Episode 176: Lukasz Grabowski

15 thoughts on “Episode 176: Lukasz Grabowski”

1. Very nice interview.

   Regarding general recommendations.
   Any interview with player who made his(her) move from micro stakes to nosebleed stakes in tough times(1913-1916) will be great.
   Dzmitry Urbanovich and his mindset will be great subject .
   I see a couple reasons.
   -he claims he exclusively learns poker by playing(no work out of table)
   -after winning or finishing late one tournament he is known to immediate start new one.
   -he plays successfully “every” format(turbo,super-turbo,mixed,etc) of poker
   -he seems to develop his poker skill without “think tank”-group of very successful poker friends.

   • Indeed 1913-1916 were tough times I meant 2013-2016.

2. Larps set in the present day strike me as pretty Borgesian. I’m picturing lukasz in a 30 year long larp as a character that is a Polish poker player.

3. *eyeroll*

   http://gtorangebuilder.com/#share_calc=Qs7s3d_3956f98f9ff6a123b00617f2a4cfbca7

   In the GTO solution, Ac5c is about 50% call and 50% jam on the river. Poker is so complicated. The amazing thing about these GTO solutions is that on the flop , almost all the ranges are fractional (e.g. Ac5c check 36%, bet 64%) so that by the river, on all runouts, you always end up with a balanced range. It’s mathematical magic. God knows how anybody would ever implement these strategies in practice, but more to the point, I think learning from them is a significant challenge. It’s not clear to me that the sort of conversations that Nate and Andrew have are necessarily any less helpful than staring at the exact, and frighteningly complex, solution.

4. You asked about pronunciation – the L in Lukasz is crossed through which means it’s pronounced like an English W. A Polish W is pronounced like an English V. “SZ” is their equivalent of SH, so the correct pronunciation is something like “Wookash Grabovski”.

   Don’t beat yourself up about it, they like to change names to Polish equivalent (e.g. the Queen of England is Elżbieta II), so it’s fine to call him Lucas.

5. good, unusual interview, heh. as for the hand, well-played by villain . love the river sizing.

6. I am using that professional poker student, going forward. Lotta years under my belt, but it’s great to see guys like Carlos that just ” get it”. Keep your nut low, bro.

   Also, Nate struck me as a Nihilist type, obviously thinks he knows “metaphysics”, would be really interested in hearing why he disagrees with the Polish guy. I understand, “whos metaphysics is right?” opens a big can of worms, but I also think there could be an interesting conversation there, even if it was brief, in the future.

   • I just think that the usual arguments for value nihilism (roughly, the view that nothing matters, or that nothing is good or bad) fail. It doesn’t (I think) follow from the observation that we’ll all be gone in 200 years, for example; it doesn’t follow from the observation that people can sometimes decide what and what not to care about; etc. And believing that nothing matters on the basis of faulty arguments seems to be a pretty serious mistake.

     • Nate is clearly right. Even if eventually the universe will go cold, devoid of any life, it doesn’t mean that the Holocaust was not a terrible and evil event. Certainly it was bad for the Jews and it still mattered greatly to them. While I am a theist, I would argue that even if there is no God, there can still be objectively worthwhile values. (Most of my theistic philosophy friends also agree with this.) Even if God doesn’t exist, there are ways to still benefit and harm people, and to engage in unjust acts of hatred and bigotry. Things still matter.

7. Also, I would suggest this book:

   https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Poker-Timeless-Transform/dp/0452281261

   Very simple and quick read, but should help you to be in harmony.

8. While I think Lucas made number of good points, and he’s obviously a very intelligent person, I found his account of religion and belief in God far too cartoonish and uncharitable. Not all theists (whether Christian or not) believe in some dusty ancient book for stupid reasons. There is a deeper intellectual, spiritual, and moral tradition that undergirds many intelligent people’s faith, that can only be understood “from the inside” so to speak. Of course, many intelligent people–Lucas included–may ultimately reject that religious or theistic worldview, but there are also many intelligent people who also find that worldview more coherent and explanatorily powerful. To simply paint theists as if they are a bunch of idiots is simply unfair and untrue. Many people, myself included, struggle with faith, but also do believe that an intelligent agent or mind better explains the structure, regularity, and order that we find in the universe than an atheistic explanation. Can randomness really generate order and structure? (One obvious move: multiverse. Unfortunately there is zero evidence for them. In fact, they are by their very concepts, inaccessible. It’s clearly an adhoc response.)

