Liv Boeree, Poker and Life —Turning $500 into $1.7M, Game Theory, and Metaphysical Curiosities

Tim Ferriss 0:01 [laughs] Okay. All right, so [upbeat music] Ms. Boeree. I say that to prime myself. Ladies and germs, boys and girls, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. This is a rare in-person interview. I think this is the first time doing a full shebang with video since COVID, the appearance of that little bug. You may have heard of it. And let's jump right to the intro. My guest today is Liv Boeree. That's B-O-E-R-E-E. On Twitter, @Liv_Boeree. She's one of the UK's most successful poker players, now a resident of Austin, Texas, winning both European Poker Tour and World Series of Poker championship titles during her professional career. Before poker, she studied astrophysics, and now focuses her time as a TV host and YouTuber specializing in game theory, futurism, and rationality. What a world we live in that you can now do that on YouTube. It's fucking amazing. It's incredible. She also gives seminars on high-stakes decision-making, and recently spoke at the annual TED Conference about the application of poker thinking to everyday life. In 2014, she co-founded Raising for Effective Giving, REG, parenthetically. [laughs] Let me try that again. She co-founded Raising for Effective Giving, in parentheses, REG. Let me try that again. In 2014, she co-founded Raising for Effective Giving, REG, a nonprofit based upon the philosophies of effective altruism that raised more than $12,000,000 for its carefully selected list of maximally cost-effective charities. You can find her online, livboeree.com, livboeree.substack.com, and on all of the things, all of the socials, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube. You can certainly search and find her, Liv Boeree. Liv, welcome to the show. It's nice to see you.

Liv Boeree 2:09 Thank you for having me.

Tim Ferriss 2:10 We can go so many different directions. I thought we would start, actually maybe [laughs] in an unexpected place. So I asked you before we started, what color would you prefer? Black, blue, orange, or I think it was yellow. These-

Liv Boeree 2:22 Oh, that's what it was for, was for mic cable?

Tim Ferriss 2:24 It was for mic cable, so that I can tell which line is feeding into which input on this recorder.

Liv Boeree 2:30 Right.

Tim Ferriss 2:30 It certainly looks a lot better in audio, right? [laughs] So it does have a certain [laughs] clown car appearance to it when we do it, uh, in person with video. But when you said black, I said, "I bet it's gonna be black" right beforehand, and it was black. And the reason I said that is I read something about you and Metallica.

Liv Boeree 2:49 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 2:50 And, uh, to get into the zone coming here on the drive over, I listened to Orion, the remastered-

Liv Boeree 2:56 Oh, great choice

Tim Ferriss 2:57 ... version. Yeah.

Liv Boeree 2:58 Niche choice.

Tim Ferriss 2:59 Very, very, yeah. Because my first, now we're really getting off track here, but that's okay. There is no track. My very first album I ever bought was on cassette tape, and it was Master of Puppets.

Liv Boeree 3:10 Oh.

Tim Ferriss 3:10 And can you guess why I bring up Metallica?

Liv Boeree 3:16 Well, they were m- my love that bordered on a unhealthy obsession from the ages of, like, 16 to 22. So that's probably a, I would guess why you brought it up.

Tim Ferriss 3:30 That is a big part of it.

Liv Boeree 3:31 I don't know how you would know that, though.

Tim Ferriss 3:32 Well, you know, we do research over here.

Liv Boeree 3:34 Jeez.

Tim Ferriss 3:34 MetalInsider.net.

Liv Boeree 3:35 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 3:37 The Iron Maiden of the poker world they called you, and there was a short discussion of The Unforgiven. And this led you, I guess, in some respects, into guitar. Do you still play guitar?

Liv Boeree 3:52 I don't.

Tim Ferriss 3:53 You don't, but you did for a period of time.

Liv Boeree 3:54 I did, yeah, from, like, 16 or 17 till 24. Basically until poker took over.

Tim Ferriss 4:00 So do you then have typically one obsession at a time? Do you ever have multiple obsessions simultaneously? Or do you tend to have one obsessive fixation, and that is where you put your energy?

Liv Boeree 4:13 I used to.

Tim Ferriss 4:15 Okay.

Liv Boeree 4:15 I used to be very, there'd be a shiny new activity would come along.

Tim Ferriss 4:20 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 4:21 And I would, if it ticked enough boxes, I'd be like, "I have to become the best at this." I would rarely become the best at it, but I would certainly, you know, go, go down the rabbit hole deep enough to become proficient. And I was like that, I would say, until some point in my, probably my early 30s. Somewhere, some point around the age, age of 30, where I s- lost that a little bit. And in some ways, that's good because it means I can try more, you know, a greater breadth of things. But it comes a little bit at the cost of then not ever picking. I'm currently struggling with the fact that I'm, I'm being too much of a jack-of-all-trades, master of none.

Tim Ferriss 4:58 Mm.

Liv Boeree 4:58 Like, not knowing what I'm... Am I going to be focusing on YouTube? Or maybe I should just do speeches, or maybe I should actually just start a company and give up on this silly, like, public-facing stuff. You know, it can be a bit of a blessing and a curse, I guess-

Tim Ferriss 5:11 Mm-hmm

Liv Boeree 5:11 ... uh, of not, not fixating on one particular thing. But certainly as a, as a teenager, certainly with metal, 'cause I think, you know, with teenagers, they, i- so often you, you don't, because you haven't formed your identity yet-

Tim Ferriss 5:23 Right

Liv Boeree 5:23 ... you will form it typically around a genre of music.

Tim Ferriss 5:26 Sure. I was a metalhead.

Liv Boeree 5:27 You were a metalhead?

Tim Ferriss 5:28 Oh, for sure.

Liv Boeree 5:29 Oh, sick, right. So yeah, you get it. Like, and metal is so-

Tim Ferriss 5:33 I mean, I say was as if it's past tense. [laughs] If I'm in the gym, I'm still a metalhead.

Liv Boeree 5:38 Right, exactly.

Tim Ferriss 5:38 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 5:39 And, but you don't look it, you don't live it in your visual.

Tim Ferriss 5:42 [laughs] No, I mean, I have, like, from the neck up, I definitely have the sort of early era, well, actually no, like, mid-era Pantera look to me.

Liv Boeree 5:49 I was about to say, Phil Anselmo, like, a little bit.

Tim Ferriss 5:51 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 5:51 You know, Phil Anselmo after his, you know, Vulgar Display of Power era or whatever.

Tim Ferriss 5:55 Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

Liv Boeree 5:56 Yeah. Yeah, so I was kinda uncool until the age of 16.

Tim Ferriss 5:59 Mm.

Liv Boeree 6:00 And then metal came along, and I was like, "Oh, this is, this is what I was waiting for." And then I just went all out. You know, I had the piercings, red hair, black hair, blue hair, the guitar, and just would not listen to anything but metal. And not just, like- Sort of nu metal. I hated nu metal. No core nor anything like that.

Tim Ferriss 6:18 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 6:18 No, I wanted the really heavy shit. Like, Pantera was like a, that was like a nice day on the beach.

Tim Ferriss 6:22 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 6:23 You know, I'm talking like Dimmu Borgir, Bosse. You know, those, some of the-

Tim Ferriss 6:27 Oh, wow. Yeah

Liv Boeree 6:27 ... the Swedish-

Tim Ferriss 6:27 Yeah, yeah

Liv Boeree 6:27 ... Swedish black metal or Norwegian black metal.

Tim Ferriss 6:29 Once, once you get to the Scandinavian-

Liv Boeree 6:31 Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 6:32 ... death metal-

Liv Boeree 6:33 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 6:33 ... then you've gone really deep.

Liv Boeree 6:34 Yeah, exactly. But Metallica were a, a huge forming part of that. They were the one sort of classic metal band that I still was like, I just loved so deeply.

Tim Ferriss 6:42 All right. Let's, let's paint a picture here. What was your, the age range of your competitive poker career? And then we're gonna back into that by going to some very early, early chapters. But what was the span? 'Cause I'm trying to overlay that-

Liv Boeree 6:56 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 6:56 ... on what you just said.

Liv Boeree 6:58 So I first learned to play poker age 21.

Tim Ferriss 7:04 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 7:05 Yeah, it was 2005. I'd just graduated uni, didn't really know what I wanted to do. I thought I was gonna carry on in physics, but I decided to take a gap year because [laughs] I, you know, when I first started taking physics, I was like, "Oh, I'm definitely doing this. This is so interesting. I love it." But then the more time I got to spend with, like, uh, PhD students or even people doing their masters, they seemed... I don't know. They just didn't seem very happy. And- [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 7:30 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 7:31 ... I don't know, just personality wise, I was wondering if it was, actually w- was gonna work for me because all I really wanted to do was go out partying and clubbing and go, you know, see rock-

Tim Ferriss 7:39 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 7:39 ... rock shows, metal shows.

Tim Ferriss 7:41 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 7:41 And I was also still wanting to be a rock star at the time.

Tim Ferriss 7:43 Yeah. [laughs]

Liv Boeree 7:44 And I was like, "Eh, I just don't know if this is gonna quite work, me sitting in a lab pl- you know, fiddling around with lasers." So I decided to take a gap year, and I think I signed up at... Oh, I was doing, like, random, like, goth modeling sometimes.

Tim Ferriss 7:57 Okay.

Liv Boeree 7:58 And I [laughs] -

Tim Ferriss 7:59 As one does-

Liv Boeree 7:59 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 8:00 ... in their gap year.

Liv Boeree 8:01 Right. Well, I, I... You know, just any way I could make some money, and I thought, I don't know, I enjoyed dressing up in my, my heavy metal costumes as, as often as possible.

Tim Ferriss 8:09 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 8:09 And I was like, "If I can get paid to do that, that'd be great."

Tim Ferriss 8:11 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 8:12 I also got paid to be a cage dancer in rock clubs in London. That was-

Tim Ferriss 8:17 Yeah, well, you know, I was, I was admiring the, the boots on the way in.

Liv Boeree 8:21 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 8:21 This is a, the shoeless household, so thank you for accommodating-

Liv Boeree 8:24 This is not the-

Tim Ferriss 8:25 With, with, with the socks

Liv Boeree 8:25 ... my least metal sock ever.

Tim Ferriss 8:27 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 8:27 I'm so embarrassed.

Tim Ferriss 8:28 These are, these are gray and pink-

Liv Boeree 8:29 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 8:30 ... striped socks with hearts all over them. So yes. It's, it's... Well, it's like the hard exterior, the goth death metal exterior, and then, like, the, the soft, sweet-

Liv Boeree 8:39 Ugh

Tim Ferriss 8:39 ... inside.

Liv Boeree 8:40 I, you don't understand how much pain I'm in, actually.

Tim Ferriss 8:42 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 8:42 The fact that this is these. I have so many. Like, most of my socks are black. I just grabbed whatever I needed to.

Tim Ferriss 8:48 So goth modeling-

Liv Boeree 8:49 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 8:49 ... which I also did during my gap year. Totally lying. I'm kidding [laughs] , kidding.

Liv Boeree 8:53 Oh, man.

Tim Ferriss 8:53 And I wish I, I wish I could have. But goth modeling, cage dancing.

Liv Boeree 8:57 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 8:59 And, and then?

Liv Boeree 9:01 And then, yes. So I think I signed up for this, like, website that would advertise different TV shows or modeling opportunities, that kind of thing. And I remember seeing an ad which said something like, "Could you use your powers of skill and deception to win £100,000 on TV?" And seeing as I was, you know, rapidly getting pretty damn broke because dancing in a rock club cage doesn't pay you anything, uh, really.

Tim Ferriss 9:25 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 9:26 And I had some student debt mounted up, but really didn't wanna get a real job for... You know, my parents were like, "You have to. Like, what are you doing? You've moved to London. Get a job." So I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna... This seems reasonable." I wanted to try being on TV. I like game shows. This seems like a game show. I'll apply. Turns out, they wouldn't tell us what, what it was that we were applying for-

Tim Ferriss 9:48 Yeah

Liv Boeree 9:48 ... because they needed to keep it a secret, but turns out it was a reality show that was looking for five beginners at poker to teach them how to play. And the sort of loose scientific premise was they were looking for five different personality types, uh, to see which, you know, is most suited for the game. And so I got selected for that.

Tim Ferriss 10:09 What was your personality type?

Liv Boeree 10:11 [laughs] They called me the Professor-

Tim Ferriss 10:13 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 10:14 ... which I most certainly was not.

Tim Ferriss 10:15 I mean, I can see it.

Liv Boeree 10:16 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 10:16 I can see it.

Liv Boeree 10:17 I, I, I was... I literally turned up in skintight tiger print spandex self-made trousers.

Tim Ferriss 10:22 [laughs] Now, did you do that because they had put you in the Professor category? [laughs] Was that a rebellion, an active rebellion, or did that just-

Liv Boeree 10:32 No, I mean, that was-

Tim Ferriss 10:32 ... come out of your-

Liv Boeree 10:33 ... genuinely how I dressed

Tim Ferriss 10:34 ... your style emoting? Okay.

Liv Boeree 10:35 No, it was, it was my genuine appearance. As I said, I lived and breathed metal.

Tim Ferriss 10:39 Sounds good for TV.

Liv Boeree 10:40 Right. And I think that's probably why they selected me, honestly.

Tim Ferriss 10:42 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 10:42 Like, I was s- strange, very, very overconfident to the point of, like, cocky 21-year-old brat.

Tim Ferriss 10:51 Unheard of with 21-year-olds. [laughs] I'm kidding.

Liv Boeree 10:53 Yeah. So I just thought I was the smartest person in the world, and I think I even said something like that in the interview-

Tim Ferriss 10:57 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 10:57 ... like, the audition.

Tim Ferriss 10:58 And they're like, "Oh, we're definitely bringing you in."

Liv Boeree 11:00 They're like, "Yeah, this is gonna be a good one."

