[00:00:00] Speaker A: What does it really take to build something extraordinary? Behind every thriving business is a powerful mix of grit, creativity, risk, and the relentless drive to keep going when others would stop.
Welcome to the Next Venture alliance show, the podcast where entrepreneurs, innovators and trusted advisors come together to uncover the stories and strategies behind remarkable ventures with your host, Oliver Kotelnikov. Whether you're building, buying, scaling, or selling, this is your space to learn, gain, get inspired, and prepare for your next venture.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: All right, and we're live.
Good morning. Glad to have you with us today for the next Venture alliance show. My name is Oliver Kotelnikov. I am an entrepreneur, a storyteller, mergers and acquisitions advisor, and a business and commercial real estate broker. On the show, we talk with founders, business owners, self starters, industry leaders, and trusted advisors who support them. Together, we explore both strategic and human sides of entrepreneurship. Today's guest is a longtime friend and someone I consider to be a foundational member of the Seattle underground poker scene.
Is the leader and organizer of one of the longest continuously running private poker games in the region, known among friends as the Monday Night Poker League. He also operates a company called Raised Events, a non profit venture that runs poker tournaments benefiting countless Puget Sound charities. And he's a real estate broker at Keller Williams.
You know, as an entrepreneur, I've always seen strong strategic parallels between business and poker. And so there's no one to. No one to better unpack all of those than our guest here today, Stevie. Good to have you on the show, my friend.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: Thanks for having me. It's good to be here.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: Appreciate you joining. So I've been looking forward to this conversation just because we've obviously spent a good amount of time in our life playing poker and we've also had or maybe spent more time talking about poker.
So just think of this as a recap of the last 20 years of friendship, poker and business and life as a, as a jumping off point.
I think the whole phenomenon of the poker boom, you know, is probably where things began. I mean, you and I met over poker and kind of a year I met at that time and at the table and then, and then, you know, the friendship followed.
But when I think of the poker boom, I think of three things. To me, the big three events are Chris Moneymaker, winning the main event, the release of rounders, and obviously the birth of the Monday Night Poker League.
How would you rank those three in the.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I think, I think some of the online players might say that Black Friday was a big deal where their accounts got locked out. But yeah, I Think Monday night Poker league probably up there with some of the biggest poker movements in the last 25 years. Yeah, I mean, it's got to be up there.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: It's, it's. I mean, I listed those three and so, you know, in no particular order. Right, right. We'll just say Monday night poker is up there.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: Yeah, it is interesting. You know, the poker boom, you know, the game of, let's say, 200 years kind of, I mean it's always been there just, you know, existing more or less on the margins and then something happens and it blows up.
2000, early 2000s, 2003, I think is when money maker won the event. The regular guy, every man wins, you know, what was it, seven, eight figures, you know, unheard of amount of money. And then what happens? And I mean, what do you remember about that time and kind of the beginning of poker?
[00:03:58] Speaker A: I think it was a beacon of hope to the recreational player. The, you know, playing against Sammy Farha who's just old school, you know, poker.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: You know, figure out hanging out of his mouth.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I mean, some of the bluffs getting through back before they had, you know, the card readers, where they had the little camera and the commentary, I mean, it was, you know, it just saw that, like, hey, I know how to play poker. Which is sort of like we all learned to play at some point. Playing with friends, sitting around a table, playing five card draw, maybe not even sure what beats what, but like just everyone's like, do you know how to play poker? Like, yeah, I know how to play poker. At least like most guys, you know, like, I don't want to, you know, sounds sexist, but it was, it's very. Still to this day. It's very male dominated. Although that's changing rapidly, which is great. But yeah, I think that that was a door that opened a million home games, you know, and it became televised.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: Right. I mean, there's one of those events that became televised and people saw like ESPN started trans.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: Yeah, there was a big thing every.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: Year they, where people saw guys that. And you know, people that they play in home games with all of a sudden on television, you know, bluffing the pros or trying to bluff them or being arrogant or, you know, getting, getting doom zoomed and you know, all these.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: Well, that was, that was the running joke for me was you can look like me and still get on espn. You know, like that was like, oh.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: Man, you can have a voice for radio and still end up on espn.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. You don't have to be peak Male athleticism to, you know, to get on there and get some attention. Like, you know, it's a wide range of folks that sit at the poker.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: Table, and it's as wide a range as you can imagine. Right. You know, the. You look at poker, like every table, every game will have probably the widest range of characters for any single one activity. Like the variance. Right. Between the people at the table. I mean, you've got.
You'll have one of each, and they'll all clash, connect over poker, right?
[00:06:16] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
The diversity at a poker table is just a microcosm of global diversity, because everybody likes to play games, everybody likes to win. Everybody likes the rush of winning. Everybody likes the camaraderie.
And you also don't get that at every poker table. It requires navigating times when you're extremely uncomfortable. And that discomfort is when the growth happens in your poker game is going, oh, man, I went to the World Series and I drew a table of all these European pros, and there's a whole stigma on European pros versus versus known Americans versus sitting at a table going, oh, this is great. None of these guys are known. They're not on some Hinden mob or something like that. And it changes how we play, how we react and respond.
Yeah.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: You know, poker becomes big. Everybody's playing. People, you know, have home games. And that was a big thing. Right. There were these random. Random. But just, you know, almost everybody had a home game at one point.
You know, how does the more organized version of the game that exists today? How did that start? I mean, who was there? How did it come together?
[00:07:31] Speaker A: The good question, you know, like, you're talking about our existing game.
[00:07:36] Speaker B: Are your game. Yeah. So, you know, yeah, this was a.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: Game I was in. I was in a sales position, and one of the guys in my office was like, hey, do you play poker? And, like, it's just like. Like I talked about earlier, every guy was like, oh, yeah, of course. Male ego will almost not let you say no to that question, because at some point, you've played, got invited to a game, started playing. It was. It was every Monday night, which was how the whole thing came about. And I was like, okay, this is a cool game. It took place at a cool spot in Seattle, and it was this hodgepodge of characters, and it had some mild success. But what I ended up doing was just loving the social aspect of it, the financial. It wasn't a huge financial risk at the time. It wasn't like I wasn't a huge game.
[00:08:25] Speaker B: What Was the tournament buying like the first six o' clock game?
[00:08:28] Speaker A: The very first time I played it was 40 bucks.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: 40 bucks?
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Yeah, 40 bucks.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: Probably not.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: Then it went to 100. Yeah. And the structure changed. But what it did was I was like, okay, like I can do something with this. It played into what I love to do a little bit. So I started educating myself, reading books, trying to figure out what type of poker educational tools were available at the time, which wasn't a ton back then. It was usually books. There was very little on the Internet at 2004, 2005 when I started.
[00:09:06] Speaker B: My system or what is the super.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: Yeah, super system, which is now pretty much regarded as very outdated. They have the crazy thing now have they've, you know, there's you know, these GTO wizards and all these different platforms where you become a student of the game and even the best of students.
This is not chess. There's not perfect strategy, you know. But you do see a lot of crossover from chess because of the strategy and how to play in different situations based on the people your position, based on all of these things. And I got better at it. And then what ended up happening is I was like, oh, you know what this game needs? Like they need some better cards, they need some better chips, like. And I took in a.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Well in the system, the organization of it too, right, because people know how to play a hand but they don't understand kind of blind structures, the timing of them, you know, taking breaks, blinds going up.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: Yeah, we're talking about, yeah, we're talking specifically, I think for everyone. We're talking specifically about tournament poker, which is, which is a timed event. You know, cash games are a different beast and we can talk about those as well. But this was like, you know, just.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: Started out tournament, right?
[00:10:18] Speaker A: I mean, yeah, yeah, you're sitting there for five, six hours on a, on a Monday night playing these quick tournaments. Like I say quick now because if you look at the World Series event of World Series Poker, those are multi day events for most of those tournaments, you know. Yeah, that's really grown. But this is just almost like a club, you know. And so we've sort of would tweak it a little bit here, a little bit there and it just grew. And I didn't run the game, but what ended up happening, but I was tying it into is I was the guy that brought better cards, better chips. And then when the guy who, a buddy of mine, Cody, when he left to open his restaurant up north, he couldn't be a part of it anymore.
They were just, they were just like, well, you're in charge now. And like I didn't ask to be, but that was the guy who brought better chips and better cars. And I was kind of like this.
[00:11:09] Speaker B: And better bluffs. You brought better chips, better cards, better bluffs.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Oh man. And I was just sort of this, I've always been this, I guess, gatherer of people, like by, by how I am, how I'm wired and you know, fairly non confrontational and the type of person who can like negotiate all the different personalities because there's a lot, there's emotions with these things, you know, like how do we, how do we kick out this person for being a total jerk? And like how do we dip? How do we diplomatically uninvite them? You know, and you're a tournament director or like someone who's just running a game like that, it's kind of more difficult to win because you can't solely focus on poker. You're focusing on payouts, you're focusing on clock and appeasing this person's complaint and like making a ruling. And you know, you're never 100% just sitting at the table. You're man, you're the ultimate diplomat.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: And I've seen you, I've seen you wear those multiple hats and you know, and then there's, you know, there's drinks in the mix and, and so when there's egos and there's, you know, you have money at stake and, and, and, and it can get, it can get hectic. But I, you know, I remember speaking of diplomacy, the first interaction that you and I had and then, you know, you were already sort of more or less the, the deputy commander, you know, or the leader of the game. And I was so this, so this place in Aurora.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:40] Speaker B: Where that I'd gone in on occasion to shoot some pool and I heard about this poker game they said, you know, they play Monday.
I said, you know, okay, I'll, you know, I come back Monday and I see this, you know, this is sort of table in the corner and this kind of a dingy bar. There's some people hovered over the felt going on over there. And then you come over the bar and you know, okay, it's a poker table. I said, hey, can I play?
And then, and then you start bombarding me with questions. And I think every answer I gave you, you liked me less and less until like, until the bartender that we both know came over was like, Stevie, you just stand down dealing in.
[00:13:16] Speaker A: It's okay. Well, it's. What's funny.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: You were a pretty harsh gatekeeper, you know.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: Yeah, very much so.
[00:13:22] Speaker B: We.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: The game was sort of a little bit. I would say, a little bit getting out of hand where, like, people saw, you know, you out in the open at a bar, which, you know, it's not necessarily illegal to play poker in a bar, but there are some things that you don't want to necessarily draw attention to. You don't want to let anybody in. And so what ended up happening is we got very careful about who we let in. We're like, oh, this is a. This is a private game. And, like, when people would ask, we would get to the point where we're like, oh, it's just a league. We play for points and weak thing.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Where we already had our players.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: We don't have any openings. And I'll give me your name and your email, because email was big back then. Give me your name or email. I'll let you know when the league starts over again in some date that.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: So you had this formal statement prepared for.
[00:14:12] Speaker A: Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were just like. And it also kind of give it some exclusivity. So I was like, oh, yeah, Who. Who are you? Okay, what do you do? And then, like, it finally came, and you're like, oh, yeah, I. I own a bakery. And I was like, oh, what baker? And then we, like. I was like, oh, like, I'm gonna.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: Give it the secret knock over and over again. And it's the wrong kn.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: Yeah, we have laughed about that because it was just like. I was like, okay, who's this guy? Because I mean, no offense, is like, a guy who looks like you could easily work for the gaming department, you know, so, you know, I'm just like, well, who is this guy who's just trying to just get into our game Bakery.
[00:14:52] Speaker B: He's over here playing pool. Like, the story doesn't make sense.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: It turns out you were regular. And once our friend was like, just, yeah, okay, cool. If our friend says you're cool, you're cool. That ended up being just like, every Monday for, like, years of our life. And, like, you know, life stories, parallels, hanging out, like, all kinds of stuff, you know, come out of that.
[00:15:14] Speaker B: So, I mean, at that point, you know, you are kind of. Whether you liked it or not, you're the informal leader of this game. You bring the chips, people look at you, people text you. You text people. Because remember, you sent out that text every.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: Every Monday. Yeah.
[00:15:27] Speaker B: So years of people see you as at least the organizer, right?
[00:15:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: And to me, I mean, I said it in the beginning, and I've always thought that chess, too, but poker specifically has a lot of parallels to. To life, but also business and entrepreneurship. But then I've, you know, over the years, what I've seen from poker and even you running this game, I mean, to me, it's running an organization, you're running a venture, but it's such a cast of characters and it's so volatile that it's running. You're managing. You're running a rock band, you're managing Motley Crue on tour, or you're, you know, you're running a. A strip club or something. Like, it's kind of one of those types of business. Like, I mean, how do you.
How do you run that? And you mentioned you talked a little bit, but like, just the cast of characters that come to the tables.
[00:16:20] Speaker A: Well, I think the way that I approached it was just like how I approached things in my sales career. You get all kinds of different people that you are working with, and you have to negotiate every single type of personality. Aggressive personalities, passive personalities, people from different cultures, men, women. You have to negotiate or navigate all of these different personality types that all sit around a table and at least try to get along. On some levels of poker, you can. You can also be the total introvert. You could just sit there and do nothing.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: And there is that player, too, right? And we've seen.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: And I am. I have just in my life, and I don't know, I've always given people the benefit of the doubt, second chances.
And I've always. I think I've always been some type of a bridge builder. You know, I don't like. I don't like to. I don't like to blow up bridges, destroy friendships. And some people are just really good at that. And they run terrible poker games. You know, they're just toxic personalities. I just have always been somebody. I think that whether you like me or not, that I'm pretty easy to get along with. Even if we've had disagreements and arguments and we've had to bury the hatchet on something.
Like, I'm pretty good at doing that. Putting our disagreements behind which, you know, you have to with poker, because, you know, it's. It is.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: Well, and you had to prove it over the years with so many, because the cat. That's a rotating door of characters, right? I mean, at this point, the game has grown, changed venues, people have come and gone. It's not the same people.
[00:18:04] Speaker A: And you can't keep something going for that long with just allowing one personality type, you know, going, hey, we're only. And then this was in a day where I knew of poker leagues and up until recently that would not allow women. You know, it was a very sexist thing and it was never an issue for us. But there's games around Seattle that up until recently just finally started allowing women. And I'm like, holy cow.
[00:18:32] Speaker B: Like, you know, it's very progressive of them.
[00:18:35] Speaker A: Wow. I know. Like, what's next? Are they gonna let them vote? I mean, right.
[00:18:40] Speaker B: There is a gender divide where women play differently and they respond differently. There are kind of table dynamics that. That enter it.
[00:18:49] Speaker A: But I will tell you, I look at it like sales. Sales career. Some of the best sales professionals that I ever worked with were women because they interact. I mean, again, it sounds sexist, but they just interact differently. They're wired differently. And now to this day, some of the best poker players I know are women.
