YouSaid · the spoken record

Andy Beal

lines on the record: 50
first: 2020-03-09
most recent: 2020-03-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Books down great 1,000 to go. Now how long would it take me to read and analyze and make podcasts on that analysis of a thousand books? A lifetime. And that's That's what I want founders to be. I don't want it to be another thing I start and stop. I don't want to quit at this. I think what we're doing here is very important. And the more you study it, the more you realize every single other person we study have done the same thing. They learn from and are inspired by the life stories of people that came before them. So to that end, I do need your help to get to book 114. And the easiest way, this is a misfit episode, so you're already supporting the podcast financially, which good. The most important thing to do. But I just do want to ask you if you could just help spread the word as much as possible, email your friends about the podcast, text them links. If you're in, there's been people that are in all these entrepreneurial or investing groups, like Facebook groups or WhatsApp groups or Telegram groups. I'm not in any of that, so I don't know what they're talking about. But if you're in that, let the people know that...”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then here comes over two days, they have the largest game in history. And I'm just going to end here with the reflection by the author. He says, I had an opportunity to learn from some very wise gamblers. I would say founders exist. So you have the opportunity to learn some from very wise entrepreneurs. I can say two things for certain. First, it will be at least several decades before there is a higher stakes poker game than Andy Beale played against a collection like a rotine collection of pros on May 12th and May 13th, 2004. And second, I wouldn't bet you on it.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like a tournament before the tournament, right? Andy entered three satellites but did not win a seat. He's about to play for $15 million and now he's doing a thousand dollar buy-in. So sorry. He did not win. After that, he attended a Las Vegas business meeting from 2 o'clock to 3.15, and then he arrived back at the Bellagio, his $15 million was in the cage, and Todd Brunson was ready to play Okay, so”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so now we got to the point where the big game happens. I'm going to admit, I'm not going to tell you what happens, okay? But I do want to share this weird thing. And I'd love to know for myself. What a bizarre nonchalant way to start an important day. This is the day that Andy's like, this is it. This is the day I've been waiting for. I'm going to finally get to play the stakes as I want to play them. But how he starts his day, and like for me, I'd be like, focus. I wouldn't want to do anything. He doesn't do that. On Wednesday, May 12th, 2004 at 3.40 p.m., Andy Beale and Todd Brunson became the richest, began the richest poker game of all time, 3.40 in the afternoon, okay? How did Andy spend that day? He started it by wiring $15 million to the bellagio. Then he went and joined thousands of poker players who were trying to get a discount on that $10,000 buy-in for a poker main event by entering one thousand dollars single table satellites. It's like almost like a...”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And why am I bringing this up? So I felt that way. Conor McGregor felt that way. And where we are in the story, Andy Beale is feeling that way. He knew what to do. And he didn't do it. And that feedback, that feedback loop, he's like, oh, I'm disgusted with myself. Being disgusted with your actions, with your current state in life, with the decisions you're making is a very powerful tool to implement change. I don't even know if we're capable of implementing long-term change without that feeling. So I just want to bring that to your attention because I think it's something that we should keep in the front of our minds. Use the feedback that your inner monologue gives you to make changes, to adapt, to overcome whatever it is you're doing in your life. Did you know that you should not be doing?”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Consistent effort, do learning, do watching what he pays attention to. He talks about this over and over again. Then what happens? And he's 28 years old. In one year, he makes like $100 or $150 million. And then he starts getting arrested, starts partying, starts drinking, he's doing all the things the opposite of what got him in that position to begin with. This is fundamental to our nature. We have to understand that we are prone to make those same mistakes as well. So just recently, he decided, he's like, I'm not even the person I'm like, I don't like the person I become. I'm disgusted. And so he goes back to the basics. He just starts focusing on fighting, starts focusing on training, starts focusing on being a good person, staying out of trouble, doing all this other stuff. And then he gives this interview. And in it, he says, listen, when you know what you should do and you don't do it, it makes you sick. I felt that way. Andy B.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The insight that this person had is insane, where it shows him shows Conor McGregor in his early days when he quits his job and he was like a plumber's assistant or something like that. He's in Ireland. He has no money. Him and his girlfriend at the time are having to live with his mother. He's getting mail from like debt collectors and all kinds of stuff. And all he's talking about is like, I know I can do this. I'm dedicating all of my time and effort thinking about how to become a professional fighter. I know one day I'll be a champion. One day I'll have more money and I'll be able to set my mom up forever. My grandkids will be rich. And what's interesting is that shows him say this stuff when he had no reason at all to believe it. It's a fascinating documentary. It's only like an hour and a half. And you go from, you know, him telling you what he's going to do to seeing him do what he's going to do. And he does that through.