Tim Ferriss 11:01 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 11:02 And I didn't disappoint because-

Tim Ferriss 11:03 Yeah

Liv Boeree 11:03 ... I ended up having a complete meltdown on the show. Like, it w- [laughs] so glad this is not on the internet. Basically, on the final, I think we played, like, seven preliminary rounds where we would, the five of us would play.

Tim Ferriss 11:16 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 11:17 And then, like, that would accumulate points.

Tim Ferriss 11:19 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 11:19 And those points would translate into chips for the final game, where we would play for the 100,000. And I was winning, you know, I was leading going into that.

Tim Ferriss 11:27 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 11:27 And clearly, I had a knack for the game. And I remember the, the hosts and the, the professionals that they g- brought on the show to teach us were like, "Oh, you're definitely gonna win. You know, you are the most talented at this." So I was so sure I was gonna win this thing.

Tim Ferriss 11:41 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 11:42 And then [laughs] I ended up making, not to get too technical, but basically I misread my hand. Oh, no, I didn't. I misread the board. I made a straight on the river. The opponent bet. I was so excited. I was like, "I raise," which was basically all my chips. And then I looked at the board again and noticed there were four diamonds out there, and I didn't have ... I, like, I had two black cards and audibly went [gasps] . [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 12:08 [laughs] Now, I'm not, I'm, I'm no professional, but is that what-

Liv Boeree 12:11 Don't do that

Tim Ferriss 12:11 ... one would call a tell?

Liv Boeree 12:12 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 12:13 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 12:13 That is, that is a tell. Do not do that.

Tim Ferriss 12:16 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 12:17 Um, and my opponent, it was this really nice guy called Lee- It was like, "Well, I guess she doesn't have a diamond." And he was like, "I'm all in." And instead of, again, keeping my, my cool or anything, I just started crying.

Tim Ferriss 12:31 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 12:31 Like, melted down.

Tim Ferriss 12:33 The producers are high-fiving in the background.

Liv Boeree 12:34 Oh, my God. Yeah, they were literally.

Tim Ferriss 12:35 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 12:35 And, and, and they're like, "Oh, Liv, what's the matter? Tell us more." And I was like, you know, makeup everywhere. I think I, I, I like run away from the table. They try and follow me with a camera. It was just, you know, classic reality TV meltdown stuff. So that was my intro to poker. But I just completely fell in love with the game.

Tim Ferriss 12:52 Mm.

Liv Boeree 12:53 And funny enough, while I was in the ... During the filming of that, which took two months, I went to a local card club in London to try and get some practice. And they had this now sort of infamous, this £5 rebuy. So, you know, it was the cheapest tournament they had.

Tim Ferriss 13:10 What is a rebuy?

Liv Boeree 13:11 A rebuy means that for the first hour or so, if you bust out, you can just buy back in again.

Tim Ferriss 13:16 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 13:17 So considering it was only a £5 entry, you can imagine it's just pandemonium.

Tim Ferriss 13:20 [laughs] Right.

Liv Boeree 13:20 Everyone's going in every single hand.

Tim Ferriss 13:22 Right.

Liv Boeree 13:22 And people will easily like spend like £100 in their entry overall, you know, 20 rebuys.

Tim Ferriss 13:26 Good for the house.

Liv Boeree 13:27 Yeah. But I turned up with £10.

Tim Ferriss 13:29 Mm.

Liv Boeree 13:29 Because I was like, "Well, it's a £5 tournament. Why would I ever need more than, you know, £5 for the entry and £5 to buy a drink, and that will be my, my day?"

Tim Ferriss 13:36 So you're like a player in a video game with two lives, where everybody else has like 100 lives.

Liv Boeree 13:43 Right.

Tim Ferriss 13:43 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 13:43 Yeah. And most people were, were doing that, yes.

Tim Ferriss 13:45 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 13:46 Only for the first hour. Then once that period ends, then if you bust out, you're out.

Tim Ferriss 13:50 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 13:51 So anyway, I go in. This is the first tournament I ever play, and I enter this thing. Somehow get through this carnage period-

Tim Ferriss 13:58 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 13:59 ... in the first hour.

Tim Ferriss 13:59 Right, the zombies-

Liv Boeree 14:00 I think I did-

Tim Ferriss 14:01 ... that just keep [laughs] standing back up

Liv Boeree 14:01 ... yeah, I think I did rebuy once with my other £5, so I didn't buy a drink. And anyway, I ended up winning it.

Tim Ferriss 14:07 Mm.

Liv Boeree 14:07 Ended up playing till 5:00 in the morning. It was like 120 people in it, and I came home. I remember just having this ... You know, they paid me out in 10s and 20s, I think £750 or something like that, which was more money ... So I'd never seen that amount of cash before, just so much money.

Tim Ferriss 14:22 Mm.

Liv Boeree 14:22 And I remember going home to my boyfriend at the time and waking him up at 5:00 AM and just throwing the cash on him.

Tim Ferriss 14:26 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 14:27 Like, "This is the best thing ever. This is my game. I m- and I must be the best in the world."

Tim Ferriss 14:31 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 14:31 Like, you know, it was my first ever tournament, basically.

Tim Ferriss 14:34 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 14:34 And I win it. So even though the, the TV show did not go well and I didn't win the 100 grand, I'd already got the bug, basically, from that-

Tim Ferriss 14:41 Okay

Liv Boeree 14:41 ... little win.

Tim Ferriss 14:42 So let me weave through this and inspect a bit because I have many questions. What do you think helped you during the show itself to make it to the final table? What were some of, whether they're your characteristics, things you learned, things you observed, trained abilities, anything that comes to mind that you think helped in the very early nascent stages?

Liv Boeree 15:10 Of that tournament?

Tim Ferriss 15:11 Yeah, the TV show, and then I have more questions.

Liv Boeree 15:15 I mean, I think the thing that was most helpful early on for me in poker was I was just so pathologically competitive.

Tim Ferriss 15:24 Mm.

Liv Boeree 15:24 I just had to win, and like prove that I was the best in this game.

Tim Ferriss 15:28 And that translated to just more study time-

Liv Boeree 15:31 Just, yeah

Tim Ferriss 15:31 ... more practice.

Liv Boeree 15:32 Just laser focus, and then this like ruthlessness. Because the thing about poker is that you actually, you do have to be really ruthless in the game.

Tim Ferriss 15:39 In what sense?

Liv Boeree 15:40 In terms of being willing to put people ... Like, well, bluffing people, right?

Tim Ferriss 15:45 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 15:46 If you're not comfortable with bluffing someone at, at the poker table, which I don't think is ... A lot, a lot of people say, "Oh, it's lying." It's like, it's not really lying. No, it's just a form of ... It's a strategy within a game as defined by-

Tim Ferriss 15:55 Yeah

Liv Boeree 15:55 ... the rules of the game. It's an in- integral part of it.

Tim Ferriss 15:58 It's sanctioned lying.

Liv Boeree 15:59 Right.

Tim Ferriss 15:59 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 15:59 If you're not willing to do that, then it's not the game for you.

Tim Ferriss 16:03 Play chess. [laughs]

Liv Boeree 16:04 Right. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 16:05 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 16:06 And then you have to be just willing to, I guess, just really laser in and pay deep attention to what is going on. Because technically, at any given moment, even if you're not in hand-

Tim Ferriss 16:19 Mm-hmm

Liv Boeree 16:19 ... there's really valuable information-

Tim Ferriss 16:20 Mm-hmm

Liv Boeree 16:21 ... being exchanged about the way people ... You know, the types of cards people play, the way that their bodies move when they're uncomfortable versus comfortable. Are they a naturally aggressive person, or are they naturally scared? What are the things that make them scared, et cetera. And certainly in the beginning, I was just ... Because I didn't know anything about the actual statistical sort of the, the mechanics of the game, all I could rely on was the, you know, the stuff I knew, which was r- looking, looking for when people are bluffing.

Tim Ferriss 16:47 Looking for when people are bluffing. Okay, so let me ask you about the statistical side because you're coming out of physics.

Liv Boeree 16:54 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 16:54 You have, it would seem, a huge competitive advantage. Why would you not begin to study the tables and the statistics and so on?

Liv Boeree 17:04 Well, I did too.

Tim Ferriss 17:05 You did that as well?

Liv Boeree 17:05 And the thing is that the statistics required in poker to actually ... You know, at a high level are, you're not going to learn within the first month.

Tim Ferriss 17:13 Sure, right.

Liv Boeree 17:14 And also, people didn't even really know ... 'Cause this is 2005. Even the top players in the world back then didn't really understand game theory like even an average player understands it today. So, you know, I was reading ... I read all the books I could get my hands on, so I guess my sort of physics training helped to an extent with, with being willing to just like dive in and research on this like, on a big amorphous topic. And, you know, not even clear directions of where to start. That probably gave me a bit of an advantage there. And then presumably I have an higher-than-average IQ from, you know, physics-

Tim Ferriss 17:48 All the cage dancing.

Liv Boeree 17:49 Exactly.

Tim Ferriss 17:50 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 17:50 Really helps. Uh, and all the drinking and guitar playing and chasing after rock stars. Yeah. Um, [laughs] but ... Which I think obviously helps in any kind of strategic game.

Tim Ferriss 18:01 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 18:01 But honestly, the thing about poker is, the beautiful thing about poker, in fact, is that in any given ... If you're, if you're talking about one night, you can have the literal best player in the world, a, a medium player, complete beginners, and provided everyone knows the basic rules, then technically anyone can win. It's only over the long run does anything actually meaningful start happening.

Tim Ferriss 18:25 Oh, right.

Liv Boeree 18:26 And so- Even in this TV show where we played, I think, eight different games, statistically it's not that meaningful the results over that time period. There's so much luck going on, and I didn't realize that early on in the game. Like, winning that big tournament, of not a big tournament, that, the £5 rebuy, it gave me an immense amount of confidence and love for the game, which I think had I not had, I wouldn't have then pursued it as much as I did. But it can also delude you a little bit, because I then just assumed, "Oh, okay, well, I'm going to win this. There isn't that much luck. It's just who's the best player wins." And I think that's partly why it was such a kick in the face when I screwed up and didn't win the 100,000.

Tim Ferriss 19:06 When you say you've, you fell in love with the game, aside from things that maybe you've mentioned already, what made you fall in love with it? What was so appealing? I mean, there's an inherent excitement to it-

Liv Boeree 19:20 Right

Tim Ferriss 19:20 ... of course, because there's a blending of skill and chance.

Liv Boeree 19:23 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 19:24 And money. I mean, there's stakes-

Liv Boeree 19:26 Right

Tim Ferriss 19:26 ... built into it.

Liv Boeree 19:26 But actually just winning ca- the, the potential of just winning, you know, making a living where I don't have to go and sit in an office and I can do that. That was obviously a big-

Tim Ferriss 19:36 Driver

Liv Boeree 19:36 ... carrot.

Tim Ferriss 19:37 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 19:38 There's just so many different skills that it draws upon. So there's the statistical side, you know, the scientific side. There's the, the game theory. If you really wanna dive deep into math, and I mean, these days you can, you know, work with simulators, you know, computer science stuff basically-

Tim Ferriss 19:54 Mm-hmm

Liv Boeree 19:54 ... and go in that angle. But then you've also got this more, there's, like, an art to it as well, you know, psychology, men- trying to mentally model what level someone is thinking at and be one step ahead of, you know, they're, they're gonna zig, you're gonna zag, that kind of thing. And then also just, like, there's a scientific way to read body language, but sometimes you just get, like, a vibe that you can't explain.

Tim Ferriss 20:15 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 20:16 So there's just so many different approaches you can take to it, and, like, today I'm gonna work on my body language reading, and today I'm gonna work on my pot odds or my combinatorics. There's never a dull moment, and there's always a new situation as well. Like, even after playing for 10, 15 years, I'll still see something crazy with, like, the cards run out, like, you know, straight flush against quads, that kind of stuff. Like, it, the, these incredibly rare scenarios will sometimes happen, or people will do weird things, or some strange ruling will happen that, like, everyone's scratching their heads like, "I don't know what the right call is here." It's, it's, there's such depth and complexity to the game.

Tim Ferriss 20:49 Okay, so I'm gonna admit something. It's embarrassing. I've been fascinated and drawn to poker for a very long time, and I've never learned how to play properly.

Liv Boeree 21:01 No way.

Tim Ferriss 21:01 It's true.

Liv Boeree 21:02 Wow.

Tim Ferriss 21:02 Now, there are many excuses I may have for this. One of them is that friends of mine, like a guy named Jason Calacanis, want me to play, but it's mostly because he wants to take all my money, [laughs] because he's gonna be far better than I am. [laughs] And that's a compliment, Jason. Um-

Liv Boeree 21:19 [laughs] I'll teach you how to beat Jason

Tim Ferriss 21:21 ... a- and a lot of these investors are very confident. I know some of them certainly, particularly the quants who I've observed from afar, seem to be pretty confident.

Liv Boeree 21:34 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 21:36 I had a little, a little bite of the bug probably five years ago when I did an episode of a TV show w- [laughs] bringing back TV, where I trained for a week, or five days probably, to play heads-up against a whole cohort of folks, including some pros. And I was able, and I was trained by, I wanna give him credit, Phil Gordon for that. And for a very short period of time, until the next skill I had to learn for the next episode pushed it right out of my head, had a lot of fun with heads-up. But one night [laughs] when the filming had finished and I was like, "You know, let me go try just a regular table," and I got slaughtered. [laughs] Like, it did not translate at all, which I expected would largely be the case, but I just got dismembered. I mean-

Liv Boeree 22:28 Well, as, heads-up is a very different game-

Tim Ferriss 22:30 It's super different

Liv Boeree 22:31 ... to playing against eight people.

Tim Ferriss 22:32 Yeah, totally.

Liv Boeree 22:33 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 22:33 So yeah, one-on-one, a totally, totally different game.