And they know how, you know, they're students of the game. They know how to navigate table to table. They know how to table talk or be quiet. Like, the ability to shift gears as a player is one of the most important things. And so the fact that it took until recently for some of these games to even allow women, like, just show the inherent sexism that was attached to this game. Luckily, I was never in any of those. You know, like, if you're cool, like, we have always had a. Our one hard and fast rule is no A holes, you know, like, that was it like. And some of those fell through the cracks and we're like, should we keep allowing this person? And like, well, they're not that bad, but like, you know, like, it's just. You just can't be like, abusive to the players. And so, like, we've always just been like, if you like, are just cool enough, you're. You're probably okay. So.
[00:20:00] Speaker B: And I think, you know, the emotional intelligence factor which women bring in spades and men don't always have, you know.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:08] Speaker B: Life or at the tables. Like, if you can manage in and kind of maintain perspective through the swings of life and poker, that's half of it, right? Or more than half of it.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: Right.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: You know, how many bad plays results of bad kind of emotional decisions. Nothing to do with the hand, you.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: Know, so it's the tilt factor, man. And like, they're part of, you know, how a lot of people play. They play their game by how much they can get under your skin and angle situation.
[00:20:38] Speaker B: And there's that character for sure out there. It's one of them. But you know, just to give an example, I think in an overview of who would, you know, what a poker cast might look like A typical. So you ran six. We ran Monday night at one point had a six o' clock game and a nine o' clock game.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: Yeah, Monday night, yeah, the game used to start at 9. And then what happened was there were some people that wanted to play earlier. So you'd have like called the Turbo. So you'd go between like 6 and 8:45, so the 9 o' clock could start. And it was like. And sometimes we. People would play both and it was like. I mean, it was a pretty brief. It was a brief time. But yeah, we had two tournaments in one night.
[00:21:17] Speaker B: This is like Monday, where Tuesday is the next day and people have to go to work. And so again, that's not so, you.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: Know, what happened was this is part of the evolution of this, that our buddy who started this game, his wife was a bartender and this was really a.
A retail industry night. When I say retail, I mean a lot of restaurant workers.
[00:21:38] Speaker B: And that's why it's Monday.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: There were some sales. He was a slow night and it was a slow night at the bar.
What if. What if we have a. What if we have a poker night? Because a lot of servers, bartenders, cooks, things like that, they often have Tuesday offer, don't have to be in late. And then it just, it's a really weird night to have a poker night. Most people who have a poker game at their house are going to have a Friday or Saturday.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: Like, you know, that's when most people hold those types of events. Right? But here we got three tables of.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: Degenerates going on a Monday night, you.
[00:22:14] Speaker B: Know, yeah, it's 30 at night and we're like in the first round of blinds, you know, on a Monday.
And, and so, okay, clearly, so not. This is not your typical office crowd.
There are lots of business owners, lots of entrepreneurs.
[00:22:29] Speaker A: I will say not yet. But the game, as you get older, as long as the game has traction, it's going to evolve into whomever's willing to play at whenever they're willing to play.
[00:22:42] Speaker B: Right. And whoever can sustain years of poker because it does wear on you, right. If you run hard, which, you know, which we. Again, this is what you see from the perspective of time. People have come and gone, you know, and we've lost some people and we've had some new, new faces and some people just disappear. And then you Come back or you see them somewhere else, you know, completely changed or doing something different. I mean, that's all part of kind of this deal. But, you know, like, I remember Monday night, you'd have people coming in on Monday. Again, typical workday for people. People are coming off of golf courses, they're coming off of the day on the lake, they're coming from racetracks, they're coming. It's like these are people that make their own schedule. They're coming from a ball game because they, they don't have to be anywhere tomorrow for some reason on a Tuesday, like. But poker attracts this type of a crowd.
[00:23:39] Speaker A: Oh, that's a really, that's a really good question. It's that, it's that anybody can play. You can sit down with a very basic knowledge. And Doyle Brunson said it best when he said, you know, it takes minutes to learn in a lifetime master. It's like anyone who's willing to pony up, you know, 50, 100 bucks, bring in a few hundred bucks, whatever it is. It was kind of that game, you know, like you could show up with a few hundred bucks and not put yourself into financial ruins. It was approachable for most people and it became this.
I almost like a social experiment like you like for me. And I said this in the early days. I love playing poker and I love winning because I'm competitive. But I loved the cast of characters. Like I. Even the ones I didn't like, I know, like I love.
[00:24:31] Speaker B: We can name them and rattle off, right? We're not going to. But I mean there's.
[00:24:34] Speaker A: Yeah, there were people. I'm like, oh, this person drives me crazy.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: Film. You could walk in there and film it and do.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: Oh, you could make a television show that would, that would last years if off of, off of a good poker game. If you just followed the characters, it's wild.
I can throw you under the bus too because you were the anomaly of that game because you would play. And like my question to be to you would be why did you come play when you had to be at the bakery at 5am or whatever time you had to be. You had some tired Tuesdays, bro.
[00:25:09] Speaker B: I did. I eventually learned to take Tuesdays off. But I'll tell you why I think it is and that's what attracted me.
You don't think it's the approachability or the ability to afford the game.
I think community of like minded individuals starts hitting closer. But it's also people who are wired for a higher risk tolerance and on themselves right in Anything they do in life. So they're looking for that type of an activity. They're looking for some level of. Kind of a large variance, right. Something that's not completely sort of contained by rules and can have large swings because, you know, it's a dopamine hit and it's a drug. But I think people that are.
That are entrepreneurially minded are already wired that way, and so they're already wired that way. That's why they like poker. It's not that they're poker players, and that's why they go to business, I think.
But I think.
[00:26:06] Speaker A: I think the beauty of what you're talking about is what kept it going too. But what I was saying is the approachability is that you first have to get bodies in the seats, conduct the experiment. Because if I said, hey, we're Gonna set up 10 chess boards, and you're gonna be. And you're gonna be sitting there with some pretty good chess players.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: I'll do a sign. Let's do it. Chess boards, we'll do 10.
[00:26:34] Speaker A: It's gonna be. It's gonna be a lot harder to fill those seats because someone's gonna be like, oh, like, I need to know that game. I need to know strategy. Like, with poker, like, you really have to have a basic understanding of the game to be willing to, like you said, bet on yourself and go, I can play. And I have seen people who are not good and they come over and over and over again. They would often be referred to as the fish of the game. Those who, you know, don't really know how to navigate the nuance.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: Just. Just for context, Stevie, these are fish, you know, the other end. The rest of us are known as degenerates. So we're not. No one's that much higher, right?
[00:27:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Because I would not consider myself a shark, necessarily, but more of a degenerate. Like, I play a lot. I haven't lost a significant amount of money that would put me into any type of, you know, support groups or anything like that. But, like, I've been. Man, I've been able to manage a successful bankroll. But, like, yeah, there's some sharks, I would say, that are really high level, high IQ players. But, like, yeah, I'm in the degenerate category, and I'm pretty good.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: I mean, okay, so what's a bankroll? You throw that term out there. What does that mean? Like, in the poker world, managing a bankroll.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: Yeah. And I don't think everybody does this, but there's even software that Helps you manage your bankroll by tracking your wins and losses. And I know people who are religious about it. I used to do that.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: But poker players, what is bankroll?
[00:27:57] Speaker A: Yeah, it's just the amount of money that you have set aside to play poker.
And typically, I would say an average poker player has a bankroll that they're comfortable with. And not everybody manages like, you know, a safe at home with $10,000 in it. Sometimes it's their bank account, but they're going to pull out what they can lose. You know. Now we have had some folks sitting there, you know, are.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: Who have exceeded that limit.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: I'll mention our buddy Gabe, who's no longer with us. You know, I still laugh when I think about him sitting down saying, I need to win tonight so I can pay rent. And he wasn't joking. And so I'm like, well, so not everybody practices the same financial responsibility at the poker table.
I've never gone so deep in a game where I'm like, wow, I am at risk of not paying my mortgage.
I also managed to play this game while keeping my marriage fairly safe.
I don't dip into our shared money. And so there's never been like, hey, honey, I need, I need to take a thousand dollars out. Like, there's just my wife. There's just no way, no way. So, like, you know, man, you know, separate.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: And for that you need to manage it so it doesn't run out. Because if you run out, you're not going to go into the. So that's the poker players dilemma, right? Is do you have a bankroll that you can consistently maintain, like, you know, the rounders, like, he lost his bankroll, right?
[00:29:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:34] Speaker B: Nothing to get, nothing to make up ground with. So.
[00:29:39] Speaker A: Well, and you see that now that there are, there's at least better platforms because of technology. There are apps, there are training sites that you could subscribe to and they will tell you, if you have this for a bankroll, you shouldn't be risking this much in a tournament or you should only risk this much at a cash game. And they sort of become a little bit of, not only educational on playing the game and understanding the game on a deeper level, but understanding that like, you know, if you've got, if you've got a bankroll, let's just use an average player of. Back in the day, if you have a bankroll of $1,000, which not that much money in today's, but like for some of those players, about.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: Right. For those days, I mean, you had.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: $1,000 you shouldn't go sit down at a $500 buying game and risk half of your bankroll either on a cash game or on a tournament. Now, most of them probably would, but like, learning financial aspects of this game is really important too, because you're, you're never going to.
Shouldn't say never, but the chances are very low of you having a really big breakout game like at the World Series of Poker or something like that, and becoming a pro when you poorly manage your bankroll, you know, and that's.
[00:30:59] Speaker B: Probably part of the evolution of the game, right? I mean, along with kind of the skills. Right. Because when the game first started, I mean, you can speak to this. I mean, the objectively, the skill level and the conceptual understanding of the game, it was more of a gambler lens, right? There was some awareness of math and statistics and, and sort of that, that there was some strategy. But it was, it was kind of a. It was the gambler's paradigm, right. And then kind of the Internet comes along. People see a lot more hands, a lot more books start being written, and it slowly starts to transition into, into a game of strategy, into a game of managing bankrolls, managing odds, sitting down at the right table, playing to your strengths, not playing in games that you're not good at, you know, you know, being rested, doing yoga, like all that stuff rolls in. But I mean, when it first started, you had half a table of people at Monday Night Poker who were either calling or moving all in. They had two gears.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:58] Speaker B: And then.
[00:31:59] Speaker A: Well, and they were, they were. And I can think about mistakes that I made in my early days before reading book is that like, you know, you start to understand how much would you bet? This is just an example of poker. If you've ever played Texas hold' em at a tournament, at a full ring game, you know, you would sit there and you'd go, okay, well, I have this many chips in front of me. It calculates to this many blinds.
And how much am I gonna bet here? How much am I gonna bet pre flop? How much am I gonna bet? It was starting to learn about betting patterns and the percentages you're gonna bet based on certain, certain things. And then it wasn't until years of playing, I was like, well, I was learning about putting your opponents on hand ranges. I'm like, oh, I just started thinking.
[00:32:44] Speaker B: About what other people, what other people have, right? That whole idea of I gotta think about what's, you know, and you're dealing with things like position.
[00:32:53] Speaker A: No, it was back in the Day it was like, you look, you look down at aces and you're just like, oh, you know, it's a different game now for sure.
[00:33:01] Speaker B: I mean, more advanced sort of concept that used to be advanced that, that are now considered standard. If you don't understand bet sizing or, you know, pot odds or your position in, in a hand you're probably not going to last very long at, at any game. Whereas before, this was groundbreaking stuff, right? And there was a lot more of like falling in love with hands. Oh, this is my favorite hand.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: Oh my God. All the time.
[00:33:27] Speaker B: I mean, how much of that was going up? Why'd you play?
[00:33:29] Speaker A: I never did that. I heard people say if their favorite hands. I was like, pre flop is aces because I like math, you know? You know, and I was like, and I was like, you know, no offense to any of our friends.
Why do you like team three, like.
[00:33:45] Speaker B: The nine, six off some suited look gap or something, you know.
[00:33:51] Speaker A: Yeah. And you play them and I know I, I, dude, we have a good friend who, who likes, you know, I mean, I know, yeah, we can go.
[00:33:58] Speaker B: On, but there's less, less of it.
[00:34:01] Speaker A: It's just not mathematically and I know it's there. This is the other thing is that I'm not a superstitious person. I believe in mathematical crazy improbabilities. You know, like somebody wins the Powerball out there, it's crazy odds. But you know, like, yeah, there's luck there. Right. But like, as far as luck goes. But if people fall in love with these crazy hands and they're like, I never fold this, I'm like, well like, yeah, you got to work on your game.
[00:34:26] Speaker B: You got to reassess that setting.
[00:34:28] Speaker A: Yeah, that's just not how math works.
[00:34:31] Speaker B: So you mentioned game theory. There's things like game theory, optimal sort of moves at the table. What does it mean even? What does game theory mean and what is it trying to message?
[00:34:41] Speaker A: Well, what it's, you know, like ultimately is that like the next, the next level of play for, for these people who want to become good at this and like maybe explore taking their game outside of somebody's basement or outside of a bar. And some people are fine playing. They're like, you know what? I play in my bar league and I'm fine with that. They don't pick up a book, they don't go to a website. But game theory optimized optimal or gto is you are looking at all of the information that has been put together since the early days of poker and said, you Know, like, if you ever look at a hand chart, it just looks like boxes on a spreadsheet. And now there are hand charts for different situations. What are the highest ranking hands here? And then what do you do?
Do you call fold, do you raise?
And people are studying these situations almost to memorize them. And what it's doing is it's giving them the best mathematical edge in a situation that still has an element of what we would call luck or an improbability where, like, you're going to use all of that stuff and it's going to advance your game, because if you're on the right side of math, you're generally going to be more successful than those who just play. A gut feeling. Or like, I just read people and there's some. There's some of that and analyzing table talk and all this, but there will always be the guy who shouldn't be in a hand and catches a one outer or a four outer against someone who's like, well, I got my money in good. And, you know, Right.
[00:36:19] Speaker B: Which is a bitter pill to swallow. But the lesson there is, if you were 70, 30, you're gonna win that hand seven times out of 10, and you need to do the same thing. And that's kind of where the pros come in. It doesn't matter what happened this hand.
[00:36:31] Speaker A: And you know what?
[00:36:33] Speaker B: Right.
[00:36:34] Speaker A: What are the best life lessons for me and came out of poker? And that is just how do I respond to that situation where I'm on the losing side of it?
[00:36:48] Speaker B: Someone shouldn't have been there. They flip their hands. You're like, what were you doing in that hand?
[00:36:52] Speaker A: I was a big sore loser. And like, not like, mean about it, but just like, you know, like, I was never the guy that would yell at someone. I would never yell at a dealer. I would never yell at another player. I would never call somebody stupid. I would never.
