000 They wouldn't take your business.

01:43:25.000 What if you went through a proxy?

01:43:27.000 Then...

01:43:29.000 I might trick them and I might get to play on the site, but I would be constantly at risk of being caught and...

01:43:39.000 Confiscated.

01:43:40.000 If I'm caught, I might lose all my money, yeah.

01:43:42.000 So, yeah, you have to do all sorts of identity masking bullshit to get away with playing on international poker sites from the US these days.

01:43:50.000 So what's being done to try to change that?

01:43:53.000 Uh...

01:43:54.000 In some ways, it's pretty similar to the marijuana movement in the US, actually.

01:44:00.000 It's happening on a state-by-state basis.

01:44:04.000 There's probably not going to be a federal bill anytime soon.

01:44:07.000 There have been some attempts, but they haven't come very close to passing.

01:44:13.000 But so far, Nevada, New Jersey, and Delaware have passed Online poker bills.

01:44:23.000 And you can play in those three places.

01:44:26.000 That's it.

01:44:27.000 That's it, so far.

01:44:29.000 California is at the forefront and is a huge one.

01:44:33.000 If California becomes an online poker state, even if you can only play against other California residents, it's a big enough state with enough money that that will be a full-fledged poker economy.

01:44:48.000 Yeah, 20 million people here. 0.99

01:44:49.000 I mean, this is a goddamn country. 0.99

01:44:50.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:44:52.000 This is Canada.

01:44:54.000 Close.

01:44:55.000 Canada's 40. Is it?

01:44:56.000 I think so.

01:44:57.000 I think I looked that up recently.

01:44:58.000 I think you did, too.

01:45:00.000 I think you're right.

01:45:01.000 I think we looked it up, actually.

01:45:03.000 Well, let's find out right now.

01:45:04.000 Population of Canada.

01:45:05.000 I want to say it's 37. Population. 0.69

01:45:07.000 That sounds about right.

01:45:08.000 I think California's actually higher than 22. 34. 34.8.

01:45:15.000 California or Canada?

01:45:16.000 Canada.

01:45:17.000 34.8.

01:45:18.000 I want to say California's close.

01:45:19.000 I mean, LA is 12 or 14 already?

01:45:23.000 38. California's 38. So yeah, California's a bit bigger than Canada.

01:45:28.000 So pretty close.

01:45:29.000 38 and 35. And then those are pretty comparable to the larger European countries?

01:45:35.000 LA's 20 million.

01:45:36.000 LA's 20 million?

01:45:37.000 Yeah.

01:45:38.000 Wow.

01:45:38.000 That's what the 20 million came from.

01:45:41.000 But that's just without Mexicans. 1.00

01:45:42.000 They have no idea how many people really are here.

01:45:44.000 Right.

01:45:45.000 It could easily be 30. Yeah.

01:45:47.000 Or 40. Yeah.

01:45:49.000 There's a lot of people here that are undocumented.

01:45:52.000 Yeah.

01:45:52.000 That's a crazy thing.

01:45:54.000 Yeah, the actual numbers.

01:45:55.000 I mean, I'm sure they probably have some sort of a vague idea, but unless they're going from neighborhood to neighborhood scanning, I mean, how do they know?

01:46:03.000 Yeah.

01:46:04.000 That's the whole idea, that they're here illegally. 0.99

01:46:06.000 There's no documentation.

01:46:07.000 Yeah, I guess you could, like...

01:46:09.000 You could guess, somehow or another.

01:46:11.000 Yeah, you could track indicators of economic activity, like... 0.99

01:46:17.000 How many fucking bags of rice are being sold at the supermarket? 1.00

01:46:23.000 Racist! 1.00

01:46:25.000 I don't know if that would work. 0.53

01:46:27.000 I mean, track how much food is sold in L.A.? That has to be pretty closely correlated with how many people there are here.

01:46:36.000 I guess.

01:46:37.000 But how much cash business do they do?

01:46:38.000 That's where things get really squirrely.

01:46:40.000 Because a lot of folks in the illegal community, they work... 1.00

01:46:44.000 For cash.

01:46:45.000 Right.

01:46:46.000 They spend cash on their bills.

01:46:48.000 But you spend cash at the grocery store.

01:46:50.000 The grocery store has a record of that.

01:46:51.000 They don't know who spent it, but they know how much food they're selling.

01:46:54.000 But it would be racist to check, because you'd have to check those weird markets, weird Spanish names.

01:46:59.000 You drive by, like, you go down Van Owen, you see those...

01:47:02.000 I mean, you check all the markets.

01:47:03.000 Yeah, I guess.

01:47:05.000 And then just calculate how many people are buying that food. 1.00

01:47:08.000 Look at you, you clever bastard. 1.00

01:47:10.000 He treated it like a goddamn poker game. 1.00

01:47:14.000 So, how long have you been in Malta now? 0.99

01:47:16.000 Since September 2011, so like three years.

01:47:21.000 And any plans on...

01:47:23.000 What about, like, Monaco or any other places where you can...

01:47:25.000 Monaco's creepy.

01:47:27.000 I don't want to go to Monaco.

01:47:28.000 Is it creepy? 0.99

01:47:29.000 Everyone there has so much fucking money, and they're so snobby. 0.99

01:47:33.000 So says the guy who made a million six his first year of playing poker. 1.00

01:47:37.000 Eh, those fucking rich assholes. 1.00

01:47:39.000 You know how, like, you'll see a car drive by in the States, it'll have, like, a handwritten sign in the window, for sale, $15,000, call this number? 1.00

01:47:49.000 Yes. 0.87

01:47:50.000 In Monaco, you'll see that, only it'll be like a fucking McLaren or something, for sale, 1.5 million euro. 0.99

01:47:59.000 Really? 0.99

01:47:59.000 Handwritten sign in the window. 0.99

01:48:01.000 Come on.

01:48:01.000 I've seen that in Monaco.

01:48:02.000 A McLaren for sale?

01:48:05.000 Like, with a little handmade sign? 0.98

01:48:07.000 I don't know shit about cars. 0.96

01:48:08.000 I may be guessing the wrong name. 0.97

01:48:10.000 I know you, but yeah. 0.99

01:48:11.000 Real fucking expensive sports cars. 0.99

01:48:13.000 Wow, that sounds crazy. 0.99

01:48:15.000 Why wouldn't they go to a broker?

01:48:16.000 The taxis there are all Cadillac. 0.97

01:48:18.000 If you have that much money, why wouldn't you go to, if you have enough money for a fucking McLaren, not a, there's different McLarens. 0.97

01:48:23.000 Yeah.

01:48:24.000 There's a, there's, I've talked about this in the podcast before, people got upset at me, but there's, this, I was saying that McLarens don't sound very good, and then they said, what about, this sounds awesome.

01:48:35.000 That's the million dollar McLaren.

01:48:37.000 Yeah.

01:48:37.000 It's a million plus dollar McLaren has this amazing sound to it, but the regular McLaren that's like, I think 200 plus thousand, it doesn't sound bad.

01:48:47.000 It just doesn't sound like a Ferrari.

01:48:49.000 Like, Ferraris have this...

01:48:52.000 Part of the beauty of a Ferrari is the sound it makes.

01:48:57.000 People underestimate that.

01:48:59.000 That's one of the reasons why turbocharged cars aren't appealing to a lot of real sports cars fanatics.

01:49:05.000 Because they just don't have the same sound.

01:49:07.000 That makes sense.

01:49:08.000 Yeah, the forced induction with the air.

01:49:10.000 It just doesn't give the same exhaust sound.

01:49:13.000 So much so that a lot of turbo...

01:49:14.000 Like some of the new turbocharged cars, what they're actually doing is they're faking the sound.

01:49:19.000 So there's a thing called the sound synthesizer that they use on the BMW M5. You could turn it off, praise Allah, because it's really gross.

01:49:28.000 And when you have it on, it's actually pumping sounds like engine sounds through your speakers.

01:49:35.000 So it uses a sound system of the car to make you think that you're making all this engine noise.

01:49:41.000 Which car is this?

01:49:42.000 The BMW M5, which is a brilliant automobile.

01:49:46.000 But they just tacked that on because it was too quiet by default?

01:49:48.000 Well, they used to have a V10. And the V10 was a monster engine.

01:49:54.000 It was just an incredible, incredible engine.

01:49:57.000 And it made so much cool noise. 0.99

01:50:00.000 It was just like this fucking throaty, deep, powerful... 0.99

01:50:04.000 I'm pretty sure it was a V10. Hold on a second. 1.00

01:50:06.000 BMW V10. Let me pull that off real quick.

01:50:12.000 WV10... And they switched to a turbocharged engine.

01:50:16.000 Yeah, yeah, it was a V10. So they switched to a turbocharged engine for the new one.

01:50:21.000 It has more power, more torque, it's faster, but it just doesn't sound as good.

01:50:26.000 Just doesn't.

01:50:27.000 You know, the one that, you know, it used to have this incredible whale to it that's like, here, I'll play it for you.

01:50:35.000 Sound like a Ferrari.

01:50:36.000 Like Ferraris have this...

01:50:38.000 That's the delay.

01:50:42.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:50:43.000 Let me find this fucker. 1.00

01:50:47.000 So anyway, what I was saying about Monaco is that more than any other place I've ever been in the world, there's this feeling that you don't belong there and that nobody is happy about the fact that you turned up. 0.99

01:51:00.000 Nobody's happy about the fact that you turned up.

01:51:03.000 Like, there's one big poker tournament a year in Monaco that I have been to several times and, like, All the hotel staff and cab drivers and everybody else like that that I've interacted with there just seems like surprised and put off.

01:51:24.000 That you're there?

01:51:25.000 That there is like some young American dude who doesn't speak French who is in Monaco.

01:51:33.000 Really?

01:51:33.000 So it's just a millionaire, billionaire playboy place.

01:51:36.000 Yeah.

01:51:37.000 And they want it for the rich French-speaking people.

01:51:41.000 Yeah.

01:51:41.000 Hmm.

01:51:43.000 But doesn't, like, George Clooney live there or some shit? 0.60

01:51:45.000 Yeah, I mean, there are a bunch of people who are not French. 0.61

01:51:49.000 He's probably got, like, chateaus all around the world.

01:51:53.000 For sure he does.

01:51:55.000 Chateau.

01:51:57.000 A chateau.

01:52:06.000 That's what a BMW with a V10 sounds like.

01:52:09.000 That's a serious engine? 1.00

01:52:10.000 The new one sounds like a little bitch. 1.00

01:52:12.000 But the new one's a better car. 1.00

01:52:13.000 Yeah.

01:52:14.000 Catch-22.

01:52:15.000 It's like, what are you going to do? 1.00

01:52:16.000 If you keep going with these bigger, crazy, throaty engines, they just eat the gas, and then they kill the seals in the Arctic shit. 1.00

01:52:25.000 Drown the polar bears, the frozen glaciers, and all that good stuff. 0.99

01:52:29.000 What is the economy like in this Malta place?

01:52:32.000 What's it constructed with?

01:52:35.000 A lot of it at this point has to do with foreign companies, many of them in the online gaming industry, a lot also just in banking and finance and stuff like that.

01:52:51.000 Is there tricky laws there or something?

01:52:52.000 Is that why they move there?

01:52:54.000 Yeah, it's some of the lowest tax rates in the EU. So, like many small countries, it's, like, you know, Antigua or St. Kitts.

01:53:09.000 There are a bunch of, like, island nations near the U.S. that have carved out an itch for themselves as tax havens and...

01:53:20.000 Business-friendly economies.

01:53:22.000 Malta has a bit of that going on as well.

