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Patrick McKenzie, known as “patio11” on Hacker News and elsewhere, is a blogger, consultant, and all-around public intellectual on subjects related to software and business. He’s also, of course, a poker player. We talk to him about playing poker in Japan, mental health challenges, and being a high-output public intellectual.
Patrick previously appeared on Episode 209.
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Timestamps
24:16 Norman Zadeh
Strategy
We are 7-handed and I am in the LJ w/ $315. I open to $7 w/ 78 of spades and get calls from the button and both blinds, all of whom have me covered.
The flop is 10c6d2s. Both blinds check. I decide to bet $25 into the $25 pot, and only the button calls, making the pot $74 after rake with $283 in the effective stacks.
The turn is Qh. I bet $35, the button thinks for a little while, and calls. The pot is now $144, w/ $248 in the effective stacks.
The river is the Ace of spades. Final board 10c6d2sQhAs. I bet $100.
Thanks again for another great episode Andrew, Nate and Patrick.
As a former resident of Japan I would like to point out there is actually at least one legal games in Tokyo by the name of Corner Pocket – all be it with payouts in the form of tokens and merchandise.
Despite the modest rewards the field can be very strong with many local players getting there fix between attending major tournaments overseas. For me a major draw was the colourful crowd. There were a number of characters a foreigner would rarely encountered while in Japan including the club owner Takao.
Last I was there (2917) there was a Holdem game run every second Tuesday where everyone was required to speak English. A variety of games are run every other night in Japanese. As long as a player was respectful and non-disruptive a foreigner can play these games too – basic commands are still in English (fold, call, raise, etc)
Corner Pocket is located in Asakusa (Tokyo) with the English language nights usually listed in Meet-Up. I highly recommend it for the unique poker experience.
Interesting, thanks Ade!
27:55 Thank you Patrick for discussing mental health and therapy. Counseling often involves coaching from a professional and it is effective for many people in their struggles. As you pointed out, some cultures are not fully supportive of mental health resources. Good on you for being open to counseling.
It was a bit too meta I thought, which is usually a sign that someone is a faker, as is needing to describe oneself as an intellectual rather than trusting people to work it out.
However I looked this guy up and immediately ran into an interesting idea he has about moveable url physical addresses (i.e. he just tells each company he’s patio11 and when he changes his home address he only tells the post office, not every company in the world).
It would have been good to talk to him about his specific real world ideas and not all this meta stuff.