$50M Poker Pro Shares Emotional Intelligence Tricks For Founders

- October 6, 2025 (5 months ago) • 01:15:26

Transcript

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Daniel Negreanu	I went broke many, many times. But the downswings are probably the most important part. Typically, with a breakdown—when things are going badly—that's an opportunity for a breakthrough.
00:15	Shaan Puri	Alright, today we got Daniel Negreanu. He is here. I've been watching this guy on TV—feels like half my life. He is a poker player who I think you've had over $50 million in tournament cashes, so tournament winnings. You're known for your ability to read people, for your longevity in the game, for your personality, and how you built a brand around the game of poker. I think you've won something like—is it five or six—World Series of Poker bracelets?
00:42	Daniel Negreanu	Well, we're at 7, but it should be a lot more, if I'm being honest.
00:46	Shaan Puri	And he's humble to boot. So here he is: Daniel DeGrano. Listen — people are gonna be like, "Why are you guys having a poker player on a business podcast?" The reason is: (a) I'm selfish — I played poker my whole life and I wanted to talk to this guy. That's what the podcast is. (b) There are so many parallels between poker and business. Whether it's thinking about it in terms of investing, bankroll management, pot odds, and things like this — all these frameworks that I've used from poker in business — but also the people side, the human side, the reading-people side. You were one of the best at that. So, thanks for coming on, dude.
01:19	Daniel Negreanu	Absolutely — you're absolutely right with your description, too, because there's just so many things about poker, poker. You have to register as a small business anyway, right? You're just self-employed, and getting out of bed to go and work is up to you. But you still have to make smart decisions, invest, and look for +EV situations [positive expected value]. </FormattedResponse>
01:36	Shaan Puri	So, Sam, I don't know if you've—if you followed poker back in the day—the sort of famous players...
01:43	Sam Parr	Yeah, I watched it on TV with Phil Ivey and Daniel. I've seen Daniel so many times.
01:46	Shaan Puri	And they looked a lot like Doyle Brunson — they looked like cowboys, right? They had these big personalities. It was like superheroes coming to a table. One guy was just "stone cold" — you couldn't read him. Another guy was the talker. Another had no fear gene in his body; he could just risk it all. That was the persona of these charismatic, personality poker players. If you fast-forward to now, it's hoodie on, sunglasses on, a scrawny kid who's doing math. Basically, in many ways it's a numbers game versus the way poker used to have this sort of gunslinger mentality. Daniel, was that accurate? How I described it?
02:26	Daniel Negreanu	Pretty much. I mean, you know, the difference between—and I think this is true with chess and other games too—the difference between... like, Bobby Fischer was asked, "Who's the greatest chess player of all time?" He said, "It's not fair. You can't make this... the players in 1905, right? Brilliant people; they didn't have access to the tools that they have now." So with both—are these kids more? Back in my day people had to figure it out on their own. Doyle Brunson, before he had computers, would run simulations by literally getting a deck of cards, a piece of paper, and a pencil. He would take an Ace and a King against a pair of fours, run out the board, and say, "Okay, Ace-King one," and he would do it like 100,000 times. Now, obviously, with the click of a button you have this data available to you, so it was a different type of skill set. And you're right: a lot of the more modern players are much more deliberate. They take a lot more time because, for the most part, they're doing calculations we didn't used to do. Used to be like this: I'd look at Sam and I'm like, "Yeah, Sam's full of it. He didn't have it. I call, right? That's the equation." However, now people are doing what's called—this might be a little bit above your audience's level of understanding—counting combinations. I'm just saying, because even for most poker players they don't understand combinatorics. Okay, so for example: you think your opponent has Ace-King. How many Ace-King combinations are possible? That's a difficult question for somebody who doesn't play poker. Well, there's four Aces and there's four Kings, so that's 16. So what you're doing in your head—or what these people are doing—is they're counting not just "Ace-King" as one, but 16, and then using other effects to decide, like, the pot odds, what they have. It is, like I said, kind of complex, and I probably shouldn't go down there.
04:03	Sam Parr	It's sort of like—why? I like this idea of Babe Ruth who shows up hungover and smoking a cigarette right before he goes up to hit. Now it's just all jack dudes who hit home runs and are technically perfect. But I'm like: I want the guy who ate steak and eggs in the morning and smokes a cigarette while he's practicing. </FormattedResponse>
04:20	Daniel Negreanu	The more updated version of that is absolutely John Daly, right? Tiger Woods was asked one time, "Why do you practice so much? Why are you up at 4 a.m.?" He replied, "If I was as talented as John Daly, I wouldn't have to." Tiger is getting up at 4 a.m. (or 5 a.m.) to go play golf. He sees John Daly at the bar—drinking, smoking, whatever—and they tee off around 9 a.m. If John Daly goes out there and shoots a 63... I agree with you, Sam. It's kind of romantic, frankly: just that old swashbuckler who just shows up and can still, you know...
04:53	Shaan Puri	Was there a moment like that that hooked you? Because, you know, I think the first poker boom I was part of was the Chris Moneymaker thing. I remember the final table with him and Sammy Farha—Farha was this experienced player; Moneymaker was an amateur who kind of won a mini-tournament that got him a ticket to the Main Event. It was like Willy Wonka—he got a golden ticket, then he got in and made it all the way to the final table. I vividly remember that was great TV. Was there a great TV moment, or a poker final-table moment, that for you made you think, "This is awesome — I want to be a part of this"?
05:25	Daniel Negreanu	Well, yeah — I’ll answer your question. But first, the moment you’re talking about is just sort of a watershed moment in poker. It was the first time where some amateur guy named Chris Moneymaker — you can’t make this up — put $40 into an online site, turned it into a $10,000 seat, and sat there. Now he’s up against the grizzled vet Sammy Farha — cigarette, suit, the whole old-school vibe — and he ends up winning. For me, my moment was a little further back. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the movie Rounders.
05:54	Shaan Puri	Yeah, of course — I love Rounders.
05:55	Daniel Negreanu	Rounders — great movie. In that film, Matt Damon is watching a scene between Johnny Chan, the master, and Erik Seidel. I used to watch those tapes as a teenager. I remember Phil Hellmuth — who's a buddy of mine and someone I like to needle. I watched him as a young guy in his twenties. Johnny Chan had won two years in a row, and then he was heads-up with Phil Hellmuth, and Phil Hellmuth won — this young kid. That was a little bit inspirational for me. I was 16 and thought, "I'm gonna be the next bat," you know? That was a big moment for me. I believe that was 1989.
06:26	Sam Parr	"By the way, Sean—let me ask you a quick question: have you ever heard Daniel tell the story about Scottie Wynn?"
06:32	Shaan Puri	"That's the one I was thinking of."
06:34	Daniel Negreanu	Yeah, I was actually there for that. That was 1998, when I'd won my first bracelet, and I was just coming up on the scene. I was 23 years old, I believe. I was there for the final table, and Scottie Winn was that guy. He was having a Michelob—that's what he drank—smoking a cigarette, and he was in the hand. He looks at the guy.
06:49	Sam Parr	"Beautiful mullet. Beautiful mullet."
06:51	Daniel Negreanu	He's got the black and white, the chains—everything, you know. And then he just gives him the, you know: > "Baby, you call, it's gonna be all over. Baby, that's right." and then he drinks his beer. It was amazing psychological warfare. I can dig into what happened there. So he's up against a guy who's not a professional, right? Highly stressful moment. You're training for days—14 hours a day, five days in a row—in a smoke-filled room, right? And this guy, Scotty, he's fighting you; he's a pro. And Scotty gives you the out. He puts this little idea in his head: if you call, baby, it's gonna be all over—no more pain, no more suffering; you get to go. Right? So I really believe—and Kevin McBride ended up saying the comment, what he said—we call that, you know, "speech play," if you will. That did it. That was what got him to call. And Scotty won. You know, Scotty Wynn was the world champion.
07:38	Sam Parr	That's exactly showing what Conor McGregor did to José Aldo, yeah.
