Poker's Dark Secrets: I Lost $3.5M Overnight | Bryn Kenney DSH #780
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I don't say like, oh, I've been so successful, oh, so lucky, so fortunate. We're like, you really should feel these things and celebrate a bit in these goals and dreams that you've accomplished. Whereas then, when you go through those struggles, the gratefulness for everything that you have will shine through whatever difficulty you're going through. Yeah.

Alright guys, Bryn Kenny here, the most winning poker player right now in the world. $60 million. Crazy, thanks for coming on man. Yeah, for sure, great to be here. Did you ever think you would get to number one? Oh, well I mean, twofold. Like when I first started playing, I was thinking that poker was this great game that if you could make like $150 to $250 a year back 20 years ago, like that would be something great. You don't have to have a boss, you live by like your own rules. I had like this...

dream goal of becoming number one where I was telling friends even as early as 17, 18 years old that I was going to become number one. Wow. You know, most people would say it's lucky or something, but been through a, it's like a crazy storm that you go through and somehow made it to the top. And you manifested a man. And we were talking earlier how two of your winnings were basically half your prize money, right? Yeah. Cause you had a $20 million win and then another huge one. Yeah.

Yeah, so like Triton tournaments, which they only really started, I think, in 2017 or so. And back then there was only one or two stops a year. It's just...

I had unbelievable success there. I think the first main event I ever played there, I got second place. Second main event, I got some fourth place or something too. Then by the time 2019 rolls around, I win the two biggest no-limit tournaments in Montenegro, like right before the World Series. And here in that stop that they're making the biggest poker tournament of all time, the Million Pound and...

I don't know. I just had a, I said it in the interviews before too. I had a feeling like I was going to win it. It's like something rang in my ears that like my whole story up until then was like culminating in winning this tournament. All of the like struggle that I went through to get there. That's crazy. A million dollar buy-in. Yeah. What was going through your head when you put that money in? Uh,

You have to be desensitized to it. So like I've always been on a crazy roller coaster and then the extremes would just get more extreme. So I'd build up, let's say, first few hundred thousand and then lose it all and then build up a million and then lose it all and get into negative million dollars, build up a few million, lose it all and get into a bigger negative million.

millions. So it was like the seesaw, like go just more and more each time. So you kind of just have to be desensitized to money. And for me, I never really,

value of myself from the amount of money that I had where I've seen other people, if your confidence is derived from the things that you have like money and then you lose it, then your confidence goes away, then your mind starts unraveling and then that's when people really have a hard time. But I kind of just always treated it like play money because I

You really have to at high stakes because you're playing in these huge tournaments and on one side, it's the biggest tournament you've ever played. You're supposed to have like these nerves. You're supposed to feel that it's something different than the things that you're used to. But really, it's just...

It's another game. Yeah, it's a bigger game, but you've been practicing your whole life for it. And while you're in that game, you need to do your best of like getting rid of any type of outside noise. So somehow you've got to convince yourself that it's just a normal day, just another tournament. And that the only thing that you can really focus on is bringing your a game out.

And in something like that, it becomes tougher because you have every person that knows you is writing you all along the tournament. Good luck here, here, here. You have nerves like you can't really sleep as much as you usually do. But you just like try to drink water, breathe it in, be prepared for it and just like give it your best. And if you can quiet those like outside noises, you give yourself just a much better chance of winning the tournament. Whereas the

Like the same thing if you start thinking about the min cash being a million and a half or so where all the other tournaments that you're playing, the min cash is maybe, if it's huge, it's 100K, 300K, so much bigger than everything else. But now if you put this label on the min cash, now you're just going to be really scared to get the cash or,

you're not going to be in like your best element to really take down the tournament. Wow. That's so interesting to be, to be able to play at this level. You really need to have control over your emotions. Yeah, definitely. To be able to like suppress your emotions and be real. 16 years from today, Greg Gerstner will finally land the perfect cannonball.

