#27 - 10 Million Reasons Why He Plays Poker

Faraz Jaka (@FarazJaka) is a Poker pro who’s made $10M on the felt... What started out as a fun game during his spare time in college turned into big money FAST. Turning a few hundred dollars into $180k in 6 months as a 19 year-old. He was on top of the world appearing in articles, throwing massive parties, flying to Vegas every other weekend and ambitious plans to make millions a year… until it all came crashing down, went into debt and battled depression. Obviously, he rose from the dead and became hugely successful, so join this roller coaster story on My First Million, and also listen to how he uses the “+EV” method for all decision making, why you shouldn’t be results orientated, meditation exercises to overcome stress and tackling depression by confronting your issues like ‘folding a rug’. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  We just kind of started this regular poker game.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  For me, it was just like a way to like make college money on the side.

• 0:09Speaker 00

  I was hungry. I was looking for more games and I like thought I was good at this thing.

• 0:14Speaker 00

  While I was 19, I built up from basically a few hundred dollars to 180,000 dollars. I'm doing the math of how I'm gonna make millions of dollars a year.

• 0:25Speaker 00

  Do I go to class or do I play this guy heads up? He's sitting there at 20,000 dollars.

• 0:31Speaker 00

  We ended up renting a nine bedroom house, calling it the poker house. We started throwing these parties where we'd have like 300 people show up and you know, where are these kids running into all this money?

• 0:44Speaker 00

  Over the course of the next six to nine months, I basically lost it all and even got myself in 50,000 dollar debt. I got super depressed. I'm in this hole. I can't know how I'm gonna get out. I ended up finally having my first big tournament win. I think I won like 30 grand. That's basically when my career kind of shot off and I never really looked back.

• 1:08Speaker 00

  100,000, 300K, 500K, 770K. The next one, like three months later, I made 1.7 million.

• 1:21Shaan Puri?

  5 million is not enough. 10 million. 15 million. 20 million dollars.

• 1:24Speaker 00

  100 million dollars.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Half a billion in revenue. 850 million dollars.

• 1:28Shaan Puri?

  One or two people in a bedroom actually the threats to these like giant multi-million dollar companies because you have creativity and you have nothing to lose. Add another zero to that price, buddy. Add two more zeros.

• 1:44Speaker 03

  Every week, we sit down with self-made millionaires and ask them, how did you do it? I didn't start a podcast. I started my own personal business school. And the teachers are the successful entrepreneurs behind the biggest brands and businesses that we find today. I wanted to know the real stories with all the details, like how did you get your first 100 customers? What did it feel like when shit hit the fan? I ask them, how'd you spend your money now that you're rich? And what would you do if you were starting over from scratch again today? If you're like me and you want to own your own business instead of living a nine to five job, this is the podcast for you. The Hustle presents My First Million.

• 2:25Speaker 00

  I'm here.

• 2:26Shaan Puri?

  We did it.

• 2:26Speaker 00

  I'm excited.

• 2:28Shaan Puri?

  I'm gonna frame this for people because I don't know how much of my audience knows about you. So I gotta do like a proper intro here. So we have Faraz Jaka here. I'm gonna just read these accomplishments. You just sit there and just bask in it. Okay, ready? You're a professional poker player.

• 2:41Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:41Shaan Puri?

  Six World Series Poker final tables.

• 2:43Speaker 00

  I didn't know that.

• 2:45Shaan Puri?

  You were named World Poker Tour Player of the Year.

• 2:48Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 2:49Shaan Puri?

  That's pretty damn good. And most importantly of all, I think this number's right. This is what Wikipedia tells me. 10 million in career lifetime earnings playing poker.

• 2:57Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:57Shaan Puri?

  Wow. How does that feel? And your nickname is the toilet. Why is your nickname the toilet?

• 3:01Speaker 00

  That's the most popular interview question at poker tournaments.

• 3:04Shaan Puri?

  Of course.

• 3:06Speaker 00

  Because when I first started playing in college, you know, I had no idea what I was doing. Kind of was self-taught in the beginning. So I was just like, oh, suited cards must be good. So I'd play like every suited hand and I'd get all these flushes and my roommates would get super annoyed and they'd be like, damn it, the toilet flushes again. So when I had to make an online screen name to play online, I wasn't really taking it too seriously. I was like, oh, everyone calls me the toilet. Boom, toilet. And next thing you know, the toilet's playing like high stakes.

• 3:31Shaan Puri?

  Right, 15 years later.

• 3:32Speaker 00

  And there's, you know, the media loves it because like the toilet flushes away the competition. The toilet gets flushed.

• 3:38Shaan Puri?

  You're a marketing genius and you didn't realize it at the time. Okay, so how does a nice brown kid like you become a professional poker player? That's not a career path for most kids.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  It wasn't what I expected either. You know, I started playing freshman year in college, just, you know, some guys were playing in the dorm room. One guy was trying to get everyone together to teach them how to play. So, you know, we put together a little tournament. I actually won the first tournament I played. It was 12 of us and only one of the guys had played before.

• 4:05Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 4:05Speaker 00

  So we just kind of started this regular poker game. And for me, it was just like a way to like make some college money on the side. And what's funny, actually, kind of thinking two weeks in, I was down $180. And I was like, man, like.

• 4:20Shaan Puri?

  That's devastating as a college kid.

• 4:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. I was actually worried. I was like, all right, I need to like step away, like not do this. You know, if I get to minus 200, I'm just gonna stop.

• 4:29Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 4:29Speaker 00

  I don't know if I would have stopped or not. Like, I thought I would at the time, but either way, I went in a big heater. And over the next few weeks, ended up like up $1,000. At the beginning, I was just really good at like outsmarting people, was good at reading people. I didn't really, you know, know too much of the fundamentals and that kind of thing.

• 4:46Shaan Puri?

  Just instincts at the time.

• 4:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, just instincts at the time. And I started seeking out kind of, you know, bigger games. I started going to other fraternities, other dorms, started playing other places.

• 4:55Shaan Puri?

  So what were the stakes of the first games that you were playing?

• 4:57Speaker 00

  So like $10 buy-in.

• 4:59Shaan Puri?

  $10 little sit and go, like a tournament?

• 5:01Speaker 00

  First one I played was a tournament, but after that it was all cash games.

• 5:03Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so $10 buy-ins and then you sort of, you graduate up to where?

• 5:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was just, I was hungry. I was looking for more games and I like, thought I was good at this thing. So I ended up winning another tournament at some fraternity. There was only two of us that weren't from the fraternity and the guy who got second was the other guy. And I realized he was pretty good and he realized I was pretty good. So we started talking, we became friends and you know, he was like, oh, I got this $5 game. You know, he invited me to his thing.