07:43	Shaan Puri	> Yeah, exactly. There's a sort of mind game to this whole thing, and you're famous for reading people. I'm curious — there's probably some natural element to it, but it's a practiced skill you've done a bunch. > > In entrepreneurship and business, there's a big element of reading people. You're doing a deal with somebody, you're selling; it's really important to understand what's going on in the head of the other person and where they're coming from. > > So I'm curious: if you were going to give us a mini master class on reading people, what comes to mind? What are the big factors?
08:16	Daniel Negreanu	Okay, we're going to start from when you're born, and you're a little baby in your mother's arms. As a little baby, you can look at your mother and get a sense when Mama is happy or sad. How do they do that? That's a natural human instinct and ability, and we all have that—we're all born with it. What happens is, as we get older, we trust it less and less. Have you ever met someone and, within three seconds, thought, "There's something—I don't like this guy"?
08:40	Shaan Puri	Right.
08:40	Daniel Negreanu	You have no reason — there's nothing this person did — but something, a clue, just felt off. When you're a poker player and you're trying to read people, you trust your instincts in those spots. I used to — no joke — I did this as a teenager when I started becoming professional. I would go to the mall. I would sit on a bench. I'd wear sunglasses so people didn't think I was a weirdo, and I'd watch people walk by. I tried to get a sense of who each person was: were they picked on in high school? Are they confident? Are they insecure, depressed, or happy? Was this guy a football player? I'd make up these stories in my head to try to get an idea. So when I sit at a poker table, everything — from what you're wearing to what you do, where you're from — is a puzzle. I'm essentially profiling people, which we all have the capacity to do. In business, of course, it's super important. A guy comes and tells you, "Oh, you know, we had a great first quarter. It was unbelievable — we broke records." Why are you telling me all this? The way you are so boastful is probably because it's baloney. You have to get a sense for that. Often, what you do with people is remember what they look like when they're lying and look for that pattern again. I'll give you a simple example from poker. It was in the World Series of Poker Europe. I played with this guy on day one and he was chewing gum. I was watching: he was chewing gum, and then he bet all his money — he was all in — and he stopped chewing. He wasn't chewing his gum anymore. I thought, "I really want to see this hand." He turned it over — he was bluffing. I banked that in my memory. Four days later, at the final table, there was a big spot between me and him. He bets all his chips; he's chewing away. I fold. Later, he bets all his chips again and he's not chewing anymore. I call — he's bluffing. I was able to knock him out of the tournament. We all have that ability. I think it's really observation — noticing and looking for patterns. Everyone's unique and different, but there are some tried-and-true examples. People typically don't look you in the eye; they look away or down to the right because they're uncomfortable with you looking at them. They're doing something they shouldn't be doing, or they're saying something they shouldn't be saying — or they're lying to you.
11:00	Sam Parr	"Can we actually invert that? So, let's just say that — I think, you know, you've been involved in owning and investing in a handful of companies. If I were trying to get you to invest in my company, and I wanted to successfully lie to you, what would the checklist be that I would follow?"
11:14	Daniel Negreanu	I think certainty—for sure—is important. But again, here's the thing: the best con artists are also the best liars. They can fool you. I'd say an overexuberance of confidence is problematic. If you're just too... "Oh my God, this is the greatest thing," that rings false. If you actually acknowledge both good and bad, you might say, "Listen, we're in great shape; however, we really gotta work on this." Admitting something—being humble—almost shows honesty. It makes people think, "Wow, okay, why would he tell me this bad thing if the other part isn't true?" So if you were going to lie to me about A but tell me the truth about B, that doesn't look good for you... and now A is far more believable too...
11:57	Sam Parr	So... I would be—I would be confident, but a bit self-deprecating, and I would admit to my flaws. What else would I do?
12:03	Daniel Negreanu	Well, there's honesty there. Looking the person in the eye is a big one. I also think—never come off as desperate.
12:14	Sam Parr	Alright. I read a ton — almost a book a week. The reason I read so much is because my philosophy toward reading is: I want to see what worked for the winners I love and what strategies they used. Then I want to see what mistakes they all made, what common flaws they had, and I just want to avoid those. HubSpot asked me to put together a list of the books that have changed my life so far in 2025, and I did that. I listed seven books that made a meaningful difference in my life and explained the differences they had on me and the actions I took because of each book. I also listed my very particular ways of reading — I'm pretty strategic about how I read so much and how I remember what I read. I put this together in a very simple guide: seven books that had a huge impact on my life. You can scan the QR code below if you want to read it, or there's a link in the description — just click it and you'll see the guide. So, it's the seven books that had a massive change in my life this year so far, and also how I'm able to read so much. Check it out below. What's an example of not being desperate and also of being desperate?
13:24	Daniel Negreanu	Yeah, I'd say—okay—so, you know, desperate people front-load the pitch too much and they ask, right? If you really want to pitch somebody, you will play the long game. Don't even make an ask. Just be like, "Man, I'm working on this really great project—it's fantastic." Then, at the end of it, don't even ask for anything. Don't even say, "Well... ask him." Hopefully, if you've pitched it well and subtly, he's going to ask you. How much better is it when he says, "Whoa—so you guys taking money for investments?" And you say, "Yeah, we are, but, you know, we're in round one. It's not that we're— we're fine. Like, we've got money, but, you know, hey, listen, we're always open to listen to people." So now you flipped it on him. Instead of you selling him, he's like, "Oh man, I want in on that." That's a really solid way to get people on board with your vision, I think.
14:11	Shaan Puri	"You mentioned that when you were on your come up you would go to the mall and practice your observational skills. Without distraction, you'd just observe people—try to really understand how they move and how they think, and build up a profile of them. What were the other things you did to get good? You don't just become who you became without doing something uncommon. If you only did the common set of actions, you'd have had a common result. You must have done something uncommon to get an uncommon result. What else did you do on your come up that was very helpful for you?"
14:43	Daniel Negreanu	Yeah. On that note of observation—do you remember a show called Heroes many years ago? There was a character called Sylar, and all these people had superhero-type talents. He would go in, "pull their brain out," and he would now have that ability himself. When I started out, quite young, I would play with people and start to notice the same guys winning. I thought, okay—this week I'm getting inside Sam's head. I'm going to sit like him, put my chips like him, try to become him for the week and understand exactly how he thinks. I take all the good, leave the bad, then move on to Sean: let's be Sean for this week; let's really soak in what makes him successful—why is he winning? The idea was to create this super player: take the best skills from different people, look at what works and what doesn't, and then formulate a game plan that way. For me, it was learning from those who are already successful. That's easier to do today than it's ever been. I'm going to be streaming later today, playing for eight hours. You can watch me play for eight hours, see my whole cards, and hear me explain my thought process. Without even risking money at the poker table like we used to, you can just watch and learn that way. Then you start to think outside the box just from observation. I had a friend—a group friend—who we ultimately did start talking poker with, but early on it wasn't like that. I wasn't going to go up to him and be like, "Hey, would you just tell me all your strategies?"
16:10	Sam Parr	Cool. The listeners are going to hate hearing this story again because I say it 10,000 times, but I previously owned a media company that I sold, and it was wonderful. When I sold the company it was during COVID, so I sold it via Zoom. There were a lot of phone calls and a lot of Zoom meetings. You've talked a lot about negotiating and being able to read someone, but that's very physical. Is there a way you could teach me how to be better at reading or understanding what someone's thinking via Zoom or phone calls? Can you hear it in someone's voice, or just see them on camera, or do you think you have to be in real life?
16:47	Daniel Negreanu	Yeah. Well, obviously you can with Zoom, but I think—frankly—when it comes to business, this would be my go-to: the best way to get reads on people is when they are relaxed. Not during a business call, not on Zoom where everyone's buttoned up and ready to talk. Instead, think about when you go out for dinner and drinks. Something like, "We should check out this restaurant, have some drinks," and then talk about things unrelated to business. Understand who these people are, get a sense of them, and disarm them. I do this in poker all the time. I'll give you an example of what I often do. The idea is I want the person to be relaxed so I'll get more from them. I'll be in a spot where my opponent has bet all their chips, so it's a decision on me. Instead of looking at them, I look at the dealer and say, "Why did I do this to myself?" Then I see my opponent out of the corner of my eye—he's laughing, giggling. That usually means he thinks he has the best hand. I'm looking at the dealer and thinking, "Yeah, okay, what if he just has ace-jack?" Then I glance at the opponent's face and he reacts—giving himself away—and I can tell I can beat that. All of a sudden his demeanor changes, but the thing is he's disarmed because I'm not looking at him. The analogy with business is you're at that dinner or drinks and you're in reading mode. That's when you're going to get the best reads on who this person is and how they think. Especially with a little alcohol, they'll probably be a bit looser-lipped and disarmed, which makes it much easier. It's much more difficult when everyone is very stiff. You can't get authentic reads because it's practiced—you know, if you're taking a pitch from somebody they've probably done that pitch before and they're just going through the motions. That's not authentic. You need to see the real, and usually that happens away from formal environments.
