YouSaid · the spoken record

Daniel Negreanu

lines on the record: 220
first: 2022-09-27
most recent: 2022-09-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, so early on, you know, as basically as a teenager, I was playing Toronto, and then in my early 20s, I'm like, I'm going to Vegas, right? And I thought I was the best. I'm 21 years old. I'm like, check me out, right?”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The perfect shot for them is it goes in, but they try and make the mistakes smaller and smaller and smaller. Poker is the same. We all make mistakes consistently. The goal is to minimize, especially the big ones.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think the most difficult thing for people is self awareness, right? And resilience. Self awareness to know, okay, so again, am I not doing as well as I could be because of luck? Or is there things that I can learn? And I always look to mistakes as opportunities. I really do. When I make a mistake in a poker hand, right, call it a breakdown or whatever, that's where breakthroughs happen. I'm like, oh, you know what I could have done here? I could have done this, and that would have been really good. And I'm going to do that going forward. So I think like with anything, you know, when you start out playing golf, like your goal is to just hit the ball, right? Then you try to hit it in the air. Then you're trying to hit it straight. Then you're trying to hit it on the green. Then you're trying to hit it closer to the green to the point where the pros get where they're so finite. They're trying to hit it 63 yards and spin it back three yards. It's imperfect. Like they don't hit the perfect shot.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, yeah. Well, when you think of the World Series of Poker, so as you said, I lost about 1 million, right? In one tournament, that was 500,000. So then, you know, like a few others here of high buying tournaments. So the sample or the amount was 40, 50 total tournaments with high variance. And if you don't run well or do well in the highest buy-ins, you're going to have a losing summer.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, for the most part, you know, what I'm trying to do is like, if I formulate a strategy for the whole seven weeks, because there's a varying degree of buy-ins too. Like you have small ones, like 1,500, then you got like $250,000 buy-in. So I map out the seven weeks and write, I'll give a little bit of mental energy to the $1,500, which means I'll be on my phone. I don't care as much about this one. But the $250K fully engaged, fully focused, you know, up against obviously the higher the buy-in, you know, super top competition. And as far as strategy goes, focusing on each day, playing the best I can, not the result. Because if you focus on the result, you're focusing the wrong place. Your focus should be on the decisions you actually make, right? And if you're making good decisions consistently, you have to continue to do that. The frustrating part is this with poker, unlike chess or other things, making the best possible decision doesn't mean you win.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Made what's considered like a pretty standard play in modern poker, where a guy raised and he was just trying to pick up what was there. And he ran into a hand in the big blind and he got lucky.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so it was a, you know, the player on the button raised. David Peters, very aggressive player. He went all in from the blind, and I had a pair of pocket tens. So I went with my tens, and he had Queen Ten of Spades. So I was good. I have way the best hand. And the flop was like king 93, one spade. Was like the eight of spades. So now he has a flush The river was another spade. So he caught spade, spade, and he made a flush.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's super, for lack of a better word, offended by everything. And he was equating my throwing a stick on the ground to violence against women, domestic abuse, and the idea that makes women feel unsafe to play poker. And so that was kind of a running joke for the last two weeks where every time I sat at a table, the guys would be like, oh, I feel unsafe. I feel unsafe.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know, I mean, it's like if you never watch sports, have you never seen a guy on the golf course smack his club or throw their helmet? Like, you know, there was a guy Justin Bonimo, who's a poker player”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You should never really think like this, but part of me felt like I deserved to win this So part of me was like, listen, I've lost so many in the last two weeks. All right, let the poker gods be kind to me right now. Let me win this. And it looked good. I was in a great situation on the flop. Great situation on the turn. I'm about to be a competitor. I'm going to be a contender in this tournament to win a big prize pool and turn the whole thing around. It's all there for the taking. And then, boom, the last card, it just, you know, it was a couple weeks of frustration in the moment of filming that I just had, you know, sort of a visceral reaction. And I smacked the selfie stick. And then I see a corner, it's safe. I threw the selfie stick on the ground. And of course. Social media blows up about how it was a violent act”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A certain degree. Obviously, you know, the more the more it happens in the higher buy-ins, like the one where I broke the selfie stick, I lost 500,000 in that tournament And it was like the last card. It was painful”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was making good decisions. I genuinely felt like I'm playing really, really well. But every time my money went in and my opponent's money went in and say I was 60%, 70%, 80% for about a two-week stretch, I lost every one of those. And you start to wonder, like, I can't win if I never win in these spots. It was difficult. Luckily, I have 20 odd years of experience on how to deal with it. And so, as I said, I wake up the next day, ready to go.