Liv Boeree - Million Dollar Girl

Full transcript: Liv Boeree on London Real

7:29 Brian Rose: This is London Real, I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Liv Bowrie, the number one ranked female poker player on the Global Poker Index. You’ve won millions playing poker and also hold a first class degree in physics and astrophysics. When you’re not playing poker, you’re a model, TV presenter, heavy metal guitarist, and philanthropist. You recently spoke at Google’s headquarters as the founder for Raising for Effective Giving, a fundraising organization which encourages people and companies within the poker industry to donate to charities.

8:13 Liv, welcome to London Real.

8:15 Liv Boeree: Thank you.

8:15 Brian Rose: So much to talk about. Let’s talk about poker first. You know, when I see the world of poker, I don’t know what to think.

8:22 On one hand, I see, you know, these people really studying hard, winning lots of money. On the other hand, I see Dan Bilzerian, you know, with popping bottles and jets and models and guns. And so I’m guessing your life is somewhere in between the two.

8:37 Liv Boeree: Oh, yeah. I mean, I’m just surrounded by models and guns all the time.

8:41 It’s exactly what I’m all about.

8:43 Brian Rose: Should I check your Instagram feed?

8:46 Liv Boeree: Yeah. Okay. So it’s like that sometimes, not like that.

8:50 Brian Rose: I mean, whose life is really like that? Is his really, I mean,

8:54 Liv Boeree: it’s, yeah, it’s, I mean, poker, it can be whatever you want it to be. You can, for the most part, most people are playing it for fun. And, you know, they’ll go down to their local casino, or they’ll play online. They might play a couple of hours a week.

9:10 And, you know, that’s what the game’s about. It’s just sort of fun and pastime that people like to do. And then there’s sort of, you know, I guess on top of the pile, there are then people who play more, and they might still be winning or losing players. And then sort of the higher up the pile you go, you get the sort of the long-term winning players. And then, particularly sort of these days, they tend to be more the analytical types.

9:34 And, you know, so not the classic tits and guns type people.

9:38 Brian Rose: Okay, right, right. Was that the classic poker player then?

9:42 Liv Boeree: Well, yeah, so, I mean, Bill Zarian’s over there. I wouldn’t necessarily call him a poker player.

9:48 He’s a very wealthy guy that clearly knows how to have a lot of fun and plays in some very rare, exclusive, high-stakes cash games in LA from what I’ve heard of. Like, I’ve never seen him. Okay. I’ve never met him. I’ve never seen him.

10:01 So it’s always when people are like, oh, you’re like Daniel Darian. I’m like, nah, no, no, no, no. He just plays poker sometimes. Same as, you know, Toby Maguire sometimes plays poker. Okay.

10:11 Brian Rose: Would you call him a poker player?

10:13 Liv Boeree: I mean, no, he’s an actor.

10:14 Brian Rose: Right, but he’s not a professional poker player, which you are.

10:18 Liv Boeree: Right. Um, I don’t tend to use that word because I have other things that I do as well.

10:22 There are definitely people within poker that purely make their income just from like grinding out a living playing poker. They’re a very, very small percentage of all the people in the world that play poker. And I’m not one of those. I had like a time period where I was maybe for a year or so, but I’ve always had other things going on as well. So, yeah, I’m a poker player, definitely.

10:44 I’m definitely very regular on the circuit. And I, depending on what time period you look at it over, I’m definitely a profitable player. Okay. Lifetime and…

10:56 Brian Rose: Which not everyone can say.

10:58 Liv Boeree: No. Okay. Some people, um, it depends. Like if someone can come along, they might be a bad poker player and they’ll win a big tournament and then they’ll leave and they’ll never play poker again and they’ll definitely be profitable lifetime because of that. But it doesn’t mean that they’re…

11:16 If, you know, if they were to, in a vacuum, if they were to play add, add, you know, to infinity, then they would not be a profitable player, long run. Right. So it’s difficult to define.

11:24 Brian Rose: Right. So if you’re playing like some of the best on a regular basis and you’re still profitable, it shows that you have that skill level.

11:30 Liv Boeree: Yes. Okay. Absolutely.

11:32 Brian Rose: As opposed to that one-off win. Right.

11:35 Okay. Yeah. So, all right. So poker is more of an analytics game as opposed to a, you know, a Bilzerian game per se. And so the people that you compete against, I mean, is it a mathematics game these days, the way that poker has evolved and the way that it’s, you know, the Texas Hold’em game, is it really more about knowing numbers in your brain or is it really more about playing the player and the psychology?

11:56 Liv Boeree: Um… These days, it’s, in order to become one of the very best, you have to have the desire to do a lot of analysis, both pregame, studying the theory and so on. Within the game, there’s sort of a, it’s a game of logic, essentially. Oh, well, they did this here and this there. And so that means they’re likely to have this range of hands and sort of piecing that together.

12:19 And so there’s some sort of basic math in game. And then, again, to be really good, then after the game, you want to analyze what you’ve done, discuss a hand with your peers, you know, people whose game you also respect, and sort of simulate ideas and feedback from the decisions you’ve made, that kind of thing. So, yeah, it’s definitely a game of logic and analysis, more than anything. On top of that, I mean, people often might say, oh, so it’s all about reading people and so on.

12:47 It’s like, well, what do you mean by reading someone? You know, I’m looking at you now. I could be reading your body language. I see you’re sort of listening to me. You’re focused and so on.

12:56 So that’s a form of reading, but also reading someone is the way that they have played the hand. Well, they bet this many chips on that card, and then they check raised on this street, and so on and so forth. That’s also a form of reading someone. You’re getting information just about their betting patterns and so on. So it depends how you want to define it.

13:14 But is it more about some people tend to focus so much more on, oh, just the way someone, oh, well, they moved their hand this way, and so on and so forth. And it’s just not an accurate enough picture you’re going to get from the way people behave, because yes, there are human tendencies. When we’re confident, we tend to expand like this. And when we’re shy, we get smaller. But anyone who’s half decent at poker knows this.

13:37 So if they see someone’s really staring at them all the time instead of actually really thinking about the game, then you can easily just go, OK, well, they’re looking for my body language, so I want them to fold, and so on. So yeah, it’s a combination of all of these little things. But by far, if you want to become a really good poker player, then you’ve got to do the theory work and the analysis.

14:00 Brian Rose: OK, and your degree in physics and astrophysics probably makes you comfortable with math and statistics.

14:06 And so that probably came natural to you. You’re like, I got this.

14:10 Liv Boeree: Yes, I mean, analysis and so on was definitely sort of my stronger point when I was still in academia. But then actually, once I had graduated, I went through a few years where, I mean, when I first started learning the game, I was just all about it and so on. But once I felt like I was proficient, I’d had some success and so on, I actually became quite lazy and complacent, for want of another word, and didn’t do that level of analysis that I should have been.

14:38 And the way that poker’s gone is that there’s so many sources of information of how to be better, like the internet and so on, that the average standard of players just gone up and up and up. And if you don’t keep up with that, then you get left behind and so on.

14:51 Brian Rose: That’s fascinating to me, because you said that in an interview that you took kind of like a year off and you weren’t studying and doing all the pieces, and then you said the game left you behind.

15:00 And it’s strange to me to think that poker can evolve that quickly when it’s the same game, it’s the same cards, the same probability, and yet the learning curve is constantly being climbed and people are learning how to play better.

15:13 Liv Boeree: Yeah, the average bad player these days is better than probably some of the best players in 1998, for example.

15:19 Brian Rose: Okay, that’s wild. And television’s had a big part in that, right?

15:23 Liv Boeree: TV has, yeah.

15:24 But I would say more than that, the internet. There’s the explosion of online poker, sites like Poker Stars and so on. They have teaching material on there. You can watch, replay hands, that kind of thing, analyze it, and then there’s all these poker forums and discussions where people are discussing in depth, you know, really breaking down hands into the nitty-gritty and so on. And so you don’t have to put in that much effort to really get the basics, sort of the basic strategy which people took years to figure out 10, 15 years ago.

15:58 Brian Rose: Okay. I was reading the autobiography of a guy named Tony Shea and he’s the CEO of Zappos. He sold his company for like a billion dollars to Amazon and he’s in Vegas. And he was talking about poker. He got fascinated after he sold his first company to Microsoft and I didn’t realize it, but he said, when you’re playing poker, you’re not playing against the house or the casino where you statistically lose, you’re playing against the people at the table.

16:20 And if you change tables and go to another table and there are just a lower standard of players, then your probability of winning goes up. Absolutely. And so I didn’t realize that and the casino just takes a small piece of it. So you really are playing the other people on the table and their habits can go up and down depending on if they’re tired or if they’re this or that. So the game is constantly changing, right?

16:39 Liv Boeree: Yeah. Okay. Big mistake people make is pigeonholing someone from the get-go. And whenever you sit down at a table, you should obviously try to look around and make a note of all the faces and I guess calibrate. Well, first of all, you want to, I guess, apply a little bit of prejudice based upon the way people look.