Tim Ferriss 22:37 But it actually brought back, in a way, my love of mathematics and statistics, which I lost. Not to make this, like, a confessional, but I lost it in 10th grade because I had this one teacher who just had this huge ax to grind with the boys in the class, and almost all the boys ended up quitting math or avoiding it after that class. My brother had the opposite experience and then later became a PhD in statistics. So it's amazing to look at these divergent kinda points, right?

Liv Boeree 23:05 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 23:05 Where you have a, a fork in the path depending on your experience. So my question, after all of that word salad, is if, if you were to suggest a way of learning or to teach me an approach to learning-

Liv Boeree 23:20 Mm

Tim Ferriss 23:20 ... regular poker, wh- whatever that means, the type of poker I would play with my friends who are like, "Let's play poker," right? How might you think of approaching that?

Liv Boeree 23:31 Well, given that you are... I mean, you're pretty well-rounded in your personality in that you like both sort of human interactive things-

Tim Ferriss 23:39 Mm-hmm

Liv Boeree 23:39 ... but you can also nerd out really hard.

Tim Ferriss 23:42 Yes.

Liv Boeree 23:42 I don't think there's really a wrong way to teach you poker.

Tim Ferriss 23:45 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 23:45 Like, if I was to teach my, my mum or something like that. My mum is the most, sounds strange to say, but she's the least autistic person [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 23:52 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 23:53 In that she is so able to intuit-

Tim Ferriss 23:58 Yeah

Liv Boeree 23:58 ... social situations-

Tim Ferriss 24:00 Yep

Liv Boeree 24:00 ... and unbelievably emotionally intelligent, but could not, she's, like, phobic of math.

Tim Ferriss 24:08 Hmm.

Liv Boeree 24:08 She's interested in sort of scientific concepts, but if you actually try and get into the technical weeds, she's just like, uh, she, she cannot. It's like she would be in arms with Molly right now, just like, she's just a, she just feels. She's a very feel-

Tim Ferriss 24:20 Yeah

Liv Boeree 24:20 ... based person. If I was to teach her the game, you know, I would take her to the table with group of fun people and, you know, we would slowly just, like, turn the cards over and, you know, talk through. I'll give her the hand rankings, and we'd take it very steady in, in terms of, like, this is, look how the way that they're acting. So-

Tim Ferriss 24:37 Mm-hmm

Liv Boeree 24:38 ... they seem quite confident. You know, take a more- ... human approach to it. But I think with you, we would wanna jump s- sort of straight into the game theory, to an extent

Tim Ferriss 24:47 So let me apply some parameters-

Liv Boeree 24:49 Mm

Tim Ferriss 24:49 ... if I could, just to allow us to conjure an image. So let's just say, [laughs] he's really gonna wanna take my money now, which he will probably. So let's say I had a game with Jason.

Liv Boeree 25:01 Uh-huh.

Tim Ferriss 25:01 And you can pick the sort of minimally viable period of time over which you think I could learn to be competent enough-

Liv Boeree 25:08 Ooh

Tim Ferriss 25:08 ... that I might have a chance. Is it four weeks? Is it 12 weeks? And this is also not knowing how, how good Jason is. I have no idea, 'cause I've always refused to play. [laughs] But-

Liv Boeree 25:21 He's pretty good.

Tim Ferriss 25:22 Okay, great. So let's just say, you know, if luck is on my side, having some chance in hell.

Liv Boeree 25:28 Well, here's the thing. So-

Tim Ferriss 25:29 Yeah

Liv Boeree 25:29 ... you have a chance in hell anyway. If you ta- sat down and just played-

Tim Ferriss 25:33 Because it's not just gonna be Jason, it's gonna be an entire table.

Liv Boeree 25:35 Well, no, but even if you were playing one-on-one against Jason, if you guys sat down, assuming you know the basic rules of, like, which hand beats what-

Tim Ferriss 25:41 There's always a chance

Liv Boeree 25:42 ... okay, but let's, you know-

Tim Ferriss 25:43 Yeah

Liv Boeree 25:43 ... assume the, the very basics, you know what betting chips means.

Tim Ferriss 25:46 Sure.

Liv Boeree 25:46 And whether you have a straight on the river or not. Assuming that, you and I could sit down and play-

Tim Ferriss 25:51 Yeah

Liv Boeree 25:51 ... 10 hands, and it's basically 50/50 who wins.

Tim Ferriss 25:55 Okay, let's say you can pick the period of time of training, right?

Liv Boeree 25:58 Right.

Tim Ferriss 25:59 So, um, um, however long it is, and then Jason and I are going to play-

Liv Boeree 26:03 1,000 hands, let's say.

Tim Ferriss 26:04 Exactly.

Liv Boeree 26:05 Yeah, 1,000 hands. You're already... Your chance of beating Jason over 1,000 hands, probably with, like, just knowing the rules, is 45%. That's, that's-

Tim Ferriss 26:18 All right

Liv Boeree 26:18 ... how crazy, like, that's the thing-

Tim Ferriss 26:19 That is crazy

Liv Boeree 26:20 ... like, maybe it's a bit less than that. Maybe it's... Sorry, Jason. Maybe it's, let's say 37%, maybe 35. Uh, he's g- I'm gonna get a phone call after this.

Tim Ferriss 26:28 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 26:28 Um, [laughs] uh, but, you know, could we get it so that you are a favorite against him? Eight weeks of intensive.

Tim Ferriss 26:44 Okay.

Liv Boeree 26:45 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 26:45 Eight weeks.

Liv Boeree 26:45 If, if you sat and studied all the charts.

Tim Ferriss 26:47 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 26:48 Because that's what it is really these days. So poker is n- now that we know the mechanics of the game, basically there's this thing called game theory optimal solutions to different scenarios, which is basically, you know, if you have jack nine suited on this type of board against a person in this position, you will want to check raise them 30% of the time and check call 70% of the time, or something like that. Basically, there, there are, like, answers to what you should do in different scenarios with what frequencies. It's all about frequencies. And so now that we know this, and, and you can run simulators to give you the answers of all these fictitious scenarios, now it's changed the game into a, basically who's willing to, you know, learn as many different scenarios as possible and, like, basically emulate them in their head when they go and play.

Tim Ferriss 27:30 Hmm.

Liv Boeree 27:31 So it's a very different type of game. It's more b- like, kind of almost studying chess moves.

Tim Ferriss 27:34 I was just gonna say-

Liv Boeree 27:35 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 27:35 ... it sounds a lot like studying, like, uh, chess scenarios.

Liv Boeree 27:39 And it wasn't like that even 10 years ago. It was very, very different. I mean, there were some... It was more about you, you'd sort of do com- combination calculations in your head and that kind of thing, but that was kind of the limit of it. And honestly, it's actually one of the reasons why I, in the end, didn't like the game as much anymore. I'd been doing it for 12 years anyway, and I, I was just starting to get itchy feet naturally, but it required more and more time spent to... A- at the top levels, at least, with these-

Tim Ferriss 28:06 Just for incremental gains.

Liv Boeree 28:07 Exactly. Diminishing returns in terms of hourly. Because also, what it means is, uh, because it's like these game theory optimal solutions exist, it means that there's technically this perfect style of play that any one of a, any one person can play. And the more, the more people study this style, the more people are close to it. And so that means there is a ceiling of how perfectly you can play. Like, technically, if you and I are both two computers that are able to play this game theory optimal style, we're just breaking even against each other over infinity. O- over the short ti- you know, if we play for a- an hour, whoever gets the best cards will therefore win. But over infinity, we will just break even. And so that meant that you would have to be putting more and more time in to win a, uh, a, a sort of shrinking pot of money, essentially. Which is why I, I don't now recommend to people to go out and try and be professionals in poker. But I still absolutely recommend that people go and learn the game, because it is probably the best way to... It's, it's the best mini analog for the type of complex decision-making that you need to do in life, that you could do.

Tim Ferriss 29:08 And we're gonna come back to this, because I do think, with my very little exposure to poker, and having watched some on TV, and nonetheless having had my ass handed to me [laughs] when I tried it live, that particularly maybe an easy map is investing and poker, because there's, there are just so many variables that are similar.

Liv Boeree 29:32 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 29:33 Which is why I think so many investors are drawn to it. And also, give a plug, All In Podcast, check it out. That's J. Cal's podcast with his buds.

Liv Boeree 29:41 It's amazing.

Tim Ferriss 29:41 It is a fantastic, fantastic show. I do think it is one of the, the best new-ish podcasts-

Liv Boeree 29:47 Mm

Tim Ferriss 29:47 ... that I've put into my rotation. So don't take all my money, Jason. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 29:52 Eight weeks. What does the density of practice look like? Is that two hours a day? Is it 10 hours a week? What does the distribution look like?

Liv Boeree 30:01 To be confident that you're, that you will have, like, a 60/40 edge on him, I would wanna do, like, 40 hours a week at least.

Tim Ferriss 30:10 Okay. All right.

Liv Boeree 30:11 Oh, yeah.

Tim Ferriss 30:11 All right, 40 hours.

Liv Boeree 30:12 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 30:12 How does that break down? If we have... You said eight weeks, right?

Liv Boeree 30:18 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 30:18 So hypothetically, let's say week one. What does the schedule and curriculum look like?

Liv Boeree 30:24 So in the first week, I think we would... I mean, I would sit and just run out lots of different hands. I think in person is better than online, so you actually just get to play with the cards, feel what it's like. You get really familiar with the betting patterns and that kind of thing. And we would talk about the more sort of general things, like, you know, why are we betting? What, what are we seeking to find here? Okay, we want to find information. We'd get into the idea of, like, ranges. Kind of a strange word, but basically, you know, if we're playing a hand right now, I don't know anything about your cards. All I know is that you've got two cards out of the, you know, a thousand and whatever the number is combination of two cards that you can have. So right now, your range is 100%. And same back at you. And then as the hand progresses-

Tim Ferriss 31:12 Mm-hmm

Liv Boeree 31:13 ... basically I want to narrow down the perceived range that I think you could have. You know, narrow, gain information so I can narrow that down and put you on a hand, while meanwhile giving away as little information about my own possible range, so keeping it as wide open to you. So it's about maximizing deceptiveness-

Tim Ferriss 31:29 Sure

Liv Boeree 31:29 ... while extracting information out of your opponent.

Tim Ferriss 31:32 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 31:33 So I'd teach you about concepts like that, and we would talk about ways that you can do that. And then I think we would go and actually play a little bit in person, just so you get used to the, again, the kind of dynamics.

Tim Ferriss 31:42 So we would need to find a table somewhere.

Liv Boeree 31:44 Yeah. I mean, probably invite friends over and we'd just have some-

Tim Ferriss 31:47 Yeah

Liv Boeree 31:47 ... have some games. And it'd be so much fun anyway. Those are the best type of poker games.

Tim Ferriss 31:51 Bring in my card mechanic and take all their money.

Liv Boeree 31:53 Exactly. Yes. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 31:54 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 31:55 And then after that, I think we would start, I don't know at what stage, but, you know, once you seem competent and, and are able to... You're able to do sort of basic math calculations in your head about, like, okay, well, I have to call $100 into a pot of $400. I'm getting four to one. What does that mean? What, how many cards are there that I need to hit, hit, et cetera? So these kind of pot odd calculations, that kind of stuff.

Tim Ferriss 32:18 Could you just take a second and explain what you mean by pot odd calculations?

Liv Boeree 32:21 So pot odds are basically, you know, like in investing to an extent, if things go well, what do you win versus how much would you lose?

Tim Ferriss 32:30 Mm-hmm. And then how do you bet size accordingly?

Liv Boeree 32:33 Right.

Tim Ferriss 32:33 Or size your bet?

Liv Boeree 32:33 Exactly. Or, like, you know, let's say you're, you're trying to hit a flush, and there are nine cards left in the deck that could help you, say, out of 36. So you have a 25% chance of hitting the card you need, and meanwhile, the pot is odd, offering you five to one. Well, now it's actually a profitable thing, right?

Tim Ferriss 32:50 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 32:50 You're, 'cause you're getting... The pot is offering you more than the odds that you need to, to hit your card.

Tim Ferriss 32:55 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 32:55 So, man, I haven't talked about this stuff in ages. It's really interesting seeing my brain's like, "Oh, find the words."

Tim Ferriss 33:01 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 33:01 So those kind of rudimentary types of math calculations that you need to do. And then as you get more comfortable in that, then you would start doing more, like, combination calculations. So again, like, as you're sort of narrowing down your opponent's range, there will be presumably some hands that they will have that are better than your hand. You know, so what we would call value hands that they would be playing. But they would also have some bluffs in there. So you need to try and think about what are the conceivable bluffs they would have, given the sort of story that's been told. You know, like pre-flop, they raised early, so that means they probably have stronger cards than, than, uh, weaker cards. So you can narrow it down to, like, the top end of the cards, uh, you know, like aces, kings, ace king, ace three suited, that kind of stuff. But then on the flop, when an ace came out, they actually slowed down, so that maybe suggests that they don't have an ace. Maybe they have more, like, nines, tens, eights, you know, to a pocket pair like that. You know, weaving together bits of evidence to be able to narrow down people's ranges and put them on, like, conceivable bluffs versus conceivable strong hands. So that kind of stuff. After that, if, you know, you're seeming to grasp all that, then we would actually start looking at the, the solver charts. So these are these, like, simulators. There's this one called PioSOLVER that was at least popular in the day when I was playing.

Tim Ferriss 34:15 How do you spell that?

Liv Boeree 34:16 P-I-O.

Tim Ferriss 34:17 P-I-O.

Liv Boeree 34:17 PioSOLVER. I think it's still the main one. And at least when I was, you know, using it, that was back in 2016 or so, it would take many hours to run a sim. So, you know, you'd be like, "I want to know what the optimal play is with jack nine suited on a 10-8-4 rainbow board," or something like that. And then let it run.

Tim Ferriss 34:37 Folks listening, I have no idea what that means either.

Liv Boeree 34:39 I know, right?

Tim Ferriss 34:39 It's okay.

Liv Boeree 34:39 I don't think I know how technical it's gonna go.

