29 thoughts on “Episode 100: Nate Meyvis and Andrew Brokos”

  1. Looking forward to listening to this. 100 is a great achievement guys, congratulations and thanks for all. My enthusiasm for poker has ‘waxed and waned’ but not for your podcast.

  2. Congrats Nate & Andrew on the 100th episode. I’ve listened to them all and really look forward to the next episode showing up in my iTunes queue!

  3. Well played all round! The milestone is a superb achievement.

    The hypermiling wikihow page is an in-depth manual on all the relevant techniques and it all seems pretty hardcore. Not for the faint hearted, or those who can’t afford the time to setup their vehicle, plan all their routes and drive around everywhere at 25km/h! A solid nitty tale related to this is something my notoriously tight friend (honest) would do driving on the motorway. She would call her mother who was in the car in front, ask her to use the windscreen spray and then position here car close enough so she could get some free cleaning fluid on her own windscreen. I would say nitcast approved.

    I owe both Andrew and Nate, and everyone who has appeared, worked on or commented on the podcast a big thank you. This podcast is pretty much my only resource when it comes to maintaining and expanding my poker skills. It’s also helping me stay sane while I go through a monster dry period of not being able to play poker and even though there is no substitute for time on the felt, I feel well prepared for the comeback, when it happens.

    Also, for no particular reason, I’ll share my all time favorite podcast moment;

    ep25 – Ed Miller. Classic lol moment is when Ed is telling his back story and how he knew his days were numbered at Microsoft when they told him he was their “key player” in a new incredibly over-ambitious project. Gets me every time!

    • My wife and I experimented with driving at 60-70 on the motorway, rather than the usual 70-80, plus some other tricks to reduce breaking and the like and we got 700 miles to that tank rather than the usual ~600, but it was soooooo tedious that we’ve never don’t it since.

      On the other hand, I’ve been taking off my shoes to drive since forever, who knew that it was giving me extra precision on my acceleration and breaking?

  4. Congrats on #100, and thanks for the hours and hours of enjoyable listening. Carlos trying to get free poker coaching under the guise of interview questions is a worthy #nitcast moment.

  5. I’m really not the type to randomly dish out compliments, but I feel privileged to have been a consumer of the podcast, blog posts/comments and twitter interactions of the TP team.

    The perfectly balanced range of serious discussion and laughs is impossible to beat. If PodcastSnowie existed, I think it would it only spot a couple of minor errors, would have zero blunders to highlight, and would rate it ‘World Class’.

    Here’s hoping there are another 100 episodes on the way.

  6. Great episode guys, i really enjoy carlos and gareth’s contributions to the podcast too.

    Hopefully the next hundred episodes are as good as the first hundred!

  8. Congrats on the 100th episode. It’s been great following the progress of the show and the improvements you’ve made. Now how about a Carlos & Gareth spin-off? (the Laverne & Shirley to your Richie and Fonzie)

  9. Congratulations on the 100th episode, and a brilliant way to commemorate it! This one is my favorite to date, even though you have had some amazing guests. Carlos and Gareth have been great guests, and they made superb interviewers. The nitcast stories provide comic relief to the philosophical discussions. Here’s to the next 100!

  10. Just finished Episode 100 and thoroughly enjoyed it – props to all four participants. I’ve been listening since Episode 2 and have been looking forward to the podcast weekly (more or less) for the past 2 years or so, so thanks for all of the good work.

    Here’s an unsolicited suggestion on the “dream interview” (though I agree Doyle would be good): Isai Scheinberg. I’m fairly certain that this would be a fascinating interview in the hands of Andrew and Nate. Of course, this is also pretty much an impossible interview, since I don’t think he has ever done an interview, period, but, hey, why not shoot for the (Poker)stars.

    Also, here’s a second to Gareth’s nomination of Phil Galfond for the “interview him already” category.

    • Thirded, Galfond could be a really good interview – he seems pretty open and chatty, and there’s a lot of potential for high level strategy and interesting poker-world discussion.

      Other than him, I agree with Gareth that the best interviews have often been the unheralded guests. Doyle, whatever, Durrrr, would he open up on anything interesting? As for the cocktail waitresses, cage staff, and motel 6 desk jockeys, I would say that whilst they’ve never been my favourite episodes, I think that somehow they have added to the overall pokercast experience in a holistic fashion – I look back on them as a whole with more interest than perhaps I did whilst listening.

      I stopped listening to Bart Hanson when his podcast ceased to be free, and I get the sense from occasional twitter sightings that his advice has got more sophisticated, but I always took his old podcast as a lesson (a la Nate’s see what works approach) in the importance of discipline, not overthinking, and general solidity. He strikes me as a different type of personality to the TPP stereotype – less reflective perhaps. That might make him a bad fit, or perhaps it might make him a good interview.

  11. This is a good opportunity for me as a loyal listener to say, THANK YOU. I missed some of the earliest episodes that looked like they included low strategy content, but I’ve looked forward to and enjoyed each and every episode for for over a year. 1 thing: I love the jargon, don’t mind obscure references, here for the high level banter, intelligent guests, thoughtful hosts, etc but what are these “Bayesian considerations” Nate brings up so often?