• 5:27Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 5:27Speaker 00

  And that's Ben LaFus. So he became, I don't know if you've seen like rounders, like, you know, like Worm and Mike, like kind of like bankroll partners. Like he was like my bankroll partner. So he'd been playing since he was a kid and he'd read every poker book and like knew the math behind it. So he kind of helped me kind of understand that there's some fundamentals of the game, you know, like here's like the starting hands, like this is the chance of you getting a flush, like. So he kind of helped me a little bit, like understand the fundamentals. And I probably helped him in the fact that I was just like, no, like we're not playing this, like let's go find bigger games, you know?

• 6:01Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 6:01Speaker 00

  So kept going for bigger games and eventually, you know, we couldn't find a bigger game at $20. So we started our own game. So now, you know, we're running our own game and.

• 6:10Shaan Puri?

  This is in a dorm room or where?

• 6:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is in the dorms and you know, start playing online, start going like this local charity casino. And you know, one thing led to another and you know, next fast forward and you know, we're making weekend trips to Vegas. That's when stuff started getting really crazy. So I think I made like a few thousand dollars online. You know, the first time to Vegas was pretty hilarious because I remember just walking over to Ben's dorm room next door. I think it was maybe like midnight or something. I looked up a bunch of flights to Vegas and I was like, Ben, like we should go to Vegas. And he's like, yeah, you know, definitely man him down. Like, you know, we've been talking about it. Like, let me know. I'm like, no. Like we need to go to Vegas now. And he's just like, what do you mean? I was like, I looked up flights, there's a flight at 6 a.m. I was like, I talked to our friend G.

• 6:56Speaker 00

  He said, if you let him borrow your Mustangs, he'll drive us to the airport to O'Hare. It's a three hour drive. And he's just like, you know, it's a Thursday. He's like, what about Spanish homework? I'm like, G's Puerto Rican, on the way, we'll convince him to do our Spanish homework as well. And we literally did, he was just like, I can't think of a reason not to go. And we literally just up and went to Vegas, like two 19 year olds. And I think we had maybe like a $10,000 bankroll at this point. So we brought like $2,000 each, went to the Bellagio, played cash games there. Obviously, we're only 19, so we would dress up in like a shirt and tie and like, act like we were like just came from work or whatever. And, you know, I learned all these little tricks. So we'd walk in past the guy that IDs you at like Bay 101, like when we're here in San Jose.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  And I'd literally like be on my phone, acting like I'm yelling at an employee. Like just whatever I can do to like.

• 7:45Shaan Puri?

  Get past that guy.

• 7:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. My favorite one was like when I was at the Bellagio and stuff like that, literally just, I'd notice the floor man, like every time you see them, they'd be like, oh, hey, John, Jaka, yeah. And it's like, these guys don't remember everyone, like there's no way.

• 7:58Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 7:58Speaker 00

  So every time I'd see a floor man, I would just read their name tag and be like, oh, hey, John, like, how's it going? And you're playing high stakes. Like at that point, they're gonna be too embarrassed to ID you. You know, you're acting like you have a relationship with these guys.

• 8:10Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 8:10Speaker 00

  It literally works like 100% of the time.

• 8:13Shaan Puri?

  Just to set the context, you're in college, you're supposed to be doing what? What was the like stated plan? I'm in college, I'm studying.

• 8:19Speaker 00

  I was economics and business major, so yeah, I mean, I was passionate about business. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I did, in high school, we'd had this like student run business, selling silk screens, printed t-shirts.

• 8:31Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  So that's where I kind of got my passion for entrepreneurship. I joined a business fraternity in college, Alpha Kepisi, that was my plan.

• 8:38Shaan Puri?

  Plan was to go into business and then you start on this sort of slippery slope.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:42Shaan Puri?

  Luckily, we know the story ended well for you. There are many people who start with that $5 cash game, then go 10 and 20.

• 8:48Speaker 00

  Well, it had its ups and downs, so it definitely wasn't all good. Over the course of three to six months while I was 19, I built up from basically a few hundred dollars to $180,000 as a 19 year old. Year old college student.

• 9:00Shaan Puri?

  Hundred eighty K.

• 9:01Speaker 00

  Hundred eighty K. I'm just like this dorm celebrity, like the locals, you know, schools doing articles on me. And I'm living the life, you know, like we're in college, like we're throwing crazy parties.

• 9:13Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. What do you even do with a hundred eighty K when you're nineteen years old?

• 9:16Speaker 00

  Man, we would pay our friends to just like do the stupidest things like go drink this, do this, go talk to that girl, go say this. It was fun. We ended up renting a nine bedroom house, calling it the poker house. We were running our own games. We were coaching people. We were playing online poker. It's actually amazing the crowd that came out of that. Out of the guys we were teaching, five of them now have had million dollar stores on the big tours.

• 9:40Shaan Puri?

  Wow.

• 9:41Speaker 00

  And probably about seven or eight of them are professional poker players just out of that circle, which is pretty crazy, actually.

• 9:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 9:48Speaker 00

  So we were doing that. We were running these games and we started like throwing these parties where we'd have like, you know, three hundred people show up, like nine keggers.

• 9:55Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  Like, uh, you know, Fredo went to college, you know, like the bragging rights to the party of how good a party is gonna be was how many kegs it was gonna be. And, you know, we're these kids running into all this money. So every other party has like Keystone and we have like the Guinness, the Woodchuck cider. And no one else is doing this. We're charging five dollars a cup. So it was funny. The first party, we actually had to like argue over like, who can put in money for the party? And by the second one, everybody was arguing over who can put in money, cause we were literally.

• 10:22Shaan Puri?

  Profitable.

• 10:23Speaker 00

  Oh, it was super profitable.

• 10:24Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. So yeah, so it was pretty wild. We probably threw some of the best parties on campus, like forty thousand students there. It was up there.

• 10:32Shaan Puri?

  Great. So you're, you're on this heater. You've gone from basically a few hundred bucks to a few thousand bucks now to a hundred eighty K.

• 10:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:38Shaan Puri?

  At this point, do you think, oh, there's a career or you're not even thinking about questions like that?

• 10:42Speaker 00

  So I'm doing the math of how I'm gonna make like millions of dollars a year.

• 10:46Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 10:46Speaker 00

  Again, I haven't actually learned the fundamentals of poker. I'm naturally like pretty talented. I'm super competitive. It's not that it was all just natural talent. I mean, just to give some background, like in middle school, I started doing track in seventh grade. I was like, probably like on the slower side of the team. By the end of eighth grade, I was one of the fastest runners at school. In high school, I became like one of the fastest runners in the district, you know. Like a one fifty nine half mile, four twenty nine mile, and I was super competitive.

