This Year’s World Series Of Poker Is Different

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Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions.

I'm Maria Kanakova.

And I'm Nate Silver.

Did we mix that up?

Usually we go the other way.

Oh, I don't know what I'm fucking talking about.

See, okay, I'm confused.

This is a perfect start to this segment.

Nate, welcome to Las Vegas.

And Maria, me, welcome to Las Vegas.

Beautiful.

Las Vegas, Nevada.

Is it beautiful, Las Vegas?

Fabulous.

Fabulous.

The strip is not beautiful.

It's impressive.

No, but

Las Vegas is actually gorgeous.

For people who haven't been here.

Just go off strip, go to Red Rock, go to the Spring Mountains.

Like there is some absolutely breathtaking beauty out here.

Anyway, so on the show today, Nate, during this 2025 World Series of poker, we're going to be all in on poker.

So you and I have just played our first event.

We're going to be talking about changes in the World Series, your ability to know your opponent, and then we're going to have a special guest on whom neither one of us has met.

And it's a poker newbie and we'll be offering some poker lessons yeah.

I've been here for 46 hours.

I've played

I think 22 hours of poker.

In those 46 hours I have you know you've already had something which is increasingly common in America Day.

There was a shooting on the Las Vegas strip the first night I got in which was terrifying.

to everybody involved.

So I feel for better or worse, very fully immersed in the Las Vegas experience already.

But yeah, the ostensible, well, yeah, the ostensible origin story of our meeting and the show is poker.

And so we're going to lean a little bit into poker.

I was also recently out at the Manifest Conference in Berkeley, California,

downloading with people on AI and effective altruism and other things.

Maybe we'll talk about that next week.

One thing I've been looking forward to this year is like, it's not an election year, so I can focus a lot more.

And I want to talk about some changes, or we want to talk about some changes to how

the World Series actually play.

I think this is a very fundamental change that players are downplaying that has profound effects for the strategy.

So should I explain or do you want to explain it?

No, go ahead and explain.

But first, can we just give a congratulations to us?

So Nate and I, well, Nate played one event while I still wasn't here, but yesterday I played my first event and Nate played his second.

We both cashed.

You know, we had a nice dinner and then went back to play.

And Nate, you ended up busting at the very end of the day, but you did cash.

You did make the money, which is great.

We're taping this on Tuesday.

I'm about to restart day two.

I apologize to all our listeners and our viewers.

I'm going to be caffeinating this entire time because I've gotten all of like four hours of sleep.

But I have really cute elephants on my

coffee cup.

I have a sugar-free red one.

So there's some.

I'm joining you.

Beautiful.

Okay, so cheers to the risky business poker caffeination.

But yeah, this year, so I arrived and my experience registering and getting to my table was completely different because there's kind of this new component of the World Series, which is all online and it actually gives you access to all the players.

So Nate, do you want to talk a little bit about this and what it actually means for, you know, how you approach your day one table, which has never been possible at the World Series before?

I just want to say it's always been possible at PokerStars.

I am a PokerStars ambassador, but the PokerStars Live app has been light years ahead.

However, at the World Series, this has just been introduced.

Yeah, the app is called WSLP Plus.

You can sign up now with bonus code risky business for 20.

No.

No, that's not true, but that would be funny.

So they have a new app.

The World Series poker brand was bought by GG Poker, which is an online poker provider.

You don't have to care about that detail.

What's interesting is that it's de-anonymized poker in a way that I think is kind of radical, right?

So you show up at your table.

You're on the app, by the way.

Make sure your phone is charged fully.

It's a big disadvantage to have your phone shut off, right?

You can play, but you lose info.

And you know the names of almost every player at the table.

There's a weird loophole where you're kind of allowed to be quasi-anonymous, which maybe we'll talk about, maybe not, which I think is like unfair.

But yeah, before you show up to date.

Wasn't there, I'm sorry, I just want to interject here with a bit of humor.

I think one of the first final tables, there was some, I don't remember what his name was, but it was something like Big Balls 69

made the final table.

It wasn't actually that, but like it was very, very close to that.

And everyone was like, hey, WSOP, what's going on?

And he ended up making it to like to the top three he almost won a bracelet

420 or something it's yeah like can you can you imagine like you know big ball 69 winning his first world series of poker bracelet anyway please continue for mostly it's real name for 80 or 90 of the players it'll say maria kanakova and i can google maria kanakova right um

or look up her hendin' mob that's basically the database if you're a baseball fan the baseball reference of poker where every cache you've ever had in a live tournament is contained there.

