Patrick Antonius: How to Compete with the Best Poker Players in the World | DSH #1609

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Speaker 4 In my mind, I'm kind of a perfectionist, and it makes me many days after tournaments or cask games when I'm done playing and I can't get out of some hands that I played, and was that a mistake, and how big?

Speaker 4 And I'm analyzing them.

Speaker 4 And you know, and it's sometimes you decide right things, but it turns out to be horrible would have won a big pot, or you would have lost a big pot sometimes, when whatever you decide to do, and so on, and you just have to forget those and just move on and focus again but it's definitely a game that no one can play any kind of perfect way it's just one decision at a time

Speaker 2 all right guys got Patrick Antonius here in Las Vegas playing a lot of poker lately out here yeah I play some

Speaker 4 you play any last night yes we play daytime daytime that's the best thing here we have these games during the day

Speaker 2 so I love my schedule here You prefer the day games over the night games?

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah. It's especially nowadays.
Nowadays it's a

Speaker 4 it's a really nice thing to be able to play like normal uh sleep normal hours, train normal hours. Yeah.
Play during the day and uh

Speaker 4 makes a big difference for me.

Speaker 2 You prefer the the cash games, right, not the tournaments?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I've been always a cash game player my whole life. It's uh the tournaments has been something that I never really had any goals and they've been just fun bonus bonus things and

Speaker 4 I managed to really crush the games very early and the cascades have been always like so much bigger than tournaments.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 that's why

Speaker 4 I've been just focusing on what's bigger and

Speaker 4 also I like the freedom of it that I play when I feel good, I quit when I want.

Speaker 4 Once you enter a tournament and you're stuck with the schedule for days, long hours, and

Speaker 4 and um but especially back in the days, the problem was that the tournaments were so small, like ten thousand dollar buy-in, and then you can go play a cash game where you can win or lose a million.

Speaker 4 It's like you have to win a tournament five days to make it. Of course, you can lose that money, but it just gives you a perspective of how big of a difference it was

Speaker 4 game size-wise.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 4 And nowadays, you know, Triton has been an absolute game changer. That

Speaker 4 this is why I started to play more tournaments nowadays. That

Speaker 4 it's it's exciting, it gets my adrenaline going. And it's obviously very big and it's also like very uh tough schedule to go and play two weeks every day.

Speaker 4 But uh I like this kind of

Speaker 4 um

Speaker 4 I I like tournaments a lot as long as it's y you know

Speaker 4 like

Speaker 4 important enough.

Speaker 4 Which means the money is big enough, and um,

Speaker 4 and uh, it's

Speaker 4 it's kind of like it gives you more feelings, and it's it's

Speaker 4 I mean, this is the best feeling in the world when you win a tournament, and um,

Speaker 4 but yeah, thanks to Triton that that uh we have

Speaker 4 we have these kind of high-roller tournaments more because otherwise there would be very few.

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Speaker 4 And um, you wouldn't see me playing too many tournaments. Wow.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 They really got the high rollers going to Asia now to play poker. Triton, right?

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's they're all over the world, just not in the USA.

Speaker 4 They have events in Europe, Asia, and

Speaker 4 Cyprus,

Speaker 4 on Turkey's side. And I think they might have one in Africa later this year.
Who knows?

Speaker 2 That's cool. Where's your favorite place to play at?

Speaker 4 Montenegro is beautiful where they have it.

Speaker 4 that's a very nice setup by the ocean. Good.

Speaker 4 I mean all the places, um maybe Jeju is a bit tough where they've had events regarding traveling and

Speaker 4 and um

Speaker 4 but we don't have so much time to do other things anyways once we play these tournaments. Right.
But they have really like

Speaker 4 mastered the experience for the players,

Speaker 4 how they take care of everyone, that's

Speaker 4 everyone's needs is

Speaker 4 I don't know what else you can ha what you what else you can ha ask as a player.

Speaker 4 You have food twenty four seven served to you when you play, you don't have to think about how to organize that or dinner breaks or anything and and they have VIP service people responding you twenty-four hours regarding anything and and you see

Speaker 4 yeah,

Speaker 4 best tournament organization in general.

Speaker 4 So but look, they're getting like

Speaker 4 people,

Speaker 4 very wealthy people, and all the best players flying in from all over the world to play this.

Speaker 2 Do you change the style of your play based off where you're playing, the location?

Speaker 4 I mean, I always change my style based on the players that I play with.

Speaker 4 Like, this is a good poker player who always adjusting.

Speaker 4 So, there's no really a game style that

Speaker 4 you should have, in my opinion. You should be able to do anything.