• 11:14Shaan Puri?

  You have an obsessive personality.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  Exactly, for sure. On the basketball team in seventh grade, I had this big growth spurt. I thought I was gonna be like the badass on the team and I ended up getting cut. I didn't even make the team.

• 11:25Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 11:26Speaker 00

  I was embarrassed. So I spent the next twelve months literally doing like liners every day, like in pouring rain.

• 11:33Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 11:33Speaker 00

  Like it's literally like seed out of rock.

• 11:35Shaan Puri?

  A movie.

• 11:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, like I didn't think about it at the time, but looking back, I'm like, man, that was crazy. I, you know, I bought jump soles and just did everything I could do. And the next year I was starting on the team. And that's just kind of the personality I have, just super competitive. I'm always the guy like diving for loose balls, you know, bloody knees.

• 11:50Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 11:51Speaker 00

  I approach poker the same way, too. I just, I get upset when someone outdoes me, you know?

• 11:55Shaan Puri?

  It's not like you knew all the tactics and fundamentals in math yet.

• 11:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:59Shaan Puri?

  But you're saying you had a certain natural aptitude.

• 12:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:01Shaan Puri?

  Plus this obsessive personality where if you start with something and you lose, you have a bad experience, you want to correct that. That was a trait you had naturally.

• 12:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:09Shaan Puri?

  I've met a lot of people that are like this. In fact, when we hire for our company, Furcon, who you know very well, we had this thing where it was, we would look for degenerates. And most people view that as a negative word.

• 12:19Speaker 00

  Definitely a degenerate.

• 12:20Shaan Puri?

  And we said, you know, a degenerate, because Furcon played poker, also I play poker, degenerate is a word that's very common in the poker world.

• 12:25Speaker 00

  It's a sickness.

• 12:26Shaan Puri?

  It's a sickness.

• 12:26Speaker 00

  It's a sickness.

• 12:27Shaan Puri?

  But when applied to a passion, what the result is that you become really great at your craft.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  Oh, for sure. We always say like to be one of the top, top poker players, you need to be a degenerate, but you need to learn how to tame it.

• 12:39Shaan Puri?

  Right, exactly. If somebody doesn't have that degeneracy in them, you can't put it in them. It's a personality trait they will have themselves.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  Taking epic risks.

• 12:47Shaan Puri?

  Right. Okay, so you're at this point where you think you're gonna make millions.

• 12:51Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 12:52Shaan Puri?

  Things are going well. You've never really tasted bitter, bitter defeat yet.

• 12:55Speaker 00

  On top of not having the fundamentals of poker, I also don't have any concept of bankroll management. So, you know.

• 13:01Shaan Puri?

  Explain for people what this means. This is really, we're gonna say a lot of poker terms. This is one I think we should stop and explain because it's so important.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  I'm sure this is like super similar, like investing in startups. And it's just that, you know, if you're gonna play a cash game bind where it's a thousand dollars, you know, you need to have forty binds, up to a hundred binds, depending on if you're playing cash games or tournaments.

• 13:20Shaan Puri?

  It was basically what percent of your nest egg?

• 13:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:24Shaan Puri?

  You're putting at risk on any given game.

• 13:25Speaker 00

  You know, if you're not a professional, you know, that could be, you know, lower, more like twenty five to forty because you're not relying on this from income. And it's just kind of like rules of thumbs like that you need to follow based on, you know, your expected ROI. Very similar to you're an angel investor and you want to figure out how many bets you have, you know, for how many different.

• 13:42Shaan Puri?

  You don't bet on one company, you want to have twenty five bets potentially.

• 13:45Speaker 00

  So I had no concept of that. Didn't really think about the long run or variance. I started playing this like super high stakes games.

• 13:52Shaan Puri?

  What's super high stakes?

• 13:53Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm playing like one hundred, two hundred, no limit, like twenty thousand dollar buy-ins, like online. I'm just sitting there. And it's like, do I go to class or do I play this guy heads up who's sitting there at twenty thousand dollars and I'm going to crush him?

• 14:05Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 14:06Speaker 00

  I would crush a lot of these guys, but the thing was, when you have bad fundamentals, eventually people start to pick up on your weaknesses.

• 14:15Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 14:15Speaker 00

  And they figure out how to get an edge on you. So I kind of had this early advantage because I was playing this crazy, hyper aggressive style that wasn't that popular back then. And people didn't know how to play against it, but eventually they would find out how to slowly.

• 14:29Shaan Puri?

  Adjust.

• 14:30Speaker 00

  Adjust. Yeah, because I'm playing like the best players in the world and I don't watch poker on TV. I never read a book. I'm not in the forum. So I don't even know who any of these guys are.

• 14:38Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  You know, a few years later, I find out like these are like the top players and I just had like no fear, which is something to show that, you know, it's interesting. Once you find out who these guys are, you do play them a little more cautiously, but there's something to be said about just having no fear. So even though like I shouldn't have been in those games, they taught me so much.

• 14:57Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 14:57Speaker 00

  Playing that big, it doesn't matter, even if you are the best player in the world, you're going to nine ninths of the time go broke. Over the course of the next six to nine months, I basically lost it all and even got myself in fifty thousand dollar debt.

• 15:10Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 15:10Speaker 00

  You know, borrowing from other players who, you know, at this point I established myself as, you know, a player with a big reputation. And that was demoralizing.

• 15:19Shaan Puri?

  You're twenty years old at this point?

• 15:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. I was about twenty now. I'm going into my junior year and I got super depressed. You know, like just to go from so high to so. Low in such a short period of time just definitely messes you up and you know it was a combination of things. It was that I sacrificed my school and my grades for the last, you know, year and a half now because of this thing that I was sure was going to work out for me. So now I'm like, okay, you know, I messed this up.

• 15:47Shaan Puri?

  Messed that up.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, messed that up. I'm in this hole. Like, I don't know how I'm gonna get out.

• 15:50Shaan Puri?

  Do you remember when you sort of bankroll hit zero or, you know,

• 15:54Speaker 00

  So like,

• 15:55Shaan Puri?

  Because I've been there before, right? When I was in college, I used to play much lower stakes than this, but I would do the same thing. I'd run it up to two grand. And I'd be like, I'm not going to class. I have two grand in my account right now. And I'd take the whole two grand and I'd go up a bigger game.

• 16:06Speaker 00

  So yeah, on the way down, I mean, I'd get to points where I had like 40K left to my name. And I'm still jumping into these $20,000 buying games. This is,

• 16:16Shaan Puri?

  Because now you're trying to make it back.