But I would just be like, you know, like, what are you doing?
[00:37:08] Speaker B: And then you'd give him a peace of mind, your mind, and you let them know.
[00:37:12] Speaker A: Totally. And so. But what changed is now. It's just now, once you see a lot of. A lot of hands, it's called years and years of hands and whatever you want to call that. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, whatever hands, you've seen it all, or at least seen enough of it, where you're like, even the moments where. Where in poker, we're like, oh, my gosh, somebody. Somebody sucked out a river card, royal flush against us. I mean, you know, whatever. Or whatever the situation Is I'm just using that as the most extreme example. But you. I can quickly come off of that now and just be like, oh, man. And I can say, nice hand. And I can walk away and go, man, that's poker. I did not used to. That's poker guy.
[00:37:58] Speaker B: Yeah. That's a new year for you.
[00:38:00] Speaker A: Highly competitive.
[00:38:01] Speaker B: And that's kind of growth.
[00:38:02] Speaker A: It just trying to figure out how to do that in my life as a dad, where I'm like, come off the.
You know, but it helps a little bit. It helps to go, okay, you know, like, okay, let's not overreact to the situation. And it has helped me. So I would say in my daily life, there are a lot of things that spill over from poker, and that happens to be one of those things that adapt to quickly to the things that are out of your control, you know, and what a huge lesson for a lot of people, because I think a lot of people just.
They get angry.
[00:38:36] Speaker B: And that's a direct correlation between poker life and business, right? You got to.
[00:38:42] Speaker A: Oh, man.
[00:38:43] Speaker B: You know, there are things you can and can't control, and there's. And there's unpredictability and uncertainty in life. Kind of like in poker, right? You can start the day and everything can be stacked up, and then something happens, right? The day catches the one outer. Your day just caught a one outer. And it went to shit so totally.
[00:39:03] Speaker A: And we've had that because we have both chosen a path where we don't clock in, clock out, and we don't go to an office nine to five every day. And because we're wired differently, we see that there is a life that we like better, even though it's higher risk and there's some uncertainty. But. But, but we choose.
[00:39:31] Speaker B: The thing is, you own the risk and the reward. That's it.
[00:39:34] Speaker A: And we both have lost deals. We both have been like, you know, just recently in some home sales where I'm like, oh, this is a done deal. We've. We've got this offer, and then we just go, well, that fell apart, and then we're back on the market.
[00:39:49] Speaker B: Until it actually is done. Have you.
[00:39:51] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's. It's like. It's like. It's like in poker when you. When you're playing poker and you flop the nuts, whether, like you flop a straight, you know, and that's for, I hope, everyone who's more cards to come. Yeah, you're like, ship it. Give me the chips. And then all of a sudden, bam, you're Sitting at the bar, drowning your sorrows because you're like, well, I, I didn't see the flush there.
It's on a, a different scale.
But learn, but the skill of learning to accept it and go, okay, so how do I do this? You know what I do? I'll, I'm gonna, I'm gonna study a little more and I'll be back next Monday with another few hundred bucks or.
[00:40:30] Speaker B: Whatever again when, I mean, I have this.
[00:40:35] Speaker A: It's very unfair. Life is unfair.
Understanding that it's not fair. Oh, it's very unfair.
[00:40:41] Speaker B: You know, when people come up to me and be like, you know, I had kings and, you know, you called me with deuces and caught a set. Can you believe it? I'm like, yeah, yeah, I can. It happens like 12% of the time.
[00:40:55] Speaker A: What I have got in the habit of doing. And it's just a little thing. And I don't even know if it's something I started or if it's something that I picked up somewhere along the way, is that when these things happen or when something, when I historically haven't responded well to chaos. And when you have a 10 year old daughter, there's going to be a certain amount of chaos in your life. As I know you have daughters, there's a certain amount of chaos.
You choose how to respond. But one of the things, it's just a quick thing that I do and sometimes it happens after I lose it a little bit, but I take a step back my life and like, it's really hard to get so frustrated at something that doesn't really affect your life dramatically. I just take a step back and I say, how bad is it? That's kind of one of my things that sort of resets me and it helps me in, you know, and then just go, okay, well, how bad is it?
How bad is it?
[00:41:53] Speaker B: And you know, at the poker table, I mean, this is really hard to do after you lose a big hand.
But you know, in the tournament or especially in a cash game, you can, you can walk away and go take a breath, right? And not. And then skip 10 hands before your return. It's hard to do because you want immediate revenge.
[00:42:13] Speaker A: But I am.
That is one aspect of my game that I have never worked on. I've never done that. I don't take a break because I have a problem that if I walk away, I'm gonna get dealt aces every single hand.
[00:42:29] Speaker B: Right? You have, you, you have FOMO over poker hands.
[00:42:33] Speaker A: Oh, it's like being, when I'm at the World Series of Poker, I don't leave the table. And then when the break comes in, there's 4,3000 people heading to the restroom. I'm like, God, I should have just left two minutes earlier and skipped something. I don't skip hands. Everyone's like a little, little Christmas present. And I'm like, I can't leave a potential gift on the table, but it's something I can work on. I'm still trying to work on my game. It's okay to walk away from the table because it doesn't matter what, like, you know, aces get cracked all the time. So, like, I have to really, I have to learn that. So it's funny you brought that up, because even 20 some years later, working on my game and there's. There's, there's holes. There are a whole lot of holes in my game.
[00:43:11] Speaker B: Well, you know, it's like that. There's a moment in Rounders where I think it's the perfect standoff between the rational. The rational poker side of poker and the gambler side, which you need both. But when Mike McDermott goes in to talk to Knish into the. Which is a perfect setting, he goes into the Russian bathhouse and he comes out the towel. He goes in to ask for money because he lost it all.
[00:43:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:38] Speaker B: You know, and he says, he turned him down. He said, do you want the truck? Yeah. You want a place to stay? No problem. But about the money, I got to say, no, I'm not going to give it to you. You're going to blow it all. And he goes off on him. He says, you know, you're the guy, you know, who always sees all the angles and never has the stones to play one. And he has stones.
I pay bills, I have alimony payments, my kids eat. Right. And that's the difference of, like, that's the professional grinder making a living at it, versus I'm gonna go into Teddy KGB's, get all this back and fly to Vegas and win that tournament. Right. The best poker player somewhere in between those two. But those two are the opposite ends of the spectrum, almost of a poker player.
[00:44:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, this, I mean, it all ties back to where we originally started with this thing is the diversity of people that can sit down at a poker table and are willing to sit down. And so we. We have sat down with multi millionaires at the same day, just like to play, and they'll play for a couple hundred bucks, and that's great. We've got a buddy who loves to play Poker. He's not great, but he is infinitely wealthier than I am. But he doesn't like to lose, and he's. He's frugal.
And then the story about Gabe is that, like, I need to win tonight so I can pay rent. And then we played with the. The gentleman that we affectionately know as the mayor, who also is no longer with us, and he would. He would work in the bar doing cleanup and doing stuff to earn a few bucks to play. The dude was homeless. He lived in his car and then at one point lived in a tent and then passed away.
[00:45:17] Speaker B: But, like, we literally wasn't very good at poker, but he was a phenomenal guy.
[00:45:23] Speaker A: We saw the spectrum from literally playing with somebody who was actually homeless but, like, taking care, you know, like, didn't smell. He took care of himself. He was just didn't have a stable residence to the multimillionaire. And they all sit at the table. And it is the great equalizer, which is the beauty of poker, because there are very few things in life where those people all sit together, which is why we play with. You know, we've played with lawyers, we've played with pastors, we've paid with car salesmen. We've played with entrepreneurs, real estate brokers. We've played with bartenders, servers, hairdressers.
[00:46:04] Speaker B: Walk life. Name every walk of life, and they're at the table.
[00:46:09] Speaker A: It's. It's the poetic beauty of this thing, which is probably why we're having this conversation, because, you know, that's 100.
We can sit here and talk about real estate, and it will get boring so fast.
[00:46:22] Speaker B: But completely different, right?
Different topic and different dynamics, but certainly parallels. I mean, you mentioned the topics at the poker table because the characters are so different. The conversations when you're not in the hand or even when, you know, very entertaining, to say the least. I mean, you.
You got advice to. To buy Bitcoin 2009 from somebody that you never listened to, but maybe for.
[00:46:46] Speaker A: That one time, you should have, bro, this guy who's. He's. He was one of. He's just one of the characters. And this was.
[00:46:53] Speaker B: It was one of the ultimate characters.
[00:46:55] Speaker A: It was around 2009, 2000, and he.
[00:46:58] Speaker B: May have lived in his car, I think. I don't know.
[00:47:00] Speaker A: Well, he had a house over by Green Lake, which is kind of like somebody had said they drove by one time, and it sort of reminded them of like, maybe what the outside of Sanford and Sons look like. He would sell. Use golf clubs out of his van. It's kind of. Which is a little bit crazy, right?
[00:47:12] Speaker B: He didn't live. He sold golf clubs.
[00:47:14] Speaker A: And he was.
[00:47:15] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:47:16] Speaker A: He would show up, come in and all disheveled sometime and, like, have wrinkly money and say, I'm in. Like, I don't.
[00:47:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:22] Speaker A: And then it just. It just stood out to me one time. He's like, yeah, you should buy bitcoin. I was like, what's bitcoin? He's like, oh, cryptocurrency. And I'm like, like.
[00:47:29] Speaker B: So, like, that was in the sea of a million other things that he talked about that.
[00:47:34] Speaker A: Oh, it's. It's.
[00:47:38] Speaker B: You need to travel to the moon. You need to kind of look at this conspiracy. Like, it was everything. It was impossible to keep track of.
[00:47:44] Speaker A: Oh, and this was like, when it was like, either around or just under a dollar.
[00:47:49] Speaker B: Yeah. And this was kind of less than a dollar.
[00:47:52] Speaker A: People were kind of throwing it around as, like, you know, there were stories. Like, I knew a guy that won an online tournament and got 1500 Bitcoin immediately. Just got rid of, traded for the cash. And at one point I checked, and it was like, oh, you know, you can do the math and what that would be worth. But yeah, that was the advice you get from a guy selling golf clubs out of van. You're like, cool. No, I'm not. You know, it's like, what if I would have just invested a hundred dollars? What if I just would have bought a hundred?
[00:48:21] Speaker B: Just had listened to him. Out of one of the million and three things that he talked about. You know, he had those golf clubs. He was. You see that movie Legend of Bagger Vance. Oh, like, just appears. This kind of older guy with the guy who. He was. He was the legend of Bagger Vance, talking about all these random things. He played checkers. He was a great checkers player.
Yeah.
[00:48:42] Speaker A: Yeah. So this. That's, you know, you just go, man, like that we. Birth of, you know, cryptocurrency in this game. And.
And then that would, you know, then late later years and years of. There's a. A guy that we played with when the game was sort of in the Seattle underground. And he had a cryptocurrency mine and a farm, I think, somewhere, maybe in Puyallup. And he was mining ethereum.
And he. Dude was very, very, very wealthy. And I was like, man, it was not very many years ago that a guy selling golf clubs out of an old van was telling me to buy bitcoin.
[00:49:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it comes down to the ability to separate signal from the noise and that particular one man.
[00:49:28] Speaker A: Y But, but you know what? It worked out because we might not be having this conversation if I would have brought all that stupid. Yeah.
[00:49:34] Speaker B: You know, so this is happened. We're fortunate to be here and alive and in good health. But you know, in terms of the game. So let's say I think 2012 or so, you know, the game got a little bit of notoriety now I think either the liquor board or the gambling commission came in.
The place that we were playing at, ended up moving sort of maybe the lose that place and sort of the traveling circus chapter of the game begins. Players disperse. Some of them come back together. I mean, what happened.
[00:50:11] Speaker A: What I will say in full transparency is that we've been, we played the game pretty on the up and up. Like we never, this was never a no rate game. I never charged anyone for any. We just ran it because we love the people, we love the social aspect.
And I don't think we're supposed to.
[00:50:27] Speaker B: Be in a place that served liquor.
[00:50:29] Speaker A: Well, somebody complained. The guy showed up on a random day. Anybody that complains to the gaming, someone.
[00:50:34] Speaker B: That you probably rejected and didn't let.
[00:50:36] Speaker A: Into the game, we have a couple of theories, but it doesn't matter. But what happens is they show up, they give their business card, they say, well you brought, they say you probably shouldn't play poker or cards in the bar, even though you totally can't.
[00:50:47] Speaker B: It was sort of a mild, it was like a friendly suggestion.
[00:50:50] Speaker A: Yeah, they, I mean people have pool leagues and dart leagues and trivia night where they, they, you pay money and win money. And as long as the bar is not doing anything nefarious where they're, they're charging and taking a break, what they want is, they want bodies in there buying food and drinks. And so like we have always supported every establishment we've gone to that way. And yeah, you know what? For the sake of keeping the sanity and fear level down on the ownership of that, we said, you know what, which pause button on that.
[00:51:24] Speaker B: In fairness, the, the, the tolerance level of that particular ownership group and the risk acceptance was, you know, higher than most poker players. I mean we were, yeah. Lucky to have them.
[00:51:35] Speaker A: You're like, hey, can we, I know Monday's a slow night. Can we bring 30 people in here and fill your bar from, you know, people would show up at 6pm now because the game would start it at whatever, 7, 7:30. Can we have people in here from 6 to, to 2am you'd be like, yeah, we'll reserve an entire room for you. Because like.
[00:51:53] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it worked for.
[00:51:54] Speaker A: It was a win.
[00:51:55] Speaker B: Win for a long time.
[00:51:56] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And then we went to other places and it was just kept going and kept going and the game really. And then like, even when we were sort of a place, the game would keep going in people's garages by downstairs. It was like. And even if they were just single tournaments, it was like there was always some aspect of this game that kept going. And people are still texting me, when are we gonna have a game? And it's like, you know, and do.
[00:52:22] Speaker B: You, I mean, do you retain, you keep all those contacts? And I mean, once a game breaks, like once you lose a location, there is some rate of attrition because like, like there's a loss of momentum and people kind of lose touch, they lose interest, and then you need to rebuild a little bit. I mean, how does that process work, running a game like this?
[00:52:40] Speaker A: Oh, you know, that's a really good question because what ends up happening is if you like to play, which a lot of us like to play. You find games, whether you're going to a local card room or a different home game. And there's been some interesting interwoven aspects of the game where the game maybe lost a few players who moved. Somebody has just kind of given up on poker. It was fun. Now they're sort of really focused on whatever aspect, but like, they're still like, you would have this core of players and then it was sort of like come together with another game. And we've.
We have sort of have our branches in many home games now. And so when we have a game or if we fire back up, even on a monthly basis, which we still have an annual tournament for our championship, which we don't always have a consistent game, but we still have a championship tournament.