Your bio, you can infer age and things.

I mean, you can for age in real life, right?

So, but like, but all of a sudden, you start out with a lot of information about people.

And I find this quite radical, like I said, because from the start,

I'll speak for myself, right?

From the start, I'm thinking in terms of what are the flaws likely to be in this person's game as opposed to starting out from a default where you're like, okay, I'm playing some game theory optimal style relative to like the population.

You're like, okay,

I know this type, you know, let's take some prototypes, for example, right?

One prototype is a guy, most poker players in the World Series are men, right?

Who had a big cash in a World Series event a few years ago.

You look at his results and they've been mediocre since then, and that might give you certain prototypes, right?

You know, here's a guy who might be a little bit tilty potentially at the same time.

If you get deep in the tournament, it's not his first rodeo that might matter to some degree, right?

You know, there are some older players who can play a little bit and just kind of look like generic old guys, right?

If you just played against them, you might fold too much in the first couple of orbits.

Typically, older players are less inclined to bluff by stereotype at least, right?

They're like, oh, this guy has like $4 million in lifetime tournament winnings, and he's still cashing regularly and probably pretty good and things like that.

And so you're relying in some sense less on crude stereotypes and more on solid information.

It's also an experience where, I mean, both Maria, you and I are public figures by like the slander libel definition, right?

It removes some ambiguity and awkwardness about like, oh, do you know who I am or do I know who you are, right?

As a person who's like, slightly socially awkward.

I'm like, oh, I think that's, so for example,

the poker player Lexi Gavin, who is a terrific player, but I don't think I've met in person before, right?

Friends of friends.

She's like, oh, you're Nate.

I'm like, oh, you're Lexi.

Great to meet you, right?

It's nice to have that instead of being like, are you when you're in the middle of the poker hand?

Yeah.

So, so I think that, you know, there's a really interesting shift that happens when you actually know who somebody is.

So normally, like,

and this is what you're, I think, implying, Nate, when you're talking about kind of the

ability to

adjust to who's at the table.

So normally when you sit at the table, and this is always my advice when, you know, when people ask me, like, oh, you know, how do you play?

Like, well, the beautiful thing about like actually studying and knowing your GTO or game theory optimal way of playing is that you have a baseline, right?

You have kind of this baseline that you play, like your, your solid poker game.

And I always set, I always caution people, like, don't deviate based on too little information because it's too easy.

You know, if someone's someone's raising like the first 10 hands at the table you're like oh my god this person's a maniac well like maybe but maybe they've just been getting you know really good card distribution that happens or if someone has folded they might not be a knit like there might be other things going on and so I always say like don't over adjust immediately and make sure that you're adjusting based on solid data because it's so easy so Nate you actually bring up one of the you know one of those there are poker stereotypes and one of them is that you know the the nitty old guy who never who never bluffs.

And then, but those guys, by the way, if you're ever at a table with them, they're then capable of once they've been card dead and they get frustrated, they will go crazy with eight three off suit.

That's, I just picked a random hand.

That's not a good poker hand, but like they're also capable of doing that all of a sudden, like they'll blow up.

Anyway, so one of the stereotypes is like that, there's the older guy.

Then you also have like, I've made this mistake when you have like the really jacked dudes who look like they're on steroids, you know, the big necks tattoos.

I'm like, well, you're going to be super aggressive, right?

That's not always the case.

Like sometimes they're actually really tight players.

Like, you normally, what our brain does, like, from the psychology standpoint, is it stereotypes based on how people look.

Like, that's the first thing.

That's the first available information that we have.

People do it to me all the time because I'm a female, right?

Like, that's the most striking thing about me because, Nate, as you say, most players are male at the World Series in any given event.

It's under 10%

in most events, under five in some events.

You know, it's tiny percentages of females.

So, you know, that's that's something that really stands out about me.

What this does is it actually allows you to use real data and real information as opposed to cognitive biases and cognitive shortcuts, some of which can be meaningful, but most of which are just noise.

And yet, our brain doesn't process them as noise.

We're like, oh, you know, I've met this kind of person all the time.

Yeah, but you haven't met this person, right?

And they might just remind you of someone incorrectly.

And so, when you have the name, if you're not lazy, and by the way, a lot of people are lazy.

Oh, yeah, no, I will.

If you're not lazy and you shouldn't be lazy, if you're listening to this,

well, actually, excuse me, if you're playing at my table, please go ahead and keep being lazy.

If you're not at my table, don't be lazy.

Like take the five minutes that it takes to look up these people

because their lifetime earnings matter.