18:38	Sam Parr	Is there a certain body part? You're describing this example of poker where you say, "what's the guy h jack," and you said he stopped smiling. But it's never that. To someone like me who doesn't know what I'm looking for, it doesn't seem that obvious. </FormattedResponse>
18:50	Daniel Negreanu	Yeah, well, there's a myriad of examples. The eyes are very, very telling — often, like in poker and otherwise. But the other one, too — and this is why, like I said, I like to use this as a strategy — is a smile. If you look at 10 smiles right now, and I showed you ten and five are real and five are fake, you'd be surprised how good you are at telling which ones are fake and which ones are real. A fake smile is one that's kind of like this; a real smile shows more movement up here [around the eyes]. So that's a tell to some. But, like I said, everybody's unique. The eyes are probably the most telling. Body language, too — body language is a big one. When people are talking, are they stiff, are they like this, or are they laid back in their chair? If someone's laid back in their chair, they're not really afraid of you looking at them; they're comfortable. You can sense when someone's comfortable versus not. And like I said, everyone's unique and individual, but body posture, eyes, smiles... A lot of guys are looking at "pulse" now — that's like a new thing — so everyone's covering their necks, of course, with scarves and things like that.
19:52	Sam Parr	Sean, have you guys ever heard this story? So in 1991 — the election, I think it was '92 — it was between George Bush Senior and Bill Clinton. The reputations weren't entirely known yet. The reputations that eventually formed were that Bill Clinton was this charismatic young guy who could woo people, and George Bush Senior was known as kind of an uptight, not-everyday type of guy. There's this famous debate that a lot of political folks say is when George Bush Senior lost to this up-and-coming guy. A young woman in the crowd was asking a question about a very everyday thing — she said, "I can't afford groceries." While she's asking the question, George Bush Senior very subtly looked at his watch like that — boom, it's over. Then the analysts go, "Look now at Bill Clinton." He grabs the mic, he walks closer, and he goes, "What did you say your name was? Can you tell me about your background? What do you do for work? Man, it's so hard to hear what you're going through. I'm so sorry." A decade later they did a test: they removed the audio from the video and only showed people the body language of the two candidates, Bush and Clinton. In another test, people could only listen to the audio. What they found was that the people who only watched the video and didn't hear the audio could predict the outcome exactly, whereas the people who only listened to the audio couldn't exactly tell what happened.
21:21	Shaan Puri	Right.
21:21	Sam Parr	And so the idea is that body language — seeing with your eyes — communicates significantly more than just audio. It was this amazing story where it was literally just: you looked at his watch like that, and that was the end of the election. That's what a lot of people say. Have you guys ever heard that?
21:37	Daniel Negreanu	I remember that too, and it makes so much sense — it's so on. Right, because the difference there is, like you said, Bill Clinton got personal. The body language mattered. How often are you talking to somebody today, in our age when people have cell phones, and they're just going, "yeah... uh-huh"? Do you feel like you're being listened to? Not really. You feel ignored or dismissed. Versus somebody who puts their phone down, looks at you, goes "uh-huh," and gives you a head nod. That person is someone you're more likely to want to engage with or feel respected by. So the example you gave — George Bush in that moment — people see that as disrespectful. It's the same as looking at your phone. What did Bill Clinton do? Oh, that was very empathetic: "What do you do? Where are you from? Tell me about your story." "Oh wow." Just look at those two different people. On that alone, it's such a drastic difference.
22:29	Shaan Puri	"Right. How did you get into poker? So what's the origin story for you? I'm curious if it just worked right away, or if you hit some rock bottoms early on and it sort of shifted you."
22:42	Daniel Negreanu	Yeah. I started as a teen. I was a pool player—playing snooker in Canada. We play snooker up there, you make some friends, and they say, "We're gonna go play some poker." I didn't know what that was. I'd bring a six-pack of beer and my $10. I’d lose that real quick, drink my beer, and mostly watch. They were playing these crazy wild-card games—follow the queen and all those stupid games—but I was watching. We started doing it more regularly, and at first I thought it was all luck. Then I noticed the same two or three guys always seemed to win and the same guys always lost. That intrigued me because I've always been very competitive. I remember buying a really bad book back then. It was very elementary, but it helped because it made me think about the game in a more sophisticated way. It took me a month or two to start figuring things out. That was my origin story. I was building up money, but I was a teenager and reckless. I went broke many times, but I had people around who saw I was good at poker and an honorable guy. So when I went broke I could borrow money—$500 or $1,000 back then. That borrowing was part of the learning experience. I think the relation to business is essentially this: if you have very little to lose—if you have a very small company—you can take shots. Whatever you lose, you can recover. Once you become a big company, though, you can't risk the whole thing to go back to where you started. I remember speaking at Kraft Foods [at a corporate event]. One person asked, "What would you do with Kraft Mac and Cheese? It's been like our staple." I used the poker analogy and said, "Listen, if I had a $500 bankroll, I could take risks to try to grow it. But once I have $2,000,000, I can't risk the whole $2,000,000 to go back to $500—it's too much." When I was broke, I would take shots. Once I've established a brand and have the money, I wouldn't mess with it too much. They wanted to change the recipe and the packaging, and I said, "Listen—if it's working, why mess with it? There's a risk there." So: take risks when you're on the low end of the totem pole. That's exactly when you should take them—especially in your twenties. Once you've established yourself, you should be much more risk-averse. I play poker for a living, but when it comes to investing I know very little. I'm very risk-averse. I have a Morgan Stanley guy; municipal bonds—I don't even know much about them, but they're safe. I don't gamble needlessly with that money.
25:18	Daniel Negreanu	Because I've already created the dream life that I want, so what's the... </FormattedResponse>
25:22	Shaan Puri	Right. There was a guy—when I was in college I took one class my senior year called "Getting Rich." I was a pre-med kid, so I'd already done the hard physics and biology. This was my blow-off class, but it turned out to be the most valuable one I took in college. They invited a guy from a hedge fund—or maybe it was a venture capital fund. The VC came in and asked, "Who here wants to start a business someday?" About 75% of the class raised their hands. He said, "Awesome. Who here is going to start a business right away? You're all graduating seniors—who's going to start a business when you graduate?" At that point, about 75% of the hands dropped; there were only two or three hands left. He asked, "What just happened?" Then he started asking people individually, "You said you wanted to start a business—why aren't you doing it now? What's coming first?" People answered, "Oh, I got this great job at McKinsey," or "I got this job at Goldman Sachs," or "I got this internship, so I'm going to do that for a few years to get experience, then I'll start the business." He said, "You guys have it backwards. When you're 21 or 22 and you can live off a futon—no mortgage, no kids, no expectations—this is the time to go broke repeatedly. You should try so many businesses during this era. Don't wait until you're 28 to 32, because then it'll feel a lot harder and more costly to start a business. You'll have a better salary, a job, a reputation—you won't want to be a beginner in your thirties. You should be a beginner in your twenties." That literally shifted the course of my life. I thought, "He's right—I should just go. I can afford to go broke several times." It's similar to poker: when you have a small bankroll is when you want to take the most risk, because you can recover and bounce back quickly. You don't actually have that much to lose. So, when you said you started in your teens and learned the game—going broke, borrowing money, and getting back in—what happened from there?