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But without making such a stupid error. So I just saw this interview with the fighter Connor McGregor. And he's a very fascinating person. Even if you're not into watching fighting or any kind of sports at all. I'd watch the documentary. It's on Netflix. It's called Notorious. And you have Condor McGregor.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just mentioned, you know, we all veer off the path here, Andy veers off the path, and it costs him a lot of money. According to Todd, he won the group more than $13 million in two days. That's $13 million of Andy Beale's money. Affording the loss was no problem, but Andy Beale valued his money much more than he demonstrated at the end of the game. He would fly commercial to save $20,000 on a private jet that was a no-brainer. He would even fly coach to save $500. But he sat there with Todd, that's a professional poker player he's playing, not doing what he trained himself to do, not having fun, and gave away the last of the $10 million. He was disgusted with himself. He had done the very thing he knew led to his defeat in the spring. He allowed himself to be worn down by playing too much, then playing badly in that condition. He didn't know whether he wanted to get away from poker forever or try again.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Here's a note I left myself. It's a question. I don't know the answer to this, but I do want to know the answer. How can we simulate an environment like this for ourselves? Andy had played against the best poker players in the world for nearly 300 hours. It was impossible to stick around against this level of competition and not improve. So maybe a proxy for that is studying the lives of exceptional people, reading biographies. But I do think what the author said is true. It's impossible to stick around against this level of competition and not improve. You just learn too much.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So important because it's so human. If this is happening to Andy undoubtedly it's happening to us, I veer off the path all the time. I do dumb shit all the time. Stuff I know I should not be doing. Perfection's not the goal. But if we chase perfection, we'll eventually attain excellence. That's the goal. And so just understanding, it's not one, it's not like, oh, I solved this problem and I'm done. No, it's a constant battle over and over again to stop you from sabotaging yourself. Andy Beale is sabotaging himself. He's losing millions of dollars. It doesn't matter if he has a billion. Lose $15 million is going to hurt. It's going to make you feel uncomfortable. And I think, again, knowing we just talked about the value of studying extremes, understanding this happens at extremes, understand it's probably going to happen to us. Let's just be aware of that. And we'll work our way through it.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So this is the ridge between knowing and doing. His aggressive style and understanding of the fundamentals made him competitive. He felt his problem was that he was letting the prose get to him. With nothing else to do to play but play and no set times to finish or go home, he was staying too many days, playing too long, and losing his focus. Once he became fatigued, he was easy to read. He knew he was becoming careless in many little ways. So let me pause there. What do you mean? We already know this. That's why he hired, he asked somebody that works for him to come and make sure he doesn't do this. But they're between no one and doing. One of the things he mentioned to Craig before the last trip was for Craig to let him know if he was playing too many hours or getting sloppy. Craig did exactly that, but Andy ignored him. Just another half hour, or just a few more hands. He was learning the game, but he had not yet learned to manage himself.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Extremely attracted to unusual, exceptional people. I like learning from them. It's fun. I think it's a great way to spend your time. And so we happen to do this in the domain of, say, entrepreneurials for the most part, but people find it worthy poker players study. I think why do people watch professional sports? Because it's one thing to watch a basketball game at your local park, and it's another to see something in the NBA. You want to see things done at the highest level. I just think it's a very common human trait. Now, I just told you that what Andy was doing was smart. He's studying, he's coming back every time, but... Edge appears for a little bit and then is whittled away. And so this is, and sometimes it's whittled away through not because we don't know better,”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so this is right before the big game. I guess the early years of that world poker tournament, whatever it's called, you've probably seen it all over networks. At the beginning of the book, it didn't exist. And then once it starts covering coming on TV, there's like an explosion of popularity. So tons of more people start playing poker. You have their stories of people that enter a tournament $40 and wind up winning 2.5 million. So of course, when you hear stuff like that, just like anything else, humans are going to like flock in there. But they were also surprised at how big the ratings were. And it's not really surprising if you think about this sentence. He says the idea was spreading that poker players in general could be unusual, exceptional, attention worthy people. I bring that up because it's the same for the founders that you and I study.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Noticing when they change speeds, he was always dangerous with his aggressive style. But if he could continue to keep such tight control of himself and remain methodical, he had an excellent chance of winning.