• 16:17Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly. Because I made it so quickly. So I am, this is what you call being a degenerate.

• 16:21Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 16:22Speaker 00

  And I remember some crazy sessions. I had a session where I was down to like, my 60,000 went down to about 1,500. And it's like a $20,000 buying game and everyone left the table and there's one guy sitting there with 60K. And from 1,500, I literally got all of it back. The guy disappeared for months and came back and you're just, at this point, you're just talking in the chat and he's like, dude, like you messed me up that. He's like, he's like, my wife was pissed at me. Like, I stopped playing. It's the first time I'm back. But yeah, won that 60K back and then the next day, boom, lost half of it. Literally feel like you got punched in the stomach. Like, it is awful feeling.

• 16:58Shaan Puri?

  Did you tell kind of friends? Did you hide it at the time?

• 17:00Speaker 00

  I would hide it for sure because at this point I'm going broke. So, and there's been so much hype around me, around the dorms and, like I said, I was a, you know, local celebrity, like people like, you know, I'm in the newspapers and, you know, all this stuff. It's super embarrassing for me. You know what I mean? I feel like, you know, you just feel like you have this kind of image you have to hold up.

• 17:18Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 17:18Speaker 00

  And so now I'm broke. I'm in the 50K debt. That obviously adds to the kind of depression. I go to the school counselor. You know, they have these kind of therapy resources, which is awesome, by the way, that, you know, these like, I, there's so many resources in college like I didn't take advantage of. And now I'm like, wow, these are amazing. And that was one I actually did get to take advantage of. And, you know, I was probably like depressed for a good like, three to four months already before I went to counseling. And just immediately going already felt better, just like talking to someone who's professionally dealt with this.

• 17:49Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 17:50Speaker 00

  There's a few things that really stuck with me. The counselor told me, you know, think of your problems like a rug. Right now you're overwhelmed.

• 17:56Shaan Puri?

  Like a rug?

• 17:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, you can't pick up a rug all at once, like lift each corner and you know, it will become easier. It's so simple, but it's so true and it's actually really helpful. And when you have a set of problems, like they're gonna overwhelm you. And when you just focus on one and solve it, like the other one just becomes 10 times easier.

• 18:14Shaan Puri?

  So what was like the first corner for you and you're in this funk?

• 18:16Speaker 00

  He also said, he was just like, your confidence is shot right now. So do things that you used to do that make you feel really confident. So I was like, okay, in high school, I was good at basketball. I would write like poetry and rap lyrics and so I didn't get back into the rap. But I got into, you know, I got, I started playing basketball again. So those are definitely some helpful things, but you know, he also told me to stop playing poker, which I didn't do. And to be honest, I spent the next few months just like, oh, I'm out of school, like partying a bunch, like just still being a bit of a degenerate.

• 18:48Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 18:48Speaker 00

  But it got so bad that I realized like, okay, I'm gonna have to like drop out of school. Anyone who knows brown parents, like you're scared shitless of your parents.

• 18:58Shaan Puri?

  What was their take this whole time? Were they like poker is evil? They don't know anything?

• 19:03Speaker 00

  So by now they do know. So during the whole come up, they had no idea. So brown parents like super strict, like anti gambling, like very conservative. So the way they, my dad actually found out was someone sent him that article. Student wins 180,000 playing online poker. That was in the Daily Illini, the college newspapers. So he found that online and he called me like super pissed. And I'm in Vegas, like at the World's Who's a Poker, playing cash games. And you know, he has no idea. He thinks, you know, I'm at summer school or whatever.

• 19:33Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 19:34Speaker 00

  So he's super pissed and wants me to fly home the next day. And eventually I ended up going home. He basically talks me into like, okay, like invest some of it or a lot of it into real estate. So I'm like, okay, you know, I'm probably gonna invest like 120K or something into some property. So you know, let me make sure I make some more. So that was part of the motivation to like, oh, you know, I need to make.

• 19:53Shaan Puri?

  Increase your stakes.

• 19:53Speaker 00

  Exactly. So that was also added pressure now, like during the, you know, how shitty I felt that, you know, it's gonna be, I told you so to my parents.

• 20:01Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 20:01Speaker 00

  Like I was gonna, you know, I thought like my dad's gonna kill me. And so I think that the pressure. From that was also just making it really hard for me. And when I eventually called him and told him, which it took me like months to, you know, sucker up the courage to do that. Like his reaction wasn't what I thought it was gonna be at all. Like he was like, instead of like pissed, he was just like super worried. Like it was just like, he instantly like knew what I was going through and just like this like fatherly kind of like uh feel like came out instead.

• 20:29Shaan Puri?

  It's amazing how parents do that. On the micro transgressions, on the small mistakes, they blow it up. When you actually make a big mistake, parents go into like, you know, fix it mode where they're like, we're here for you. They don't make you feel worse. You know, the best parents.

• 20:43Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, for sure. And yeah, and my dad is awesome. And I, I think brown parents have this thing of like trying to intimidate you and like scare you into like doing what they want to do. It's just kind of instilled is the way they were raised. I meet a lot of people who have, you know, conservative, like ethnic parents that are also like, you know, living a certain way, doing a certain things because of like fear of their parents. And that's a lot of advice I end up telling them is your parents, granted, they're good parents, like they love you and that matters like more than anything else. You know what I mean?

• 21:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 21:12Speaker 00

  And a lot of this is just a strategy that they've learned how to manipulate their kids into like doing what they believe is good.

• 21:19Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 21:20Speaker 00

  Which for the most time is, but it's not always, you know? So that probably helped a lot, like, you know, having my dad kind of react like that. So eventually I just kind of hit like rock bottom, like so bad that I realized like I'm gonna have to like leave the school, like go back home, which is what I didn't want to do. Like I'm never gonna, you know, but already leaving California, going to University of Illinois was a big thing for them. So I was still trying to make my bankroll back.

• 21:44Shaan Puri?

  Why didn't you decide to quit? You know, most people at this point would say, okay, you know, I'm never drinking tequila again, type of thing.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  I felt like instinctively that I was really good. Like I felt like I was outplaying my opponents. Like that I knew something, that I was capable of something that they weren't. I just like, you know, my gut was telling me that I was good at this thing.

• 22:02Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 22:03Speaker 00

  And.

• 22:03Shaan Puri?

  You listened.

• 22:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm not even sure how to advise people on that one because there's a lot of people that I think shouldn't be playing poker or shouldn't be investing where they're investing. And they're just completely blindsided by that.