It's. Every seat's full.
[00:53:38] Speaker B: Is it happening? Is it this January? February.
[00:53:41] Speaker A: It's gonna be. It's gonna be probably January or February. Yeah. We'll have the Seattle hold' Em Invitational tournament, which is a great acronym.
[00:53:49] Speaker B: Is it like we had three tables normally for something like that?
[00:53:52] Speaker A: Yeah, three or three or four. You know, that's a long day. Yeah, yeah. We. An eight hour tournament, which is, you know, a normal, maybe single day tournament. But like. Yeah, yeah. And we've got the perpetual trophy, which is one of the cooler trophies with the space needle on it. And it's like this awesome. And I still have never won it. And I would like to win it. So.
[00:54:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, likewise. I don't think I've.
[00:54:16] Speaker A: I think, I think if you like what you're doing and it's. Sometimes I'm just like, I'm getting too old for this. But man, it's just like there's an element of it. I also think in a very digital world that it's a very analog thing.
You're looking at pieces of paper or plastic and you're throwing chips in and you have to face each other. And so there's this social aspect of poker, especially for our group, that is getting more and more diminished as people just spend time on their screens. Social media becomes how they socially interact instead of like there's just very few things other than recreational sports leagues or having, having a party, which people do less and less these days. You know, where you have people over and you talk, which is something we used to do.
[00:55:05] Speaker B: Yeah, because engagement is analog too, ultimately. I mean, it's ironic that I'm saying this as we're doing this digitally, but. But that's connection. I mean, it is sort of a direct. It's a belly to belly thing, as is poker.
[00:55:19] Speaker A: Oh, it is. And I think that's what. And I think people miss that. And I think people of a specific generation too, because I would say that our game, the demographic may be just a little bit older and then there's a lot of young people who play. We picked up a few young people along the way and they really like it. They're sort of these, I would call them old souls that they sit there and they're not on their phone the whole time. They like, they engage in the game and think it's.
For me, poker, there's always going to be an aspect of nostalgia. You know, it will just always be there because what's really changing, you're not, you know, there's. Can you change in poker that would bring it to the digital age, other than, you know, fancy tournament clocks or tables with LED lights, which isn't really technology, it just looks fancy. It's always going to be the same thing. You're always looking at these cards, you're looking at people, you're trying to make quick judgments and assessments while also being social. And it's fascinating and I'm still not burnt out on it after, you know.
[00:56:24] Speaker B: 20 love and the passion. Which is why I wanted to talk to you because every time we talk, I mean, you still fired up about it, which is inspiring and that's what inspires people. And that's what inspires me is that, you know, there's growth and there's change and evolution, and it's not speaking of nostalgia. You know, we want to bring some of those times back. We can't do that. We have to continue living in the present. But you know what? The next thing is happening, that the previous thing isn't anymore, and we remember it fondly, but the next thing is happening. And the cool thing about the next thing is that we don't exactly know what it is. Right. We don't know what the next chapter will be, which to me is a great thing, because if everything is known and predictable, that's sort of the place where I lose interest.
[00:57:18] Speaker A: And I love technology. I'm like the next person. Do I want the new iPhone? Yeah, it's great, but do. I'm trying to insert more analog into my life because it just feels like things are getting away from us. So poker is always going to be there for me. I mean, things like.
Like getting my wife a record player for Christmas. We're trying to, you know, she got some cool Beatles records from her mom as her mom's kind of thinning out the things at her house, and so it's like, oh, she goes, I don't have a record player. So, like, you know, like, we kind of love my wife, and I love those things that harken back to a simpler time where you put an album on and you listen to it all the way through, you know, and you're just going in.
[00:58:00] Speaker B: That's hard to skip around vinyl. It's hard.
[00:58:02] Speaker A: Yeah. So, like, I. Poker, to me, reminds me of, like, putting on a very long record because you're sitting there for hours, and it's like you're. You're activity.
[00:58:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think you're right. I mean, that's a good thing to pay attention. Again, we're. We're looking at poker, and we're looking at, you know, what's happening in life, because one kind of reflects the other.
But the digital stuff, I think it's safe to say at this point, will happen on its own, with or without our help. How can technology change poker? That brought it into people's living rooms and created all kinds of issues.
What happened and what ultimately ended up being the downfall? Obviously, there's some names that fell from grace, and.
[00:58:50] Speaker A: Well, it sounds like some people who ran some of the biggest online poker sites were very irresponsible with the. The money that was coming in. And so without getting into a lot of detail, there were Some well known poker players who were investors and left a lot.
[00:59:07] Speaker B: They were advertised like the people that we'd all want. Yeah, they were advertising the stars.
[00:59:12] Speaker A: They were at big sites and some people got some money back but not everyone got everything back. But it ended up getting shut down by the government on what's referred to as Black Friday.
[00:59:24] Speaker B: And yeah, you mentioned that at the start.
[00:59:26] Speaker A: Was it, was it, was it called Black Friday or. Yeah, Black Monday. I forget what I play a lot online because although I had some mild success in the very early online playing in the 2000s, I always had trust issues. And so when you take something that's analog and you convert it to digital, it's it, it'd be interesting. There's, there's for people to cheat people where multi tabling all at the same house. People had all kinds of schemes going and then like, you know, even today if you can play online, there are all of these tools now that will help you like you know, whether it's a software that does a screen overlay and lets you like completely remember and record players betting habits and patterns like it just like the digital aspect of it.
While some people love it, I just, I don't trust it because I think there are too many tools that make it unfair for an old dude like myself to hop on and just want to, want to play. I don't want somebody to know like my complete betting patterns in history. You know, like if you can't remember it up here, like it's not fair to use.
[01:00:34] Speaker B: You don't want to be cataloged and.
[01:00:37] Speaker A: Analyze them because Washington, you know, where I live is very, we can't do it anyway. You have to have vpn, you have to go, you have to go through hoops to play online and there's people who do it. But I don't play poker online, I don't bet online, I don't do sports betting. Like it's, I'm that level of degenerate. I, I hosting games and playing games.
[01:00:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean it was pretty short lived from what I never played online but you know it just, it went big and then it got shut down on the federal level essentially.
[01:01:06] Speaker A: Yeah, it's, it's up again and now split sports betting is taking a real big hold in the market and a lot of those people who like to play poker, they like to gamble on other things. And it's, it's, there's more regulation and it's interesting, even though there's more regulation, it still feels like the wild west. And you can't do it in every state. It's not federally available for everyone to play anywhere. You can't just, you know, so I'm not going to risk it. I'm just going to mostly going to play with people that I like locally. I'm gonna play with people that I either invite or like, I trust going to certain games. But like I'm, you know, I'm, I'm about all that stuff.
[01:01:46] Speaker B: But, but it did, you know, it did kind of create a brand new type of player, right. Because you're online, they had multiple games going.
And so now you have a player who in two years has seen, you know, the amount of hands that an old school pro spent a lifetime putting together, right. They just, they just, they created that analytical, that highly strategic, kind of level headed, oftentimes player who just played the numbers because they had seen so many hands. And it's easier to do online than to log those hours. And you can tell, right? I mean there was maybe not anymore, but there was a time period where if you went and played somewhere, you could tell and sometimes age is a giveaway. You know, demographically, the older players tend to be, you know, the live room grinders and, and you know, the online players are younger, but their style of play and the kind, you know, the way that they go about the game, you could immediately tell who their teeth online and who spent time in the card rooms.
[01:02:49] Speaker A: Oh, it's. Yeah, it is.
There are some generational gaps for sure.
[01:02:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:02:55] Speaker A: And there are. And it's evolving. Like that's the thing is that the game is not just evolving in the, the dissection of it and the study of it and the math of it. It's evolving where, because now you have audiences on broader platforms. YouTube, Poker Go. It's not just, it's not just airing the World Series of poker on ESPN.
[01:03:22] Speaker B: Or poker, poker on demand 24 hours a day. Right. If you want it.
[01:03:26] Speaker A: Yeah. And so what they've done though, to expedite the game of play on certain, like a lot of these places now have a shot clock, you know, because you could watch poker and if you're watching it live or you on a 15 minute delay and, and are at the final table of the World Series of Poker and players are agonizing over each decision for two minutes, which you and I know about. Agonizing over hands and hand funerals and all classic.
[01:03:55] Speaker B: I just, I just put, I just put you all in.
[01:03:57] Speaker A: Oh, I gotta do that.
[01:03:59] Speaker B: Yeah, that.
[01:03:59] Speaker A: Oh man.
Yeah.
[01:04:01] Speaker B: And then you kind of Bend the cap and you, yeah, and then you lean back.
[01:04:08] Speaker A: You know the fold is coming and you know, but that, that, that, that.
[01:04:13] Speaker B: The classic Stevie hand funeral proceeding that would hold everybody up for sometimes 15 minutes. And you would occasionally pull down the tournament director card where it's like, I'm gonna, yeah.
[01:04:26] Speaker A: You know what's funny about that back then, what I realized if you like what I, I had this. There's an interesting just poker strategy where I'm less hung up about having the absolute best hand in a situation. Like if you have a powerful draw, like a lot of times you're just gonna be like, okay, well I'm, I, I'm on a draw here. You probably have a pair of aces. You probably had an ace there. You, you know, and I'm getting better about reading and calling out people's hands because you put them on a range. And so I just make quicker decisions now because I understand the math and like there's just, there's, there's just a lot less Hollywooding at the table, you know, a lot less acting and the hand funerals and like, you know, and.
[01:05:05] Speaker B: Because you weren't acting, but I mean, you really were in pain over these hands.
[01:05:09] Speaker A: I was like, oh man, how can I fold this right here? But now you just go, well, you know, like, I think I'm. If you got it, you got it. And like, you know, it's just things happen quicker, you know, I remember you.
[01:05:20] Speaker B: And I were involved in one where it just. The last hand of the night or the people standing around and it just turned into total Hollywood theater. It just, the wheels came off. It was like 4 o' clock in the morning.
[01:05:32] Speaker A: It was, yeah, we were playing a cash game and I was like, oh man.
[01:05:36] Speaker B: And like, and I probably didn't have anything and yeah, you were right to think about it. But I mean, these days you talk.
[01:05:46] Speaker A: About the evolution of the game.
[01:05:47] Speaker B: I mean, what do you think of, you know, things like Hustler Casino Live and like guys, Alan Keating and Nick Airball playing for, you know, half a million dollar, what used to be the.
[01:05:57] Speaker A: Biggest potential, really wealthy people in big bank roles. And I don't know who backs those players, but I think it's, it's, I think it's both good and bad for the game.
[01:06:09] Speaker B: Like, hold on, so you think that's not their money? You saying they're bad?
[01:06:13] Speaker A: Oh, I think a lot of them. No, I mean, I think Alan Keating probably has his money. Like you mentioned him specifically, but I think some of these players have to have some. I mean, they. They're always you. Poker players on a bigger level will often sell pieces. You know, we don't know what kind of backroom deal is going on. They'll sell pieces of their game. They're like, hey, I'm gonna sit with a hundred thousand at Hustler Casino Live. And someone's like, cool, I'll take 10%.
[01:06:36] Speaker B: And they'll stake them or they'll lose.
[01:06:38] Speaker A: You know, or, you know, and so.
[01:06:42] Speaker B: Sometimes some money would suggest that it's not their money. We may be just looking at it.
[01:06:47] Speaker A: Yeah, there's. There's that, like, you know, we don't. We don't know. We don't know what's rigged and what stage. But, like, I was watching some last night, and they have six figures sitting in front of them, and I'm just going, man, like, the swings are huge. And also, they're playing with each other because that's been on for years now.
And the level of play is wild. There's their range, like starting range, calling range, raising range is wild. And sometimes it's situational. Sometimes it's. Sometimes you play the cards, sometimes you play the player. That's like an old saying, you know, but it's like. Like the way that they play. Like, I just. I. I don't think I could. I mean, if. If I had all the money, I just don't think I would thrive in that game because it's wild. So, like, there. It's entertaining. And that's why they get, you know, 10,000 people at a time watching them. But, like, you know, poker goes. Doing a really good job. They have big poker after dark. And now it's pretty common.
It was so uncommon to see a million dollars in one pot get in the middle. And now, like, it's. You see that? You know, I'm.
[01:07:50] Speaker B: Strategically. Yeah. I think you and I historically have sat in the game where, you know, pre flop, like, four or five xing bets, pre flop took place. It just didn't happen. No, the only three bet, they had aces and was the end.
[01:08:09] Speaker A: That was the old school mentality. It was like bet rate.
[01:08:12] Speaker B: It was aces or kings.
[01:08:14] Speaker A: And he raises like you have aces or kings. And then it was like. It's so different now. It is, you know, the bettings, it's. Yeah. So different, you know?
Yeah, it's changed. And now. Now you. Three, four, five, bet. And, you know, you and I have gotten into some. Some games now where you just go. The dev is.
[01:08:34] Speaker B: And it doesn't have, like, again, you're talking about people putting people on ranges, but some people have such wide ranges that, yeah, he be sitting there with a 7, 9 off, you know, acting, doing the same thing that somebody else is doing with kings. You don't know.
[01:08:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[01:08:51] Speaker B: Relative hand strength, right. They're a lot more dialed in. They're like, hey, if I have a pair and hold them, that's good. Yeah.
[01:08:59] Speaker A: And you can do all the calculations in your head and think about scenarios, but sometimes this is just poker is that you just have to go, okay, man. Like, you have to. You have to sort of do the mental coin flip. Be like if you've got it. If not, like, you know, I don't think you. Like, you can say, I think you're full of. And then like, you know, and be wrong or be right, you know, and it's just like, it's, it's.
[01:09:23] Speaker B: But, but there's the evolution of the game now too, right? I mean, that is now normal where you almost can't put someone on a hand unless you played with them a lot. And, you know, patterns, their betting structure doesn't tell you much unless, you know, you have context on them.
[01:09:41] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's not a good game if you have trust issues. I see too many people now try to make hero calls call with, you know, like the ace high, the king.
[01:09:48] Speaker B: The hero call is the new thing.
[01:09:50] Speaker A: It's a new.
[01:09:51] Speaker B: That's the new flex.
[01:09:53] Speaker A: And someone's looking for it because if you get it, you're so remembered. You're like, oh, man, what a call. He soul read him. He was like, oh, did he? Or is it just. Is it just luck? You know?
[01:10:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:10:05] Speaker A: Excuse me.
[01:10:06] Speaker B: Well, I would say, yeah, you know, you're talking about the types of players and kind of how this Monday night poker game has evolved or Monday night poker league. You know, I'd say that this last chapter has been really fun and it's, it's brief, but I would say, you know, it was held in a perfect location for poker game that, you know, may or may not have been a, you know, backdrop of some adult entertainment. I mean, with a poker table in the middle.