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So now Andy's back for another trip, he's done more research. Every time I go home, usually for a few weeks, but most times for a few months and really try to improve on what he's doing. So let me just read, I think my note might even be longer than the section I'm going to read to, but it says Andy gave out no information, but collected and learned from his competitors. So he's essentially engaging in asymmetric information warfare here, but collected and learned from his competitors. He was aggressive, but under control, under control this time, I should say, because he lacked control last time. Continuing my note says this would increase your chances to win at a lot of other things, not just poker. So here's what I talked about. Ted, one of the professional poker players. Ted agreed that Andy was outplaying them. Bele had made himself hard to read and was doing a good job.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Device is that serving where you're going, David, or not? Because if it's not, then you're lying to yourself. You're not interested in these are my inner monologue now. If you ever want to know what my inner monologue sounds like, if you've listened to the audiobook by David Goggins of Can't Hurt Me, it's very similar to that. And I'm not saying I recommend that for everybody. It might be unhealthy, but it's just the way I talk to myself. So anyways, now that I see that on my phone, I'm like, okay, you're either all in on this, you're serious about making sure that there's no slack in your life, making sure that you're getting to where you want to go, or you're lying to yourself. And that's fine. It's very common for you to lie to yourself, but that reminder serves as like a check, like a slap in the face. Stop lying to yourself. Either go all in or don't do it at all. And I just feel that kind of...”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have to keep yourself on that path. So, like, if you look at my lock screen on my phone right now, I have a quote. And it says, people need to, this is somebody that's independent artists that's talking about, you know, he struggled for many years, finally broke through. And he says, people need to prioritize. If you're not where you want to be in life, every second of your day and every ounce of your energy, you have should be going towards things that bring you closer to your desired position in life. That's exactly what's happening with Howard, right? And so at the end of the quote says, some people be bullshitting and then complain as if they're not the problem. So I put that on my phone just to remind myself that one, I haven't reached all my potential, right? And two, am I allowed distractions that do not serve my goal in life or what I want my life to be? And I figure if I just put it there because, you know, I probably open my phone, what, I don't know, 50 times a day, something like that. I'm going to see that reminder every time. What you're about to do on this.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Would Howard realize is like, I want to be the best poker player in the world, right? That's what he's trying to do. And I can't do that if I'm spending 10% of my time analyzing business deals, maybe I'm spending another 15% of my time, they call it staking poker players. What I would, like, the analogy that came to my mind when I was reading this is like angel investors. It's like founders investing in other founders. You know, it's very common. Poker players do that too. They'll say, okay, I'll give you whatever, $20,000 for 10% of whatever you win. And if you don't win, you know, they're not paying them back or whatever the case is. So you just realize this is ridiculous. I'm not going to get to where I want to be in my life, but with all these distractions. So let me get rid of my distractions. I also know that this is not something that normal people even think about or consider. I also know it's something that you have to constantly remind yourself.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, maybe it's just time to bet on me. So there's a lot of things going on there. One, he's betting on himself, but before he's able to bet on himself, I think we talk about this idea all the time. Humans scorn the abstract. We think that attention is just infinite. And it's the opposite. Like what we direct our attention to is probably the most valuable, our attention is probably the most valuable, single most valuable thing we possess. How you spend your time, what you're focused on is what you're going to improve. And yet we squander it, watching all.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This now quotes from Howard. I definitely had periods of doubt and didn't want to admit defeat. I had internal dialogues saying how much I'd regret I'd have to carry if I had to admit defeat. His skills and desire was so great that he had persevered. So I've had tons of my mind playing tricks on me. I think you have had two. We're seeing Howard's going through the same exact time. Definitely had periods of doubt and didn't want to admit defeat. So he's going back and forth. He's having some success. He's having some failures and he's like, you know what? I'm doubling in. He says he cut out all the other activities, especially backing other players and too good to be and then investing in too good to be true business deals. Since then, he had managed to keep his finances in order. At some point, you have to say...”