27:31	Daniel Negreanu	We're very good—people are very good at thinking of all the reasons why something's not going to work and why something's going to fail. So it's very easy to be like, "Oh, I want to start this business but I don't have the money," or, "It's not good timing," and think, "When I'm set and everything's good, then I'll do it." I remember I did a course years ago on emotional intelligence. There's a thing called "be-do-have." Many people think you need to have everything in order to be something. The truth is it's more like: be it, do it, and you'll have it. Just live like you've got it—go for it. To segue into your second question, that's kind of what I did: I went for it. I went to Las Vegas. I remember the first time I went I had $3,000; twenty-four hours later I did not. I still had three more days in Vegas with no money—learning experience. I got kicked in the nuts, went back home to Toronto, rebuilt, and kept going back. It was trial and error. I went from being the big fish in a small pond in Toronto to playing against the top pros. I remember a very distinct moment: it was four in the morning and I was playing seven-handed (seven people at the table). I lost my money, went to the bathroom, washed my hands, came out, and they were all gone. I realized in that moment I was the sucker—they were only playing because of me. I was their EV [expected value]. I remembered every one of their faces with vengeance and thought, "Gonna get you one day." One of them was a guy named Hawaiian Bill—he wore those Hawaiian shirts. I hated him at the table because he was playing aggressively. I was like a bull; he just knew how to beat me. About a year or two later he became a little bit of a mentor because I realized, "Oh, this guy knows what he's doing; he's been around the block," and I decided to learn from him instead of being angry. I had persistence. I had many walks home from the casino to my motel wondering, "What am I doing? I'm not in school, I'm not going anywhere, and this is it." The good news is I'd wake up in the morning ready to go: "Alright, today's the day—let's turn it around."
29:49	Sam Parr	One of my favorite scenes from a movie is from a poker film with Mark Wahlberg, where he's talking to John Goodman. Do you guys know the scene I'm talking about? He basically says, "I was up two million and I lost all of my money." John Goodman replies: > "Look, every idiot knows that when you're up two million, we all know what to do. You take one million and you buy a house, and then you buy a really crappy car, and you put the rest in savings — that's your fortress of solitude. You can never mess that up. Then you go and gamble with the rest, but you never screw that one bit up." He tells an amazing story. Was there a moment in your life — or at what age — when you were like, "Okay, I have a base; I have my fortress of solitude; things feel good"? How early or how late in life were you before you felt some security? Because it sounds like your line of work has a lot of ups and downs. Was there ever a point where you thought, "Okay, I'm at a place of safety"?
30:43	Daniel Negreanu	The first time it happened, I was very wrong. So I'll go there, then I'll tell you about when it actually happened. In 1999 I had a good year. I won the US Poker Championship. To end the year I had about $400,000–$500,000. I thought, "Okay, we're set. We're good. We're never gonna go broke again." Then in 2000 I got complacent. I was living the Vegas life — going to strip joints, going to dinners, playing poker, gambling, not taking it as seriously as I should. By the end of 2000, the money was gone. It was a good learning experience; I'm glad it happened because I watched many of my peers go through this pattern of building up a bankroll, blowing it all, and then rebuilding it again. Part of that was they didn't have a foundation — like, actually a reason; they didn't have a why. They'd wake up in the morning, they've got it — what's their goal? They gotta go make money. Right now they have money; okay, well what's next? So subconsciously they self-sabotaged. They would self-sabotage and lose all the money they had — they lacked a purpose again, you know. I remember watching my peers do that, and I said to myself, "I'm not gonna be that guy." So I started to take things more seriously in the early 2000s. Probably by my late twenties/early thirties, I'd say, is when I finally realized that I got it figured out. I've got enough money — we're for sure not going broke anymore. Even though we're playing higher stakes, I'm much more careful than I was. But that was a very important year for me to fail the way I did in 2000 — to really just bottom out in a sense. And then that's a decision.
32:13	Daniel Negreanu	Am I going to just keep doing what they do and be 50 or 60? I mean, I watched the guy—no joke. He builds up... he, you know. I used to play with him in small games where he had $1,000, $2,000. Now he's playing the big game where he's got $2,000,000, right? And then I do that.
32:27	Sam Parr	I mean, he had $2,000,000 saved, or he was placing bets on that game—$2,000,000 was on the line. </FormattedResponse>
32:32	Daniel Negreanu	He had 2 million total. That's his bankroll—2 million. Now he's up there playing the big game. He's got a couple of ladies with him; he's doing blow, he's drinking, whatever. Three days later, this guy who had 2 million in front of him comes up and says, "Hey, can I get 500?" because he's back to nothing. So he wants 500. I saw that and I was like, "Wow, man—you had 2 million and you blew all that." There are a lot of crazy stories like that. I knew I was never going to be that guy, but it was a real wake-up call. Guys I looked up to, in a sense, and I'm like, "What are you doing, man?"
33:05	Sam Parr	"What's the biggest—'describe'—or what's the biggest amount that you saw someone have and then have it go to zero?"
33:11	Daniel Negreanu	Well, not—I don't know the guy personally, necessarily, but this famous story was Archie Karas, who was a craps player, a little bit of a cheat and all these kinds of things, at the Binion's Horseshoe. He went there and he was winning like $1,000,000 a day. He had about $45,000,000. He had every $5,000 chip that the Binion's Horseshoe had—he had them all in his safety deposit box. He had $45,000,000, lost it all, and then, for a second time, he was able to build up a bankroll to about $17–18 million and lost it all. This is a degenerate, right? His whole life revolves around this. This is where I don't relate to people who are billionaires in a lot of ways, who still are looking to make money. I don't get it. I can't relate to it. You have a billion dollars—why do you care so much about a deal that just made you $20,000,000? That's going to do nothing to change your life. So that sort of obsession—of a bigger yacht or keeping up with others... I have friends that are billionaires and stuff like that. One of them actually wrote a book; Bill Perkins—because he does it, you know—he wrote a book called "Die with Zero," right? Which essentially talks about how money is just a tool to give you opportunities to have happiness. And what is happiness? It's not a bigger yacht; it's not a watch; it's not a car. It's experiences. So he talks about: spend your money. Think about that. If you look back over the last ten years of your life—say you bought a watch a while ago—did that give you long-lasting happiness? What about the trip you took with your boys when you went on a golfing trip to the South of France? That's something that's valuable to you now; you still have those memories, and you know a life that's worthwhile. Material objects—material things—I think the opposite happens. Instead of making you happy, they'll make you vehemently unhappy if that's the only source of happiness that you find.
35:02	Shaan Puri	Yeah. It's also funny... it's almost frustrating because I keep going to this well just trying to scoop up some happiness, and there's just none there. If you keep trying the same strategy and it's not working, it's not just that you didn't get happiness—you actually get frustrated.
35:16	Daniel Negreanu	Because diminishing returns, right?
35:18	Shaan Puri	You're getting diminishing returns.</FormattedResponse>
35:19	Daniel Negreanu	Yeah, exactly. It's like—you get that and you take it. I don't do it; I've never done cocaine, but the more you do it, the more you get that little fleeting dopamine hit. The more you do it, the more your body becomes a guesstimate; it doesn't even have the same effect anymore. Same thing, I think, with material objects. You have six cars. Okay, now you're going to buy this seventh car and this eighth car—what now? It becomes unimportant.
35:41	Shaan Puri	So what motivates you, then? Because, you know, you're playing the game that's literally for money. It's the chips on the table; the goal is to get the chips from the other guy into your little pot. So now, why do you do it? You've made plenty of money, and you know you don't have to keep playing. So what is it for you? </FormattedResponse>
35:57	Daniel Negreanu	Well, that's the hook — really, that's the trick. I think the majority of successful people became successful doing what they love. If you don't love what you're doing, your chances of being successful are very slim. If you just say, "I want to be rich and famous," okay — but do you want to do the work? What do you like to do that gets you there? If you're doing something because you think it's going to get you money, but you don't enjoy it and you don't have passion for it, it's unlikely to work. I always loved competing. I wanted to be an athlete, but I'm [5'9" and about 160 lb], so there's no— I'm too tall to be a jockey and too short to be a basketball player. I didn't have any talent in that regard. But poker was a battle of wits, and I loved the game. When I started playing, I wasn't playing for money. Money was a tool. I wanted to play in bigger games and play with the best, and the only way to do that was money. So money wasn't the end goal. Ultimately, what money provided me — and what I always asked people when I coached them — was freedom. People would say, "What do you want? What's your dream?" and "I want to be rich." I would ask, "For what? What are you going to use it for?" Money itself is just a pile of notes or a number on your screen; it doesn't do anything by itself. What do you want it for? For me, it was to provide the freedom to do whatever I want in my thirties, forties, and fifties: travel, relax, stay at home, not have to go to a day job, and be my own boss. That's what I looked at as far as money goes. The truth is, if my bank account were ten times what it is now, my life wouldn't change much at all — maybe I'd have a plane.
