Nice podcast. I have played with Carl McKelvey. It was years ago when the WSOP was downtown at Binons (Bobby Hoff, Steve Lott, etc.). I didn't realize that he was still playing. A very interesting story that you relate in your podcast. Well told. You make an excellent point!!

Here is the PokerNews story about Carl McKelvey.

Nice podcast. A few things come to minds

1. A 10% vig is a 5% EV for the books. So regardless of winning or losing, the books gain 5% in EV. That's why it's not important for them to balance out the wagers because longterm, their EV is the same. Now, books like to spread out their risks to avoid volatility. So prefer to take 7 million on one side and 3 mil on the other side as oppose to just taking 1 10 mil on one side. Now if you simulate both situations 10,000 times, the EV would be the same. But short term, if a book loses 3 10 mil bets, it can go belly up.

2. I think that Wall Street guy was out of line. Anytime a person tells somebody what to do with their life without being asked, he is being condescending and an a$$. He's trying to say "look at me, I made all this money so I have authority to suggest your career choices". He's basically getting a power trip. But in reality, not everyone can be a successful stock broker in Wall Street. Our society structure wouldn't allow it. If everyone is a successful stockbroker, who would pick up our trash? Who would teach little kids in school? Who would do root canals? Who would make funny youtube videos? Who would make our clothes? Grow our food?

That's a funny thing with money sometimes. It makes people think that they are better than people. Instead of treating money as a exchange for goods/services tool, money has become an individual scaling of value. We use it to compare our value as an individual vs others. And people want to be higher on the scale than their peers, neighbors, friends. It's sad but there is truth to that.

Another thing is that people are ruled by fear when it comes to money. They always think it's never enough. They make 50k, they want to make 80k. They make 150k, they want to make 250k. Now, I'm not some socialist who wouldn't want people to achieve their best. But this constant mindset of "leveling up" to the next salary amount or net worth will leave a person in a situation where they are never content. "He who knows what's enough will always have enough".

At the end of the day, money is time. The more money you have, the more time and freedom you have. That's why people get up and bust their a$$e$ everyday for that money. There's a big difference between time and freedom of having $500 vs $500,000. But at cetain level, the extra money doesn't give us extra time because our life expectancy doesn't outlive money. So if we were to die at 75, having an extra 100 mil in the bank wont' buy us extra time or freedom.

cushlash,

First, want to say I've been reading your thread for some time and recently started picking up the podcast. Thanks for the efforts on both.

-ThePimp- has some excellent points in his post above, which seem to align with what many on this thread are saying. Money has to have some level of importance to have an enjoyable life, but how much is enough?

I'm glad there are people in the world who love work and want to put in 60 hour weeks, pushing things forward. I'm equally glad that I'm not one of them.

P.S. From another ex-cheesehead, Go Pack!

Imo a go getter creates much more life experiences and opportunities vs someone that sort of wants to coast. But yeah everyone is a little different/ values life differently.

Making long term plans can certainly help you figure out what "enough" is for you. Keep in mind that the things you might not be interested in now will most likely become the biggest/ most important things in your life later on. Life just has a way of doing that.

New Episode: When Enough is Enough and How I Manage Finances

New Episode: Crypto and My Continued Poker Hiatus

Deregulation and insufficient government enabled the financial crisis of 2007-2008. If the goal of crypto is move even further towards an unregulated economic space, then it is going in the wrong direction.

Net neutrality abandoned, the internet full of hackers, all of your money online in a highly volatile pseudo currency secured by a relatively new concept called block-chain, what possibly could go wrong?

One put TRUST in the hands of greedy finance institutions.

The other puts TRUST in NO ONE (Trustless system).

Do you want math, algorithms, and computing power to secure your money or do you want greedy, emotional, irrational humans working in Big Finance to do so?

Haven't those algorithms been developed by greedy, emotional, irrational humans though?

I want bigger and more powerful government to regulate Big Finance more heavily. I want Elizabeth Warren to secure my money.

Increased Regulation, and a more powerful government are the roots of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. See Freddie / Fannie , see CRA, see Fed’s irrational interest rates. Fractional reserve banking requires a lender of last resort. Once establish fractional reserve banking, it cannot be unwound without pain - you broke it, you bought it. (Figuratively you, of course)

Crypto is very interesting , in that it exposes fiat money for what it is.

I think this has the potential to get sidetracked into a political philosophy issue. I believe that for most industries zero/self regulation doesn't work and government ownership/over regulation doesn't work. The mission impossible is to find the balance that requires both sides to act in a fair/common sense way and to minimize ongoing influence of lobbyists/interest groups. In this current political environment that truly is a mission impossible.