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is where I'm going to find my advantage. Now, I want to go back, I want to tell you more about this idea of the emotional roller coaster, which is extremely common. And another theme that we learn over and over again through these books and these life experiences, that at some point you're not going to get the life you want unless at some point you've got to bet on yourself. Nobody is coming to save you. So this is a professional poker player, one of the most famous. His name's Howard Leader, I think. He's talking about both of these things. Most of the millions of new poker players and fans who saw Howard Leader as bulletproof would be surprised to know that he spent a significant amount of his time at the pinnacle of the poker world, just one wrong move from financial ruin.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Goal is on improvement, improvement of this very specific skill. So to do so, he's got to expose himself to the ideas and the interactions with the people that are very best at what he's trying to accomplish. I think that's extremely smart and extremely rare. And it's something I think about all the time in my life is like, am I taking it too easy on myself? Like comforts a false God. We talk about this all the time. Like maybe I should design an environment that's even tougher because it's the only way I'm going to reach my full potential. Anyways, back to the book. He says, why didn't Andy Beel insist on playing heads up as he had on the previous trip and he would on all future trips? Okay, so this is just one trip where he changes his mind and then through experience, he's like, oh, no, okay. My theory was sound. He just wanted to make sure he wasn't making a mistake by insisting on playing heads up. So that's the entire point of this trip. That he's testing one variable. He's like, all right, maybe I should be playing in a group like everybody else. The result is, no, no, I need to go back to heads up because”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the main things to understand about Andy is he understood the power of trial and error and that you derive knowledge through experience. There's a lot of knowledge that people can tell you, but some you just you're going to discover by accident or experience. So he's like, okay, well, maybe I made a miscalculation. Maybe I was playing heads up because I would limit their ability to cheat, but maybe I'm not good enough to play them one-on-one. So he goes back. He's like, okay, I'm going to try to play in a group and see if this changes anything. But there's one sentence that I think is extremely important that Andy understood instinctively. And that's the benefits of exposing yourself and competing against the very best in the world at what you want to do. So he says he specifically wanted to test himself and his developing theories against the best players. Now, why would he do that? Because he understood that's where you're going to learn the most. And his...”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Scared of risk, but not much skill. This is so they wind up taking him for, I think like $5 million in this trip, something like that. And so then they start talking about amongst themselves what happened. And they're describing Andy in this next sentence. He came, he saw, he was conquered. Okay, so a few weeks after he lost all the money, he decides I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna change my strategy. And this is why.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“overcoming that struggle and understanding that the way I'm feeling right now is just not unique. Okay, so I'm going to give you some highlights. There's a bunch of games that happen during During this brief time, this multi year time period before the big game. And in some cases, Andy does well. He adjusts. He learns. In some cases, he gets wrecked. And so it says he's playing this guy named Howard. He says, Howard made short work of Andy, winning a million dollars in less than three hours. Howard played even more aggressively than Andy. Remember Jennifer was talking about she was noticing Andy's aggressiveness was causing other players to back down, to not use one of their advantages. Howard didn't give in to that. He says, if it wasn't clear to Andy Beale before, it was certain, it certainly was clear by now. He was far, far behind poker professionals in every area that counted for this game. Bele had a lot of money and a lot of gamble. That's the compliment that professional poker players gave him, that he wasn't.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This part was interesting to me because what I'm about to read to you, I think applies to this well-known phenomenon about the entrepreneurial roller coaster, it's this emotional roller coaster. What I'm about to read to you applies for entrepreneurs or really anyone that is doing anything that is hard. You're going to have to navigate peaks and valleys. And that's just the reality of life. So says poker could be such a lonely occupation. And the low periods could be so devastating that seeing how players in your situation have succeeded could be an important sustaining force. So they're talking about the benefits of studying the history of your industry because inevitably what you're running into is not unique. It's not novel. It's unique and novel to you, but it's not unique and novel to human beings throughout history. So I do agree with that. I do think I derive strength from the struggle from hearing the stories of people struggling and then”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So again, this plays to Andy's advantage. Doesn't mean it's going to guarantee his win. He's just again increasing his edge a little by little. I says, this disappointed Andy a little because he knew that even the professionals at a certain level would feel the pressures of the stakes. Remember, that's his strategy. I'm going to increase the stakes. I'm going to bring them into deep water where they're uncomfortable. And joining forces would minimize their exposure. But his main objective was to play heads up and he was getting his wish.