   Of course, one can err in the other direction, by painting a ridiculous picture of atheists as unthinking or morally vicious which would also be wrong. (Steve Harvey made this kind of terrible claim in saying that atheists are dumb a while back. As a theist, I would also wholeheartedly argue against this).

   I just wish if people at least read more of Alvin Plantinga, Alasdair McGrath, Robert and Marilyn Adams, John Haldane, John Cottingham, Thomas Aquinas, Eleonore Stump, or even the papal encyclicals, to find out for themselves what really intelligent and thoughtful theists think, before coming to what appears to me to be a shallow and unjustified judgment. There are really good, smart theistic philosophers out there and I challenge everybody (including Lucas) to give them their day in court. Again, I don’t mean to say that if only you read those things, you will come to embrace theism. But, I do genuinely believe that after reading their works, you will find theism less unjustified. In the same way theists should also challenge themselves and read David Hume’s skeptical arguments (much better than the works of the so called new atheists). Let’s stop with the shallow depictions and engage in more fruitful, and richer dialogue.

   These topics are far deeper and interesting than can explored in an episode of a poker podcast, obviously. (This is something I’m sure Nate and Andrew would agree with.) And I’ll just end with a more positive note, saying what a terrific job you are all doing. I just felt compelled to say a few words about this topic, since I worry that, especially these days, so many intelligent people have a really negative view of religious belief that often seem to be far too uncharitable. One of the great things about a liberal worldview is the drive to deeply probe ideas in an open and honest way, and I am disheartened that this happens so infrequently with regard to theism and religion. If you are truly a freethinking liberal you should, with an open mind, read the very best of what religious thinkers have to offer; not just read Dawkins or Hitchens and go on to treat (the billions of) religious people as imbeciles. (Sorry, I think I still ended on a negative note!)

   • Very good comment, Richard. Though I think I’m closer to Lukasz than to you, religiously, I also thought that he presented a caricatured and not-very-rigorous view of religion. I actually think there’s a fair chance that even he would agree it was glib and not really something he wants to stand by. I’m sure I couldn’t have articulated that was well as you did, though, so thanks again! And for the reading list.

     • Thanks Andrew. I also hope that Lukasz would agree that more would need to be said. My deeper wish would be that he would read (if he hasn’t already) what the best religious thinkers have to offer, to at least get the most rigorous defense of theism before rejecting it. One recommendation for some serious philosophy is the debate between J.J.C. Smart and John Haldane, titled “Atheism and Theism.” I think it’s a terrific exchange by two serious thinkers, that will at least make you think harder about this really difficult but important topic. Thanks also for keeping such an open mind, even as someone who doesn’t share the same worldview. To also get a deeper religious perspective that is also humane, I would recommend Dorothy Day’s “The Long Loneliness.”

       Best of luck to both you and Nate at the world series! I hope to catch you guys there some day.

       • Thanks for your comments, Richard. I agree with many of those reading recommendations. My own non-expert view is that a lot of the theistic stuff in the style of modern analytic philosophy is rather less convincing than some of the more “old-fashioned” stuff (to say nothing of the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins), but that judgement probably has a lot to do with my aesthetic tastes.

         I also think that a lot of his claims don’t follow even if you grant him his atheism, as we agreed above…

9. Thanks Nate, while I am largely in line with the contemporary analytic style of philosophy, I agree with you that contemporary analytic philosophy of religion seems to fail in capturing some of the deeper features of a religious outlook. (Do I detect a kind of Wittgenstenian sentiment for “of that which we cannot speak, we must remain silent”?) That being said, I think there are some works in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion worth reading.

   I’m happy that you are familiar with the work of Gerald Manley Hopkins, who is an excellent poet and finds a way of articulating the more profound elements of theistic belief. On this line, I would also recommend the writings of Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy, who found a way of integrating terrific writing with a deeply religious sensibility. Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain and No Man Is An Island are also very much worth reading in this regard.

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