Tim Ferriss 34:40 No, I just, I love how, I love how it sounds, though. [laughs]

Liv Boeree 34:42 Yeah, there's so much jargon in poker.

Tim Ferriss 34:43 I think I need a rainbow board.

Liv Boeree 34:44 That's actually probably where we would start. We would start with glossary.

Tim Ferriss 34:47 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 34:47 Because there's so many, there's so many w- terms.

Tim Ferriss 34:50 Vocab.

Liv Boeree 34:50 The vocab is, is, uh, you know, there's, there's just so much going on there. But yeah, so we would start running simulations so you can see and understand, like, okay, this is, this is what the optimal solutions would be in these certain situations. Because once you know what the optimal solutions are, then now you can, you're sort of equipped with this, like, really solid baseline of what the, the perfect play is, where if you don't have any information about your opponent, that you can just follow and know that, you know, at worst you'll be breaking even, but you'll still be beating them.

Tim Ferriss 35:19 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 35:19 But then because you know what the perfect play is, you can look for ways to exploit their screw-ups. Because in reality, everyone, even the pros, are making mistakes. They aren't playing this perfect GTO style. But you can't really know the way that they're screwing up until you know what GTO is in the first place.

Tim Ferriss 35:36 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 35:36 So it acts as this, like, baseline benchmark of high-quality play. So we would sit and we would study these charts, and if over that course of eight weeks I got you so that you were able to, like, emulate these charts to, you know, I don't know how to quantify it, but to a good amount-

Tim Ferriss 35:51 Mm-hmm

Liv Boeree 35:52 ... that would be more than sufficient to beat Jason. [laughs] Because he's, you know, he's not a full-time pro.

Tim Ferriss 35:57 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 35:57 He's good. Like, he's played a lot, and we've only played once, and I was more just, like, bemused at the amount of words that were coming out of his mouth.

Tim Ferriss 36:03 Well, I was gonna say, if his poker is anything like his basketball, his ability to shit talk-

Liv Boeree 36:08 Oh, man

Tim Ferriss 36:08 ... is actually incredible.

Liv Boeree 36:10 That guy is-

Tim Ferriss 36:10 I mean-

Liv Boeree 36:10 ... world-class

Tim Ferriss 36:11 ... he's very good at getting under your skin if he wants to get under your skin.

Liv Boeree 36:14 Oh, yeah.

Tim Ferriss 36:14 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 36:15 Oh, yeah. We've been at a few parties together, and he is, he knows how to ruffle feathers.

Tim Ferriss 36:19 He do.

Liv Boeree 36:20 But he's so funny. I love him.

Tim Ferriss 36:23 Excellent interviewer and moderator. I just wanna-

Liv Boeree 36:25 Yes

Tim Ferriss 36:25 ... second the recommendation that was made earlier. Okay.

Tim Ferriss 36:28 So let's depart from the training for a bit. We may come back to it. Actually, let me ask a question I haven't asked in a long time. Maybe similar, this is, like, we're kicking in the gears, starting the old car, trying to, like, [laughs] turn the key, get it to turn over. If you could predict the main reasons, the failure points-

Liv Boeree 36:54 Mm

Tim Ferriss 36:54 ... the reasons I would quit in those first eight weeks, what do you think they might be?

Liv Boeree 36:58 [sighs]

Tim Ferriss 37:00 Assuming that I had the time.

Liv Boeree 37:01 Right.

Tim Ferriss 37:01 Right? And the interest. What are the, what are the things that might break me or cause me to walk, give up?

Liv Boeree 37:07 Hmm. If for some reason you couldn't wrap your mind around what these charts mean, I guess that would be a sort of breaking point, but I just don't see that ever happening, to be honest.

Tim Ferriss 37:19 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 37:19 So it, it would be more the ... I think the reason why you'd walk away is because you're like, "Ah, actually this isn't that much fun and I'm not playing for ... I don't care enough about beating Jason."

Tim Ferriss 37:27 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 37:27 You're not playing for suitable stakes.

Tim Ferriss 37:28 [laughs] Yeah.

Liv Boeree 37:29 And you're like, "This is not worth my time."

Tim Ferriss 37:30 And for people listening, I'm just using Jason as a stand-in 'cause it's fun. [laughs]

Liv Boeree 37:33 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 37:34 But right.

Liv Boeree 37:35 Right.

Tim Ferriss 37:35 I don't care-

Liv Boeree 37:36 But, but basically-

Tim Ferriss 37:36 I don't care enough about beating anyone. Right.

Liv Boeree 37:37 Oh, exactly. Like, the, just the opportunity cost would be too high.

Tim Ferriss 37:39 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 37:40 That would be the only reason I think.

Tim Ferriss 37:41 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 37:41 'Cause I think you would find it fun otherwise.

Tim Ferriss 37:45 And I would have to ... Well, I wouldn't have to, but ensure that I have a certain frequency of play after putting in-

Liv Boeree 37:51 Yes

Tim Ferriss 37:51 ... 40 hours a week for eight weeks, otherwise the decay rate would-

Liv Boeree 37:55 Well, absolutely

Tim Ferriss 37:55 ... be brutal.

Liv Boeree 37:56 And, and part of that time, by the way, in that 40, it, it's not just studying the charts, it's also going out and actually practicing and getting real, because assuming you're gonna play one-on-one in the, in the flesh.

Tim Ferriss 38:05 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 38:05 Um, so a, a big part of poker that we haven't touched on yet as well is emotional control, understanding yourself and your own emotional, you know, your own biases, not only cognitive but also the way, you know, different negative emotions will, will arise-

Tim Ferriss 38:20 Mm-hmm

Liv Boeree 38:20 ... which they will in the game.

Tim Ferriss 38:21 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 38:22 Particularly with someone like Jason, who is so adept at, like, saying things to needle.

Tim Ferriss 38:25 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 38:25 And that's a big part of the game.

Tim Ferriss 38:27 Getting the verbal-

Liv Boeree 38:28 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 38:28 ... bamboo shoots under your finger-

Liv Boeree 38:29 Exactly

Tim Ferriss 38:30 ... fingernails. [laughs]

Liv Boeree 38:32 That would be as important, particularly if you're playing for a particular ... You know, you're training for a big match.

Tim Ferriss 38:37 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 38:38 The mental game side of it. You know, if, 'cause ultimately you can study all the charts and think you're a GTO machine, and like, "Oh, I'm, I'm fine," but then you get down there and he looks you in the eyes and it's like, "Well, you screwed up that hand, Tim." Like, what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do, huh? You know, and, and just goes full Jason on you. Like-

Tim Ferriss 38:54 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 38:54 ... you'll forget everything. The red mist. Um, I call it the white noise.

Tim Ferriss 38:58 The red mist.

Liv Boeree 38:58 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 38:58 I've never heard that.

Liv Boeree 38:59 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 38:59 Okay. I like it though.

Liv Boeree 39:00 The red mist descends. Like, if ... So there's, there's two mental blocks.

Tim Ferriss 39:05 That's when one might go tilt.

Liv Boeree 39:06 Tilt. Exactly.

Tim Ferriss 39:07 If I, if I'm catching the lingo.

Liv Boeree 39:08 Yeah. Tilt. Very good.

Tim Ferriss 39:09 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 39:10 For those who don't know, tilt is-

Tim Ferriss 39:11 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 39:12 ... what people do basic- when their emotions get the better of them and they start playing badly.

Tim Ferriss 39:16 Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. Now, is monkey tilt just an exaggerated-

Liv Boeree 39:20 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 39:20 ... version of that?

Liv Boeree 39:21 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 39:22 Okay. Yeah.

Liv Boeree 39:22 Monkey tilt is just like-

Tim Ferriss 39:23 I love the image of this-

Liv Boeree 39:24 One of the flavors

Tim Ferriss 39:25 ... [laughs] conjures. Now, the reason that this is fresh on the mind is not too long ago I was in a, a non-sober state and decided that it was a perfect time to start making stock trades. And my friend was watching me and he's like-

Liv Boeree 39:40 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 39:41 ... "I think you may be full tilt right now." And I was like, "Do I look excited? Do I look upset? I'm not, [laughs] I'm not on tilt." Those didn't work out very well, those trades.

Liv Boeree 39:52 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 39:52 [laughs] But the red mist. When the red mist ... But you call it the white what?

Liv Boeree 39:56 Well, so there, there's two. There's the white noise. So the white noise is when ... It's less about r- ... So red mist is when you're angry.

Tim Ferriss 40:05 Mm.

Liv Boeree 40:05 Someone has wound you up.

Tim Ferriss 40:07 That would probably be my Achilles heel.

Liv Boeree 40:09 Right.

Tim Ferriss 40:09 The white noise.

Liv Boeree 40:11 Yeah. And the white noise is where, for whatever reason, perhaps, you know, you're just really tired or you're really stressed, but you'll go and consult your brain, and it comes back with nothing.

Tim Ferriss 40:21 Okay. Yeah. You're just beach balling.

Liv Boeree 40:23 Just beach ball. Yeah. It's just khhh.

Tim Ferriss 40:23 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 40:25 And I've had that a few times. Like-

Tim Ferriss 40:27 That's-

Liv Boeree 40:27 I remember having it in the World Series-

Tim Ferriss 40:28 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 40:29 ... day four or something, day five.

Tim Ferriss 40:30 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 40:31 And it was a really big pot and I just needed to think. And then, but then my brain was like, "Well, this is a really important decision. You know, you should really pay attention to this one. Like, are you paying att- Well, I'm not sure you're paying attention. Why are you listening to me?" And it, so there's a little voice, and then I was like, "Okay, pay attention. Let's count the combos of what they've got." And just khhh, nothing.

Tim Ferriss 40:48 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 40:49 So in the end I was like, I, I, you know, my system two. Are you familiar with, with, uh, system one, system two?

Tim Ferriss 40:53 No.

Liv Boeree 40:54 Okay. Uh-

Tim Ferriss 40:54 Oh, wait a second. System one, system two. Is this, like, Daniel Kahneman?

Liv Boeree 40:57 It's the, the ... Yeah. It's a Danny Kahneman thing.

Tim Ferriss 40:58 Maybe if you could just give some context.

Liv Boeree 41:01 His thesis is that we have two modes of thinking. System one is, like, your intuitive. Like, if I ask you, "What's five plus five?" You immediately know the answer is 10. So it, kinda your gut instinct.

Tim Ferriss 41:11 [laughs] I just got a shot of adrenaline 'cause I thought you were gonna make me do multiplication tables.

Liv Boeree 41:14 Well, wait.

Tim Ferriss 41:14 Woo.

Liv Boeree 41:15 We'll wait.

Tim Ferriss 41:15 Okay. All right. [laughs]

Liv Boeree 41:16 So that's your system one. It's just the things you immediately know an answer to, or you, you know, it's like an unconscious process. You know, if y- technically it's system one if you're driving down the street and someone cuts in front of you, your, your, your body will take over and you'll swerve, 'cause you don't have time to do a sort of cost benefit analysis of going left or right. And then your system two is the, like, conscious thinking.

Tim Ferriss 41:36 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 41:36 So if I was to ask you what 471 plus 88 is?

Tim Ferriss 41:41 [laughs] It would be-

Liv Boeree 41:43 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 41:44 ... 560, uh, I even forgot the numbers now. Nine?

Liv Boeree 41:49 471 and 88.

Tim Ferriss 41:51 471, 88. What's that?

Liv Boeree 41:53 I can't do it either. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 41:53 [laughs] 471. Yeah. Nine, five, five? Five, five, nine? Is that right? 559? I have no idea.

Liv Boeree 42:03 Five, it's 500 and ... Well, I can't even remember. Uh, anyway, the point is-

Tim Ferriss 42:06 Whatever that was.

Liv Boeree 42:07 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 42:07 You can't, you can't use your gut feelings for that.

Liv Boeree 42:10 Right. You have to think it through. You have to do the calculation mentally in your head.

Tim Ferriss 42:13 Mm.

Liv Boeree 42:13 So that's your system two. And poker's really interesting because-

Tim Ferriss 42:16 You know I'm on five hours of sleep. [laughs]

Liv Boeree 42:19 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 42:19 I just wanna buy myself a little bit of [laughs] wiggle room on the mental math.

Liv Boeree 42:23 I didn't even answer my own question.

Tim Ferriss 42:25 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 42:25 And I have no excuse.

Tim Ferriss 42:26 [laughs] May I make a quick aside?

Liv Boeree 42:28 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 42:29 One of the coolest things I've ever seen was when I was 15 as an exchange student in Japan, and I, I, I got to know multiple kids, because it's mandatory ... that every kid learn how to use an abacus. And something like 1 out of every 30 or 40 kids would get so good that they no longer needed the physical abacus.

Liv Boeree 42:50 Wow.

Tim Ferriss 42:50 They could see it in their minds. And so for party tricks, their friends would just lob these, like, three-digit multiplication problems at them, and they could come up with the answer. It would take them a second because-

Liv Boeree 43:01 Mm

Tim Ferriss 43:01 ... they actually had to physically-

Liv Boeree 43:03 Map it out a bit, yeah

Tim Ferriss 43:04 ... map it out and move these beads and so on-

Liv Boeree 43:07 I love that

Tim Ferriss 43:07 ... in their minds, but astonishing.

Liv Boeree 43:10 My partner Igor can kinda do that.

Tim Ferriss 43:12 Yeah?

Liv Boeree 43:12 It was one of the ways he got me, honestly. He just-

Tim Ferriss 43:14 Wow

Liv Boeree 43:14 ... you just throw numbers at him and he'll ... He hasn't done it in a while, and he'll hate that I've mentioned this 'cause now everyone's gonna do it to him. But he can usually answer within, like, a second or two-

Tim Ferriss 43:22 Wow

Liv Boeree 43:22 ... these things.

Tim Ferriss 43:23 That's fast.

Liv Boeree 43:23 Yeah, it's hot.

Tim Ferriss 43:24 [laughs] Second or two.

Liv Boeree 43:26 It's, like, hot shit. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 43:27 Rock stars to mental mathematics, you know?

