- What are some of the toughest spots
you found yourself in life that
you wouldn’t change
because they brought so much value to who you are today?
- Toughest spots in life.
Oh, when I was starting again in poker,
I had some downswings and that was tough.
I was always really afraid because
like everyone in my life kind of thought
I was like a crazy person,
like a madman
for trying to be a gambler.
I don’t know why.
- It’s OK.
- Getting emotional losing in a poker game too.
But –
and I was really afraid of failing,
of not making it
and I think that really drove me to succeed.
- What was it about that moment then that just
clicked?
- Actually I remember a moment.
I was going to do –
I was losing in poker
and I probably lost like
half of my bank roll.
I probably had like $50,000 or $60,000 left.
I was like,
“Oh man, I might have to go back to school.”
Like everyone is going to tell me, “I told you so.”
I was sitting in an airport.
I was flying to see Phil Galfond
who’s a good friend of mine.
He lived in another state.
I remember having like an anxiety attack in the airport
like worrying about this
and that never happened to me before.
Then,
you know, I went to see Phil
and at the time, he was a
much, much more talented player than me
and I just watched him play for a week
and I kind of just saw, OK, like
I still know how to do this.
You know, I still know how to play.
So I was watching him play
like the biggest games at the time
and sometimes you would like think of things
he wouldn’t think of a way to play the hand.
I would tell him and he would be like,
“Oh, yeah. That’s a correct way to play.”
So that helped build my confidence in my poker game.
- It seems like
poker is
very important here in terms of emotional context.
But is it also –
you mentioned that they would –
I would be proving them right or
you said something like that.
Is there an external factor here as well?
- Oh, for sure.
I mean poker was just my
tool or my vehicle
to kind of prove to myself I was enough.
You know, that
I could do
things that everyone doubted I could do.
- Who were those doubters?
- I mean it wasn’t really doubters.
I think people around you
just want like the best for you
and they kind of have their own
preconceived notion or their own beliefs
just about life.
Like what you have to do to succeed or
be happy and
so I mean all of my friends and family thought
I was crazy
because this was when poker
was first kind of starting
and first growing as a sport and growing in culture.
So like when –
maybe people still think of gamblers this way.
But definitely back then,
they thought any gambler
was like a crazy person
who was going to
lose their house and become addicted to drugs
and ruin their life.
- I left school at 16 with no education and I
ended up working in the British Railway System
and for the next 20 years,
I got close to becoming managing director
and then I stopped drinking alcohol
and I woke up one morning and thought,
“What am I going to work for?
Why am I doing this?”
- Yeah.
- And I told everyone I was going to quit
and everyone thought I was nuts
and nobody would support me.
Everybody just wanted to –
me to do what they wanted to do.
I think because they wanted to protect me
and it was very lonely
and I felt really misunderstood.
- Yeah.
You know, I can understand that
and I think
part of it is a lot of people like –
you will be around whatever group you’re around
and you’re all on the same path, right?
You kind of all have the same values
and outlook on life
and then if someone gets a new idea
or a new outlook that’s different from the groups,
like
one, that scares people
because it makes them sort of question,
“Are they making the right choices in life?
Is that really what they want to do?”
So I think that’s where some of it comes from.
- It’s like you’re holding a mirror up.
- Yeah, exactly.
- And then you see the reflection.
- Yeah, and like –
yeah, exactly.
- And what are
some of those values
that are really important to you in life
that guide you?
- Well, I’ve changed a lot as a person
since I first started playing poker.
But I think the main driving force back then
was I really wanted freedom.
I wanted freedom to do whatever I wanted.
You know, I didn’t want to have to listen to anyone
or take orders from anyone.
Then at the same time, it was also fear of failure
and those two things are kind of what
propelled me
to succeed at poker and get better at poker.
- It seems like the fear or failure is like a double-edged sword, right?
- Yeah,
or no, I think it’s something –
you know, there is –
there are values that can serve you
at certain times in your life.
You know, and for me, when I started out,
that was a great motivator
because I never would have
worked as hard as I did and –
you know, without that.
But I think at different points in life,
there are times to let everything go
because I know people,
some people who are billionaires,
you know,
who are older
and they still have that fear of failure
and they can’t really
enjoy life because that’s their primary emotion
even though they’ve achieved so much.
They’re always afraid
someone else is going to be achieving more.
So
maybe that served them when they were young.
But now
perhaps it doesn’t serve them anymore.
- It’s almost like we need to find –
instead of pressing a button to
get rid of that fear of failure,
we need to find a dial.
Dial it down because we need it.
- Yeah.
- But we don’t want it to go out of control
because it can have an adverse effect on our lives.
- Yeah.
because it can have an adverse effect on our lives.
- Yeah.
No, I think that’s very wise of you to say
and I think it’s just like kind of
like changing what your definition of a failure is.
- Yeah.
- Like some people might think they’re a failure
if they have a losing day at poker
and as a poker player
and that’s probably not a very healthy belief
because you’re going to have a lot of losing days
and if you’re always beating yourself off
whenever that happens,
you’re not going to have a very happy life.