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why he thinks that's advantageous to him is also because of the nature of his opponent, which is very smart I mean, I'm gonna say this over and over again. The dude's freaking brilliant, but it's very smart for him to pick up on that and use that to his advantage. It just gives you the idea of the brilliance of his mind and his strategic ability. All right, so now we're going to get in a little bit about the negotiations between Brunson and Beale. Brunson explained the situation of Beale. He contacted everyone he thought might be a threat to get into the game. And though Beale would only play one opponent, the opponent would be playing his or her own money plus the money of the other.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In all these other people, but it will be one on one. Now, that means somebody, he's essentially saying, I'm going to play a team of professional poker players, but poker players are not used to playing on the teams. They're lone wolfs. So this is also important to understand Andy's strategy. So there is one person that's like the godfather. That's the I don't know too much about the poker industry, but from reading the book, it sounds like, you know, he's one of the OGs. His name's Doyle Brunson. He's the one that Andy Every time he makes a trip to Vegas he's the one that Andy contacts and Doro Brunson is kind of responsible for herding cats, right? He's got to try to match these people. He's got to, you know, there might be 15 players, 10 players on the team, depending on who's in town, who's not playing in a tournament, who actually has the bank role. So that's the background you have to understand. I think it's important to understand Andy's strategy of heads up.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Only advantage in being able to beat them. Okay, so now a little bit more about the personality, like what kind of person becomes a professional poker player. It says professional poker players with the ultimate independent businessmen. They had no bosses, no employees, and no set hours. It would be an understatement to say that poker players are difficult to manage. I'm telling you this for a reason. I'll get there in one sec. I could just keep everything I'm saying in your mind, okay? Most chose poker because they didn't want to be the subject to anyone else's rules. Every one of them was idiosyncratic about making financial and scheduling commitments. They all had phenomenal capacities for strategic thought, and they generally had few opportunities to exchange opinions and rarely had to give in to someone else's authority. So this is also, if you're thinking about, we just talked about his strategy. I'm not going to play, I'm not going to sit down a table with five professional poker players and try to beat them all at once. I'm going to play heads up. You can rotate.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He plays professional poker players. They've been playing for four or five decades. So he's like, I've got to figure out a way to find my edge, something that appears over and over again in these biographies. They know what they're strong at. They know what they're weak at, and they make sure they play the games and engage in the businesses that will lead them to the highest probability that their unique skill set that they possess will reach the success they want to accomplish, which I think is something that everybody has to internalize and think about. Now, on the very next page, there's a lot of people in this book mentioned in this book that are also past episodes of Founders. So I'll leave.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Won over $100,000 in a game filled with the world's top money players. He was flabbergasted. Maybe I'm actually a good poker player, he thought. Okay, so at this time Andy, he's gonna stumble on the strategy. I guess he's more intentional. He eventually says, I'm not gonna play like a group of players like he was here. And he did this to isolate the probability that, or to decrease the probability that they were cheating. So eventually he wants, he says, no, I'm going to play you heads up. Now he'll play a collection of pro players, but he plays them one at a time. And they have like a rotating team, which is even crazier because he just keeps playing and they can put in fresh people. So I want to tell you a little bit more about his reasoning. He says he was more concerned about being cheated. Everything about them, meeting the players and the game seemed above board, but you really can never know, right? But they were all intimately familiar with both one another and all the angles while he was the only outsider in their game. So you understood. I'm not going to accumulate more experience in a short amount of time than they have for 20 or 30 years. In some cases.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he's going to continue, the author is going to continue explaining what's happening here. And this gives you an idea of the level of self-confidence that Andy has. He says, if Andy Beale was intimidated by the quality of his opposition, he did not show it. In fact, he insisted on raising the stakes. Now there's just one poker player who's playing against him. Her name's Jennifer. Says Jennifer had never played this high and noticed everyone was playing tighter than usual, saving bets and abandoning the aggressiveness that was the hallmark of the highest stakes professional. So Andy's supreme level of default aggressiveness is even throwing off the pros at their own game. He's doing this intentionally. Remember, this is also an insight that he, I don't know if he, I would say he stumbled into this by accident. So since Andy Beale's backing down the best players in the world by raising the limits she thought, this is unbelievable.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But they have this opinion at the beginning. I'll tell you right now, they do not hold that opinion later on. And so he says, by the second day, so now he's playing. He says, by the second day, Andy Beale was facing a lineup of the best big money poker players in the world.