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Aaron Brown is a professional-poker-player-turned-Wall-Street-trader. You may know him as the author of The Poker Face of Wall Street, but he’s got a lot to say about gambling, economics, and our favorite, the “old days” of poker in private games and smoky California card rooms.
Timestamps
0:30 – hello & welcome
8:38 – strategy
26:37 – aaron brown interview
Strategy
This hand is from a $365 wsop circuit event. Re-entry. Level 2 blinds are 50/100. Starting stack was 10k and I have almost exactly that amount. Villian in the hand seems to be a competent player/circuit
grinder type probably early 30s.
Preflop: I get 9c9s in MP i open for 250, 1 call behind me, V calls on the button, and sb and bb both call.
Flop (1250): 8c3d2c.
sb and bb both check to me and I bet 1000. 1 guy folds behind me, and V makes it 2300, sb and bb fold so it’s back to me. I ended up putting in a reraise to 5300 and he snap shoved.
There’s a number of one or two second gaps in the audio file. Kind of annoying 🙁
Otherwise I thoroughly enjoyed the episode!
This interview was great- a different perspective from many recent interviewees. Really interesting.
Aaron’s comment that society’s scorn of gambling is rooted in fear of social mobility (the aristocrats could lose their money to clever commoners!) was really fascinating to me. Is that really true?
Good stuff, guys!
What a fascinating guest I really enjoyed the discussion! To bad the sound issues got in the way. Keep up the great work guys love your show.
Regarding the discussion on writing a book towards the end, somewhere I read recently a quote something like ‘I write in order to know what I think’. I’ve not found it so much writing, but I have found lecturing and teaching to be a great way of bringing new insights to the surface.
Great interview. Motivated me to buy and begin reading The Poker Face of Wall Street. Super-stoked to read a foreward from NN Taleb (if _he’s_ praising this book it’s gotta be great!) but so-far writing “DISAGREE” notes at a record pace. Engaging read, even if some passages make me want to flip my shit.
Yeah, I found a lot of the non-poker parts pretty interesting and I think they increased my understanding of or at least gave me a new perspective on options and trading and finance, but seeing what he had to say about a subject I do know a lot about did kind of shake my confidence in those other chapters.
And yes I realize it is spelled “foreword.” Anyway, so as not to leave you hanging as to things I can’t disagree with more…
“It’s more important to be unpredictable in poker than it is to always have a sound mathematical reason for your actions.” (p. 50)
*bangs head against a wall*
Hoping this thread turns into a list of Emo Meltdown exclamations.
Yes please!
Alright Nate.
Chapter 8. I shouted “BLUFFS ARE NOT LOSS LEADERS” at my kindle multiple times before attempting to snap it over my my knee like Bo Jackson. After I dusted off the ol’ kindle, I resumed reading and got to this: “Sklansky states that you should expect to make money on your semibluffs–in fact, on all bluffs.” Finally, I thought to myself, someone’s making sense around here!
Next sentence: “To my thinking, if you expect to make money on the hand, it’s deception, not bluffing.”
*record scratch*
*hurls kindle into pool*
Maybe years of range-based thinking has made me a snob who is too judgmental for pre-2006 poker books, but I expected better than a semantic dance about what’s bluffing and what’s not. Especially after the first part of the chapter shared the insight of turning the worst parts of your range into a bluff, which is counterintuitive to people who don’t obsess over NLHE like some of us (and was especially counterintuitive when this was written because few people had even conceptualized hand ranges by then).
Still going to finish the book (once I fish the kindle out of the pool, of course). Maybe if I read the options trading chapters a few more times I’ll finally understand options trading (multiple people have failed at explaining it to me in a way that led to more than temporary understanding).
Thanks for the notes.