YouSaid · the spoken record

Liv Boeree

lines on the record: 222
first: 2022-08-24
most recent: 2022-08-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Playing and they played Chemical Brothers, Hey Boy, Hey Girl, which I don't know why it's notable, but it was just like a really, it was a song I always liked. It was like one of these pump-me-up songs. And I was sitting there thinking, oh yeah, this is exciting. I'm playing this really big tournament. And out of nowhere, just suddenly this voice in my head just, and it sounded like my own sort of, you know, when you think in your mind, you hear a voice kind of, right? And so it sounded like my own voice, and it said, You are going to win this tournament. And it was so powerful that I got this wave of goosebumps down my body. And I even looked, I remember looking around being like, did anyone else hear that? And obviously people are in their phones like no one else heard it. And I was like, okay”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Quite early on in my poker career. And I Remember the Icelandic volcano that erupted that shut down all Atlantic airspace? And it meant I got stuck down in the south of France. I was there for something else. And I couldn't get home. And someone said, well, there's a big polka tournament happening in Italy. Maybe do you want to go? I was like, oh, right, sure. Got a train across, found a way to get there. And the buy-in was 5,000 euros, which was much bigger than my bankroll would normally allow. And so I played a feeder tournament, won my way in, kind of like I did with the Monte Carlo big one. So then I won my way, you know, from 500 euros into 5,000 euros to play this thing. And on day one of then the big tournament, which turned out to have, it was the biggest tournament ever held in Europe at the time. It got over like 1,200 people. Absolutely huge. And I remember they dimmed the lights before the normal shuffle up and deal to tell everyone to stop.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, it's a reminder of epistemic humility because I fell too hard, you know, same as people like, I think, you know, many people who are just like, my religion is the way, this is the correct way, this is the work, this is the law. You are immoral if you don't follow this, blah, blah, blah. I think they are lacking epistemic humility. They're a little too much hubris there. But similarly, I think sort of the Richard Dawkins brand of atheism is too... It's too rigid as well and doesn't. There's a way to try and navigate these questions, which still honors the scientific method, which I still think is our best sort of realm of reasonable inquiry, you know, a method of inquiry. So an example, I have two kind of notable examples that really rattled my cage. The first one was actually in 2010, early on.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so to try and answer this. Do I think there is some kind of Extraneous intelligence to our classic measurable universe that we can measure with our current physics and instruments. I think so, yes. Partly because I've had just small little bits of evidence in my own life, which have made me question like so I was a diehard atheist even five years ago. You know, I got into the rationality community, big fan of less wrong, continue to be an incredible resource. But I've just started to have too many little Snippets of experience which Don't make sense with the current sort of purely materialistic Explanation of how reality works.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Green goo through synthetic biology, very bad destroy all organic matter through basically like a biological paperclip maximizer, also bad, or AI type mass extinction thing as well would also be better.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe several million episodes. It would depend. Pick your X risk. Depends on the X risk. Nuclear war, sure, that's one of the perhaps less bad ones.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But wonder at this point that we aren't having this kind of like selection effect thing going on because you look back and you're like, geez, that's a lot of near misses. But of course, we don't know the actual probabilities that they would have lent. Each one would have ended up in nuclear war. Maybe they were not that likely. But still, the point is, it's a very dark, stupid game that we're playing. And it is an absolute moral imperative, if you ask me, to get as many people thinking about ways to make this very precarious, because we're in a nash equilibrium, but it's not like we're in the bottom of a pit, you know, if you would like map it topographically, it's not like a stable ball at the bottom of a thing. We're not in equilibrium because of that. We're on the top of a hill with a ball balanced on top. And just at any little nudge could send it flying down and, you know, nuclear war pops off and hellfire and bad times.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, no, I mean, it leaves you into like solipsism, which is a very dangerous mindset. Again, if everyone falls into solipsism of like, well, I'll be fine. Near misses of just stupid things. Like there was Moonrise over Norway and it made weird reflections of some glaciers in the mountains, which set off, I think, the alarms of Norad radar. And that put them on high alert, nearly ready to shoot. And it was only because the head of the Russian military happened to be at the UN in New York at the time that they go like, well, wait a second, why would why would they fire now when their guy is there? And it was only that lucky happenstance, which doesn't happen very often where they didn't then escalate it into firing. And there's a bunch of these different ones. Stanislav Petrov like saved the person who should be the most famous person on earth because he's probably on expectation saved the most human lives of anyone like billions of people by ignoring Russian orders to fire because he felt in his gut that actually this was a false alarm and it turned out to be you know very hard thing to do um and there's so many of those scenarios that i can't help”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not advocating that we're all immortal because of this. It's just a fun thought experiment. And the point is it raises this thing of these things called observer selection effects, which Bostrom and Nick Bostrom talks about a lot. And I think people should go read.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, from that perspective, you are essentially immortal because someone and you will only find yourself in the set of observers that make it down that path. So that's...”