[01:10:35] Speaker A: Yeah, it was a great spot that we ended up going to two nights a week and we it into cash game instead of tournament and the cast of characters change and the volatility went way up.
[01:10:49] Speaker B: So, you know, managed volatility.
[01:10:52] Speaker A: Right.
[01:10:53] Speaker B: I mean, I think at this point, no one at their table, at that table is playing for rent money. And people do manage their bankrolls. They're just no limit players who, who thrive in that environment and understand and accept the swings. That's what it looked like to me. And I mean, the level of game, I, I don't know if I'd call it a, you know, unbalance of professional game, but it's pretty close. Like any one of those guys, you know, those guys go to Vegas routinely. They participate in the World Series of Poker events. They sit with the pros. Like it's a tough room.
[01:11:26] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. We've had some, we, we had some of the old tournament players come through and they just said, I can't play that game.
[01:11:37] Speaker B: Right. Some of them. And we know who they are. Right. Some of those people that have come tried it and said, yeah, this is now something else.
[01:11:45] Speaker A: It's a different animal. Yeah, but it's, it's because there's like, I think also this is just good conversation as far as the perception that poker is just people sitting around a table looking at cards. And there's so many aspects of poker because people who get their chops usually play in Texas hold them, and they're not playing a cash game where there's five card double board bomb pots. And if you don't know anything about poker. And that just sounded foreign language.
[01:12:18] Speaker B: Because I had to wrap my head around this and I've played them. What is a double, what is a bomb pot? What is a double board? Tell the.
[01:12:26] Speaker A: Depending on where you are, a pop can happen with a certain thing, whether it's a dealer change in a casino or like our game where a bomb pot sticks with one player going the opposite direction of the button.
[01:12:37] Speaker B: Once an orbit, right.
[01:12:41] Speaker A: When the button meets the bomb, everybody gets five cards instead of two and everybody's in. You can actually sit out, but you're in for a set amount. Let's just call it five bucks or ten bucks. Whatever. The, it's before the game starts and that all goes into the middle after everybody gets their five cards and you automatically see a flop.
And then, then the betting starts. There's two boards.
[01:13:04] Speaker B: There's, there's, you see, so there's two of each.
There are two flops instead of one.
[01:13:15] Speaker A: Rules three on the board.
[01:13:17] Speaker B: I mean, I've seen even the most experienced players sit there and study their hands and can't put together what they have. Yeah.
[01:13:24] Speaker A: And there's one winner per board.
And I mean, I, I'm, I love, I love, I love Omaha. I love plo. I love those games. And I feel like I did, you know, I've, I'VE placed well in some PLO tournaments and big O tournaments. But even like just playing that game, I, I, in a most recent situation, things that you like, you think you would never do. But like, the EV of my game is like flopping the absolute nuts on the top board, flopping trips on the bottom board, and there's all of these players get going all in. So we're talking like, you know, like for the sake of the game, like, there's a large amount of money post flop that just went in and these all in, all in, all in. And then it comes out. And in retrospect, I, I could have instead of folded, but I call for not a lot of money. We're talking a couple hundred bucks. But odds or the value to go in is like my 200, you know, my stack getting in there because these players are all in to win half of 1200 or whatever. Like the odds were good for me to call, but in retrospect, I should have folded. And I'll tell you why. Because flopping a straight in a Omaha or PLO is often, is, is often beat by the next two turn cards, whether it's a flush, somebody sitting on a set. And so what I should have thought in that situation when I had flopped straight and this other guy's all in, I should have read that I'm getting, I have the same straight as this guy. That's what I should have read, is that we Both probably have jack, 10 or whatever the two cards were in our hands. And then the bottom board where I flopped, trip fives. And then my next highest card is a jack and the board is 5, 5, 5 king. I'm going, well, it's really easy for somebody to have king five or a pair of kings. And I'm getting quartered, which means I'm getting half of the top board. If, if it holds. If somebody doesn't have trips and hits a.
[01:15:21] Speaker B: In the best case scenario, you're in.
[01:15:24] Speaker A: The worst case getting 25% of, of 2.
[01:15:27] Speaker B: So that's a good prospect.
[01:15:30] Speaker A: No, I mean, I called and there's, there's an argument for a call. But it's interesting in that where I'm like, oh, there's a place to fold there. And it's when you feel like, or you have a feeling you're getting quartered, it save money, you know, because it's like you're gonna, you're gonna do in, in that risk versus reward, that's, that straight didn't even hold up. So, yeah, there's risk yeah, there's risk aversement and ways to think about like. Because I kept thinking about that in my head. I was like. And I talked to another player who's better player than me and it was like, well, you know, like he was to my attention was going, well, you've got, you know, trips. But it's really easy for me, somebody to have with five card either a pair of kings or king five, which another player did had king five for a full house against my trips. And then the top board would have been chopping with the other guy, but somebody else had a set of eights or whatever it was and ended up getting a full house. So like I didn't even get quartered. So like my learning to fold in a situation that looks really, really is a difficult lesson to learn. And those big. And then the games get more volatile.
[01:16:33] Speaker B: Than just especially on those pots. I mean.
[01:16:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:16:37] Speaker B: You know, and remember when you're talking about those odds and possibilities, everybody you said you could sit out. Nobody sits it out rarely. Right.
[01:16:44] Speaker A: So you, you have impossible being a knit because if it like, you know, we've. I've been there too. Where I've. And I'm going, oh, I would have scooped both boards. You guys are just being aggressive. So it's like, it's a delicate thing. Go. Is this the right spot? But my position and the action before me dictated. I could have found, I could have found a fold. But it's the evolution of my game because you know, there's not always a, a perfect scenario. He's going, oh my gosh. Like I this.
How can I fold here? And I did probably like a 22nd hand funeral. Not like before, but I made the call. But I'm like, what? Like because there's no further action behind me. So you. If there's no further, you can talk. I'm like, I have the nuts and trips and how can I fold here? And. And then bang, like you know, 10 seconds in and I go, oh, okay. But if I take the time and think about it instead of agonizing and just the dramatics of it, if I just think like, what am I doing here? Like, yeah, there's some risk averse.
[01:17:42] Speaker B: Yeah, you probably had some fold equity there still and could have gotten out of it.
[01:17:46] Speaker A: But it takes going through the fire a little bit, getting burned a few times and hopefully not in a way that makes you play like a nip. It helps you play smarter.
[01:17:54] Speaker B: You know, I have called people out of spite and hold them with a nut low. That's my strategy, you know, you know, your game goes like this, and then you, then you, then you get irked or you go until, and you start doing something that's, that's out of alignment.
[01:18:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:18:12] Speaker B: You know, you think, you think Monday Night Poker League will ever find a permanent home? Is there room for that?
[01:18:19] Speaker A: That is a good question. I don't know. I think, I think the book of our poker journey has many chapters, and the ones that are unwritten are really tough to predict. You know, it take the right plate and, you know, like, yeah, maybe I rule it out. I don't think as long as people are willing to show up at a place. And what I don't like now at the age of almost 50, is I don't want to haul tables and stuff. I don't want to feel like a mover. I don't, I love people, but I don't love them that much. I just want the stuff and, like, set it up and, like, let's, like, I, I just, I'm not the, I'm not, I'm not the young man that I used to be, so.
[01:19:04] Speaker B: And players are lazy. Like, they just like to show up.
Like, how nice is it, like, for this game, this recent iteration of it, to have a dealer at that level? Like, that's key. Yeah, that's absolute. Like, I loved it.
[01:19:19] Speaker A: Yeah, it's wonderful, you know, and it's given me a new appreciation. It's also changed me a little bit in the sense that having a dealer and what a game could be almost made me not want to run a tournament again, you know, because it's like, I did that for free, and I did it, like, I just loved bringing people together. I mean, that was my social, that was my social aspect. I mean, most of the people at my wedding were from our poker game, you know, it was like, it was, yeah, it's, Yeah, I, I know, man. I, I, the game is just ever evolving. I think there's going to be more cash games, there's going to be more stuff in people's homes, but it would take the right place. It would take, like, somebody's detached garage. That's nice. And, like, I'm also my buddy who runs the stuff with me, you know, Lars.
[01:20:16] Speaker B: He, yeah.
[01:20:17] Speaker A: Will tell you that I'm like a, I'm like a poker snob and not, like, who I play with or about my game, but, like, what I don't want to do is I don't like showing up to someone's house and, like, you're playing On a tabletop with bent paper cards and the. The chips from the 19. The plastic chips from the 1970s. I want to sit down. I want to be a little bit nicer, you know, Like, I want to sit down and feel like you've come.
[01:20:45] Speaker B: To expect a certain level of accommodation in your poker.
[01:20:48] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, it's like, it doesn't have to be the nicest, but I don't want to go sit in someone's stinky back room with a table topper.
And it just. Everything is disheveled and messy. Like, that's why, like, I'm about to host a game, you know, coming up at my house, and I've been, like, painting and working on reorganizing my poker room, and I'm like, oh, it's not ready for people to come over, because it doesn't meet my.
[01:21:16] Speaker B: Yeah, see, that's the fair thing. Like, you're providing that same level of service to others when you host a game.
The chips don't stick together and the cards aren't bent, and everything's organized and the tabletop's nice and kind of. You have some kind of spread out. You'll, you know. Yeah, yeah. So I.
[01:21:35] Speaker A: And that's. And that's what ties into, like, why poker is, like. I mean, I don't know where you want to pivot, but that's also why poker sort of organically created an events company for this.
[01:21:47] Speaker B: So that was my next question.
[01:21:49] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I mean, that's the whole thing.
[01:21:50] Speaker B: And what you do.
[01:21:52] Speaker A: Well, we started a company called Raised Events because there was this opportunity to run some poker tournaments for smaller nonprofit organizations where you can run a charity poker tournament and sort of raise just a little bit of money or. Or more than a little bit, depending on the access people have to invitees and things like that. And it's. It started out with just helping a couple of friends. We just had the poker equipment. They're like, hey, could we do a tournament where I raise a couple grand? You're like, sure, let's do it. Help them out. Then these things started to grow, and then it became kind of word of mouth to, like, hey, these guys can run this thing? And this organization would tell other organizations or other areas within organizations, oh, this is cool. Or they would show up at one of our events and go, hey, can you do this for. For our organization? And so last year, we officially started an llc, which is. And it's a work in progress, but it's. And it's a total side hustle. But it's okay because that's how most ventures start. You know, we have like 15 tables and all of these really nice chips and really nice cards. And we're always buying new equipment so we keep up to date on setting up a really good event. And it's the same way that I treat the way that I like. I want someone to show up and go, oh, wow, this is legit. This is not showing up at somebody's house. And there's, you know, you know, five.
[01:23:25] Speaker B: The basement you described.
[01:23:28] Speaker A: We have professional tables and like, you know, it's great chips with denominations. And so these are the little things that set it apart. When somebody sits down and go, oh, I feel like I'm maybe part of one of those things that I briefly saw on tv. That's what we want. And so, like, that's the way I run the events company. And I'm also the emcee. And we set up sound and lighting and video and we do sort of all of these things because we kick it up a notch from just what I think people would expect, showing up at their buddies and just we're having a poker night and you're sitting around someone's kitchen table, it's made out of wood, you can hardly shuffle the cards on it.
And there's chips flying and drinks are spilling. And we've always been wrong with those games.
[01:24:10] Speaker B: I mean, we've played in them. That time maybe has passed is what you're saying.
[01:24:14] Speaker A: I just think I've always had a passion for putting on a top tier event, whether it's a Monday night at a dive bar. How can we make this nicer? I'm always going, how could this be better? After we're like, how can we make this better? How can we. What can we bring to the table? How can we advise? And so it became this Raised events is kind of raised as in the name.
But like, nothing about our company says poker other than the word raised. Because we do consulting for events where, like, we help people raise. We have access to auctioneers, we have access to sound, lighting, video. I've done just live sound for a small organization at a hotel that just needed some good audio. And then as an audio engineer, it's one of my things that all kind of ties together. You know, like, you can go into my garage and half of my garage is poker tables and speakers.
[01:25:08] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I've been.
[01:25:09] Speaker A: Don't come break into my house. But, you know, like, who would this.
[01:25:13] Speaker B: Be a good fit for? I mean, talk about, like, who is the End user or something like this. What kind of company, how many people can participate, what size?
[01:25:19] Speaker A: I mean, we can run a tournament for up to 150 people. People like we, you know, so it, it's, it's a good, it's a good thing for any small organization, I would say, that's looking to raise. And, and this is just a range, right, of, let's call it 5,000 to $25,000 to supplement donations they're already getting. And everything is, and we work with people on like suggested donations and things like that. But what ends up happening, I think is what people are finding out is they're like, we don't know anything about poker. What is this poker? And so, but we've had the people who don't have any clue but run a specific nonprofit say, could you do this for us? Because we do a poker 101, which is great. It's part of what we do. Lars runs it and people come an hour early and they sit around a table and stand around a table while someone is teaching them not just how to play poker, which everybody gets a cheat sheet with what hand beats what, but literally how do you navigate a poker tournament? How do you win? And several of our winners have come out of the poker 101 table because they're getting little nuances and key pieces of strategy and ways to think about it that just the person is showing up. Go, yeah, I know how to play poker well, but do you know what to do in this situation? And so like, what? We actually have been doing this for a long time, even though we just formally formed the company, but we sort of have it down to a science on how to do it really well for kind of that middle of the road fundraiser. We're not talking about like big auctions and banquets that raise $100,000 or millions of dollars. That's not what we do. It's really about if you've got a space and you have the access to a database of potential players, we'll help you get this thing off the ground. And we've had a few people that are like. Because it's hard to tell someone, how do I have a poker term? Well, you email people, tell them we're going to have a poker 101, and you got to have your first one.
And then you end up like, like my buddy who was like two tables above somebody's garage 20 years ago, was helping him raise a couple grand, which ended up evolving into a hundred plus player tournament and is now one of the Bigger tournaments that we run, and that's been going even after he left. The next person took it over. And it's at a set date every year and people wait for it ends up being their favorite fundraiser because you don't have to show up in a tux. This is not a dinner. It's not, it's just like, it's fun. There's a bar, there's. There's a food. There's camaraderie. We also don't.
We're not as rigid and strict with charity tournaments. So, like, you show up and you're there with five of your buddies, we're going to sit you all at the same table. We don't like, do the random draw. We tried that and we're like, people want to sit together. We sort of had to figure this thing out. We can't treat it like a casino. We treat it like, you know, like. And we have had companies that are like, I'm gonna buy a whole table. So like, we did a, we did a tournament in Tacoma and a company bought a whole table and everybody from that company just, they got a seat and they had a great time and they're already gonna donate again next year. You start like one tournament builds the momentum for the next one.