17:01 Oh, it’s an older guy. So I’m going to assume he’s perhaps a little bit more conservative in his style of play. This is a young kid with a hoodie and sunglasses who thinks he’s the shit. So probably isn’t this guy young as well, but just very calm and I really need to keep an eye on him. This girl, I don’t know much about her, but she seems young and very focused.

17:23 So probably you should be careful with her and so on. So you have a quick look before you’ve even seen how anyone’s played hand and try and even though in an ideal world you shouldn’t put people into pigeonholes because it can be a detriment to your game, you have to make assumptions from the beginning until you’ve gathered enough data. And if you get evidence that actually the old guy is super aggressive, really make a mental note of that and people often don’t keep up with this information that they’re receiving and they still stick to their initial first impression.

17:52 Brian Rose: And you can’t be playing at hours at a table and their personalities will change or they might evolve a bit.

17:58 Liv Boeree: Yeah, they can evolve. I mean, for the most part people have a style, but then, yeah, situations can happen. I don’t know, they might get a phone call that’s frustrated them, so now they’re actually just a little bit more agitated and before they were very emotionally calm and now they’re dunking their chips around or they win a huge pot and now they have excessive confidence or there’s a lot of things that can happen that will make people deviate from their baseline playing style.

18:26 But it’s more important to, again, that sort of calibration of what each person’s baseline is and make a mental note of that.

18:33 Brian Rose: Okay, how good are you at calibrating people and players?

18:37 Liv Boeree: It’s definitely one of my strong points. I mean, I couldn’t put a percentage number on it. And again, it depends on my state of mind that day.

18:45 I have days where I’m so focused and I’ll sit down and I just feel like I’ve had, you know, what’s the movie, Limitless? Yeah, Bradley Cooper, right? Yeah, I feel like Bradley Cooper, but I’m just noticing everything and those are the best days. That’s when you’re in this sort of flow state of just heightened awareness and picking up all these little bits of information. And then other times, and I’ve tried to figure out why, but, you know, is it because I didn’t get enough sleep or is it because I was distracted or I didn’t meditate and I’m sure it’s a combination of those things, but there’ll be times when I just cannot concentrate.

19:19 However much effort I put in, I cannot bear to the moment my cards are folded and the hand continues to not be looking at my phone and not being present to what’s actually going on at the table and that’s when you’re then missing out on this vital information.

19:35 Brian Rose: Okay, when you’re in the flow state and you sit down, does that mean you’re going to win that day?

19:41 Liv Boeree: Not at all. That’s the grossest thing about poker. You can be in the absolute best mental state playing your complete AAA plus game and lose all your chips or lose a lot of money because there’s this thing called variance, which is a fancy word for luck, and that’s what anyone who plays poker is always going to be affected by.

20:01 It’s unavoidable over the short term, so in any given day, which is a short term, you’ll be somewhere on that sort of variance bell curve. You’ll either be lucky, you could be right around the middle or you might be very unlucky, but the point is that over the long run, when you play many thousands and thousands of hands, that smooths out, and if you are making the most profitable decisions or more profitable decisions in your opponents more often, then you’re going to be, in the long run, making profit compared to those who aren’t. Okay.

20:33 Brian Rose: How important is it to cut losses? You know, I was in the city for 15 years, Wall Street, the city of London. We’ll talk later about traders and poker players because they think they go hand in hand, but the good traders know what a stop loss is as in they know how to walk away from a trade and not be emotional about a trade, and the bad ones are the ones that that one trade can bankrupt them because they don’t know when to get out. Right. How much of you being successful over time is being able to just recognize when you’re on the bad part of that variance curve and you’ve got to just fold them, fold them, fold them, fold them?

21:04 Liv Boeree: Well, so, I mean, the thing you’ve got to think about is obviously your bankrolls, and that’s the mistake that people can make, is they either overestimate their skill level or they underestimate the level of variance in the style of game that they’re playing. And, I mean, there’s sort of these rules of thumb, like, oh, never invest more than 2% or 1% or 5% of your bankroll in any given game. And those are a good idea to sort of try and stick to. Now, there’ll be times when a game has popped up that you know is just a one-time game and it’s perhaps much higher stakes than you’d normally play, but the players are all so bad and you know that you have an expected ROI of 20% instead of the usual 8% or something like that, and you’re like, okay, I’m going to take a shot.

21:50 And that’s fine, as long as you don’t, then this game ends up always existing and you’re now taking a shot for 15, 20% of your bankroll because, like I said, in any given day, you could be somewhere on that bell curve of variance and you lose it, then now your bankroll is down to here and you’re having to put bigger and bigger chunks of it in to try and recoup your losses, and that’s the mistake people make. I think the key thing is, if in doubt, be even more conservative of how big a game you can play. And I mean, a lot of players sell action to some big games.

22:29 If I play a big high-stakes tournament, very rarely do I have 100% of myself in it, very, very rarely, because I know that I’m profitable in the tournament, but my bankroll, because the nature of tournaments and so on, they tend to be a big win, and then nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Big win, nothing, nothing. Well, those nothing, nothing’s can really stretch out for a while whether you’re playing, even if you’re playing really, really well. So it’s important to sort of gauge, well, this is what my bankroll is, this is how profitable I am in that tournament, and you can run a fairly simple calculation to determine how much you should put up in any given game that you want to play.

23:11 Brian Rose: What’s a typical bankroll for you in a big tournament? Like, what are you walking in with as a bankroll?

23:16 Liv Boeree: Well, so the way a tournament works is everyone buys in for a fixed amount. Okay. So that’s the entry fee, and in return for that, you will get an equal number of chips.

23:25 And then the game start, everyone’s usually tables of nine, so there might be 1,000 players, so there’s 100 or so tables. And the minimum bet starts off really small, and then every hour or so it goes up. And let’s say it doubles. And if you lose all your chips, you’re out. And that’s it, you’re done for that tournament.

23:47 And it keeps playing until someone ends up with all the chips, and they win the tournament.

23:52 Brian Rose: And what’s the typical entry fee for something like that? How big do things get?

23:56 Liv Boeree: So a main event, like a classic, for example, I play the European poker tour a lot, it’s organized by poker stars, and the main events for that are always 5,000 euros, or dollars depending on where it’s held. And yeah, so 5,000 euros is a typical stake for something like that.

24:11 But then there are plenty of tournaments that are sort of 100, 100 pounds, 1,000 pounds, 100,000 pound tournaments. I’ve never played anything that big. They had a million-dollar buy-in tournament in Vegas last year. Okay. I didn’t play it.

24:25 My boyfriend did. Okay. It was terrifying.

24:28 Brian Rose: So you guys bankrolled part of that, and someone else bankrolled him as well?

24:33 Liv Boeree: He had a piece, and a lot of the pro players that were playing in that had sold off a lot of themselves.

24:39 Brian Rose: How much will they sell off? Like 50% or 80%?

24:42 Liv Boeree: It depends. Sometimes more people sometimes play for only 5% to 10% of themselves. Okay.

24:48 I can’t imagine anyone in that tournament, except for the old mega-mega-rich businessmen that have come in to play it. Most poker players in that probably had a maximum of 50% of themselves.

24:59 Brian Rose: Okay. Do you want to play in something like that one day?

25:03 Liv Boeree: I mean, if I got the opportunity, if someone came in and were like, yeah, here, I’ll take 80% of your action, and I just have to sell a bit more, absolutely.

25:12 Of course. Because provided I feel that I’m at least slightly profitable. I mean, my edge might be very, very small, but it’s hard to justify playing in a tournament if I know that I’m going to be sat at the table of the nine very best in the world. Someone’s got to be the losing player there, and the chances are it’s going to be me. I don’t want to be too delusional about how good I am.

25:36 I know I’m good in most fields, but in those super high roller tournaments where you get some of the very best people, if you get unlucky with your table draw that you just have them all at your table, well, then it’s going to be a miserable day.

25:51 Brian Rose: Right. Where are the rest of the women at the poker table?

25:54 Liv Boeree: That’s a great question. It’s a really, really good question.

25:58 There’s been a lot of debate about it recently. Things are getting a lot better. I mean, even when I started out 10 years ago, there’s so many more girls you see, women, ladies, whatever you want to call them, around, but we’re still very underrepresented.

26:16 Brian Rose: Five percent of the players? Less?

26:18 Liv Boeree: Yeah, sometimes. It depends on generally the lower stakes the tournament, the higher the percentage, the better the ratio is. Some of these high rollers, like a 25K buy, they’ll usually be one, maybe two females, if they’re out of 100, which is actually one of the better ratios, but sometimes it’s zero. Typically, it’s around five to seven percent on a good day.

26:46 Brian Rose: And why is that?

26:47 Liv Boeree: Well, a lot of people like to go, well, it’s because the female brain’s not cut out for poker, which drives me absolutely mad. It’s almost certainly, you can’t be certain about any of these things because there’s just too many variables to ever run an extensive study to go conclusively, oh, it’s because of this. But I think it’s most likely a combination of historical factors, societal factors. You could argue evolution itself favored, encouraged men to be more competitive and females to be more nurturing, or poker is a highly, highly competitive game.