Speaker 4 Anything that's just always do the right thing at the right time, whatever is right now against this player. And poker is an extremely complex game.
It's just

Speaker 4 it's it's uh it's something that we will never master and

Speaker 4 you know it's not a game that is meant to play perfect and um

Speaker 4 that's the beauty of the game and at the same time it's so much

Speaker 4 skill but perfect amount of luck and yeah. And

Speaker 4 yeah, it's been a

Speaker 4 it's been an interesting

Speaker 4 journey with poker.

Speaker 4 Like later age in my life, I've even realized how good of a game we have, like how much

Speaker 4 more it can offer for a person

Speaker 4 than like early in my 20s when I was just

Speaker 4 wanting to play, play, play, and it was so much about just action and playing.

Speaker 4 But as a

Speaker 4 regarding like a personal growth also,

Speaker 4 it can give you a lot. You can learn a lot about yourself with your wins and losses and everything how you manage yourself.

Speaker 4 There's a lot of human behavior, human psychology, a lot of energy exchange,

Speaker 4 lots of things that you can

Speaker 4 take in and

Speaker 4 improve yourself.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that makes sense. Do you still have the same passion

Speaker 2 as you did in your 20s for poker?

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 I think I have more passion now. It's a different kind of passion because then, when I was younger, I was playing so much.
I had a lot of passion to play.

Speaker 4 And I played probably, I went through a period of maybe playing like

Speaker 4 close to a 12-hour per day for six years, seven years. Wow.
No days later.

Speaker 4 This is a, I mean, sometimes, but I was just like, you know, I was really lucky we had online poker was then different than nowadays and

Speaker 4 before there were no like programs helping you and not even like a last-hand histories were offered and the games were there 24-7 and very good games.

Speaker 4 So you could wake up, play online, eat breakfast, play some online few hours,

Speaker 4 go to workouts or something, come back, play again.

Speaker 4 have another workout or whatever whatever you do and play again like you can split your days when you played online just it was easy all the way before you went to sleep and

Speaker 4 I was playing a lot online those days when I was younger before the stolvers before the cheaters

Speaker 4 I don't know about cheaters I mean I mean it's uh it's uh

Speaker 4 I mean there's been some scandals back in the days obviously but

Speaker 4 But light poker is the real experience and this is also like I'm a much better live player than online.

Speaker 2 Maybe that wasn't the case 20 years ago but do you think there's more skill needed involved with live poker compared to online?

Speaker 4 It's a different kind of skill we're talking about. Like

Speaker 4 you need to be much more statistically oriented when you play online based on your opponents because you're not going to get live reads, you're not going to get this kind of feel.

Speaker 4 Sometimes you can get some little timetail or bidding size tail that you can

Speaker 4 make up your mind of what indicates weakness or strength and this can be also

Speaker 4 opponent leading you another way but live

Speaker 4 a lot of little things

Speaker 4 come into play

Speaker 4 and good player always builds up builds a feel of what's

Speaker 4 what's happening that's how strong or weak you are and

Speaker 4 very little things that we can observe can

Speaker 4 can influence your decisions and

Speaker 4 it's pretty difficult to fake a strong body language when you have a weak hand, you are nothing.

Speaker 4 Like

Speaker 4 other way around, I think if you have strong, you can

Speaker 4 you can probably

Speaker 4 probably

Speaker 4 look weak, but it's it's very difficult to

Speaker 4 to especially when it's like some big important moments that's in tournaments you're risking your tournament tournament life or

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 4 some play.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's tough to get a bluff through these days, right? People are so good at the tells now.

Speaker 4 Well, they're good at reading the game, reading the situation, reading the hands.

Speaker 4 But yeah, every situation is different, so it's hard to say. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You've played in some big games over the years. I mean, what are you? 29th all-time money list, number one in Finland.
Have you accomplished everything you wanted to in the game of poker?

Speaker 2 Do you have any goals to this day?

Speaker 4 I mean, I have my goals.

Speaker 4 I have my goals in general of just being responsible for myself. That

Speaker 4 I really enjoy competing against the best. And

Speaker 4 it's nothing that it's a serious goal. Like, I mean,

Speaker 4 I don't have to achieve these things, but I would really,

Speaker 4 really be proud of myself if I can keep up with how the game is evolving and the best players,

Speaker 4 how strong they are, and if I can still compete compete with them in, like, for the, let's just say, the next 20 years,

Speaker 4 that would because it's gonna be more difficult in the older age, yeah. I assume, and uh, but I think I'm on the peak of my game, really.
Yeah, and I think

Speaker 2 you're getting better to this day, yes, of course.

