Derric Haynie

That was super important.

But my coaches and a lot of the people that are better than me at poker are just naturally 140 IQ plus people.

They're just geniuses.

And I realized really quick that I was smart, but not as smart as them.

And I started to kind of feel my own personal like,

I mean, we're talking about, like, basically world-class chess is what I like to think about it as.

There's a lot of similarities with enumeration and combinatorics.

The difference is that chess, you know all of the pieces and positions, and in poker, there's hidden information, which brings in variables.

And there's also variable outcomes because, you know, the cards are basically dealt at random.

I realized that I was never going to be like that grand master of chess.

And there's a big problem with that because the best player at the poker table is the one that makes all the money.

The second, so it's like, it's a logarithmic scale.

It's like the best player makes, you know, twice as much as the second best player who makes twice as much as the third best player.

And then everybody else doesn't make anything.

They're all losers.

And so you could be one, the cliche poker statement is, you know, it doesn't matter how good you are if, you know, if you're,

surrounded by eight people that are better than you, then you're gonna lose.

And the fact is, is actually, if you're surrounded by two or three people at the poker table that are better than you, you're not gonna make nearly as much money.

So there's ceilings in poker that are really hard, you know, you have to humble yourself and kind of realize you're not gonna break through them.

Oh, God.