27:29 It’s based on intimidation and based on- Right. And again, it’s not because the female brain can’t handle it, per se. I think it’s because females have been trained to, they don’t need to do it. And so they’ve just, again, whether you want to say it’s sort of in the caveman society, it was discouraged. So you could blame it as a societal thing or whether it was a purely natural phenomenon.

27:53 I don’t know. But for the most part, it’s because poker became popular in a time when it was played in smoky back rooms and sort of the boys’ night out, look at these men’s clubs, where women were just not really welcomed. And it’s certainly not at the table.

28:09 Brian Rose: What was it like when you started? Did you get a lot of looks and comments?

28:13 Do you still get them?

28:15 Liv Boeree: Yeah, it was really not that bad, actually. When I remember the first time I went and played, I was 21, and I learned to play on this TV show that took five beginners and taught us how to play. And I loved it, absolutely. I was a disaster on the TV show.

28:33 I cried, didn’t really know what was going on. But that aside, I loved the game. And so I went to my local card club here in London, and they had advertised they were having a five-pound rebuy tournament. Well, I didn’t know what a rebuy was, so I came down with ten pounds in my pocket. And I was walking in, and there were several, two or three waitresses, 125 guys.

28:57 And at the time, I was 21. I had hair down to hair that was bright red, I think. Maybe blonde, who knows, badly died, self-died. And I wore heavy metal gear all the time, biker jacket, leather trousers, and so on. And this was just my normal outfit.

29:11 Why not? And I remember everybody turning and staring like, who is this chick? I sat down, and everyone was really nice. It fit with my personality type, perhaps at the time. I got a lot of attention, and I loved it.

29:22 But that said, I can completely understand for someone to walk in who’s a beginner at a game, and to have that level of focus on them. People do look, well, they will, at least back then, point a lot of attention at a woman. And when you’re already a complete beginner, and it’s scary sitting down playing this intimidating game to then have everyone staring at you on top of it, because you have boobs, I mean, it’s stressful.

29:47 Brian Rose: It’s stressful, but I got a funny feeling you’ve used that to your advantage on the poker table.

29:52 Liv Boeree: Yes. I mean, have I deliberately moved my top down? No, I don’t have enough to distract people that much. But I mean, men aren’t used necessarily to you at the table. They’re used to a lot of other people looking like them.

30:08 And when you’re there, they might not know how to read you or how to be read.

30:13 Brian Rose: And you would be a monkey in the wrench. You would probably screw things up.

30:17 Liv Boeree: Which can be a big benefit, exactly. Generally speaking, men will react to women in one of three ways.

30:23 They’ll be completely impartial to them, in which case it means they’re a good poker player. Again, they might have a slight prejudice, like I mentioned. Well, let’s say she’s going to be a little bit more on the scared side, but I’m going to wait and see how she plays, and then I’ll determine it. Or two, they are fortunately very, very rare now. Barely ever see it outwardly misogynist.

30:45 Don’t think that she really either belongs there or they want to molly coddle her. Be like, oh, here, dear. And be a little patronizing in that way. And then they either tend to be overly aggressive in terms of their style of play, or they’ll be excessively nice. So that’s important to figure out quickly which one they are.

31:06 But they’re definitely not playing optimally. Or thirdly, they actually might be attracted to the woman and be flirting with her. And again, that’s usually when they fall into the playing a little bit softly against them. And then four, there are actually ones that go, oh, she’s a girl playing this and she’s wearing a team pro patch and so on. She must be good.

31:27 I’m scared of her. But again, those are sort of more on the less frequent side. To be honest, these days it’s player type one, is what you see. Most people don’t give a shit that you’re female, which is great.

31:37 Brian Rose: You mentioned the kid at the table with the sunglasses and the hoodie.

31:40 What’s with the sunglasses? Do you wear sunglasses? And have people going away from the sunglasses? I remember tuning into TV like five years ago and it was like a pool in Miami. Everybody was wearing them.

31:52 What’s the deal with that?

31:54 Liv Boeree: I think it was fashion. Fashion comes and goes. And so that was the thing that started off. They saw Phil Ivey or Negrano or whoever.

32:04 The forerunners of the game wearing them so they felt like that was the thing to do. This was also a time when people overvalued body language.

32:13 Brian Rose: What you don’t know because you’re saying it’s a complete package. You’ve got to watch the behavior. I’ll go to that a little bit later.

32:21 Liv Boeree: But people think that a lot is given away by the eyes and actually it’s not true at all. The eyes are one of the least informative things. Remind me to explain why. I think people felt they should hide their eyes because they’re giving something away. It gives this sense of security.

32:40 When you have them on at the table, you do feel this level of security. It’s also really annoying because it’s hard to see the cards. Often it’s not that bright in there. There’s nothing worse than reading a club for a spade by mistake and thinking you have a flush or don’t have a flush when you do or whatever.

32:56 Brian Rose: Does that happen to you?

32:57 Liv Boeree: Oh yeah. I haven’t worn sunglasses for a long time. Another reason is, A, I like to look someone in the eye. I think it intimidates them more often than they’re getting information from me. Also, these days, if I sit down at the table and I see someone wearing sunglasses, I assume that they’re the fish.

33:17 I assume that they’re feeling that they’re not completely confident in themselves and they’re wanting to hide something or they’re wanting to look cool.

33:25 Brian Rose: So on the professional circuit these days, is it very few will wear the sunglasses now?

33:29 Liv Boeree: Yeah.

33:29 Brian Rose: Okay. Talk about you like intimidating people by looking them in the eyes.

33:33 You’re looking me in the eyes right now. Talk to me about Bluffing. You know, you have a famous clip on YouTube, the Golden Balls clip.

33:39 Liv Boeree: Oh, gosh. What’s that, from 07 or something?

33:41 Brian Rose: Yeah. But you Bluff that poor young man.

33:43 Liv Boeree: Poor guy.

33:44 Brian Rose: And you sell him down the river. Yeah.

33:46 And you did a great job. And I guess I knew it was coming because I watched the clip. But was that like one of your first Bluffs on camera and what’s going on there and were you always good at lying?

33:56 Liv Boeree: So that show, this is when I was on the game show circuit. Which there is such a thing.

34:01 I didn’t know. And the way that show worked, just for the viewers who haven’t seen it, it started off with four people. You’d all be given balls. And inside each ball there was a money amount. And your front balls were opened up so all your competitors could see them.

34:20 And then your back three you could look at or back to. And so you’d have, it’s kind of like poker. Poker, right? Yeah, absolutely. You have your private information and then your public information.

34:30 And then the game would start and you’d have to convince, you’d have to tell people what you had in your back balls and you can be truthful or not if you have bad money amounts. And the goal is to accumulate. You have to vote someone off and you want to ideally vote off the person with the worst amount of money. So now you’re down to three people and same deal you ideally want to take up through the most amount of money. But the catch is when you get to the final two players, you’re given this option to split or steal, which you both have to pick simultaneously.

35:00 And it’s a classic form of the prisoner’s dilemma. If you both go for split, then you both take 50-50 of the prize ball. If you both go for steal, you both go home with nothing. And if one goes for split and one goes for steal, the stealer wins 100%. And the splitter goes home with nothing.

35:18 So the only way to win is to convince your opponent to go for split. Then what you do is up to you. But it’s the perfect example of game theory 101, which is if you look at the maths of the situation, if you go for split every time, you’ll win 50% or zero depending on what your opponent does. Or if you go for steal every time, you’ll win 100% or zero. So it’s twice as profitable to always go for steal yourself and your job is to try and convince your opponent.

35:50 So I just played the game correctly.

35:52 Brian Rose: You did?

35:53 Liv Boeree: I get down to the final two and…

35:55 Brian Rose: Did you knew you had him? Were you like, this guy is a sucker?

35:58 Are you thinking he might have been gaming you too?

36:01 Liv Boeree: Well, no. The reason why I did know that I was very confident, you never know if you’re certain, but I was very confident that I had him was because when we got down to the final three, there was this young lady, and she had much better money amounts than him. And I was pretty confident that he was lying about one of the amounts just the way he said it. He had just bad…

36:20 He’d gotten unlucky and he had bad balls. But the thing is about this young lady, she knew how to play the game, clearly. And if you understand how to play the game, you can never go for split if you want to be profitable. So she can bring through a million pounds. If she’s only going to go for split 1% of the time, well, that’s only…

36:41 She’s only actually really worth, iniquity, 10,000 pounds. Whereas this guy, he was lying. He felt like he was going to get voted off anyway because of it, so he was absolutely desperate. So I actually felt that… Because if the two of us went through, we could win up to about 40,000, depending on how this weird luck thing they do afterwards.

36:58 So he was worth more inequity to me. So I was like, look… And they never once thought about voting me off, which was handy. I said, look, I think you’re lying. If you tell me the truth of what you really have, then I’ll trust you because this game is all about trust.