And it's super organic. We don't advertise. We. We don't even have our website developed yet. But we're working on.
But we also have full time jobs and things outside of this. But it is fun. It's the next.
[01:28:41] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, you mentioned it's a side hustle, but yeah, it's taking them and you guys do a great job.
[01:28:46] Speaker A: We're doing really good. We have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for nonprofit organizations doing some great work.
Some send kids to camp, some are working with underserved and underprivileged kids from immigrant families. Like, I mean, it's across the board because there's a lot of organizations that need support. We're one of the few cultures in the world that the government doesn't just take care of everyone. We're not socialists. So, like, they have to do fundraising. My wife is a full time fundraiser. It's necessary work. And so we're just bringing a little piece that wasn't really being fulfilled by anyone else, you know, and so, I.
[01:29:26] Speaker B: Mean, it's a fun way to give back. And what I'm hearing is one, you don't need to be good at poker necessarily even know anything about it. And two, it's a turnkey solution from Your end. If somebody wants to put on this tournament corporately or as a company, they can, they can call you and, or get in touch and then you handle the rest.
[01:29:48] Speaker A: Yep. We do a whole what? They would reach out to me.
We would just ask them some questions, you know, like, tell us about your organization. There are certain organizations we won't work with. We won't work with organizations that, I mean, I don't want to get into like who we won't with. But I mean not every organization is going to be something that we align with because we personally have to align with it. You know, like if, if you're a non profit organization that is uber religious and we don't necessarily align with that, we might not be a good fit.
[01:30:28] Speaker B: Or they might be doing conversation. Right.
[01:30:30] Speaker A: I mean, yeah, this is what we'll find out. And then we'd say, I don't think we're a good fit. And it's so far that's never happened. But there's organizations are popping up all the time. But like if you're like, hey, we want to raise, we want to raise $10,000 so we can get some new gear for our little league and like we might be a good fit because you've got people that like sports, they're competitive, like, you know, something like that.
[01:30:54] Speaker B: There's a lot of alignment, a lot of synergies.
[01:30:57] Speaker A: No, but even if, but, but we found that even people that they didn't think would be a good fit, they're like, yeah, I think this would be good. Let's get the first one off the ground. And, and they just grow. Yeah.
[01:31:07] Speaker B: You have to grab the caller.
[01:31:09] Speaker A: Nope, I'm just the guys. We've been dealing with a of lot.
Our state is melting off the map with all the rain and wind and so there's road closures and there's just the guys running behind. So no, I'm trying to multitask but it's obviously when it's obvious when I get.
No, it's just, it's a weird niche. It's a weird niche to now shifting our focus to like really doing some good things with it. And it feels good. You know, it's like we don't mind, we don't mind helping these organizations. We make a few bucks, not life changing amounts of money. And that's the other thing is that what we, what we charge for an event is it's a fraction of what it costs most people to put on an event. If you're looking at totals of what it Cost. Most events like for big organizations are going to be at least in the 50% range and we're, we're well below that. So it's, we've sort of dialed it in over the years, but we're like, we need to really form a business and like, you know, we were kind of just doing it pretty casually and then it sort of got out of hand organically, which we're okay with.
[01:32:16] Speaker B: So yeah, no, you can manage growth when it happens. It's a good problem to have. And then I really like the concept and I'm planning on doing something with you guys in 2026. Like I said, I love the White Glove service. I've always like, I don't like the games where the players have to be really involved in running it because it turns messy. So the fact that somebody can just show up and play and contribute and sort of give back and you can do that corporately and as an organization, I think it's a great service and it's a great way for people to come together and hold a company event, you know.
[01:32:54] Speaker A: Yeah, typically, just like. Because I know people will ask, but typically, typically what we do is there, you know, people will ask about the legality of it. And so one of the things that we do in the consulting process is we make sure that our service has a fee just like you would, you would have. But what we do is we put the onus on the people running it to reach out to their database and come up with a handful of prizes for like first through. Let's, let's say you have a, a hundred player tournament. I would say having a first through tenth place or first through ninth place, final table. Everybody wins something in descending value. First place is usually like an experience somewhere. Someone's house in Sun Katie or someone's lake house or something like that, a cabin. But it's typically prizes that they've gathered from their donor base because we advise people to not take money from the pool because that, that gets into a little bit.
[01:33:56] Speaker B: Well, I mean that defeats the purpose of raise money for something.
[01:34:00] Speaker A: Right. So we've been very, very careful about how we do it. We're just an events company. We're just basically consulting. You're renting our equipment. I'll emcee the event. I mean we have music, we have everything that you would need. And then we're going to ask you for a little bit of help in the price procurement aspect of it and in your donor base and bring a friend and. And it always grows organically. And then the next year like somebody brings a friend and it's like you can just count on it growing. It's great because people have a great time. So.
[01:34:34] Speaker B: And it is always a great time. And it tends to again bring that unique cast of characters.
And I think you guys level the playing field with instruction and the organization of it to where anybody can show up and play. Literally worry about.
I don't know anything about poker. That's not an impediment.
[01:34:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:34:54] Speaker B: One of these things happen.
[01:34:55] Speaker A: We had a guy, his. A guy brought his dad to our big tournament last year.
His dad had never played Texas hold him or poke tournament. Sat down to the poker one on one table and the guy won the whole thing.
[01:35:08] Speaker B: He won it.
[01:35:09] Speaker A: I was gonna say it's, it's all. It's almost rare to see a polished poker player win a charity tournament because the dynamics are so different. It's almost frustrating to seasoned poker players because people are not doing a different hat.
[01:35:26] Speaker B: Yeah. You're not gonna on hand ranges and that's it.
[01:35:29] Speaker A: The only people I've ever really seen frustrated at a charity poker tournament are polished poker players that are trying to like do things and it doesn't work.
[01:35:38] Speaker B: Their systems don't work. Which is the right kind of justice. I mean they.
[01:35:42] Speaker A: Right.
[01:35:43] Speaker B: You know, so. Yeah. So what's going on in the world of real estate?
[01:35:49] Speaker A: Yo. You know, it's a good question. I've got.
Just went well depending on a deal a little bit. Real estate's interesting for me because that's another area where I'm building. I decided to take a mid life career shift. So I haven't been doing real estate.
[01:36:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:36:04] Speaker A: More than a few years. I, I could hu. Hustle a little more with real estate. So I'm like real estate broker part time. Making sure my priorities, taking care of my kid works. My wife's kind of okay with our setup. I have enough deals going right now where we're fine.
But you know, real estate's. For a person just getting started has been a little bit of a log jam. There's not a lot of inventory moving, the rates aren't cooperating. So there's some things that are out of alignment in our market and where we live specifically in this part of Washington where the average home price is up, the average income is not aligning with the average rate and that's not aligning with the average price of a home. So in order to buy a home there's a few things that needs to happen is that you need to have either substantial down payment from equity home stocks. And there's people that have money because homes are selling, they're just not moving as quickly. But what you're running into are folks like my wife and I who have no motivation to leave because we bought our house in 2011, we refinanced it.
[01:37:09] Speaker B: I remember when you buy your house, you called me, you said, we just closed on a house.
[01:37:13] Speaker A: I mean, we're locked in at 2.75, right? Yeah.
[01:37:17] Speaker B: That money is never coming back around. I don't think so.
[01:37:20] Speaker A: I. And, And I've always said, you know, since I got it, I go, if rates could hover back around the fives we do, we'd be in a good place. But the only people right now that are people aren't just. I think people were more adventurous before. When rates were affordable, homes were a little more affordable. What happened was people were willing to move and pick up and do something different. But unless your company's relocating you, there's a death, there's a divorce, there's some key life things that kind of have to make you move right now. And it's a little bit of a log jam. And so I'm going to keep riding the wave and keep doing side hustles and. But I love the people I'm working with right now. It's fun. It's. It's a longer sales cycle, but the, the size of the transaction doesn't bother me. Like, it's great. I know the area really well. As somebody who's been a homeowner and someone who has gone through the process with several people, I'm getting better each transaction and like, if somebody wants somebody that's fun to work with, knows the area. And I have all the re. Being at Keller Williams, it's kind of a bigger outfit. It's the biggest. But it. We have a ton of resources, so there's. You just don't make a lot of mistake because they don't let you. Everything has to go through. Yeah.
[01:38:42] Speaker B: I mean, you got a lot of support.
[01:38:45] Speaker A: Yeah. So that's the difference. You can work with some of the boutique brokerage, and maybe they've been doing it a long time, but there's just so many safety nets at Keller Williams that I have the confidence to work with someone and go. I run everything through my team. And so, you know, I, I may be the face and. But there's a lot of work and components behind the scenes. So it's fun. It's. It could be better, but it could also you know, tie back into what I said earlier. How bad is it? How bad is, you know.
[01:39:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, this is. We're. We're doing pretty good. Just sitting here chatting and with. With a few things in the hopper.
You know, I think just briefly on real estate, and I mean, this is commercial and residential. You're talking about misalignment between interest rates and various other things. I think one of the things, one of the other key misalignments is the expectations of buyers and sellers. Right. So, yeah.
You know, when some of the larger factors start stop lining up.
[01:39:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:39:41] Speaker B: Accentuates and highlights the differences between what.
Because the parties need to agree. Right. In any deal, it has to be when it has to work for both sides. Before we jumped on, you kind of walked me through one of your transactions. And there's a part of it where everybody's trying to pull the blanket on themselves, and then there's a part of it, hey, do you want to make a deal?
We're going to need to meet somewhere in this area. This is the acceptable range of the middle ground.
Right. When things are going great and interest rates are low and, you know, market's hot and people are buying and selling, it's always a little bit buyer or a little bit seller biased, but easier to do business in that environment. When it's. When there's some challenges, then people start kind of advocating for themselves more so than the deal.
[01:40:24] Speaker A: I think what had to happen, and this just took several. Not. Not several years. I think folks had to adjust because the rates were so good. You could just buy and people had equity. But rates being low is also a sign of an economy that's struggling in another area. Right. And so, like, even though we just had another rate cut, and it takes a while for that to reflect in the housing market, because it's not all just immediately tied together, if you understand how all that works. But what ends up happening.
Folks have to get used to whatever's happening. And if they can't afford it, they need to look for a lower price point or they need to have more money if they want to live in a specific area. And so folks are adjusting to the market, but as every time they lower rates, it means the market is insufficient in another area. And it's really hard to be in a perfectly balanced market. And like, I think people are waiting for that perfect balance. And, you know, like, I mean, every time a rate gets lowered a full percentage point, another 10 million buyers come into the market.
But it's been a quarter at A time every time the Feds meet. And then they've now said that the bar is pretty high for them to lower it again. So don't expect. They're setting themselves up saying don't expect it. But if people are struggling and unemployment is rising and people are losing their jobs, one of the only ways we can combat that is if the Fed's lower rates. Because there doesn't seem to be any indicators within any sort of economic predictors that suggest that there's going to be a housing value crash. Like, the values are just kind of like the values are not.
I'm talking nationally, but like we're in a fairly protected area.
[01:42:18] Speaker B: There's a word bubble, you know, we.
[01:42:19] Speaker A: Always double, but, but I'm also not moving. So I always have to think about my bubble, you know, and so this is where I work. And it's like there's nothing that says like home values are going to drop by any significant amount. And I would be okay if they did because I've got good equity, I'm at a low interest rate. If my house dropped a hundred thousand in value, I'd be okay with that. That would mean I could be helping somebody who's like, you know, and then the, the opposite snowball happens where people are like, I gotta sell before it keeps dropping. And like there's.
[01:42:56] Speaker B: Because it's approaching a point of inaffordability for the payment.
[01:43:00] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it's approaching like if you were thinking about maximizing your equity, it's like timing the stock market, right? And people are like, oh, we were gonna sell right now it's dropping, so let's get out. But like, that would create some movement, but that's no indicators that's going to happen happen. So what's going to happen?
[01:43:16] Speaker B: Is there any way to time it, by the way?
[01:43:18] Speaker A: So, yeah, we live in an impossible segment that you just can't predict it. You can look at all the indicators and say, well, I think it's going to do this. You know, like we, we've been saying for two years, we think the rates are going to go down. They've crept down. They haven't dropped down like so significantly that it's like, okay, things are moving, you know, like it's. Yeah, you have to be a little bit aggressive, you know of a hustler out there right now. You gotta find, you gotta find the deals, make the connections. And, and luckily I'm making some of those. But, you know, it's tough, it's tough sledding right now. Unless You're a who's been doing it a long time and you have a list of repeat referrals. You do. You know, there's, I can tell you, the top producers in my market segment and they spend a lot of money on advertising and people, especially when things aren't moving, they tend to want to use the top producers and the people who face they see on the shopping cart at the grocery store and who's in their mailbox every mail cycle, you know.
[01:44:24] Speaker B: Right. But I mean, it is kind of like, you know, being in a broker. It's sort of building your own business. It's kind of like opening your own and you operate your own small business. You need to build it as it takes time to build.
You know, it goes through the same growing pains as any business that you would start. Right. It takes time to be known, to be recognized, because essentially people can look at it and go, well, how makes you different? Well, if you develop an identity, then that question is answered organically.
[01:44:54] Speaker A: Yeah, it's, it's a long play, but, you know, I'm in it for the long haul and I'm gonna, I feel like, because I have a proven track record in my sales career of being a top producer and, you know, just understanding the client broker relationship pretty well, that I think I'll have the success. But you know, like, it would be nice if the market cooperate a little bit, but even when it doesn't, like, I can, you know, you have to like go find who's willing to work with you.
[01:45:26] Speaker B: You know, you gotta grind like you do at the poker table. I mean, sometimes you're sitting there and you're going through that cold run of cards or things aren't happening, or you're at the wrong table or something that's changed in the weather.
[01:45:39] Speaker A: And if real estate.
[01:45:41] Speaker B: Grind it out, huh?
[01:45:42] Speaker A: I just have to run some shady games in my basement. We'll be fine.
[01:45:46] Speaker B: I just got a few more rapid fire questions. You got a couple more minutes?
[01:45:51] Speaker A: I got it. We're good.
[01:45:52] Speaker B: All right. Poker and AI, what's gonna happen? Is it gonna have an impact?
[01:45:57] Speaker A: It already is having an impact. I mean, the whole thing about AI AI is like, I use the term loosely because AI we so many things are getting labeled as. As AI. What I view AI currently as it's getting better is that like, you know, you think of artificial intelligence as like having a robot in your house that can help you with tasks and actually makes your life easier. I think of AI like chat GPT as like one of the Most powerful search engines you can use. Because used to just when you would Google things, it would give you this list of websites to click on.
