0:00Danger is still laying in as we laugh songs above the tent. It's hard to know if this will be the day when you're giving it. Hello and welcome to episode 507 of the Thinking Booker Podcast from Kittensville, Maryland. I'm Andrew Brokus. And from St. Augustine, Florida, I'm Carlos Welch. We will be joined shortly by today's guest, Ben Raven. Ben Raven is a professional poker player and also a trained psychotherapist, not currently practicing, but we do talk a good deal to him about what exactly that means and has meant

1:01for him. It's a pretty unique route for coming to the poker world, not a lot of people actively playing. I think a lot of people who are doing mental game kind of stuff have some sort of background in psychology, but for people who are actually like professional poker players, I don't think because many people have that, especially that kind of clinical background. So a pretty unique story for Ben and ended up being a pretty unique interview. He was really, it was not someone I knew a whole lot about before talking to him. Most of what I knew about him was from watching his, I would say, really excellent videos on YouTube, but actually talking to him, you know, was totally different side of his personality and maybe only about half the interview was really about poker on a very granular scale, but I enjoyed the hell out of talking to him. I couldn't believe I was going to the time flew by where I was like, oh, it's been like almost an hour already. Yeah, yeah, it was great. I love talking to people who have had interesting lives outside of poker in addition to interesting lives within poker.

2:02And then, you know, it's always a plus when we get to talk to people with such wonderful accents as well. That's right. I do want to thank Daniel Levine, who is our guest on episode 440. Also, a good friend of mine. He was the one who recommended and encouraged me to have Ben on the show. He was also the one who encouraged me to have Ben's friend Luke Johnson on episode 499. You will hear Ben and me talk in the interview about how much went into actually getting the set up. My initial thought was when we were able to have Ben and Luke back to back on the show and ended up being like several months between them by the time we were actually able to find the time that we could record with Ben. But I'm glad we pushed through that. I'm glad that Daniel kept encouraging me to talk to him because I do think he ended up being a really fantastic guest. I do have a strategy segment for you first. And that strategy segment is brought to you by GTO Dojo, which is a great place for you

3:04to learn and drill GTO poker strategy, like the kind that we talk about in these strategy segments as great as it is to hear us talk about poker theory and high level poker concepts. You do need to actually practice using them in your playing. You get feedback on how you're using them. If you want to make them a part of your conscious competence to borrow a term from the mental game world in poker, shout out to your time mark. So GTO Dojo is a great place for you to put those concepts into practice to practice using them. And you can get started for free at GTO Dojo dot com slash thinking THIN KIN G. You can also support the show by joining us at patreon dot com slash thinking poker daily. That is where you can hear Carlos and me talking strategy as much as every day of the week, you can start for free and get two episodes per week with no further commitment at patreon.com slash thinking poker daily.

4:12This strategy question comes to us from anonymous, probably not anonymous by their choice, but we lost the name of the submitter. So it's functionally anonymous. Thank you, whoever you are for writing this interesting question. This player says they sat down in a one three game, which was awfully deep, probably 68 players had $600 plus and it played that way, lose aggressive all the way around. I was sitting on $169 when I caught pocket tens under the gun and raised the $16 five people called. So before we go to the flop, there's two things that I want to talk about here. One is our heroes choice to use such a big race size and one is our heroes choice to be sitting in this game with $169 in the first place. And I'll start with the first of those because this is the one that I think fewer people have thought about. I see very little reason why you should be sitting in a game like this with $169.

5:19I suppose it's possible that what you really wanted to be sitting with was 100 or whatever was the minimum buy in and that's what you bought in for and then you just ran it up to $169. I kind of suspect what happened is that you started with 300 or something and ran it down to $169 and just didn't reload. And I'm not a big fan of that. And what I mean by that is in a cash game, you're allowed to put more money on the table. And if you thought it was a good idea to buy in for 300 in the first place, it's probably going to be a good idea for you to be reloading. Unless something has changed where you're like, oh, actually the game conditions are not such that I want to have $300 on the table. But I think what a lot of people, I kind of suspect the way people end up with a stack like this is they're not being very thoughtful about these decisions. They're just like, oh, I bought it for whatever and then I played for a while and now I have this. And if people are making a lot of big mistakes, which it seems like they are, if they're calling us $16 under the gun, raise five people are calling that raise. People are making some pretty big mistakes here. You probably want to have more money on the table to take advantage of those mistakes. And what that means is that like when you flop a set with pocket tens, well, or alert, you're going to be missing out about

6:23$131 you can potentially win. I'm assuming 300 is the max buy in or is what you're comfortable playing with. And you might miss out on more than 31 of more than more than one person would have called to your chef. So this is like, this is potentially a much bigger mistake than just like missing a flock continuation bet or something. Just sitting with an arbitrary amount of money that was not carefully chosen as the amount that you want to be playing for. It's just kind of letting the fluctuations of the game determine how large your stack is. There are times when you can't avoid that, right? I mean, you can't take money off the table and you're not allowed to buy past the maximum buy in. So sometimes you're not allowed to choose the amount that you're in for. But this strikes me as a spot where our hero probably had a choice of how much to be sitting with. And probably was not treating that as an active choice. And I think that's a much bigger mistake than it seems. So I would encourage you to be thinking about him. And I'm not saying you have to reload every time you stack tips to $2.95. But like when I play, I buy more chips that I'm going to put on the table right away. And I keep them in my pocket. And if I get down to, you know, maybe 90% of what I bought in for initially,

7:28I'm going to add a little bit more one and bring myself back up to the maximum. And I think that's a good way to find out can be a pain to call a chip runner over to buy, you know, $50 chips at a time. And that's why I just keep some of my pocket. So for a small reload, I can just reload out of my pocket. Yeah, that makes sense to me. When you do that, do you have to announce to the table that you had, no? Now, if you're adding one below the maximum, it's fine. And I suppose someone, it might look shady if I'm like taking money on my pocket and putting on the table. And so if someone complained about something, you know, like I can prove that I'm buying it for less than maximum. And if they run and make a stick about it, they can count down my stack or look at a camera or whatever and see that nothing shady actually happened. So, I mean, there's some possibility that there's going to be like bad optics here or someone might think that I've never had anything to me. I don't know if someone was assuming that I was doing something shady, but I wasn't. And I was prepared to defend that if someone made a stick about it.