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is crazy when you factor in all the near miss accidental firings. Yes, that makes me wonder, like, you know, are you familiar with the quantum suicide thought experiment Where it's basically like you have a Russian roulette type scenario hooked up to some kind of quantum event, particle splitting or paraparticle splitting. And if it goes A, then the gun doesn't go off and it goes B, then it does go off and it kills you. Because you can only ever be in the universe, assuming like the Everett branch, you know, multiverse theory, you will always only end up in the branch where you continually option A comes in. But you run that experiment enough times, it starts getting pretty damn out of the tree gets huge. There's a million different scenarios, but you'll always find yourself in the one where it didn't go off.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because if everyone plays zero sum games, that's a fast track to either completely stagnate as a civilization, but more actually far more likely to extinct ourselves. The playing field is finite Nuclear powers are playing a game of poker with their chips are nuclear weapons, right? And the stakes have gotten so large that if anyone makes a single bet, fires some weapons, the playing field breaks. I made a video on this. The playing field is finite. And if we keep playing these adversarial zero-sum games, thinking that in order for us to win, someone else has to lose or if we lose that, you know, someone else wins, that will extinct us. It's just a matter of when.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's always a bigger game. That's the thing. That's my motto what's the next game? More importantly, because of the game usually implies zero sum, like what's a game which is like omni win?”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, like it must be so hard for him. You know, he's been on the top for so long. And it's like, well, now what? He's got this incredible brain. Like, what to put it to? And yeah, it's...”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Slightly more optimally than her next opponent, cool, great legacy, you know? I just want to, you know, there was something in me that knew I needed to be doing something more directly impactful and just meaningful. It was just like a search for meaning. And I think it's a thing a lot of poker players, even a lot of, I imagine any games players who sort of love intellectual pursuits. You know, I think you should also, Magnus Carlson, this question. Yeah, walking away.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The dark times were in the sort of like 2016 to 18, even sooner, really, where I was like, I had stopped loving the game and I was going through the motions. And I would, and then I was like, you know, I would take the losses harder than I needed to. Because I'm like, it's another one. And it was, I was aware that I felt like my life was ticking away. And I was like, is this going to be what's on my tombstone? Oh, yeah, she played the game of, you know, this zero-sum game of poker.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your creepy light. No, it is. I mean, I wouldn't change a thing about my life right now and I feel very blessed to say that.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sort of again, like it's a drive of over optimization to random metrics that I decided were important without much wisdom at the time, but then carried on. That made me continue chasing it longer than I still actually had the passion to chase it for. And I don't have any regrets that, you know, I played for as long as I did because who knows, you know, I wouldn't be sitting here. I wouldn't be living this incredible life that I'm living now.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think my darkest points in poker were when I was wanting to quit and move on to other things, but I felt like I hadn't. Ticked all the boxes I wanted to tick. I wanted to be the most winningest female player, which is by itself a bad goal. That was one of my initial goals. And I was like, well, and I wanted to win a WPT event. I've won one of these. I won one of these, but I want one of those as well. And that.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Losing hers. Oh, yeah. Yes, competitiveness over time. I think it's more that, at least for me, I still care about winning when I choose to play something. It's just that I don't see the world as zero-sum as I used to be, you know? I think as one gets older and wiser, you start to see the world more as a positive something, or at least you're more aware of externalities of scenarios, of competitive interactions. And so, yeah, I just, you know, like. I have a really strong emotional response to losing, and that makes me then feel shitty for the rest of the day, and then I beat myself up mentally for it, I'm now more aware that that's unnecessary negative externality. So I'm like, okay, I need to find a way to turn this down, you know, dial this down a bit.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so in order to be able to play a decent game against our group, you'll need to be consistently winning 90% of games against 15 crazy bots.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's no time for exploration in polyty. You got to get well, once you graduate from the crazies, then you can come play”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I believe it. No, I totally believe it. Because as you get, you can still be like, I care about winning. Like when, you know, I play a game with my buddies online or, you know, whatever it is Polytopia is my current obsession.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kicked the wall, punched a wall, I like nearly broke my hand one time. I'm a lot less competitive than I used to be. I was pathologically competitive in my late teens, early 20s. I just had to win at everything. And I think that sort of slowly waned as I've gotten older.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But that's, I mean, that's another thing poker trains you to do, you see everything in percentages, or you see everything in like ROI or expected hourlies or cost-benefit, et cetera. One of the things I've tried to do is calibrate the strength of my emotional response to the win or loss that I've received because it's no good if you have a huge emotional dramatic response to a tiny loss or on the flip side, you have a huge win and you're so dead inside that you don't even feel it. Well, that's, you know, that's a shame. I want my emotions to calibrate with reality as much as possible. So yeah, what's it like to lose? I mean, I've had times where I've lost, you know, busted out of a tournament that I thought I was going to win in, you know, especially if I got really unlucky or I make a dumb play, where I've gone away and like, you know, kicked.