01:53:25.000 So do you have to, because you maintain your United States citizenship, do you have to pay taxes there and here as well?

01:53:32.000 Is that how it works?

01:53:33.000 Only here.

01:53:34.000 If I had become a resident like I was planning to, which I never really finished that story.

01:53:41.000 If I had become a resident like I was planning to, yes, I would owe taxes there.

01:53:46.000 They have a tax treaty with the U.S. so I can...

01:53:49.000 Deduct what I pay there against what I would owe here.

01:53:52.000 You don't end up getting double taxed.

01:53:57.000 But, since I'm not a resident, no, I have no tax liability anywhere other than the U.S. But if you do become a resident somewhere else, you have to give up your residence here, right?

01:54:07.000 No, not always.

01:54:08.000 Not always?

01:54:09.000 Really?

01:54:09.000 I mean, in this case, not at all.

01:54:11.000 This isn't becoming a citizen.

01:54:13.000 This is just becoming a permanent resident.

01:54:15.000 So I don't get a Maltese passport or anything like that.

01:54:19.000 I get a sticker that goes inside my U.S. passport saying that I am a registered permanent resident.

01:54:26.000 Yeah, there's a thing like that with Mexico.

01:54:30.000 Yeah.

01:54:30.000 Like you had a resident visa or something like that.

01:54:33.000 You could stay like six months at a time and then you have to go back and forth.

01:54:37.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:54:38.000 There are all kinds of visas.

01:54:41.000 Every country has their own set of rules and different rules that apply to citizens of different other countries.

01:54:48.000 And do you enjoy this, this living in Malta and doing your online gambling there?

01:54:52.000 Yeah.

01:54:54.000 It's a pretty decent place to live.

01:54:58.000 If I could live anywhere in the world and keep playing online poker, there's a decent chance I'd pick somewhere like San Francisco over Malta. 0.99

01:55:07.000 Why San Francisco?

01:55:08.000 I just really like it there.

01:55:09.000 I was getting ready to move there from Vegas just before the DOJ crackdown.

01:55:16.000 Just because of the atmosphere of the town?

01:55:18.000 Yeah, it's a nice place.

01:55:19.000 It's a great place.

01:55:20.000 Very smart.

01:55:21.000 It's one of the smartest cities, I think, in the country.

01:55:24.000 It's also one of the most tech-savvy.

01:55:27.000 There's so many tech people there.

01:55:29.000 A lot of complaints, though.

01:55:30.000 The folks who were there for a long time are complaining about the real estate prices.

01:55:35.000 They were shot through the roof where regular people can't even afford to live there anymore.

01:55:38.000 They can't afford to buy houses.

01:55:40.000 I looked at the housing prices in San Francisco. 0.96

01:55:43.000 It's ridiculous.

01:55:44.000 A four million dollar house is like this regular house. 0.92

01:55:47.000 How is that a four million dollar house?

01:55:50.000 It's a million dollar house maybe, but it's not a four million dollar house.

01:55:53.000 I have friends who live in Atherton.

01:55:56.000 Do you know where that is?

01:55:57.000 No.

01:55:59.000 It's one of the richest neighborhoods in the country.

01:56:01.000 Okay.

01:56:02.000 And it's just outside of San Francisco. 0.99

01:56:04.000 And it's fucking preposterous. 0.99

01:56:07.000 Like, their house is worth $15 million. 0.99

01:56:10.000 And it's not worth $15 million.

01:56:13.000 It's just not.

01:56:14.000 Yeah.

01:56:14.000 It's just they have a large backyard.

01:56:15.000 But, I mean, it's not large if you live in Kansas...

01:56:18.000 Right.

01:56:19.000 Or, you know, Nebraska or anywhere else. 0.99

01:56:21.000 It's just large for this one fucking area where it's just ridiculous real estate. 0.99

01:56:25.000 I mean, it doesn't make any sense. 1.00

01:56:27.000 Like, you look at this, you're like, how could you ever pay $15 million for this fucking house? 0.99

01:56:31.000 It doesn't make any sense. 1.00

01:56:33.000 Yeah, that shit's crazy to me. 1.00

01:56:35.000 But it's called all those wacky fucking billionaire Google people live out there. 1.00

01:56:39.000 Right. 0.99

01:56:39.000 It's just too much money. 0.99

01:56:40.000 So, yeah, I mean, it's supply and demand.

01:56:43.000 Right.

01:56:44.000 People want to live in this one spot.

01:56:45.000 There's limited space.

01:56:47.000 And those people have a whole lot of money.

01:56:50.000 It drives me crazy, though, that you can't live here.

01:56:52.000 Not that I love you so much. 0.99

01:56:54.000 But it just drives me crazy that you have to, like, leave the country to do what you do for a living because of some fucking goofy laws that were obviously put in place by criminals or people that are just shady as fuck. 0.99

01:57:06.000 Yeah, I don't love it. 1.00

01:57:08.000 No, it's fucking awful. 0.99

01:57:10.000 It's awful. 0.98

01:57:11.000 So if it does change, will it be something that's going to happen within the next decade?

01:57:19.000 I think so.

01:57:20.000 Yeah, I mean...

01:57:22.000 Does PokerStars.net, do they try to work on that?

01:57:25.000 Are they...

01:57:26.000 Yeah, there is a pretty good chance that they will be in the New Jersey market in the next year or so, because you need to get regulatory approval, and obviously the U.S.,

01:57:45.000 Casino interests are trying to keep PokerStars out.

01:57:47.000 It's not a company owned by Americans.

01:57:50.000 They should just send donuts to that Chris Christie guy's house over and over and over again.

01:57:55.000 He'll let them in.

01:57:56.000 Donuts and hot dogs and maybe cheese and pizza.

01:58:00.000 Just keep sending food to that guy's house. 0.60

01:58:03.000 He'll say yes.

01:58:05.000 He loves food.

01:58:06.000 He loves food probably as much as he loves money.

01:58:09.000 And money buys food and this is like you cut out the middleman.

01:58:11.000 Just send him the food.

01:58:13.000 It looks like he's pretty enthusiastic about food.

01:58:17.000 Yeah, he's not enthusiastic about Teslas. 0.99

01:58:20.000 He won't allow them to direct sell Teslas, which is just shady as fuck. 0.98

01:58:25.000 I don't know about that. 0.98

01:58:26.000 You didn't know about that?

01:58:27.000 No.

01:58:27.000 What's the story with that?

01:58:29.000 I'll Google it so I have all the information so I don't fuck anything up.

01:58:32.000 But Tesla, New Jersey, Christy. 0.98

01:58:38.000 He's just gross. 1.00

01:58:40.000 Christy says Tesla criticism is complete crap. 1.00

01:58:44.000 He's such a fucking slob. 1.00

01:58:48.000 Conservative criticism over his administration's decision to stop Tesla from selling cars in its showrooms in New Jersey is complete crap. 1.00

01:58:56.000 The fact is we looked away for a year to allow Tesla to do what they were doing and we couldn't look away any longer. 0.97

01:59:02.000 Look away?

01:59:03.000 What does that mean?

01:59:06.000 They had already been selling cars in New Jersey.

01:59:08.000 They have a law in the books that they could interpret to stop them from doing that, but they didn't for a little while and then decided they would.

01:59:14.000 The company cannot sell their cars from the showroom.

01:59:18.000 They have two showrooms.

01:59:19.000 The company cannot sell their cars from the showrooms or offer their customers test drives.

01:59:24.000 The Jersey law on the books since the 1970s requires cars to be sold through the traditional dealership model.

01:59:32.000 Okay, he says, I don't like the law either.

01:59:34.000 I didn't vote for it.

01:59:35.000 I didn't sign it.

01:59:36.000 But I don't get to just ignore the laws that I don't like.

01:59:40.000 Hmm.

01:59:41.000 Okay, well that actually makes sense.

01:59:42.000 Yeah, so...

01:59:43.000 He probably was spitting food out when he said it, though. 1.00

01:59:47.000 Probably had shit flying out of his teeth. 1.00

01:59:49.000 Somebody sued or whatever and they couldn't ignore it. 1.00

01:59:52.000 No, maybe.

01:59:54.000 Yeah, probably.

01:59:55.000 Or someone paid someone off or something like that.

01:59:58.000 Right.

01:59:59.000 It's just gross.

02:00:01.000 I don't understand.

02:00:04.000 First of all, it doesn't make any sense.

02:00:06.000 Why would you have a law like that in place?

02:00:08.000 The only reason why a law like that would be in place is because someone paid somebody off.

02:00:12.000 I mean, I guess in theory the idea is you should need to have a license to sell cars, otherwise you might sell people real shitty cars that fall apart and then disappear and not be accountable for selling people cars that don't work.

02:00:27.000 What?

02:00:28.000 I guess.

02:00:29.000 The rule is actually a result of a backroom deal.

02:00:33.000 Electric car makers chairman charges.

02:00:37.000 Hmm, okay.

02:00:38.000 The anti-Tesla rule.

02:00:39.000 A new rule that effectively bans direct-to-consumer car sales.

02:00:43.000 This is what it's saying in this one article that is in NewJersey.com.

02:00:48.000 Oh, this is sounding pretty suspect.

02:00:52.000 It's for specifically direct-to-consumer.

02:00:55.000 So, like...

02:00:57.000 There has to be a middleman broker.

02:01:00.000 You have to have a manufacturer who sells to a dealer who sells to a consumer.

02:01:05.000 And Tesla was selling manufacturer to consumer.

02:01:08.000 And so they had to crack down on that.

02:01:10.000 Is that what's going on?

02:01:10.000 Elon Musk, the way he said it, he said that if you believe that the law in the books protecting dealers are there for the good of consumer, then Governor Christie has a bridge closure that he wants to sell you.

02:01:21.000 Yeah.

02:01:24.000 Which is, of course, in reference to the scandal where that slob closed down a bridge for whatever political reason that had nothing to do with safety or the health and welfare of the citizens. 0.99

02:01:36.000 It was some political pressure.

02:01:38.000 Governor Christie has promised that this would be put to a vote of the elected state legislature, which is the appropriate way to change the law, Musk said, when it became apparent that the auto dealer lobby...

02:01:50.000 When it became apparent to the auto dealer lobby that this approach would not succeed, they cut a backroom deal with the governor to circumvent the legislative process and pass a regulation that is fundamentally contrary to the intent of the law. 0.95

02:02:04.000 Okay, so he's a bullshit artist, which makes sense. 0.97

02:02:07.000 Sounds about right. 0.99

02:02:08.000 Yeah, that makes sense.

02:02:09.000 So New Jersey's got a bunch of issues.

02:02:11.000 This is also the same guy who's morbidly obese but said that he's going to stop Marijuana from being legal in his town that it won't be legal in his state rather on his watch because of the children How about the children looking at you as their leader,

02:02:28.000 this morbidly obese person that's giving out any health-related advice whatsoever? 1.00

02:02:35.000 It just drives me fucking bananas, that kind of shit. 1.00

02:02:39.000 And, of course, they have... 1.00

02:02:42.000 I don't have anything against fat people being elected to office, but...

02:02:45.000 I do.

02:02:46.000 Yeah? 0.67

02:02:47.000 Yeah, morbidly obese.

02:02:48.000 I just don't think it's right.

02:02:51.000 Really?

02:02:51.000 No.