8:28Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're happy that you put more money on the table that they can win. It's just a matter of like, I played on a stream game recently and they announced whenever people added on. But maybe that was just for the stream or whatnot. I didn't know if that was a thing that happened when you playing live cash anyway. Because the times I played live cash, I generally, I don't recall, it's been so long ago, man. The times I've like, you know, played and added on. So I can't remember if it was something I needed like tell the dealer or something or whatever. So that was just like, you know, logistics things from my own edification. But the other question I have or the other statement I want to make is you said that you can't take money off the table. Actually, you can. You just have to take all of it off the table. And so if you bought in for 100 and you ran it up to a stack that you're not comfortable playing with,

9:29you can just like leave. It's a one three game. So I imagine there's like tons of one three games available wherever you're playing it. And if you want to play with $100, you can just leave and go to a different table with another $100. But if you are, if you like, I agree with you, Andrew, that there's really no. I can't think of a lot of reasons to kind of play with this sort of in between stack. If you want to play shorter, go to a different table and play shorter. If you want to play deeper add on, maybe you wanted to play with around $200 and you bought it for 200 and you've blinded it down a little bit. But I think that's rare. Generally in these sort of games, people either want to play with 100 or 300. Yeah, that's right. In terms of announcing when I add on the only time that I'm doing that actually is if I am using a chip runner, right? If I've given money to a chip runner, I'm waiting for money to be delivered to me and I get in a box with someone. Then I'm going to make sure that they and the dealer know I'm playing 500 behind or whatever it is. But that's

10:34the only time that I'm announcing something. Gotcha. Okay. So then the other thing is opening to five or more than five X the big blind. And in a game like this where everyone is too loose, that's a great strategy. And again, I would just say that like in the kind of game where that is called for, I think you probably want to have more money on the table. Like if you're expecting and you probably are that this race is going to get called by some pretty bad hands, those people are probably making bad calls after the flop as well. And I think you just want to have more money in the game. So this is probably a good, a good race and a good race size. But it just gets back to the point of why you would like to have preloaded before now. Man, this question is getting very interesting in ways that I didn't predict what happened. And I think it started with your, you noticing that, you know, this awkward stack size kind of indicates one or two things either this person wanted to play deep or they wanted to play short. If they wanted to play deep, I agree with everything you

11:38just said where they should play deeper, you know, put more money on and then make this big race size. But if they wanted to play short, now I kind of want to throw another curve ball at you, which is, what do you think about limping hands like this early position at a loose aggressive table with a short stack? I guess like trying to set up a limp jam. Yeah. Yeah, I think you might be a little too, not short enough for that. Like if you had a $100 stack, that would probably be viable. But I think that's just a judgment call of like how likely is it that people are going to raise behind you? If it's a really loose passive game, we're just going to kind of punch people limping behind you, then I don't think that's very appealing. But if it's a game where people don't forget that very often, but they do raise lips pretty aggressively, then I could take a case for that. I just want to make sure that I have a stack size where I can comfortably limp jam. And this is why I said earlier that it really matters what this player's intention was when they

12:41sat down. If they sat out short with a hundred and they wanted to play hands like this from early position at this sort of table, then I think limp jamming is a very viable strategy. But once you do that a couple of times and you run your stack up to the amount where it's kind of awkward to continue doing that, then either add on more and just play deep stack poker at this point, or switch tables and start over. But this middleing type stack doesn't work well for limp jamming, as you said. And it doesn't work well for playing normal deep stack poker because it kind of like caps how much you can win when you hit sets and stuff like this. So yeah, this I did not expect this question to go in these different directions. But yeah, for the person who wrote this, if you're listening, if you want to play deeper, you just have to, if you want to make raises like this, you need to be deeper. And if you want to play shorter, then don't make raises like this,

13:45actually be shorter and then just limp jam. I think our correspondent is not entirely ignorant of the concepts that you're describing because he does do something pretty similar after the flop. The flop was we were saying against five players, six people total saying the flop, which means we're already looking at close to $100 in the pot. And here only having 169 in the stack. The flop is Queen of Diamonds, Ten of Diamonds, Deuce of clubs. So our hero has flopped middle set. And with this being a six way pot, our hero being out of position to most of these people, even before the flop is dealt, we should be thinking about doing a lot of checking on the flop. You'll be doing a little bit less checking because of how shallow your stack is. There aren't going to be some times. For instance, if you flopped like King Queen here, like there might be a case for just open shoving that, there might be some case because you have the option of getting all in on the flop, there might be some times where it makes sense for you to just jam. So I think you can have a slightly higher seed betting frequency than you might if you were in a deeper situation, your position is less of a liability here. But still just being out of position this many people, there's a lot of,

14:49like you're not going to be doing a lot of bluffing or thin value betting, which means by necessity, you're going to do a lot of checking and then you certainly want to slip some strong hands into that checking range when you can. And tens is a great example of one that is really not going to suffer from the flop checking around. And what I mean by you're not going to suffer from the flop checking around, like yes, there are a lot of draws on the board. Yes, you don't want to see like the everything check around in the turn like nine to diamonds rolls off. But the truth is like, you're shallow enough that even if that happens, you're not going to be folding. Like there's, there's no scenario where your tens don't continue to be a good hand. And a lot of the hands that would be improved by that nine of diamonds are not going to be folded into a flop that anyway. So the fact that you don't want to see that card is not the same thing as it actually costing you something that it did flop and it's up checking around. So I think this is a great time to start with the check. And also a lot of the hands you're worried about would have bet when you check to them. Yes, also that. Our hero finds the check, which is great. And now the low jack bets 25 dollars, which is quarter pot. Three people call the action that's back to our hero. And hero does

15:49what I would say is the only logical thing to do here, which is jammed for the remaining 153 dollars. And that is exactly what they do. But they say beyond winning the hand, what am I actually rooting for here? Do I want everyone to call everyone to fold? Should I have played it differently? If my stack was deeper, how would that change my all in decision? And the first thing I want to say is that I mean, you can root for whatever you want to root for. But like, that's not up to you. I don't think there's really any option other than jam here. And I mean, the nice thing about jamming is you, I mean, I guess you have a preference, but like none of those things is bad for you. Even if everyone falls, you went a big pot. And you're going to be ahead of their calling ranges also. So it's all good. And that's why you jam right? Because there's really nothing bad that can happen when you jam. And there are bad things that can happen if you don't jam, if you just call, there might be hands that would have called your jam that now are not going to pay off on the next street or the next could be a card that really complicates things for you and

16:53makes it harder for you. Like, maybe you won't be able to get the rest of the, I know I said before, like, there's not going to be a turn card where we have to fold. I think once you get action from this many people on the flop, you might actually be able to fold a diamond turn. But we'd rather not be in like we'd rather just get the money in now and either push them off of their equity when they have diamonds or if they call it, at least we get into money in ahead. So I think like it's with this tax size, it's very straightforward that you want to shove. And I mean, I guess you're rooting for calls, but like whatever. I mean, you're just, you're putting the money in because it's the best option. And then you're going to get to do whatever they're going to do. And there's nothing they can do to get to. Yeah, you're rooting for making the right decision. You've already won. Yes. So congratulations. But then he also says, you know, what if my stack were deeper with that change this decision? And I mean, I would say with this many people, so now by the time it's back on you, there's $200 in the pot. So even if you were a good deal deeper, like let's say you have