37:10 I’ll take you through and you’ll split the money. He’s like, I’m so sorry, you’re right. I don’t have much, but I promise 100% I’m going to split it with you. Please just vote me through. Girl goes crazy.

37:20 Understandably. And the two of us go through, so that’s why I was fairly confident.

37:24 Brian Rose: Okay, so you conspired early on. You started leading him down the garden path early, and then you knew what he was going to do.

37:31 Liv Boeree: Yes.

37:31 Brian Rose: Okay. And did you feel bad in that instant?

37:33 Liv Boeree: I felt awful.

37:34 Brian Rose: Okay, but not that bad. It’s just business.

37:36 Liv Boeree: It’s such a mixed bag because the game theory… I went on the show. My goal was to win as much money as possible because that’s the objective of the show. They had said, whatever you do, you’ll never see the person afterwards, so it’s not like you could offer a deal mid-game either. They said, you can say you’re going to split it with him, but you will not see this person afterwards, so unless you pick the split ball, you won’t.

37:58 And he… I can’t remember what I was going to say now.

38:02 Brian Rose: You didn’t feel bad afterwards?

38:04 Liv Boeree: I cried afterwards, actually, just for carrot. It was after.

38:08 Brian Rose: Well done.

38:09 Liv Boeree: I feel horrible. The audience was booing. His family were there. And yeah, it’s a little different to poker where you bluff someone, and it’s a very zero-sum game without a collaborative option.

38:22 Right. And people expect to get bluffed and so on, whereas even on this show, people should expect to get bluffed is really no different because there’s a less profitable, but there is a collaborative option of both going for split, then it’s easier to make someone into the bad guy when they play the game optimally.

38:37 Brian Rose: Okay, when you play poker, what’s your competitive advantage? Is it reading people? Is it also engaging with people and intimidating them?

38:44 Like, what would you say objectively is what you’re good at?

38:48 Liv Boeree: My biggest advantage is my experience, in all honesty, because I’ve just played so many hands in our lifetime, and I’ve done so much analysis and study. I’ve surrounded myself by the very best minds in the game, and that’s rubbed off on me. And so really, yeah, that’s my strongest advantage is just my understanding the theory of the game more than people. But then on top of that, again, I’ve experienced, I’ve seen situations so many times that I’ll know, it’s become almost intuitive to know when someone’s bluffing and when they’re not.

39:23 Brian Rose: Okay, 2010, you won big 1.2 million Euro pot. Did that change your life and kind of put you on this course? I’m going to do this poker thing for a while, and what was that like for you?

39:33 Liv Boeree: Yeah, I was already pretty devoted to wanting to become really well known in poker at that point. I’ve been traveling the circuit for about a year, but I never expected to win such a big one so soon, so very, very lucky going.

39:46 Brian Rose: And PokerStars is one of your sponsors, so is it a good debit sponsor like that? Can you kind of earn a living wage as like them as a sponsor?

39:54 Liv Boeree: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it definitely sees you through times when you’re on the down swings in poker, which will come and go, and I mean, that’s kept me afloat in times when I was A, playing badly and B, running horribly. That’s what you say when you’re getting unlucky consistently.

40:11 Brian Rose: Okay, because otherwise you’re bankrolling yourself, and it’s really your savings account that allows you to go up and down.

40:18 Liv Boeree: Yeah, exactly, and I had a couple of years where I didn’t really have any major wins at all, and so had I not had that to keep me afloat, I would have really struggled.

40:27 Brian Rose: Do you ever worry about going totally bust? Do you see people on the circuit that go bust, and you never see them again, you hear bad stories?

40:35 Liv Boeree: Yeah, a lot of people, a combination of, again, being on this big downswing, they’re on that lower end of the variance spectrum, and secondly, they just mismanage their money.

40:44 A lot of players will win this big amount, and even though they academically understand bankroll management, they just don’t stick to it, or they still underestimate variance, or they are going to the club and stuffing $100 bills into strippers, who knows?

41:01 Brian Rose: You spent time in Vegas, obviously. You see this stuff. But you’re pretty conservative like that.

41:07 Liv Boeree: I don’t stuff bills into strippers at all, no.

41:10 Brian Rose: And you don’t buy Ferraris and things like that?

41:14 Liv Boeree: No, I’ve always been, my friends laugh at me at how, we call it, nitty, I am with regards to big purchases. The only thing I bought after my win was my apartment, and that was because it seemed like a good investment, and I needed somewhere to live. Otherwise, I kept my old shitty see-it-lay on until it went moldy, and now I don’t have a car at all. I hate designer clothes, in all honesty.

41:42 I like things to look nice, but yeah, I’m not into flashing the cash at all.

41:47 Brian Rose: What is it like, like a day in the life of a professional poker player? If you were to explain to someone like a week of your life, like when you’re in the season, what is it that they wouldn’t expect in both the good way and the bad way?

42:04 Liv Boeree: I guess the thing to do is describe what it’s like when you’re at a tour stop. I’m going to Prague, for example, in three days’ time, and I’ll be there for 10 days. Sometimes you’ll stay in a hotel, other times we might do Airbnb, that’s actually become more popular now with a lot of poker players.

42:22 Brian Rose: Get away from the casino, get away from everybody.

42:25 Liv Boeree: Exactly, you have your own space, you have your own kitchen, and that’s really, really nice.

42:31 Depending on what time the tournament starts, you’ll typically get up. Ideally, I’ll try to get up two hours before I play. In reality, I tend to get up about half an hour. But yeah, a lot of people treat it like their day job because they know they’re going to be playing for up to five, six days in a row, and so you’ll get up around 10, have some breakfast, go to the gym, then you’re playing until the day’s done, which is usually around 10 or 11 p.m., and then you might go for a few drinks, bed, and repeat.

43:01 Other times, it depends also on the location, like there’s an event in Bahamas, which will be going to the Caribbean, the Poker Stars Caribbean Adventure, and if you’ll deliberately take days off because there’s so much fun stuff to do, you can go scuba diving and so on. So it’s really hard to say that there’s a typical thing. I often like to combine, if I’m going to somewhere, particularly if I’ve not been before, I’ll give myself three or four days on either side to actually go and experience the city because if you’re traveling all this way, then you might as well actually visit and see what this place is, and I think that’s a mistake a lot of poker players make.

43:37 They’ll go to somewhere, and they’ll just be in the casino 24-7 if they’re not playing a tournament, they’re playing a cash game, and then they’ll be drunk in a bar or some club, which, let’s face it, clubs are all the same wherever you are in the world these days, and they won’t actually experience any of the culture of whatever location they’re in, and I mean, that’s what I love so much about poker is this opportunity to see the world and travel and have a reasonably good excuse to do it. Do you ever have a moment when it’s like 2 a.m. and you’re in some dodgy casino in Prague, you know, surrounded by a table of men who want to kill you, and you’re like, what am I doing?

44:12 I’ve had times when, yes, where I was really questioning why I’m there, because I’ve gone to an event where I was not that sure about going, but oh, well, I didn’t really want to pass up the equity, and I know I’m plus EV in it, but actually, I really would like to stay home, because I’ve been really interested in doing some comedy writing or whatever I’m into at the time, and no, but I’ve got to go because it’s there, and I’ve been to this stop five times before, and now I’m here, and I bust out the main event, and, well, I guess this is 1K event starting now. I’ll jump in that, and then I’m sat there, and I’m in the exact opposite of the flow state where the hand’s over, and I’m browsing my Twitter. I’m not even reading anything constructive, so I’m not present anywhere, basically.

45:01 I’m not present on my phone, I’m not present in the game, and very unlikely do I actually end up winning that tournament. There is definitely correlation between my attention, obviously, and my success, but there are, obviously, times where I could just still get lucky and win and then rationalize, oh, well, actually, that’s the way to do it. Maybe I shouldn’t be mentally present. Yeah, I’ve had moments where I’ve maybe played multiple tournaments over a few-day stretch, but I wasn’t present at all, and before each tournament, I wasn’t excited to play, and I’m just doing it because I feel like I should, and, yeah, those are definitely like the WTF moments.

45:39 I’m like, what the fuck am I doing? I’d be better just to stay home and read some interesting book, or not even, just watch 10 movies in a row. I would have saved money. I wouldn’t be down all this money, or I would have lost, if you want to look at it in expected value terms, I would have lost a little bit of potential ROI, and instead I would have learned something new, or I would have relaxed, or whatever it was. So, yeah, those times can come out, and I mean, it’s called, we call it burnout, basically.

46:07 Brian Rose: It’s common.

46:08 Liv Boeree: Yeah, it’s common in all sorts of disciplines.

46:12 Brian Rose: And if you’re playing all year round, how many poker tournaments will you be in, or how many days a year will you be playing poker? Like hundreds?

46:24 Liv Boeree: No.

46:24 Some players do. Some players will really grind the circuit out and go to every single stop, and good for them. If they’re loving it and they have that hunger, then you should ride that, because that hunger often goes. For me, like this year, for example, I’ve probably played about 55, 60 live tournaments.