02:02:52.000 I'm just fucking around. 0.99

02:02:53.000 I'm just fucking around. 1.00

02:02:55.000 Bad example for the children. 1.00

02:02:56.000 No, if they're really good at their job, fuck yeah, they should be fat. 1.00

02:03:00.000 But he's not good at his job. 1.00

02:03:01.000 Doesn't seem that way. 1.00

02:03:02.000 He's fat and he's a hypocrite. 1.00

02:03:04.000 My issue became only with the marijuana thing, which is marijuana is near and dear to my heart. 1.00

02:03:11.000 I think it's a fucking fantastic plant and I think it aids evolution.

02:03:14.000 And so I see some non-evolved, morbidly obese person who doesn't care about his health, and he's trying to push what he's talking about it from a health perspective, you know, worrying about the children. 0.98

02:03:24.000 Not only that, he's citing studies that he doesn't understand, non-biased studies that he doesn't understand at all.

02:03:30.000 Yeah, the government studies on that stuff are real shady.

02:03:33.000 Yeah, ignoring all the positive benefit studies that have just time and time again been pushed aside because of their agenda.

02:03:40.000 Well, yeah.

02:03:41.000 I mean, in my opinion, you don't even need to demonstrate that there's anything positive about it for it to be clear that it should be legal, just from a harm reduction standpoint.

02:03:54.000 People are gonna smoke weed whether or not you tell them it's legal, and if you make it illegal, then they're gonna have to deal with criminals to do it, and they're gonna be putting themselves in danger, and there's gonna be more crime, the associated crime that goes with that,

02:04:11.000 and... 0.71

02:04:11.000 Not only that, people are going to be locked up, which is more harm, which is ridiculous. 0.71

02:04:15.000 Blocking people up for non-violent drug offenses is archaic. 1.00

02:04:18.000 It's stupid. 0.98

02:04:19.000 In fact, the World Health Organization just recently called for a decriminalization of all drugs. 1.00

02:04:23.000 I saw that, yeah.

02:04:24.000 Fascinating.

02:04:25.000 Absolutely fascinating.

02:04:25.000 I think it's absolutely the right thing.

02:04:26.000 It is the right thing. 0.97

02:04:28.000 If you can have drugs, and you can have drugs, there's goddamn plenty of drugs. 0.97

02:04:32.000 I've gone over this a thousand times, but go to any corner liquor store and you can drink yourself to death. 0.99

02:04:38.000 Go to any drug store, there's a liquor aisle that's filled with enough booze to kill dozens of people. 0.89

02:04:45.000 Oh yeah. 1.00

02:04:46.000 We live in a preposterously hypocritical society. 0.99

02:04:49.000 Is Malta like that? 0.98

02:04:51.000 Can you get good weed in Malta?

02:04:52.000 What's it like?

02:04:53.000 No, Malta is pretty repressive on the drug laws.

02:04:58.000 Really?

02:04:59.000 It's a Catholic country. 1.00

02:05:00.000 Ah, those fucks. 1.00

02:05:02.000 So what happens if you get caught with a joint in Malta? 1.00

02:05:06.000 Death.

02:05:08.000 Potentially a good bit of time in jail.

02:05:09.000 Really?

02:05:10.000 A joint?

02:05:12.000 I don't know. 0.92

02:05:13.000 The fucked up thing with multi-drug laws is that they really don't draw a lot of distinctions between one drug and the next. 0.76

02:05:19.000 And there's a bit of a growing heroin problem there. 0.84

02:05:24.000 And so there's a bit of a push for harsher drug laws to crack down on that.

02:05:32.000 And there have been a couple cases of...

02:05:39.000 That's spilling over into weed and people getting in a lot of trouble for a relatively small amount of weed.

02:05:46.000 That kind of makes sense.

02:05:47.000 That does happen in a lot of these smaller countries or countries that are just not as sophisticated.

02:05:51.000 They tend to lump drugs together, and oftentimes they also tend to prosecute people based on the weight of the plant, and they pick up the pot with the plant, like the pot that grows in, the dirt, the soil itself, and they count all that as your drug.

02:06:09.000 If you found someone who had marijuana plants in their house, and you weighed everything...

02:06:15.000 It's like probably a few ounces of smokable marijuana, but it's like dozens of pounds of stuff associated with it.

02:06:24.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:06:24.000 It's like a sneaky little fucking loophole that prosecutors use. 0.99

02:06:28.000 You know, it's just gross. 0.99

02:06:31.000 It's just when you make criminals out of people that are just doing what they want to do that doesn't harm anybody else, it's a loophole.

02:06:39.000 And it just shows you that you have too many laws.

02:06:41.000 I mean, that's what it is.

02:06:42.000 It becomes bureaucracy.

02:06:43.000 It becomes red tape.

02:06:45.000 And it becomes a machine that needs fuel to feed itself.

02:06:48.000 It's getting to the point that everyone's a criminal and that they can just pick and choose who needs to be taken down and sent to jail.

02:06:57.000 And so the criminal justice system just becomes a vehicle for discrimination and oppression.

02:07:07.000 Because if you interpret the laws...

02:07:12.000 To the maximum stringency, we're all felons for a million different reasons. 1.00

02:07:19.000 A bunch of the shit you do on the internet's a felony, a bunch of the shit you own in your house is a felony. 1.00

02:07:24.000 If you do both of those, you're a fucking double criminal. 1.00

02:07:28.000 Smoking pot and gambling online, you dirty bastard. 1.00

02:07:32.000 Or just downloading videos that you didn't pay for. 1.00

02:07:36.000 Yeah, well, that's a tricky one, man.

02:07:38.000 That's a tricky one, because I think that as time goes on, it does seem to be changing in making access to legal, purchasable versions of these movies and things.

02:07:49.000 It seems to be much, much, much easier than it used to be a while back.

02:07:53.000 And, you know, I'm not in favor of putting anyone in jail for downloading things, but you're going to have to deal with what is a downloadable copy of something.

02:08:03.000 I mean, what is that?

02:08:04.000 For sure.

02:08:04.000 There's a lot of ethical arguments both ways.

02:08:08.000 I like the argument that the people that have downloaded things, when they, you know, start calling them piracy...

02:08:13.000 They go, no, it's not piracy.

02:08:14.000 Because if it was piracy, I would take yours and you wouldn't have it anymore.

02:08:18.000 Right.

02:08:18.000 It's a copy.

02:08:19.000 And that's so true.

02:08:20.000 And this is just...

02:08:21.000 It's one more example of how people want to use these black and white sort of definitions of things that exist for physical, you know...

02:08:32.000 Carbon-based, hard things that you can put on a scale that you simply can't do when it comes to digital content.

02:08:40.000 You just can't.

02:08:41.000 You can't do it.

02:08:42.000 Applying property laws to ideas gets pretty complicated.

02:08:46.000 Especially ideas where you're not stealing the idea for a profit.

02:08:51.000 Right.

02:08:51.000 Like when you're taking someone...

02:08:53.000 You're just enjoying the idea without paying for it.

02:08:55.000 Yeah, it's weird, right?

02:08:56.000 And I'm not saying that's okay to do.

02:08:58.000 I'm not either.

02:08:59.000 My dad's a writer.

02:09:01.000 There are professional artists in my family who need to make a living by selling their art. 0.97

02:09:08.000 And if you can get all the art you want for free, that's fucking them over. 0.92

02:09:12.000 Right. 0.56

02:09:12.000 It is, but I think that there's room in this country for ethical consideration by the consumer. 0.56

02:09:19.000 To put it this way, remember when Napster was around, there was a bunch of people that were downloading things for free off of Napster.

02:09:27.000 They were doing the peer-to-peer thing, but...

02:09:29.000 A lot of people had this sort of really cool ethical consideration where they would take, like, if they got something and they liked it, they would go buy it.

02:09:38.000 Yeah.

02:09:38.000 They would say, hey, I owe this guy.

02:09:40.000 This fucking album kicks ass, I'll go buy it. 1.00

02:09:42.000 Right. 1.00

02:09:43.000 You know, and they also would become fans of the band, and then they would go see the band live, which is even better for the band, because then it's more profitable for the band.

02:09:52.000 Sure.

02:09:52.000 As opposed to, like, the record, where they get kind of pennies on the dollar, they would get a much larger chunk.

02:09:58.000 You know, so there's... 0.99

02:10:00.000 There's a lot of shit going on. 0.99

02:10:02.000 How is it different that you can download music for free? 0.99

02:10:05.000 How is that different in some ways than the radio?

02:10:08.000 Is it just because it's a better copy? 1.00

02:10:10.000 Because the fucking radio is playing your music all day long. 0.99

02:10:12.000 Because you have to pay for your radio music by listening to the ads in between. 1.00

02:10:17.000 Right, right.

02:10:18.000 But aren't you paying for your bandwidth that you use to download it?

02:10:22.000 I mean, it all gets squirrely.

02:10:24.000 Yeah, it's all pretty complicated.

02:10:26.000 My point in bringing that up wasn't that I think it's wrong that there are laws regulating what you can and can't download without paying for it, but just that it creates a fucked up situation when the laws are such that if the government decides to, 0.87

02:10:45.000 they've got a reason to put fucking anyone they want in jail. 1.00

02:10:47.000 Well, especially now that they're literally downloading every single voicemail that you've ever said, every single email that you send from now till fucking who knows when will be in some NSA database somewhere, and they might go look through your shit, 0.99

02:11:03.000 and who knows, you might have said something completely joking, like, look, this poker shit isn't working out, so I'm going to start robbing babies and fucking, you know, whatever. 0.99

02:11:14.000 Yeah, of course. 0.99

02:11:31.000 They find that shit, they leak the information to the FBI or to local police, who then basically conduct a sham investigation to find the information legally so that they can use it in court, 0.99

02:11:46.000 but they already know what they're looking for because the NSA got it illegally and just gave it to them. 0.99

02:11:51.000 Yes, that's exactly what they do.

02:11:53.000 Yeah.

02:11:55.000 That should be illegal. 1.00

02:11:57.000 That shit's insane. 1.00

02:11:58.000 That's sneaky as fuck. 1.00

02:11:59.000 Well, depending upon what you're doing, and that's where it gets squirrely. 1.00

02:12:02.000 If it turns out you're involved in trafficking, human trafficking, and selling children to sex slavery... 0.97

02:12:09.000 Yeah, there's shit that's bad enough that it becomes a difficult question of what rights you can trample to keep people from doing that. 0.98

02:12:18.000 Yeah, but there's got to be a better way. 0.98

02:12:21.000 And also, if our society was just and if all the laws that were in place were in place in order to actually protect people.

02:12:29.000 Protect people from being victimized by bad people.

02:12:31.000 But that's not what's going on.

02:12:33.000 Especially when you're dealing with most drug laws.

02:12:37.000 No one's getting victimized by pot.

02:12:40.000 They're just not.

02:12:41.000 They tried to push it for a while that they were. 0.99

02:12:43.000 Do you remember when they used to have those commercials where these two fucking no-nonsense guys would be eating dinner and the guy would be saying that if you buy drugs, you support terrorism. 0.99

02:12:53.000 Period. 0.99

02:12:54.000 Right.

02:12:55.000 And he kept eating to tell you. 1.00

02:12:57.000 It was like giving you this feeling of authority like it's your dad that's tired of your fucking stupid nonsense. 1.00

02:13:03.000 They've been talking with your friends around. 1.00

02:13:05.000 It's like, no, listen, listen, period.

02:13:08.000 End of discussion.

02:13:09.000 If you buy drugs, you're supporting terrorism.

02:13:12.000 And he's eating the salad. 1.00

02:13:14.000 So I'm like, what the fuck is this? 0.99

02:13:15.000 What is this weird psychological message you guys are trying to... 0.99

02:13:19.000 Do you remember that, Jamie?

02:13:21.000 You know what I'm talking about?