17:53$300 instead of $153, Janet would still be pretty reasonable. Any raise size that you make, you know, if you're going to raise it all, you'd probably raise to at least 100. And then like you're not going to have that many hands that are raising to 100 and then folding for 200 more. So like, you'd have to be deep enough to where you could have a raisefold range. That would give you only reason to raise less and all in is to represent like, oh, maybe I have some hand or to actually have some hands that are going to raise and knock it, knock it your entire stack. And it should have to be quite deep before I think that would that would really be relevant. And then you'd want to be thinking about like, how can I raise to set up a turn jam? Because what you have is a hand that doesn't want to play the river. The your hand is strong now, but it's going to get less strong as more cards come down. And the hands you want to get paid by are going to either get less strong in the case of like a top pair, you know, a diamond coming is probably going to cost you the pot because you're probably going to lose to a flesh. But even if it doesn't, you're not going to get any more money against someone who has top pair when a diamond comes. So you really want to get the money in early against the second best ends because they're going to get weaker. And against the draws also,

18:57you want to get the money in early because on the river of draws are going to play well against you. They're going to miss and not pay you off where they're going to get there. And unless it's like the duce of diamonds where you build up for the most part, if they get there, you're going to lose. So getting the money in early is to your advantage. If you can do it by jamming, great, do that. If you're deep enough, if you're if you're if you're so deep that jamming doesn't feel like a good option, then I think you raised to a size that sets you up to jam the turn. Exactly. Our hero says they ended up with one collar who had a queen. And the diamond flesh didn't materialize for any who had a flesh draw, but they already folded it. I won, but that's no reason for me not to analyze it. Yes, absolutely. As I'm sure you've heard on the show before, looking at a spot where you end up getting your great outcome and are still questioning, should I have done something differently or how would I have done something differently if conditions have been different? Those are fantastic things to think about and fantastic things to write to us about. So thank you for both of those things. One last piece of advice I have to

19:59give to this correspondent. You need to work on how you categorize your opponents because you start off by saying all these players were loose of a grad loose and aggressive. And I've seen nothing but extreme passivity throughout this hand. So where there's a raise in five collars and then there's in three collars on the flop. This is not an aggressive game. This is an extremely loose passive game. And with that being the case, I would not advocate buying in short and trying to limp jam because these people are aggressive enough to give you the opportunity to limp jam. Now, if you send this as a game that if you limp, somebody will raise and then all these passive players will call a weekend is behind. That's a great time to go for this whole limp jam and thing. But you need that first raise to happen. And so far in this game, I haven't seen very much aggression. So I'll be careful about that. And it also indicates why you want to use bigger raises from early position

21:08because you're not going to have a lot of fold equity. So what you want to have is bigger raises and a stronger range. So you want to raise very, very tight in early position at this table and use big sizes because this game is better categorized as loose passive. And those are the exploits you want to have in these sort of games. Yeah, fair point. Thank you for writing. And everyone, please enjoy our interview with Ben Raven. Ben Raven, thank you so much for joining us. I'm glad we finally managed to make this happen. It's been a long time in the making, I think. Yeah, that's funny because I like, I think neither of us uses Instagram or 2 plus 2 very often. But those are like the only places where I was able to

22:09contact you. So I was like, I contacted you and then like two weeks later, you saw it and wrote back and then I didn't see that for two weeks. Yeah, I know. Just trying to kind of like protect my brain as much as possible from going on this stuff. But yeah, for sure. Yeah, now I can't I can't argue with that. Yeah, we have two plus two. Two plus two is a great place to go to protect and breathe. Yeah, it's true. But also like it's the true birthplace of so many of our careers, right? Yes. I can't not have a really soft place in my heart for two plus two. Like I love two plus two deep down. Does it still feel so I haven't been on there in years except to DM you. I mean, now that Mason's not running at any more, like how much does it still feel like two plus two? Well, yeah, honestly, I don't really spend much or anytime there anymore, but for years and years, I'm sure similar to you guys, I spend most of my days on there,

23:09communicating with the community. I think that for the most part, it's similar, but just a lot quieter. And people have, yeah, moved to other platforms to share their journeys and their stories. And let's just say like they heads up for all shit talking. They've moved that to Twitter, I think, or YouTube. Yeah, two plus two is a bit quieter. So what was your, like when were you most active on two plus two? And how did you find it? Yeah, I mean, I think I started posting on two plus two, or at least reading two plus two, it must have been in about 2009, 2010, I would guess, where there was a small stakes fooling thread. And all of the regs posted in there. It was all the supernovas, all the supernova elites, oh, and also just like people who were just playing fooling at the time. And yeah, there was just, there was just a forum while we were just all discuss hands, we were at all pretty supportive for the most part, not that much flaming. And then in 2012, I started

24:12my own poker goals and challenges. I don't know if you guys have frequented the poker goals and challenges for a much, it's a lot less toxic than the NVG. For sure. I spent most of my time in the NVG. If I was on two plus two, I was looking for toxicity. You were born in the flames of the NVG yeah, it's a very tough place to be NVG at times. But yeah, two plus two and then poker goals and challenges. And then yeah, that's pretty much how I, well, actually before the poker goals and challenges, I met most of my very now good poker friends in that small stakes fooling thread. We used to do meetups. It's kind of like, you know, like, seems so alien now. It wouldn't really happen much nowadays. I don't think. But because the community was so small and everyone knew each other and also I think because everyone was quite successful because there was quite a lot of money going around at the time, even at the very small stakes. It was more supportive than the kind of like combative communities that you see nowadays a bit more. Yeah, I think it felt like it was safer to

25:15share stuff openly because like you said, there was so much to go around. I mean, Carlos and I were in the single table and multi table tournament forums, but it was very much the same vibe. Just kind of a very like collegial atmosphere and you would like at the WSFB, you'd see people and you'd be like, Oh, you're, you know, Josh, Josh most 69, like interesting to meet you. Yeah, they were that kind of community. So were you playing the like 180 men sitting goes the 45 one and the 9 max as well? I did some of the 180s. I think by the time they rolled out the 45 men's, I had already moved on to playing mostly cash, but yeah, the 180s definitely was a player, a fair number of us. Yeah, I think me and my immediate friendship, poke friendship group, we started in the $4, 180 man sitting goes and we had this strategy that when we had Ace King, we would always just limp to just limp jam because there were always people early in the tournament who just wanted to spin up their stuff. That was our early strategy back then. Yeah, I started with single table,

26:21sitting goes, nah man, and reluctantly moved to 18 45 and then eventually 180s just because the single tables became too reg infested and then eventually moved from 180s into tournaments and that's why I've been ever since. When you say reluctantly, why were you reluctant as the time constraint? Because I was enjoying the money I was making in the single tables and it kind of felt like something was taken from me once I could no longer make the same amount of money. It was so funny, we used to like the regulars kind of had like this unspoken agreement where you would just come in and you would just sit all your tables, you would just open up new tables and wait for it to fill up with fish. And so if another regular saw, so I would play like I think my max was like 21 tables.

27:22So I'll sit 21 tables on the only one there and just slowly fish would kind of fill it in. And honestly it wasn't even that slow here first fish would just come out of woodworks and the other regulars would kind of like wait and basically sit their own tables. But at some point the tables didn't fill up as fast. So then you would get some regulars that would sit another regulars table and then there was like this this dynamic of well you're a regular but I'm better than you. So you're kind of a fish to me anyway. So it's okay if I sit your table and then that happens so often where it went from one or two ricks at a nine handed table to maybe seven ricks at a nine handed table. And when that happened it just wasn't profitable for me anymore. And so I just moved on to more tables where I was harder to you know get it so saturated with regulars.