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. I mean, I'm happy, I've sort of lived through it vicariously through him when he did it at the time. What is it like to lose? Well, it depends. So it depends on the amount, it depends what percentage of your net worth you've just lost. It depends on your brain chemistry. Really, you know, varies from person to person.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For life, no. I know plenty of people who have. And I don't think Eagle would mind me saying he went broke once in Poker. Well, you know, early on when we were together”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then also, like poker players learned that I would play in a huge game against some of my friends, even my partner Igor, where we'll be absolutely going at each other's throats, trying to draw blood in terms of winning each money off each other and like getting under each other's skin, winning each other up, doing the craftiest moves we can. But then once the game's done, you know, the winners and the losers will go off and get a drink together and have a fun time and like talk about it in this weird academic way afterwards because that's why games are so great because you get to like live out this competitive urge that most people have.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, perhaps. Yeah, people. I mean, that's why I think actually like poker, what's so interesting about poker is most of the best players I know, they're always exceptions. They're always bad eggs. But actually poker players are very honest people. I would say they are more honest than the average, you know, if you just took random population sample. You know, I think humans like to have that, most people like to have some kind of mysterious, an opportunity to do something like a little edgy. So we get to sort of scratch that itch of being edgy at the poker table where it's like it's part of the game. Everyone knows everyone knows what they're in for. And that's allowed. And you get to like really get that out of your system.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think people do. I mean, like, think of spouses cheating on their partners, right? And then having to lie, where were you last night and stuff like that? That's, I think, you know, I mean, unfortunately, that stuff happens all the time, right? So.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a really learned skill to be able to subdue your flight or flight response, what I think get from the sympathetic into the parasympathetic. So you can actually engage that voice in your head and do those slow logical calculations. Because evolutionarily, if we see a lion running at us, we didn't have time to sort of calculate the lion's kinetic energy. And is it optimal to go this way or that way? You just reacted. Physically, our bodies are well attuned to actually make right decisions. But when you're playing a game like poker, this is not something that you ever, you know, evolved to do. And yet you're in that same flight or fight response. And so that's a really important skill to be able to develop to basically learn how to like meditate in the moment and calm yourself so that you can think clearly.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I call it the white noise. And it happens in all kinds of decision making. I think anything that's really, really stressful. I can imagine someone in an important job interview. If it's like a job they've always wanted and they're getting grilled, you know, like Bridgewater style where they ask these really like really hard mathematical questions.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, a mixture of like, okay, what are the cards? So, in theory, I'm thinking about, okay, what are cards that make my hand look stronger, which cards hit my perceived range from his perspective? Which cards don't? What's the right amount of bet size to maximize my fold equity in this situation? That's the logical stuff that I should be thinking about. But I think in reality, because I was so scared, because there's this, at least for me, there's a certain threshold of like nervousness or stress beyond which the logical brain shuts off. And now it just gets into this like it feels like a game of wits basically. It's like of nerve. Can you hold your resolve? And it certainly got by that, like by the river. I think by that point, I was like, I don't even know if this is a good bluff anymore, but it's it's all.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Felt like it in the moment. Like, I mean, it literally does feel like a form of life and death. Like, your body physiologically is having that flight or fight response.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think in this scenario, I had a flush draw. So I had two clubs, two clubs came out on the flop. And then I'm hoping that on the turn and the river, one will come. So I have some future equity. I could hit a club and then I'll have the best hand, in which case, great. And so I can keep betting and I'll want them to call. But I've also got the other way of winning the hand where if my card doesn't come, I can keep betting and get them to fold their hand. And I'm pretty sure that's what the scenario was. So I had some future equity, but it's still, you know, most of the time I don't hit that club. And so I would rather him just fold because the pot is now getting bigger and bigger. And in the end, like I've jammed all in on the river, that's my entire tournament on the line. As far as I'm aware, this might be the one time I ever get to play a big 25k. You know, this was the first time I'd played one. So it was, it felt like the most momentous thing. And this was also when...”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To like each time you put the bets out, you know, you put another bet out. What's called a semi-bluff. So there were some cards that could come that would make my hand very, very strong and therefore win. But most of the time, those cards don't come.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I imagine comparable to. You know, running a, I mean, any kind of big bluff where you. Have a lot of something that you care about on the line, you know. So if you're bluffing in a courtroom, not that anyone would ever do that, or, you know, something equatable to that. It's incred. In that scenario, I think it was the first time I'd ever played a 20. I'd won my way into this 25k tournament. So that was the buy-in, 25,000 euros. And I had satellited my way in because it was much bigger than I would never, ever normally play. And I wasn't that experienced at the time. And now I was sitting there against all the big boys, you know, the Negranos, the Phil IVs, and so on.