46:49 Brian Rose: Which is how many days?

46:51 Liv Boeree: On average, probably about 50 days. Maybe a little bit less, 45, 50 days. So it’s not that much. So I haven’t had the burnout problem this year at all. I’ve been excited to play.

47:03 But also that’s probably because I’ve been doing a lot more poker theory before the start of this year. My boyfriend and I sat down for a month and just really worked hard. He’s one of the best minds in the game, and it’s given me this renewed passion, because I’ve got all these new cool little tricks I can do and these new weapons in my arsenal. It’s hard to get bored when you’ve got all these little fun things you can try.

47:25 Brian Rose: That’s very cool.

47:26 You mentioned FlowState earlier. You said sometimes you get up two hours before, half hour before. We’ve all been in the FlowState, and it’s amazing. We know we can control it. You can’t always control it, but you can do things that set you up to get there.

47:39 What kind of things do you do? Is it training? Is it meditation? Is it staying excited about the game, taking time off? What do you find works for you, and what do other people do in the business?

47:51 Liv Boeree: I find it next to impossible to get into the FlowState if there’s any kind of, oh, another day of this. I think some people can. Their pros are really harnessing it. I’m a complete noob when it comes to the FlowState. I recently read The Rise of Superman, and that’s what got me into it.

48:13 Brian Rose: This is all about how to get into the FlowState.

48:16 Liv Boeree: Absolutely, and I can’t say I’ve mastered it. It seems to still happen. I’m just like, oh, I’m really enjoying today, and I don’t even know why. So I can only look at it with hindsight and go, so what was different?

48:29 Usually it is because I hadn’t been playing for a while, so I think there’s that novelty factor. Coupled with, perhaps I haven’t played for a while, but I’ve done some work beforehand, some poker theory and some analysis, which is a little bit, that classic struggle phase before you get the release. And I think that’s sort of the struggle phase where I’m there, and I’m discussing a hand with Igor, and he’s like, well, no, let’s run through the numbers, and I’m like, argh!

48:53 And I have that, there’s some frustration there, and I think that’s almost a necessary prerequisite for me, so that then I’ve worked through it, and I’ve kind of got it in there, and I feel a little bit overloaded, but I haven’t been able to actually play and get that out so that when I then do get to somewhere and I sit down and play, then sometimes that magic ingredient, it fires, and then I’m in that state. But I can’t say I have any conclusive…

49:18 Brian Rose: Meditation, diet, training?

49:19 Liv Boeree: I’ve started meditating again recently. I go through phases. One of the best feelings, best times I can remember actually was, not this year, but the year before. I’d just gone to the Bahamas, and it’s tricky because I was also in the process of falling in love, so I think that kind of maybe…

49:38 Brian Rose: Good help.

49:39 Liv Boeree: Yeah, Rose Tinsett. But I remember getting… I had landed in the Bahamas. I had a bit of jet lag, which meant that I was waking up at about 7.30am, which is not a good thing when you’re… Normally it’d be great, but when you’re playing poker and everything doesn’t start until at least noon or one or two, and you’re going to be playing until midnight maybe, you don’t want to be up that early.

49:59 But I was awake, and someone told me, oh, there’s a yoga ashram away from the big monstrosity that is the Atlantis Hotel where the events held. There’s this tiny little yoga ashram with huts and vegan food, and they do two hours of yoga every morning at 8. Can we check it out? I’m walking on the beach, and I do that, and then had this vegan breakfast and felt like I was floating on a cloud. And I went back…

50:26 I didn’t go back every single day, but sort of top-top every other day. And I went that entire event, literally like I was… It was an unbelievable feeling. And I can’t… I haven’t really been able to explicitly replicate it, but there must have been something in that.

50:46 My mind was just so quiet and focused and everything. Again, it was like this stretched out, gentle flow state.

50:53 Brian Rose: Did you win?

50:53 Liv Boeree: I did. I mean, I went deep in the tournament.

50:56 I ended up just getting unlucky, but I busted the tournament. I had a big smile on my face, which again, usually you get that deep and you’ve got so much potential to win this huge tournament, and then you get unlucky and you usually feel some frustration. But I was like, yeah, it’s all good. And so that was amazing.

51:13 Brian Rose: Talk to me about getting deep into a tournament, you know, anxiety, self-sabotage, self-doubt.

51:18 You know, what happens with you, and I’m guessing you’ve seen players that just totally screwed up for themselves. And when you’re able to see the cards and play these things back, you must have seen train wrecks that you’ve seen people put through.

51:31 Liv Boeree: Very recently, I was in Montreal playing a well-poked tour event, and we were sort of like 800 people. We were down to about 70 people. So we were just in the money, because the way it pays out is a thing called the bubble, where if you bust out just before then, you go home with nothing.

51:46 But after that, you’re guaranteed at least like double your entry fee. So we were just inside that, so I knew I was making some money, and I won’t bore you with the exact scenario of the hand, but I remember looking down at these two cards the guy on my right had raised, and it was a very marginal situation, and I knew, because I have this thing I do as well, I’m like, what would Igor do? That’s my boyfriend. If I’m being mindful, that’s usually one of the first questions I ask, and it settles me down, and I just basically put his brain on essentially, which is great.

52:18 I’m like, what would Igor do? And I’m like, Igor would either re-raise or fold here. And yet, my hand, it explicitly was just cool, the third option, the least good option, and I did it, and I was like, okay, I don’t know why I did that, but I’m in it now, okay, that’s fine. And then just the way the board came out, I end up having to, I played, from that point onwards, I played the hand right, which was cool, because I had the ace of spades, there were three spades on the board, and this guy bet, he bet again on turn, I call river, another spade didn’t come.

52:52 So now I have basically the worst hand that I should have in this situation, so if I want to win the hand, I’m going to have to bluff, and I check, and he bets again, and I look at him, and he doesn’t seem that sure about his bet, and I’m like, all right, I’ve got to go for it, so I check Rose all in, and he can never have the very best hand, because I have the ace of spades, so even if he has two spades, he never has the nuts, and I, at this point, really should just, if I have a strong hand, I have the nuts. And he was thinking, and thinking, oh, this is so sick, I was like, okay, good, well, at least, this is not a complete disaster. And he talks, and he sees your reaction, and all the time, I’m thinking, why the fuck didn’t I just, why, I got myself in this situation, whatever happens, I know that Eagle is going to be like, I tell him the hand, he’s like, well, good for you for playing it out once you were in there, but why were you in that spot in the first place?

53:42 And so, yeah, I blew it up, he ended up calling, he had flopped the flush, the ten high flush, and he’s like, I can’t follow what it calls, and I’m like, well done, okay, I’m out of here, and there’s sort of buzzing in my ears, just where I was, I had accumulated a big sack, and he was the other big stack at my table, basically, and I had gone and done the one thing, sat like sat, and I had that mental note in my head, okay, there’s a speculative hand, I’m going to call, probably shouldn’t have done that, whatever I do, I’m going to play this hand super conservatively, there’s no way I’m going to get all my chips in, and yeah, I ended up getting all my chips in. And you were like watching your hand do it, and you’re like, who is this? And you have that sometimes, but you’re just like, but it’s too late, and actually an interesting trick, someone said to me, they’re like, you’ve all had that, it’s completely fine, you can almost be putting the chips down, and you go, no, you know what, I’m not doing this, that’s fine, and a lot of people feel like they’re committed to it, because everyone’s watching you, like, what are they going to do?

54:35 Well, I can’t back down now, and it’s never too late to not make the bad mistake, basically.

54:41 Brian Rose: Okay, so you bluffed, and you got called in your bluff, and you lost.

54:46 Liv Boeree: And I was out, and I blew it up, basically, I did not need to do it, and what was the actual point?

54:52 Brian Rose: So the point is, do you ever go back and get real with Igor and say, okay, why did I do that? Do you ever get emotional, I’m sabotaging myself, why am I doing this?

55:03 Do I really want to be here, do I want to win or lose, do I hate myself?

55:07 Liv Boeree: Yes, absolutely. From this instance, I didn’t feel like I really sabotaged myself, I was more amused, I was shocked and amused at the situation, because that initial mistake was counterbalanced by the fact that I made this really gutsy play, that he was actually proud of me afterwards, he was like, the old Liv would not have made that play, you would have, you were playing to win the tournament at that point when you did that, so it was okay, yes, the hand should never have happened because he made that mistake, so I wasn’t so upset about that, but yes, in the past, times where I would play sub-optimally and lose, and I was convinced that it was all because I hated myself and I was sabotaging it, I was sabotaging it, or even worse, I would be getting consistently unlucky, and I pride myself on being a rational, scientific person, and then I’ll be like, no, but there’s something, I’m creating this negative space and the cards are no, and so on, and I really did, at one point, convince myself that I was cursed, but I didn’t believe it with all of my heart, but there was a big enough part of me that was starting to believe that, that it was clearly, I was having a problem, and that was tough, that was 2013, it was a shitty year, basically.