28:22I actually now that you mentioned it I remember this happening as well in those nine max system goes. Everyone was quite respectful weren't they? Like allowing the lobbies to fill organically but also kind of on organically in a way so that the games were softer. But when there's less food to go around then people start fighting for scraps right so that's just the nature of the game and that was the beginning probably. Exactly. And what was your introduction in tradition? What was your introduction to poker in general? I mean I assume by the time you're on the the small stakes cash forums you're already playing small stakes full ring. So like how did you get started playing online poker? I mean I would also say that when I first started posting in the forums I wasn't a winning player pre-rate back. I was probably around break even or maybe slightly losing but with rate back just like scraping by I was definitely not somebody who kind of won off the rip. I really really really really struggled for like probably the first third of my career maybe even half of my career I would say. But I first learned how to play with my friends. My

29:26friends brother taught us how to play and we were playing like five dollar, five pound home games pretty much all weekend we were playing. And then my immediate friendship group which is there were three guys. We basically taught each other how to play and created strategies and discussed poker. We just as many of us did in our early careers we ate, breathed and slept poker for three, four years. That's all we were doing up till seven, eight in the morning playing home games, playing online cash games. But I guess my other friends were well flat out a lot better at poker than I was and they were making decent money for the time and I was kind of like just scraping scraping scraping by loving the game but lacking discipline lacking the ability to kind of think critically and not allow my emotions to completely take over. I would just like blow up all the time or just like till or just just just very as a fish basically. I think that's probably

30:29the best way to put it. Not very good player. It's very refreshing to hear that because you know we have this conversation all the time kind of asking people their origin stories and there's such an obvious survivorship bias and who becomes a pro like the number of people whose story is just like yeah I wasn't really any good but I got lucky early on and just like won the first tournament I played and never looked back or you know I was terrible but I ran hot in the first whatever and you know to actually hear from someone who was like no I actually had to like really work at it and I was not good right off the right off the jump and like it took it was a while before I was really like profitable it's it's very refreshing to hear that story. Well I mean like genuinely I think so I started playing properly in like 2007 2008 and when I started my 2 plus 2 blog which was in 2013 it was right off the back of trying to go for Supernova Elite and I mean I don't know if either of you ever got Supernova Elite or yeah I mean me too to be honest with you and that just

31:30shows my mindset I battle to make Supernova but I thought it would be good idea to go for Supernova and that's why Supernova Elite was so so profitable for the people who actually got it because for every one guy that did it there were 250 failed attempts right and I basically had I quit within one month of trying to get Supernova Elite I lost 120 bions in the first month of trying to get Supernova Elite and that's when I started my 2 plus 2 blog was like something has to change at this point because so so so many failed attempts at trying to be a good poker player something needs to change and honestly I know you just said like that there's like a lot of hard work that goes into it but there isn't really like one single turning point it's just like constant small maybe luck outcomes maybe slightly chipping away a better better habits or listening to people or just maturing bit by bit by bit that contributes towards your success over those years

32:32it wasn't like a moment where it just felt like it clicked at all I was a little surprised when you said that you felt like your play was really governed by your emotions because my understanding is you you are were a a psychotherapist yeah a lot later a lot later on after yeah I wasn't so this time frame that I'm talking about now I must have been between 18 and then to 21 was probably when I've tried to go Supernova Elite and I didn't start studying psychotherapy or at the time counselling actually until I was 26 I think and then finishing my training when I was 31 around 32 something like so yeah the emotional landscape and ability and I used that word maturity before I think maturity is probably a better way to describe all of the progress that I've made wasn't until I've made a lot

33:34a lot of mistakes and was unaware of the blind spots that I have and I'm sure I still do have plenty of those but certainly many more blind spots back then so it was poker like the the origin of your interest in psychology probably I mean I could see on the surface from the outside of perspective it could be seen that way but I think the main reason would be that both my parents and both my sisters are psychotherapists in their own right so probably that was the origin story or laid out before me that had no choice to avoid probably but say even even when you became a profitable player after kind of you weren't like looking to go pro-arm and you were pursuing a pretty intense studies outside of poker yeah so I definitely wanted to go pro and jumping a little bit back when we were doing all those home games and when we were playing for Supernova and all that kind of stuff and as I was scraping by I had an opportunity to move to

34:36London from my hometown with these three friends that I mentioned before and I had about two or three thousand pounds to my name so about yeah four four thousand dollars at the time and our rent was probably a thousand dollars each a month and I had the option to move in with these guys to move to London and I just knew that financially it made no sense but I had another friend who said to me then if you don't move in with these guys you are never going to make it as a poker player he's like very candidly told me that I didn't have the sole potential to become a poker player unless I was supported by my friends so I decided to take the plunger move and clearly that was the best thing that could ever have happened because it all worked out but from that from around that period I really really really wanted to be a professional poker player and I did again continue to do okay for about three years and then that was when I found Psychotherapy my partner at the time's mum suggested that I would maybe be a good Psychotherapist or could potentially find value

35:41in that and I was a bit of a crossroads of poker because I wasn't making a huge amount of money I was living and I had a great lifestyle insofar that I was my emboss and all that stuff that poker players love but in terms of like future opportunity it was looking pretty limited to say the least so then I started doing the training and I fell in love with that side of psychology and working with people and mainly personal process because I don't know if you have done psychology or psychotherapy sick particularly training but the general thesis is that you can't expect your client to go to places that you haven't gone to within yourself and that's very psychotherapy sick rather than maybe psychological from the analytical side of things but so as part of that the psychotherapy sick training process you're in weekly therapy and you're doing group process and you are identifying

36:42and sitting with and exploring your personal lived experience what makes you you your childhood your parents your lifestyle choices your heritage all of that kind of stuff and then inadvertently through doing all that and understanding my emotional landscape and the reasons I am the way I am I then found that I was able to find this new place in poker that not only helped me appreciate the amazing things that poker has to offer and take it more seriously but understand my triggers around why poker impacts me in the ways that it impacts me and I'm not gonna act like I have all the answers to that but there was kind of this weird moment where I shifted from poker being this thing that I did that I didn't really think much past the next month of making money to poker facilitating the lifestyle that I can have outside of the game whilst also working with people and kind of yeah finding pubs and meaning in that so are you still practicing now in addition

37:47to playing poker so yeah this is this is interesting as I was saying that I was kind of noticing that contradiction because now I am not practicing and the reason I mentioned the personal process side of things was I think that unconsciously or deep down I was doing that training as a way of helping me understand myself a lot more and my priorities and I mean there's so much other stuff tied up in that but I don't know like kind of proving to parents and family and all that kind of stuff that I can do this thing that they all do and it be it be something I can kind of relate to them too whilst also helping me understand myself but it's now not something I'm interested in pursuing with clients anymore one main thing was that when I was doing the training I loved volunteering and as part of the training you have to accrue 450 hours of psychotherapy to work with clients