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Definitely. I mean, I mean, generally speaking, you want to not reveal information. You know, the goal of poker is to be as deceptive as possible about your. So, I have to be really confident that my meta gaming that I'm going to then do, or they've seen this, so therefore that, I'm going to be on the right level. So it's better just to keep that little secret to myself in the moment.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You should never show in game. Because, especially as I felt like I was one of the worst players at the table in that tournament. So giving that information, unless I had a really solid plan that I was now like advertising, oh, look, I'm capable of bluffing Phil Ivy. But like, why? It's much more valuable to take advantage of the impression that they have of me, which is like, I'm a scared girl playing a high roller for the first time and keep that going, you know.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I was bluffing. I presume, which, you know, there's a chance I was bluffing with the best hand, but I'm pretty sure my hand was worse. And he folded. Was truly one of the deep highlights of my career”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A three bit and then just barreled all the way through. And he just put his laser eyes into me. And it felt like he was just scouring my soul. And I was just like, hold it together, Liv, hold it together.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, to be honest, too much out of the scene for the last few years to really. I mean, Phil Ivy's clearly got, again, he's got that X factor. He's so incredibly intimidating to fly against. I've only played against him a couple of times, but when he looks you in the eye and you're trying to run a bluff on him, oof, no one's made me sweat harder than Phil Ivy. My bluff got through actually. That was actually one of the most thrilling moments I've ever had in poker. It was in Monte Carlo in a high roller. I can't remember exactly what the hand was, but”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think it's about sort of manifesting what you want. And getting the outcomes that you want by believing so much in yourself and in your ability to win, like eyes on the prize. And I mean, it's working.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's an extra layer, and I don't mean to get Weird and wooy, but or there's an extra layer of Ability to manipulate the things the way you want them to go that we don't understand yet.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As I said, I love Phil and I would say this to his face. I'm not saying anything. I don't, he's got, he truly, I mean, he is one of the greatest. I don't know if he's the greatest, he's certainly the greatest at the World Series of Poker, and he is the greatest at, despite the game switching into a pure game, almost an entire game of math, he has managed to keep the magic alive. And this just through sheer force of will making the game work for him. And that is incredible. And I think it's something that should be studied because it's an example.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To win if that silly thing hadn't happened, and it's like you don't understand, the silly thing happens 99% of the time. And it's a 1%, not the other way around, but genuinely for his lived experience at the World, only at the World Trade Poker, it is like that. So I don't blame him for feeling that way. But he does. He has this X factor The poker community has tried for years to rip him down, saying, he's no good, but he's clearly good because he's still winning. Or there's something going on, whether that's he's figured out how to mess with the fabric of reality and how cards, you know, are randomly shuffled deck of cards come out. I don't know what it is, but he's doing it right still.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the thing is, if you went and stuck him in one of these high stakes cash games with a bunch of GTO people, he's going to get ripped apart. But there's something that he has that when he's in the halls of the World Series of Poker specifically amongst sort of amateurish players, he gets them to do crazy shit like that. But my little theory is that also he just, he's like a wizard and he gets the cards to do what he needs them to because he just expects to win and he expects to get flopperset with a frequency far beyond what the real percentages are. And I don't even know if he knows what the real percentages are. He doesn't need to. Because he gets there.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct the simulation, I think. Yeah, he somehow to this day is still, and I love you, Phil, don't I'm not in any way knocking you, he is still winning. So much at the World Series of Poker specifically. He's now on 16 bracelets. The next nearest person, I think, has won 10. And he is consistently year in, year out, going deep or winning these huge field tournaments, you know, with like 2,000 people, which statistically he should not be doing. And yet, you watch some of the plays he makes and they make no sense, like mathematically, they are so far from game theory optimal.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's probing and he's getting this extra layer of information that others can't. Now, that said, though, he's good online as well. You know, I don't know how, again, would he be beating the top cash game players online? Probably not. No. But when he's in person and he's got that additional layer of information, he can not only extract it, but he knows what to do with it still so well. There's one player who I would say is the exception to all of this. And he's one of my favorite people to talk about in terms of Think he might have cracked the simulation. It's Phil Helmeth.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're beating your hand is worse. So then the real art, this is where the last remaining art in poker, the fuzziness, is like, do you listen to your gut? How do you quantify? I mean, I can't speak for how much he's studying with the simulators and that kind of thing. I think he has. Like he must be to still be keeping up. But he has an incredible intuition for just, he's seen so many hands of poker in the flesh. He's seen so many people the way they behave when the chips are, you know, when the money's on the line and he's got him staring you down in the eye. You know, he's intimidating. He's got this kind of X factor vibe that he gives out.”
2022-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #314 – Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source