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So here's the thing I do, like you said, I do a YouTube vlog every day. So I kind of share my thoughts. And listen, I can edit that thing and. Keep out the bad stuff, but I think it's more authentic and genuine to show people the actual struggles and the pain that I go through, you know, without it. And I'd say the one thing I'm most proud of throughout the entire thing is the resilience because there are moments, you see me where I'm broken. I'm just like, I can't take it. I broke a selfie stick this year. Like I was filming it because, you know, I do for my vlog. I smash the stick, threw it in the corner, right? Just that was my hit rock bottom moment. And then I put the camera on me and I was like, all right, I let people see it. But mentally it was very difficult because There was a feeling of hopelessness where”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But yeah, like I feel, listen, a rich guy who wants to sit down with a million bucks and get drunk and lose it. I have no empathy for that. I'm like, I don't have any moral qualms with that.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, yeah, that's a good question because part of the reason I played poker and wanted to become professional was like, I want to make my mother proud, right? And I don't think she would be proud of me taking like Grandma Betty's last $5, you know, and down the street, you know, sending her broke and taking her pension check. So I play at the highest stakes against people who can afford it. They know who I am. I'm not a hustler. I'm not pretending I'm bad at poker to squeeze in. Like I was thinking about this just yesterday because I played in a game that If I played that sort of role where a lot of guys do pros that sort of play down their skill level, pretend they're just one of the guys, these guys can make 20, 30 million dollars in a year legitimately. If I did that, if I said, you know what, I'm going to go down that path, get into these games in LA, you know, and travel and do all this kind of stuff, I can make 20 million a year, but it feels a little greasy, right? I don't like to kiss anyone's ass. I don't like to ask it for anyone for a favor or things like that.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Considering what I know about the private games and the types of players who play in these private games and the stakes that they play, I absolutely believe Dan has made, I don't know how many millions, but whether it's 50 or whatever. But it wouldn't surprise me that if you play in these games within a year or you find the right businessman who has way too much Bitcoin money and in one night you take him for 20 million, I absolutely could see it. I don't see any reason why, listen, where he got his money initially, you know, that's up to. Interpretation from his father or whatever, but has he made a bunch of money playing poker? Absolutely no question.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the other things that I think is interesting about poker too is good is relative, right So you could be the seventh best player in the whole world, like literally seventh best player. But if you're playing with the other six, you're the sucker. You are the worst player in the game, right? So there's a lot of players. For example, like the Dan Blazarians of the world, right? He's not a top level player, like these guys you see on TV, but he probably makes more money than they do because he plays with people that are far below his skill levels. So part of the skill of being a poker player is finding situations where you're profitable, regardless of your skill level.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, like beginner's luck can be detrimental. If you have some early luck and you believe that this is just the way it's supposed to be forever, it can put you in a delusional state where you feel like I'm just great, but no, you're not. You were just lucky in the beginning.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The rat went, you know, the mouse went to get zapped, he got zapped, came back, he kept going back to get zapped until he died. Like, he kept going because he found cheese there. He has one there. So he continued to go chase that win despite it being now all of a sudden not worthwhile till they died. And essentially what they said was that is essentially how they compared it to like, you know, the gambling brain and how people think about gambling”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think they did a study. I remember there was like a study that was supposed to be related to gambling, but it was mice, and they put them in a little maze, and they go down these three tubes, and they go down this one tube, and there'd be cheese, right? And then they go down again, cheese. Three times in a row, there was cheese there, right? The next time there was an electric shock there, not cheese.