Speaker 4 Wow, um,

Speaker 4 it's all, it's all like

Speaker 4 it's all how much you put

Speaker 4 effort on it and energy, how much motivation you have. It's just

Speaker 4 if I will,

Speaker 4 yeah, like if I will,

Speaker 4 if I have other goals that are important, they're

Speaker 4 taking my energy. That's probably gonna be a lot away from poker.
But at the moment, I'm pretty much

Speaker 4 full-time poker.

Speaker 4 And I really like it.

Speaker 4 I love it.

Speaker 4 It's something that makes me happy. And

Speaker 4 I've experienced all kinds of things when I've had periods when I don't play so much and there hasn't been so many big games available and

Speaker 4 and then I end up usually

Speaker 4 uh

Speaker 4 I end up doing other things that the re as the result is not always the great. Like like I end up over training, I start training twice a day.

Speaker 4 If I have because I have a lot of energy, like I'm not a guy who likes to sit at home and watch T V.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 I have a professional sports background. I used to do a lot of sports since I was little, all kind of sports, and then tennis was

Speaker 4 my sport.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 yeah, it's it's it's uh I noticed that I'm so much so much happier when I when I get to play a lot of poker.

Speaker 4 But obviously too much is too much, there's balance in everything, but it gives you some kind of

Speaker 4 satisfaction of you know using your brain, being in the present moment

Speaker 4 stimulates a lot of thinking

Speaker 4 and uh

Speaker 4 if you don't get that you gotta kind of

Speaker 4 find this kind of stimulation from some other things. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So you like adrenaline, you like that rush?

Speaker 4 I like the adrenaline in a way that when it gets is ma gets my focus into it. If the game is not meaningful, like it's too small,

Speaker 4 then

Speaker 4 then you don't,

Speaker 4 yeah, I won't enter that kind of state of focus, the kind of intensity. That's why I always

Speaker 4 like the high stakes, and it's

Speaker 4 also like been my best skill. That once we play for big money, that it's

Speaker 4 it is meaningful for all of us, like no matter how much money you have. It brings certain aspects in the game that

Speaker 4 we start talking about players' comfort zones, that yeah

Speaker 4 what kind of hands you know what kind of bed sizings they start being uncomfortable of bluffing or calling off and and this this brings another skill to the game and

Speaker 4 I've been always good at

Speaker 4 good at kind of

Speaker 4 navigating this kind of this kind of world it's definitely a different type of game than low stakes when just chips are flying and chips are flying and it's laugh you know you get stacked and it's just laughs and so on.

Speaker 4 Like, like it's great poker, but it's a different type of poker. Right.

Speaker 2 You're not playing it serious.

Speaker 4 And uh

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, all the poker is fun. I mean, even the games we play is is a lot of fun.
We have so much laughs and fun, but it's also that we know that it's

Speaker 4 it's everyone is trying and it's means when someone is risking their chips a big bet, it's really yeah, um, he cares or she cares if you get called or not. For sure.

Speaker 2 What would you say your favorite part about poker is? Is it the money? Is it the competition? Is it the camaraderie? What do you like the most about it?

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's a good question.

Speaker 4 I get a lot of

Speaker 4 satisfaction of playing against the best in the world and if I'm if I'm able to outplay them like this is

Speaker 4 it's always a challenge and it's it's something that

Speaker 4 you know you just don't go there and

Speaker 4 you just don't go there and do that. Like you have to really be like mentally.
There is I like that

Speaker 4 yeah when I play it's really

Speaker 4 I'm playing poker and everything else I kind of forget. So I put my phone away and

Speaker 4 of course I'm sometimes I'm listening to some music when I play, and so on. But

Speaker 4 it's very.

Speaker 4 I guess this is something what makes me also happy that I can have this kind of state of

Speaker 4 kind of your meditative state in the way and analyzing and

Speaker 4 but there's a lot of

Speaker 4 lot of great things

Speaker 4 what I like about poker but I see I think I think it's really like

Speaker 4 you know I had this thing that I was trying to play tennis like seriously

Speaker 4 and I put a lot of training and you wanted to go to traditional try to yes but it was very clear at my teenage years after a lot of injuries that falling behind a lot from the best

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 people who never did competitive sports, they never got to compete in a way that they would feel these losses and wins and how it's disappointing and how it's how happy you are when you have performed on your highest level and so on.

Speaker 4 Like poker can give them this feeling, which they never had if they never did

Speaker 4 competitive sports. And this is very fulfilling, I think, for a lot of people to experience.