37:36	Sam Parr	But isn't it funny? Isn't it funny how the line between degeneracy and loving it... we could be describing very similar things. For example, I'm a little bit of a workaholic. I love it. But then my wife—or someone else—would say, "Well, you're just a degenerate." Like, yeah, I have, you know...
37:53	Shaan Puri	"You're a workaholic."
37:54	Sam Parr	Yeah, it's kind of interesting. When you describe it the way you describe it, I'm like "Gambling's awesome." Then when I think about it, I'm like, "You know, Larry the Greek—or whatever; it's Archie the Greek" [name uncertain]. He's a degenerate, but couldn't he describe it the same way: "I loved it."
38:12	Daniel Negreanu	Yeah, you know, Doyle Brunson had that famous quote once. It was on a TV show where they asked him and he said, "We're all really just degenerate gamblers. We just found something we could beat." He was—like a lot of the old-school guys—they gambled on everything. Poker players didn't just play poker. They played golf for big money, bet on every game, bet on everything. There were some really famous bets back in the day—some really cool ones. But they're always looking for action or EV [expected value], and a lot of it is because it gets their juices flowing. But I found—like I said—for me that's not the be-all and end-all. It doesn't do it for me. I'm not really a thrill seeker in that way. People say, "Oh, you should bungee jump or jump out of a plane." I'm like—have zero interest in that. Zero. It's just dumb for me because it doesn't do what it does for other people. Some people go, "Oh my God, it was the thrill of a lifetime," whatever. I'm like, for me I just look at it and go, "Oh, you might die, so what's the...?"
39:02	Daniel Negreanu	"You know, if I believed it would give me that thrill, I might take it on, but it doesn't — it doesn't do it for me."
39:10	Shaan Puri	You mentioned loving the competition. Who's the best poker player you've ever sat down at the table with? Has there ever been anybody you sat down with and you're like, "Wow—this guy's better than me"? </FormattedResponse>
39:20	Daniel Negreanu	For sure. Several. One of them is my good friend, who I've been friends with for 30 years, and he did what I didn't — I'll tell you. We sort of split in terms of focus. He's the best poker player in the world as far as I'm concerned when you count all the games, and that's Phil Ivey. Phil and I took different paths. There was a time when poker started to get popular on TV and there were a lot of opportunities. Phil didn't go that route — he was not about that. He was nose to the grindstone: "I'm gonna sit my leather ass in this chair and I'm gonna play it for ten hours. I'm gonna make all the money." I had that drive when I was younger, but then I saw other opportunities to be a name in the game and potentially make money through sponsorships and the business side of poker. I was more well-suited to that because I enjoyed it. When I was a very young kid I wanted to be an actor, so being on camera and speaking was comfortable for me. I felt like I could position myself to do quite well that way — and I did. He went a different path and did well his way. The difference is once I started doing that, my focus was diverted. He's focused on one thing and one thing only: poker. I'm playing poker, but I'm also doing other stuff too, so the intensity with which he plays, I can't reach because I've got other things going on. Which is fine — I don't regret it looking back. I think that's part of what made him so successful: he was completely consumed by poker and nothing else.
40:49	Shaan Puri	So he was—he's completely, intensely focused on it. What's his kind of superpower? If yours is the ability to get inside the mind of the other person, read them, and see through their cards, what's his superpower? </FormattedResponse>
41:05	Daniel Negreanu	He was very—quiet. He was a quiet assassin when he played, but he paid attention to everything. He saw everything. So he'll sit in a cash game and he'll watch for fifteen to twenty minutes and think, "The wrong guys are winning." What does that mean? "The wrong guys are winning" means they're going to play well. Sometimes when people are winning they play well, and when they're losing they're going to go off for a big number. So sometimes he'd go down there, play for fifteen to twenty minutes, see there's nothing there, and he'd leave—he'd go home. Other days he'd be there for four days without leaving his chair because he saw that they were vulnerable. Often in that environment it's all a bunch of sharks—it's like all sharks. Every shark is circling each other and if one shark is wounded, if one shark "lost his tail," ho ho ho, they're going to rip that shark apart. It's a dog-eat-dog world in that sense, and he was the king of that. He still has that killer sign of intensity. I would say it's just his ability to dial in and have uber focus.
42:07	Sam Parr	If you had to teach me—someone who, frankly, has never even been to a casino—how to keep calm under pressure in these high-stakes games, and you and Phil were my coaches, and we were going to spend three days in a hotel before we went down preparing (not the actual math or the cards), what would you teach me? What would be my checklist for staying calm in a stressful situation?
42:31	Daniel Negreanu	Yeah. Well, first of all, virtually impossible. It's… okay, like in three days? Because here's the thing: it's an emotional thing, right? I mean, you could do a meditative retreat, a yoga retreat, learn to get zen—learn to get centered. All these types of things. But in three days, entering an environment you've never really experienced before and dealing with that sort of stress… that's a "you" thing. We could set you right by explaining that it's all part of it; there are things you could probably do. But over three days, somebody who's completely new—I would say you wouldn't be an easy person to help in that regard. You're just going to have to go through it on your own. Now, that's different for people who have played the game for years. I can get them to focus on the fundamentals of what they're doing. Are you making good decisions? Okay, let's focus on that. Let's not become victims to the idea of, "Oh man, I'm so unlucky"—that does you no good; there's no value. </FormattedResponse>
43:26	Sam Parr	So: be input-focused, not output-focused.
43:28	Daniel Negreanu	Focus on the journey. In poker, it's not like other things where if you make the right decision you automatically make money. That's not how poker works. I can go all in with a pair of aces, and Sam could say, "I have a nine and a four—I'm gonna go all in." That's a good situation for me, but sometimes I'm going to lose. Did I make a mistake? No. In the long run, I'm going to be okay. For you, or for anybody else, I'd usually ask about your life experience with other things. For example, if you play the market, sometimes you make good investments and then something completely uncontrollable happens and your investment goes to nothing. That doesn't make your decision bad—your decision was good. Focus on that instead of thinking, "woe is me." Alternatively, if you lost because you missed something important, use that mistake to plug a hole and be better prepared the next time you see it. Poker is essentially a big puzzle: you start out making all these mistakes, then you begin to figure things out. You continually plug leaks. After you've seen these situations so many times, you recognize them—"I made this mistake before"—and when you're in the same or a very similar situation again, you're going to do the right thing.
44:46	Shaan Puri	What are the most common leaks? You've coached people and been asked for advice for years—what are the most common leaks that a smart, competent player still has, leaks that kill them and really hurt their game? They're not at the beginner level; they're intermediate, smart, and talented. What leaks do they have? </FormattedResponse>
45:06	Daniel Negreanu	I'd say a pretty common "leak" for 99% of poker players — or gamblers in general — is how they handle winning versus losing. For example, my friend Evelyn, who used to be my ex-girlfriend, would win almost every day. She'd say, "I won $100," "I won $200," "I won $300." Then I look at day nine and it says, "I lost $3,700." So you won nine out of ten days, right? But what's the difference? You won small amounts — $100, $200, $300 — and because of your mental state when you were winning, the situation was good and you should be pressing and pushing. A lot of people just say, "I'm gonna take my winnings." That's the opposite of what a Phil Ivey would do. When she was losing, she wasn't disciplined about session length. The first six days were one-hour, two-hour, three-hour sessions — nothing more than a four-hour session. Then on that bad day she lost $3,500 and was there for 31 hours. The biggest leak people make is they chase losses in the short run. They think, "I have to get even today." But this game isn't just today — it's all month, all year. When you're losing, your mental state is affected. Very few people can play poker robotically without that affecting them to some degree. You're better off playing when your mental state is good — when you're winning — rather than when you're feeling bad.