02:13:22.000 It's like, no, I'm pretty sure my buddy Dave knows a guy named Jeff who grew these mushrooms in his closet.

02:13:28.000 Yeah, well, especially with pot.

02:13:30.000 I mean, I was buying it directly from the guys who were growing it.

02:13:33.000 So, like, there's no terrorism involved there, man.

02:13:36.000 They might have terrorized some fertilizer, popped the top, and poured it into the ground!

02:13:40.000 No! 0.98

02:13:41.000 It was just so silly. 0.92

02:13:43.000 I mean, there is a little truth to that. 0.96

02:13:46.000 Like, if you buy cocaine... 0.98

02:13:49.000 Somewhere up the chain, there are some fucked up people involved in getting cocaine to you. 0.97

02:13:55.000 And you know why? 0.98

02:13:57.000 Because...

02:13:59.000 Cocaine's illegal.

02:14:00.000 It's illegal, yeah, of course. 0.95

02:14:01.000 If cocaine was legal, you'd be buying it from Murtec or fucking, you know, GlaxoSmithKline or something like that. 0.86

02:14:08.000 They'd be selling cocaine. 0.98

02:14:09.000 They're, of course, just ethically fine.

02:14:11.000 Hey, just like Jack Daniels.

02:14:13.000 They have a commercial for Jack Daniels.

02:14:15.000 Have you seen it?

02:14:16.000 Pull it up?

02:14:17.000 Yeah, pull it up. 1.00

02:14:18.000 Let's watch this fucking goofy-ass commercial because it's quite hilarious how they treat you like you're a fucking monkey. 1.00

02:14:25.000 Let's take a look at this. 1.00

02:14:27.000 Yeah, this is exactly it.

02:14:28.000 This is so funny.

02:14:30.000 Watch this.

02:14:32.000 It's a ploy.

02:14:34.000 What?

02:14:35.000 This drug money funds terror.

02:14:37.000 It's a ploy.

02:14:38.000 Ploy.

02:14:38.000 A manipulation.

02:14:40.000 Ploy.

02:14:41.000 Drug money funds terror.

02:14:42.000 I mean, why should I believe that?

02:14:44.000 Because it's a fact.

02:14:45.000 A fact?

02:14:47.000 F-A-C-T fact.

02:14:49.000 So you're saying that I should believe it because it's true.

02:14:52.000 That's your argument.

02:14:54.000 It is true. 0.99

02:14:59.000 So, the guy on the left, the first guy, is a moron, the handsome guy, and the older gentleman is like his... 1.00

02:15:06.000 That's a weird ad. 1.00

02:15:07.000 It's the dumbest fucking ad ever. 1.00

02:15:09.000 Because there's nothing being said. 1.00

02:15:11.000 It's two dickheads. 0.98

02:15:14.000 Why is that convincing? 0.99

02:15:15.000 Who thought that was a good idea?

02:15:17.000 Because people are scared of their dad.

02:15:20.000 It's convincing for people that are scared of their dad. 0.97

02:15:22.000 Not only that, who's going to fucking see that and go, I don't want that guy eating salad to be mad at me, so I'm not going to buy drugs. 0.94

02:15:26.000 Like, completely ineffective. 0.98

02:15:29.000 Like, absolutely 100% ineffective.

02:15:31.000 Like, not one person watched that ad and didn't do drugs.

02:15:34.000 Matter of fact, I did more drugs because of that ad.

02:15:37.000 I got mad and I did extra drugs. 1.00

02:15:40.000 Because it's so fucking stupid. 1.00

02:15:42.000 They treat you like you're a moron. 1.00

02:15:44.000 Like, somehow or another, that's all you have to say. 1.00

02:15:46.000 Like, first of all, that was pre-internet.

02:15:49.000 This is like 2001. Not pre-internet, but pre the effect of the internet and social media.

02:15:53.000 Social media really changed the whole game, the way people communicate, the way they understand information.

02:15:58.000 That was pre-social media.

02:16:00.000 Because you can't have those kind of arguments.

02:16:02.000 You just can't. 0.99

02:16:03.000 You can't say, because it's fact, F-A-C-T. Oh, you can fucking spell fact! 0.99

02:16:07.000 You must be right! 0.99

02:16:09.000 Yeah.

02:16:10.000 I'm sold.

02:16:10.000 Have that guy come over here and sit him down for a podcast for three hours.

02:16:13.000 I'll dissect that dude. 1.00

02:16:15.000 I'll send him through the fucking Vitamix. 1.00

02:16:18.000 Splice him up, you silly bitch. 1.00

02:16:20.000 It's ridiculous. 1.00

02:16:21.000 It's a ridiculous way to express an opinion. 0.99

02:16:25.000 First of all, you can't make an argument about terrorism and drugs in a 30-second commercial. 0.92

02:16:31.000 It's just physically not possible.

02:16:33.000 Yeah, it's a really complicated issue.

02:16:35.000 It is as complex as biological life itself.

02:16:39.000 It is unbelievably complex.

02:16:41.000 If you want to break down the root cause of addiction, where drugs come from, what is a drug, what are the effects, why does this one-term drug, why is it a blanket that we throw over things that save lives?

02:16:56.000 That enhance cognitive function and productivity like caffeine and things that kill you and things that are bad for you and things that makes life more interesting.

02:17:06.000 There's all together under this one big blanket called drugs. 0.99

02:17:10.000 So if you're saying if you buy drugs you support terrorism, If you have a cup of coffee after your meal, I'm going to stab you. 1.00

02:17:15.000 Because you're a fucking drug user, you crazy asshole. 1.00

02:17:18.000 You're going to have a whiskey on the rocks like a gentleman, you piece of shit. 1.00

02:17:23.000 It's madness. 1.00

02:17:25.000 And that's all the kind of shit that was available... 0.99

02:17:27.000 You know, that they, or was out there before, you know, the social media aspect of the internet made that preposterous. 1.00

02:17:34.000 Could you imagine the Twitter response if somebody tried to put a fucking video like that? 0.99

02:17:39.000 You know, hashtag yes all drugs. 0.99

02:17:43.000 Hashtag yes all drugs would be the fucking, the parody attack of it. 0.99

02:17:47.000 They're still out there? 0.99

02:17:48.000 They're still putting out pretty, not that bad, I guess.

02:17:52.000 What is one that you could think of?

02:17:54.000 Um...

02:17:55.000 Jamie, see if you can look up recent anti-drug propaganda commercial, because I don't think they do them anymore. 1.00

02:18:01.000 I really think that they're so idiotic. 0.98

02:18:04.000 If one child went without a school lunch that was funded by the state, if one teacher got paid one extra dollar... 1.00

02:18:12.000 Someone who made that video should get their dick kicked into a fucking meaty pulp. 1.00

02:18:17.000 Because it's just a waste of money. 1.00

02:18:19.000 It's a waste of taxpayer money. 1.00

02:18:21.000 Not only that, most of that shit, when you see that, remember that talking dog? 1.00

02:18:26.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:18:27.000 Lindsay, I wish you wouldn't do drugs.

02:18:28.000 That was the one I was about to bring up.

02:18:29.000 Isn't that pretty recent?

02:18:31.000 Uh, fairly.

02:18:32.000 It was on my 2009 comedy special, so I'm assuming that it was 2007 or 2008, and it was just mocked mercilessly.

02:18:42.000 Yeah.

02:18:42.000 I wish you wouldn't smoke pot.

02:18:44.000 You're not the same when you smoke pot.

02:18:46.000 I miss my friend. 0.99

02:18:48.000 Fucking retarded sponsorship that's all made by a partnership for a drug-free America the problem with that of course is a partnership for a drug-free America has received millions of dollars from alcohol tobacco and pharmaceutical companies yeah of course my joke was that that's like hookers making commercials against strippers that's really what it's like it's pretty much like alcohol companies making commercials against pot and There's 1.00

02:19:19.000 the foundation for a drug-free world. 0.99

02:19:22.000 Oh, a world filled with...

02:19:23.000 First of all, before we talk about this, if you're interested in any of this stuff, like really in-depth, I recommend Dr. Carl Hart's work.

02:19:31.000 Dr. Carl Hart, who has been a podcast guest, and what was the name of his book?

02:19:36.000 Remember his book?

02:19:39.000 Here, I'll pull it up real quick.

02:19:41.000 Dr. Carl Hart.

02:19:44.000 He had a great point, and one of his...

02:19:47.000 High price.

02:19:47.000 High price, yeah.

02:19:48.000 He's brilliant.

02:19:50.000 Just a brilliant guy, and he's the...

02:19:52.000 Associate Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Columbia University, and he is well known for his research in drug use and abuse.

02:19:59.000 And his statement is so clear.

02:20:03.000 It's just the best statement.

02:20:05.000 Not only is there never going to be a drug-free America or a drug-free world, you wouldn't want it.

02:20:12.000 Yeah, of course.

02:20:12.000 You wouldn't.

02:20:14.000 Drugs are technology.

02:20:16.000 The reason they exist is because they're effective.

02:20:20.000 It's because we have figured out that there's ways that we can manipulate the way our mind works, the way our body works, the way our body feels.

02:20:27.000 For good and for bad.

02:20:30.000 And like all things in life...

02:20:33.000 Human beings have tools and those tools can be abused or they can be used and they can be used to the greater good of mankind.

02:20:41.000 And a drug is just like that.

02:20:42.000 It's just like a tool.

02:20:44.000 Absolutely.

02:20:44.000 What is it?

02:20:45.000 Do you have a commercial?

02:20:46.000 There's a bunch of them. 1.00

02:20:46.000 Just play one of those goofy fucking things. 1.00

02:21:00.000 It's a nice sneaky use of an or statement. 1.00

02:21:10.000 Okay, well that's a good commercial.

02:21:20.000 I mean, that's like talk to your kids.

02:21:22.000 That makes sense.

02:21:23.000 Yeah, that really wasn't bad.

02:21:24.000 Also, seven out of ten kids get offered drugs in high school.

02:21:28.000 I want to know who those other three are. 1.00

02:21:29.000 Those fucking losers. 1.00

02:21:33.000 Nobody's offering you drugs? 1.00

02:21:34.000 Come on, man. 1.00

02:21:35.000 What fucking parties are you going to? 1.00

02:21:37.000 You're not getting something? 1.00

02:21:38.000 Yeah, don't take pills.

02:21:39.000 You don't know what they are, alright?

02:21:40.000 Don't do heroin. 1.00

02:21:41.000 That shit's addictive. 1.00

02:21:43.000 But the only way we learn all these things is by, you know, the ability to freely communicate and express each other. 1.00

02:21:49.000 Express thoughts, rather.

02:21:50.000 Like Portugal has instituted a countrywide decriminalization of all drugs.

02:21:55.000 A while ago.

02:21:56.000 Yeah.

02:21:56.000 And it's going great.

02:21:57.000 The results have been fantastic.

02:21:59.000 Yeah.

02:21:59.000 Lower crime, lower drug addiction, you know, lower cases of HIV infection.

02:22:04.000 It's just across the board.

02:22:05.000 Across the board, you know.

02:22:07.000 You can't suppress people.

02:22:09.000 You know, I know this...

02:22:11.000 As a parent, I try very hard to not suppress my children.

02:22:15.000 I try to explain to them what's good or bad about doing things, explain to them the dangers of things, but give them like...

02:22:22.000 I don't want to be the boss, you know?