56:22 Brian Rose: Let me ask you a question, you are not afraid of a photo shoot, and so tell me, how does a woman use her body or her sexuality and her career in the right way and the wrong way, I mean, we see so many examples these days, I see someone like Ronda Rousey, who is an amazing, accomplished UFC fighter, and then she’s like, yeah, and I’m also a woman, I’m going to use that, however I want to use that to be that person too, and so you see people probably make the right choices, the wrong choices. How do you use that?

56:52 Liv Boeree: I think my opinion on this has evolved a little bit.

56:55 Back when I was 18, 19, 20, and I was in the heavy metal scene, and I would go out clubbing, wearing things that I would never dream of wearing really now. Well, I might still, if I’m a burning man I would, but very rock and roll was an excuse to basically wear as few clothes as possible, and it was completely fine. If you weren’t wearing stilettos, it was fine, I used to wear these big, huge chunky boots, kind of a little bit like this, and therefore it was okay to go out in basically nothing more than a bikini.

57:23 And I don’t know, I’ve never been one to get offended by naked bodies in general, so I think it’s fine for the most part to use your attractiveness to achieve your goals. I’m trying to think actually how do I fully feel about this? I think it’s just such a fine line because I’m aware that I would not be as well known as I am in poker if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m female and the way I look, and I got far more attention than I would have ever had if I’d been perhaps an older woman or a man or whatever.

58:16 And so I did use, and I was aware of that, and I capitalized upon it. I do try to look good when I know that there’s going to be cameras around because it does just hurt my equity, basically, my earning power, if my earning power is coming because I’m a unique offering to a poker side or whoever because of the way I look. Do I wish that in theory there would never have to be the case that people were only judged by the merit of their brains and what they say? Yes.

58:45 But it’s not an ideal world. So the pragmatic solution to achieve the goals is to use whatever attributes you have available. Is there a threshold where it can go too far? Yes, but there’s no hard and fast rule. I guess it’s if you find yourself doing things that you aren’t entirely comfortable doing, then that’s when you’re probably pushing the line a little bit too far.

59:12 If I was doing a shoot where they were like, actually, you know what, take more clothes off. No, I now, you know, wear this, something like that. Then if I’m starting to get a little bit uncomfortable and going, ah, you know what, actually, this is going to be, I mean, you can just do, again, an equity calculation. Is this photo likely to hinder or harm my achieving whatever goal it is, if it’s making money or spreading a certain message and so on. If it’s going to be net positive, then sure, that’s fine.

59:39 So I think as long as you keep checking in with yourself about what your explicit goal is, in doing it, if your goal has become the most famous porn star, then probably the way to do that is to be extremely liberal in whatever nudity and sexual act you’re choosing to do. If your goal is to, and that’s fine, because you’re being congruent with what your goals are. So I think that that’s, yeah, that’s when it gets a shame is when a woman uses her appearance because she just feels, she doesn’t really know truly why she’s doing it, I guess.

1:00:18 But I think for the most part women in poker do because they’re usually on the more, it’s hard to do well in that game and not start to learn how to think about things more critically.

1:00:27 Brian Rose: Right, it’s fascinating to hear you talk about it from an ROI standpoint and it’s a great lesson or even a game theory. Like I’m making a decision here because it’s going to pay off here. It’s the right decision. Let’s not get emotional about it.

1:00:40 We’re not judging. It’s the correct decision in this scenario just like when you play poker. And that’s a great scientific way of looking at it. So good answer. Thank you.

1:00:49 I want to talk about Burning Man. You went to Burning Man for the first time last year. I haven’t been to Burning Man, but my sister lives in San Francisco, so I’m close enough, and I’m from California. But you saw a lot of interesting things there. You have a great blog post on your site about the giving economy of Burning Man and just people, being whoever they want to be out there, no transactions, no animosity really.

1:01:15 And I’ve heard so many things about it. I still need to go. And I want to hear about that and I want to hear about the raising for effective giving. And you spoke at Google headquarters about that. And was this an epiphany?

1:01:27 Was this a transformation? When people see you and your poker history and maybe some of your photographs, they’re like, I know who Liv is. But when they read all this stuff, it’s like, no, you don’t know who she is. So who is she?

1:01:40 Liv Boeree: Who am I?

1:01:41 Brian Rose: What happened to Burning Man?

1:01:43 Liv Boeree: Well, yeah, Burning Man was a breakthrough. I mean, I think I was going through quite a shift in just figuring out more what my priorities were anyway. And Burning Man was kind of the pinnacle for that for me. It was 2014.

1:02:02 I’ve always been one to not be very helpful when it’s something that I don’t particularly enjoy doing and I don’t see the direct benefit to myself. And we’re all on a spectrum of that. And I would say much further on the selfish spectrum than perhaps what I wanted to be in myself. Again, if you’re completely happy with your level of selfishness, well, then you’re being congruent with what you believe. But the point is that I didn’t want to be as selfish as I was.

1:02:35 And so there was this gap which wasn’t perfect. And I remember getting to Burning Man and being in this community and my mum had always, for example, my mum didn’t go to Burning Man that year, but whenever it was like a family gathering and so forth, I knew what my role was. My role was sort of the youngest one, the entertainer, the wondering, weird stuff. And oh, she’s like a little boy. She’s no good in the kitchen.

1:03:02 She doesn’t know how to help out with that kind of stuff. And I think it was a combination of, A, I didn’t really know how to cook, and B, whenever I was made to do it, I would deliberately do a bad job so that I wasn’t made to do it again because I just really did not enjoy it. And so I’ve kind of been able to cruise through life for just basically doing the bare minimum when it came to these kind of community collaborative efforts. And then we dumped into this environment in Burning Man, where there was a lot of my friends, a lot of people I also didn’t know, but it’s very close living quarters, and it’s all about self-reliance and gifting, giving your time to others, making sure everyone else has got everything that they need.

1:03:42 And so, for example, our camp was putting on a barbecue one time for just everybody. People would walk by and we’d be giving away food. And they sort of said, oh, we’re going to set up a road to review who has to do it. But ideally, we shouldn’t really have to do that. Just give your time to help out whoever wants to.

1:04:01 And my first instinct was like, oh, okay, you have to cut tomatoes and shred anything. Well, what’s over there? Anything else? I’ll do the yelling out on the tannoy. Can I do that instead?

1:04:12 That’s more my thing. And then I was like, no, wait. You’ve got to ask yourself, why am I having a resistance to this? Let’s really break it down. And I only had to go a few steps before I got to this.

1:04:24 Well, because, you know, my mom always did it. And it wasn’t a truly rational reason. Oh, I’m allergic to tomatoes. If I touch them, this is going to happen. Or I physically hate sitting in one place and so on.

1:04:38 No, I’m going to try this. Let’s actually do it. And I sat there and I was cutting tomatoes for about four hours. Sounds so mundane. Everyone was just like, what the hell is this?

1:04:47 How is this a breakthrough food? But it was such… I enjoyed myself so much. Just seeing the smile. I was so unbelievably present doing this menial task and it’s so hard to put into words but I felt so connected to myself and to these people, both friends and strangers around me.

1:05:07 And it’s part of this beautiful community where just everybody was welcome and everyone was the rawest version of themselves. And I felt completely comfortable saying I was the work-shiest person ever in the world before I’d never really admit that to people. And like, no, I thought I would hate this but this is really fun actually. And I don’t know. It was just that to me was like one of my favorite moments of the whole week which sounds strange for so many cool things you could be doing a bunny man.

1:05:34 Brian Rose: No, I get it. I get it. So you had kind of an epiphany there where you were really present.

1:05:40 Liv Boeree: Yeah, really present and just got the true value of giving and being more selfless. And then you come to the question, well, is it actually a selfless act if I’m gaining something from it?

1:05:51 Well, I don’t think so. I mean, if it’s a net positive all around, so it’s a beneficial act, I’m helping people and I’m gaining something from it. That’s kind of what I gained from it is a little bit more relevant. The point is the consequences where a lot of people were helped by cutting them off. Okay.

1:06:09 Brian Rose: And what did you bring back from Burning Man? Because that all happens and you got to come back to the real world and then not only that, you played poker for a living. So that’s like an even heightened reality than a lot of people’s occupations that’s not really in the giving sense, I guess. Right. So what did you come back with?

1:06:25 What did you want to change?

1:06:27 Liv Boeree: I wanted to… Well, the timing wise, we had just started raising for effective giving. So that whole period of my life was this shift more to thinking of bigger picture than just myself and my immediate surroundings. Okay.

1:06:44 But yeah, I wanted… Burning Man was just like microcosm of utopia just of human beings at their very best. 70,000 people living in cramped, dusty, unpleasant conditions for a week. And I didn’t see a single act of aggression, not a raised voice, not… Maybe I was lucky, maybe it was my rose tinted lasses that I was walking around with.