46:40	Sam Parr	"Have you ever read The Inner Game of Tennis, Daniel?" "No. We talked about it on here." What you're describing is exactly that. It's an amazing book. I don't play tennis, but it's about how to play tennis and it's one of those books that teaches you about life. The concept of the book is basically that you have two selves. Self One is the conscious, critical mind where you judge yourself: "Oh, that was a bad hit," "that was a bad hand." Self Two is like—you don't think, you feel your body. When you listen to your body and don't judge yourself, that's often when hot streaks happen. I think—I don't know, Sean, I forget the phrase—but they call it in basketball when you're on a hot streak. You're like, "you can't miss," and people always say, "well, don't pull them out; let them just go." That's that moment where you're listening to Self Two—you're just feeling it—and what you described is exactly that.
47:28	Daniel Negreanu	Golf too — I don't know if you guys golf, but when you golf most people have a swing thought, something they're working on. There's always a swing thought. I remember one time my swing thought was this: my swing thought was "Nothing from nothing is nothing." It meant nothing — just swing. I would literally go over the ball and in my head sing, "Nothing from nothing is nothing," and just let the body do it. When you're overly technical or overanalyzing, it can actually be a detriment. That's true.
47:55	Sam Parr	Isn't that funny? You're describing this... you and this author say the exact same thing. That's so fascinating to me.
48:00	Daniel Negreanu	Yeah, and it's true in poker too. You're like, you see a move and you're like, "Oh, I don't know—do I need to take this risk?" I mean, it seems kinda crazy; it might work, it might not. Instead of just deciding, people hesitate. And frankly, this is a secret weapon that I don't use too often, but it really helps: alcohol. Okay, I'm not saying you should drink and play, but there was a guy named Bill Smith many years ago. They said when he was sober he was the weakest player in the game. When he was drunk he was just a sloppy mess and couldn't win. But when he was still a little buzzed—just a little drunk—they said he was the best player in the world. Why would that be? Because with poker, alcohol can lower your inhibition a little bit, so you're just gonna trust again. Whenever I've done that, I feel like it's almost like a superpower because it allows you to get past the fear and the rationalization for why you shouldn't take this risk. All those reasons go against what your instincts are saying will work. Having that little bit of... being able to learn to create that trust without alcohol is the ideal goal, and that's what we all strive for. I've actually gotten a lot better at that naturally by telling myself, "Okay, listen: if you think this is probably right, forget about all these other reasons that it's not—just do it, man. Just do it."
49:12	Shaan Puri	I'm writing this book right now on creativity and getting into creative flow. In the research I'm looking at—particularly with writers and authors—it's amazing: these guys are drunks. They would wake up and have this discipline part, which is waking up and immediately starting to write. But they'd also say their best work came when they added another habit: right before they started writing, they did the whiskey part. They would start drinking and then write. There's another analogy to this that involves napping. There's this famous study called the Paris Sleep Study—the idea is you get into a state of mind where your inhibition is lower and you basically don't self-censor. We all have this sort of editor in our head—like an umpire in a tennis game calling balls in and out. When you start to think, you start to censor what you're doing. If you can get that sensor to shut up and trust yourself, you actually do a lot better. In the Paris Sleep Study, researchers gave people a very complicated pattern—like a number or math pattern. Let's say 10% of people solved it right away. The rest were stuck after working on it for about an hour. They split the remaining group in two. One group took a short break—about 20–30 minutes—in a waiting room. The other group was told to take a nap in a calm environment for about 25–26 minutes. When they all returned to the problem, the group that had napped had about a three times higher rate of solving the problem immediately. There are many anecdotes like this: Edison used to nap, Einstein used to nap. They would famously nap holding a spoon in their hand because they didn't want to sleep for too long; they wanted to reach that moment of falling asleep. When they started to fall asleep, the spoon would drop, clang, and wake them. They used that state—which is called the hypnagogic state—because you are more creative and can get into flow much more easily than in your normal waking pattern.
51:37	Sam Parr	"That's super fascinating."
51:38	Daniel Negreanu	Yeah — wow. My first thought was that, obviously, sleep in general for poker is the most important thing. It's like if our mind is a computer: it's the time it shuts down and reboots, and you download all the information so you're ready for the next day. I remember hearing about some tests where people did the same test at night and in the morning after sleep. The results the next morning were always better than the previous night. I didn't know that napping or this flow state idea could do that, but that sounds cool, because I'm a big fan of naps. When we used to go to Europe to play — with the jet lag — sometimes I'd be at the table with my head down and my hand out, and I'd feel the dealer throw the card on my finger as I started to wake up.
52:30	Shaan Puri	"You mentioned at the beginning that you went to a course or a seminar about emotional intelligence, and that's not what I expected you to say. That sounds like... I don't know — I thought you would talk about poker and math and stats and all that stuff. That's pretty fascinating. Why did you go, and what did you get out of that?"
52:48	Daniel Negreanu	Yeah, it was in Vegas. I did it in 2013. My manager, Brian — who's, like, just a super healthy, perfect-wife, three-great-kids, lawyer-type, all buttoned up — did it right. We were playing golf and he said, "You should try this thing." I thought to myself, okay, well I trust him, right? So if he thinks it might have some value, I'll go. I'm always looking to learn and do different things. It was nothing like I expected. This was no business seminar. It was a deep dive into what makes you tick — where you decided certain things about yourself, what works about you, what doesn't work about you. It was a life-changing experience in a lot of ways for me. I hated it the first couple days, but because I had faith in Brian I said, "Alright, I'm going to stick with it." It was transformational in so many ways. Some of the key tenets I learned there were the difference between being a victim of circumstance and being responsible — completely responsible — for everything: for where you are and all the decisions you make. You're not responsible for the weather. You're not responsible for a car crash. But you are responsible for your response to it. The word "responsible," when you break it down, is essentially "response-able." The difference between those that succeed and those that fail often comes down to how they respond to things. There's one story I remember they told — it's true. Two mothers had the same thing happen to them: their child was killed in a car accident. Horrifying. The first mother grieved, drank, and stayed in that depression. Six months later she had lost her family. The other mother had the exact same thing happen. She grieved and took her time, and then she started an organization called "Mothers Against Drunk Driving." She said, "I'm going to take this and respond in a way where I'm going to help other people." The event was the same — a neutral event that happened to both people — but the response to the event set their lives on very different trajectories because of how they responded. Learning that is incredibly important in poker, because you're going to have bad luck sometimes and good luck other times. How you respond matters.
55:03	Sam Parr	To it is going to be the difference between you being successful and you being a failure. One of the biggest things I've learned from Sean is... for years I thought, "Well, I'm very good at that. I know that I am responsible for my own outcomes." I believe that fully. One day I think I was in a bad mood and he was like, "Well, why are you in a bad mood?" I said, "This person did this and it pissed me off." He's like, "So you're—not responsible for your mood? What's going on? Like this person just..." And it— that's when it clicked. Frankly, it's still really hard. But it was like that: having that internal locus of control isn't just for making money or starting a business. It's also for how I feel on the inside. And that was the biggest thing. Sean, what do you say? Like, you have some different version of someone living rent-free in your brain—like you have all these phrases where it's... </FormattedResponse>
55:50	Shaan Puri	I went to a Tony Robbins event. I kind of intuitively knew, “Hey, I’m a learner. I’m a curious guy. I always want to improve—why would I not invest in this?” I got there and he said, “Alright, everybody stand up. I wanna hear you.” I thought, “Oh God, I’m here just for the learning part. I don’t need to dance.” Five minutes in I had a choice—a fork in the road. Either I was going to play full out and do the experience, or I was going to do it half-heartedly and get half the results. I thought, “Whatever. Let me do this. Nobody here knows me. I could just—we’re dancing—let me dance.” Forty-five minutes in I was dancing and thinking, “This is amazing.” Then he says this thing in his talk. He says, “I’m fucking Tony Robbins,” and tells a story about being on a trip with his platinum clients. They’d bought all the upsells—they were paying him a quarter million dollars to go on vacation with him. He was in India and met a guru in the mountains. The guru asked, “Tony, how much are you suffering nowadays?” Tony started to be defensive: “Sorry, I don’t know if you know me—I’m Tony Robbins. Suffering isn’t exactly how people describe me.” The guru pointed out small things that had upset him—someone forgetting the schedule, little annoyances. Tony defended himself and then calmed down and asked, “What’s the observation you have here?” The guru basically said: > “How cheap is your happiness? All it took was this guy forgetting one thing on the schedule and you lost it. That was so cheap. It took him nothing to take your happiness away.” That idea stuck with me. Your mood should be like the Louis Vuitton of moods—you want it to be so premium that for somebody to affect your mood, to take your mood away from you, it should come with a very, very high price. I started to reframe things when something would happen: “That’s too cheap. I’m not going to take that deal. Why would I ever trade my good mood for that small thing?”