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like in the moment to be the best that you can. Because poker is really one of those rare things where you could play one day, three day, five day, seven day tournaments and you could play a great tournament. You slip up once and it's over. So, you know, you just put 30, 50. It's very unforgiving. You can get unlucky. You could get lucky too in some of those situations. But it seems like a lot of the times when you make that

error, it's the end of the road for you. - Wow, just one hand? - Yeah, so just like one hand, because it's like a buildup always. So even if you're making it to the end of the tournament, you only have so many chips that really, unless if you have a huge stack, you can only survive one hand from someone else who has the same stack. So one slip up and everything that you built up there is just, it's all gone. And then it's such a humbling experience too, because on one side you have to be completely focused on growth,

Because if you're not improving your game, improving yourself on the side to be the best version of yourself, and then also accepting that you are going to make mistakes, you're not going to really be able to make it to the top of the hill. So it's like forgiving on yourself, but then also very meticulous in improving yourself, improving your game, and not drumming down on yourself from any past mistakes. It can go...

a good way in life too. It's kind of similar. Yeah. You know, if you live with like the mistakes and you let them recycle and haunt you and every day, you're not going to have that clear head to get to where you want to get to in the future. Hmm. How much planning are you doing before the tournament? Like, do you study the lineup of who's playing and see kind of their tendencies? Uh,

No, not really at all. I'm more like a feel type of person. I mean, I've played so many hands with these guys. So a lot of poker players, they're all into studying and trying to optimize the best mathematical game that they could possibly play. For me, I always just saw it as studying was me playing and I was playing all day, every day more than anyone else. I pretty much...

put my whole life into it. So for me, it was like, learn what they're learning at the table anyway. So whatever they're studying, like poker kind of is you have these groups of friends who study together, talk strategy together, where I've never really done that. I've always just

played my game, came prepared myself in my own way of just playing and improving and getting better. But then when you have these guys who are thinking the same way, practicing like a similar type of approach, you're playing with them all throughout the day. So you kind of, you see what they're learning in real time. And then you can apply pieces of their game to your own game.

which I think is another really important thing in poker and in life also. You see other people who are successful, and if you can understand how they think a little bit and the approach that they have about something, instead of discrediting and saying that you're better so you shouldn't even look at this, there's always these gems of successful people and players that you can pick up

things that they learn throughout the way to then enhance also your own game and put it all kind of together and craft like a style that works for you with all the information that you have. Right. So you don't even use GTO yourself? Yeah, I've never like...

I've never looked at these things in my life. That's pretty crazy because I've seen like Daniel Negreanu say you have to use it or else you're going to die out. Yeah. So, I mean, that's their feeling and their approach. Like I completely disagree like with that, I would say. And it kind of –

What I see as poker, I see poker as expression of your creativity. So I think it's the best game in the world. And the reason for that is you can build a world-class strategy from anywhere between playing very tight to playing very aggressive. And inside of all that ranges to play, there's a strategy that's world-class in there. So it's kind of like...

if you go with your creativity and like the way that works for you, I think that you're going to be the most successful. So there are people of course, who are number crunchers and that type of way is going to be the best thing for them. But kind of like life, you know, to say that one size fits all is like such a crazy thing. There are so many tools and so many ways of improving yourself and your game apart from just looking at masterpieces,

mathematical numbers. And then at the same time, I feel like a lot of people who just look at things in numbers context, they can miss...

other things that are going on. They kind of see the picture as they see the picture and they don't open their eyes to the bigger picture that really exists. Because you got to be able to feel people's like emotion and energy kind of to tell what they're thinking, right? Yeah, plus like poker is such a deep game. So there's only so much studying that you could really do to be prepared for all situations. So what winds up happening is you do all this studying and you're very good at the pre-flop game of poker. But when I look at poker, I'm

Money is really made on the turn in the river when more money is in the pot and there's more. It's a more it's a bigger web of decisions that exist. So no one's going to be perfectly studied and perfectly balanced in these like.

intricate turn and river scenarios. And since they spend all their time in being calculated preflop, they're not even doing much thinking in those later areas where then like I'll try to take them out of their comfort zone, bring them in situations where it's kind of like no man's land for them. They haven't studied it. Yeah, exactly. They haven't studied it. I've practiced it and played it and kind of

I'd say what I'm good at is understanding what other people think. And then if you understand the way that they think, you can understand the way that they approach the game, that they approach hands, and the difference of if they'll make these hero calls or hero folds, and then trying to teeter a different game all based on every opponent that you have. That's crazy. So you probably don't like playing online then?