• 22:15Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 22:15Speaker 00

  So what ended up happening. was so because I had already kind of built this like poker house with my friend Ben and we're surrounded by other players. One of the students he was teaching was started doing well in tournaments, Andy Sess. So like, all right, you know, what's up with this tournament stuff? And, you know, he's studying and learned the fundamentals, you know, Ben's taught him some stuff and he's really big into the forums. Even some of my students, Kevin Schultz, I was teaching him. And now he's kind of on the forums, like learning stuff beyond what I've taught him.

• 22:41Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 22:41Speaker 00

  So it was kind of like, these are the younger kids, like teaching me what's up with the forums.

• 22:45Shaan Puri?

  The two plus two forums?

• 22:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, so two plus two, and then we started our own called the Poker House. I think there was like an FCP, like full contact forum, something like that, and there's pocket fives. So they're kind of catching me up to speed on kind of what they're learning on the internet. I learn really quickly and I'm really good at asking questions and I think that's why I'm able to learn quickly. So, you know, just like watching them a little bit and like, you know, ask them questions, like seeing like some of the strategy they're doing. I was able to just like watch them a few times and take that and start incorporating that into my own game. Learned a little bit about bankroll management. So basically, at the beginning, while trying to make it back, I just, you know, I'd have $500, I'd jump into a $500 game. Well, you know, I build up to a few thousand, back to zero. So that happened for like three, four months. And then I finally buckled down and just started playing $5 sit and goes.

• 23:31Speaker 00

  And I can't tell you, like, it's just going from $20,000 buy-ins to $5 sit and goes. Like, you need to humble yourself to be able to do that. And, you know, Dora Brunson, Super System, he'll talk about that a lot. That is one of the most important things, like not caring what anybody thinks, what anybody's gonna say, because people are gonna like talk shit.

• 23:49Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 23:50Speaker 00

  And you just need to do it and, you know, stay true to yourself. So, you know, just getting the courage to do that. So I started building up slowly, you know, to $10, to $20. And now I'm kind of in this tournament thing. So I eventually like qualified for a tournament in Aruba, like a live tournament. So I fly to Aruba, I get knocked out of the tournament. I'm playing online on a Sunday, like in this like outdoor lobby with this security guard there, just me and him all night. It's like 3:00 AM. I ended up finally having my first big tournament win. It was like a party poker, like nightly 162, I think I won like 30 grand. It's like 3:00 AM at night, I kept running into my room for like bug spray, like five minute breaks. And it was like, there's literally just like me and this security guard is like pitch dark black and I'm just like on the floor, I'm like celebrating with all my friends.

• 24:34Speaker 00

  So that was my first big tournament win. And then like a few weeks later, I think I got like second or third in an ultimate bet tournament, like another like 40, 50K. And that's basically when my tournament career kind of shot off and I never really looked back.

• 24:47Shaan Puri?

  So you've gotten now to the point where you're over 10 million in career winnings. So what was the next sort of, did that come in small chunks or was there one big score that really like elevated your profile and your winnings?

• 24:59Speaker 00

  So I basically just started jumping on the live tour immediately. So you know, now I'm 21, so I could actually play in like the live tournament. So Aruba, I think was only 19 plus. So that was at 20. But yeah, now at 21. So you know, I start flying to Bay 101, to Commerce, basically on weekends or I'd skip class. And I'd start playing this tournament. I think I won a $1,000 tournament at Commerce for $100,000. And then I think it was like another year, finally when I was around 22, 23. And I basically just had my like killer breakout year where I made 1.7 million in earnings, mostly on like the WPT tour and WSOP. There was like this $15,000 buy-in events at the Bellagio. I

• 25:40Speaker 00

  got second in one for 770K. The next one, like three months later, I got like third in like 500K. And then also there was an event at WSOP that I got third for like 300K.

• 25:53Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 25:53Speaker 00

  Like all in one year, like all within like a six month span. And I had investors, so I had to give a percentage of that to them. And there's also buy-ins. But long story short, like basically I made a million dollars that year.

• 26:04Shaan Puri?

  And so when you think about your career, you have different tactics that you use. The one thing that I find interesting about you, when we were having dinner, I don't know, a couple of months ago, you were telling me that you were playing in the World Series of Poker, the main event, $10,000 buy-in. And you said that, I was asking you sort of like, how do you stay at the top of your game? How do you keep peak performance? Because these events are like, you know, multi-day. You know, there, I don't know how many days the main event is, but I think it's like five, seven days, something like that. Just to get through the field of tens of thousands of players.

• 26:33Speaker 00

  So first I'll get into even how do you like get good at poker? Or whatever it is you're doing, then I'll get into that.

• 26:38Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 26:39Speaker 00

  So kind of the first thing is, you know, I realized that these are kind of the key things like A, you know, you need to be doing some sort of studying, you know, whether that's like, you know, taking hands and analyzing with friends, like reading books, like watching videos online. So you need to be doing, you know, one study thing. You need to have a group of peers, whether it's, you know, mentors. So in poker, it's, you know, I have these WhatsApp groups where, you know, there'd be anywhere to like three to 10 people and we post hands and talk about it.

• 27:05Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 27:05Speaker 00

  And by the way, this advice is relevant to whatever it is you're doing, whatever you're trying to get good at.

• 27:09Shaan Puri?

  What you're saying is exactly what I do in the startup world.

• 27:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. So you need, you know, either books or videos to learn from. You need, you know, this peer circle and then you just need to, you know, be like reviewing and analyzing your own work. And I think you should have a mentor. You need to be surrounding yourself by people that are equal or better than you.

• 27:25Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 27:26Speaker 00

  Um, so kind of, kind of those are the things you need. And then, okay, the second question you asked is, you know, just how do you stay at the top of your game? And yeah, that's extremely important, just being able to play your A game. There's so many talented players, you know, more talented than me that just are not able to stay at their A game. Because, you know, they get frustrated or they have vices or they have ADD or whatever it is. And, you know, they just, they end up broke. So you gotta eat healthy, you gotta work out, like you gotta do whatever it is, it's gonna put yourself in a good state. So for me, so, you know, we'll start with kind of pre-game. Like I'm really big on like cold showers in the morning, you know, that just, it gets your adrenaline going and it relaxes all your muscles. It's kind of a meditative experience. Like your natural reaction is when the cold hits you to like shiver.

• 28:10Speaker 00

  And like, I just try to not shiver and just try to like focus my mind.

• 28:14Shaan Puri?

  Calm yourself.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  So it doesn't need to do that.

• 28:16Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 28:16Speaker 00

  And just like, you know, spending and doing that for a few minutes, like you'll just feel like in a meditative state after that. And I actually, my goal when I'm doing cold showers is I try to do it until I pee. Because it relaxes all your muscles. It naturally makes you beat.

• 28:31Shaan Puri?

  That's the trick.