1:07:06 But I really didn’t like… That’s so rare. And it gave me this sort of positivity of, well, maybe the world is going to be okay. Because I don’t know about you, but often, for a long time, I’ve been thinking, where really are we headed? There just seems to be so much aggression.

1:07:22 The human spirit itself has so much potential for greatness, but it has so much shitty… The way we get into our… The way we express our emotions sometimes. We work so much from the ego. Do we really have any hope?

1:07:37 I don’t think so. But after seeing that, I guess I was renewed with a little bit of hope, saying, okay, that people… And it’s not like, oh, it’s a certain type of person who goes to Burning Man. No. Burning Man makes every single person that goes there become a certain type of person.

1:07:52 And so I guess that’s what it was. It’s not that we either are good or we’re not. It’s like, no, you can become better. And you can change the perspective from which you look at the world. For example, also, in my…

1:08:06 Brian Rose: I mean, your political views, I think, tie in a little bit on this spectrum as well.

1:08:11 Liv Boeree: I don’t want to categorize it as conservative or liberal or whatever, but I know that, historically, my views have been more sort of, no, no one should get benefits. It’s all a meritocracy, and you work hard, you should get this. And I was much more classically conservative in my views when I was growing up as a teenager. And as I’ve gotten older, but particularly in the last couple of years, my views towards that have completely changed.

1:08:38 I’ve been like, no, actually, there are people who are just not as fortunate. They might not have been born as smart as others, or they certainly haven’t had the educational opportunities that others have had. And just because they’re not as able to achieve something, they’re maybe not as able to figure out how to get themselves off the sofa to go and apply for a job. I think there’s got to… I was so against the idea of benefits, and now I understand them so much more.

1:09:09 So the fact that I could do such a 180 in often such a polarizing political agenda was another symptom of this believing that people can change and become more generous and more open-minded and I guess more rational to a degree. Yeah, I just became much more rational as well during this time period.

1:09:33 Brian Rose: Now you’re convincing poker players to give a little something back? Yeah. Is that hard to do?

1:09:40 Are poker players usually capitalists and conservative and not the ones that are up for charity?

1:09:51 Liv Boeree: Yes and no. We’re definitely…

1:09:54 Our whole game is around beating people who aren’t as good at something as us.

1:10:00 Brian Rose: Bullies.

1:10:00 Liv Boeree: Yeah, well, a little bit. There’s competitiveness. There’s this drive to capitalize on other people’s weaknesses.

1:10:08 And obviously then it’s all tied in with money as well. But at the same time, it’s very hard to be… It’s not a classical job. It’s perhaps a little different to say finance where someone goes to university. It’s sort of following the classic sort of, this is how society has always worked and you go into this nine to five and you have your children and so on.

1:10:27 And poker players shy away from that very much. They hate commitment. They hate routine for the most part. And they want to be sort of the outliers of society a little bit. A lot of people are attracted to it because of that.

1:10:40 So it’s hard to be classically conservative. So it’s this… It’s like a liberal capitalism, I guess, in some way.

1:10:50 Brian Rose: Okay. And are they feeling this charity?

1:10:53 Is this going to happen? Is this… You’re going forward with this?

1:10:56 Liv Boeree: Yeah. Well, to explain a little bit what it is.

1:10:58 So it’s a fundraising organization built upon effective altruism. And I don’t know how familiar you are with that.

1:11:08 Brian Rose: No, tell me about it. What is it?

1:11:10 Liv Boeree: Altruism is basically using science, evidence and reason to determine which are the most effective ways of reducing suffering in the world.

1:11:22 Brian Rose: Okay. Bill Gates comes to mind. Does he use that for his foundation?

1:11:27 Liv Boeree: Yes. He’s very analytical and he has his foundation and so he sort of does means testing.

1:11:33 He looks at sort of all the problems in the world and he’s like, well, this one’s really big. This one’s really big. Generally speaking, the bigger the problem, the more potential there is to help, the more suffering there is to be reduced and so on. And then it’s a case of sort of using a lot of trial and error. Because that’s the thing.

1:11:52 A lot of charities, they aren’t even… Their effectiveness is very rarely measured. They just go, this is a problem. This is a bad thing. There are blind people without blind dogs.

1:12:03 It sucks.

1:12:03 Brian Rose: Yeah, you’re right. It’s a horrible thing.

1:12:06 Liv Boeree: And we can provide blind dogs, guide dogs for them and that will help them.

1:12:09 Brian Rose: Yes, it will.

1:12:10 But I’m not saying particularly that guide dogs are not effective at doing a great job and increasing someone’s life. But people often will give emotionally because they’re like, well, I knew a blind person that didn’t have a blind dog and so on. But the fact of the matter is that it’s, I think, about $50,000 to train a guide dog for its life, to help someone, let’s say, nine years of life. Conversely, if you took that $50,000 and gave it to the Against Malaria Foundation, that’s going to save about $3,000 on average to save a life.

1:12:48 And so you’re going to actually save a significant number of lives that will not be saved if you don’t put that money there. So the point is that some charities are just so much more effective in reducing suffering than others. And there, fortunately, are groups of scientists, basically. There’s charity evaluators like GiveWell, animal charity evaluators for looking at animal suffering charities. And they give a list of recommended charities that are highly effective and means tested.

1:13:18 And they know that basically $1 donated there will reduce x number of, improve x number of lives or whatever, whereas most charities don’t have that kind of feedback and that measurability. OK. And so yours does.

1:13:33 Liv Boeree: Yes. So yeah, we are, our charity in itself is actually just, it’s like a, it’s a fundraising organization.

1:13:40 It’s the best way to describe it. And so we encourage poker players, the modelers, we encourage them to give 2% of their gross quarterly winnings to charity. They can either choose out of the list or they’ll just say, no, distribute it however you think is which ones need it the most right now.

1:14:00 Brian Rose: OK. Is it working?

1:14:01 Are you giving your money?

1:14:02 Liv Boeree: Yes. Well, most of my money that I’ve donated was to actually start up the project, because obviously to create an organization to then promote this idea to poker players is to cost money. But yeah, I’ve also given to some of the charities through it as well. And we’ve raised about 800,000 so far.

1:14:17 Brian Rose: That’s a lot. Yeah. OK. And what do poker players, they know you personally? Do you go to them and you say, look, this is the deal.

1:14:23 That’s why we’re doing it. Are most of them buying in? Or what’s been the reaction?

1:14:27 Liv Boeree: So the reaction’s been overwhelmingly positive.

1:14:29 Brian Rose: Is Dan Bilzerian put his money in?

1:14:30 Liv Boeree: No. But I’ve got to meet him. He’s got to come to a poker tournament first. Oh. So to have that conversation.

1:14:35 Brian Rose: The gauntlet is thrown. Yeah. OK. All right, Dan. Get involved.

1:14:40 Liv Boeree: Yeah. We started off by we put on a dinner. And the guy, the sort of the guy, there are a couple of guys with the brains behind it. They’re not poker players. They’re full-time effective altruists.

1:14:51 One of them’s a professor at Basel University in philosophy. Brilliant, brilliant guy. And it was his idea to actually start a break. He came to us and was like, I think that poker can generate a lot of money for really effective causes. Help me do it.

1:15:08 And so we got together. We came up with a name and we put on a dinner to start with with just a bunch of very sort of well-respected poker players in the community, some of the poker media and so on, and presented this idea to them. And they’re like, this is such a good idea. Absolutely. And then the donations started coming in.

1:15:29 Sometimes, yeah, some players are sort of formal members that give every quarter. Others sometimes go, no. When I have a big score, you’re going to get a chunk and so on like that. But yeah, there’s no like hard, hard model, but that’s the recommendation we give.

1:15:48 Brian Rose: Okay. Is gambling a vice?

1:15:50 You know, you must get asked this a lot. You know, is it an addiction? Do you ever look at it that way? I had a guest in here who was a mixed martial arts fighter and he had tattooed on his arm the last date he was going to gamble, and it had been crossed out and he was running out of arm room, and he showed me that on the show. And I don’t know where he’s at now, but it was scary to watch.

1:16:07 Do you ever think about that? Because that’s what you do for a living.

1:16:10 Liv Boeree: Right. So do you define vice? What do you mean by that?

1:16:12 Brian Rose: That’s a good question. Something that’s dangerous that should be regulated. I don’t know. You must have been asked this question.

1:16:19 Liv Boeree: Oh, totally.

1:16:20 Yeah. It’s also like, define what a drug is, and like, you could get me started on that. Yeah. So I think that… So poker, for the most part, involves some kind of money, right?

1:16:33 And when people play it, they play it for… What do they want to gain from it? Some people want to gain more entertainment with the hope of getting some money back. Some people think that they’re just going to make money. Some…

1:16:45 And then outside of that, you get people who perhaps don’t even enjoy it that much anymore. And they know that they’re not really going to get any money. And that’s when you’re sort of saying, well, that sounds more like the negative addiction type category. And… But that…

1:17:01 And poker can create that situation for different people. But so can other hobbies or things that people like to do. If someone becomes… It’s perhaps not the best analogy, but something like golf. I don’t know.