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. Yeah, one of the hardest things, especially about playing, because cash games and tournaments are different. One of the most difficult things about being a tournament player is resilience because more often than not, like so if there's a tournament with thousand people, to win the tournament, you have to get all of the chips. That means there's one winner and 999 losers. So it's very rare that you actually win all the chips. So you're essentially at some point in every tournament you play going to deal with really bad luck and disappointment. And sometimes those streaks can have you question yourself and be introspective about, okay, so I think I'm 47 now. I think I've gotten better as time went on between distinguishing, okay, am I losing right now because of bad luck or is it fundamentally decisions I'm making are not very good, right? And that's one of the hardest things for anyone who plays poker to get to, right? Why am I losing? Am I losing because of my opponents being better? I'm not playing well or am I losing just because of luck? And because there's so much variance in poker, a lot of players can be confused with.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But so here's the thing it's you know, poker players, some have said it's unlucky to be superstitious. We're all a little bit superstitious, a little bit, you know, and so I don't know, maybe it is a case where when I have 10.7, I feel somehow energetically that I'm more likely to catch something, which may actually make me more apt to be aggressive and confident in the hand, but you really shouldn't let yourself do that. Like you're not supposed to fall in love with any specific hands.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's just sort of, but it's not like I'm going to look at 10.7 and go, oh, wow, you know, I'm going to call an all in or anything like that. I'll play it in situations where it makes sense, but it's rare because it's not a very good hand.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so it's one of those viewer discretion is advised like 10-7. I've just noticed throughout my life, you know, it's a tendency thing that I've been lucky with it.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. So that's the question of essentially if you're not looking at your hand pre flop, you're basically giving up a fundamental advantage, right? Where you're going to be playing way suboptimally in terms of your hand selection, right? Because if you don't look at your hand, you might have a two and a three. That's not good. But now you're playing it. So you've invested whatever, two, three thousand bucks with absolute garbage. And it's very difficult to climb that hill, right? So it's much better to actually look at your cards and go, okay, I'll throw away the two and three and I'll play the ace king.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It depends on who I'm playing with, right? So if I was playing in a tournament with mediocre or weak players, I think I could probably do pretty well”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't have a mediocre hand, like just a pair of nines or a pair of tens. I have a royal flush or have nine high. So with my bet sizing, I can control how my opponent is perceiving what my range is going to be. So for example, similarly, if I bet small, right, well, that could be a lot of hands, right? That could represent a big part of my range.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, so that makes it so, yeah. So that's true. For example, one of the most extreme examples is we have spots where there's a bit that's considered polarizing, right? So let's say there's a thousand in the pot and you bet 10,000, which is crazy big, right? That's saying one of two things. I either have the absolute best possible hand or absolutely nothing. Because any of the hands in the middle, I wouldn't do that with. So I'm essentially telling you when I bet that I'm like, I either got it or, you know, I got.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your opponent can think about your hands in certain spots. I don't really think it equates that way. I think what people do when they're playing a hand is they think in terms of, all right, what does my range look like here? So my range has value. So you look at the actual hand you have secondarily. So you say, okay, well, I could have this. I could have this. I actually have this, right? But I could have all these hands. So my opponent, if he's thinking on a high level, he knows I could have all these hands. And I have this one. So what do I do with this one? right in the bigger scope of things.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ultimately, in terms of controlling people's perception of you, you can't fully control it, but you can do things to sway it. As I said earlier, showing bluffs and things like that leads your opponent to think maybe you do this more often than you're supposed to or whatever the case may be. But in terms of like controlling, you know,”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's what's great about him. He's certainly never accused of not having the guts to put it in. And that's scary to play against, right? The easiest opponent to play against is one who's just straightforward, passive, you know, not wild and crazy. Playing against him, he's going to put you in the blender, as we say.