38:47so I was working in the voluntary sector and working with people with all sorts of issues but trainees shouldn't be working with like extreme psychological disorders and suicidal ideation and severe anxiety and depression and bipolar and all that kind of stuff but then as soon as I qualified and was being paid to work with these clients I just had a completely different feeling to me it felt really greasy after making money from poker to then go see clients who are disadvantaged and to but then to pay for that service it became very convoluted and a bit complicated and actually I didn't really resolve that fully what do you mean you didn't resolve that fully I mean that I end up moving from the UK and my about four years ago and my license didn't cover me abroad so I took a break from therapy which kind of coincided well

39:47with this experience of struggling to work with clients who were paying and then in that break I well in that forced break of not working with clients I realized that I didn't enjoy being paid to work with these clients and I think the thing that's not resolved still is that I haven't gone back to psychotherapy because I don't know where I kind of land on the let's just say ethical or moral dilemmas of being a poker player and a psychotherapist they feel quite opposing internally to me are you are you comfortable saying more about what you feel like the the dilemmas are of course absolutely yeah yeah sure I think that the the aspect of poker being zero-summoned to be a winner there must be a loser and the impact that that can have on people obviously I'm talking I'm talking quite the the extreme end here I'm not talking about in the middle range where people are gambling to have fun or lose a small amount of money or an amount of money that's reasonable

40:50to them but more that like the accompaniment of negative feelings for those who are losing poker players being something that you're I'm indirectly confronted with by working with clients who have had adverse experiences regardless of whether or not those adverse experiences are from poker or gambling there is a sense that the the losers in poker are left with the negative feelings and the the potential to yeah the potential to draw I can be a catalyst in driving negativity within somebody else's lived experience I think that's the that's the difficult part for me like you're you're causing some kind of pain or harm by winning absolutely yeah yeah yeah and I guess there's this is this is the the dilemma of the psychotherapy sick and poker player but every

41:54mind just wants to caveat I as part of my training as I said I'm in I've been I was in personal therapy and I continued my personal therapy so I've been in personal therapy for maybe eight or nine years with the same therapist and it's this is the these are some of the conversations that we have regularly so it's just good to say that it's a process that's ongoing as well the paradox between the psychotherapist being a an emotive feel opening oneself up to the wider field of lived experience as a way of deepening and connecting to a client who who so desperately needs the therapist to be open available and digesting of their feelings that they are unable to feel or who are blocked from feeling or a multitude of other potential emotional things versus the poker player which is

42:56to somewhat disconnect to somewhat go to war go to battle emotionally from quite a masculine doggy dog perspective and I feel both of those things within me very very very strongly and there's that kind of tussle and that's where the real difficulty comes between being both or of being both if that makes sense all right yeah I felt like as you know we've been doing or the carless is a little newer to it but I've been doing this podcast for 12 years I've been doing coaching for 20 years I've been like writing about poker you know I think I've always been drawn to like I've never been a full-time poker player like poker has been my source of income my sole source of income for as long as I've needed a sole source of income but like it's always been a diversified portfolio and I think doing things that are more positive some with other people you know whether that be making the the podcast or coaching or even just like you know writing articles

44:00as right for two plus two magazine and now for GTO wizard just like doing yeah doing like positive some things in addition like the negative some alone was um yeah I was just like doing that exclusively I don't think it would be good for me so do have these these kind of conversations and explorations you kind of feel like you've had within yourself well with others yeah I mean I think that there's used to be a pretty regular um topic of conversation on like two plus two you know where people are sort of like what a what a poker player is contributing to the world or that kind of thing and I've also done like substantial kind of volunteer work but um I think the the coaching it kind of came I didn't enter it into it deliberately for that reason but I mean I always kind of knew I didn't want to be a full-time poker player that was never very appealing to me and um I just kind of looking at what are the other sorts of things that I've sought out and I have I have always kind of sad or been aware of the fact that you know poker does have this um

45:01zero-sum element that I don't want to be like the entirety of my life I think some of that is in pretty together after the fact like why did I pursue all these other things or like why have I never wanted to be exclusively a poker player and I do think that's the reason yeah I think it's really it's a really interesting and an important thing to think about and not not something that it's quite confrontational or confronting sorry it's very confronting to have these kind of conversations sometimes especially when the environment is such that uh it favors the doggy dog mentality doesn't it because to be truly successful in poker you need to have your arm are on and the arm keeps everything out you know yeah I mean I do also think poker has been good for me in the sense of um cultivating the ability to to do the more um doggy dogger like I'm going to look out for myself sort of you know like when I've needed to negotiate like you know buying a car or like that kind of like in situations where you are in a very like openly zero-sum sort of

46:06relationship um or not that that would have to be a zero-sum relationship but I think just like having that gear I think poker has made me more comfortable with being um aggressive in situations where that is called for yeah but and like that's absolutely like I uh with we're even though with everything I'm saying like I love that element of poker like clearly I love that element of poker because I'm drawn to it and we are drawn to it I don't think that we may necessarily form our personality or poker our personality is preformed for poker going back again like when I try to maybe quit poker or when I consider that maybe I want to move away from poker it has been it was so difficult and still is to find anything outside a poker that gives me the feeling that I have when I am playing poker and when I feel that I am better than people when I feel

47:07that I'm once that the idea that I'm fully self-sustaining aggressive as you said like these are all really really core things that offer that give me something that I can't quite put my finger on but they exist and I I'm gonna use it in in the words of comments I need that feeling you know the most intense conversation I ever had about this was with a he's probably about five at the time um my cousin's son asked me why I like poker and I said that um it makes me feel smart and he said why does it make here he's why why why why why you know so why does it make you feel smart um well I think you know everyone who plays like you know higher stakes poker games that's usually pretty smart people and they're all trying to win and so if for you to win you have to be like even smarter than these other really smart people they said why do you want to be smart and I was like I don't know and there he goes he looks at me and he goes well then you're not smart and just walked away that that's absolutely amazing yeah that and that's that's basically what the therapeutic

48:09process is like okay should we go can we go another layer below can we go another layer below and eventually you get to this core feeling and it's like oh yeah like actually I don't want to feel like I'm I'm um weak or whatever it is which is like okay well then now we kind of got to this place it's like what does this thing that is poker what does that uh crop up within me that gives me a sense of belonging and meaning you know yeah that's the thing that I've noticed a lot in like coaching and also like when people we have another podcast we're like a strategy focused thing where people can send us questions and um a really common thing is people do not like to be considered nits even if they're not you know even just like okay I've just been card dead and I'm actually like playing quite aggressively but some of the table commented that I'm in it and now I'm really upset about that and I feel the need to like prove them wrong like like are we're always just sort of like well that's an opportunity for you like if they think you're too tight you should be like don't try to prove them wrong just take advantage of the image that you have but you know obviously people are not this is not a purely strategic uh mindset that people are in at this point