What, how they're doing recently.

So if you understand the psychology of this, you know, like, oh, did this person just have a huge score?

Right.

Like they're going to be playing very, very differently from someone who's made a lot of money, but their last big score was 10 years ago, right?

How has this person been playing this World Series?

Have they cached every event or have they had zero caches?

That, by the way, is information you can see in the app.

So there's so much valuable information that is actual data.

And then, Nate, as you were talking, then you can start adjusting, right?

Because I think that the World Series of poker is actually somewhere where exploitative poker is much more meaningful than just like being absolutely game theory optimal.

And what that means is that you want to start adjusting your strategy.

This is such good advice, by the way, for just life in general, right?

You should have a baseline way of behaving and acting and negotiating and making decisions.

But then when you get into situations where like you're at a table of fish, you're going to adjust.

Yeah, look, I actually kind of have become more critical of like a lot of poker content on the web, right?

Especially the more expensive content that you pay more for.

And I'm friends with some of the content creators.

It's geared toward this environment where it's elite elite players versus elite players.

It's very driven by solvers and game theory.

And I just don't think that's where you make the money in poker for 99.9% of the poker playing population, right?

I have played more

live cash games in the past two years, probably spent as much time doing that as tournaments, ranging from low stakes to pretty high stakes.

And in cash games, the game doesn't happen if you're in some GTO optimal world because no one one would play just to pass chips around and give the casino rake or the home game rake or whatever else.

So from the start, you're in like an exploitative environment where you're looking for people's backstories.

You're looking for physical reads, you're looking for game flow, meaning what's happened recently.

People can really overweight, right?

What happened in the last 15 minutes, right?

Whereas like, oh, well, Nate hasn't raised in an hour.

He's been well behaved, you know?

And I also think kind of as a person who's now 47 years old, like I think my comparative strengths are actually in soft skills in poker.

You might think that like Nate's

a math guy, right?

Well, all these people are math nerds, or not all of them, but many of them, right?

You know, I think that I, in a poker context, like read people pretty well.

I think I'm pretty good at like kind of like, how much should you update?

Okay, does a Brazilian play better than a guy from Boston or a guy from Israel or a guy from Japan or whatever else, right?

The stereotype's not worth nothing.

Let's be honest, right?

If you're trying to play poker, you can't, you have to like take any information you can, but it's worth not very much.

And how much are you adjusting to that?

How much are you typecasting people?

Yeah, it's so funny, Nate.

Yesterday, you know, when you say that people, so the recency bias is a really strong bias in psychology where people overweight recent information, right?

What just happened?

And in poker, that happens all the time where people just really overweight like the last 10 minutes, the last half hour, the last hour, and they'll think that you fall into a bucket.

And it was very funny because there was this one player at my table that, you know, I got into kind of several confrontations with and got the better of him in those confrontations,

took some of his chips.

And then, you know, I was kind of, I was well-behaved for the most part.

It's not like I was going crazy.

And then like three orbits later, like I raise and he is in the small blind and he kind of looks around because he's getting a massage.

So he's not necessarily like paying attention to everything.

And he's like, oh, there's a race.

He's like, oh, it's Maria again.

I was like, I haven't raised for three orbits.

Like literally, this is the first hand I've played in like three orbits means like three rounds of blinds.

Like I've just been completely, but in his mind, I'm a maniac, right?

Like, and it's Maria again.

And he just, like, his mind just didn't even.

process that I actually haven't been raising that many hands.

And because he's taking this kind of recent information against himself and just skewing completely the data set that he has, which prompts people to make big mistakes.

So this is something that, I mean, it happens to the best of us.

And it's very like, I actually always have to remind myself not to do that because it's easy, especially when it's against you, to start taking it personally, right?

If someone has only three bet three times, three bet means raising kind of your bet.

So if someone raises and someone else re-raises, that's called a three-bet.

And that's kind of an aggressive, it's a good thing to do.

But say there's a player who's only done it three times in an hour, but every single one of those times has been against you.

It's not.

It's tricky too because players' moods change a lot, right?

Some people play very differently when they're winning than when they're losing on when they have a big stack versus small stack, right?

Some people are playing attentively, and then you know, what do people do?

They play other tournaments.

They're online tournaments that you can play while you're playing, which I think is stupid for various reasons, right?

But like, all of a sudden, someone's playing online and they're.

I have to, I'm going to have to make a confession, Nate.

I sometimes do that.

I sometimes engage in that stupid stupid behavior.

Again, to me, I felt like I've had like a transport because like I was so distracted by the election at the last World Series, right?