Speaker 4 It's really something that this game

Speaker 4 has to offer that

Speaker 4 that uh

Speaker 4 I don't know any other card game or um

Speaker 4 game that has so many different aspects and we're dealing player against player against player and there's so much

Speaker 4 pressure under such a quick time you have to make decisions, solutions.

Speaker 4 Um you have live rates, you have a lot of things that goes to into play on your decisions and um

Speaker 4 yeah, and yeah so and it's and it's a game really that

Speaker 4 it's hard to say when it's right or wrong things like you have to balance things

Speaker 4 you have to play same hands in different ways otherwise you're too predictable to play against and

Speaker 4 it's really a game that is not meant to be played perfectly and

Speaker 4 and maybe that's my least favorite part because I'm kind of

Speaker 4 in my mind I'm kind of a perfectionist yeah and it makes me many days after tournaments or caskets I'm when I'm done playing and I can't get out of some hands that I played and was that a mistake and how big and I'm analyzing them and I you know and it's sometimes you decide right things but it turns out to be a horrible you would have won a big pot or you would have lost a big pot sometimes when you

Speaker 4 whatever you decide to do and so on and and

Speaker 4 you just have to forget those and just move on and focus again

Speaker 4 But yeah, it's definitely a game that

Speaker 4 no one can play any kind of perfect way. And it's just one decision at a time.
Right. And so on.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because even if you play near perfect, you could still lose money.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 it's a...

Speaker 4 Yeah, there's a big luck factor also. And there's all kinds of things like this that what tests you as a Poco player that you can be the best player in the world.

Speaker 4 You can have a horrible six-month streak that you just they just give you the second best hand like every day.

Speaker 4 And and you're gonna be put on tough spots by players that when you have there's a lot of spots that are very tough, complex, you have marginal hands

Speaker 4 and they just happen and you have those medium-sized hands and second best hand against little bit and there's always your

Speaker 4 opponent is betting and they have just perfect hands to bluff you, like how these hands play. And

Speaker 4 everyone who plays a lot of poker for a long period, they will go through these kind of periods that they can really, like, it can really start messing up with your head.

Speaker 4 And you start questioning that,

Speaker 4 how am I playing?

Speaker 4 Is this kind of normal, this kind of luck and run of cards? And

Speaker 4 some players, they really, I think, got hurt by just purely bad luck of losing their confidence on themselves. And

Speaker 4 the final result is basically that they started to play too scared, maybe, which is very bad. Or

Speaker 4 also can happen the other way around that

Speaker 4 lots of players had a very good run for a long time where they just...

Speaker 4 get away from all the bluffs, opponents never had some big hands to call, and everything just went their ways and they have overconfidence or it's they think that it's if they're not self-aware of how they win and how it happens that they kind of get very wrong data and they start playing too aggressively and they're gonna next thing they're gonna hit the reality when the car starts to break even and so on so there's a lot of these kind of things that you have to be very self-aware of how do you win and how do you lose

Speaker 4 which is tough to do right that's tough to be that self-aware it can be tough I mean, a good player should know, but

Speaker 4 once it starts to happen for really long periods that you're getting consistently bad, bad luck or some something,

Speaker 4 some

Speaker 4 something similar, then

Speaker 4 yeah, it can

Speaker 4 it can hurt your game. Like I had a few periods long time ago when I was

Speaker 4 I lost every hand for and lot of money like very quickly, like a week or two.

Speaker 4 And uh

Speaker 4 I would just little, I would just,

Speaker 4 it's good to take a break

Speaker 4 whenever we have different

Speaker 4 people have different

Speaker 4 preferences of break. Some people have one day good, some people one week.

Speaker 4 Whatever you think that, okay, you have cleared up your mind and you're kind of ready to play.

Speaker 4 And then it's good to play a little bit softer games or smaller games and start getting some winning hands in and some successful hands. And

Speaker 4 when you feel like you're playing your best again, you can

Speaker 4 it's then better to go on the bigger games or or so on. But

Speaker 4 we all do different things, we manage ourselves differently and

Speaker 4 this would be like an optimal thing thing to do.

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 I think players are managing themselves much better nowadays and back in the days they were they were

Speaker 4 you know, everything, all the sports were different back in the days. Everything is changing and becoming a bit more advanced.