New Episode: Diving Deeper Into Our Financial System and Crypto

I'm extremely bearish on crypto but have missed out on potentially huge gains as well. I remain bearish as I don't see legitimate use cases for the technology. That being said, if you get a good job offer in the sector I recommend going for it but would also recommend staying diversified financially. Don't go all-in on crypto or invest anything you are not willing to lose just like you have done so far. While I agree with some of your points, the current financial system is still a net-positive for society and not nearly as bad as it is made out to be either, especially among crypto bulls.

Just look around the strip. None of that would be built if the world was based on bitcoin. Instead, all those coins would just be sitting in cold storage right now hoping to strike it rich while doing nothing productive. The current financial system incentives investments and growth, bitcoin incentives hoarding and burying money under your mattress.

There is a long BFI thread dating back to 2011 for anyone interested in the read or just recent opinions: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/3...rency-1011408/

wow, you are really stretching if this is your bearish case against BTC.

"promotes hoarding and saving"...probably because people value it....and if people value it, they will find ways to obtain it....maybe, just maybe, possibly some enterprise would scheme to put some casinos in the desert in an attempt to fleece patrons from their beloved bitcoin via rake, -ev gambling, hookers, blow !?!!?

if it's not easy to come by (scarce) then people will be more dilligent in using it (smarter investing) with net result less wasted resources.

Quite possibly the worst bearish case I've seen presented against BTC Shoe and you should check yourself out of any future convos if "zomg we wouldn't have casinos in the desert if BTC was our base currency".

Either I didn't explain myself well or you misinterpreted or both. By saving and hoarding I just meant people are only buying it in hopes of getting rich. There are not really any reasons to have it or use it for anything other than getting around gambling laws or drugs, or other illegal stuff. For anything that is legal it is absolutely inferior and no one has a reason to use it for anything other than hoping to get rich.

I don't want to derail this thread, the Bitcoin thread can barely discuss anything productively, and I don't see a better conversation happening here so not sure if it is worth debating or not. Long-term it will be interesting to see what happens.

Ah ok.

Those who are last to adopt things are often times those who the actual product/commodity would help the most (a couple years ago the poor in India I'm sure wish they had "used" BTC instead of waking up to their high denomination bills being deemed worthless....or Venezualans or soon to be Turkish peeps, Argentinians, Iranians).

People don't wake up to the value/potential until it hits new ATHighs....rinse/repeat

I think the crypto space is inherently political, but most people don't understand that. To be clear, my orientation is that the system we should be questioning is capitalism itself and not fractional reserve banking. I also think that you should read the report and dissenting views from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

But I wanted to get more into how people think about crypto and not specifically politics. You don't need to be a programmer to understand crypto; you just need to understand the effects of technology on society. For most of the people who talk about crypto at the poker table, it's this sort of black box that spits out money. One could compare it to CDOs and other financial products, where banks seemed to not care too much about how such complex instruments actually worked so long as the money came pouring in. Bitcoin will go up because it always goes up. If goes down, it will rebound because it always rebounds. That's how most crypto enthusiasts seem to talk about it.

The only people who seem to have a theoretical framework for explaining their faith in crypto are the people who see it as a vehicle for making government obsolete. These are the people who might want to return to the gold standard, even though economists are uniformly against such an awful idea. Crypto feels like a variation on the theme of abandoning fiat money, with the concept of "mining" named to draw comparisons to gold. I disagree with those digital goldbugs, but that doesn't mean I am bearish on crypto. One potential use I see for blockchain is for a cryptocurrency with a clear digital audit trail for all transactions so that money laundering is impossible.

If I were to ask a crypto investor a single question, it would be to ask them what they foresee as the US regulatory atmosphere towards crypto over the next decade. Not what it should be, but what it will be. Will merchants be banned from accepting Bitcoin? Will know-your-customer legislation require banks to do their due diligence in determining whether deposits originated in crypto and to decline those transactions? I've never asked anyone that, mostly because the crypto talk I encounter occurs at the poker table and I try to avoid involved political discussions there, but I've never met any crypto enthusiast who seemed like a deep enough thinker to have considered that question.

Bump.

Your loyal podcast listeners want more!

Soon...

Haha sorry for the random hiatus. Will be back early next week.

As promised, back in the podcast game.

New episode: Breaking the Hiatus Update and How Variance Affects Your Brain