Now it's getting better and better because you go to AI and you go, can you give me a.
Just an overview of, you know, War and Peace? Because I don't want to read it and I don't read in Russian, you know, not that it's not available in English, but you know what I'm saying? Like it can, it spits out that information in seconds. And now what you can do.
[01:46:55] Speaker B: I'm laughing because that's exactly the search that I think you would put it, Stevie.
[01:46:59] Speaker A: But yeah, yeah, well, I might after this. But you know, like it is just, it is a powerful tool that is more conversation. And so the way that it communicates the information it processes with the end user is so powerful that, that it will, it will just have a dialogue with you and you go back and you pick up that same dialogue and you just say, can you give me some strategies to playing PLO 5 card double board? And you. And I had this conversation. I was, I stopped using it, but I had a pretty lengthy poker conversation with Meta's AI and then I was like, this is getting a little creepy. I deleted it. But like I'll go on chat GPT and it will, it will take, it'll scour every.
[01:47:45] Speaker B: Tell me what got creepy and why did you feel the need to delete it?
[01:47:48] Speaker A: It read some things.
It's just so closely monitored. And in fact I, like I said real estate agent. I'm not very active on social media. I have Instagram and as much as they know about my life, it's already too much. But if I have this deep conversation with them, I, I was not like, yeah, from a privacy standpoint, not a conspiratorial standpoint because I'm not a big conspiracy theorist, but maybe it said something.
[01:48:13] Speaker B: So smart it freaked you out. I don't know.
[01:48:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it was like such a high level conversation that freaked me out a bit and I was like, well, I would do pokey for me.
[01:48:24] Speaker B: I can still shut you off. Click.
[01:48:26] Speaker A: Yeah, but I, you know, I'll go on chat GBT and chat GPT will do some really powerful things like has. I will say and I'm not a sports better, but I do like a weekly football pickups. We're in the middle of the. Or at the end of the NFL season, depending on when this airs. We're in December here and, and I can say this now because Nobody I play with is going to be able to hear this. But I go on chat GPT and I want to get its assessment of picking each NFL game against the spread at the beginning of the week. And then I go back and I fine tune that. I go, can you give me updates based on injury, player decisions, weather and specific outdoor stadiums? And then like the day before I'll go, do you have any changes in our previous assessment? Oh yeah, I do and I'm leaning.
[01:49:19] Speaker B: Have you found some real dirt better?
[01:49:21] Speaker A: Well, against the spread, you know, above 50, which is I think where you need to be. I mean like, you know, yeah, it's again, talking about sports gambling, but similar.
[01:49:34] Speaker B: I mean similar sort of dynamic supply and poker, you think it's going to start.
[01:49:39] Speaker A: It does some critical thinking because of the way it analyzes data and the way that it gives it to you.
So in the poker world you want to learn, you want to learn about poker, just be like, can you, can you give me some helpful tools to playing in a Texas hold' Em tournament where the buy in is this, the blinds are this and the starting stack is this.
And it will give you that information.
And not only that, it'll say I can also give you this. And you're like, yeah, I want that.
[01:50:17] Speaker B: It's so much, put it in a little bit of a manual step by step for me that I can give me a strategy.
[01:50:26] Speaker A: My wife and I use it for recipes. We'll be like, can you give us some healthy like recipes this week? And like we've done grocery lists and like, you know, know. So why can't it be used for high level poker?
[01:50:39] Speaker B: I mean poker is no different. Yeah, yeah.
[01:50:41] Speaker A: And you don't have to subscribe to some poker website where they do training and simulations and all that stuff. You can, you can improve a lot of areas of your life having a really powerful tool like AI, you know.
[01:50:57] Speaker B: Top five poker players in your book and why you can go back as far as you want in history.
And again, you're having to compare eras. I get that, you know, different but.
[01:51:07] Speaker A: Well, I think Doyle Brunson's got to be up there because he's kind of the guy that, you know, was one of the first authors of poker books. You know, he's sort of the staple at the very, he's kind of like.
[01:51:19] Speaker B: Will Chamberlain of when the World Series.
[01:51:22] Speaker A: Of Poker was sitting down for $10,000 in the early days, when it was a lot of money back then, which is now just has become known as the main event who else?
Chris Moneymaker, Absolutely. Because. Not because of what. How successful he is now, but because of what he did for poker.
He. He just absolutely opened the door for so many home games and so many, you know, people to say, oh, I can do that. Like, I thought it was.
Yeah, he broke the barrier for that top five. I.
[01:52:00] Speaker B: You like, I mean, stylistically, like, or maybe who your style resembles?
[01:52:05] Speaker A: Oh, I. I don't. I don't think there's a player whose style resembles mine because I find myself going, oh, I wouldn't have done that with just about everybody. Or that's way better than what I would have done because I'm not a pro. You know, like, maybe ask me that question when I'm a. A. When I'm a poker pro.
Although, like, I don't like him as much now, but I think Daniel Negrano has to be respected for what he's done as far as winnings.
I think most recently, one of my favorite players. Although, again, I don't. I don't have to say that I like these people personally, but I think what Michael, what Ms. Rocky did right, in winning, you know, making that deep run it to, you know, those are crazy odds.
[01:52:48] Speaker B: I mean, they ran those numbers. What were the. What were the percentage point one. Something that it was crazy what he.
[01:52:54] Speaker A: Won, but also winning the Players Championship and also that, like, he just hadn't played. He's like. He's sort of the guy that's so good that, like, he ran well, but he also was like, he doesn't play a ton of poker and just was, like, came back and, you know, like, comes to the World Series of Poker, and it's not like, what he does. He does all kinds of stuff. You know, he plays. He plays table, he plays bachelor, he plays blackjack, he's a gambler. But, like, some of these people are just. Just all they eat, breathe, sleep, study is poker. And the guy like that shows you imagine like, the guy, like, you know, the guy who shows up at your work conference and flip flops and a ripped T shirt and people go, wow, he looks really unprecedented. You go, oh, that's the guy that made 10 billion for our company last year. You know, like, I view him as, like, he.
[01:53:42] Speaker B: He's the right to be himself and to be an outcast and to not play.
[01:53:50] Speaker A: You know, I think he's been in.
[01:53:51] Speaker B: The game for a long time, the Mizraki. And I think there's a clan, there's a. You know, they're brothers, I think. Right.
[01:53:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, I don't know what his brother's done, but you know. Yeah, the Grinder though.
And I, I, you know, it comes to like top five. I don't know too many more because there's some of these newer, newer, like.
[01:54:11] Speaker B: Anybody on Hustler Casino Live? Like, yeah, I mean, I like Keating.
[01:54:15] Speaker A: Because what I like about Keating is the amount of money he'll play for, the amount of hero calls that he'll make him be right. The, his range of hands. And he doesn't get rattled. He's like just the most even keel. He's cool as a cucumber. Like, and I like that because when you see like the, the don't I come. I am inherently a pretty nice guy, so I don't love villains. So, you know, like, I don't love some of these guys that have brought negative attention to like the World Series of Poker, you know, eating.
[01:54:50] Speaker B: I mean, I don't know if you saw this, but he called out Negronu for something, you know, for, for, you know, for.
[01:54:58] Speaker A: He might be right. That's why I say like I, I look at Negrono's body, but I don't, I love Negrano personally, you know, like, and some of these other.
[01:55:07] Speaker B: But he basically said he didn't have what it took to play for those amounts of money live. That he kind of hides behind small stakes and tournaments and he has this old school guru, but he said, you know, I'll play him live at Hustler Casino any day. Yeah. And see how he holds up. And basically questioned his sort of in just fortitude to be in that type of game.
[01:55:28] Speaker A: Well, and then the only other person I think I would compare myself to and it's not my game, it's just like, it's my self deprecating sarcasm and it's, I like Doug Polk, you know, like he puts, he puts entertaining stuff out there.
He's funny, he's first a dog on himself, but he's a high level player. He like showing up at that, that high stakes game dressed as Sammy Farha. Dude. Yeah. How do you not love the guy? It's just, you know, he can be annoying, he could be kind of a douche and but like, who can't be.
[01:55:58] Speaker B: Like, remember I used to show up in the, in the tracksuit and then would show up in shorts and one day I could wear pants.
[01:56:06] Speaker A: You made him wear a tuxedo, remember? You're like, hey, yeah, yeah, I paid.
[01:56:10] Speaker B: Him to come wear tux. That's right.
[01:56:11] Speaker A: Oh, dude. And so, yeah, like When I think of someone like Doug Polk from an entertainment aspect and what he brings to the poker community with his YouTube channel, owning card rooms in Texas, being a high level player, playing heads up against Negreano, and like, you know, he's brought some great things where, like, I've spent.
[01:56:31] Speaker B: The kind of publicity you need.
[01:56:33] Speaker A: Yeah. I spent countless hours of my life watching him, and so I've just got to put him up there. Whether again, all of. I think every one of these players comes with a caveat because it's like, you know, saying, you know, what I respect about them is within the poker world, not a personal, you know, like, I mean, I don't.
[01:56:51] Speaker B: That's a good line to draw. We have the same thing with athletes and like, you know, with.
[01:56:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yes.
[01:56:56] Speaker B: For instance, if you said, do you like Bobby Fischer? Well, he was kind of a despicable human being. But, but, but, but if you're separating, but if you're looking at his body of work, yes, I'm conflicted about that too, but.
[01:57:10] Speaker A: Because it's hard, it's hard to say. It's hard to anybody that you put on a pedestal. It's hard to put them up there, especially if they've done something like, really nefarious. It can almost knock them down instantly. You find out somebody's like a murderer, you're like, well, no, I, it doesn't matter. They're now out of the conversation. None of these guys have done something so despicable. But they're like, but the thing is.
[01:57:32] Speaker B: We don't know anything about them. Right. Something comes out about an athlete or a musician and you go, oh, I don't like them anymore. Well, all these other people that you like, guess what? They're also human beings. They're, they're fallible. And, and they're doing things that you don't like probably right now, and you don't agree with. No, I get it. It's hard to stack them, but those are good names.
[01:57:51] Speaker A: I feel comfortable with that. 5. I think that's, like, covers a lot of old school and some new school and, you know, tournament and cash game and, you know, I could probably do a little deeper dive and go, oh, maybe I like this person better. But I think that's a good range.
[01:58:07] Speaker B: No, good, good, good, good, good. Starting five.
Any recommendations? Books, movies, articles, websites, things you're reading about poker or real estate or otherwise, things you're listening to, new podcasts, you.
[01:58:21] Speaker A: Know, that is a good question. I am.
Boy.
[01:58:26] Speaker B: All right, I'll give you one so you can think about it. Have you read. I know it's the last name that's. That maybe has been mired in controversy, but Annie Dukes Thinking in Bets.
[01:58:37] Speaker A: I have not. No.
[01:58:38] Speaker B: Remember Howard? She was Howard Letter and she had a book called Thinking in Bets, probably within the last 10 years that I read and had so many good parallels and kind of carryovers to.
And it's all about ranges and it's going to be my gift to you for Christmas and for coming on. So. Okay, I'll set that up. But it's a good book. I think you'd love it.
[01:59:05] Speaker A: Most of. Most of what I have been reading lately is more mindset stuff.
I'm really trying to do harder things, you know, because what do you do versus reading?
[01:59:22] Speaker B: What are the things that you're doing? Lifestyle things. I mean, I know you've changed your sort of habits and some. And, and kind of how. How you go about your daily life. What are some of the things that you're doing that are working or not working?
[01:59:35] Speaker A: Prioritizing. So one of the things I'm doing is like I'm almost completely cut out. Alcohol.
It's very rare. That's been a big one. Prioritizing sleep, man. Getting eight hours of sleep especially. I just. The midlife phase. I prioritize sleep. I prioritize fasting. I really don't eat until the afternoon, so it's not like some crazy fasting, but I just am not hungry till the afternoon. So I usually eat one to two meals a day.
I am, you know.
[02:00:08] Speaker B: Are you meditating? You said you're taking pauses. What are you doing?
[02:00:11] Speaker A: I'm not meditating, but like I'm trying to. I'm trying to disconnect from technology a little bit because, you know, like I'm trying to force.
We talked about earlier, trying to force a little more analog into my digital life because I'm just consuming. What else? You're bored for a second. What's going on social media. I don't want to spend countless, countless hours doom scrolling because there's just. There's a lot of stuff. Stuff. The most recent book, by the way, just to tie in as I was Habits was just.
Just a way to build better habits.
[02:00:42] Speaker B: Oh, atomic habits. That's James Clear. Is that right?
[02:00:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Yes. And my, my wife and I also both read.
What did we read here?
Hold on a second. I'm trying to find this.
Oh, please.
I just couldn't think of it off the top of my head.
[02:01:00] Speaker B: It.
[02:01:01] Speaker A: But you know, we both read the Comfort crisis.
[02:01:06] Speaker B: I've heard of it. Yeah.
[02:01:07] Speaker A: You know, the comfort crisis was really good. That was back. But that was back in like 22. That's several, you know, years back.
But. But it's just. It's just about the reward of putting in the hard work, you know, like, and. And as, like someone who's fairly inherently lazy, I feel so much better when I'm doing things that are challenging. So it's. It's just easy to default to lazy, and I have to push back against it. And so, you know, like, it has.
[02:01:44] Speaker B: To be a conscious effort, and you have to do that. Won't happen.
[02:01:46] Speaker A: Reading that book was. Was great for my wife too, because when we walk the dog, she puts on a weighted backpack. Just get the extra little. Those extra little bits, you know, to help you, you know, and she's in much better shape than I am. But, like, she just. It just has become a part of her routine by just reading a book. And so, you know, like, trying to. Just tried to push myself a little bit and I could do better.
[02:02:10] Speaker B: So I would add to that part B of that book. We could. Someone could write the convenience crisis because one of the. As much as this world is addicted to comfort, the other thing that convenience is a religion. Right. This is the modern religion.
Is it convenient? Affordable too. But if it's not convenient, it's not currency.
[02:02:33] Speaker A: Yeah. That could, that could be a whole series of books. We are in the convenience era.
I just had groceries delivered to my house.
[02:02:41] Speaker B: Yeah. And what was important about that is you didn't have to go get them. That's why.
[02:02:44] Speaker A: Well, and I placed the order at like 11:30 at night, and they were on my. My porch when I woke up.
[02:02:50] Speaker B: It's hard to argue with. Right.
[02:02:52] Speaker A: But. And part of the, Part of the problem is, though, also there's certain things like, this is so dumb. And this doesn't really. You can cut this out. But like, we get the type of dog food, and I'm like, oh, like, if I buy it through Amazon Fresh, it saves us 20 bucks a month. So, like, not only have they made it convenience, they're actually sometimes cheaper.