Liv Boeree 43:30 Yeah. So those are ... I can't remember where I was going now.

Tim Ferriss 43:33 So where you were going is we were talking about system one, system two, and that-

Liv Boeree 43:37 Yes

Tim Ferriss 43:37 ... white noise moment.

Liv Boeree 43:38 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 43:38 And that is not a time that you can rely on system two. Is that what you were gonna say? Or that-

Liv Boeree 43:42 Right. Exactly, 'cause system two has shut down.

Tim Ferriss 43:44 System two's offline.

Liv Boeree 43:45 Yes, offline.

Tim Ferriss 43:46 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 43:46 It does not compute. No, there's nothing there. Hello? Um.

Tim Ferriss 43:48 404. 404.

Liv Boeree 43:50 404.

Tim Ferriss 43:50 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 43:50 Yeah, blue screen of death. And it's bad when that happens in poker.

Tim Ferriss 43:54 Yeah, [laughs] it sounds fucking terrible.

Liv Boeree 43:54 It's no good at all. Yes.

Tim Ferriss 43:56 Ugh.

Liv Boeree 43:57 And that is, you know, if you're playing, you know, it could be various reasons. It can be because you're wound up, someone's gotten under your skin, uh, that will shut it off, but also just pure adrenaline and stress. You know, you're excited. Even I've had it when I had a really good hand.

Tim Ferriss 44:15 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 44:15 And I was really ... I was like, "Oh, man. I'm gonna win a huge pot here. This is so exciting." And I'm like, "Well, I need to think through what the optimal bet size is." And again, kkk.

Tim Ferriss 44:22 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 44:23 'Cause I just, ugh. It just ... It's- it's so hard because I think you're- you're put into ... Well, you know this stuff better. Like, uh, your- your sympathetic nervous system is in- is in play, right?

Tim Ferriss 44:31 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 44:32 Uh, so you're kind of in fight or flight.

Tim Ferriss 44:33 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 44:33 And that is not conducive to slow cognitive thought.

Tim Ferriss 44:36 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 44:37 [laughs] It's conducive to immediate, you know, physical stuff, really useful for, but not so good for the mental.

Tim Ferriss 44:43 So- so let's talk about the regulation, the self-regulation. So I have in front of me some notes. Obviously, you can see them. Those who are on audio only will not be able to see them. That's fine, 'cause it makes me sound more professional if you think I'm doing everything off the top of my head. So at one point, you turned €500 into 1.25 million euros, which is around 1.7 million if I'm getting roughly-

Liv Boeree 45:07 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 45:07 ... I believe that- that math right. That was at the EPT San Remo. And it was 500 euro buy-in or $500? I forget.

Liv Boeree 45:16 It was a 500 euro satellite tournament into the main event buy-in, which was 5,000 euros. So everyone was buying in for 5,000, but I won my way in 'cause I couldn't afford the 5,000.

Tim Ferriss 45:27 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 45:27 I- I won my way in through a feeder, smaller tournament.

Tim Ferriss 45:30 So a few just housekeeping questions about this. How long after that first tournament win after the TV show-

Liv Boeree 45:40 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 45:41 ... was this?

Liv Boeree 45:42 This was 2010, so five years.

Tim Ferriss 45:46 Wow. All right. So five years later, this happens. Presumably, in this tournament, there was less huh and then crying a- and running away from the table.

Liv Boeree 45:56 Correct.

Tim Ferriss 45:57 Okay. So what type of self-regulation did you learn over that period of time and then subsequent to that?

Liv Boeree 46:05 [laughs] Oh, man. That- that tournament was nuts because, you know, the TV show was in 2005. I didn't actually really turn fully professional whereby I was living off it until 2000- like, late 2008.

Tim Ferriss 46:20 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 46:21 You know, I was still sort of playing casually. Couldn't really get my act together enough to- to be s- you know, I wasn't good enough really to be living off poker before then. I'd been playing on the circuit now for, like, a year and a half, and I played some bigger buy-in tournaments, but I'd never made, like, any, like, really big final tables or anything. And this Italy one kinda happened by accident. It was, uh ... Remember the volcano that went off in Iceland?

Tim Ferriss 46:43 Yeah, I do.

Liv Boeree 46:44 And it shut down all of European airspace. I was in the south of France for something completely different, and I couldn't get home, and someone ... I heard that there was this tournament going on in northern Italy, and it was, like, a train ride away. So I was like, "All right. Screw it. I'll go there."

Tim Ferriss 46:56 Thank God for volcanoes.

Liv Boeree 46:57 L- B- Bless that volcano.

Tim Ferriss 46:59 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 46:59 Oh, yeah. And then I arrived, and there was this, like, this feeder tournament, it's called a satellite, that night where, you know, it was a 500 euro entry and 1 in 10 people would win their ticket for the 5,000, the main event. So I won my ticket that night at, like, 4:00 in the morning, and then went and played it the next day starting at noon. And a very strange thing happened to me actually at noon before the tournament started, but that's, like, another topic I think we can get into later maybe.

Tim Ferriss 47:24 Wait a minute.

Liv Boeree 47:26 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 47:26 You can't leave that. Just g- give us a teaser, and then maybe we'll come back to it.

Liv Boeree 47:30 I had my first of a handful of completely unexplainable borderline metaphysical experiences.

Tim Ferriss 47:40 Okay. All right.

Liv Boeree 47:41 I won't say what it is now.

Tim Ferriss 47:42 We'll come back to that.

Liv Boeree 47:42 'Cause it, it'll be better if we talk about it later, yeah.

Tim Ferriss 47:43 We'll come back to that later.

Liv Boeree 47:44 But anyway, so I had a very strange thing happen just before the tournament started at noon, and long story short, six days later ... It, it turned out, it ended up being the largest tournament ever held in Europe at the time.

Tim Ferriss 47:55 Leaving that undescribed is what I call-

Liv Boeree 47:56 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 47:57 ... keeping the audience listening.

Liv Boeree 47:58 Yeah, yeah. You better keep watching. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 48:00 [laughs] And now for a short commercial break. No, just kidding.

Liv Boeree 48:03 I ended up being the, the, attracting the biggest field of players of any tournament in Europe to date, at the time at least. Was over, like, 1,200 people. So huge, huge tournament. And six days later, I was on the final table down to the final nine.

Tim Ferriss 48:19 How many hours a day are you playing?

Liv Boeree 48:21 I played, like, 10 hours a day on average.

Tim Ferriss 48:25 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 48:25 Some days were a bit longer. Some days were a bit shorter. So you can imagine how exhausting that is. Also, because the longer you're going, the more intense it gets.

Tim Ferriss 48:33 Right.

Liv Boeree 48:33 'Cause in the beginning, the stakes are like, okay, I might l- lose my 5,000 euro buy-in, but as the tournament wears on and, you know, there's less people, your- your chip stack is worth more and more in terms of equity.

Tim Ferriss 48:43 So your loss aversion starts to-

Liv Boeree 48:45 Oh, yeah

Tim Ferriss 48:45 ... go, go vertical.

Liv Boeree 48:46 But by the time of the, like, you know, the end of day five where we play down to the final table, the final nine, I, you know, for ninth place- I was already guaranteed, I think, €90,000. I only had, like, I, I mean, I think I had, like, £50,000 to my name at this point. So I was already guaranteed double my net worth for whatever happened-

Tim Ferriss 49:06 Yeah

Liv Boeree 49:06 ... on that final table. And first prize was, you know, the €1.25 million, so like $1.7. And that morning [laughs] I did not sleep. I mean, I, I don't know what... I, I think I got some sleep the night before, 'cause I, I'm somewhat of an insomniac anyway. So if I have a, something on the next day that's big, I often will just not sleep very well, and so you can imagine this cranked it up to 10. And I was dreaming. You know, you... I don't know if you ever have that where you've been doing a lot of a particular thing, like trading or whatever, and you sort of semi-sleep and see the thing?

Tim Ferriss 49:38 Oh, sure. Yeah.

Liv Boeree 49:38 I was playing poker. I was like, I was lying there, but I had pocket jacks, I had a king-queen. You know, just these fictitious hands. My brain just could not shut off. And that was my night the night before.

Tim Ferriss 49:48 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 49:48 And I was just, like, in a complete tiz because I'm like, "I don't know what I'm gonna play tomorrow." Like, I'm a mess. I was so nervous before the final table. I, like, threw up three times on the way, like, walking down to the thing. It was, it was so stressful. But, like, I don't know. Once we actually started playing, once I got the cards in my hand, it was just like, phew, and I just switched into this, like, mode of... I don't know. It was weird.

Tim Ferriss 50:10 Was that the first time that had happened, or had that happened to you before?

Liv Boeree 50:15 Not to that extent, because I think it was the perfect storm of, like, such extreme nerves and being such a mess beforehand, and then, like, actually, you know, being able to play well. I don't know. The, the delta-

Tim Ferriss 50:27 Yeah

Liv Boeree 50:27 ... felt more than I'd ever had it before.

Tim Ferriss 50:28 That's interesting.

Liv Boeree 50:28 But I had had that before where I was, like, able to, like, get into the zone very well.

Tim Ferriss 50:32 I wonder if you had just spent all of your-

Liv Boeree 50:35 Nervous energy?

Tim Ferriss 50:35 ... stress calories. Yeah.

Liv Boeree 50:36 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 50:37 You know what I mean? Like, that tank was empty.

Liv Boeree 50:39 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 50:39 So you needed to switch to a different tank.

Liv Boeree 50:41 Yeah. I don't know. I... But as I'll go into the story, honestly, it felt like I had something guiding me that whole time. It was a very strange experience. And anyway, I won, and it was great. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 50:51 Of course I'm not gonna let go of this metaphysical experience. We're gonna c- we are gonna come back to that probably quickly, but before we do, for people who [laughs] are not going to bank on having metaphysical experiences or, or the feeling of being guided, what else have you learned about regulating?

Liv Boeree 51:08 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 51:09 Whether it's the white noise or, especially for me, of personal interest, when someone is actively trying to fuck with you-

Liv Boeree 51:16 Mm

Tim Ferriss 51:16 ... and disrupt [laughs] all of your systems.

Liv Boeree 51:20 Mm.

Tim Ferriss 51:21 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 51:21 The best thing I've found, and it's super simple, is just breathing.

Tim Ferriss 51:26 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 51:26 Like three deep breaths. It's so, you know, cookie cutter, but it just works.

Tim Ferriss 51:32 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 51:32 Just close your eyes and inhale in. You can feel, even if your heart's pounding, like my, my heart's actually pounding a little bit now-

Tim Ferriss 51:41 Yeah

Liv Boeree 51:41 ... 'cause of retelling the story. It's funny. You notice that. You feel your body. You breathe in and you breathe it into your belly. And I, I imagine, like, my favorite color-

Tim Ferriss 51:49 Yeah

Liv Boeree 51:49 ... which is usually a mix of, like, turquoise and purple, something like that, and I just, I'm s- sucking that in-

Tim Ferriss 51:55 Mm

Liv Boeree 51:55 ... and it, pulling it down into my stomach, and then it's just, like, this, ah, settling feeling. And it's, half of it is just, like, bullshitting myself, you know?

Tim Ferriss 52:03 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 52:03 Like, I, I, I'm just like-

Tim Ferriss 52:04 But it's an interrupt

Liv Boeree 52:05 ... it's an interrupt. Exactly.

Tim Ferriss 52:06 All right.

Liv Boeree 52:06 And it, and it just is enough to, like, settle your nervous system a second. Just ground you back to here, and then be like, "Okay, now what's the problem?"

Tim Ferriss 52:14 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 52:14 You know? Another thing that's helped as well is I, just, like, laughing at myself.

Tim Ferriss 52:18 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 52:18 Like, "Oh, you're taking this one awfully seriously. You're silly." Like, like, like, almost, like, playing a silly little da, da, da, da, da, da, da-

Tim Ferriss 52:24 Yeah

Liv Boeree 52:24 ... in my head, just to, like, make light of the situation-

Tim Ferriss 52:27 Yeah

Liv Boeree 52:27 ... a bit. But that requires a lot of ability to sort of step out and observe the situation.

Tim Ferriss 52:31 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 52:31 'Cause obviously once you're in the red mist, particularly the red mist more than the white noise, by definition you are, like, animalistic. You are, you don't have the ability to step outside and observe a situation well. So-

Tim Ferriss 52:41 Yeah

Liv Boeree 52:41 ... it's, I think, just practice really. Practice getting angry. You know, practice reading. I guess a way you could do it is go, like, go read something that you know makes you angry. Like, really, like, reliably gets your blood pressure up, and then try and, like, build in some kind of trigger that makes you do the, the three breaths thing.

Tim Ferriss 53:01 So for 99.9% of the sadomasochistic users of Twitter, myself included-

Liv Boeree 53:06 Absolutely

Tim Ferriss 53:06 ... just go on, just go on Twitter.

Liv Boeree 53:07 Yeah, just go on Twitter.

Tim Ferriss 53:08 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 53:08 Every day, like-

Tim Ferriss 53:09 Just go on Twitter

Liv Boeree 53:09 ... you'll be reliably upset. Yes.

Tim Ferriss 53:11 For, for two minutes.

Liv Boeree 53:12 Oh, man, Twitter. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 53:13 [laughs] Oh, what a nasty neighborhood that's turned into.

Liv Boeree 53:17 Oh, so sad.

Tim Ferriss 53:18 You know, as you were saying this, I'm imagining, I'm imagining Jason listening to this and formulating in his mind, that's why I was smirking, for if he sees me taking deep breaths, he'll be like, "Yeah, Timmy, take those deep breaths."

Liv Boeree 53:30 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 53:30 "Come on, buddy, you can do it. Oh, sorry to upset you. Oh, yeah."

Liv Boeree 53:34 I've already got you. I have.

Tim Ferriss 53:34 "Yeah, no, you're doing great."

Liv Boeree 53:35 You just close your eyes. Don't even look at me.