That like, okay, I feel like I'm intaking like 50%

more information, right?

And it's just a totally different game.

You're doing it.

Also, I'm fresh off the, off the boat, so to speak, right?

I'm sure by two weeks from now, I'll be grizzled and the beard will be longer and things like that.

But like, I really think that like there is a reason that there are certain players who crush live tournaments and live cash game, which is there's so much fucking information, right?

Like, you know,

there is.

I know.

I'm becoming kind of like an anti-GTO guy, I think.

So I think that the moral of the story when it comes to kind of this new capability on the WSOP app is it's giving you real actionable data with which to make decisions and help make your decisions more tailored to this specific environment, which is really important, right?

Like there's a way of quote unquote making good decisions in a vacuum, but you're never making decisions in a vacuum.

And one of the things I always say is you're not making decisions in a vacuum.

So how do you use data to accurately evaluate the situation in which you find yourself?

And this is such a great tool for doing that.

So don't be lazy.

Actually use it and then adjust accordingly.

It really makes it clear.

You are going to play better if you do more work at the table.

It's less fun when you get there, you get switched tables, you're looking people up, right?

It's definitely more work, but like, I think it's a huge advantage for someone who is good at working with incomplete information and willing to treat poker seriously to try to maximize their expected value.

Yes.

And with that, let's take a quick break.

And then we will introduce our guest for today, who's a newbie poker player.

And we'll be giving him some tips for the World Series of Poker.

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We actually had a call out,

if you remember, listeners, a few weeks ago, where we were looking for an amateur poker player who was coming to the World Series and wanted some pointers from me and Nate.

And as we told you, it was the plus EV move to write in and say you wanted to do this.

And some people did.

And today

we have a person who...

you know, we have chosen or our producers have chosen to get some coaching advice for this World Series of poker, which is really exciting.

His name is Tim Sunstock.

So he's already spent one weekend at the WSOP this year, and he'll be returning in a couple of weeks.

So, Nate, let's see if we can help Tim improve on his performance.

Welcome, Tim.

Thanks for having me.

It's cool to meet you guys.

Tim, where are you from?

Do you want to give us a little bit about your background in poker life, et cetera?

Yeah.

So, I grew up in Southern California.

I kind of probably came into the poker boom during the 2003 Christmas Moneymaker thing.

I was playing a little bit as a kid, you know, but that was kind of like the spark.

There's a lot of Indian casinos around here.

So we were able to go play when we were 18.

And I did all right because I was a tight player when I was younger against just a whole bunch of crazy people.

So I did all right.

I thought I was probably a lot better than I was.

But I, you know, I played, we played house games and things over time.

The only tournament I ever really played that was a WSRP event was 2012.

I was out in Vegas around 4th of July.

And I played a daily deep stack, one of those little, you know, kind of catch-all kind of tournaments.

And I went pretty deep.

I actually had a pretty bad cooler to get out of the tournament, but I finished like in 50th.

And I was like, maybe I'm, maybe I'm better than I think.

Maybe I could do this.

But I never really played much after Hardley.

You know, just here and there.

But I feel like my time now, I have more time.

And I'm like, I kind of want to go.

And I'm okay in cash games.

That's the problem.

I do well in cash games.

I think it's probably the nature of like the way I play.

And I need to get a lot better.

But in tournaments, I just feel like a fish out of water.

So, you know, and the thing is, I really want to go play these WSAP events.

So that's kind of why I was reaching out.

I wanted to see if there's maybe a couple of pointers that you guys could give.

And I did read, I have read your book.

I just, you know, I think what sparked me into this whole thing is I read your book, Maria, and then I read Nate's new book and I started getting in the fever.

You know, there we go.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes, wait, mission accomplished.

I was like, oh, I got all to play.

So, so, Tim, you mentioned that you were kind of that you did decently well when you just started because you were a tighter player.

Do you feel like that's kind of still the case?

Are you someone who kind of errs on the side of being a tighter player in your cash games?

And also, I think this question is relevant for Nate, who plays cash.

I don't really play cash, so he'll be able to kind of read a little bit more into this.

But can you tell us also a little bit about the cash games that you're used to playing?

Like, do you play, you know, in a low-stakes home game?

Like, what's the environment that you'll be coming to the World Series from?

So those are two questions, but I think they're both important.

Yeah,

I think I've done a lot of cash games because I was ultra tight.

I think looking back now that I know a little bit more and I've been reading it ton lately.

I'm like, oh my God, I was playing so bad.

I was playing really tight.