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he has this idea. And he said, I want to play higher, Andy told Todd. Okay, Todd said, I'll play you higher. No, no, no, not this time. I want to come back and play a lot higher, like $10,000 to $20,000. Todd didn't think he was serious at the time they're playing a 400, 800 game. This 400, 800 game was not particularly large by Todd Standards, but this guy wanted to play for 25 times as much. Todd thought this guy must be full of shit. It is so rare that a completely new player would play for such high stakes. However, the pros would play whatever game he wanted. So that's how they not giving away too much, but that's their opinion at the beginning. He's going to get on some runs on them. So there's a back and forth. It's not a domination by either side, which is also surprising and also speaks to the intelligence and creativity of Andy Beale and why we should spend time studying him.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My name is Claude Shannon said about Henry Singleton. Let me see if I can find the quote without wasting too much of your time. Okay, I found the quote. This is Claude Shannon on Henry Singleton. Says he always tries to work out the best moves, and maybe he doesn't like to talk too much because when you're playing a game, you don't tell anyone else what your strategy is. So we're seeing similarities between the way that Henry Singleton would conduct his business affairs and the way that Andy Beale does as well. Okay, so I'm going to fast forward to there's a series of games that have to happen over several year period before the highest stake poker game of all time takes place. And so I'm going to give you a little bit of background and draw some interesting parts from these games. And so at this point, Andy.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A person after my own heart here. He had spent nearly 25 years in real estate and banking and became one of the great entrepreneurial success stories of the last quarter of the 20th century. Nevertheless, he was virtually unknown, which suited him just fine. So let me give you a little bit more detail about that. And then I left myself on this page is something I think about all the time, that bad boys move in silence. Andy was intensely private. building his real estate fortune, banking business, and other interests without accessing public capital markets, making no more than the required minimum public financial disclosures, and without courting the press and drawing attention to himself. I love traits like that. I feel the same way. But it also, when I came across that section, it reminded me of what Claude Shannon. Let me pull it up so I don't butcher this.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He played aggressively by instinct. Andrew Beale's physical characteristics was a steady in contrast. He was tall and broad with a large head, balanced on a wide shoulder. He's one of my big-headed brethren. This is great to know. He was also quiet and soft-spoken, preferring listening to talking. But once he developed an opinion and chose to express it, this quiet reserve vanished. He would bludgeon opponents into submission with the force of his reasoning are just as easily probe someone with superiority.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so let's back up. I need to give you an intro into Andy Beale. I find this person, he's one of the most fast, I mean, it's hard to even say that on given all the failures that we've studied, but he's one of the most fascinating people I've come across. All right, so it says more than 20 years earlier when he was just out of college and starting his real estate business, he would travel to Las Vegas to play Blackjack. He counted cards treating the trips like missions, and won as much as $50,000 in a weekend. He had even gotten barred from some casinos. Winning like that was exhilarating, but he was a different person then, though he did not spend lavishly on most things he had long passed the time when making fifty thousand dollars was worth the effort a professional card counter would have to expend to win that much.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And his bankroll was taking a beating. After twenty minutes, Ted was down to his last hundred thousand dollars, so twenty minutes ago, Ted sat down at the table with half a million. So he's down in 20 minutes, he's down $400,000. And that gives you an idea of, you need to know that because this is integral into understanding Andy's strategy. He's obviously extremely, extremely wealthy at this time. He's a billionaire. His bank at this time is making a couple hundred million dollars a year in profit, to give you an idea of what we're talking about here. So he's not going to be interested in just winning $20,000 or whatever case is. He wants these wide swings.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“5,000 and $10,000. Just know the book is going to reference this. So you can play at Poker Game with 15-30, $10,000-20. Andy wants to push this up those two numbers as high as possible. So, and usually the poker players are trying to bring him on the other end of the spectrum. So he'll push that number, I think, as high as like 100,000, 200,000 or 50,000 to 100,000. But this is the description. So in a 10,000 to 20,000 Texas totem game, the blinds are 5,000 and 10,000. With three players, it was costing Ted a minimum of $15,000 every three hands just to sit at the table. Okay, so he's going to, these are already extremely high stakes, and Andy's going to keep pushing him higher. Beale was very aggressive. That's another trait of his that I'm going to repeat over and over again. Playing nearly every hand, raising most of the time. It was costing Ted $20,000 per hand to see the flop.