02:22:25.000 I just want to be the person who can tell them things that they don't know yet and do it because I love them. 0.99

02:22:30.000 But as soon as you fucking tell people, like, because it's a drug, because it's a fact, F-A-C-T fact... 1.00

02:22:37.000 I just want to beat you to death, you fucking dunce. 1.00

02:22:39.000 You shitty propaganda machine walking around with a fucking pair of glasses eating salad. 1.00

02:22:47.000 Asshole. 1.00

02:22:48.000 Asshole face. 1.00

02:22:49.000 Just did your fucking shitty commercial. 1.00

02:22:51.000 That's my least favorite commercial, I think, ever. 1.00

02:22:54.000 Because it's a fact.

02:22:56.000 F-A-C-T fact.

02:22:58.000 So you're telling me that it's a fact. 1.00

02:23:00.000 I'm telling you you're both assholes. 1.00

02:23:02.000 Who talks about anything like that? 1.00

02:23:05.000 Because it's a fact?

02:23:06.000 Your dad.

02:23:08.000 It's like a dad thing.

02:23:09.000 That guy is like a dad.

02:23:10.000 I have a friend who has a dad like that.

02:23:13.000 I know people who have dads like that. 0.99

02:23:15.000 I can't talk to him because I'd be like, you're a dunce and that's why your son doesn't accept your thoughts. 1.00

02:23:20.000 You don't even understand this. 1.00

02:23:22.000 He gets away from you.

02:23:23.000 He mocks you.

02:23:24.000 Okay, I gotta go, because I can't have this conversation. 1.00

02:23:27.000 I'll fucking yell at you in your own house. 0.99

02:23:30.000 I wouldn't really, but... 1.00

02:23:32.000 But that thing, that fucking Mr. No-Nonsense guy, that Mr. No-Nonsense guy intimidates people. 0.99

02:23:39.000 Because it's fact. 1.00

02:23:40.000 F-A-C-T fact. 0.99

02:23:42.000 Anybody who fucking spells fact out like that, you should be able to just spit on them. 0.99

02:23:47.000 It should be an automatic... 1.00

02:23:51.000 What the fuck? 1.00

02:23:51.000 It seems like the appropriate response. 1.00

02:23:53.000 Spit. 0.67

02:23:53.000 S-P-I-T, spit. 0.67

02:23:55.000 It's not assault, but it's gross. 0.80

02:23:57.000 Clearly too late for an intellectual discussion. 0.98

02:23:59.000 Yeah, you're going to hit him. 1.00

02:24:00.000 Hit him with rocks. 1.00

02:24:02.000 What the fuck? 1.00

02:24:03.000 Pee on his leg or something. 1.00

02:24:05.000 I've taken this fucking way out of the boundaries of normal thinking. 1.00

02:24:09.000 Assholes. 1.00

02:24:11.000 But, you know, those kind of commercials are really insidious. 1.00

02:24:14.000 They're insidious, and the roots of them is what's most disturbing.

02:24:19.000 When you find out this partnership for a drug-free America, it's essentially just a business ploy.

02:24:25.000 Yeah, it's the alcohol lobby protecting their market. 0.85

02:24:28.000 Yeah.

02:24:28.000 I mean, it's so weird.

02:24:30.000 It's just, it's so weird.

02:24:32.000 Especially, like, you know what it would be like?

02:24:34.000 Well, that's not even good enough.

02:24:35.000 I was saying that it would be like a really shitty movie that's attacking, like, a really awesome movie.

02:24:42.000 You know?

02:24:43.000 For being, you know, because they don't want you to, I mean, that's what it's like, kind of, in a way.

02:24:49.000 That no-nonsense guy.

02:24:51.000 That is something that for whatever reason...

02:24:55.000 Even the ineffective way that the first guy communicated...

02:24:59.000 So you're trying to tell me?

02:25:00.000 That's what you're trying to tell me?

02:25:02.000 He's not telling you anything! 1.00

02:25:03.000 Are you guys both dumb? 1.00

02:25:05.000 You guys are idiots. 1.00

02:25:06.000 This conversation sucks. 1.00

02:25:07.000 And this is the reason why people shouldn't be allowed to vote. 1.00

02:25:09.000 You two dummies. 1.00

02:25:10.000 You two dummies having this fucking salad argument. 1.00

02:25:14.000 Weird. 1.00

02:25:15.000 And Malta?

02:25:16.000 Worse, huh?

02:25:18.000 In terms of drug laws, yeah, it's pretty bad.

02:25:21.000 You can end up in jail for a very long time, for not very much. 0.99

02:25:25.000 You do some fucking Midnight Express type shit, right? 1.00

02:25:28.000 You ever see that movie? 1.00

02:25:29.000 I don't know.

02:25:30.000 I've seen no movies ever.

02:25:32.000 It's embarrassing.

02:25:33.000 Really?

02:25:34.000 Yeah. 0.90

02:25:35.000 Just playing poker like a madman? 0.86

02:25:36.000 How many hours a day do you play poker?

02:25:39.000 Not that much.

02:25:41.000 20?

02:25:43.000 I'd say, like, I probably average 30 to 50 hours a week.

02:25:47.000 Oh, okay.

02:25:48.000 50 hours a week is still like a real work job.

02:25:50.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:25:51.000 So it's a real job.

02:25:53.000 It varies a lot throughout the year.

02:25:55.000 It's a lot of sitting.

02:25:56.000 Yes, it is a lot of sitting.

02:25:57.000 It's not good for you.

02:25:58.000 Yeah, terrible for you.

02:25:59.000 Sitting is the new smoking.

02:26:00.000 Have you not heard?

02:26:01.000 I have heard that phrase.

02:26:04.000 I kind of buy it. 1.00

02:26:05.000 I mean, my back is way too fucked up for a 28-year-old. 1.00

02:26:08.000 Is it really fucked up? 1.00

02:26:09.000 Do you stretch out or do yoga or anything like that? 0.99

02:26:11.000 I stretch a bit, but nothing organized.

02:26:14.000 Not as good as it should be.

02:26:15.000 Yeah, you can get some bulging discs that way, dude.

02:26:17.000 Degeneration of discs.

02:26:18.000 I don't think it's gone that far yet, but...

02:26:21.000 Yeah, I was wearing...

02:26:21.000 I was using this thing for a while.

02:26:23.000 It's pretty cool.

02:26:24.000 This knee thing.

02:26:25.000 But I decided that I like sitting up straight in this better than I like sitting on that thing.

02:26:32.000 It doesn't have...

02:26:32.000 You know what these things are?

02:26:33.000 You ever see these?

02:26:34.000 Here, I'll put it on.

02:26:35.000 It's a...

02:26:36.000 It's like a kneeling chair.

02:26:43.000 Yeah, I do know those.

02:26:44.000 I thought about buying one of those to sit on while playing poker and didn't do it.

02:26:48.000 Well, there's good and bad to it.

02:26:50.000 It's not the most comfortable thing, but it definitely forces you to sit up straight.

02:26:55.000 A buddy of mine has started playing from a treadmill desk.

02:26:58.000 Really?

02:26:59.000 So he's on his treadmill while he's...

02:27:01.000 It's this, like, specially designed treadmill desk.

02:27:03.000 He's, like, walking real slowly.

02:27:05.000 It's not strenuous because the studies show if you go more than, like, two miles an hour, it starts impacting your cognitive function.

02:27:12.000 He's just walking real slowly, but he's standing up and moving around all day while he's on his computer.

02:27:17.000 That's clever.

02:27:17.000 That's probably way better for you.

02:27:19.000 He's liking it a lot.

02:27:20.000 I may do that eventually.

02:27:22.000 Treadmill desk.

02:27:23.000 I love it. 0.99

02:27:23.000 What if it gets to some virtual reality type shit? 0.99

02:27:25.000 Some Oculus Rift poker playing? 0.99

02:27:27.000 That would be kind of dope.

02:27:28.000 You aware of Oculus Rift?

02:27:30.000 I'm not.

02:27:30.000 You're not?

02:27:31.000 Oh, but I have to tell you.

02:27:32.000 Oculus Rift is the newest, latest, greatest 3D virtual reality helmet that they've created.

02:27:39.000 Okay. 0.95

02:27:40.000 My friend Duncan, who's a big proponent of it, he loves this shit, because he got a copy of one of the earlier ones. 0.98

02:27:46.000 He let me try it on, and it was amazing. 0.98

02:27:48.000 But it was really pixelated.

02:27:50.000 It was like Quake 1, like old school video game-y.

02:27:53.000 There's no way you could misinterpret what it is.

02:27:57.000 You know it's not.

02:27:58.000 Do you remember that really old Nintendo one came out?

02:28:02.000 Virtual Boy.

02:28:02.000 Virtual Boy, that's what I thought it was.

02:28:04.000 That thing was insane.

02:28:05.000 It was red.

02:28:06.000 Red?

02:28:07.000 A friend of mine got it, and he got a headache within 30 minutes.

02:28:10.000 Some people get headaches.

02:28:12.000 Brian got a headache from Oculus Rift, but it doesn't give me a headache.

02:28:16.000 I think maybe it's the same kind of people that get a boat sickness, like motion sickness on boats, seasick.

02:28:21.000 That would make sense.

02:28:22.000 Yeah, it's an inner ear thing, apparently.

02:28:25.000 I think maybe that's a genetic thing.

02:28:27.000 You either get it or you don't get it.

02:28:28.000 Because my kids don't get it, but my wife gets it. 1.00

02:28:30.000 It's weird. 1.00

02:28:31.000 Because I think my kids get their robustness from the fucking old man. 0.99

02:28:36.000 But anyway, this Oculus Rift, apparently it's gotten exponentially better. 0.99

02:28:42.000 And Duncan called me the other day.

02:28:44.000 I was at the improv. 0.99

02:28:45.000 And he called me up and he was fucking frothy. 0.98

02:28:48.000 He's like, dude, what I just saw is going to change everything. 0.97

02:28:52.000 The world is going to change.

02:28:54.000 This is bigger than the internet.

02:28:56.000 He goes, this is bigger than the invention of the wheel.

02:28:59.000 This is bigger than... 0.99

02:29:00.000 He goes, it's fucking crazy. 1.00

02:29:02.000 He was fucking frothy. 1.00

02:29:03.000 Frothing at the mouth. 1.00

02:29:04.000 I wish I could see his fucking beady eyes bulging out of his head. 1.00

02:29:07.000 He was so happy and excited. 0.99

02:29:09.000 He went to this 3D virtual reality developers conference thingy, and he said the newest version of the Oculus Rift, which hasn't reached consumers.

02:29:18.000 I don't think any of them have, right?

02:29:19.000 Just in a low-level sense, like developers.

02:29:23.000 But the newest, latest, greatest one, you go into a room and there's a guy playing piano.

02:29:28.000 And the way they filmed it, apparently, they put cameras all over a person's body.

02:29:33.000 And so everywhere you look, it's like you see it as if the camera, like you're looking.

02:29:41.000 There's no breakup of the motion.

02:29:43.000 It's completely smooth.

02:29:44.000 And it's completely HD, three-dimensional, like a movie.

02:29:49.000 Right.

02:29:49.000 Like you're watching perfect three-dimensional 4K video.

02:29:54.000 Jesus.

02:29:55.000 Yeah, and you go into this room, and there's a guy playing piano, and he talks to you.

02:29:58.000 And you get to sit down, you can move near him, you can move around him.

02:30:03.000 It's all been filmed. 0.99

02:30:05.000 You can change where you're going, and the video follows you, and he said, it's fucking nuts. 0.98

02:30:10.000 The sound, he said, is like 3D, stereo sound. 0.99

02:30:14.000 The guy playing the piano, he goes, you feel like you're in a fucking room with this guy. 0.98

02:30:18.000 He said, it just changed... 0.99

02:30:19.000 It changes everything.