1:17:17 Golf has some benefits. Like, yeah, they’ll get fresh air. They get better hand-eye coordination. Perhaps they enjoy the networking and things that… Benefits that golf can bring.

1:17:27 But if they’re starting to do it too much to the detriment of other things, they’re perhaps spending way too much money on golf clubs or for golf membership that they can’t afford. And they’re not spending time with their families and so on. Well, then you can start saying, well, that’s also an addiction. Perhaps there’s… You know, things can get into a negative territory.

1:17:44 And I don’t think poker’s that much different. And the point is that I think there should always be some kind of support system for that category of people that have fallen into this bad place with whatever it is that they’re… This hobby that’s turned into some kind of addiction.

1:18:02 Brian Rose: Have you seen it happen before?

1:18:05 Liv Boeree: Yeah, I mean, you see people definitely within poker, but often the leaks poker players tend to have more are on the casino games.

1:18:13 Brian Rose: Right. They love the gamble.

1:18:14 Liv Boeree: It’s during casinos you see that sometimes. Right, you’ll be walking to get to the poker and you have to walk past the roulette table. And I’ve personally never had the desire to play it, but I know a lot of my friends do.

1:18:25 And again, if they do it for a small amount compared to their bankroll, fine. But it’s when they win at poker and then take the poker winnings and dump it on the craps table and then it’s gone. That’s clearly a problem. And it takes, I guess, the support of friends and appears to keep an eye out on people when they’re starting to get into that territory.

1:18:47 Brian Rose: Can I ask you a couple of questions about your personal success secrets?

1:18:51 I mean, is there anything that you changed about your game, the way you played, maybe the way you philosophy about life that gave you a marketing piece in your results? I know you track everything probably down to the number, right?

1:19:04 Liv Boeree: As much as you think actually.

1:19:06 Brian Rose: Okay, all right. But was there something about it where you were like, okay, I just did that and now this is happening to me better.

1:19:13 These success secrets are only available on the London Real Academy. Become a member and get access to live shows, exclusive courses, my webinars, bonus content, meetups, live events, an amazing community, and much, much more. Now back to the rest of the show. You’re obituary. Don’t ask this very often, but I’m asking you, what are the lines of your obituary?

1:19:43 What do they say about live?

1:19:47 Liv Boeree: Well, I think they’d say she loved nature and wanted, she saw so much beauty in nature and she lived her life and her every day trying to get people to see the same because really nothing makes me happier and simultaneously sadder than people’s relationship, well, nature itself and people’s relationship to it. And what else? She tried everything or wanted to try everything and was often quite weird. I hear that one a lot.

1:20:45 Yeah, something like that.

1:20:46 Brian Rose: That’s cool, obituary. I ask everyone that comes here at the end, same question, I’m going to ask you, if you can make a call to the 20-year-old live, give that young lady a bit of advice besides stop wearing, the heavy metal stuff, or maybe keep wearing it.

1:20:59 Liv Boeree: Keep wearing it. Keep wearing it if you’ve had enough.

1:21:02 Brian Rose: There you go. Well, yeah, what would you tell her? What piece of advice would you tell her?

1:21:10 Liv Boeree: I would tell her to worry way less about the future, the immediate future, put it that way. I mean, I don’t think I’ll ever stop worrying about what’s going to happen in 30, 40 years’ time, but don’t worry about the next year.

1:21:28 Get on and do the things that you care about because I wasted so much mental energy on unnecessary anxieties and concerns about people that I loved health or my own health and very irrational fears. Like, stop worrying about shit that is extremely unlikely to happen. Or if you really want to look into it, run the numbers because that’s often what I would do. Like, oh, I have a headache for five days. I have a brain tumor.

1:21:55 I had a real problem with that in my early 20s. And instead of either being, you know, what most sane people would do and be like, is it really that likely? No. Instead of doing that, I could have gone, okay, well, let’s actually look at the numbers. What percentage of people my age have this?

1:22:09 And so on and done an equity calculation and then gone, okay, is this really worth four hours of my days stewing? No. So, yeah, that’s what I would like to teach her. And I mean, that’s, again, I think something that has improved me with age and a bit of experience, but it definitely didn’t get better as quickly as I’d like to, so. Okay.

1:22:29 Brian Rose: Best advice you’ve ever received. I want to poker advice and then just a life advice in general.

1:22:42 Liv Boeree: The poker advice would be detach yourself from the results and the outcome and focus on the process. And life, don’t sweat the small stuff. Focus on the big picture.

1:23:03 And tomorrow’s, you know, it’s a hard one. I think actually decide what makes you the happiest. Really think about what are the things that you want to see around you every single day and put your life and soul into figuring out how to make those happen. Yeah, I think that’s the key to happiness is having a goal and having a goal that is not on the material level. I’m not talking about, oh, well, I’m the happiest when I’m surrounded by 10 strippers.

1:24:04 No, I’m talking about what’s truly, like if you want a sustainable, what are the key ingredients to things that you see around you every day that when you’re like, I feel at peace, this. Find a way to make that happen for everybody and set that as your overarching goal and then do something towards that every single day.

1:24:24 Brian Rose: That’s very good. Last piece of that. There’s a lot of people watching from around the world that want to grow up and be a poker star like Liv.

1:24:33 What advice do you give to them? You must get asked this all the time. We had a bunch of comments and questions for you on YouTube when I put the video out yesterday. Yeah, what do you tell them?

1:24:47 Liv Boeree: If you want to be a poker star, be prepared for a lot of work.

1:24:51 Just ask yourself if that’s truly, truly what you want to do and if it is, then get to work. Start studying, read the forums, play online for small stakes and read, read, read, read, read, read, read. Build friends, build a community around you and analyze every situation as much as possible. Don’t expect big results. If they come, that’s nice, but don’t use them to define whether or not you’re good.

1:25:24 Be prepared to put in a lot of work because it’s not as easy as it used to be. My real goal to someone who just wants to try out poker is absolutely come and play the game because it is such an amazing game. It’s so fun and can teach you so many important lessons about life. Come at it from the angle that you’re having fun and you’re open-minded and you’re absolutely going to make mistakes and learn from them and enjoy the game from that perspective. That’s really how I would advise people to approach poker.

1:25:54 Don’t try and become a poker star.

1:25:56 Brian Rose: It’s funny because I have the benefit of having people that are great in their fields every week and everyone sees the best of it. They see you winning the big jackpot. It gives that sort of observation bias. It’s possible because you’re always being flooded by the most successful people in that field.

1:26:13 That and they see their greatest moments. They’ll see Daniel Craig on the screen for that brief moment, but they don’t realize that that took 25 years of acting sacrifice to get to that skill level. Everyone that’s here with me, when I see them behind the scenes, they put in so much work. They put in so much work that you wouldn’t want to do it to be them. That’s the theme I see over and over again is that these people are obsessed.

1:26:38 They put in all the detailed work and that’s why they’re there. You get to see their overnight success. I’m sure you used to have heard that in 2010 when in fact there’s always five years or more of work being put in to get there. Also I find interesting about you is that it is easy to get caught up as in she’s the girl poker player that also I’ve seen in the photo shoot and yet there’s so much more going on with you. Especially when you start talking about this life advice and some of this real…

1:27:06 There’s some real Burning Man stuff going on here about us getting back to who we are and that’s kind of what we’re about here at London Real. I think with these long conversations we start to figure out what’s really important to people. This whole connection of we all are part of the same thing here. Even though it’s hard to see it sometimes and we’re tricked with our eyes but we are really part of the same reality. We’re more than just bags of a vision within a bag of skin.

1:27:38 There’s all… Physics are finding newer and weirder things all the time about what we’re actually made of. It’s so easy to just fall into the… I am me and I end at this. Beyond this, this is not me anymore but teaching people about connectedness and all the hippy bullshit basically.

1:28:02 There’s a lot of truth in it. It’s the hippy stuff. There is truth in it. And then also the funny thing is physics, I was classically trained as an engineer but now if you’re looking into physics quantum physics is now telling us that wait a second, that thing over there is affecting that thing over here, is affecting that and now you’re seeing it from all sorts of sides. It’s going to be fascinating to watch your next five years so keep blogging, keep talking to us like that.

1:28:27 I would love to see you as the female version British version of Neil deGrasse Tyson. I hope that happens and I’d like to see more voices out there.

1:28:36 Liv Boeree: Thank you.

1:28:36 Brian Rose: Thanks for coming on and answering all my hard questions. And I hope the poker fiends got enough poker info out of here as well because so many people had questions to ask.

1:28:46 For me, it’s good to know and I think a lot of people don’t understand what goes behind a lot of the sunglasses and that kind of thing. So I think you’ve explained it pretty well. So at London Real we’ve always said it’s about the journey, a lot of what you said today. It’s about the process, not the result. So thank you Liv and I wish you all the best.

1:29:05 Liv Boeree: Thanks, Ryan. Alright, take care.