Not anymore. I loved playing online in the early days. I played so much when I first started playing poker. Before Solvers. Yeah, before Solvers. And then before high stakes turned into all live games. Plus, the US banning online poker in most states also attributes to that where if I could play poker legally in some big tournaments, I would sometimes because...

I love the game too, but don't really have an outlet for that. I'm not going to travel out of the country to play tournaments online. I didn't know it was banned still. I thought that was a while ago. Yeah, well, now you could play legally in New Jersey, Michigan, Nevada, Chicago.

maybe another state or two, but only maybe Delaware might be one of the states, but only in those states. And then the pool of players that you could play with is only from those states also. So the games that they have are much smaller than like the other sites that are,

spreading with liquidity all around the world. That makes sense. So when I was doing research for this, this one surprised me. I want to get your opinion on it. I was looking at the Poker Hall of Fame. You weren't on there. You have to be 40 years old. Oh, okay. So when you hit 40... So I'm not eligible yet. Got it. Because you were the most winning player, so I thought that was... I've got to be the shoe-in to get in the first year in that. Otherwise, I don't know what system you're using. How do they pick those people? Because it seems so random. I was looking at... I think that...

It's voted by the people who are in the Hall of Fame already. Oh. So they might do a fan ballot or something to decide who are the 10 finalists. And then the people who are already inducted vote on those 10 people. Got it. It's going to be tough because they only accept one person a year. And this is really the time of the golden age for online poker where you have a lot of people who...

who have been super successful, who are going to have a hard time getting in when you've got guys like me, Justin Bonomo, the biggest winners in the game now coming on, where on the other side, guys like Nick Schulman deserve to be on there, like Isai Scheinberg deserves to be on there for founding PokerStars and really making a boom for online poker.

So I don't know. I think it's something kind of like an old system. I think they should look at it. Yeah, one a year is not enough, man. Yeah, even two-year-olds start being tough over the next five, ten years of the people that turn eligible at 40. But you've got to do something different than the one a year. Absolutely. Other than you have tons of people who just dedicated their life to poker who have –

great careers that deserve to be in there. They're going to be dead by the time they get in there. Or never make it in there because then you've got the next wave of people who are most successful. So if you don't make it in your first 10 years of eligibility, are you ever really going to make it? Yeah, that's tough. Have you ever won Player of the Year? I don't think I did. I won US Player of the Year and lost by a little bit to Adrian Mateos in 2008.

I think it was. I had a very good year. I just didn't play so many tournaments. He was playing every tournament everywhere. He had a huge year. I think that I cashed the most money that year. Definitely profited the most, but just didn't win Player of the Year. So you're more selective with your tournaments? In the past, like recent years, when I was first starting in my career, because I'm like 20 years into a poker career now in the first year,

Like, 12 to 15 years, I played every tournament everywhere, played all day, every day, really just didn't think about anything other than poker and trying to reach that number one spot. Right. And then...

You get a bit older, you realize that things like balance are important, treating yourself better than you did before and living a little bit too. You could be stuck in this vortex. You're so focused on becoming number one in this game. It's like I didn't really pay attention to anything else that's going on. It's like in those times you think that,

You have like a good grasp on life and these other things and you look back on it later and like, what do you mean you thought you had a good grasp? The only thing you had a grasp on was playing poker. The rest, you were like asleep at the wheel and just like operating on autopilot. Right. Well, to get to number one in anything, especially poker or a major sport like that, you got to sacrifice almost everything. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I feel like too. If you want it, if you really want it, you have to want it more than everybody else. When you've got millions of people wanting it, then...

got to prove that you want it more than they do. And how do you do that other than just putting in the hours and the dedication like day after day, year after year? Absolutely. How'd your 2024 World Series go? I only played three events.