57:54	Daniel Negreanu	No — I actually love that. That's really good, because I think we all strive to be above that, but we're human, right? I get annoyed by the dumbest things. I'm going to use that today because, like I said, I do streams where sometimes I'm sensitive and I get comments. I get thousands of comments while I'm streaming, and, you know, the brain — I've already known this — we naturally gravitate toward the negative comment. One person calls me a "bald idiot" or whatever. So instead of allowing that to affect you and to divert the stream — it's kind of what they're wanting to do — I've learned to respond to positive reinforcement and good stuff, and to ignore the rest. But let's say, for example, I play a hand and I lose. I'm already frustrated by the fact that I lost the hand, but I'm comfortable with how I played it. Then you read a bunch of armchair quarterbacks saying, "Oh, what an idiot, just gave all his money away, it was terrible, you're the worst." I see that and I want to go, "Oh really, sam 65934? Come here and say that to my face. How about that? I would bust you. I'd take all your money, dude." I sometimes do that, but it's silly, like you said, because why am
58:57	Sam Parr	I allow this — it feels good. I trick myself into thinking it feels good. The reality is, it doesn't. I've been... checking, refreshing the page. I'm like, "Let me see the reply, let me see." No — I can't go out to dinner yet; this guy at Facebook said something, and I have to wait for his reply.
59:12	Daniel Negreanu	I will say this, though: I am a big fan of venting—in the sense that, rather than hold stuff in and let it bubble and fester, I laugh at myself sometimes when I act like an idiot. I'll get mad about something dumb, and I'm like, "Okay," and then I can let it go very quickly afterward. I think, "Okay, that was stupid, but I got it off my chest." Like when I see the "reverse card" comment, I lose it. I'm like, "What the hell is going on here? How did I lose this?" and I can laugh at how unhinged I was behaving. But it's not that I'm pretending everything's fine. It's not... I'm not just going, "Okay, everything's fine," sure.
59:43	Shaan Puri	"Right. Whatever—it's better than..."
59:44	Daniel Negreanu	There's value in sometimes just letting it out.
59:46	Sam Parr	Well, Sean, you had that thing in the "Five Tweet Tuesday" the other day—what was the name of it? It started with a K, something theory, which states that if you write something down, if you have a problem, and you...
01:00:00	Shaan Puri	Basically, a well-defined problem—if you can write it down, you've already half solved it. If you can actually write it down accurately—what is the problem?—you are already halfway to a solution. Danny, I want to ask you about one thing from that seminar. When I was thinking about the Tony Robbins Experience, they'll tell you something, but it's usually an exercise you do. There's some thing you do that you wouldn't have wanted to do, but now you're sitting in the room: you signed up to be there and you paid the money, so you go ahead and you do it. You have this moment of enlightenment that really only happens because you were actually immersed in it — you actually did something, versus just listening to an idea and knowing it intellectually but not getting to feel it. Did they do anything like that? Was there an exercise that stood out to you?
01:00:44	Daniel Negreanu	There's tons. The one that I did is called Choice Center, and there are plenty of people—there's a lot of crossover between Anthony Robbins himself and people that have done both. There's a lot of similarities and it sounds like what you were doing. As far as one specific thing that sort of is the root of that whole victim vs. responsibility idea: I remember there was a girl when I was young. She was partying or whatever and we were together. I loved her, but we broke up. I had a story about how I was the victim—about how she did this, she did that, she was bad, and all these types of things. One of the exercises we did was: tell the story as a victim. Then you must retell the exact same story where you're 100% responsible for everything that happened. Whoa. So now I have to retell it, and all of a sudden—well, she did tell me this, she did say this—and suddenly I'm freed. I'm freed of this victim story that's been a label to me. It's like, "woe is me, poor me." I'm like, no—the signs were there; the choices were there. I'll say this: after I did this course in 2013, this woman who I was in love with [unclear date: "02/1011"] came back to Las Vegas [unclear date: "2000"]. I even bought her a ring back then; I never gave it to her in [unclear date: "02/1011"], and I kept it in my safe for some reason. She came back to Vegas in 2019, and we're married now—six years. Yeah, we're married. A lot of that came from me reevaluating the story that I had told myself. That was probably one of the more impactful exercises. It's a long process—it's like a hundred-day process. The course is intense: you go to one weekend, it's pretty intense; then another weekend, and... you know.
01:02:26	Shaan Puri	You're out of meetings. That's pretty impressive.
01:02:28	Daniel Negreanu	Yeah — you're doing coaching calls; you're doing a lot. You actually learn how to coach other people. You were sort of speaking to this about writing things down, because that's part of it — the idea behind journaling as well. On that note, sometimes when I coach other people, one of the questions I ask is: say you came to me for coaching on something, and I said, "How would you coach yourself on this?"
01:02:50	Shaan Puri	Mhmm.
01:02:50	Daniel Negreanu	Right. So then, as you do that, you're like, "Well, I would probably tell myself this, this, this, this, and this." And then you just look at yourself and go, "There you..."
01:02:58	Shaan Puri	Go, you!
01:03:01	Daniel Negreanu	You already know the answer, right? But a good coach—what they do is ask good questions that help get you to a place where you can see what's possible. I don't think a good coach is someone who tells you what to do. A good coach sets you up so you can see. You tell me, "I'm helping you see what's possible so that you get there."
01:03:19	Shaan Puri	I like that a lot. One of the things about poker is handling downswings, and I think that's not just a thing about poker—that's a thing about life. In poker it's just very immediate and very quantified: I lost this much money just now. My buddy in college—Dan and I would go to Vegas a lot. We would lose a bunch of money. Every once in a while we'd make enough to keep coming back, but most of the time we didn't do well. I just remember the psychology of losing money: it gets you to act so strangely. One thing you were talking about was like—you chased the loss. I remember going back up to the room and him going to the ATM machine. I'm like, “Bro, don't do it,” but he wants to. Then he would lose money and try to get the pit boss to comp him a breakfast or the room—just to salvage some dignity out of it. He'd come back to the room and use all the toiletries and wear the robe as if he was getting value back out of what he just lost. I remember he thought we were asleep and he looked in the mirror and said, “Five iPhones—you lost five iPhones.” He was hating himself in the mirror. I just remember thinking: me and him spent so much time on the strategy of how to win, when what we actually needed to be spending time on was the psychology of how to lose. There were always going to be downswings, and we handled them so poorly that our strategies went out the window. So I'm curious, Daniel: what is the strategy for handling adversity or these downswings? What do you tell yourself, and what do you think is applicable to people outside the world of poker?
01:04:55	Daniel Negreanu	The downswings are probably the most important part — how you deal with them is the most important part of becoming a professional poker player. For me, I learned over the years that you call them a breakdown, and typically with a breakdown, things are going badly. That's an opportunity for a breakthrough. When things are going fine, you're probably not delving that much into your strategy — you're like, "Okay, things are good." But when things are going badly and things are going wrong, it requires you to be more introspective. You have to ask, "What is really happening here? Let me dive deep. Is what I'm doing working? Is there anything I can do better? What strategies can I adjust? What strategies can I change?" Those insights usually come from breakdowns, whether it's in poker — bad downswings — or in life. When you're in a downswing in your life, that's an opportunity for a breakthrough. You either say, "Okay, this is where I'm at; am I going to accept where I'm at and just woe-is-me?" or, "Is now the time to reinvent myself, try a new angle, or do things differently to get to a better place?" Often people call it rock bottom. If you're an addict or someone who is just getting by, people look at that and say this person won't get better until they hit rock bottom. But what's rock bottom? Rock bottom is the decision.