Tim Ferriss 53:36 No, close your eyes.

Liv Boeree 53:37 Don't even look at me.

Tim Ferriss 53:38 Don't look at me. Don't worry.

Liv Boeree 53:38 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 53:38 No, no, nothing to see here.

Liv Boeree 53:39 Just imagine I'm not here. You can't hear me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim Ferriss 53:40 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 53:40 He'll just endless stream words.

Tim Ferriss 53:41 It's not like everybody's waiting for you or anything. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 53:46 All right. Before, before I lose track, which I wouldn't, but what the hell happened in the morning? And you can contextualize this however you want.

Liv Boeree 53:54 Sure. No, I mean, what happened was, you know, like, I'd played a bunch of these tournaments, not, not of, ones quite this size, but I'd still played a lot of tournaments at this point. And I was there before, before it actually started. Usually I, people turn up late, but for some reason I was there in my chair before the first hand was dealt. And I remember they, the, the company, PokerStars, whose event it was, you know, they dimmed the lights. They're like, "Welcome to EPT San Remo. Huge... We've got an incredible field," blah, blah, blah. And then they, they dimmed the lights and they put on, on the screens around the room just, like, a promo, exciting, you know?

Tim Ferriss 54:30 Promo video.

Liv Boeree 54:30 Promo video, you know. And I remember distinctly the music. It was Chemical Brothers, Hey Boy Hey Girl.

Tim Ferriss 54:35 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 54:35 Which I always loved. I always loved that song.

Tim Ferriss 54:37 Yeah, good choice.

Liv Boeree 54:37 Yeah. And, you know, I was like, "Oh, this is cool. Yeah, I'm excited." And while I was just, like, listening to it, just, like, out of nowhere, this, like, it was like a bolt of lightning it felt like. There was, like, this, like, chh, and this voice in my head said, "You are going to win this tournament." And it sounded like my own voice. But what I can't remember is whether it was I am gonna win or you are gonna win. But I'm pretty sure it was you are gonna win. But it literally sounded like my own voice, and it was so-

Tim Ferriss 55:05 Sounded like your own voice?

Liv Boeree 55:06 Yes. So it was like the, you know, when you speak in your head, like, the, the voice you hear. Like, at least I think most people have that, right? [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 55:12 [laughs] You know, that Tuesday voice that everyone hears. [laughs]

Liv Boeree 55:17 Well, man, I'm learning, learning a lot out here. Um, just, you know, uh, it, it sounded like how I would s- sound in my own head-

Tim Ferriss 55:25 Yes, I understand

Liv Boeree 55:25 ... to, to myself. And it said, "You are gonna win this tournament." And I got this rush of goosebumps, like really, like the... oh, you know, it's even happening a little bit. Like, the hair's up on my arms to the point where I was like, "What?" And I remember looking around the room like, "Did, did I just say that out loud? Did anyone else hear this?" And everyone else was just, like, in their phones or whatever, and I was like, "Well, that was freaky." Then the lights came back up, and they're like, "Okay, cool. Shuffle up and deal." And I was still, like, stunned, and I was like, "Okay. Cool." And then I sort of s- little bit forgot about it, but then, like, halfway through the day I got in a big pot and I lost half my chips. And, you know, so it's always a bad feeling when that happens, and I was like, "Oh, man, I'm nearly out of the tournament. I guess that was bullshit." You know, so like, there... I had, like, little multiple moments over the next few days where I... You know, I, I, it clearly was a real thing because I've, I've, like, checked in on it, you know?

Tim Ferriss 56:16 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 56:16 And I was like, "Oh, this." And I even told a friend of mine on date-

Tim Ferriss 56:18 What do you mean check, checked in on it?

Liv Boeree 56:20 Well-

Tim Ferriss 56:20 Meaning you remembered that it had happened?

Liv Boeree 56:22 That it had happened. Well, because obviously the rational explanation to this is the, like, it was just a false memory, you know?

Tim Ferriss 56:28 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 56:28 The... I have retroactively remembered something that didn't really happen-

Tim Ferriss 56:32 I see

Liv Boeree 56:32 ... as a way of, like, making-

Tim Ferriss 56:33 You, you reconstructed it.

Liv Boeree 56:34 Exactly. I reconstructed it.

Tim Ferriss 56:34 But, but you have multiple points at which you referred to it.

Liv Boeree 56:37 Yes. And I even have a friend, my, my, my friend Melanie, who was there, and I bumped into her in the, in the women's bathroom on, like, day two. And she was like, "Oh, you got a lot of chips. It's going well?" I was like, "Yeah, yeah, uh, things are going well. Really weird. I feel like I'm, I'm gonna win this. In fact, I, like, I almost had a premonition that I did." And she's like, "Yeah, you seem really confident." I... We actually had this conversation, and to the point that she, after I won it, she was like, "What the fuck was that? You, you, like, predicted this."

Tim Ferriss 57:01 Hmm.

Liv Boeree 57:02 I'm like, "I, I know. I don't know." So yeah. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 57:06 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 57:07 I don't know how to explain it.

Tim Ferriss 57:08 Now, I think you said string or series of experiences. Is that type of experience in poker isolated to that? Or I should... And it doesn't have to be constrained to poker.

Liv Boeree 57:21 Right.

Tim Ferriss 57:21 I'm just wondering what other stories you may have that-

Liv Boeree 57:25 Well, I... So I had a few... So what was interesting was after I-

Tim Ferriss 57:29 Actually, may I ask, uh-

Liv Boeree 57:31 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 57:31 ... I apologize for doing this herky-jerky questioning style, but did you have any of those types of experiences when you were younger?

Liv Boeree 57:38 No.

Tim Ferriss 57:38 That you recall? No.

Liv Boeree 57:39 No. I was not, like, a weird kid or, y- you know, that had... [laughs] Sorry.

Tim Ferriss 57:45 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 57:45 Let me start again.

Tim Ferriss 57:46 You weird kid.

Liv Boeree 57:46 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 57:47 You weren't like the kid from The Sixth Sense.

Liv Boeree 57:48 No, I wasn't The Sixth Sense kid, no.

Tim Ferriss 57:50 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 57:50 Uh, [laughs] no, I did not, is to answer that question.

Tim Ferriss 57:54 Okay, got it.

Liv Boeree 57:54 I had not really ever had, I think, anything. You know, like, I never saw a ghost or anything like that.

Tim Ferriss 57:59 [laughs] I'm not asking about ghosts.

Liv Boeree 58:01 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 58:01 I mean-

Liv Boeree 58:02 Well, to me, this is, this is-

Tim Ferriss 58:03 Don't lump me in with the ghost hunters. Come on.

Liv Boeree 58:06 I don't... But that... To... I want to just paint the picture of the-

Tim Ferriss 58:09 Yeah

Liv Boeree 58:09 ... I was a very, in fact, like, a deep skeptic.

Tim Ferriss 58:12 Right. Well, you still are a deep skeptic in a lot of ways.

Liv Boeree 58:14 Right, right.

Tim Ferriss 58:14 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 58:15 But, like, certainly then, like, I'd never had anything weird that I couldn't really explain-

Tim Ferriss 58:18 Okay, got it

Liv Boeree 58:18 ... in any conventional way. I've certainly not had any time loops or, or anything like that, or weird voices in my head. Um, [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 58:25 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 58:26 But yeah, to answer your question of, like, is it a sort of common thing in poker?

Tim Ferriss 58:30 No, not so much a common thing in poker, but have you since had more of those types of experiences?

Liv Boeree 58:37 Not of, like, explicit premonitions, no. I've not... Nothing even close to that. I have had one really notable thing that is... Yeah, I'm, I, uh, yeah, I, I am happy to talk about it. It-

Tim Ferriss 58:53 If you change your mind, we can cut it later.

Liv Boeree 58:54 Exactly. [laughs] For want of a better word, I had an extreme energy healing.

Tim Ferriss 58:59 Hmm.

Liv Boeree 59:00 An almost accidental one. So it was a few years ago, and seemingly out of the blue, I started getting this very unpleasant sensation in my ear where partic- it was, like, a sort of low-frequency buzzing, humming quite frequently. Like, so, so some, some kind of tinnitus.

Tim Ferriss 59:19 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 59:20 But it was almost like a pressure. And voices, particularly men's voices, became distorted to the point that they were unbearable to listen to. And it was really bumming me out, 'cause it would, it would come in, like, clusters. I would have it, like, for a few hours, and it would go away and come later on in the day. And it, it was stopping me from doing any social events because any, any loud scenario was unbearable, but particularly men speaking. I just couldn't handle it. And this went on and off for a few months, and I went and saw a doctor, multiple doctors, and had hearing tests. And they said, "Oh, you're losing your hearing in the, the low frequencies of your, of your hearing in that ear. We think you have Meniere's disease." Meniere's is this degenerative thing which usually people end up completely deaf when they have it, where basically the, the nerve cells in, in the inner ear s- uh, start dying, and they don't really know why. They think it's something to do with, like, salts and ion channels. And it's incurable as far as they know. And, and so I was told that's what I probably have, and they were like, "We're really sorry. It's..." You know, it was just bad news to find that out. And also because one of the s- uh, symptoms of it is you start having, uh, balance problems as well. You get, like, these vertigo attacks, and people be, like, vomiting and so on. And so you can imagine, I was, like, really down in the dumps finding this out. And then cut to three months later or so, I go to Burning Man, and I have for the first time one of these vertigo attacks on one of the, one of the days. I mean, I wasn't completely sober, but, um, it was not a good time, as you can imagine, having a vertigo attack while not being sober for the first time. So I was then really down in the dumps. And then on the last night of the Burn, I was talking to some, you know, some friends, and started talking to this girl who I kind of, I don't know that well. But she's a friend of a friend, and I mention about my ear, and she's like, "Oh, well, I, I do energy healing. I'm an energy healer." And I was like, [scoffs] "I, I don't know what that is, but sure. Do whatever you wanna do. Yeah, have a go." She's like, "I, I can try." And she sort of put her hand over my ear for a few minutes, and then she says, I remember her saying something like, "There's something there. I need to get it." And she starts sucking over my ear with her mouth, like not touching it, but just like [whooshes] . And it was really unpleasant 'cause it was like, you know, you can imagine that sensation of someone, like, inhaling over your ear. And I was like, "Oh, please stop." She's like, "No, I need to get this. There's something there." And she does it, I don't know, for a few minutes, and then eventually kinda [scoffs] collapses in a heap on the floor crying and freezing cold going, "Oh my God, that was, that was bad. I don't know what that was. That was really, really bad." Uh, and I [scoffs] again, I was not fully sober, so this is slightly, uh, you know, retelling. But I just remember being so shocked because I, I just didn't expect anything to actually happen. I didn't really feel anything other than this, like, unpleasant sensation of her sucking, but I was so shocked at the way she was now reacting because she was shocked. She, she, she, she did not seem to expect whatever had, had just happened to her. And she said afterwards, you know, she came round after a little while, and she's like, "I don't know what it was. It was, like, bad energy. I don't know. It's gone. I'm very pleased to say it's fully gone, and it's, it's gone away." And I was like, "Well, okay, what does that mean for my symptoms? Am I cured?" She's like, "Yeah, yeah, you'll probably have symptoms for a couple more weeks, and then you'll be fine." And that's exactly what happened. And I haven't had any problems since. So yeah, I don't... [laughs] Uh, it kinda just blew my world open because aside of that premonition thing, which I'd kind of forgotten about, I have not ever subscribed to anything like that. I, like, I'm a physicist. In fact, like, you know, I'm proud, like, I kind of built a career of being a, like, materialist, rationalist physicist.

Tim Ferriss 1:03:02 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 1:03:02 And I don't have any time for any of that stuff. It's all nonsense. It's all confirmation bias. You know, uh, like no one's ever actually tested it empirically or proven it. You know, like show me the study, and I'll believe it. But here I am having that experience with, like, two what feel like pretty incontrovertible data points that something that I cannot explain happened, and fortunately was incredibly beneficial to me, like such a blessing. So yeah. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:03:32 [laughs] So these, these experiences are particularly interesting to me, right, as direct firsthand experiences, of course secondhand now that I'm listening, but are, are particularly interesting to me when I'm speaking with someone who has demonstrated a very well-developed ability to use system two-

Liv Boeree 1:03:56 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 1:03:57 ... thinking and rationality and reasoning and mathematics and so on in not just the world, but in competitive arenas, right? So you have a calibrated and also tested ability to use those faculties that you've developed. And I'm glad you're mentioning these things just because weird shit happens, and the idea that we have it all figured out is ludicrous, right?

Liv Boeree 1:04:28 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:28 I, even though humans at any point in history, whether you go back to the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages, [laughs] you know, I'm sure, you know, 6,000 years ago [laughs] or whenever it was with the Egyptians, I'm sure they thought they had most things figured out. And it's just so clear when you begin to really poke and prod and as you gain more years and have more experiences, especially if you start pushing into some strange corners-

Liv Boeree 1:04:52 Mm

Tim Ferriss 1:04:52 ... that there's a lot we simply don't understand. And even if we were to, say, not chalk those up to false memories, but let's just say we chalk it up to placebo effect.

Liv Boeree 1:05:04 Right.

Tim Ferriss 1:05:05 Nonetheless, even if it were just placebo effect-

Liv Boeree 1:05:08 Incredible

Tim Ferriss 1:05:09 ... that doesn't-

Liv Boeree 1:05:10 Yeah [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:05:10 ... diminish the absurd inexplicability of it-

Liv Boeree 1:05:15 Exactly. Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 1:05:16 ... with the current sort of m- mechanisms that we understand, right? And that's super exciting to me. It's super exciting to me, and it doesn't mean that you nor I would advocate that people just accept everything at face value. Of course not. There's horseshit everywhere.