I just did a move from the East Coast to Austin in June and wanted to get situated more. Playing in Vegas isn't really my favorite place either in these big halls, long lines, lots of people. I'd much prefer a small place. Triton. Triton. 50 people max, right? Yeah, 100, 150 or so, but still just like...

uh like a warmer setting more personable setting traveling to cool places in asia i loved it also because i love tokyo so every time i every time they had a triton somewhere i'd make a stop in tokyo the food that i heard is really good incredible you've got to make a stop yeah and when you make a stop i have a good recommendation list for you for sure it's been on my list for a while man yeah

Yeah, those Asians, they gamble a lot over there. Oh, yeah. And like Macau? Yeah, Baccarat. Yeah, it's crazy. You go into the casino at 5 in the morning and you just see people playing crazy stakes. That's nuts. Yeah, I remember the first time I got there, because they're huge too. They're these complexes where...

where Vegas has got one hotel in a complex. There they've got three, four big hotels in a complex, so it's massive, the casino floor. And then you've got these junkets too that are private rooms all throughout the place. Damn, those Asians love gambling, man. You go to any back row room in Vegas, all Asians. Oh, yeah, you can't get enough. Is there any poker goals you haven't accomplished yet that you want to –

tackle or I don't think there's anything really left and that was kind of like why I mean my goal always was reaching number one as soon as I reached number one in 2019 it was kind of like you live like your dream and what's next did you feel like kind of upset almost that it like you got there and it was like what's next

Uh, well, I almost, I don't think I even give myself much time to even think about being upset. It's more about you. Like for me, at least I accomplished something. And before I skipped that celebration phase and just go on to, okay, what are we doing now? So you didn't even embrace it. You were just like, all right. Yeah. That's something I could probably work on a little bit. It's like,

celebrating, being grateful for like all the great things, because that's such a valuable and important thing too, because everybody, they go through struggle and turmoil, like through life. And, you know, it's possible to like, I've been so successful. I,

you know, you don't really think about it. I don't say like, Oh, I've been so successful. Oh, so lucky. So fortunate. We're like, you really should feel these things and celebrate a bit in these goals and dreams that you've accomplished. Whereas then when you go through those struggles, the gratefulness for everything that you have will shine through whatever difficulty you're going through. Yeah. Was there any players you feared when you were playing? Uh,

Well, like respected. I respect like a lot of the guys that I would play with. But I think that's another thing. You can't really make it to the top with having fear. Right.

You kind of just got to play your own game. Yeah, you got to believe in yourself almost to the point of delusional and just keep going. Yeah, I'd say your confidence is one of your best skills, right? Oh, definitely. Because a lot of poker players, I don't get that vibe off them. Yeah, especially like I was saying, a lot of these people play in the groups and study together where I did it all myself. Without the confidence, I think you have absolutely no chance to rise to the highest point of

this game or almost anything really you have to have that like deep-seated feeling inside I think that you can make something happen because if you don't believe then how could life give it to you yeah that is crazy was there anyone you couldn't really figure out though like they just played so weird compared to everyone else that threw you off a little bit

Not that I could really think of, to be honest. Wow. So you were able to figure out everyone. I did well in tournaments. Tournaments is your game over cash games? Well, I play actually interesting, like along those like crazy swings that I had, I actually didn't play tournaments for the first few years of my poker career. So what wound up happening is early on, maybe five years into my career, um,

At the World Series one year, I didn't have a good World Series. I'm sitting with 50,000 on my online accounts, and I just said, okay, I'm just going to shoot it and try to spin it up to something. So I wind up in two months turning 50K into 3.5 million just playing heads up. The first night I played heads up no limit, and I was a heads up no limit player at that time. After the first night, I just said, oh, all these people are playing PLO like crazy.

Why not just try it? I'd never studied the game at all. I never talked about it with anyone else. First hands that I played were in 2550 with a 5K buy-in. I'm just like, okay, let's figure it out versus these guys. And then spun it up really all in PLO. Then I made some bad decisions, mostly staking people, which was really always my... I've never heard good things about staking. My downfall. Yeah, especially when you're doing it in a big scale, it's very difficult because you're managing...

everyone else's emotions. And well, at that point you see kind of poker is an easy game because it's easy for you. You're just winning all the time. You're like, okay, you know, these guys should be winning too. I don't understand anyone who's not winning. And if they're not like I could teach them how to win, but then you realize like people aren't really so moldable and they are already confident. And it's like, what was, I was reading the other day. It's like the most dangerous people are the ones who know a little bit about something. Yeah.