49:14absolutely no it's it's so easy to be triggered for the smallest of things isn't it as a vocalist I learned I just saw a tweet yesterday that was like I'm sorry you were bullied in high school that sucks but this is still an underblast spot and you need to fault the harsh truths is what people need yeah that was a great one um from uh character uh characters uh great great one oh from character corner yes yes oh yeah I like you hilarious man yes hilarious he actually it's speaking of hate and stuff like that and people trash talking others he's had his fair share of hate and trash talk but I always try and let people know that he's worth his salts did doing all the therapy stuff like been both but kind of your own journey and and working with others how did that change the way that you um you know what we tend to call a mental game in in poker you know did you find uh that was I guess what like what changes did you say yeah I think the

50:15he was a couple things the first one is that my my mental game early on was modeled by my friend Stevie and he was an SNE and he he's my best mate in in real life not from just playing poker and he always just had this unbelievably calm mentality um would always be able to access a game uh even if he was losing you would never be able to tell I remember him having some of the worst bounce things but unimaginable and I couldn't even tell that he had had a losing session let alone 20 losing sessions in a row but I think that I am trying to I'm trying to think what like if and when it kind of shifted from this volatile mindset to to one of I don't know if calm this is the right idea but it was it's almost as if the more I learn about my triggers the less I would get triggered by small and random things I think and I don't it's hard to separate out whether or not that's a

51:18mental game benefit or whether or not that was a as you're improving you just feel more confident in your game and appear with outcomes because you're confident in your play it's difficult to separate those two things out isn't it yeah yeah it's it's very very difficult for me to kind of put my finger on that what do you think of the have you worked with a dedicated like poker mental game coach or do you feel like your it's kind of like general familiarity with psychology is sufficient for that purpose yeah so this is something that I'm currently have written a script and need to report a kind of a mental game video and I'm not using this title anymore because I think it's it doesn't quite feel right for the video type but the title is what was meant to be you don't need a mental game coach you need a therapist and I think that I I like to think that all mental game I we yeah we get also we're getting into this kind of territory of mental game coaching

52:22which is something that I feel quite irked by in the in the space but maybe we've talked about that in a moment I'm a strong believer that once we begin to understand our remote our internal emotional world are till becomes more manageable because till till isn't this separate thing that poker players experience or gamers experience till is simply a hyper arousal of emotion that we project into a moment in poker that would otherwise rear its head in another space in our lives that perhaps we are less allowed or less able to express in the violent way we might when we're tilted so I'm talking I don't know smashing your mouse on the table saying like you're the most unlucky guy in the world or berating somebody or just doing something kind of like quite like automatically like a snap reaction but I think till is yeah till is simply yeah a

53:27hyper arousal of emotion nothing more than that and once we begin to understand those emotions then of course we are less angry in life if we understand our emotions or the anger increases in increases but as we understand it and express it then it kind of dissipates and becomes something we coexist with rather than that completely takes over our minds yeah my partner doesn't play a poker but she's you know well familiar with poker terminology yeah because she's been around me and you know I mean we use concepts like tilt from poker all the time to talk about like none but it's just like a useful useful terminology to have yeah or just thinking about like well I could do that but I don't know how to handle the later streets if I go down that road like that sort of the same with my wife as well yeah yeah I think the word that me and my wife use a lot is bad beat yeah she's never experienced a bad being alive but she says it a lot in the right occasions as well so what was your process for going from you know we've talked about you being in small sticks

54:28no limit to you know now you've got videos on YouTube where you're playing you know 10 20 no limit online you know how did you make that progress okay I'm going to be very very honest with you and the only reason I have succeeded is because I've had inadvertent mentors who have somehow found I found them they found me and taken me under their wing and helped support me at the right times in my career at the beginning that was my friend Stevie who then retired maybe four or five years ago it about six years into my career flanty I don't know if you know Luke Johnson he's the youtuber as well very successful coach now we I interviewed Luke on May 25th or the episode was released on May 25th of this year and I remember thinking that I might try to release year in his episodes back to back because I knew that you guys were friends and you know we were

55:29joking before about how long it took us to put this together like three months ago I was thinking like oh I think I'm going to talk to Ben soon so maybe I'll put this to back to back I didn't realize that I'm going to listen to that for sure um episode four ninety nine amazing yeah so he messaged me when he was playing 200 or 100 now and I was playing 500 zoom at the time and he said hi Ben enjoying your blog just wondering whether or not you wanted to do a study session sometime and like one thing I've always I'm very proud of myself in my poke career is like I've never um disregarded people when they've kind of asked for help or wanting to offer something I mean obviously I'm not just promoting every single solver and because like we get those a lot but that kind of a personal message of genuinely asking a question about like are like how do you study or how do you think about your mental game or can you look at this hand for me or whatever it is so Luke messaged me and I said yeah sure let's do a let's do a

56:31poke study and I was just really really impressed by his solver knowledge um and the fact he was playing lower than me and he clearly just had a really good nap for the game so then for the next four years five years six years we've been studying twice a week for two hours each time and they have created this incredible support network by which we're sharing hands all the time we're sending voice notes to each other all the time when sessions have gone badly or when they've gone well obviously not just about poker life as well like a lot has changed he's got kids now and he's moved and yeah a lot has changed so he has been a huge huge huge quantity being factor to my theoretical improvements um over the past five or six years and then in more recent times another friend uh who probably doesn't want to be named he I've just somehow managed to find sub one after sub one after sub one of poker who's

57:32just been able to kind of like build relationships outside of poker and then it's mutually benefited us as poker players as well and I think it's important not to cut myself short like I obviously contribute a lot to these relationships as well particularly like the mental game stuff and the discussing when things are going badly and modeling what it is like to be a a functioning and psychologically sound poker player I think would be the way to describe it and and how to because these people who are actually funnily enough I think their mental games have probably been quite lacking but their technical games have been amazing so it's been that's probably been the kind of the two-way relationship that we've had so yeah and the short answer to question is a lot of hard work but also quite a lot of luck with people that I've met yeah the impression I got from talking to Luke was that he felt quite lucky to have found you as well oh I didn't realize you took okay fair I'm glad to hear that so what are you guys doing during those two hours because I mean I've watched some of your videos

58:35in both of you are just like incredible at um not just explaining stuff but like the the speed with which things come to you um is is really impressive so the thing with Luke is that he's a very linear thinker and that the way in which he processes and um digests information and even when we're studying he's got the note pad open the entire time and he's just like writing notes like I never ever ever write notes like he does and then every time he plays he has like a mantra and he knows that he's going to think about one two three and that's the order he's going to be doing things whereas like I come from similar to you guys the era of that you just play your hands and you just look the guy in the eyes and you decide whether or not he's nothing like that's kind of that's kind of where I come from so I'm very happy to sit down and just play and not really worry about not really sweat the small stuff whereas Luke is such a he's so such a perfectionist to a detrimental level I would say because he definitely he would agree he struggles to play volume

59:40for sure whereas I don't so when we study it's a lot of him taking these kind of meticulous notes and processes with me uh kind of trying to mediate the balance of making things digestible not pushing ourselves too hard allowing ourselves to take in the information and put it into practice before kind of coming up with this unbelievably complex game plan that I personally know that I can't execute but in terms of our actual study like I remember we spent probably the best part of a year which was just out of position on the river in single race part and that was in broken nodes that was in three-bet parts that was in four-bet parts that was in triple that triple off nodes and we well actually he helped come up with this incredibly coherent strategy around when we do x with certain splits and y with other splits and y on ace high king high low straight