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it was, it came down to this, it's as simple as this. He was cognizant of his image as being a wild aggressive bluffer, right? And he was fully taking advantage of me, knowing that my tendency in these spots is to be curious. And I want to call and I want to see it. So he was fully taking advantage of the fact that he thought I would call too often. Because otherwise his play makes no sense. A small bet, a medium-sized bet, those make sense. But the bet that he made, in theory, is indefensible. It's just like, Clearly, a mistake. But that's why poker is so fascinating because he makes this play, and it wasn't a mistake. It was above the rim. What it”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He thinks for a while and he bets all of it, which is three times the pot. He bets 225,000. There's only 75,000 out there, right? And in theory, he should never ever have a hand that can do that, right? So it confused me, and I was like, okay, well, this guy's aggressive. He likes to blow off and all this kind of stuff. So I made the call with the Ace King. And he turned over 6'8. So he had a straight. But here's the thing. In theory, that river cart is bad for him. When I call the turn, I have a lot of the time three of a kind, two pair that just made a full house. So he was risking that. And the reason he did it was because he thought I would perceive him to be bluffing a lot. So he just went for it and it worked. He was able to double up right away and knock me out of the tournament like an hour in.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He could have a straight, he could have three, three of a kind, he could have aces up, he could have a whole bunch of hands. So he check raises and be big to 36,000. I call the bet. So now there's something like 75,000. The river is a five. So the board pairs, okay?”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'll explain the hand here. So I'm on the button, and I have Ace King, which is a very good hand. And I raise, and he calls from the big blind. The flop is 975. So I have nothing really here. He checks. I check behind. The turn card's an ace. He checks. I bet half the pot. There were 6,000 in there. I bet 3,000. Now, this is not a typical thing you see people do, but he raised me to 36,000. Massive raise. bigger than the size of the pot.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He wants it all. So he says, you know what? I'll give up the 2000 that's guaranteed, and I'll bet 50,000. And maybe if you call that, now, you know, so listen, you lose the $2,000, seven, eight times, but if I get called for the 50 just once, you know, I'm profiting from that. And it also sets the template for you to really sort of be a player that people are afraid to play against. He knocked me out in a tournament very early on in a huge event. And he was so far ahead. He was one step ahead of my thought process in a hand. And he did something that makes no sense whatsoever. I looked it up on the computer. Huge mistake, if you will, but not a mistake because he was taking advantage of my tendency.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, no, and I love it. And as I said, so I think a lot of players sort of come to the same conclusions about this is how you play the spot, but he doesn't. And I love watching and thinking in terms of like why he's doing this. And one specific thing, for example, is. He's willing to really go for it. So, in a spot where, let's say, he bets 2,000, he knows he'll get you call 2,000, right? But he wants it all.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then sometimes what happens is this is where the leveling comes in. You're like, man, this guy's crazy, he's bluffing like nuts. Then he bets the 22,000. And you say, ah, I'm taking my stand. I call. And then he shows you like. You know, four of a kind or something like that So he gets people out of their comfort zone. And I really enjoy watching him play. He's probably my favorite player to watch today.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He should not do that is a clear cut mistake. Even the solvers or the computers or game theory would say, this is wrong what he's doing. But it's not wrong if he's doing it in a way that he's exploiting other players' tendencies. So, for example, with him, say he's playing far too aggressively. That's not good unless your opponents are playing way too passively. So if your opponents are playing passively, the answer is to be more aggressive with them. And that's, I think, one of the biggest advantages he had was he was willing to do that.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tournaments, yeah, he was crushing tournaments. He was going against the norm in terms of what is like, you know, this is what you should do as a poker player in this spot. He wasn't doing that. He was doing what he thought was best, and he was doing things outside the norm that, again, in a vacuum, you could look at that and you go, that's incorrect.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Specifically, there's one guy who last year sort of took the poker world by storm, and his name is Michael Adamo. And he was doing things, like I said, you know, most of the top pros play very similarly with the way that they construct ranges and their bet sizing and all these kind of things. He was doing some crazy things that nobody else was doing. So he studied, you know, sort of a different form of poker. And it was unorthodox. And it throws people off. Because he's in his comfort zone with these bet sizes and different things, whereas everyone else, they're not well studied in those spots. So as a result of him being unorthodox, he became like a monster and very difficult to play against because he really knew what he was doing with it.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, with all that we've seen on TV, right? Like people get to watch streams and whatever. So you get to watch all the top players play. So if you want to learn how to play better, guess what you do? You copy what they're doing, essentially. Like, oh, he's only raising this much. I'm going to do the same. They're betting this much. I'm going to do the same. As a result, what you end up having is sort of, you know, everyone deciding, like, I guess it's similar in chess with openings, right? People figure out, okay, this is an opening. This is what you do. And that's it, you know, and then everyone's similar to that. And then you have, of course, the outliers who try to do things a little differently and confuse people.