[02:03:14] Speaker B: And that's like, it's convenient and cheap. That's the home run.
[02:03:19] Speaker A: Yeah. But I stopped doing. I did. I don't do doordash or any. No offense to doordash that. But like, I don't do any food delivery services because that just the, the ridiculous nature of the I. Out of principle. If I can't go get it, we don't get it.
[02:03:36] Speaker B: I'm not gonna pay against it consciously. Right. Doing the hard things.
[02:03:40] Speaker A: So I've cut that out. So I've cut out at least meal delivery, but, like, grocery delivery. Dang, man. Like, that was really convenient.
[02:03:48] Speaker B: It's hard to say. It's all about choices.
[02:03:50] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[02:03:52] Speaker B: The show's the next Venture Alliance. What's next for you this next year? Next venture? Anything that you're excited about next?
[02:04:00] Speaker A: Well, I'm actually just excited to a few things. I'm excited to. I've got some things that work with real estate. We've got new clients coming on with raised events. So we're going to add some events to our calendar, which is cool. That's growing. And my plan is to play in the World Series of pillar. I turned 50 in January, and I think we're gonna parlay for good gambling term. We're going to parlay that into a trip to the World Series. I don't think I'm going to play the main event just yet, but I think we're just gonna go. At least go down there and, you know, it is a tough thing to. To get through, but I enjoy it.
[02:04:37] Speaker B: I've played in it, man. It's. I mean, you would do better than I did. Just.
[02:04:41] Speaker A: I. I don't mind. I love sitting at a table for 13 hours and, like. And I know some people can't do it, but, like, I'm wired.
[02:04:49] Speaker B: It wore me down. And the main event is something else. But, I mean, you've been buzzing around it for a long time. You've been circling the World Series 50th. Just do it, man.
[02:05:00] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. That's on the horizon.
Family trip and coming up in January. But that's not part of, like, my person or my business stuff. That's personal.
[02:05:10] Speaker B: So that's so good. It's something that's in the next. We're always navigating the next.
[02:05:15] Speaker A: That's right.
[02:05:16] Speaker B: But, you know, for people wanting to put on an event through raised events or finding real estate, where can people find you? What's a good way.
[02:05:24] Speaker A: You can. You can email me. Stevie. Raised events.org is probably the best way to. To chat about poker, charity work, or I mean, they. And then from there we can. I can give my phone number, whatever. We can chat about that. But yeah, like, start. If you want to start the conversation, like, hey, this piqued my interest. What does this look like even for somebody who might be out of state? At least I can point them in the right direction. I don't mind send, you know, a quick email exchange on how to help somebody do that.
[02:05:54] Speaker B: But yeah, yeah, in the show notes and like, my gears and wheels are turning for a charity tournament in 2026. So we'll be talking.
I'll see you for Lars's 50th.
[02:06:10] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll see you downstairs. And hopefully we'll also have a friendship after that. Usually been pretty good over the last 20 years.
[02:06:18] Speaker B: It could take a few days to reset after some of these games. Games. But we usually. We usually reprioritize. I mean.
[02:06:26] Speaker A: Yeah. So far neither of us has lost our home because of poker, so we're doing just fine.
[02:06:31] Speaker B: I think. I think we're doing just fine. Yeah.
[02:06:34] Speaker A: All right, man.
[02:06:35] Speaker B: All right. Well, thanks for tuning in, everybody. Stevie, I appreciate you coming on.
[02:06:39] Speaker A: Thanks for having me.
[02:06:41] Speaker B: By the way, we talked about doing part B and then having some other folks involved and the, the second part of this conversation, it may be coming sometime in, I don't know, early 2026. We'll see how it goes.
[02:06:57] Speaker A: Might even take place around a poker table. We'll see. You never know.
[02:07:01] Speaker B: Maybe in a live setting, maybe high end microphones, sound systems, maybe some chip liner, maybe some thematic backgrounds to set the mood.
[02:07:11] Speaker A: We're always thinking about how we can make it better.
Always.
[02:07:16] Speaker B: Well, we're gonna stop.
[02:07:17] Speaker A: All right, man.
[02:07:19] Speaker B: But, yeah, I appreciate it, man. Thank you.
[02:07:22] Speaker A: Yeah, you bet. We'll talk soon, bro.
[02:07:24] Speaker B: Thanks, man. Thanks for joining. I appreciate you coming to get your stuff done.
[02:07:27] Speaker A: We got it done. We're all set.
[02:07:29] Speaker B: But did you did everything the guy.
[02:07:31] Speaker A: Oh, no. He had to postpone because road closures and debris. He literally was like, where is it coming from?
He's coming from Monroe, which is one of the areas that's flooded and it's just like, like, yeah, it's. Yeah, dude.
[02:07:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
So how'd you think it went?
[02:07:48] Speaker A: Good. Yeah, I think. I think it was good. Yeah.
[02:07:53] Speaker B: I think that's about what I imagined.
I think a sequel with Nicole would.
[02:07:59] Speaker A: Be great because she brings an interesting perspective where she can tie in conversation from. She's been both the player and the bartender and the host, and she. I think what she can talk about is.
And I don't know how many. How far into detail she wants to get with it, but, like, we were. We were supporting her during a time where like. Like she was, like, struggling financially to start a new business when the game.
[02:08:30] Speaker B: First moved into Rome.
[02:08:31] Speaker A: Yeah. And so, you know, without talking about the legality of it, but just say, like, these guys were just Having their home game, bringing in one to two tables of people that were eating and drinking and really help bring business in and make it their regular spot, which is, you know, like, she has a real appreciation for what we did. And so I think she has a really good perspective on just the. The positive impact. It can be like just if you were bringing, you know, 10 people in, you know, twice a week to play Monopoly, but they were in there from 7pm to 2am you'd be pretty happy. You'd be like, oh, yeah, this is our Monopoly group. And they play. They. They come in here for six, seven hours and eat and drink. You'd be pretty stoked.
[02:09:18] Speaker B: I mean, you know, we could rehearse it a little bit. I understand there's some sensitivities here, but there are several different directions that I think would be interesting. One would be, obviously filling in some gaps on the poker conversation, you know, but then 2 and 3 and 4. And it was her journey as a business owner. She went through kiwi, right. Learned this from the ground up. I want to say accountant by trade, right?
[02:09:43] Speaker A: Well, yeah, she got her degree from uw. She does. She does accounting, but she went through the entrepreneurial course at UW as well, so it's perfect for this. And I think one of the things that she can tie into it is just, this is really good, is as a woman who's a business owner venturing into the night and an ethnic minority business owner starting a nightclub cabaret in a system where Washington laws have changed to allow alcohol. So there's a whole new system. And wanting to be in on the ground floor of that, the headaches and. And all of the permitting that has come with that to say, hey, we don't want to do it. Like it's always been done because it's been run by men, it's been kind of seedy. It has a bit of a taboo in our state and trying to flip it on its head by being a woman who has, you know, adult dancing in a venue that's also a nightclub? And.
And how do you take something like that and get in on the ground floor of new regulations and make it something that it's never been in our state? I think that's a really cool conversation.
[02:11:02] Speaker B: Do you think we can have her to talk about that? You think she'd hop on and be willing if we.
[02:11:08] Speaker A: 100%?
[02:11:08] Speaker B: I think it's invaluable. Like, it would be really, really interesting, both from the standpoint of kind of breaking down barriers, but also to business Owners and starting business and, you know, with poker. But man, like, her journey is so interesting. I would love to have her on and we could all be on and. And then just.
[02:11:27] Speaker A: Yeah, I. I think that I don't necessarily need to be on. I could maybe even be in the same room if you guys wanted just some help with the stuff. I don't know. Yeah, but I'll talk to her. Yeah.
[02:11:39] Speaker B: Just. I mean, maybe give her just kind of lay the groundwork, see how she feels. And obviously I know her well enough to. To talk to her as well, but I just think it would be a really, really interesting and valuable conversation.
[02:11:54] Speaker A: Totally.
[02:11:54] Speaker B: To get her message out there. We can get her some publicity and it's just a win. I think so.
[02:12:01] Speaker A: Well, I think too, like, once you get some traction or once, Once people start it's. It's like women business owners in general, really great. Like, you know, you can talk if you haven't already, if you talk to your neighbor.
[02:12:12] Speaker B: Sally. Yeah, we talked Sally.
[02:12:13] Speaker A: Yeah, Sally's been on the podcast.
[02:12:15] Speaker B: Sally's been on. Yeah.
[02:12:16] Speaker A: I was wondering if she's. Because she's great. She's. Yeah. Yep. So cool.
[02:12:22] Speaker B: Well, hey, thanks for taking the time. I know it was a chunk this morning, but it's all good, man. Felt is good. Good kind of trip down memory lane. Good to catch up and.
[02:12:32] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
[02:12:34] Speaker B: Again, I think these conversations in my heart of hearts believe that they're more interesting, these stories than we think. And then we know.
[02:12:43] Speaker A: Well, you're a good conversationalist and it spurs other questions. And when it happens organically like that, I think it's interesting for people to want to listen to a conversation about something, even if they're not familiar with it, go, oh, this is really interesting. Oh, here's the story about a guy, started this poker night, now he's raising money. And like this, the thing kind of unfolded, I think, exactly the way we would have wanted it to. So I know don't feel that didn't get untold other than like this. This could be a days on conversation if we start getting into the nuances of it and the cast of characters.
[02:13:17] Speaker B: Like this, we have to watch that. Right. That can go anywhere.
[02:13:21] Speaker A: But.
[02:13:22] Speaker B: But it can. Like let's say the singer. People can say things in comments like, hey, would really have loved to have thought heard more about this.
And then like, let's say Nicole comes on and you're like, let's talk about Steve the mayor or somebody like that. How did this cast of characters, not just around Poker. Because. Because Kiwi, parallel to the poker, had the same kind of thing. They built this cast of characters that were just these I hard regulars in this, you know, dinky place.
Right.
[02:13:49] Speaker A: So 100%. It's.
[02:13:53] Speaker B: I mean, survives in that location in 2003, doing a beach party in February, showing Australian Rules football.
[02:14:05] Speaker A: It had to become its own thing. It could never have been.
Generic bar opening, calling it whatever you want, you know, like, you know, we're.
[02:14:18] Speaker B: Just showing Monday Night Football. Come on down and have some happy hour. Like it.
[02:14:22] Speaker A: Yeah, we're just gonna. We're gonna serve chicken wings and burgers, which if you are just like every place. It's such a unique place. That's what you know. And I think what Nicole learned from the kangaroo and Kiwi is that she has to be so unique to what's out there, which is what she has. But it has taken a while.
[02:14:41] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a. It's a new unique. But it's still. It's at. What she's doing is as. Or more unique than the original kk.
[02:14:49] Speaker A: Yeah. You can't just open some gastropub and blah, blah, blah and micro and do.
[02:14:53] Speaker B: Exactly what everybody else does in Ballard. You're not gonna make it, dude.
[02:14:57] Speaker A: Yeah. For sake of wanting to own a bar, like, you know, like, we had talked about that at one time. It's probably worked out good that we didn't open something, but, you know, because I'm not sure that whatever ideas I thought I had were going to be so much greater. But like, the one thing is that, like, I don't think I had anything that was super unique. And like, that's really what you need. You really need to be like what could be both unique and timeless because you sort of need to not be a flash in the pan. It's really like what a delicate balance that is. And go. Boy, I hope this stands out amongst the vanilla that's out there.
[02:15:34] Speaker B: And it's gotten more saturated since then. And look at the concentration of bars in Ballard and Capitol Hill.
[02:15:40] Speaker A: And also what's interesting though is that for. And fewer people are drinking. Drinking is like a downward trend smoking. And so, like, I don't know how you keep opening bars when people are like. And I think. I think there's always going to be people drinking. But I mean, I was looking at, you know, the statistics of smoking rates in the 90s. It was like 25%. And now it's like, whatever it is, it's less than like 1% or something. I don't know the exact statistics.
[02:16:05] Speaker B: No. Yeah, but like, bar is something different now, right? You don't have regulars who go in there for seven hours every day. You know, like we had. I mean, those guys showed up at 3 and they'd be there till 10.
[02:16:18] Speaker A: Or 11 every staggering out. Oh, yeah. It's so like that's, that's. That. Would that make. That would be great content for a podcast.
[02:16:28] Speaker B: Let's try to make it happen.
[02:16:30] Speaker A: I'll talk to her. Yeah, we'll get it on the books.
[02:16:34] Speaker B: Say hi to Lila. Huh?
[02:16:35] Speaker A: I said Nicole loves you, so we'll make it happen.
[02:16:38] Speaker B: No, say hi to Lila. Yep. And then the game is happening at your place. Is the 17th on the 20th.
[02:16:46] Speaker A: Yeah. So, yeah, I'll send out a text reminder. It's. Normally parking isn't an issue, but my. Luckily my Airstream's gone. But the Crookerberg Garden across the street, the four acre botanical garden, has their winter solstice walk and that ends at 8pm But I'm going to try to park my truck in my neighbor's easement and I'm just going to tell people, like, my driveway will hold four cars or five cars. Cars. I know Sam's gonna Uber. Lars is gonna commute with his neighbor, British Mike.
But like, it shouldn't be an issue.
But if we have to move cars at like 8pm after they close, then that turnout across the street will open up and. But could be congested for just a little bit. It'll be fine. I think I'm just gonna do something easy. I'm gonna do pulled pork and, you.
[02:17:34] Speaker B: Know, sandwiches and you always put out that spread. I remember we had that wild cast game at my place where we had Vadim and like we were doing the barbecue and Remember that?
[02:17:43] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Oh, it's great. It was great. Dude, you did it up. Dude, man, you had some other. You did you do lamb chops or something? You did?
[02:17:50] Speaker B: Yeah, we did lamb chops.
[02:17:52] Speaker A: Yeah, dude. I was like, who is this guy? Freaking lamb chops.
[02:17:56] Speaker B: Nobody want. Nobody wanted to do a poker game at their house then. Because they. They didn't want to. They didn't want to.
[02:18:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[02:18:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
Hey, you said Sam. I realize I owe Sam a phone call. I'll just talk to him at the game.
[02:18:08] Speaker A: Yeah, no problem. He's. He said no rush and after the first of the year thing anyway, and I think he's just looking for someone to point him in the right direction. I don't know how much he has to invest or anything, but, like, you know any, anything where he can start a business is what he's kind of looking to do.
[02:18:22] Speaker B: So we'll do it.
[02:18:25] Speaker A: All right, man, I'll talk to you soon. See you on the 20th. All right, bye. All right, thanks for listening to the next Venture alliance show. We hope today's conversation left you inspired, informed, and ready to take bold steps towards your next venture.
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