You know, I was probably leaving a ton of money on the table.

But the games I come from, particularly are like 1.3, no limit, you know, cash games.

I've been told, it's funny, I had, I had some dealers one time tell me, like, you need to move up to the 2.5 game.

And I'm like, no, I don't.

I think I'm going to lose there.

You know, I played like twice at a 2.5 game.

And one time I

sat around for like four orbits before I entered and I played a really big hand.

I won a big pot and I jumped off and everybody was super mad.

Okay.

Yeah.

can't do that

um yeah so one three is where i've lived no i mean cash game if people are playing i mean in general for our listeners right you want to do the opposite of what most other people are doing i mean it's a kind of very rough guide right but like in cash games if everyone is too loose and they call too much right then you can make a lot of money by what we call nut peddling meaning only playing the best hands i think you can make much more money than that by like also taking advantage of the fact they have weaker ranges by doing some selective bluffing by doing some thinner value betting but but yeah tim you got to play 25 man what so what are you playing what are you playing out here are you are you you're still in california now or what's your world series schedule like how many events are you playing and which events are they so yeah it was funny because i had a whole plan then it got kind of blown out but i'm gonna go back in july i want to go back in july and play some stuff um we'll see i i was looking at like the deep stack tournaments like the um there's like a 600 deep stack and our 800 deep stack some of the other games don't really make sense for my schedule too much and maybe my skill level.

I don't know if I really want to jump in yet.

But

I was out recently.

I came early, played some cash games, did pretty well,

made enough money to cover everything.

Then I played the $600 deep stack and I just didn't play well, you know.

But

yeah, so, but ideally, what I would like to do is get some more time in, play some more, read a little bit more.

Now go back and read some more because I think I just completely glazed over so many concepts.

And then go back and I want to try to see if I can make make a deeper run in those deep stack tournaments.

Yeah.

Tim, I want to actually caution you a little bit that sometimes that name deep stack is actually a little bit of a misnomer.

It gets a lot of people to want to play, but those are really fast structures, right?

So most of those are half hour levels and it becomes a turbo very quickly.

So there are other tournaments that have a much slower structure that might be actually better suited to a cash player.

So I would actually like, as one of my pieces of advice, I would say potentially look at the schedule a second time to look not just at the name and how many chips.

I think a lot of players make the mistake of being like, I start with 400 big blinds.

That's amazing, right?

But within two hours, you're going to have 50 big blinds.

Whereas there's another tournament where you start with 200 and in two hours, you'll have you know, 120, right?

Like the blinds move in a very, very different structure.

And it's actually, it actually plays much deeper for much longer.

And I think that, and Nate, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think for cash players, one of your big advantages is kind of knowing how to be patient in those slower structure events, as opposed to kind of the more turbo structures, where I think tournament specialists really thrive because they know how to, how to actually keep building their stack.

You have to be aggressive in those tournaments.

Those are tournaments where being patient, being kind of a little bit tighter is not rewarded because of the way that the structure works.

Like you have to constantly be fighting against the rising blinds.

And so I think those are two considerations that you, that you should think about as you kind of consider what are my strengths.

Because one of the things I learned when I was starting is don't try to reinvent the wheel.

at the beginning for a tournament series, right?

So even if there are things you want to work on, like if you try to implement 20 new things into your game as you enter a new tournament, it's not going to go well because you haven't practiced, you're not comfortable with it and so i would say instead try to optimize on your strengths right figure out what am i best at as a poker player i'm a patient cash player right and so how what are the tournaments where that's going to be more of an asset yeah i think um it's funny because i feel pretty comfortable in the cash game and then i hopped into that tournament immediately i felt like the clock was like burning behind me i was just doing were like not typical of the way I would play.

And it was weird too, because

we started five-handed in that tournament for a while.

And that was different too.

So five-handed.

I was like, I need to push these people around right now, you know?

And I was just getting caught.

I was getting caught.

I was really, I was in hands where just, I just had bluffs, you know, and

I was getting in these spots like, what am I doing?

And I was so uncomfortable.

And I think that was the reason why.

So that's a good point.

I'm going to look back at the structures and see.

I'll take a little bit of a deeper dive into some better tournaments for sure.

Yeah, look, let me say a couple of things.

One is that like, if you're used to generally playing tighter relative to the players at the table, table, right?

Like I'm not super tight, but in these cash games, they're really splashy.

They're New York City cash games for the most part, right?

And so I'm like, I think playing correctly, but one of the tighter players.

And when you have a tighter range pre-flop, then it's just such an advantage if you know how to press it post-flop.