1:00:47row boards or whatever and we had this like almost like a study directory but other than that like it's usually two sessions or three sessions will do one will be like a theme-based video i out of position on the river or donk betting was something we did for about six months and we're talking like two sessions a week for six months and some sessions will be more like casual hand reviews with solver of course so it'll be anything between that more relaxed hand review session although those happen probably a little bit less threat less often now than the kind of really deep dive stuff the heuristic based stuff and then yeah sometimes we'll be working working in in that realm but like in terms of like structure Luke is the guy not me and this is like working with solvers running running sims for a variety of spots and then trying to develop heuristics around them yeah and i mean this is a little bit of a plug probably for Luke but like he's opening his training site now and like his resources have been on another level you've got aggregates got sim libraries

1:01:49he's a pie oh he's got every single sim for every single spot we have all the aggregate reports yeah he has pretty much he's just like a complete coaching machine basically do you do any coaching yourself no i do get a lot of requests but i think it's difficult for me because i know people who are good coaches such as Luke and i know that i can't and actually don't want to even compete to the level that he can provide because he's not one of those coaches where i think there's a lot of charlatans in the space who you could you could pay $250 or $500 or even a thousand for coaching session and then you'll turn up and they'll have nothing prepared for you and it'll just be okay well then let's have a look at your database and there's a lot of wasted time and fluff whereas to be a really good coach like someone like Luke is the amount of preparation the amount of groundwork that's gone in is like every single second of a one hour or two hour coaching session is of unbelievable pure value and i just don't even though i know you said that you think that

1:02:52the way we talk about hands and stuff is is very kind of quickened to the point i don't fundamentally feel that i have the coaching style or the ability at least currently to give students the value that they deserve for the amount of money that i probably would feel like i'd want to charge i will say it's not just me saying that our listener who recommended you for the show i asked if there was specific things he wanted us to ask you about and he said i would like insight into how much he works off the table and what that looks like his videos are so incredibly dense with information that he clearly just knows how did he get there and what worked well for him other than putting just putting in reps which may of course be all of it he will often say things like of course i don't have any queens here and i'll have to stop rewind and wait to slowly figure out why queens have been removed from his range by the turn oh yeah yeah i mean actually sadly is actually is reps but to that listener nobody wants to hear that pen yeah no i know i was going to say to that listener though i'm almost certain that how many years you've been playing for you are infinitely

1:03:57better at poker than when i i played that many years so it is completely possible for anybody to be successful in poker if i managed to make it especially from that first five six years in my career i don't know if that's very helpful that's not going to help you with whether or not they have queens or not but keep lockin away uh he also wanted you didn't he wanted to know if you have any plans to uh play on like live streams i would love to but i think the best games are in america and i don't have any plans to go that at the moment i wouldn't mind to go to the world series of poker again uh one year and playing some live stream we're not too keen on visitors at the moment yeah i know well i don't think anywhere in the world is too many but what uh where would be the best place to play do you reckon what do you guys play uh i don't say play on my honestos carless yeah yeah online and i was i was actually going to ask you about that because you talked about the challenges you had with poker being a zero-sum game um do you find that um that conflict within

1:05:03yourself is harder when you're playing live versus when you're playing along absolutely yeah it's a good point for sure i do also this is kind of a bit of a we're a bit of a silly thing to say i actually get crazy crazy um stressed when i play live poker and i've only noticed this in recent times like i have an uncontrollable heartbeat when i'm playing live poker maybe because i don't play it much but even if i'm playing i don't know five ten or two five and i know i can only lose a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars if feel like my heart rate is probably 50 percent more than it will be when i'm playing ten thousand dollar pots online like i'm just sitting calm at home but for some reason in live i just find it super stressful do you guys find that or no there might have been a time when that was true i have actually played a lot of live poker even though i'm not now so like poker rooms feel very comfortable to me but like definitely when i was last experience with live poker but i think it was not really like the actual like once i was settled in and playing i was fine

1:06:06i think it was more just like a lack of familiarity with the kind of the procedures in in poker rooms and as i became more comfortable with that then you know i'd realized how inform all out of them where and it didn't really feel intimidating anymore i think i have the exact opposite like i don't know if it's my heart rate slowing but i get so incredibly bored that i feel like i want to fall asleep it's like yeah well i we're so used to playing so many more hands seeing so many more hands on one that is surprising to me to hear you say that live gets you going to that degree like do you not feel any boredom from saying so many few hands? not honestly it's the opposite i feel like i feel super excited to play live poker mate i think it's probably just that i don't do it a lot because when i first started playing i only played live poker early early early days and we're talking like super low stakes and low

1:07:10stakes cash games and stuff and i loved it so much it was like the high stakes poker era at on the one that kind of stuff so i really enjoyed that but yeah now nowadays i don't know and i really just um uh value like health and longevity stuff at the moment that's like really my main focus outside of poker and i feel that when i'm playing live i can just feel that it's taking a toll on my body and i yeah i find i find the idea of exposing myself it's funny the people hearing this will be like well how can you possibly like have like i don't know to wet minus 20k and plus 20k days and not think that that contributes towards stress but i don't find that stressful but sitting at a live poker table playing two five i find that actually physically stressful so i just don't want to expose myself to things that kind of put me in that in that hyper aroused spot position it's nice to be so aware of your own um needs or like responses in in that way and just like give yourself permission to not uh to not do that yeah i think it's a it's a fine line

1:08:16between um wanting to listen to my body and potentially some level of uh bodily anxiety as well i would say um maybe i care a bit too much about that stuff at times what motivated you to start the youtube channel um similar to that idea of like always um kind of giving people a bit of time the time of day um i loved making my blog like it was the probably the best thing i did throughout my 20s starting that blog and the people i uh friends i made and the the journey that i now have documented i sometimes go back and read some of the posts and love how bad i wasn't poker but also how much of an important journey it was and then when i stopped posting in the blog i can't remember exactly when it was that i stopped maybe 2019 to 2020 i then had two years three years where i wasn't posting at all and i just really i just yeah i really missed not communicating

1:09:18with the community i've always felt that can like contacting the community and speaking to people who could really do with somebody talking to them who's been relatively successful in poker how motivating that can be for people because i remember like i as i said earlier in this call i wouldn't have made it if i if it wasn't for people around me who had a pick me up when they didn't really need to like i love going into youtube and i'm always watching poker content i'm always watching like streamers and people are doing ten and l challenges and i don't know i just really enjoy consuming poker content still which is great after 16 years or whatever it is yeah yeah it's just i just love that so much um but i think that not communicating with not contacting the community was a real hole in my my poker life and something i really value that i thought you know what i started posting on instagram that was okay posted a few hands here and there and then one of my friends recommended like why don't you just like try and make a youtube video and see