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Depends on the level of the buy in, really, right? So the higher the buy in, generally speaking, you can assume if they're professionals, that they're going to have pretty similar profiles because everyone's playing, you know, if you're playing this game well, it looks similar, right? At the lower levels, you know, playing, say, in 1000 or $1,500 buying or less, within half an hour or an hour, I have an idea of, all right, just by seeing how some players played a few hands that, you know, so here's the thing with poker, it's like I can see one clue of what he did. And it tells me so much about what he'll do in a vast number of scenarios.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's why I love playing exploitatively for the most part because with GTO, anything that's happened in the past has no bearing on this situation. It's simply based on what is the optimal play in a vacuum in this spot. Whereas exploitatively, okay, this guy bluffs way too much in these spots. So now I can make an adjustment. Based on past information, GTO doesn't take into account history at all.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you're going back and forth. And listen, at the highest levels, like online that these guys play they're trying to play pretty close to like game theory optimal because it's very difficult to do first of all. No human being will ever be able to compute at the level that computers can. It's just never going to happen. So that's where like the human mind has to come into play and say, all right, well, you know, if I was playing against a robot, I would do X, but I'm not. I'm playing against you. So I have to adjust.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so that's sort of the big debate in poker. We call it for short GTO, game theory optimal versus exploitative play. So GTO, game theory optimal, is the idea that I'm going to set up my play so that no matter what you do, you cannot exploit me. So essentially, that's playing rock, paper, scissors, right? and throwing 33% of each every time, right? Nothing you do can beat that. Nothing. You'll never be able to beat that, right? Exploitative play is starting to notice that, okay, well, you know what? This guy loves rock. He loves playing rock. So I'm going to go pay for a little more. So I'm going to take advantage of him. So I won't be through. But now all of a sudden when I do that, I'm no longer playing optimal because if you knew that I was making that adjustment, now you can exploit me. So that's where sort of what we call the leveling war happens, where people veer from the optimal line of, okay, 33% each for each one. You can't beat that, but you also can't win.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it's really important, like when I play, I have in my phone, I have a player profile with everyone that I play with. Whenever I pick up, whether it's physical tales or tendencies they like to have. And overall, that's just going to allow you to exploit more. So if I played with somebody, I've never played before, I'm probably just going to play optimally, or at least as optimal as I know how, until I start to gain some information on that player so that I can start to exploit them.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They go hand in hand, right? So if in a given situation, right, my range has this many value hands and this many bluffs. In theory, if I want to be balanced, this is my range and this is what it looks like. I'll bet this 50% of the time bet this 50% of the time. However, if I know that you think that I bluff too much, right? Then I'm not going to bluff as much. I'm going to start, instead of betting these hands that I would 50-50, now what I'll do is I'll do like 70, 30 where I'm basically value betting most of the time against you, you know, or vice versa. I know you always fold because you think I have it, I'm going to veer the other way. And instead of bluffing 50%, I'll bluff 70, 80% of the time to take advantage of your perception of me.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something that I'm going to, I'm going to plant seeds in your mind so that I can exploit them later. So, for example, why would players like Shoal Big Bluff? Like, what would be the reason for that? They show a Big Bluff so that you know they're capable of it. But maybe in their mind, they're never going to do that again. But now they think, you know, he bluffed me last time. Maybe he's doing it again. But that's what we call like a leveling war because you can go back and forth with whether or not, okay, this guy might know that. Like he showed a bluff because he's never going to bluff me again. So that's where it gets a little.”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, every play that you make, it either is going to, in the long run, make you some money or it's just a losing play. And as a professional, you try to make the fewest amount of minus EV plays you can. And the only reason you would make these minus EV plays is potentially if you're trying to set up your opponent for something later, right? So I might make some minus EV plays, right? so that I can exploit you later, right?”
2022-09-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #324 – Daniel Negreanu: Poker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source