• 28:32Speaker 00

  Which is kinda weird, but yeah, it's just like, okay, like all my muscles are just relaxed.

• 28:37Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 28:37Speaker 00

  I love doing like headstands. I actually, I don't know any like science behind that, but it just, you know, gets all the blood like flowing to my head and it just, I don't know, I feel like in a great state after that.

• 28:47Shaan Puri?

  So this is part of your morning routine?

• 28:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, you know, cold shower, you know, meditation, I'm huge on meditation. About six years ago, I went to a 10 day silent meditation retreat in Thailand, the Basana Retreat. And that was definitely just like one of the most like influential things I've done.

• 29:03Shaan Puri?

  How so?

• 29:04Speaker 00

  Just like you're wearing sunglasses your whole life and you just took them off for the first time.

• 29:08Shaan Puri?

  Nice.

• 29:08Speaker 00

  It just.

• 29:10Shaan Puri?

  Share the enlightenment. What, what does that feel like? What, what did you realize? What did you learn from that?

• 29:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. So at the time I kinda went because I'd been kinda like passively, like doing some seed investments, some startups and like a lot of my friends were like killing it in startups and, you know, I naturally wanted to be an entrepreneur. Probably poker. I was doing both and I realized like, when you do both, you're not doing either well. So I kinda needed to make a decision, kinda like lost in terms of which way to go. So like I partially went for that, but I also just went because I was curious.

• 29:37Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 29:37Speaker 00

  I actually knew nothing about meditation, but just like, you know, it just seemed like something that was gonna be good. So.

• 29:43Shaan Puri?

  So you started with like the most extreme version?

• 29:45Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. So like a lot of people like went there, like study and like read about it and know like, I actually knew nothing. Like a friend of mine had went to retreats. So he recommended this one. Little did I know this was like one of the best retreats you can go to. Called, you know, Stephen Rosemary Retreat. They're an Australian couple. So yeah, I mean, you get there and the journey getting there was already intense. You know, first you're flying to Bangkok. You take a bus to a dock, then you get on a katamara, a boat takes you to this other island. Then you get onto the back of this truck. There's like a 15 hour sleep train like in between that I forgot. You eventually get up to this hill where, yeah, and you walk to the top of the hill and that's where the little monastery is. And so, you know, you register like three months in advance.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  You get there and then, you know, you have to go and take your turn and go talk with the teachers. Explain to them why you're there and they decide if you're ready to be there or not. So you might even get turned down.

• 30:36Shaan Puri?

  Oh, wow.

• 30:37Speaker 00

  Generally, people don't get turned down, but if they see you have some kind of intense demons you're dealing with, that you're not ready and you might be a distraction to the retreat, they'll offer you their book and some advice and, you know, ask you.

• 30:48Shaan Puri?

  What did you say? Did you tell them I'm split on kind of where I want to go?

• 30:51Speaker 00

  I don't remember exactly, but yeah, you know, something like that, like I want to strengthen my mind, like that type of stuff. So the schedule was you wake up at 5 a.m. before the sun comes up. You have kind of an hour to yourself. The shower was literally a garbage can full of water and a little scooper in this small, dark room where literally like spiders like as big as your hand might or might not be in there. I mean, you're just in the wild, you know? And then, you know, at 6 a.m. like they do like an hour of yoga to start the day. Following the yoga would be, you know, like hour-long sitting meditation. Basically, every hour a bell rings. Then you do, you know, a light breakfast and then you do walking meditation. And basically throughout the whole day, they'd go for like, you know, about 12

• 31:34Speaker 00

  hours. Every hour bell rings and you just switch from sitting meditation, standing meditation, eating, working meditation, the yoga in the morning. And then every day there'd be a one-hour talk from them where, you know, they would kind of share their philosophies. It was incredible. Like they're able to kind of predict what you're thinking a lot of times, what you're going through. So basically teaching you how to meditate. And the whole idea is that your whole life, you're doing, everything is outward energy. You're focused outwards. And this is the time for you to focus inwards. You know, what's actually going on in your mind and your body? I got there thinking like, oh, I'm gonna like write a journal and do all this stuff. It's like, no, no writing. That's outward energy. No eye contact with people. That's outward energy. So, yeah, the whole time you're just trying to focus,

• 32:15Speaker 00

  basically. And like you do these hour-long meditations. I'd be so frustrated because I literally feel like I only meditated for like five minutes of this hour. And I'm like, oh, like I'm totally messing this up. But they'd give their hour-long talk that you've been waiting for. And they'd literally say exactly that. They're like, I'm sure you felt like you've only been meditating, focused for like one minute of that hour. But, you know, don't worry, like, you know, that struggle that you're doing, it's like you're working out, you're exercising your mind. And it's so true, like by the end of it or, you know, five days in, you start to realize that all that not meditating you're doing is actually like improving the hell out of your focus. And you're start to be able, you get so much better at it.

• 32:54Shaan Puri?

  Obviously, no technology, there's no eye contact.

• 32:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:57Shaan Puri?

  You're not speaking or making sound throughout the day, is that right?

• 33:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:00Shaan Puri?

  And what about even in the morning, where, you know, when you're taking your shower, do you make any sound there just to get it out for the day or nothing?

• 33:05Speaker 00

  No, not, no, not really. You're supposed to walk around meditative. So every step you're supposed to take, you're supposed to feel the air, like feel the ground and you're supposed to like, like feeling the touch of things is part of being awareness. So you're trying to be aware of what's going on in your mind and also what you're feeling and experiencing. So, you know, they taught us some like awareness techniques. So like, and I use this at the poker table or like, you know, when I'm working or whatever all the time. So a really simple awareness technique is right now, if you're sitting, like feel your butt on the chair. Like you feel your butt, like before I said this, were you feeling your butt?

• 33:35Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 33:35Speaker 00

  Probably not. So now you're aware. So the idea is to go around your entire day just being aware, like feeling things. You think unconsciously, your mind wanders all the time and that's not beneficial. Like it's okay to like consciously focus and think about something, but most of the time your mind is just wandering. And that's one thing you learn in a retreat. You don't like 90% of your day, your mind is just wandering, wandering, wandering. And so they start to teach you to pay attention to your body and you'll see that, okay, when your mind wanders to these places of stress, like you tense your breathing, your arm, your leg, and this basically wears you out throughout the day. And you're basically learning to just let go, you know, you recognize these patterns, let go, let go, let go.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  And by the end of the 10 days, you just feel so much energy. We're sleeping on this wooden bunk bed, showering at this tub of water, like living the most simple form of life you're living. At the first day, I was like, I don't know how I'm going to get any sleep. Like in this environment, like I'm talking about pure wood, like you're sleeping on. And instead, like you're just happiest you've ever been, you're like the healthiest you've ever felt. And you're just like, whoa, like I've been searching for happiness in the wrong place. Like it's all in just strengthening your mind.