Speaker 4 But I think poker is living a very interesting period of time

Speaker 4 because nowadays it's so accessible to study the game, to get better. We have all kinds of tools, tools to help, solvers and so on.
So you can you can access a lot of information in so fast and

Speaker 4 and get get your game like a baseline game pretty

Speaker 4 pretty good pretty quickly

Speaker 4 and so so this is great so this i think brought a lot of players to to this game that wow like back in the days like what you were reading some poker books that you could be sure that there's only wrong information because nobody knew anything i was scared to play back in the day because the skill gap was so high yeah so like yeah

Speaker 2 everyone was so good and there was just too much of a gap back in the day oh back in the day 10 years ago, yeah.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 now we know nobody was good then actually probably like now with the solvers now people are finding out what is the

Speaker 4 better strategy optimal ways of balancing your hands and so on.

Speaker 4 But when you go back in time 20 years ago

Speaker 4 we had no information of anything. You would just play with players for months, days, weeks, years and figure out who's winning the most and

Speaker 4 they were the best players who were just crushing the game and winning the most. But there were no such thing as

Speaker 4 proving based on your what statistics or anything that's who were really the best and

Speaker 4 it was interesting times. But what I was saying is that

Speaker 4 now we have a lot of players coming to play, but

Speaker 4 they can access all this information, but this doesn't mean that they they're able to play well. Like it's still an extremely complex game and

Speaker 4 everyone pretty much does some things too much or too little depending on situations and

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 4 it's it's been interesting to see how how players who are even like overly studied, how

Speaker 4 how they're lacking a lot of other things that goes into the play, like they're just playing it with uh

Speaker 4 numbers and

Speaker 4 it's like uh everything is just calculated right and uh

Speaker 4 and they're

Speaker 4 a lot of them are ignoring the human um aspect of the game and

Speaker 4 and humans just

Speaker 4 we just play differently like we are

Speaker 4 we are much different than solvers

Speaker 4 we

Speaker 4 will never be able to comprehend the

Speaker 4 comp s like complexity of balancing these hands and

Speaker 4 basically like humans under bluff every spot, almost

Speaker 4 not every spot, but a lot of them.

Speaker 4 And that's why we have adjusted our game style also because people bluff less. We also call less.

Speaker 4 So we have kind of a different baseline when we play against each other. That if you would put computers to play each other's, you would see a completely different

Speaker 4 looking game.

Speaker 2 Same with chess, yeah.

Speaker 4 And if you try to play like a computer against humans

Speaker 4 it's

Speaker 4 you're gonna go wrong in a lot of spots regarding like you're gonna probably gonna make a lot of bad calls and be wrong a lot.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 but maybe if you try to play like a computer against humans, maybe you're gonna have a lot of success bluffing. 'Cause they will fold a lot.

Speaker 4 Interesting. But it's a anyways, it's an intr interesting time

Speaker 4 poker players used to be kind of good at

Speaker 4 reading each other, feeling it out, having this kind of feel and psycholog psychological

Speaker 4 part.

Speaker 4 Back in the days, there was a lot of players who were good at this kind of table talks and all these kind of things.

Speaker 4 And now you see a lot of players that they're just coming from another world of studying the game through the solvers and

Speaker 4 they're gonna be lacking the things then back in the days

Speaker 4 players were good at. But

Speaker 4 yeah, it's not easy things. But it's definitely

Speaker 4 poker is growing a lot.

Speaker 4 It's a really nice time to be to be experiencing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it feels like there's another boom right now, right? With all the streamers now, there's people filming every hand.

Speaker 4 Definitely. everywhere around the world live events are breaking records

Speaker 4 and um i think we're knocking on the door again with with our amazing game for mainstream

Speaker 4 it's uh it feels like it and uh

Speaker 4 we will see there's a

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Speaker 4 Yeah. So the North America, and uh,

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 4 who knows if this might be something that

Speaker 4 would take us further to

Speaker 4 where I think our game belongs. We have one of the most entertaining games to watch on TV.

Speaker 2 Let's get it in the Olympics. That would be amazing, right? You could represent Finland.

Speaker 4 Olympics, I don't know if it belongs there,

Speaker 4 but I definitely belongs to uh

Speaker 4 to the mainstream

Speaker 2 yeah yeah it's a universal sport right anyone can play it yeah there's more than 100 million people who play poker it's pretty pretty large number yeah that's large yeah that's what the statistics say so do you use the solvers at all because I I've had Bryn Kenny on he said he doesn't use them at all

Speaker 4 I don't use them al at all, but when I l

Speaker 4 I when I study the game and I work with I have my people that I that I do some kind of you know sessions, improvements,

Speaker 4 then we look at them, like they look at my

Speaker 4 I could say coaches or whoever I work with sometimes.