02:30:21.000 That is crazy.

02:30:23.000 Yeah, he was going nuts.

02:30:24.000 He was going nuts about it. 0.98

02:30:25.000 And based on his original one that I fucked with, which was, like I said, very pixelated, very old school, like 1990 video game-y type, it was still pretty fucking cool. 0.90

02:30:37.000 Even then, they have ones now where- Yeah, Virtual Boy was fun. 0.83

02:30:40.000 Was it?

02:30:41.000 Well, pull up Virtual Boy.

02:30:42.000 I've never seen that before.

02:30:45.000 I'm actually enjoying this chair.

02:30:48.000 It's like this sort of helmet thing on top of a tripod that you lean into, and it's just like red lines on a black background, if I remember right, and there are various video games you can play, like flight simulators.

02:31:02.000 Here it is right here.

02:31:03.000 Virtual Boy.

02:31:05.000 That's what the games looked like, basically.

02:31:07.000 There was very little detail.

02:31:10.000 Oh god, it's all red like that?

02:31:12.000 Yeah.

02:31:12.000 Ew, it was gross.

02:31:14.000 But it was slightly 3D. Well, pull up Louis from Unbox Therapy, our pal Louis.

02:31:21.000 Lou has a video on that one that they made with an iPhone.

02:31:27.000 It's a cardboard box.

02:31:29.000 He had it here.

02:31:30.000 Oh, yeah, I've heard about this.

02:31:31.000 You open it up and then put the pieces all in place and then set your iPhone there and then you put it on your head.

02:31:38.000 It's like so low rent.

02:31:40.000 And apparently they made it that low rent on purpose to mock the Oculus Rift.

02:31:45.000 Because the Oculus Rift is this gigantic, huge, you know, silicone.

02:31:50.000 And this is, uh, he's, uh...

02:31:56.000 How crazy is that?

02:32:02.000 Anyways, I recently made a reaction video in which I gave this contraption to a number of individuals who you might recognize, and I got some amazing reactions.

02:32:12.000 So if you haven't seen that video yet, you should definitely go and check it out.

02:32:28.000 Isn't that nuts?

02:32:30.000 This cardboard cutout that you construct into what you see here.

02:32:35.000 Now you can actually make this on your own using plans via the cardboard website, so you don't need to purchase one of these.

02:32:42.000 Just get your hands on some cardboard, use the plans, and you can make it yourself.

02:32:46.000 Or you can buy a pre-configured cutout via Amazon if you want something that's a little bit more streamlined and closer to a finished product.

02:32:55.000 It's about $10, and I'll link that down in the description.

02:32:59.000 Let's cut it off here so Lou gets the hits. 1.00

02:33:01.000 But it's Unbox Therapy on YouTube, and he's got that.

02:33:05.000 You can see that, as well as the recent video of us shooting the iPhone 6 glass with a bow and arrow.

02:33:14.000 But he got a copy or hold of the newest glass screen for the iPhone 6. It's a sapphire glass and you can bend it.

02:33:25.000 You can scratch it with keys.

02:33:27.000 It's like really super, super durable.

02:33:29.000 That sounds like a thing I would have some use for.

02:33:32.000 This is what my iPhone looks like.

02:33:35.000 Ah, there.

02:33:35.000 It's taking a beating, huh?

02:33:37.000 Yep.

02:33:38.000 Most of them have. 0.71

02:33:40.000 But what you can't do with that, we found, is shoot an arrow through it.

02:33:44.000 Did not deflect.

02:33:45.000 Yeah, it did not deflect.

02:33:46.000 Went right through it.

02:33:47.000 It destroyed it.

02:33:49.000 Yeah, arrows and phones don't mix. 0.99

02:33:51.000 But, you know, how often are you going to get shot by a fucking arrow when you've got a phone on you? 0.99

02:33:55.000 Probably not often. 0.99

02:33:56.000 And probably if your phone is ruined, that's not your biggest concern.

02:33:59.000 Yeah, if you're getting shot by arrows, your phone is the least of your concern.

02:34:03.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:34:04.000 Yeah, you better be worried about your fucking personal health. 1.00

02:34:07.000 Some shit's going down, son. 1.00

02:34:09.000 You're being attacked by Mongols or something. 1.00

02:34:10.000 Usually the arrows don't come one at a time.

02:34:13.000 Yeah.

02:34:13.000 Yeah, I don't know how we got on this virtual reality headset thing.

02:34:18.000 Yeah, I don't remember where that started either.

02:34:19.000 Oh, I remember.

02:34:21.000 Oh, we're talking about poker ergonomics.

02:34:24.000 Being able to do it sort of like in the Oculus world, I think eventually you're going to be able to grab...

02:34:31.000 So you're sitting at a virtual table?

02:34:33.000 Yeah, physical objects.

02:34:34.000 Looking at virtual cards?

02:34:35.000 Or virtual screens in front of you, Minority Report style, and you're moving them around through this Oculus Rift headset, and you're standing up while you're on this treadmill and you're walking around.

02:34:45.000 That's not too far away, I don't think.

02:34:47.000 I bet it's not.

02:34:49.000 You know, I really love this idea this guy's doing of walking really slowly.

02:34:55.000 You know, a lot of people claim, writers especially, claim that they get some of their best ideas while walking.

02:35:02.000 Yeah.

02:35:02.000 Like they walk specifically and they hold on to a tape recorder while they're walking, and then they just talk, like they walk their dog or something like that, talking to a tape recorder.

02:35:09.000 Yeah, I can see that.

02:35:10.000 Yeah.

02:35:11.000 There's something about moving, like the movement.

02:35:15.000 Just getting, nothing heavy, but a little bit of blood flow.

02:35:18.000 Yep. 0.99

02:35:19.000 But your back's fucked up from sitting, huh? 0.99

02:35:21.000 I mean, it's not terrible, but... 0.97

02:35:22.000 Want to try this?

02:35:24.000 Sure.

02:35:24.000 Want to try one of these jammies?

02:35:25.000 Here.

02:35:26.000 Get this to you.

02:35:27.000 Take a few seconds, ladies and gentlemen.

02:35:31.000 This is a kneeling chair.

02:35:33.000 I just started doing it recently.

02:35:35.000 I did it now, and I love it.

02:35:45.000 I'm going to try to do podcasts like this.

02:35:48.000 Stand up.

02:35:49.000 Do you think there's any benefit in that?

02:35:52.000 How many podcasts do you think you could do if you had to stand up?

02:35:57.000 Would that be good?

02:35:59.000 So what do you think about that?

02:36:00.000 This isn't bad.

02:36:01.000 It's not bad, right?

02:36:02.000 The standing up thing, I've actually been messing around with that a little bit recently.

02:36:05.000 I started playing poker using an Xbox controller instead of a mouse.

02:36:10.000 Really?

02:36:10.000 And then I don't need to be flat on a desk, so I can stand up while I play.

02:36:17.000 Wow, that's pretty cool.

02:36:18.000 Yeah, I'm liking that.

02:36:18.000 So you can kind of lie on your back.

02:36:20.000 What about that?

02:36:21.000 What about lying on your back, staring up at the ceiling?

02:36:23.000 Put a screen on the ceiling?

02:36:24.000 I don't like it.

02:36:25.000 I feel like I'm less...

02:36:26.000 I've played poker just on my laptop lying in bed before.

02:36:30.000 I feel like I'm less mentally engaged when I'm lying down.

02:36:33.000 I think sitting upright or standing are a lot better.

02:36:37.000 Yeah.

02:36:38.000 I wonder standing writing.

02:36:40.000 Because I think one of the things about...

02:36:41.000 Standing desks are getting pretty popular.

02:36:43.000 They are.

02:36:44.000 But I wonder if they're getting popular for writers.

02:36:46.000 Because there's something about writing, you don't want to be thinking about what you're doing.

02:36:50.000 Like you don't want to be thinking about standing, you just want to be like...

02:36:53.000 You want to like get in that flow state?

02:36:54.000 Yeah.

02:36:55.000 Yeah.

02:36:55.000 I wonder...

02:36:57.000 Hmm.

02:36:59.000 It seems like it would work though.

02:37:01.000 Yeah, I don't see why not.

02:37:02.000 Hmm.

02:37:03.000 Dictating would work well, I could see.

02:37:05.000 Dictating standing.

02:37:06.000 Yeah.

02:37:06.000 Because you walk around on a cell phone, or on a phone when you talk, and just meander.

02:37:10.000 Yeah, whenever I'm on the phone, I'm definitely moving around, wandering. 0.95

02:37:14.000 Dictating software is fucking incredible now. 0.53

02:37:16.000 Just the dictating software that you have on your phone, the voice recognition software on your phone. 0.95

02:37:20.000 That's gotten really good.

02:37:21.000 It's amazing.

02:37:21.000 It's like the ability to pick it up.

02:37:26.000 Like, you could get on these note things on your phone and just talk into it, and it just picks it up incredibly well.

02:37:36.000 Like, look, I'll give you a... 1.00

02:37:38.000 Hello, you dirty bitches. 1.00

02:37:41.000 I'm tired of writing, so I just figured I'd talk into my phone. 1.00

02:37:44.000 P.S. Fuck you. 1.00

02:37:45.000 Period. 1.00

02:37:48.000 Bam.

02:37:50.000 Pretty good.

02:37:51.000 Nailed it.

02:37:52.000 Absolutely.

02:37:53.000 P.S. Fuck you. 1.00

02:37:54.000 Period. 1.00

02:37:56.000 The whole thing.

02:37:57.000 We live in the future.

02:37:59.000 Did it put a period or did it put the word period?

02:38:01.000 No, period.

02:38:02.000 If you say period, it puts a period.

02:38:05.000 If you say exclamation point, it puts an exclamation point.

02:38:08.000 But what if you want to use the word period?

02:38:09.000 That's a very good question.

02:38:11.000 It's limited in that regard.

02:38:12.000 Maybe if you say the word period.

02:38:15.000 Well, if you say the Jurassic period, does it write the Jurassic dot?

02:38:20.000 That's a good question.

02:38:21.000 Here we go.

02:38:21.000 Does it have context, please?

02:38:23.000 The Jurassic period.

02:38:26.000 The Jurassic.

02:38:30.000 Okay, hold on.

02:38:31.000 How about this?

02:38:33.000 Period, the word.

02:38:36.000 Period, the word.

02:38:40.000 The Jurassic, P-E-R-I-O-D. Can it tell us at the end of the sentence if you say, the Jurassic period was a very exciting time?

02:38:55.000 Ah, that's a good question. 0.99

02:38:56.000 The Jurassic period was a time where a lot of dinosaurs got dinosaur pussy. 0.99

02:39:01.000 Period. 1.00

02:39:08.000 Fucking confusing. 0.99

02:39:10.000 I was confused. 0.99

02:39:12.000 Let me try that again.

02:39:13.000 Here we go. 0.99

02:39:15.000 The Jurassic period was a time where a lot of dinosaurs got a lot of dinosaur pussy. 0.99

02:39:21.000 Period. 0.99

02:39:25.000 Yep.

02:39:25.000 Did it that time.

02:39:26.000 Got it?

02:39:27.000 Yeah.

02:39:27.000 Yeah, so it can tell you're at the end of a sentence.

02:39:29.000 Yeah.

02:39:29.000 That's pretty sweet.

02:39:30.000 That is.

02:39:31.000 I guess you keep going.

02:39:33.000 Yeah.

02:39:33.000 It keeps going.

02:39:35.000 It thinks of it as period.

02:39:36.000 But if you want to say, no, that happened during the Jurassic period.