Liv Boeree 1:05:33 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:05:33 I mean, and we're sitting in Austin, like, the, the world capital of-

Liv Boeree 1:05:36 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:05:36 ... spirituality. There's so much nonsense and so many charlatans, but I do pay attention to people like you who have demonstrated in other areas that they have the ability to think rationally and have some grasp of, you have a, a very good grasp of science and so on, right? That's kind of one of the first litmus tests for me.

Liv Boeree 1:06:00 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:00 If someone's sharing something with me, I'm like, "All right, can this person show me, can they fight logically, uh, out of a paper bag," right?

Liv Boeree 1:06:08 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:08 Like, can they, [laughs] can they, like, have they demonstrated any ability to use sort of structured reasoning in other places?

Liv Boeree 1:06:15 Are they able to cross-examine their own beliefs?

Tim Ferriss 1:06:17 Right. Exactly. Exactly. And, uh, are they skeptical in other areas? Or is it just like, okay, they accept a- anything as long as it's alternative [laughs] , but they reject, you know, like Western science-

Liv Boeree 1:06:31 Right [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:06:31 ... for any number of reasons that don't make sense to me. Like [laughs] if you've ever had antibiotics, Western science may have saved your life, and there, there are many other examples. I certainly wouldn't be here if it weren't for-

Liv Boeree 1:06:41 Right

Tim Ferriss 1:06:41 ... Western medicine, let's just say, not science. I struggle with where to even take this 'cause there's so many directions it could go that are pretty strange. And I don't wanna co-opt physics, so please give me a slap here if this is just an amateur butchering the, the good name of, of physics. But when I've, when I've talked to, I've had a number of cognitive scientists on the podcast, like Donald Hoffman. I've had physicists on the podcast. Although some would con- cons- consider Michio Kaku more of a- ... science communicator, but still has some fundamentals.

Liv Boeree 1:07:15 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:15 I've had private conversations certainly with a number of physicists, and I'm, I, I, I lack the m- the foundation of mathematics necessary to fully appreciate it. But when you even start to look at the conversations that were being had between Einstein and Bohr way back in the day relative to quantum mechanics, putting aside even the, say, ex- the experimental design and evidence for quantum entanglement that had been done I think in the Canary Islands and in other places, stuff is really strange, right? Like, just even spacetime itself as an objective reality. I mean, there are, there are pieces people can find online by qualified scientists on the death of spacetime, right?

Liv Boeree 1:08:03 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:03 [laughs] And thinking about that as, uh, almost a, a UI that we have evolved to utilize, but not as the one and only user interface to-

Liv Boeree 1:08:15 Right

Tim Ferriss 1:08:16 ... whatever we might be contending with.

Liv Boeree 1:08:18 And, like, Donald Hoffman even thinks that, well, and not just Donald Hoffman. He, I mean, he, he thinks that consciousness essentially gives rise to space.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:27 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 1:08:27 And while a lot of theoretical physicists poo-poo his ideas, and I think by and large they are correct to, even they would agree that it seems like space itself is an emergent property. It's not a fundamental thing. You know, we're not objects rattling around in a big, empty box. It is a thing that emerges from basically interactions of mathematical functions.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:52 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 1:08:53 Whether it's on a substrate or whether it... I don't know if it even needs a substrate. I'm, I'm too rusty on that stuff. But it's super weird. If you dig into the fundamental-

Tim Ferriss 1:08:59 Right

Liv Boeree 1:09:00 ... structure of this reality.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:00 And this is not like a-

Liv Boeree 1:09:01 Yeah

Tim Ferriss 1:09:02 ... you know, Wiccan witchcraft shop with, like, tarot cards-

Liv Boeree 1:09:05 No

Tim Ferriss 1:09:05 ... in the display case. Not to knock that, right? But, like, we're talking about some of the most esteemed scientists in a hard science with peer-reviewed publications and so on. And if you just look at that stuff closely enough, shit's really weird.

Liv Boeree 1:09:22 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:22 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 1:09:22 There's a paper I was recently reading that's, like, digging into the, th- that it seems like spacetime is r- well, space itself is essentially coming out of observers interacting with each other.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:37 Oh, I love-

Liv Boeree 1:09:37 Like, consciousnesses interacting with each other.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:39 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 1:09:39 But it's really, from what I can tell, really granular, legit physics. I mean, it's, it's a math paper basically.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:45 Yeah. We'll see. [laughs]

Liv Boeree 1:09:45 Um, it's beyond my pay grade.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:46 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 1:09:47 So I don't know.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:47 Well, I, I may need your... [laughs]

Liv Boeree 1:09:49 I wanna, I wanna send it to, like, Sean Carroll. I don't know if you've ever had him on, but-

Tim Ferriss 1:09:51 Sean Carroll I haven't had on, but my brother-

Liv Boeree 1:09:54 He's amazing

Tim Ferriss 1:09:54 ... introduced me to his podcast. Mindscape?

Liv Boeree 1:09:56 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:57 Is it Mindscape? Excellent podcast.

Liv Boeree 1:09:59 So good.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:59 So if Sean Carroll is out there listening or if anyone knows him, let him know I'm a, I'm a... [laughs] He may not wanna hear this. I don't know what his opinion will be of me. But big fan of his podcast. He is a damn fine thinker and a damn fine communicator.

Liv Boeree 1:10:12 He really is, yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:13 And he had an excellent episode on, I think it was sort of a, an archeological exploration of Stonehenge and other artifacts as external mnemonic devices.

Liv Boeree 1:10:30 Hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:31 Super cool. So Liv, Olivia, question for you.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:37 How do you, as someone who is a trained rationalist materialist, although you may not identify as solely those things, I don't wanna imply that, how do you integrate some of these experiences into your [laughs] life, your framework-

Liv Boeree 1:10:54 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:10:54 ... your worldview? What do you do with that?

Liv Boeree 1:10:56 It's tricky. I think with all these things it's like walking this fine line between gullibility, open-mindedness, whatever you wanna call it, and skepticism and, and cynicism. And I think where my poker training comes in handy is that poker trains you to think in probabilities. You're never certain about anything. Like, you could have aces or you could be bluffing me with six-four suited that missed the card it needed. So you become very comfortable in terms of, like, living, like, holding concurrent belief states in your mind with different weighted probabilities of those things being true. So with these, like, you know, these two weird unexplainable experiences that I had, you know, whether it was the ear thing was just pure placebo, which would still be crazy 'cause it would mean that, like, basically I have the ability to heal my mind by thinking I was going through some kind of, like, thing being sucked out my ear.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:49 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 1:11:49 Fine.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:49 And potentially heal your inner ear.

Liv Boeree 1:11:51 Yeah, like, like, I was-

Tim Ferriss 1:11:52 Also

Liv Boeree 1:11:52 ... literally told I had a degenerative thing and I was gonna go deaf, and, like, no one's been cured of it. And this has miraculously gone away. So whatever the hell happened, the point is I didn't go and change my life. I didn't suddenly go and be like, "That's it. I'm gonna go and practice energy healing and become a witch" and so on. Like, I've still am an adherent to the scientific method. It's just that I've now broadened my, you know... B- as you mentioned, like, you know, it's almost like people believe in the scientism as opposed to being scientists. A true scientist is that you are maximally curious and you try, you do your best to devise experiments in order to get reliable, robust results that can, you can use to predict the world. And you try and minimize all the biases and things that could mess up your experiment and give you a faulty result. And so there's no reason why I can't incorporate these two data points in terms of... I mean, I haven't gone out and done any scienc- yeah, I, I really should, I guess, go and do some tests and see if I can try and recreate those, that, that experience, but it's very difficult because it was a set, set and setting were very important in what happened there I would assume anyway. I don't know that. But-

Tim Ferriss 1:12:54 Well, when they make the Netflix series about it and they recreate the entire environment-

Liv Boeree 1:12:57 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:12:57 ... and then you can sit down and try to recreate it.

Liv Boeree 1:12:59 Yeah. So what I, I guess I've done is I have up-weighted, you know. Whereas before I would've given the probability that, like, energy healing is a real thing, I would've given it, like, a, you know... Well, probably if you'd asked my old, like, skeptical self, I would've literally said it's zero. But, you know, I wasn't so, such a bad Bayesian that I would give it actual zero.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:18 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 1:13:19 Maybe, like, one in a million.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:20 [laughs] Bayesian.

Liv Boeree 1:13:21 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:13:23 Oh, that's good. We can't, we don't have time to unpack that, but all right.

Liv Boeree 1:13:25 No, no, but yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:26 Keep going.

Liv Boeree 1:13:26 It would be like, you know, I would've given it a one in a million. And now I've updated it, you know, with this evidence to... How many orders of magnitude [laughs] do I wanna go? I mean, I will give it, I at least give it a 1 in 100.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:40 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 1:13:40 You know? But do I give it more than... I still give it l- I, I think it's more likely that there is a, an explanation through what we know conventionally that is still more probable than that it is something completely n- like, some completely novel thing that is untapped. But that said, you know, I've actually had a few other little ones I won't go into, but, like, other little data points of just, like, weird energy things that have happened in certain scenarios where I've, like... It's helped me and so on. But it's still important to keep the, like, skeptical hat on.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:12 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 1:14:13 And, you know, extraordinary beliefs require extraordinary evidence.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:17 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 1:14:17 And in order for me to, like, give up everything that I know about current, our current understanding of the world, I would need significantly more data points, and I think that would... It's just not the practical way to go forward.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:29 Yeah. I would also add to that, that if folks want to be proper skeptics, you owe it to yourself and to the people you interact with to be an informed skeptic.

Liv Boeree 1:14:39 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:39 So if you are going to invoke the name of science [laughs] and not invoke it like the name of Odin in some, like-

Liv Boeree 1:14:48 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:14:49 ... you know, God works in mysterious ways kind of way, you need to actually, my opinion, have the ability to read a study and understand a study-

Liv Boeree 1:14:59 Yes

Tim Ferriss 1:14:59 ... and study design. It's not good enough to get the journalistic interpretation from The Wall Street Journal-

Liv Boeree 1:15:06 Right

Tim Ferriss 1:15:06 ... or fill-in-the-blank online publication. That's not good enough. It's also not good enough for you to just get the gist of a few sentences in an abstract.

Liv Boeree 1:15:14 Confidence intervals. You need to, like-

Tim Ferriss 1:15:16 Right. So confidence intervals, understanding, powering un- because you'll also find folks who... And [laughs] I always, I've been saying scientism, but I guess it's scientism, the sort of, like, capital S.

Liv Boeree 1:15:25 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:15:26 In either case, it has a capital S and it's not good. So if, if you s- come to that, one of the telltale characteristics that I've come across is they'll ask if something was a controlled study or a placebo-controlled or randomized study, randomized control, you know, RCT, and they'll say, "Well, how many, how many subjects were there?" Or, "What was the N?" If they get, you know, fancy. And I might say, "20, 25." And they're like, "Oh, yeah."

Liv Boeree 1:15:48 Ugh.

Tim Ferriss 1:15:49 "Small study." Well-

Liv Boeree 1:15:50 Nonsense

Tim Ferriss 1:15:51 ... and I'm like, it's not that simplistic, right? [laughs] There are a lot, there are quite a few variables you have to take into account. So recommendations for folks who are interested. Number one, Studying the Studies by Peter Attia, MD. Excellent series of blog posts that take you into the fundamentals of understanding how to dissect and understand a study, uh, which includes meta-analyses and gets into the risks of taking meta-analyses as gospel also, because garbage in, garbage out, and there's, there's a lot to it. Another recommendation, actually a podcast that I did oh, six years ago, I realized when I pulled this up. This is podcast number 194, The Magic and Power of Placebo. This is with Eric Vance, who wrote a book called Suggestible You, subtitle, The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal. And he's written very widely on placebos, an excellent book. Uh, many of his feature pieces are, are exceptional. There was a great piece in Wired magazine probably 10 years ago on the, the evolution of the placebo effect and how it has changed depending on the culture-

Liv Boeree 1:17:05 Hmm

Tim Ferriss 1:17:05 ... and other influences. So in certain places, say a, a placebo pill in a blue capsule or a red capsule will perform better than other colors. [laughs] It's really-

Liv Boeree 1:17:13 Don't have a blue or red one in this day and age.

Tim Ferriss 1:17:14 That's true.

Liv Boeree 1:17:15 No. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:17:15 That is true, yeah. We can pick other colors. But the, the context that surrounds that is, is really, really interesting. And then the last thing I would recommend people check out is cognitive biases, and looking at both frameworks intended to avoid them and just getting a better understanding. So you can go to Wikipedia and just look up-

Liv Boeree 1:17:32 Mm-hmm

Tim Ferriss 1:17:32 ... cognitive biases and get a pretty basic list. You can look at something like Poor Charlie's Almanack with Charlie Munger, although it's a bit dense and, uh, so-

Liv Boeree 1:17:40 Yeah, it's intense

Tim Ferriss 1:17:40 ... a l- it's a little user-unfriendly in a lot of respects. But what were you gonna say?

Liv Boeree 1:17:45 I would recommend some of Julia Galef's work on-

Tim Ferriss 1:17:48 Yeah, absolutely

Liv Boeree 1:17:49 ... the scout mindset and, uh, motivated reasoning.

Tim Ferriss 1:17:52 What was the first one?

Liv Boeree 1:17:54 The scout mindset.

Tim Ferriss 1:17:54 Scout mindset.

Liv Boeree 1:17:55 Yeah. I mean, she did a TED Talk on it, but she's just written a book on it as well. And I think she actually goes in, if I remember rightly, she goes in-

Tim Ferriss 1:18:01 And her last name is G-A-L-E-F?

Liv Boeree 1:18:03 Yes.

Tim Ferriss 1:18:03 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 1:18:04 You know, when I first learnt about rationality, like I, I, you know, went, uh, read everything on Less Wrong, if people know that, which is incredible resource for it and it, you know, really breaks down, you know, how you get this, you know, your brain which is like the map to match the actual territory, which is the universe, as accurately as possible. But where I think it's maybe lacking a little bit now, because I've had some of these weirder experiences, where I wasn't, you know, in the cla- classical sense, rational. Like my, uh, you know, clearly went off the beaten path into some, like, weird land, but it was actually very beneficial to me. Even if it was, like, some completely useful fiction, it was still useful.