Speaker 4 So, but in this way, like

Speaker 4 yes, we use them. I mean, it's we get information from looking at certain spots, but

Speaker 4 but yeah, it's um

Speaker 4 I try to not look at them too much in a way. Like, I've been having a very good baseline on my game.
Naturally, that's whenever we look at some spots, what the computer would do or how they balance.

Speaker 4 Like, I'm almost always

Speaker 4 already knowing what the computer does and

Speaker 4 what hands and how big the betting size is, the computer would balance, and so on. But the computer balances everything.

Speaker 4 The betting sizes, there's a lot of situations that bets X amount of percent this time this size and

Speaker 4 I don't know 30% time this size and then it checks some times like it's it's a complete kind of sit show

Speaker 4 that that

Speaker 4 how you you have to have quite a complex brain to be a self-aware of you balancing balancing all the

Speaker 4 all the hands that you don't do something too much and too little and

Speaker 4 but

Speaker 4 if I have to say something about my game like what I

Speaker 4 what I just like to think in general that I would just like to play in the way that my opponents are not used to kind of facing these kind of betting sizes and

Speaker 4 it's more likely they make

Speaker 4 you take them to areas in the game that they are more likely more likely to make mistakes or

Speaker 4 or maybe you're more familiar with this kind of line that you take in the hand

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 But yeah, it's a very, very complex game and I think people play too much using the same betting sizes and

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 4 yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 No, that makes sense. You said you were big on tennis.
Did you watch the French Open, the recent one?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I managed to l watch the last two sets.

Speaker 2 Nice. That was a great match.

Speaker 4 Yeah, one of one of the best, yeah.

Speaker 2 That might have been the best match I've ever seen. Carlos Alcatraz.

Speaker 4 It says that it happens on the large stage, this kind of result that he says.

Speaker 4 These match points and

Speaker 4 wins, comes back like it was probably like a 200 to 1 dog with love 40 or something like similar.

Speaker 4 And that made it such a...

Speaker 4 And then Ceno showed such a mental toughness that he was

Speaker 4 able to come back and break back on the last set

Speaker 4 and look like he was

Speaker 4 becoming a favorite to win it. And they just had it.
This match just had it all. Kind of.
Yeah, it did.

Speaker 2 I was wondering who was going to step up and replace Federer and Nadal, and now Djokovic is getting old. Looks like these young guys are going to do it.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 these are the two that a lot of people have

Speaker 4 kind of predicted that

Speaker 4 they would be one and two and been taking most of the slams and

Speaker 4 here they are

Speaker 4 hopefully they don't face any kind of physical issues which I think would help them I think that's like the yeah but look for a lot of players that's like

Speaker 4 that's like something that's you know a good player if you never know you can you can get any kind of injury and that can put you back for a long time and you might never recover and reach the same level.

Speaker 4 So hopefully these two stay healthy because they're playing incredible level, and every time they play, it's like such a pleasure to watch. Absolutely.
And there's other very strong players, too.

Speaker 4 Like, it's tennis is in good hands.

Speaker 4 It's really, really impressive

Speaker 4 to watch these guys play.

Speaker 2 You play any pickleball or any Padel?

Speaker 4 Are you two anyway? Yeah, Padell, I played. Yeah.
But I've been struggling still. Like,

Speaker 4 now I'm just trying to get back on tennis. Pickleball, no, not for me.

Speaker 4 I played one time, I kind of messed up my back of this kitchen rule that

Speaker 4 you know you're reaching out on these valleys and I did like a heavy leg day that day.

Speaker 4 Went to play first time, I didn't know anything about the rule and managed to just yank a nerve.

Speaker 4 Also, I didn't like the fact that there's kind of no touch on this because the ball is different and the rackets that I'm used to spinning the ball and touching and you can just place it so precisely with tennis racket or paddle.

Speaker 4 I like paddle.

Speaker 4 Paddle is amazing, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it is. It is one in Vegas now.
It's fun.

Speaker 4 It's a little bit tough for my hips.

Speaker 4 The move moving is more aggressive in paddle than tennis. You just have this

Speaker 4 lot of sprinting, a lot of

Speaker 4 like

Speaker 4 as a tennis player, like I don't have that

Speaker 4 paddle mind and game understanding where you just relax and let the ball go and positioning yourself so well, like the pros do. Yeah.

Speaker 4 But yeah,

Speaker 4 anyways, I'm trying to get back on tennis. I still like it.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 been having a lot of physical issues with tennis is a tough, it's a tough physical sport.