02:39:40.000 Hmm.

02:39:41.000 I wonder if you can get the intonation just right that it can tell anyway, or if it's the last word, it always goes to the dot.

02:39:47.000 No, that happened during the Jurassic period.

02:39:50.000 Period. 1.00

02:39:52.000 I'm going to trick this bitch. 1.00

02:39:53.000 Ooh, that worked. 1.00

02:39:54.000 Nice.

02:39:55.000 Period, period works.

02:39:57.000 That's how you do it.

02:39:58.000 So if you want to say period in the middle, you just keep going.

02:40:00.000 If you want to say period, period, then you get the word period and a period.

02:40:04.000 All right, we've got it figured out now.

02:40:06.000 Ooh, we got it, man. 0.99

02:40:08.000 We fucking got it. 0.99

02:40:10.000 We live in the future, ladies and gentlemen. 0.98

02:40:12.000 But sooner or later, you're going to be able to do that with your Oculus Rift.

02:40:15.000 It'll just show it to you on a scroll, like one of those king scrolls.

02:40:20.000 It'll appear out of thin air.

02:40:23.000 How long do you think you're going to do this poker thing?

02:40:25.000 This is it for your life?

02:40:26.000 You're 28? 1.00

02:40:27.000 Ride this bitch right into the rocks? 1.00

02:40:29.000 I mean, at some point, I'm not going to be able to compete at the highest level the way I do now. 1.00

02:40:35.000 That just has to be true, right?

02:40:37.000 What age do you think that is?

02:40:40.000 40?

02:40:41.000 50?

02:40:41.000 But why would that be?

02:40:43.000 What would it be?

02:40:43.000 People's brains slow down.

02:40:44.000 Do they, though?

02:40:45.000 Do they slow down because of atrophy?

02:40:48.000 Because of lack of use?

02:40:49.000 Do they slow down because you're dying?

02:40:51.000 Like, at what age does that happen?

02:40:52.000 There's never been a seven-year-old chess world champion.

02:40:55.000 Ah.

02:40:55.000 How old have they gotten?

02:40:57.000 I think 50s.

02:40:58.000 50s.

02:40:59.000 Um...

02:40:59.000 I think poker's probably similar, though...

02:41:04.000 You can make a living in poker without being one of the best in the world, so...

02:41:08.000 Make a living?

02:41:09.000 Yeah.

02:41:10.000 Yeah, but it's like...

02:41:12.000 It gets to be a lot less fun at that point.

02:41:14.000 Yeah, right?

02:41:15.000 You're just kind of a journeyman.

02:41:16.000 One of those guys that they bring in as an opponent for a boxer and he gets beat up every time.

02:41:21.000 Yeah, basically.

02:41:22.000 But he's still a test.

02:41:23.000 Still a good opponent.

02:41:24.000 So, by then, you'll be living in Malta, you'll be in jail for pot, you won't be able to come back to America, where... 0.93

02:41:35.000 Do you have a strategy of how many years you want to do this?

02:41:38.000 Or are you just enjoying it right now?

02:41:40.000 Enjoying it now, and it's just so hard to predict what the landscape of poker will look like, what making a living in poker will look like 10 years from now.

02:41:50.000 Yeah, I would imagine.

02:41:52.000 Especially with the regulations and the laws.

02:41:54.000 If everybody just opened everything up, I think it would be quite fascinating.

02:41:58.000 Yeah.

02:42:00.000 I'm hoping...

02:42:01.000 There was an article that I posted recently about the death of politics.

02:42:08.000 It was technology and the death of politics, and the idea was that data was going to deny politics.

02:42:14.000 A lot of what politics is is sort of like...

02:42:17.000 Manipulating data and that the internet and this free access to information is going to sort of cut out most of the forms of politics.

02:42:25.000 That makes a lot of sense.

02:42:26.000 Totally makes sense.

02:42:27.000 I would hope that that would also have a similar effect on things like your business. 0.98

02:42:31.000 It frustrates me to no end that you have to live in some fucking weird island in the middle of nowhere to avoid being locked in a cage. 0.98

02:42:38.000 They're not going to lock me in a cage. 0.97

02:42:40.000 They're just going to lock the guy who lets me play poker on his site from the US. And they're going to steal your money.

02:42:45.000 They might steal your money, yeah. 1.00

02:42:46.000 Steal your fucking money, son. 1.00

02:42:48.000 The DOJ likes stealing people's money. 1.00

02:42:50.000 They do.

02:42:50.000 They love it.

02:42:51.000 It's their best thing they do.

02:42:52.000 They do that better than anything.

02:42:54.000 The DEA does it, too.

02:42:56.000 That's what the DEA was doing in California.

02:42:58.000 It was hilarious.

02:42:59.000 They would bust these pot shops, not charge them with anything, take all their money, and then say the case is pending.

02:43:05.000 And so they would just steal a million dollars here, a hundred thousand there.

02:43:09.000 It happened to a friend of mine who's another professional poker player, professional gambler.

02:43:14.000 He took a trip to, I want to say Puerto Rico.

02:43:18.000 Pretty sure it was Puerto Rico.

02:43:20.000 To play blackjack in a casino there.

02:43:23.000 He's an advantage blackjack player.

02:43:26.000 The game there was such that he could get an edge counting cards.

02:43:29.000 So he made a trip there to make some money.

02:43:32.000 And he flew back into...

02:43:35.000 I want to say it was Atlanta Airport.

02:43:40.000 And he had $80,000 in cash on him.

02:43:43.000 And he had all the receipts from, I sent this bank transfer to the casino because I was going to go gamble there.

02:43:50.000 I gambled there.

02:43:51.000 They paid me out this money.

02:43:53.000 I've got the cash.

02:43:54.000 I've got all the receipts.

02:43:56.000 Clear trail of what he did.

02:43:58.000 He got there.

02:43:59.000 They said, you've got a lot of cash.

02:44:01.000 Look kind of like a drug dealer to me.

02:44:03.000 Mine. 0.77

02:44:05.000 Wow.

02:44:06.000 Wasn't charged with anything, they just took his money.

02:44:08.000 And what happened?

02:44:09.000 He had to take them to court to get it back, and he did win.

02:44:15.000 But it took years and a lot of money. 0.99

02:44:18.000 And if you don't have a lot of money to pursue the case, and you don't have the wherewithal to navigate the legal system the way he did, and something like that happens to you, you're just fucked.

02:44:29.000 Well, not only that, $80,000, it seems like they could be eaten up pretty quickly in legal fees.

02:44:34.000 I think he ended up suing for the fees as well, so he got paid...

02:44:39.000 The money back.

02:44:40.000 He got paid his costs.

02:44:42.000 Well, that's nice.

02:44:43.000 But still, the interest and all that jazz.

02:44:45.000 And you don't always win.

02:44:47.000 Sometimes you're out the 80 they took from you and 60 more you spent chasing it.

02:44:51.000 I wonder if that could have been prevented if he had legal representation as he landed or had it cleared in advance.

02:44:57.000 You know what I'm saying?

02:44:58.000 You can't just travel around with a lawyer everywhere you go and you're a professional gambler.

02:45:02.000 No, I didn't mean that.

02:45:03.000 I meant contact a lawyer and arrange to have everything taken care of as you get there.

02:45:08.000 Is there a way around that?

02:45:11.000 I mean, traveling with cash and declaring it at the border is a thing professional gamblers deal with all the time.

02:45:20.000 Have you dealt with that before?

02:45:22.000 Yeah.

02:45:22.000 And it's no issue?

02:45:23.000 It's almost always no problem.

02:45:24.000 It's legal to carry money if you're carrying more than $10,000 across a border.

02:45:46.000 What's the most cash you've ever traveled with?

02:45:49.000 Traveled with, like, had with me on a plane, I want to say around 70,000 euro.

02:45:57.000 What's that in dollars?

02:45:58.000 About 100,000. 1.00

02:45:59.000 Damn, son. 1.00

02:46:01.000 Walking around with 100k. 1.00

02:46:03.000 And a briefcase? 1.00

02:46:05.000 With a fucking big chain attached to your wrist? 1.00

02:46:09.000 In a bag. 1.00

02:46:10.000 A bag?

02:46:11.000 Like a gym bag?

02:46:13.000 That's what you want, right?

02:46:14.000 Like a Nike bag.

02:46:15.000 Yeah, you don't want to look conspicuous if you're moving around with a bunch of money.

02:46:18.000 You don't want handcuffs. 0.99

02:46:19.000 Handcuffs attached to the fucking... 1.00

02:46:21.000 They'll just chop your hand off. 1.00

02:46:22.000 That's what they do.

02:46:23.000 That's what I heard.

02:46:25.000 Yeah, it seems like, yeah, the arbitrary limit of $10,000 always drove me crazy, too.

02:46:30.000 You're carrying more than $10,000 in cash.

02:46:32.000 Like, well, what's $10,000 to Bill Gates, and what's $10,000 to the regular person?

02:46:38.000 Right.

02:46:38.000 But it's only a reporting requirement.

02:46:39.000 It's not like you're not allowed to do it if you have more than that.

02:46:43.000 Yeah, so if Bill Gates shows up somewhere and he's like, why do you have a billion dollars in cash? 0.99

02:46:46.000 It's like, because I'm Bill Gates' bitch. 0.98

02:46:49.000 I just like to roll around with a billion in my pocket. 0.99

02:46:52.000 Yeah.

02:46:53.000 Could you even carry a billion dollars on you?

02:46:54.000 No.

02:46:55.000 Is there a thousand dollar bill?

02:46:57.000 What's the largest?

02:46:58.000 Hundred dollar bill is the largest?

02:46:59.000 Hundred is the biggest U.S. bill.

02:47:00.000 It used to be larger though, right?

02:47:02.000 There used to be thousands or maybe even ten thousands, but they were not in general circulation.

02:47:08.000 They were printed for banks to hold onto and pass between themselves.

02:47:13.000 Oh, I see.

02:47:15.000 The 500 euro note is, I think, the...

02:47:20.000 Largest international.

02:47:21.000 Largest denomination that's like actually in wide circulation.

02:47:25.000 I've read that international crime is mostly done in euros now because it's a lot easier to move around cash in 500 euro notes if it's giant amounts of it.

02:47:37.000 That makes sense.

02:47:37.000 Because a 500 euro note is like 700 US dollars and takes up the same amount of space as a US hundred.

02:47:45.000 What is that right there?

02:47:47.000 That's $100,000?

02:47:48.000 Is that real?

02:47:49.000 Yeah, it was.

02:47:50.000 It was a gold certificate.

02:47:51.000 Only printed once in 1934. Oh, okay.

02:47:54.000 God damn. 1.00

02:47:55.000 Who's that creepy dude on the cover? 1.00

02:47:56.000 I think it's Woodrow Wilson. 1.00

02:47:57.000 Creepy looking fuck. 1.00

02:47:58.000 He's responsible for some shit, guaranteed. 1.00

02:48:01.000 Looking at his background. 1.00

02:48:02.000 What is the most money that you ever won in a poker tournament?

02:48:06.000 In a poker tournament?

02:48:07.000 Or playing poker.

02:48:08.000 Any event?

02:48:10.000 Yeah, the biggest cash I've ever had in a poker tournament was...

02:48:15.000 About $3 million. 0.99

02:48:16.000 Damn! 0.99

02:48:18.000 I finished second in a tournament in Australia this year that was a $250,000 buy-in. 0.99

02:48:25.000 So you had to spend $250,000 to get it?

02:48:28.000 Well, like I was mentioning earlier, I took on investors to play at that tournament.

02:48:32.000 I didn't put up all the money myself.