You know, I think if I if I had the different approach and found smart people who didn't know anything about poker and taught them from like the beginning, I'd turn them all into absolute crushers. But because they had that idea that they knew like a bit about the game, they weren't open then to allowing what they know to be really ripped apart.

So long story short, I lose the whole $3.5 million in maybe six months or so, just mostly staking, spending some money. When I was already losing a bit staking and kind of on tilt, I played a few sessions where my head just wasn't there and maybe lost $500 of it back. So I wind up getting into a spot in six months where I had $3.5 million, I lost it all, and then actually had negative half a million. Holy crap. So I borrowed from friends.

And I was starting to hit, I didn't realize, but I was trying to play smaller stakes and my head just wasn't there for playing heads up cash. You go from playing 500, a thousand heads up versus Ivy and crushing him to then like two months later, you're trying to play five, 10 games like this. It's,

really impossible to be there and to play your best. You just don't care. So it's like the downward spot. So I wind up hitting into a spot where like negative half a million and my like credits kind of like starting to run dry. Like I've borrowed from all the like friends that I really could. I was starting to think like, okay, you really have to like

turn something around because you're not really going to be able to get so much more. So in a 300, in a 500 K hole, uh, and this is what I think, uh, like the dedication to just do what you have to do makes like the real winner stand out over time. Because what I started, I started playing $20 tournaments.

Like I was negative half a million. Most people are trying to chase that get even in a month or so. I told myself, okay, well, you just have to start winning. Even if it's 300 bucks a day at first, then turns into 500, then turns into a thousand. So from there, I actually never played a tournament before I started playing tournaments. Then within a few months, I started doing really well in tournaments. I think I,

I got out of that hole in a three to six-month span and then kind of rinsed and repeated a few times of building big roles, stupidly staking too many people, burning it to the ground again, getting into the negative, building it back up again, losing it all again. The staking risk to reward never seemed to make sense for me because even if they win, you still got to collect it. Yeah, well, yeah, mine was kind of more... I was...

What I enjoyed was helping people and helping them improve their life or teach them something that I know. So I always know poker and I wanted to help the people around me to be successful also. But then as you grow in time, you realize that

for someone to be helped, they have to help themselves. And if they don't have that trait really in them, there's nothing that you could do to help them. You're really just wasting your time and energy and theirs as well, and you might as well just pass it on.

pack up and go on to something that's a better place to your time. I've just never heard good stories, especially the Tom Duan situation. You got people saying he owes money and then he's in a million dollar buy in the next day. Something's off there. Yeah, poker's, yeah, it's a crazy business. You can have people who just owe a bunch of money out and playing in big games. That's the thing, like you said, to collect. You can loan someone money. You can think that they're credible and then when push comes to shove...

they might only really pay you when they're rich again, not when they like make a bit of money. For me though, I think what kept me in and able to get into these negative figures over time is because anytime I won, I paid off any of these markers that I have with anyone. So there'd never be a time that it's like, oh, I see Bryn gambling in the casino or playing like some huge cash game and he hasn't like wrote me back and owes me like a bunch of money. It's like, no, no, no. If I win something for, I remember in that stretch, uh,

I was still like negative 500. I won a tournament for 150 and I gave 130 of it away just right away to the people that I owed. Because also you just kind of feel uncomfortable when you owe. So you want to get that hump off your back. And that's like a feeling of accomplishment too. Like you chisel into your number and winds up like making you someone that people trust and want to do business with, which in a gambling life, when you can lose all your money and get negative, those, those,

For me, without that, I would have never made it to the top. I would have lost all my money or got into negative and I would have been out of the game. So it saved you. Yeah. So that's why you're so grateful for it. It makes sense why you're so giving with your money then. Yeah, plus I just feel like I'm so fortunate too. Like from...

from like the experience that I had. That's why I think that I've been able to become at the top of poker too. I feel like I've been given this like rare life where I just had so much love around me as a kid. And then it just like went from like love to support and belief that I could do anything that like I believe in. And that,

That's something that I would love to teach as many other people as I possibly can, that if you believe in yourself, you can make incredible things happen.

