Episode 97: Kristy’s Back

27 thoughts on “Episode 97: Kristy’s Back”

1. Top notch episode folks! Sorry to hear you are leaving poker news feed if that means losing some revenue, although I always thought it was funny to hear ads for expensive t-shirts and sunglasses in the middle of the nitcast!

2. You don’t know me…. yet…. but I wear Blue Shark Optics.

3. Great podcast fellas, small thing, could you not just post up all podcasts to this blog feed, regardless of where they are held?

   Nice to have one central place rather than having to visit these other sites x

   • Slightly confused–do you mean “now” instead of “not”?

     Actually I like this idea, as it appears that some people just never made the switch to PokerNews. That said, it’s easy to like an idea the execution of which requires work only from your co-host.

     • ‘could you not just’ – yep now realise this is more of a local (my local as in Suffolk, England) way of saying ‘would you consider’, def not proper english, but something I would say – its weird now you’ve brought it up as its something I would use in conversation all the time

       • I understood you, Meyvis is just a nit 😉

         I’d like to do this.

         • true to the cause 🙂 nitcast thru n thru

4. Thank you for pointing out the inanity of that title. The ship of fools awaits the writer of it.

   • +1. The elongated and nonsensical title of Janda’s book tilts me hard. I think Dave Eggers was involved. 😉

     As for the podcast as a whole, I thought it was refreshing to hear a well known player/personality open up about the “difficulties” of poker, and I think a lot of wide-eyed newbies could learn a lot from this episode.

5. This might have been my favorite episode(other than maybe my own). I can absolutely relate to everything Kristy spoke about. I made a lot of mistakes when it came to my expectations in tournaments, especially the wsop this summer. I also think Andrew hit the nail on the head when he said not to make monetary goals. Last month was one of my worst cash game months making about $10/hr over 170 hours. I knew that I was just running bad and I just had to keep putting in the hours and wait for the positive variance to kick in. However, one of the tougher things was talking to my poker friends and constantly telling them how bad I was running. I started to question whether they even believed me at some point. Now over my first 51 hours this month I’m making about $100/hr. Im starting to treat it more like a job and really motivate myself to put in the hours.

   • Since only making 10$/hour was such a humbling experience for you, I can only imagine how humble you will be after your first losing month. I must be the only professional on the planet who routinely racks up four or five losing months a year.

     • I could work with 10. I’d be comfortable at 20. Anything more than that, and I’d consider myself rich.

6. Perhaps because she is so charming, personable, and pleasing to the eye we give her a wide berth when it comes to criticism. But when you boil this meat down to the bone it belies arrogance. It may be to her disadvantage that she had been surrounded by the top tier players and the poker elite that it may rub off by osmosis. But no it doesn’t work that way.

   To say “Ill just bink one during the summer and have enough money to play with…” is pretty sure of oneself. Im reminded by Chris Fox Wallace who remarked to a pro poker wannabe who asked what it took for him to take down the main event. He likened it like an engineering student who wanted to know when he could build his first bridge.

   Then she proceeds to say she didn’t want to listen to her husband because she didn’t want to hear it from him. Arrogance again. Who is she going to listen to? Sweet talking bracelet winner who wouldn’t dare offend. A line from Ed Miller’s controversial video from Red Chip Poker, Everyone is terrible at Poker. Including you. Including me.

   There are those who grind 45 and 180 SNG’s everyday trying to build a BR to enter the game.
   Playing $0.50/$1.00 cash games. She should interview and talk to them.

   Im being so harsh because I have survived an industry where only about 5% qualified to be professionals can make a good living and qualify for full health insurance. Ive seen so many good decent people fall by the wayside. Disappointed and rejected. You do not follow fame and money. You make fame and money follow you. You do that by developing your skills. And if they don’t follow you you still have your soul.

7. Keone, I think you are misunderstanding her when she says “I’ll just bink one during the summer and have enough money to play with”. She is being sarcastic and poking fun at herself for being naive. I don’t take her for being arrogant at all. If anything I think she is being very humble and honest.

   • Perhaps youre right. Perhaps youre not. You say “naive” and I say “arrogant”. But I grind with a bunch of guys who are real honest and humble about their skills. No one gives them the wide berth that I talked about. And they certainly would not asked to be staked because they are “humble and honest”. And they have the ROI.
     Had a young Scotty Nguyen proclaimed that I want to “bink” the ME or a newly arrived Men Nguyen say he wanted to have a $95 an hour profit in cash we would have told them to hit the road. And those 2 probably never read a poker book in their life.
     Poker is not a tea party. I can empathize with Dan Colman, onedrop winner, when he disdains the limelight because os pokers ruthlessness. Im not one to patronize. You want to swim in a big pond with the other big fishes then you better have the guts.
     Theres a great saying from the great movie “The Friends of Eddie Coyle”. Life is hard, but if youre stupid its harder.
     I do have props for anyone committed to a passion but I warn those that do that it is a struggle.