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so now, oh, I do need to give you a note on the numbers that are in this book that I'm sure they're going to reference. It's also as important to understand the strategy, because at the beginning of the book, it talks about he was deliberate in bucking the trend and approaching it differently. He knew, hey, these people have been, they're professional poker players, they've been doing this whole life, much longer than me. There's no way I'm going to beat them. Just copying them. So I have to come in at a different, I have to find a different edge. And so one way he does that is he plays at extremely high amounts and he does that intentionally to make the other, his competition uncomfortable. And so this is just a note on the numbers in the book. In this case, this is the very first game that Andy plays. He's playing verse two other professional poker players almost by accident. One of them is this guy named Ted, but here's the numbers. It says in 10,000-20,000 Texas Holdem. So it says the blinds are...”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most of the high stakes poker players through their years of success have deliberately kept themselves undercapitalized. This is really surprising to me because they have been aggressive about trying to shelter as much money from poker as possible. See, they're misfits. They have an addiction. So to overcome that addiction, they have to put their money in illiquid or less liquid assets than a poker game, which they could easily, and in some of the numbers in this case, the stakes got so high they could wipe out their entire net worth in a few hours. So they're aggressive about trying to shelter as much money from poker as possible. They buy property, they start businesses, and they invest in the stock market.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“36 hours. I could not put it down. So just keep in mind, I'm going to give you some ideas that even if you don't read the book, it's still going to be valuable to your life. But I'm going to omit, obviously, the outcome of a lot of these games. Okay, so it says this was interesting to me. I never thought about poker as a capital intensive business and then how professional poker players avoid going over the edge. So it says poker is the most capital intensive business in the world. Like banking or securities trading, the commodity is money. But while technology and innovations like margins and interbaked lending have supplanted the need for physical cash in the financial world, monetary transactions in the poker world have a medieval flare.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Athletes, anybody that's trending in something that's difficult and trying to succeed in a complex adaptive system. So to this point, I want to start with drawing your attention the fact that poker players are very much misfits, just like entrepreneurs, investors, and anybody else trying to do something unique. And so here's a poker player, a professional poker player describing the characteristics and traits that he possesses and that he feels a lot of his fellow poker players possess as well. Since most of us, maybe all of us have a little sickness in us. The people that end up in the biggest games are the ones that have a little too much gamble in them, but they've managed to figure out how to use it to their advantage.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As I learned more about his improbable career and unique approach to financial intellectual issues, I wondered why Kant a wealthy, smart, determined person figure out a way to compete on even footing with top professional poker players. Most important, I learned what a capricious game poker can be and what a difficult profession it can be even for its expert practitioners. In fact, when I started, I thought the central question of this book would be why Beel would attempt something so apparently foolhardy, taking on the best in the world at their game. But by the end of the story, the more pertinent question is why the professionals continued to take up his challenge. By the time the stakes reach their peak, the pros were potentially risking everything on an edge they realized was virtually non existent.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“His approach to poker and to risk itself is unique. By ignoring and even contradicting conventional wisdom, he became extremely wealthy. His hobbies made him an important and credible figure in science and mathematics areas in which he had no formal education.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I also had the privilege of witnessing the problem-solving skills of the Texas banker, Andy Bele. Bele, one of the great entrepreneurial minds of the information age, had accumulated great wealth, yet managed to remain almost completely anonymous. In fact, the Bellagio allowed him to register under the name anonymous. From the time he was an eleven year old buying broken televisions for a dollar and fixing and reselling them for thirty or forty dollars, to purchasing hundreds of millions of dollars of bonds in California utilities and airlines when most investors were writing off those businesses, he has never been afraid to venture into new areas, teach himself the rules, challenge the experts and prevailing wisdom, and measure the results.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The banker's place in the game didn't make sense at all. But he's a billionaire, another player told me when I tried writing this off as urban legend. Even if the banker could throw around that kind of money, why would he? That curiosity started me on the road to the richest poker game of all time and took me inside the world of high stakes poker. For most of a year I learned about the unusual and impressive skills that separate the best players from the rest of the field. The enormity of their successes and failures and their shortcomings, which almost always stem from their strengths.”
2020-03-09 · Founders · #114 The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source