But that belief, it usually stems from someone believing in you. So just going as little as telling someone who's young and trying to become successful that you believe in them, that's something that could really last a lifetime and give them that push and the urge to be the best version of themselves. Absolutely. And then the best world that we can live in is the more people that are the best versions of themselves as possible. Yeah, I agree. Yeah.

So a lot of people label Helmuth as the tournament goat, but I'd love to hear your opinion because he doesn't really play in the higher stakes tournaments like you do. Yeah, I mean, he's the biggest winning WSOP player. He has his career, which is impressive too. He's played a lot of big field tournaments and has been successful in those throughout time, even winning bracelet events. But yeah,

He's played some high rollers and hasn't really fared very well in them. And...

I think when you think about who are the best players in poker, if you're not competing at the highest level, you can't really be in contention for it. It's almost like you could be the head of some subcategory that exists somewhere else. Right, like a casual tournament. Yeah, like WSOP. He's number one in WSOP player. Okay, cool, but WSOP has huge fields. What about when you play the small fields with the best players? Then you really see how good you are at poker.

Because year after year, if you're winning in those, then you're standing the test of time versus the people who are at the top of their game. But if you're playing against mostly amateur players who are at the World Series, you're great at beating the amateur players. It's like you could be the king of AAA or something like that.

Yeah. But he's not really in the majors. Yeah, because when you say tournament player, you've got to include the high roller events. Yeah, and then you could say like, oh, that they're lucky, those ones, small fields lucky. But you get lots of play and you're playing versus the toughest people. There's no luck involved from year in, year out. Right. Maybe in one specific tournament.

Yeah, but not year after year. So we'll give him the king of AAA. He thinks he's the GOAT of everything. Well, no. I mean, he says that he is online. He doesn't want to play me heads up. You know, if he's looking to ever make like a huge bet in the World Series, like I'll consider playing a whole WSOP series and show him that he's not even the best at those either. Wow.

You just don't want to commit to the big fields? It's just too much, especially if you make a bet like that. You're playing every day for a month and a half. Ten hours a day, right? I've just put so much time into poker already. I love poker, and I don't think you can really get to the top without loving what you do. But then it's also like now I have a daughter that's one and a half. I want to spend time with her. I want to –

Do other things in life. Take the skills that I've learned in poker and translate it to something bigger. You've probably seen every single hand possible in the world at this point, right? Yeah, I remember a lot of them too. Oh, you do? Do you have photographic memory? Yeah. That comes in handy, I bet. Especially in high rollers, especially the way that I play. Right. If you play that mathematical approach, it doesn't matter the hands that you remember because you're playing a systematic thing that you're instead memorizing the

Yeah, memorizing really. But then mine is like more compacting information. So the more you remember, the more information you could put in to solve the problem, the better apt you are to solve the problem. Yeah, you could argue photographic memory is more valuable than knowing GTO. Yeah, I would say so, especially if you play a strategy similar to mine. That's always changing. Yeah.

Yeah, because people are going to have the same tendencies. So you're able to kind of pick those out with your memory. Yeah, people like to imagine that they have these balanced ranges. It's all the same. You can lie to yourself all you want. You're not a robot. Everyone's got tendencies.