• 34:43Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 34:43Speaker 00

  And just that enlightenment was just insane.

• 34:46Shaan Puri?

  I love that. You know, the mind is a muscle and it's amazing how little we sort of stretch it and strengthen it. Consciously.

• 34:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:53Shaan Puri?

  You do some other things I thought were interesting. You know, there was a period of time where you didn't own a home or rent a place. You were totally nomadic. The hook for me has always been, oh, wow, this guy's an amazing poker player. He's had tremendous success in the poker world. That's fantastic. Cool, he made millions of dollars playing poker. But what I think sets you apart and what made you kind of fascinating to me was the silent meditation, living nomadically, all the little technique and tactics you do to, you know, like you said, your pregame routine. I know you told me that during tournaments, during the five minute break, when most people just go grab a bag of chips and start eating it, you will run into the parking lot and do a bunch of jumping jacks to freshen up your body or something.

• 35:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, so you were asking about my routine. So this is something I learned from poker, but I think everyone should do. And so in poker, we call it on tilt. So on tilt is basically like something negative happened to you and you're emotional, you know, pissed off, and now you're acting out of emotion, whatever business might happen to you because a coworker said something.

• 35:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I was on tilt yesterday.

• 35:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, whatever, some, some deal, some employee does something dumb or whatever. Someone says something to you, you need to recognize when you're kind of in this state of mind and everybody should have something in their pocket of how do I get out of this?

• 36:04Shaan Puri?

  Snap out of it.

• 36:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, how did like, it's just a trick. It's just a hack. Like, and if you're just literally just today, like go write it on a piece of paper, like, how are you going to get out of it? Try it. If it doesn't work, write something else down. And just once you know it works, it works.

• 36:18Shaan Puri?

  And usually, from my experience, it's not thinking your way out of it. Don't logic your way out of it.

• 36:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:23Shaan Puri?

  Like, move your body is a much faster.

• 36:25Speaker 00

  So for me, it's I will go and do wind sprints in the parking lot on my 15 minute breaks. People think I'm pretty weird and but I'll literally go out there and I'll just, I'll be like, you know, dressed in my like nice file table clothes sometimes and go do four wind sprints and I promise you at the end of it, you're like, huh. You don't care anymore. You're just back in, it gets you back in the zone. Oh, breathing exercise is like so helpful.

• 36:49Shaan Puri?

  What's one breathing exercise?

• 36:51Speaker 00

  So it's hard to just kind of show without video, but you know, basically you cover one nostril. So first you learn to breathe into your belly. So, you know, you'll cover one nostril and. You'll breathe in and out, you know, as you breathe in, your belly needs to get bigger. And as you, you know, exhale, your belly goes back in. So you take a big, deep breath in, like holding one nostril. Then you close the other nostril. You hold all the, the air in your belly, suck your belly in. So it all goes into your chest. Now just hold it there for like five seconds or, or actually no longer if you can. And then release it out of the other nostril. So that's one. So now repeat doing the other direction. Just do like four or five of those and just, you feel amazing. Like you feel on a high, it just like completely refreshes you.

• 37:33Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, had somebody teach me this around breathing, which was there's something called stress breathing.

• 37:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:37Shaan Puri?

  And stress breathing, if you'd be say, all right, take a big inhale, right? If you're just listening to this right now, take a big inhale. And now one of two things happened. Either you sucked in, right? Because sometimes when people try to take a big inhale, their stomach goes inwards. That's stress breathing. Uh, what you were describing with the belly going out, that's, that's sort of the, the sort of proper relaxed way to, to breathe. Where an inhale should expand. Why is it that some people, when they inhale, they tense up and squeeze in? Uh, and so it's two different types of, of, of breathing. And if you notice a very common pattern is when somebody's stressed, sort of the reverse breathing. They'll breathe inward rather than expanding their belly in order to breathe.

• 38:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I naturally breathe the wrong way. So I have to consciously try to do the, that type of breathing.

• 38:16Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, same. What do you think is the advice you would give? Not to like somebody else, but I'm thinking like to your own future kid. Would you, if your kid was interested in playing poker, would you say, yeah, this is a good path? Or would you be like, hey, this worked for me, but I wouldn't recommend it. What's your take on it?

• 38:32Speaker 00

  So there's two things. There's learning how to play poker because it's good for you, which I strongly, strongly believe. And there's playing poker because you want to do it professionally.

• 38:40Shaan Puri?

  Learning it as a game versus learning it as a job.

• 38:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, doing it as a job, I think that just totally depends on where the industry is. Right now, like online poker was, you know, banned, I don't remember, like seven, eight years ago at this point. So, you know, that's taken a lot of the sponsors, a lot of the marketing dollars out of the game. So it's not a great industry to get into right now. If you're trying to make a lot of money, you know, it was seven years ago. And that might come back as online poker gets legalized in the U S, which it has in a couple of states, but it's waiting for the bigger states. Then that might be a very viable career option. Right now I would say it's not. If you're recreational, just trying to play. Poker because you think it's fun or you think you could learn some cool skills from it. Then yeah, it's a great time to be in. And so that gets my second part. I think I've learned poker has taught me, you know, how to think in such a more like logical productive way that I've been able to implement into the rest of my life.

• 39:27Speaker 00

  There's this thing we call like plus EV thinking. That's, you know, expected value.

• 39:31Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 39:31Speaker 00

  And so if you don't know, you know, what expected value is, you know, let's just take a simple example. You take a coin, flip it 10 times. You're taking heads, I'm taking tails. The expected value of that flip is zero, like if we're betting a dollar or whatever, because it's 50 50. It's a weighted coin 51 towards 49. So now, you know, it's plus EV on the head side by a certain amount.

• 39:52Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 39:52Speaker 00

  So basically in poker, you're basically trying to make plus EV bets.

• 39:57Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 39:57Speaker 00

  And, you know, it's the same as, you know, if you're investing in startups or the stock market. And then you could also apply it to life, right? So you just have to think of what is the game of life? You know, my points are in like happiness points, like utils. So what is the EV of dating this person or being single? What is the EV of me, you know, going to this concert versus not going to it? And then how much does it cost me, you know, monetary wise? And it just kind of teaches you how to make, you know, better decisions. So like the classic example, like flawed thinking is, you know, okay, I bought these $200 concert tickets and we're going to go to this concert, but my best friend just did this birthday party. It's gonna be super fun. Like it's actually gonna be more fun than the concert. Most people will still go to the concert because, oh, I already spent this $200.