Tim Ferriss 1:18:41 Yeah, yeah.

Liv Boeree 1:18:41 You know? And this idea of, like, useful fictions I think needs to be explored further.

Tim Ferriss 1:18:46 Yeah. I'd also add that much like poker, science, I don't think a lot of folks realize, is largely a game of probabilities.

Liv Boeree 1:18:54 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:18:54 You don't prove something 100% most of the time. It's like, well...

Liv Boeree 1:18:59 Literally never, actually.

Tim Ferriss 1:19:00 Exactly. I mean, you, you can have overwhelmingly compelling data even with, say, an observational study, say with the sort of quintessential example would be cigarette smoking causing lung cancer.

Liv Boeree 1:19:12 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:19:12 Right? But most of the time it's like this suggests with this degree of certainty that this is the case. But when you start to look at the replication crisis, which is not just in social sciences, it's all over the place, and especially if you start to actually Roll up your sleeves and get involved in science, whether that's as a subject. I've been a subject in studies at all sorts of places. [laughs] I started doing it as an undergrad. I was a subject in one of, uh, Daniel Kahneman's studies.

Liv Boeree 1:19:42 Hm.

Tim Ferriss 1:19:42 And, uh, it was not very intellectually engaging. It was like space bar every time and like a, you know, green square popped up or something. But I needed the $7 an hour [laughs] or whatever it was. And I've been a subject at Stanford with heat exhaustion experiments. That was also not terribly fun. Marching to exhaustion with like a-

Liv Boeree 1:20:00 Ugh

Tim Ferriss 1:20:00 ... esophageal probe and an anal probe kind of meeting in the middle. In fatigues with weights on a treadmill in a sauna to, like, complete some-

Liv Boeree 1:20:09 Collapse

Tim Ferriss 1:20:09 ... mental collapse.

Liv Boeree 1:20:10 Jeez.

Tim Ferriss 1:20:11 Yeah, so why do I do these things? Because I'm interested in seeing the process. And even some of the best science you could point to in the most prestigious journals, when you actually get in there, it's a lot messier than people think, right? But people wanna have confidence in something, then religion has become so out of fashion that they look to the high priests of science. And they're like, "At least I have the confidence in this being true."

Liv Boeree 1:20:36 So I actually wanted, one of my next videos I wanna make on this, which is about basically these signaling prestige bad incentives that get s- society stuck-

Tim Ferriss 1:20:46 Mm

Liv Boeree 1:20:46 ... in these kind of, these traps-

Tim Ferriss 1:20:48 Yeah

Liv Boeree 1:20:48 ... essentially. So we're stuck in one of those with the current status quo of, of the way science is done. And this is not at all to knock any scientist. You know, they're doing their absolute best. But the s- the way the system has been designed, we give all the reward to the people who f- first create the, like, you know, c- make the new fancy discovery, and don't give any credit to the people who then actually replicate it and verify it.

Tim Ferriss 1:21:10 Yeah, totally true.

Liv Boeree 1:21:10 So there's this incredible incentive to be always looking for some new novel thing-

Tim Ferriss 1:21:14 Yeah

Liv Boeree 1:21:16 ... in order to get that, you know, your thing published in Nature and get those research dollars for the next time. But it doesn't actually really advance human knowledge.

Tim Ferriss 1:21:23 Yeah.

Liv Boeree 1:21:24 Because so many of these things don't replicate. So it's sort of like you, we're sort of stuck in this spiral of just, like, everyone's trying to p- do whatever they can to get in the journal. There's a name for it. So there's this really incredible short online book called Inadequate Equilibria.

Tim Ferriss 1:21:36 Okay.

Liv Boeree 1:21:37 By the guy who wrote most of the stuff on Less Wrong-

Tim Ferriss 1:21:39 Yeah

Liv Boeree 1:21:39 ... Eliezer Yudkowsky. And I recommend-

Tim Ferriss 1:21:41 [laughs] Inadequate Equilibria, the-

Liv Boeree 1:21:43 Yes. It's, it's in-

Tim Ferriss 1:21:44 It's a heady na- heady name.

Liv Boeree 1:21:45 Yeah. Oh, man. I know it sounds... It's so good. It has one of the best things. It has a, a discussion, a fictitious discussion with an alien from a perfect society, a basic person who thinks everything that's wrong in our society is, is because of, like, there's bad people being greedy, and then with a cynical, smart economist. And they have this three-way discussion talking about, like, reason why the US healthcare system is so expensive, and it sort of goes into this meandering thing about-

Tim Ferriss 1:22:07 That's a cool premise.

Liv Boeree 1:22:08 It's so good. Like, I-

Tim Ferriss 1:22:10 Yeah

Liv Boeree 1:22:10 ... like, you must include this in the show notes.

Tim Ferriss 1:22:12 Yeah. How long would you say it is?

Liv Boeree 1:22:13 Um, I mean, ideally they read... They could just read chapter three, honestly. It's like a 40, 45-minute read.

Tim Ferriss 1:22:19 Oh, it's, yeah, it's short.

Liv Boeree 1:22:21 Yeah. It's like a book chapter.

Tim Ferriss 1:22:22 All right. Yeah.

Liv Boeree 1:22:22 And you can kind of read it standalone.

Tim Ferriss 1:22:23 We'll put this, we'll put it in the show notes.

Liv Boeree 1:22:25 But basically it's, it's talking about these traps that we can get into, where it gets people, now speaking game theory, it, it, it gets society stuck in, like, shitty Nash equilibria. So a Nash equilibrium-

Tim Ferriss 1:22:36 Yeah

Liv Boeree 1:22:36 ... is when, you know, two people or, or, or multiple people are playing in a strategy where it would be bad for anyone to deviate from that strategy. It's like everyone's stuck doing that. But not all Nash equilibria are actually created equal. There are some where if everyone was doing, you know, X instead of Y, everyone would be happier. They'd also be, like, you know, now stuck in a new thing. Like, a good example of this would be... Well, so I just made a, a video on, uh, called The Beauty Wars, on, uh, about this, like, fictitious thing called Moloch, which I call, like, the demon of negative sum games, basically. It's like the god of negative sum games.

Tim Ferriss 1:23:09 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 1:23:09 It's the, a force of bad, usually economic incentives that make people sort of sacrifice things that they want in order to optimize for a short-term goal. And the example I talk about is these beauty filters on Instagram. I don't know if you've spent any time on-

Tim Ferriss 1:23:23 They are horrifying. I mean, in how dramatic they are. I'd never seen these things before until my girlfriend showed them to me, and I was-

Liv Boeree 1:23:31 They're mad

Tim Ferriss 1:23:31 ... dumbfounded.

Liv Boeree 1:23:32 They're so... Well, they're horrifying not only in how impressively good they are at doing stuff, but also how now the really insidious ones are the subtle ones.

Tim Ferriss 1:23:41 Hm.

Liv Boeree 1:23:42 Because there are some where you would never, you would go online and you would not be able to tell. If you don't know the person, or even if you know the person, you wouldn't necessarily be able to tell. You just think it's a good picture of them. They're so subtle, but they're so effective. It seems like there is clearly just some kind of optimal face structure that, you know, our eyes find pleasing. And it just tweaks people. It makes the eyes a little bit wider apart or a little bit bigger, or the lips, you know. It changes the proportions just right that it sets the dopamine spike off in your brain. And-

Tim Ferriss 1:24:08 It's gonna make online dating really hard.

Liv Boeree 1:24:10 Oh, man. Uh, well, so as a girl on Instagram-

Tim Ferriss 1:24:12 Not that I'm on the field.

Liv Boeree 1:24:13 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:24:13 I'm not on the playing field. But-

Liv Boeree 1:24:14 But, right

Tim Ferriss 1:24:15 ... if I were, that sounds like a headache.

Liv Boeree 1:24:16 Well, and but also for people who use them. Like, so I'm a girl on Instagram. You know, I for a while certainly, like, made a lot of my career off the way I looked. Like, there's such an incentive pressure. You know, if I wanna keep playing the game-

Tim Ferriss 1:24:28 Sure

Liv Boeree 1:24:28 ... of trying to grow my Instagram, like a sexy pic-

Tim Ferriss 1:24:31 It's the arms race.

Liv Boeree 1:24:31 Yeah, it's the arms race, exactly. And that's what Moloch is. Moloch is this, like, the god of arms races. And it's like these, these bad incentives. Like, the cheap thing for me to do is just to use one of these AI filters on, on, on all my pictures, and I know I'm gonna look good and I'm gonna get a ton of likes and it'll grow my thing. But it will make me miserable in the process. And if you poll most, particularly women on, on Instagram, they are not having a good time with these things either on themselves. 'Cause if you then, like, compare your face side to side, it, you're just like, "Man, I..." You, you just, it just makes you feel ugly. And so we're in this weird situation where no one wants to do stuff that makes them hate their face, but they're doing it anyway. And that's what th- this, it's like a lower Nash equilibrium. You know, we could all be in a higher e- Nash equilibrium where we're not doing it, but instead we're all stuck down there because of these bad game theoretic incentives. So this is my current obsession, this thing called Moloch, and I think about it all the time.

Tim Ferriss 1:25:21 M-O-L-O-C-H, for people wondering.

Liv Boeree 1:25:24 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:25:24 And we'll, we'll link to that in the

Tim Ferriss 1:25:26 show notes. So just to underscore this for folks because I do suggest that everybody check out your YouTube channel, what's the best way for them to find your channel?

Liv Boeree 1:25:33 Probably the best thing is if they search for my name and then The Beauty Wars.

Tim Ferriss 1:25:38 Mm-hmm.

Liv Boeree 1:25:39 That'll link to the video I just talked about.

Tim Ferriss 1:25:40 All right.

Liv Boeree 1:25:41 And then you can find my channel from that.

Tim Ferriss 1:25:43 And, uh, just for the spelling everybody, it's Liv, L-I-V, last name B-O-E-R-E-E. Which means, I learned just beforehand...

Liv Boeree 1:25:52 [laughs] Drunk farmer.

Tim Ferriss 1:25:55 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 1:25:56 So they say.

Tim Ferriss 1:25:57 So they say. [laughs]

Liv Boeree 1:25:58 And I did grow up on a farm.

Tim Ferriss 1:26:00 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 1:26:01 And I did drink a lot. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:26:02 It's so good. So good. Yeah, Ferriss, you know, the best I can tell-

Liv Boeree 1:26:08 You're a big wheel

Tim Ferriss 1:26:08 ... it [laughs] could be that. It also refers to ferrous, like ferrous oxide, F-E-R-R-O-U-S.

Liv Boeree 1:26:15 Ooh, rusty.

Tim Ferriss 1:26:17 Because apparently some of my progenitors were silversmiths. I don't know how it all fits together. Seems like a very dubious story. I'm not sure. But I want s-

Liv Boeree 1:26:28 Ah.

Tim Ferriss 1:26:28 I want some story to go along with the last name.

Liv Boeree 1:26:31 Sure.

Tim Ferriss 1:26:31 But I don't have drunken farmer. That's an amazing one.

Liv Boeree 1:26:34 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:26:34 Uh, Liv, we should do a round two sometime. We're n-

Liv Boeree 1:26:38 I would love that

Tim Ferriss 1:26:38 ... we're practically neighbors. We have so much we could talk about. We've got a million other things, even in the notes in front of me, that we could cover and should cover. I'm thinking about this training.

Liv Boeree 1:26:47 Are you gonna do it?

Tim Ferriss 1:26:49 We'll see. Requires more mezcal to make that decision. [laughs]

Liv Boeree 1:26:53 I think we could, we could condense it down. We don't have to do the full eight weeks.

Tim Ferriss 1:26:56 Okay.

Liv Boeree 1:26:56 I think commit to even three weeks, honestly, I think you would... J.K. will still be better than you at that stage.

Tim Ferriss 1:27:03 [laughs]

Liv Boeree 1:27:03 I have to say that. No, he would be.

Tim Ferriss 1:27:07 All right. Three weeks, three weeks. I'm going to, I'm gonna sleep on that. I do my best thinking when I'm asleep.

Liv Boeree 1:27:11 [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:27:13 So let me sleep on that. Is there anything else that you would like to say? Any closing comments? Places you'd like to point people? Anything at all you'd like to say before we, before we wind this down?

Liv Boeree 1:27:23 No, I mean, I guess do check out my YouTube. Now I've moved to Austin and I'm, like, building a studio and everything, I'm gonna be ramping up production again, so I would love people to go and just sub to my channel so that they catch my stuff. Because of, you know, playing the rat race, the attention wars, that's the name of the next video, is The Attention Wars. Um, which is about the, like, why Twitter and everything is making us so angry and hate each other.

Tim Ferriss 1:27:46 Oof. Yeah.

Liv Boeree 1:27:48 Ugh. That's a big one.

Tim Ferriss 1:27:49 Talk about a nasty game.

Liv Boeree 1:27:50 Yeah. And Moloch. Moloch's in that.

Tim Ferriss 1:27:52 Moloch. Moloch's all over that.

Liv Boeree 1:27:54 Fucking Moloch. Yeah. [laughs]

Tim Ferriss 1:27:55 [laughs] So Liv, we're gonna link to everything in the show notes. Uh, people can find you at livboeree.com also, which I, I would imagine has links to many things.

Liv Boeree 1:28:06 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:28:06 And we'll put links to everything we've discussed, all the resources, Inadequate Equilibria [laughs] and, uh, all other good things in the show notes at tim.blog/podcast. And so nice to see you.

Liv Boeree 1:28:21 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:28:21 Thanks for taking the time.

Liv Boeree 1:28:22 This was awesome. Thank you.

Tim Ferriss 1:28:23 Super fun. Super fun. And for everybody listening, as per usual, thanks for tuning in. And until next time, just be a little kinder to yourselves and to others than you think is necessary. And take care.