You can bet then for value.

You can make bluffs because they miss so many flops when you have a tighter range, right?

You can obviously try to extract money when you have very strong hands, the nuts in various ways.

But yeah, if you are one of the looser players at the table, then

that requires a lot of adjustments post-flop.

I'm usually not on that side, so I can't speak as much from experience.

But I want to say, like, one thing that Maria was hinting at, like, is like, so one thing I literally did before this World Series, and I haven't done it in the past, so maybe I will, but like, I made a list of like what I think my comparative strengths and weaknesses as a poker player are relative to the field, and then how that translates in a substantive way in terms of strategy, right?

But you're trying to think about like, what are my big overriding objectives here, right?

The kind of mantras that you repeat to yourself, because I find those can be quite powerful.

But Tim, what do you want to achieve?

So why are you playing, why are you coming back in July?

Why are you out here before?

Why are you playing the World Series?

I think I know I could go deep.

Maybe I'm a little too presumptuous, but I think I could go deep in the tournament, and it would just be fun to get there.

Because it's like, I feel like when I play cash games, and maybe this is part of my delusion, is that I feel like I'm like, okay, I'm better than these players pretty much all the time.

I play these, these, these lower limit cash games.

It's probably not a lot of difference between the type of player that are in these deep stack of events and these cash games.

But it's just to prove to myself, I could go a little deeper.

But I think I got into this situation where, like you're saying, I think your point is really good.

Because what I did was I read a bunch of poker books, some advanced strategy books, reading stuff on solvers.

And I just.

info dumped so hard into my head.

I was thinking about so many things.

And I've already been thinking, I just need to boil it down to like

just two strategies I'm going to look at.

Yeah.

And I was looking at just like fold equity calculators and that was really helpful for me because now I feel like I know exactly where I am in certain spots against certain ranges.

And that was something that I hadn't really even looked at before.

A lot of the solver stuff, I think it's going to take a minute for me to kind of

do all that.

But yeah, I feel like there's, I feel like the thing is that I feel like there's not so much that I need to do.

I don't need to jump these big leaps and understanding.

I just need to kind of get really, like Nate was saying, get really sharp at the things I know that I could do better at and then incorporate it there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I mean, I think that should be kind of your number one focus is to just like focus on a few things for the next few weeks before you come out here.

But one thing that you said kind of jumped out at me.

So one of the most important things is mental game, right?

And is trying to kind of remain present and be able to execute the strategy that you've already thought about and not melt down when it comes down to it.

And one of the things you said, you said kind of you felt like the clock was kind of burning,

right?

That was burning behind you.

And that's a really common feeling.

And I've experienced it too.

I think we all have.

And if you're feeling like you're kind of making decisions with like this ticking time bomb, right?

Like this red countdown behind you, you're not going to be thinking as clearly and you're going to be making poor choices.

And so what I would also say is, yes, you know, obviously like focus on a few things like strategy, like I'm going to be, you know, three betting more.

I'm going to be doing this.

I'm going to be doing that.

But also take some time to like think about the mental game execution and be like, okay, you know what?

I am just going to constantly like be focused on how many big lines I have relative to the table, how my table, my table only is playing and how I can kind of

be a good presence here.

And I'm not going to worry about the clock and the chip average and all of these external things that are going on I'm going to just kind of remain focused on what's going on here at my table and There's never a need to panic as soon as you start panicking That's when you start making mistakes and so I think just focusing on that and trying to make sure that you're not the player panicking but that you're taking advantage of the players panicking will go a long way so that you feel more comfortable I think one that you can do too is do some degree of picking your targets right the players that you're much better than in a 1-3 or 2-5 game, right?

Like they're going to be a lot of them at the table and they're usually pretty identifiable.

Maria and I were just talking about the WSOP app.

We can see their names now and like, you know, but if you're playing as someone who's a little trickier or less known, maybe someone from, you know, a different country, different environment and things like that, I mean, then you might want to be a little bit more careful.

I still think doing like, I still think doing your best Tim is going to be better than doing like

your C plus impression of solver play, unless you've taken more time to studying it, right?

And then if you are making a deep run, I mean, it's tough.

Poker is a tough game, right?

Probably some degree of tightening up is correct.

I mean, if I were you, I'd be like, trying to build a big stack.

Enter early, try to build a big, big stack, be yourself.

You can make some feel and read different plays if you want, and targeting weaker opponents, right?

To build a big stack, so you can maybe be a little bit more tight as you approach the money, which you're supposed to be anyway, right?