Speaker 2 Like it's one of the toughest models. You might have to get some stem cells.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I still haven't done that.

Speaker 2 I just got some last week.

Speaker 4 There's some other things I haven't done that could help.

Speaker 4 But yeah,

Speaker 4 I've been having like

Speaker 4 a little bit of hip issues and this kind of hip replacement has been knocking on the door a few times. But I managed without any surgeries and

Speaker 4 still managed to play.

Speaker 4 Been on a course quite a few times last year, but

Speaker 4 now I'm back again. I need to work a little bit on the gym.

Speaker 2 They say tennis is the healthiest sport you could play. They've done studies on longevity and racket sports are the best for you.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I've I've seen the studies, yeah. It has something to do with this, you know, moving the ball coming so fast and

Speaker 4 you're

Speaker 4 hearing it reacting on it, like for the brain, for sure. It stimulates, I think, the brain really nicely.
Like, also, that makes me very happy.

Speaker 4 Every time I manage to be on a tennis court and not have too much pain, and it's a really, you know,

Speaker 4 good feelings. It's

Speaker 2 my favorite thing to do do out of any sport to play absolutely yeah the brain is super important as a poker player do you do any mental workouts or anything for brain health

Speaker 4 um

Speaker 2 meditation or anything like that

Speaker 4 i do a lot but i don't do specifically something like basically i'm

Speaker 4 health is my like passion and my life and it's my way to live and it goes together with everything like as a poker I approach poker as a sport

Speaker 4 and the most important thing is that I'm well rested

Speaker 4 but yeah I've I've done a lot of

Speaker 4 work on my

Speaker 4 my training but

Speaker 4 what would I say something specific

Speaker 4 The most important is that I play a lot of poker for my brain basically. That's like

Speaker 4 the more I play, the less

Speaker 4 kind of

Speaker 4 less I go wrong, like some small mistakes or something, and you realize some spots instantly

Speaker 4 what to take

Speaker 4 when you need to bluff or

Speaker 4 how much to bet and so on.

Speaker 4 But I've been doing long-time like brain brain optimization with my health guy, with just

Speaker 4 basically just becoming healthier and healthier. But then there's some uh some things that

Speaker 4 will optimize your brain functioning.

Speaker 4 But it's really complex. I can't really talk about it because I don't even understand it so well myself.
Like

Speaker 4 kind of the the things that I understand is that what like what I have learned is that the brain is like a master of adaptation. That's

Speaker 4 you need to it get used to anything pretty much after periods of time. So you always have to kind of keep changing things.

Speaker 4 Even this is like what you're doing, and also like supplementation, and you kind of trigger it in a different way.

Speaker 4 If you do the same things over and over again, take the same supplements over and over again,

Speaker 4 it's at some point you just the effects start diminishing, right? Yeah, yeah. You always, you need to like,

Speaker 4 yeah, it's so complex. I don't even

Speaker 4 kind of what I've learned about health, that it's it's

Speaker 4 to me it's so complex that I leave it to the professional the best people I'm I understand it but I could never understand the

Speaker 4 complexity of how deep the health goes and

Speaker 4 what to what to do and there's so little we know about the brain right now yeah and we're all different I know also that whatever what works for me doesn't most likely doesn't work for you you might feel much different if you take eat the same things and take the same supplements as I do

Speaker 4 And um

Speaker 4 we're all different. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I would imagine you need good memory as a poker player to remember specific hands against the same people though, right?

Speaker 4 Yes, very good, very important your memory. Um

Speaker 4 that's very important, yes. Um

Speaker 4 yeah, you just

Speaker 4 our brain is everything. And uh and um

Speaker 4 but it goes also like

Speaker 4 also like taking care of your body and

Speaker 4 physical health goes completely together with your how your brain and mind functions

Speaker 4 it's it's as important

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 4 I think it's pretty tough to make

Speaker 4 right decisions overall if you

Speaker 4 if you haven't slept well if you have a lot of chronic inflammation or pain and you have

Speaker 4 whatever issues you have

Speaker 4 that is stopping you to feel good. So, if you're feeling good,

Speaker 4 you're gonna put yourself in a much different position to make right decisions.

Speaker 4 Whatever decisions those are, it doesn't mean that we're talking about poker, might be about anything in life, what decisions you have. We all have to make so many decisions every day.

Speaker 2 Yep.

Speaker 2 What's next for you? I know you got some companies you're working on. What's the main focus for you the rest of this year

Speaker 4 it's gonna be a busy year yeah but every year is busy and I like it I like it like that

Speaker 4 yeah I can say that I recently I signed a contract with the

Speaker 4 one of the largest poker platforms but this I'm not gonna publish here yet. I will

Speaker 4 publish it when it's the right time.