     • The sense I got was that she was looking back and realizing that she had been arrogant in retrospect. That doesn’t mean she won’t have more doses have humility to swallow in the future, but I think she already had some perspective on the most extreme examples.

     • Nice post. This is why I advocate being a semi-pro (and a life nit) instead of a full time pro and a balla. Maybe the game should never become a job, but a serious hobby that forever gets increasingly more and more serious.

8. I thought a lot of this, especially that third quarter, after the disconnect, was really powerful stuff.

   It was a tough episode to say anything about without feeling like you’re weighing in on the interviewee, rather than interview (I’ve felt similar about a few of the recent episodes). I spent quite a lot of the episode asking why you weren’t talking to Kristie about choice centre – you eventually touched on it, but it would have liked to have a lot more about it because it seems to have been the counterbalance to the crisis of confidence Kristie’s had in her poker.

   • Thanks, Ian. I at least didn’t know she’d had any involvement with Choice Center. When she mentioned that, I was like, “Oh man, that opens up a whole bag of worms we don’t have time to get into.”

     • Yep. It reveals a lack of research on my part, but that’s what happened to me too.

9. This episode was valuable, though far from a favorite. I put it in the category of sometimes the best example is a bad example. Hopefully, someone in the audience learns from Kristie’s mistakes.

   I was frankly stunned a bit by how little she seemed to understand about variance despite her time in and around the game (and being married to a winning pro). Yet, she had no problem selling a package for the big tourneys. Those who say poker is dying are so wrong, the game is flush with money chasing dreams.

   I personally benefit from Keone’s stern, fatherly commentary on this blog.

   • Thanks Russ and you were right on the button when you used the word “fatherly”. Im raising a 5 year old now and its hard. Trying to balance discipline with freedom of expression. Its tough. I never had anything and Im apt to spoil but that doesn’t work and neither does dogma.

     When I asked my mentor what it took me to excel in my craft his answer was “you have to be a good human being.”. I first mistook that for being “nice”. I learned that was not it. It was to be honest to oneself and in that way have compassion for others. To work hard and to believe in what you were doing. Soon others and riches will follow you. And if not you would at least have your dignity intact. And that’s all we can expect.

     I guess like me Kristy is a Asian American and know what pitfalls and traps await us. I identify. I only have well wishes for her hopes and dreams. But they can only come with self- introspection.

10. Kristy is going to be fine. She has tenacity and honesty.

    I am very surprised that anyone thinks she’s arrogant. She comes off as much more naive than arrogant to me.

    • I first met Kristy in 2008. It was at Caesers where I made my first 5 figure cash in a MTT.
      She was a reporter then for Card Player magazine and her partner, Ryan Luchessi, did an interview with me. I was naïve then. I subsequently ran into her in LA at the Commerce Club and several WSOPs in Vegas where she was working for Poker News. So its at least 6 years she has been immersed in the game and its culture. So it seems stunning to some by her lack of understanding of variance. After all she has not only hung out with them but been tutored by some of the best. (I seem to remember a series where she was coached on a CardSharks or Card Runners vid). She has always been courteous and professional. I like her.
      So to say she is “naïve” I think is naïve. Perhaps it fulfills a certain stereotype that really doesn’t benefit her. We all have grown since. I want to be better and I want her to be better.

      • It really goes to show that there’s a huge difference between having an abstract understanding of what variance is and having a real, in-depth, understanding of how it works in practice. Being around pros constantly doesn’t give you an understanding the way viscerally feeling and experiencing that variance does. If she was never a pro, it doesn’t seem surprising that she wouldn’t have that in-depth understanding of how it works. Hopefully now she does, or at least has a better understanding of it.

        • Not to belabor the point but I think this points to the present state of Poker journalism. Some poker sites seem to stress the visual rather than the intellectual. Glamour instead of insight. I would love to see our AB or NM reporting from the WSOP instead of some of the recent choices of flash without knowledge. (not that they aren’t pleasing to look at)

          Im not a pro and I think I understand variance. Enough has been written and talked about.

      • I don’t think it’s weird that her immersion in the poker world didn’t help her appreciate the phenomenon of variance. I think her particular brand of immersion centered around the most successful players in the highest profile tournaments. If a player busted out early, he/she was never around to get interviewed my Poker News and Card Player. I think her overly optimistic perspsective can be explained largely by a selection bias — she was always around the winners, and even the losers she interviewed were already deep in the money in many cases.

        I think the bigger question is why she didn’t gain a more “real” perspective from her husband and poker-related friends who she knows outside of her career as a poker journalist. It makes me feel like they might be intentionally hiding their reality from her. She made a point of saying her husband has a phenomenal hourly rate and she went on to say she wants to make an optimistic hourly rate herself at 2-5 games. It seems like her husband might not be doing his best to inform her of his experience with variance. Or maybe, like she said in the interview, she sometimes just doesn’t want to hear his advice.

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