1:10:19how it goes and i've had it quite awkward i still do at times at least watching it back but i simply have done it to document it's the exact same as my blog i just want people to kind of have something for free see what it is like to be a poker player see what the journey's like see what the swings are like although admittedly i feel like i'm becoming i've been on a bit of a heat of the past few months feel like i'm becoming everything i've hate which is people just posting winning graphs you know you know you have that in the poker space they never post losing graphs they only post winning graphs yeah yeah the transparent journey yeah that's a say break because i hate when people all eat post winning graphs i wish i had a losing graph post but all i've do is win i'm just i'm just telling you the facts at the moment in two yes in two in 2023 on my youtube channel you might not have seen this all i did was post losing graphs for 10 months and everyone in my comment section was like why are you still playing poker like who is this guy and it was so

1:11:19demoralizing to keep posting losing graphs so i'm i'm having i'm enjoying my day in the sun until until it gets taken away by the poker buzz this reminded me i meant to come back when you're talking about um mental game coaches earlier it sounded like you might have had more you wanted to say on that topic yeah i mean just broadly i just i i really dislike the the the terminal game coach is not an accredited title anyone could call themselves a mental game coach and coming from a a therapy training that took seven years and with accreditation and volunteering and personal therapy and personal process and the amount of upheaval and hard work like i can't even begin to describe how deep that process goes and how tiring and how exhausting it is to then have somebody who just goes you know what i just want to be a mental game coach because there's good money in that and

1:12:19they have never had a lot of the time not in all cases they haven't done a an official training or a deep dive into themselves and the category danger of working with vulnerable people if you are not adequately equipped to deal with potential emerging severe mental health issues that can come up if you don't it's kind of like someone who does acupuncture or massage on somebody who is i don't know has a spinal injury or has an underlying condition or decides to be a shaman and give someone mushrooms who actually has mental health issues in their family it's kind of these really potentially dangerous practices that can do a lot more harm than good to to those who are potentially vulnerable and i've heard people say well like yeah but mental game coaches they kind of do the more

1:13:19psychological psychology surface level stuff you don't know what's lined beneath the surface it there are a lot of people and i've got a big big big problem with those potential dangers to to vulnerable people i was going to say that when you mentioned vulnerable people it's like you don't know in advance who it like it's even potential for people to sort of like remember stuff that they didn't even know was in there you know just all of a sudden they're talking about like oh why are you afraid to call the turn back like oh because it turns out i was assaulted when i was a child you know just like having that sort of thing yeah yeah and and what what we taught in our psychotherapy training was the therapist or in this case the mental game coach is the container or the unconscious emotions of the client and if the mental game coach as i said earlier hasn't gone to places where they are even aware that these things exist

1:14:23not only are they putting the client in a risk but they're putting themselves at risk as well because they are potentially taking on more than they can handle so it becomes a very uh uh i think i just think dangerous is the right word it's just a really dangerous dynamic where there can be two uncontained individuals in a therapeutic relationship that is you never ever want to be in in that situation yeah and i think there may be something to that because we often talk about how poker can attract people that who may have some sort of like deep-city issues more so than the general public so i can imagine like i never thought about it until you said it but we often um talk about especially um live poker especially here in the us how chaotic some people can be in certain games like that could be like a manifestation of some deep-city issue that they

1:15:32might not be aware of and so i can see how that sort of thing might come to the surface if they work with a metal game coach absolutely i think it's a really really good point it's people's predisposition to to be the way that they are you know and it doesn't take a lot to shake something that is beneath the surface to the surface and once that is on the surface it needs to be contained and it needs to be held and potentially needs to be medicated and how is a mental game coach who hasn't done training meant to manage that like it's it's too much of a tool order i just also want to caveat that by saying there are coaches mental game coaches who have done training and who are worth their their their soul and all that kind of stuff so until again a bit more general broadly you know i don't don't what about now yeah well i'm thinking jarotendler like he's he's

1:16:35obviously like a great uh he probably actually genuinely the only person in the focus space that i would recommend someone go see like honestly how you ever encountered any extra terrestrial or paranormal beings what what a what a left feel question i'll tell you why i'm asking in a second but have you i guess you're i mean i know i might be sounding a little bit woo woo today but no i still have my logical the the the logical part of me tells me that i haven't had any um although actually let me just give him more open to the question i have had some profound unexpected deep experiences on my therapy training that i didn't think i was emotionally capable of having and i think that shows to me that kind of the the oh having an open stance allows you to kind of like

1:17:36expand your experience and expand your or what you think you believe and what you think you know but no i don't i haven't had an extraterrestrial experience or believe in that so the reason i asked this is that uh we had injured lichtenberger on here and there's a uh a question that i often ask at the end of these interviews which is like is there anything that you know you wanted to talk about or were hoping to talk about that we hadn't gotten around asking or didn't know enough to ask and he thinks for a second he goes i had an alien encounter once is that we're talking about what's like of course of course that's what we're talking about and then we had like another 20 minutes with him so now i i guess i need to i need to i need to listen to the whole all the all the spoilers being dropped apparently i i i can't assume that people will bring up that sort of thing if i don't ask so now i ask it it's a it's a fun uh as you said left field left field question i think you need to ask all the the hard questions you never know what people

1:18:37are going to have the answer to uh is there anything that you're up into talk about that we haven't gotten around to not necessarily but i would like to just kind of share uh something that i feel that i've been talking about a lot more recently and that's in my discord um and to your listeners although to be honest with you i feel like your listeners if people are listening to these types of conversations they're already the kind of open-minded poke players that uh i'm i kind of want to talk about but i think the main thing is is to remind poke players to remind aspiring poke players that staying in your lane and not getting caught up in the madness and the noise is the single most beneficial thing you can do to contribute towards your success as a poke player there is so many there are so many opposing opinions and so many loud voices and the loud voices are so often the ones you need to listen to the least and you need to be listening to those that

1:19:39are non-combative who are not forcing their opinions on you and who have shown success in poker rather than just a loud voice yeah i think that um we don't even need the in poker caveat on there i think that's just that's just good advice in general yeah because my discord has been i like to call it the zoo um because it's just a load of roaring animals so much of the time and so misrepresentative of me as a poke player at times and i'm really trying to i don't know create a more positive environment that's difficult uh for people who want to find your discord your youtube channel doing a talk that kind of stuff yeah i mean the youtube channel has just been a bad beat poker and my discord are you'll find it in any of the descriptions of my youtube videos it's obviously free it's just a community where we discuss all things poker and lifestyle and and histories and all that

1:20:43kind of stuff and then yeah some noise in between let's just say it was really great talking to you Ben that the time truly flew by like at some point i looked i was like oh shit it's really almost I don't know we're already i better start wrapping this up no it was a really really fun talk and actually like it's been a long time since i kind of dove back into some of these topics i've been quite focused in on poker so thank you for the questions you asked both of you really enjoyed it yeah that's so fun do the rest of your day take care go go for the world i hope take away the pain sleep this nice do i need some kind of pill or the devotion of a car my line of the

1:21:45passage of a bill and we'll sign off since we long i know you won you won you won you won for what you won of what