02:48:34.000 And it was a re-entry tournament, so I busted once on the first day and then bought in again.

02:48:38.000 So I spent $500,000 on the tournament.

02:48:41.000 Wow.

02:48:41.000 Oh my god.

02:48:44.000 But you came in second.

02:48:45.000 I came in second and ended up making some money.

02:48:46.000 How much does that pay to come in second?

02:48:48.000 About three million.

02:48:49.000 I don't actually remember the number off the top of my head.

02:48:51.000 You could google it real quick.

02:48:52.000 I think it was two point something.

02:48:54.000 What kind of pressure is there on you once you spend $250,000 then you get shanked and you come back in again?

02:49:00.000 It was a rough week.

02:49:02.000 It was a series of tournaments there.

02:49:03.000 The first one was, or the first big one that I played was the 100k that was also re-entry that I was in six times and didn't cash.

02:49:16.000 So you spent 600 grand and you didn't cash?

02:49:19.000 In a day.

02:49:19.000 Oh my god.

02:49:20.000 And then four days later is the 250k.

02:49:24.000 Oh my god.

02:49:25.000 And I show up for that and bust right away. 0.94

02:49:28.000 You have major league balls, son. 1.00

02:49:30.000 Giant, huge, iron fucking balls. 1.00

02:49:35.000 Wow. 1.00

02:49:36.000 Six times in a day.

02:49:38.000 It was a rough day.

02:49:39.000 Oh my god.

02:49:40.000 How do you sleep that night?

02:49:41.000 What is that night like?

02:49:43.000 Because you obviously can't do that too many times in a row.

02:49:45.000 Nobody can, right?

02:49:47.000 Well, with that exact one, the re-entry period was open until the start of the second day of the tournament.

02:49:56.000 So after the first day, I was getting bloodbathed and down a ton of money and still had to come back the next day and play for real.

02:50:06.000 Wow.

02:50:07.000 And came back and got knocked out for the sixth time on the first hand of the second day.

02:50:11.000 Jesus Christ, son!

02:50:13.000 So then after that, it was a lot of Australian Shiraz and a long, long sleep, and then a couple days off, and then the $250k.

02:50:24.000 Wow.

02:50:25.000 That's crazy.

02:50:26.000 That's digging into the account there, huh? 1.00

02:50:28.000 Fuck. 1.00

02:50:29.000 I'll do some damage. 1.00

02:50:30.000 So when you look at losses like that and wins, does that make you play more conservatively in upcoming events, or do you just have to play intelligently, period, and just take the losses when they come?

02:50:41.000 The place where you get more conservative is your bankroll management rather than your play.

02:50:46.000 The play from one hand to the next is really about...

02:50:50.000 You have to put the magnitude of the numbers out of your head and try to make the best play each time...

02:51:00.000 It's on you to make a decision.

02:51:01.000 So are you in the moment?

02:51:02.000 Are you zen?

02:51:03.000 Or are you still thinking about that $600,000 that you...

02:51:06.000 I'm pretty good at just getting myself into the moment.

02:51:10.000 The place where you get more conservative is you lose for a while.

02:51:17.000 You have less money than you did before that period started.

02:51:20.000 You reevaluate.

02:51:21.000 I have only 75% of the money I did a few months ago.

02:51:26.000 Should I maybe sell...

02:51:29.000 75% of my action in this upcoming tournament instead of 50%.

02:51:32.000 Right, I see, I see.

02:51:34.000 That's the way in which you can get more conservative if you're going through a losing stretch, is play for lower stakes.

02:51:40.000 What's the biggest losing stretch you've ever gone through?

02:51:45.000 In dollar amount?

02:51:47.000 In period?

02:51:48.000 Dollar amounts.

02:51:49.000 Let's see...

02:51:51.000 Have you ever gone through a couple million dollars in a weekend?

02:51:55.000 In games where I had sold action and didn't have all of myself, yeah, I've lost...

02:52:02.000 I guess my biggest losing couple of days was on the order of...

02:52:12.000 50 million Hong Kong dollars.

02:52:15.000 Hong Kong dollars, which are bigger.

02:52:16.000 Or less, rather.

02:52:18.000 So only like 6 million U.S. Oh my god, son!

02:52:21.000 Only 6 million U.S. dollars!

02:52:24.000 And personally, I had a small share of that, so I didn't personally lose 6 million dollars.

02:52:29.000 What does that mean?

02:52:29.000 What's a small share?

02:52:30.000 A million?

02:52:31.000 Two million?

02:52:32.000 What's a small share?

02:52:33.000 10%-ish.

02:52:35.000 Okay, 600 grand. 0.99

02:52:38.000 Still, that's a lot of fucking money. 0.99

02:52:41.000 Yeah, it doesn't feel good. 0.99

02:52:43.000 Wow.

02:52:44.000 And then, of course, a bunch of my friends lost a shitload of money, too, and I have to send out the email, hey guys, didn't go real well.

02:52:54.000 That's the worst part of it for sure, is the hey guys didn't go real well email.

02:52:58.000 I'm sure, because everybody's like planning on making a profit based on your success in the past.

02:53:05.000 So it's rare that you hit these dark spots.

02:53:07.000 What do you attribute them to?

02:53:09.000 Is it just luck?

02:53:10.000 I mean, it's not that rare.

02:53:13.000 Like any given day that I play poker, I might be...

02:53:16.000 If I'm playing cash games, maybe like a 52% favorite to have a winning day.

02:53:22.000 Maybe less than that.

02:53:24.000 If I'm playing a tournament, I'm a favorite to have a losing day, because tournament, they pay about top 10% of the field, so if they're paying top 10% of the field, a really good player cashes 15-18% of the time.

02:53:41.000 That seems incredibly stressful.

02:53:43.000 It's pretty stressful.

02:53:44.000 How do you feel about this as a human being trying to make a living in this incredibly...

02:53:50.000 It feels like you're navigating a minefield, like...

02:53:55.000 Yeah.

02:53:58.000 Obviously, you've been very successful with this.

02:54:00.000 Yeah.

02:54:00.000 You've turned a very nice profit.

02:54:02.000 You do very well.

02:54:03.000 Yeah.

02:54:03.000 But the amount of stress that on your 28-year-old body, not just your back, but your mind racing and battling these numbers.

02:54:12.000 You're talking millions of dollars back and forth and down and up.

02:54:16.000 Yeah.

02:54:17.000 What is that?

02:54:17.000 Do you do something to mitigate that?

02:54:19.000 I like to meditate every day.

02:54:21.000 What kind of meditation?

02:54:22.000 Just breath focused.

02:54:25.000 Basically just sit quietly for anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes and attend to my breathing.

02:54:33.000 Just concentrating, breathing in and breathing out, just trying to stay calm.

02:54:37.000 And sometimes I'll do an exercise on top of that where I'll track the thoughts that enter my mind and label them as thoughts about the future or thoughts about the past.

02:54:48.000 And what that exercise does is helps to bring you into the present moment and to see that it's difficult to have Yeah.

02:55:22.000 Yeah.

02:55:46.000 Sail off into the sunset.

02:55:47.000 And both of those are things you can think that take you out of the moment of, alright, he just bet.

02:55:56.000 What do I think he has?

02:55:57.000 What's the right play?

02:55:58.000 So in that sense, poker is a lot like life.

02:56:02.000 The key to life is to be present.

02:56:04.000 It's great training for living your life mindfully and rationally and effectively.

02:56:13.000 Have you ever done any treatments or sessions in the isolation tank?

02:56:18.000 I haven't.

02:56:18.000 I really want to.

02:56:19.000 Why don't you get one?

02:56:20.000 You're making banks, son.

02:56:22.000 Yeah, but I'm traveling around all the time. 1.00

02:56:23.000 Ship one of them bitches out to Malta. 1.00

02:56:24.000 I don't know how to get something shipped to Malta. 1.00

02:56:25.000 I can't fucking figure out how to get them to send me a desk chair in Malta. 0.95

02:56:28.000 I guarantee you somewhere in Europe they have sensory deprivation tanks. 0.99

02:56:33.000 They have a couple in Malta.

02:56:33.000 I looked it up.

02:56:34.000 They do have one?

02:56:35.000 I didn't get around to go into one.

02:56:36.000 But it's an hour across the whole island. 0.98

02:56:38.000 Yeah, no, it's right fucking there. 0.91

02:56:39.000 I'm just kind of lazy. 0.98

02:56:41.000 Jesus Christ.

02:56:42.000 If you do it once, you're going to realize what an amazing tool it is.

02:56:45.000 You're going to want to do it all the time.

02:56:46.000 I came really close to doing it once with JC in LA several years ago.

02:56:49.000 We got in the cab and we went to the place and we got there and it was closed.

02:56:52.000 Well, there's a place that's in Venice while you're here, the Float Lab.

02:56:56.000 I'm pretty sure that's where I tried to go.

02:56:58.000 I mean, JC took me there.

02:56:59.000 Oh, it's amazing.

02:57:01.000 They're the best place too.

02:57:02.000 The best place in California for sure.

02:57:04.000 I should check that out for sure.

02:57:05.000 Yeah, well, I'll try to see if I can hook it up once you get out of here.

02:57:07.000 Cool.

02:57:07.000 But we're out of time, man.

02:57:08.000 We're going to turn into a pumpkin.

02:57:10.000 Oh, alright.

02:57:10.000 So, we're three hours in.

02:57:11.000 That was three hours.

02:57:12.000 Isn't that incredible?

02:57:13.000 That flew by.

02:57:14.000 Yeah, follow Ike on Twitter.

02:57:16.000 It's IkePoker, I-K-E, poker on Twitter.

02:57:19.000 Anything else?

02:57:20.000 PokerStars.net, your sponsor.

02:57:22.000 Real quick, I want to...

02:57:22.000 Please.

02:57:50.000 Excellent.

02:57:50.000 And what's it called again, one more time?

02:57:52.000 Fading Hearts on the River.

02:57:53.000 I'm pretty sure you can get it on Audible.

02:57:55.000 I think there's an audiobook version as well.

02:57:57.000 Glorious.

02:57:58.000 And that brings us to our sponsors.

02:58:00.000 Audible.

02:58:01.000 Audible.com.

02:58:02.000 Thank you to Audible.

02:58:02.000 Go to Audible.com forward slash Joe.

02:58:04.000 Get a free audiobook and up to 30 free days of Audible service.

02:58:08.000 And if you want to get Ike's dad's book, it is...

02:58:11.000 Fading Hearts on the River by Brooke Saxton. 0.99

02:58:13.000 Write it down, bitches. 1.00

02:58:14.000 I know your memory sucks. 1.00

02:58:17.000 Thanks also to Ting. 0.91

02:58:18.000 Go to rogan.ting.com and save $25 off of any of their brand new Android devices or the Apple iPhones as well.

02:58:27.000 Thanks also to onnit.com.

02:58:29.000 Go to O-N-N-I-T. Use the code word ROGAN. And save 10% off any and all supplements.

02:58:34.000 That's it for this week, you dirty fucks. 1.00

02:58:36.000 We'll be back next week. 1.00

02:58:37.000 Until then, much love.

02:58:38.000 We'll see you Friday night at the San Jose Performing Center.

02:58:43.000 Go to my website, JoeRogan.net.

02:58:45.000 All the details are there. 0.99

02:58:46.000 I don't remember shit. 0.98

02:58:47.000 Much love. 0.90

02:58:48.000 See ya.

02:58:48.000 Big kiss.

The Joe Rogan Experience - July 22, 2014

Joe Rogan Experience #526 - Isaac Haxton

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Transcript