• 40:40Speaker 00

  I don't want to lose that $200. That's the like classic like sunk cost fallacy. That you already spent the money, you know, the money's already gone. Now you just go to which one's going to bring you more happiness.

• 40:48Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 40:48Speaker 00

  So poker just teaches you, I mean, like a lot of, you know, lines of thinking like that are really beneficial and.

• 40:54Shaan Puri?

  In poker, you might say, I've already put a hundred dollars into this pot. Now they're betting 300. You know, I already put in 100. Maybe I should just do the rest, but that's the sunk cost there.

• 41:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:04Shaan Puri?

  On the other side, you have for EV, if you're wanting to learn a little bit more about this, there's a basic formula for EV, which is essentially you take the result you think you'll get if the thing happens, times the probability it might happen.

• 41:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:15Shaan Puri?

  So, you know, your expected value of the lottery is pretty low. It's a huge prize, but the probability of you winning is super, super low. Whereas, you know, the expected value of something that might be higher chance of happening is going to be a lot higher. And you want to calculate, am I making positive EV decisions or negative EV decisions based on the cost it takes you to make the bet?

• 41:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'll even like when I'm booking flights now, so like this used to be such a stressful thing where when I first started, we're all like, oh, like this round trip flight is, you know, a thousand bucks like abroad. And I want to leave on this date, but if I make the final table, I'm have to miss this and you know, like pay another thousand dollars was like, okay, the chances of that happening are like 5%. So, you know, I just multiply, you know, a thousand by 5%. And you know, that $50 is the cost of me booking this flight, the day I want to leave like,

• 42:06Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 42:06Speaker 00

  Okay, $50, that doesn't sound that bad.

• 42:08Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 42:08Speaker 00

  So now, you know, just think of like, you know, these expenses that I might have to cancel and lose as what is the EV that it actually costs me because if I'm in this situation a hundred times, I'm only going to have to cancel that flight five times.

• 42:21Shaan Puri?

  Right. I might have this with a job offer where you get stock options and they say, great, you know, here's what the stock options are worth today. But it's privately valued company. So it's not like you can go sell it. So you basically say, all right, I give this a 10% chance of becoming a hundred million dollar company. Well, if that's the case, then this is worth $10 million today, right? The value of the company today is worth that. And then you can price your shares accordingly. So it lets you assign value to things that seem different, a chance of occurring, which is important.

• 42:45Speaker 00

  So there's two other things that poker has taught me that I think are super important that everybody should learn. This one drives me nuts in the startup world, actually. It's not being results orientated. I shouldn't say startup world, but I should say business world because I see a lot of, maybe they mean the term in a different way, but I see a lot of, you know, business articles talking about being results orientated and that being a good thing.

• 43:08Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 43:08Speaker 00

  Whereas I strongly believe that's a bad thing and you should not be results orientated. And let me explain what I mean by that. You can make a bad investment in a company and it can end up making money. And you could go on to make nine investments in good companies and lose money. It's just because there's a lot of variance. Let's use the heads or tails example, just the weighted coin. It's 55 on the head side, 45 on the tail side. We flip it 10 times, it ends up being seven times tails. Does that mean you were dumb or you were wrong for choosing heads? No, it's just short term luck. If you flip that coin. You know, a million times it's gonna end up being fifty five, forty five.

• 43:47Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 43:47Speaker 00

  So someone who's results orientated is gonna say, oh, why did I pick tails? Like, you know, like that was dumb. So I hear people say this, you know, when it comes to like, oh, why did I date this person? Why did I choose this job? Why did I go on this trip? Because like something bad happened. But again, they're being results orientated because some fluke thing happened where the percentages were low.

• 44:09Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 44:09Speaker 00

  Or maybe, you know, the opposite, that maybe the percentage of something bad happening was like eighty percent. But the twenty percent that something good happens, the gain you get out of it is so big that it's worth, you know, just taking that risk.

• 44:21Shaan Puri?

  It's the ability to separate analyzing the decision you made versus analyzing the outcome that happened.

• 44:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. So like.

• 44:27Shaan Puri?

  In poker, you analyze the decision. That's where you need to, if you wanna get good, you analyze the decisions and you sort of ignore outcomes to an extent. Because the outcomes have this huge degree of variance.

• 44:37Speaker 00

  Yes, I'll see some people, you know, even in startups and stuff, like really smart people, but just have this kind of flaws in the way they they think about that. And, you know, whether it's a Facebook ad or whatever, just something that led to some success. And they're just like so hundred percent that this was the way and they're just, so, you know, the third part was sample size, just that you need to be sample size aware. Like, it's okay to be like, okay, I did this thing and it worked, but, you know, I don't have a large enough sample size. I, my confidence in this being their answer should be low. Like, it's better than nothing, so I'll go with it. But, you know, and as your sample size grows, you have more and more confidence in, you know, that method, that direction, that ad or whatever it is you're doing. It's not, I don't hear it being taught, you know, like, it's one of the most important things, I think, like being able to make logical decisions.

• 45:22Speaker 00

  That's arguably one of the most important things in life.

• 45:24Shaan Puri?

  Right. What you're saying is that there's a set of frameworks around making better decisions and using logic, where logic combines with math and probabilities. And poker obviously teaches you that the hard way, because if you don't know it, you're gonna lose a lot of money.

• 45:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. So the cool thing with poker is that you get to go through, you know, thousands of sample size in like a very short period. So, you know, within a couple of years, you know, you will go through the financial experience of someone's entire life.

• 45:48Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 45:49Speaker 00

  Which is really valuable, you know, teaches you a lot.

• 45:51Shaan Puri?

  Fantastic. And so if people want to follow you, get a hold of you. Reach out to you. Where should they connect with you?

• 45:57Speaker 00

  Uh, yes, you can find me on Twitter. It's at Faraz Jaka. That's F A R A Z J A K A. I'm also on Instagram at Faraz Jaka, or you could go to my website, farazjaka.com. I have some like blog posts on there, but it's more just kind of like evergreen content. I'm not updating it regularly, but there's like a contact me page and some, some stuff about me, some articles. My meditation blog is on there, which people find pretty interesting. So yeah, check it out.

• 46:19Shaan Puri?

  And I can attest, you know, when Faraz is making a run in a tournament, he'll post like, "Hey, tomorrow is the final day. I got this many chips."

• 46:26Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 46:27Shaan Puri?

  "Follow me at 2:00 PM. It starts and let's see if we win." And those are a lot of fun. We, you know, I have it on my second screen at work often where I'm following the progress and seeing if you can take it down. Awesome. Uh, thanks for coming, man. This has been awesome.