How much luck do you need to win the main event in the World Series? Oh, so much luck. Like more luck than skill, you'd say? Oh, yeah, for sure. Because you've got to navigate through an 8,000, 10,000-person field. So you could just get dealt one hand that you can't get away from and your event's over. Of course, when you get towards the end of the tournament, skill is going to matter a lot. But to get to the end of the tournament is...

a minefield that you're like kind of dodging bombs over and over again. Yeah, I saw a lot of top guys go out day one, day two. You went out. Chance Corneth is out already. A couple big guys are out. Yeah, it's very easy to go out like early on. There's so many like great winning poker players that –

for sure a bunch of them will get knocked down on every day yeah yeah phil golf on's out that's that's why i asked that because it seems like there is a ton of luck because if random people are knocking them out i mean and then if you if you look at the wsop winners in the past few years there have been a few young like uh good poker players but before that you had a lot of uh

Just random people who hopped in the main event and just won the tournament. Chris Moneymaker. Yeah, you have like the Jamie Golds and Chris Moneymakers. Yeah, Jamie Gold. That's a big one. I love his fight with that one guy. It's so viral. Have you seen that one? The guy freaking out. So you've been pretty quiet on social media the past few years. Do you think you'll ever make a return?

I guess it's just something I've got to equate it for a few things. So like in the past, I would do mostly Instagram stories, show places that I would eat, places that I would go to give some type of advisement to people, give them some like lessons of the things that I learned. I kind of quieted down on that. I feel like.

it's a big effort to do it well. And if I were to have a team of people or a few people that would help me put something together there, then I would love to do it, but just single-handedly doing it on your own. And then also trying to navigate, like not say,

saying the wrong things. The haters are already... I would sometimes say like just stupid things for no reason and then forget like, you know, you're number one winning. You can't be saying like this, these stuff and you're, well, life is humbling. You're primed for cancel culture because you're at the top. Yeah. So you say one controversial statement and...

And everything's completely dissected. Right, every word. And I'm very much in the flow, go with my feel, my instincts, not editing and rewriting things. So very easy for someone like that to say one word wrong and get completely blasted for it. People on Twitter are ruthless. That's probably the most honest platform ever.

You know, honest. It's brutal, though, too, because you've got just got people with these like absurd that anyone can say anything and there's no like blacking out. So you've got these like absurd takes and like lots of keyboard warriors and, you know, people behind like a computer with no picture idea of themselves.

and having lots to say about things that they really have no idea about. That I can't respect because I get some hate too and I'll click on the profile. It's a fake profile. I'm like, why can't you say that from your real page? Of course. You know what I mean? And maybe it's someone who's like your competitor. Someone who's like jealous of you. They don't want to like say that it's actually them because it looks so like...

stooping so low but they have no problem like doing it on some anonymous name yeah i just realized it's inevitable though if you're gonna be big on social media you're gonna get some hate even mr beast gets hate yeah no matter what i mean he's saving lives and he's getting hate their comments are like why are you doing this yeah it's crazy we're gonna hate on whatever yeah yeah well i guess yeah exactly like you said it's just an inevitable thing if you're doing

Especially if you're doing things that are different. A lot of people have this narrow-minded thinking of who do you think you are for doing something different. It's like, what do you mean who do I think I am? I'm just trying to make a positive impact on the world and the way that I can do it where every person is so different. You're almost judged to this cookie-cutter mold of what you're supposed to be. I've always been the complete opposite of that.

So then navigating that and not being affected by negativity, are these things that you have to wade through? Yeah.

Yeah, sounds like high school to me. Yeah, so that was kind of like it, exactly. It's like, do I really want to just get these negative messages or should I just focus on myself and being a better person? I feel that. Poker world has a lot of drama, man. Oh, yeah. It seems like every week. High school, I've said that so many times, it's like a high school where most of the people just haven't grown up. Right. Like they're still just...

upset about how they were treated in high school and the no respect that they got or whatever way it was. And now they've elevated to a higher level. They, you know, bash those same type of people and continue the cycle. Right. Because I think just, you know, a lot of the world is just like hurting but not seeking help.

So instead of like trying to grow, trying to deal and get through that pain that they're holding on to, it just kind of runs their whole life. - 100%, they're lashing it out. - Yeah, so it's like, then you don't really feel, you feel bad if anything for anyone who's like in that position because you know that they're lashing out at you because a certain way that they feel inside. - Yeah.