Speaker 4 but that means that there's gonna be some new things a little bit

Speaker 4 I'll be playing some high-stakes cascades and tritons

Speaker 4 yeah also also

Speaker 4 you're probably probably aware of I'm a co-founder of First Line of Poker flap

Speaker 4 so

Speaker 4 it's been a long

Speaker 4 long way

Speaker 4 long way with

Speaker 4 with with my company or our company but um

Speaker 4 things are looking pretty good regarding our product and development nice uh

Speaker 4 that um

Speaker 4 we will do some some uh cash game cash game events with our uh land-based casino partners uh

Speaker 4 next year mo most likely um

Speaker 4 but uh yeah this is

Speaker 4 um

Speaker 4 It's gonna be the same things pretty much for me. Like, I keep taking care of myself, playing a lot of poker.
Um

Speaker 4 yeah,

Speaker 4 being involved with some projects. Um,

Speaker 4 I mean, I don't know if

Speaker 4 you uh

Speaker 4 um

Speaker 4 you you can

Speaker 4 you can edit some of this stuff. Yeah, yeah.
Because I don't know, maybe we gotta edit something regarding

Speaker 4 it's so much easier if you ask questions about the first line of poker, for example. You want me to address it? Yeah, than me talking about it in the way, but

Speaker 4 but yeah.

Speaker 2 So you're the co-founder of First Land of Poker. What is that company about? Yeah.

Speaker 4 Flop, which stands for First Land of Poker.

Speaker 4 We offer a digital solutions for land-based poker. So basically we have a um

Speaker 4 uh cloud-based web solution that automates the poker room's daily operations and optimizes their tasks from just opening tables, sitting players down, waiting lists,

Speaker 4 also loyalty point program.

Speaker 4 And we have for the players uh we have an application where they can see all the games that is running, they can take seats, join a waiting list, uh communicate with the poker room.

Speaker 4 We also have a new thing coming with this AI, that we have AI helping the players to

Speaker 4 connecting players together and guiding them to our partners, uh poker rooms to play so they can

Speaker 4 we we help them to create optimal games for the players. So

Speaker 4 it's about players player experience pretty much and um

Speaker 4 it's still a lot of poker rooms they're operating in a pretty old school way that if they don't use any digital solutions, uh it's a pretty

Speaker 4 time consusi time consuming process from the time you wanna you decide you wanna go to play poker until you get to play like

Speaker 2 yeah, some people are waiting for an hour sometimes, I heard.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so you gotta drive there and sometimes how do you find the games if there's a valve and if you don't live even close by, like some people drive one hour to play. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Then they're waiting and all these kind of things should be optimized.

Speaker 4 I mean, players' time is very valuable, and

Speaker 4 yeah, and it's,

Speaker 4 I've been very, very surprised at how,

Speaker 4 at least back in the days,

Speaker 4 how complicated it's been for the players. As a cash game player myself, like how much I wasted my time running and calling and you know

Speaker 4 then I'm on the waiting list and waiting and waiting. Like, there's so many bad experiences from a lot of players that they stop even playing, like

Speaker 4 that they drive one hour and then they don't have a seat, and then they're waiting three hours and couldn't get a seat and back home. And you wanna do it again tomorrow.

Speaker 4 And, like, like, it's not uh, it's not ideal, it's not every poker room that

Speaker 4 has lots of games that you have, you know,

Speaker 4 you can choose from, from and you always get to play and uh

Speaker 4 and uh it's just optimizing um

Speaker 4 optimizing all these kind of things for the from both sides, for the poker room, for them also to to give this kind of service for the players and

Speaker 4 and uh nice. And um

Speaker 4 yeah, well yeah, yeah, it's I mean it's the way the world is moving, it's it's it's coming. It's I would say this is one of the last industries that they're using using uh

Speaker 4 good digital solutions to improve their operation is poker rooms.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we'll include a link to the website below.

Speaker 2 We'll include a link to Flop in the description.

Speaker 4 Yeah, you can

Speaker 4 check from First Line of Poker, our website,

Speaker 4 especially if you have other Pokero managers or Poker Rooms, they can check our solutions.

Speaker 4 Perfect.

Speaker 2 Thanks for coming on, Patrick. That was awesome.

Speaker 4 Check them out, guys.

Speaker 2 I'll see you next time.

Speaker 2 I hope you guys are enjoying the show. Please don't forget to like and subscribe.
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