    • Bayes theorem is fundamental to a lot of good practical statistics/probability. It gives you the probability of an event happening subject to the condition of prior events (the probability of X given Y).

      So what’s probability that a villain has Aces? One in *Brokos maths handwave* not very much.
      What’s the probability that she has Aces _given_ she potted preflop, flop, turn and river – quite high.

      Another example might be how likely is villain to have a flush draw given that we have the Ace – significantly lower than if we don’t.

      There are other classic examples to do with medical tests and likelihood of guilt in court cases, that generally reveal how difficult and unintuitive accurate statistical reasoning can be.

    • EDIT: It also has an application that I think has been less discussed, but perhaps is no less important to do with win rates and downswings.

      So we start off thinking we’re 90% likely to be a winning player, and we go on a massive downswing. That puts us in a situation that has been discussed where we don’t know whether we’re just running bad or we actually are less good than we thought. Bayes theorem gives us a way of asking, given that we’ve downswung so far, how likely is it that we’re as good as we think we are?

  12. One thing I want to second, apropos of nothing, was Carlos’ assertion that he is meaner to strangers than partners, or those close to him. I can’t particularly imagine AB or NM being caustic to strangers, but I’ve observed myself in that way. Being better to partners than that is not a high bar, not one I need a pole to vault, in fact I would be ashamed if I ever sunk so low!

    • In Japanese culture we have 2 important dishes that carry over to us Japanese Americans. One is Oyako, which translated is Parent and Child. It is a Chicken and Egg dish. The other is Tannin, which translated is having no relation to each other. It is a Beef and Egg dish.
      There is Family and there is The Outsiders. We make those marked distinction in our daily life as well.

  13. RE: How to study and learn:

    It is important IMO to focus on one thing at a time
    AND
    to make sure you are getting useful and reliable feedback about your progress.

    The tighter the feedback loop the better.

    For example, if you are working on 3-betting – make yourself a 3-betting range, check your 3-bets (and missed 3-bets) after each session and record your progress.

  14. Wow, I’ve never heard my name (or moniker) used so much without disrespect. I did comment on the bluffing hand post Carlos mentioned. I don’t really defend my poor play, but well done Los.

    There is no free lunch, only trade-offs. So what hyper-milers save in fuel costs, they give up in work, attention, and risk-taking on the road. I don’t think I would voluntarily seek out a movie theater for my resting spot. It is worth my time saved getting there and back, the quality of my sleep, and my safety (not waking up in the back row next to another gentleman in a trench coat) to pay for a traditional room.

    When Nate told the story of his 2+2 moniker, the math joke should have ended the show. Just walk away and let that stand as an entire episode.

    Adam Smith said we live our lives to be loved and to be lovely. We want to be good by our own standards as well as those of others. Hayek noted how we correctly do not treat our close circle the same as we treat strangers. Nate as a Smithian and Carlos as Hayekian makes me smile.

    Nate, we need pics of that shirt, preferably above a link on where fan can purchase one. Well done Christiana.

    The best possible “dream” guest you haven’t had is David Einhorn. Previously it was Brian Rast, and you did well there.
    An easy layup you perhaps haven’t considered yet is Jim McManus. Perhaps he is more difficult to get than I imagine. If that is true, then Andrew should just interview some folks from the Urban Debate League and do that totally non-poker show.

    AB, lots of folks on the left could use a lesson on how power is corrupting, even when the left is in power. Well put.

    I’d like to second Gareth’s question. How does Andrew play so sick? What I really mean by that is how can one play mindful, in the moment, poker. I think AB and Nate do great strategy segments (and AB does great videos) deconstructing hands after the fact. I usually think I understand all the points you two make during your strategy segments. What I cannot do is keep any of that in mind during a hand. Is this just experience? Is mindfulness (as it applies to any endeavor) simply crucial yet difficult?

    Congrats on 100 episodes. Thank you very much for all your efforts. And for those who don’t follow Carlos on Twitter, he’s had some tremendous Podcast run-good since this aired. Keep it up.

    • Maybe there are no free lunches, but there are definitely inefficiencies, and I’m sure that some trade offs are a net improvement (or net loss).

      I think there should be a universal moratorium on being forced to explain the origins of any screen name >3 years old. My explanations are usually “I stared at the blank box for 5 minutes, and the first three ideas I had were taken, so I ended up putting in some random garbage”. And then you meet the people in real life and they’re calling you deathslayer, or pumpkin mistress or whatever it was you came up with.

  15. How about Vicky Coren, Antony Holden, Al Alvarez (he’s 85, so maybe a longshot), all British mainstream media figures with sidelines in poker and a perspective of the long view of Poker pre-boom to now?

    I’ve not reread it in years, but The Big Deal was long my favourite poker book.

  16. Thanks for a great 100 episodes!

    I want to second Nate’s suggestion to try to get Paul Phillips. His rants about poker, science, software, politics, scrabble, parenting, and life in general were great reading, and I miss his old blog. It seems like a longshot, but he’d definitely be a fascinating guest on many fronts.

    Now, off to be nostalgic at http://extempore.livejournal.com/ …

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