01:06:12	Daniel Negreanu	This is it, right? I'm either going to die here like this, or... some change has to happen.
01:06:19	Shaan Puri	There's a quote from J.K. Rowling about this. Have you guys ever heard her talk about "rock bottom"? No? J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter and is, of course, a billionaire author. She said this about the time she had been rejected: > "I was set free because my greatest fear had already been realized. I was still alive. I still had a daughter I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. So rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life." [Context: J.K. Rowling speaking about hitting "rock bottom" after rejections and how it enabled her to start again.]
01:06:48	Daniel Negreanu	That's beautiful. That's so well said. And, yeah — essentially it can encapsulate what we're sort of talking about. I think the most impactful stages of your life... for me, even going to that course required me to be in a place where I had that lost love, that breakup, that painful experience of losing someone I loved. I was at a low. So I went out and I said, "Okay, well, let's do something." Then, boom — it completely shifted my relationship with that event. Eventually I became the man who could look past our differences back then and realize, I'm responsible for this relationship working. Now we're happily married. I constantly think of those things. It was one of those courses — I don't know if it's similar for you with the Tony Robbins thing — but I still use and practice a lot of the things I learned there on a daily basis. I'm not perfect by any stretch; I still have my bad times, but I recognize them more quickly when I'm being an idiot, a jerk, arrogant, or whatever. I notice it faster, and I'm able to shift out of it. </FormattedResponse>
01:07:55	Shaan Puri	It's like—I remember thinking afterwards, "Dude, I feel like Neo in The Matrix." But I thought that was like, you know, him seeing everybody else; it's actually just seeing yourself. It's like you realize, "Oh, I'm just acting this way because of this thing." Or, "Oh, I'm saying these words instead of saying 'I have to go do this'—I get to go do this." Little shifts, right? A little two-word shift. Like, instead of "I gotta go" or "I have to go pick up my kids," it's "I get to go pick up my kids from school right now on this bike, and we're going to spend time together. This is amazing." You know, five years ago, that would have killed for this. And now it's a have-to—what's going on here? So you get curious about those things. I totally agree with that. And, you know, I think we came onto this podcast thinking, "Hey, there's going to be some poker lessons"—as in, "Oh, we can learn about poker, the art of bluffing and reading and all that." But, you know, this turned into a podcast about the mind, right?
01:08:49	Sam Parr	"Right — can I ask you about your content diet? What do you read and listen to on a daily or weekly basis? I find your attitude interesting, and I want to be inspired by the same things that inspire you."
01:09:03	Daniel Negreanu	Well, I'll tell you — nothing recently. But one of the books that I loved was such a simple book. It's by Don Miguel Ruiz; it's called The Four Agreements.
01:09:11	Sam Parr	Yeah, I've heard a lot of people talk about...
01:09:12	Daniel Negreanu	It's such an easy read—you'll read it in 5 seconds. It's four basic principles: 1. Be impeccable with your word — to yourself and to others. 2. Don't take anything personally. 3. Don't make assumptions. 4. Do your best. "Do your best" is the most important one because the idea behind it is that you'll fail at the other three sometimes. As long as you're doing your best, you're in a good place. The one about being impeccable with your word I take so seriously, not just for others but for myself too. If I said to you guys, "I'm going to be here at 9:00 AM," and I showed up at 9:04, I'd feel like it was a broken agreement — that I did not keep my word. Many people go through life and just show up at 9:04 and say, "Hey, what's up," and don't acknowledge the fact that we had an agreement. You failed on this agreement and didn't even say anything. Listen, sometimes it's going to happen — you'll be five minutes late. What does a responsible person do? They say, "I acknowledge I'm late. I'm very sorry about that. No excuses. I'm committed to making sure I'm on time in the future." You can respect that. But somebody who's always fifteen or twenty minutes late and thinks it's no big deal is disrespecting your time, and I don't trust their word when they say to me, "I'll be there at nine."
01:10:23	Shaan Puri	I'm terrible at that — not just the timing thing, but keeping my word to myself. I'm pretty good about keeping my word to other people, but keeping my word to myself is hard. I'm the judge, jury, and executioner, so I can always let myself off the hook. I have a food coach, so I'm trying to get in great shape. Obviously I had a personal trainer, but most of getting in great shape is controlling what you eat. She calls me every day at 10:45 and says, "Hey, how did yesterday go?" We have to talk it through — it's food therapy, basically, for ten minutes every morning. In those calls there are all these little things. I'll tell her, "I'm going to do this; I'm going to have this at this time. Tonight I'm not going to have a late-night snack; I'm going to get to bed on time." Then the next day I see a plate of crackers. I hadn't really thought about it, but I was kind of hungry, and then all these compromises happen. She said: > "It's not about the crackers or the chips. Sure, those chips aren't going to kill you. But being the guy who breaks his word to himself all the time — that actually will kill you. You will let yourself down and not even trust yourself because you don't believe what you say." That's been, ironically, one of the things I've struggled with the most. I'm trying to overcome it this year. If I do, then I learn to play the piano better. I do better with my companies. I do better overall because I become the type of person who trusts himself: if I say something, that's what it's going to be, and I won't renegotiate or relitigate it with myself. The problem is I'm a very persuasive person, so I can persuade myself back into anything. I don't want to use that skill against myself.
01:12:12	Sam Parr	We have a bunch of guests on the pod [podcast]. Sean and I aren't particularly big investors or anything, but we love having investors on. The most famous example of this is Warren Buffett and how he really can teach you about life via investing. It's very evident that you are in that same category. It's not necessarily the poker thing that is the interesting part about you — poker is just your vehicle for showing that you have mastery over your own emotions. You're a master in emotional intelligence. It's really cool to hear your perspective on these things because I'm not going to play poker, but you've said many things that will change my life in non-poker fields.
01:12:56	Daniel Negreanu	Well, appreciate you saying that. And like I said, I'm a big believer in, sort of, what you're saying: looking at successful people and listening to how they got there. There's value in that. This isn't me telling you, "This is what you need to do with your life." I'm sharing what's worked for me. And if you hear some of those things and you think, "Oh, you know what, that would be something beneficial for my life," that's kind of how I look at other successful people too.
01:13:17	Shaan Puri	We didn't get to talk about this, but I do... the research just came up and I was like, "That was really cool of him." So it's a compliment to you. You were talking about the young players and you said, "I never wanted to be that guy who was the old head criticizing the way all the young players are playing now and how it's ruined the game," blah blah blah. You also said something like, "I get really curious. I want to learn from them. I want them to coach me as much as I'm coaching them." I thought, man, that's a great attitude. I see that the opposite happens so often in basketball — it's always criticizing the younger generation and saying they don't get it, they've ruined the game, it's all changed, it's not the same anymore. I thought that was a pretty cool attitude you had, and I wanted to give you a compliment on that.
01:13:58	Daniel Negreanu	I appreciate it. I remember where it really happened: when I was about 22 or 23, I was really grinding. I was working hard and playing with some big names — established guys — and I could see they were scoffing at some of the stuff I was doing. Under my breath I was like, "Buddy, I'm already better than you by a lot." That cocky young energy was real. I remind myself in that moment: never be the older guy who looks at the young and the different things they're doing and scoffs, saying, "Hey, look at these dummies." So every three to four years I update my own mental software by learning the things they're learning now. I combine that with the wisdom I have from 30 years, and I become really powerful as a player. But it requires humility. Let's say you were at the top in 2004 and you think you still are today just because you can rest on your laurels — no. The day you stop learning is the day everyone else starts to surpass you, because they're going to continue to learn while you're stuck. New ideas, new solvers, new approaches — they're always going to advance. If you don't advance with them, you get worse by definition, because everyone else is getting better.
01:14:59	Shaan Puri	"That's awesome, Daniel. Thanks for coming on, man — really appreciate it."
01:15:02	Daniel Negreanu	You got it, guys. It was fun.
01:15:03	Sam Parr	Alright, we appreciate you. That's it — that's the pod.

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$50M Poker Pro Shares Emotional Intelligence Tricks For Founders

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