Yeah, there's nothing really you could do about everyone like that. You try to make the impacts that you can with the opportunities that you have and just accept that there's going to be a lot of people who...

don't want to improve and don't really understand. Yeah, if they're not ready to change, it's already hard to change yourself. So if you're going to try to change someone else... Well, I guess that's the impossible thing. It's so hard to change yourself, it's impossible to change someone else. But by changing yourself, you can change everything around you. True. So I guess that's the whole thing. So many people you see, they're like...

in bad situation, unhappy in life, and they're giving advice to other people. It's like, you know, why don't you get to a happy place in life before you're actually giving advice to other people? Because this is like toxic information for them. What do they want to live like you? So, hey, why don't you forget about, you know, trying to influence other people and telling them how they should live? And why don't you go look in the mirror and figure out, you know, how can I actually...

Yeah. Yeah.

I think, you know, your life is a whole reflection of the way that you are inside. Absolutely. Victim mentality, right? Yeah. So if you're, yeah, victim mentality, guess what? You're going to be a victim. Yeah.

It's kind of like the eureka of everything. Oh, you think you're a victim? Well, you're right. Oh, you think that you're positive, you have a great life? Well, guess what? You're right. It's like the way that you feel, the way that you think that just portrays onto your whole life. Absolutely. Wow, I didn't know you were a lone wolf in this field because a lot of poker players are friends with each other and they have these groups and you kind of just were like, screw that. Yeah.

Well, I wound up in like a spot. It was maybe halfway into my poker career. And I was hanging out with a bunch of other people. We were in Monte Carlo, maybe 10, 15 guys hanging out, all high roller players. And this one hand came up with this guy, Phil Grusome, like back when the Germans were like crushing and like the Phil Grusome, Igor Kurganov, Tobias Rankemeyer era. And he was talking about this hand that he played in a tournament. And he

And everyone was on one side of the way that they would play the hand. I'm like, well, I would play the hand this way because X, Y, and Z. And at first, they were like, no, I don't see it. But as time went on, every person in the room was like, oh, I think your line is the best one of all. And then it was kind of eureka in my head. I was like, okay, you think a lot different than these guys. Yeah.

If you hang out with them, you're going to give them a lot of insight into the way that you think, which they have really no idea about. And you're competing at the highest level. So, okay, let's just hang out by ourselves. So you had to separate friendship and business. Yeah. Well, plus, like, it's a bit of that high school just drama-ish, like, exists, too, which I really –

want no part of definitely not i'm still scarred from that i don't care like i never want to gossip about anyone or talk about anyone behind their back like i just want to live and have fun yeah 100 that shit comes back to you if you gossip oh yeah of course it's like a black hole in yourself yeah absolutely it's like another hole that like you're trying to feed because you're not feeling in a confident way yourself yeah it's like another one of

you know, it's showing the pain that the person's actually going through. Absolutely. What's next for you, man? Any big events coming up for you? I'll probably play some Triton tournaments at the end of this year. I think they'll have an invitational tournament in Monaco in November. I think they'll have a 500K buy-in in the Bahamas in December, it looks like. That would be, like, the second biggest invitational ever. So it's like I almost got to...

I've got to hold my crown for those ones. So I love playing the invitational tournaments. They're fun too because it's half pros and half amateurs. I love just meeting different people, ones who are successful in other aspects, understanding their brain a little bit, having fun, meeting people all around the world.

And I love that aspect about poker. Yeah, the networking, right? Yeah. We were talking off camera about that. You meet some great people. Yeah, exactly. There might be a lot of seedy people too in poker who are trying to take advantage. It's kind of like life too. But in that, you can still find these gems of people that exist too. And where else are you really going to meet

these super successful guys in these other interesting areas of life other than at a poker table. Absolutely. And since like, you know, if you're successful at poker, they understand it's a complicated game. So you kind of,

automatically get respect for being a smart person oh yeah we're like if you're just off the street you know you'd never be able to have a conversation you get respect from billionaires because i know like bill perkins and some billionaires play poker you know yeah it's it's like a really it's like being an athlete yeah pro athlete yeah just get respect it's like a mind athlete yeah well we'll link your socials below hopefully you're back by the time this airs but uh yeah thanks for coming on man that was fun for sure thanks for watching guys as always we'll see you tomorrow