And maybe you'll even have here at the same table some reputation from having been more aggressive and made some plays later on.

And because later on in a tournament, you want fold equity, right?

You really want people not to get into coin flips with you when you're trying to make the money and run deep and stuff.

That may be my quick high-level diagnosis, I guess.

Yeah.

Yeah,

I think that the one thing that Nate said that I would just reiterate as like your mantra is be myself, right?

Be Tim, like play your game and don't let anyone else tell, like, don't let anyone else kind of shape how you think you're supposed to play.

I had a major breakthrough because I was always like, you know, when I started out, I was.

a little too tight and you know people were like you have to be super aggressive blah blah blah and I tried being like super aggressive and that's not me right and it didn't work for me and my bluffs didn't work either because it was just so counter to my style as a poker player to my personality and so something that works for for an ad Michael Adamo, for instance, someone or an Adrian Mateos, like two very aggressive players, isn't going to work for me, right?

Because that is just not me.

And so once I figured out, okay, I am much more aggressive now than I used to be, but I'm doing it in a way that feels natural to me, right?

And that actually works for me.

And I don't take the spots that, you know, that Adrian Mateos will take, you know, God bless him, let him take those spots.

Like, I'm not going to try to out Adrian Adrian.

And so that's, I think, something that's just so important to remember because you're going to become a better player.

The best players are ones who actually tap into what they're good at.

Yeah.

Do you guys try to stay away from rebuy tournaments or is that like a thing that's not too big of a deal for you guys?

No, I mean, I love freezeouts.

I think they're wonderful.

And if it's not a freeze out, I would love if it's a single re-entry.

I do not like unlimited re-entry tournaments, but I will play them if I think they're good value.

But this is something I don't know how Nate treats it, but so I always do a budget ahead of time.

So I have a big Excel spreadsheet of all the events I'm playing and I put what my maximum number of bullets for each event is.

And I never go above that no matter what, because I have gone above that in the past when I was just starting out and it's just never a good idea.

Right.

When I'm like, oh, I budgeted four, but it's such a good event.

So I'm just going to fire a fifth.

I always regret it.

Right.

Like that's just, it's never, it's never good.

Yeah.

I'm trying to register earlier this year, meaning playing, maybe not from the very start, but I like playing deep stack poker.

It sounds like you do Tim, Tutu, Tim, right?

And so like,

look, some of the theory says that like, oh, if you register late, you're more likely to cash and it's more plus CV or less negative EV.

I'm skeptical of that.

If you do have live deep stack cash skills, and also there's a big filtering effect, right?

You know, I've played a medium event, $2,500 and $800 so far, right?

And like, the tables you get when you sit down are fucking like a wet dream, pretty much, right?

And by the time you get to the

to to the bubble, then those tables get much tougher, right?

I mean, there are, there is some deadbunk of people who are just very, very bad at poker, who are almost for sure going to, um, going to punt off chips, right?

And so registering early, I'm not as concerned about rebuy versus non-rebuy.

People will call down looser if there's a rebuy available.

It's a game texture thing, but play some real poker, like register early from the first level if you want.

I like that you're playing shorthanded and pushing people around.

I think that's attitudinally doing it seriously, even if like, because the average tournament pro is fucking terrified of playing five-handed poker, right?

I would totally, I'd love to do that.

And if you overplayed some spots, okay, you'll, you'll counteradjust next time.

Yeah, I think that's great, Tim.

We both wish you so much luck.

We hope to be able to check in with you later this summer.

But yeah,

keep this in mind.

I hope this was helpful to you.

It's a pleasure to meet you, and we hope that you crush it at the World Series in July.

Come in, Tim.

We'll get a beer with you in July if we're still around.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yes.

So thank you for joining Risky Business and good luck.

May the poker gods be on your side.

I don't need them.

Thank you guys.

Take care.

Let's take a break and then talk a little bit about our conversation with Tim and kind of what our takeaways are in general for poker players and for ourselves.

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Big props to Tim for putting himself out there.

A lot of people don't want to put themselves in that spot.

And for me, you know, it's funny because I do remember because I was writing a book about it as I was learning how to play poker, I do remember kind of being in that in that mind frame and having all of these overwhelming stimuli.

And I think that it's really useful to actually remember what that feels like because something that I talk about where people are like, what the hell are you talking about?

I'm like, poker makes you a much more empathetic person.

And people are like, what, what?

Like poker is poker empathy?

I was like, no, because you need to learn how to actually take the perspective, really take the perspective of other people at the table.

And so I think it was really cool for me to actually hear Tim's thoughts because there are, and this is in no way, like, this is a good thing, like there are lots of Tims at the table who are, you know, who want to take a shot at the World Series, who do well in their local cash games, who get there.

They're thinking about it differently than you are, Nate, or than I am.

And that's just really good to keep in mind.

It's good to remember that there are all of these different, you know, all of these different mindsets.

And to me, it was really helpful to kind of put myself in Tim's shoes for a little bit and remind myself what it felt like the first time I was out in Las Vegas.

But Nate, I'm actually kind of curious because for me, it was much more recent, right?

Like, I definitely remember my first WSOP.

When was yours?

And do you actually remember kind of your, your memories of your first trip and your first World Series of poker tournament?

So when I played professionally, as my main source of income from like roughly 2004 to 2006, I played limit-hold'em.

I played high-stakes limit-hold'em cash games online, which in every dimension is opposite from live no-limit hold them tournaments, right?

And so, like, one thing that helped is my experience early on in the World Series, I think there was one trip I went that was kind of like there was a meetup for like the two plus two forums.

I wouldn't even play the no-limit events necessarily.

It took me a long time before I even like cashed anything.

And so, I think one thing that does help is like I can empathize with players who have like

some poker experience, but like are officially out of water at the World Series of poker and are not quite sure like what they want to accomplish from it.

Right.

So you're like relating to things in the back of your head about the way they put chips in the fire, the little things like, okay, so after every X number of levels, you have to get rid of the low denomination chips.

So blinds go up, so you get rid of the $100 chips and round them off to 500s, basically, right?

And like, boy, if somebody's really unfamiliar with that process, that tells you they probably zero times ever reached that stage of a live tournament before.

And you can, and having been, having not been a, you know, I was good at poker, I was not good at live tournament poker, right?

And probably a lot of people are like that, right?

There's some poker environment, maybe it's a home PLO game where it can be really loose, right?

Or maybe whatever.

where they can thrive and they're not thriving in this environment and understanding why they're not thriving and what mistakes they'll make and what vulnerabilities and exploits you can make against them, I think is valuable.

Yeah, I think that's that's really good advice.

And it's fun to think of Little Nate

at the World Series having not really played that much live before.

By the way, it's easy to tell, like it's easy to spot the online pros because often, like sometimes I've seen some of the best ones, like their first forays into the live tournament seen, they are much more expressive than they should be, right?

Especially streamers who are used to kind of conveying a lot of information.

I was like, ooh,

you're kind of a tell box.

Then

they can get used to it.

They get over it.

But it is funny to see that transition.

Nate, you have definitely transitioned to a live player.

Congratulations.

I remember my first Vegas non-World Series trip better, right?

I remember

having a lot of vodka Red Bulls playing

probably pretty high-stakes limit games at the Bellagio and staying up all night, right?

And like, yeah, yeah.

For PSA, for people listening, do not have vodka Red Bulls while you're playing poker tournament.

They're going to cancel out.

This is not going to be a terrible turn.

The ribbon will cancel out.

This is a negative EV thing to do.

I don't drink while I'm playing poker.

Some people like to.

And then there's something referred to as the beer level late in the night where people like to order beers.

I don't drink beer, but just try not to.

Nate, you and I had a glass of wine over dinner yesterday, and I often do that.

That can be nice, but

try to be present at the poker table and not with a vodka Red Bull.

You know when a good time to have a beer is?

Is when you're on this very long bubble.

So before,

when you're waiting forever for other tables to break, right, having a beer might make you a little more relaxed and patient.

People react different physiologically.

I believe it's not necessarily a bad time to have a beer for what it's worth.

That is good advice.

And on that note, Nate, I have to leave you to play day two.

You know, we're Tuesday, June 10th.

I'm about to hop into my first day two of the World Series, and I need to get my ass over there without Red Bull.

But I did have some caffeine while we were taping this episode, so hopefully, that will help.

And

yeah, best of luck to Tim, and best of luck to you and I, Nate, to the two of us.

Let's both do well today.

I hope everyone has enjoyed this episode, and I am going to head to the lovely Horseshoe Casino.

Let us know what you think of the show.

Reach out to us at riskybusiness at pushkin.fm.

And by the way, if you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber, we have some bonus content for you.

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Risky Business is hosted by me, Maria Kondakova, and by me, Nate Silver.

The show is a co-production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.

This episode was produced by Isabel Carter.

Our associate producer is Sonia Gerwit.

Sally Helm is our editor, and our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.

Mixing by Sarah Bruguer.

Thanks so much for tuning in.

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