Adam Kreek: Level Up Your Poker Performance

Hello my friend Coach Brad here. I absolutely love every single second of running this podcast and want to offer you more. You may remember in the past me saying My ultimate goal is to release one new episode a day. To attempt this I’ve decided to try an experimental format. I’m going to open the chasing poker greatness doors to folks like yourself aspiring players. I’ll be offering unique one on one coaching sessions and releasing these on the show for other players to learn from. Over the course of time it will reveal all of the pitfalls and stumbling blocks that folks go through learning this great game we all love will not only cover hands, we’ll also dive deep into any of the burning pains you might be experiencing, including mindset, tactics, performance and anything else you have questions about. Our session will last for an hour plus and the price will be $100 which is 33% cheaper than my normal one to one poker coaching sessions. If you’d like one of these very limited spots, simply visit enhance your edge.com/guest and follow the instructions. One more time that’s enhanced your edge.com/guest if you have any questions or concerns, simply email me at Brad at enhance your edge.com Thank you very much for your time and now on with the show.

 

Pokers legendary champions, next generation stars and tireless ambassadors of the game, sharing their wisdom and guiding your journey to high achievement on the Greenfeld. This is chasing poker greatness with your host Brad Wilson.

 

Brad Wilson (2:02) Welcome welcome. Welcome my friend to the chasing poker greatness podcast. As always, this is your host, the founder of enhance your edge.com Brad Wilson, and today’s episode features one of my good friends who I’ve mentioned many times in previous episodes, Olympic gold medalist, elite performance coach and author of the responsibility ethic, Adam Kreek, Adam has an absolute wealth of knowledge on the subject of high performance. And despite having almost zero experience with the world of poker, somehow still managed to blow me away with poker irrelevant greatness bomb after greatness bomb. If you have some free time on your hands and want to sprinkle some inspired motivation to your day, I highly recommend you check out Adams TED talk titled I seek failure, which I will also link to in the show notes. In today’s episode, you’ll learn how to leverage the adrenaline dumps in your poker session to enter a state of flow. The not so pleasant yet ultra important way to reset your body’s metabolism on a regular basis. Why being a quote unquote feel player is absolutely not a bad thing. How the power of belief can have positive benefits to your poker game, and much much more. So without any further ado, I bring to you my friend, world class performance coach and Olympic gold medalist Adam Kreek Adam Good evening. How you doing sir?

 

Adam Kreek (3:44) Life is good, Brad. That’s good. Coronavirus, locked down and I am loving it.

 

Brad Wilson (3:53) Another one to add to the Coronavirus files on chasing poker greatness. Unsurprisingly, lots of lots of interviews done during this time. Lots of people that magically have a lot of free time on their hands.

 

Adam Kreek (4:09) Yeah, I’m sure there’s a lot of content that’s being generated right now in the internet verse. Think about, I just look at myself and my business, how it’s shut down. I’m just generating a ton of content right now. And I can only imagine everyone else who’s just generating, generating generating content.

 

Brad Wilson (4:31) Ton. Not many people are consuming the audio content actually, I found because nobody’s driving, nobody’s going to the gym. Nobody’s doing the secondary activities. That typically entail podcast listening,

 

Adam Kreek  4:47  

I guess. So. Unless you have a backyard. You can put on the podcast and do 800 squats. You can do that in your living room to 800 squats. That’s huge. Challenge

 

Brad Wilson (5:00) 800 How many burpees

 

Adam Kreek (5:04)just squats? What 100 burpees. I just said just squats. See if you can do 800 squats.

 

Brad Wilson (5:10) That’s too many squats. That’s a lot of a lot of squats.

 

Adam Kreek (5:13) Just to air squats, you’ll probably get to about seven. If you’re untrained, you might get to like 60 or 70 be like, I can’t do this anymore. Let’s see if you can get to 100 and then take a break. And Steve can get 800 in a day. Massive lakes. Great like burn. make you stronger, make you a better poker player. get the blood pumping to your brain.

 

Brad Wilson (5:39) This is a weird intro to this show. I don’t know. We’ve officially gone off the rails.

 

Adam Kreek (5:48) Yeah. Off the start. It’s only been two minutes into the show.

 

Brad Wilson (5:55) off the rails were off the rails two minutes in. Let me try to steer us clear back back into the realm of poker. I wanted to start out by asking you personally. How would you define greatness? It’s an abstract term that can mean different things to different people. How would you personally define greatness?

 

Adam Kreek (6:16) Greatness is a feeling a feeling of accomplishment, a feeling of impact, a feeling of, of influence and power. And I would say greatness is like you said it’s different for every individual. But I’d say greatness tends to be we’ll back I’m I’m conflating greatness with just like being super happy and loving your life. But I think to be great is just simply to be the best at something. If you’re great, you’ve done something that’s better than anyone else. And you’re at the top of your game. You can’t be great for your entire life. But you can be great for a moment in time. And for that moment in time, you can be absolutely excellent and you can do something or create something, or influence something that will have an impact that will last forever.

 

Brad Wilson (7:23) What does that journey look like to you? The journey to reaching greatness,

 

Adam Kreek (7:29) journey to greatness, it’s a lot of hard work, a lot of focus, a lot of effort, a lot of luck. It’s, you know, I had a friend who is a billionaire from gold, gold mining stocks. And he got his break was actually an interesting story. He was just playing in the penny stock space, he had a gold mine in Nevada. And it started, it’s just started to tank. And there were some rumors that circulated and the stock price went from being really low to spiking up to 100 times its value for about a week. And during that time, he liquidated all his stocks and took the cash, bought a few other more productive gold mines and now has one of the biggest gold companies in the world. And you would say you know his secret was always having your shoulder to the grindstone. Always be working, always be sharp, always be on because when opportunity shows up, you need to be sharp, and you need to be on and ready to take advantage of that opportunity. You know, like, like Eminem says Opportunity Knocks once in a lifetime. So better be ready to go and open the door. Because if you’re if you’re in a slump and you’re having a bad day When opportunity comes knocking, then it’s gone. And your opportunity for greatness is gone. 

 

Brad Wilson (8:53) Yeah, absolutely. The preparation. What is what is the saying that luck is when preparation meets opportunity?

 

Adam Kreek (9:02) Hmm. I think I think that is I agree with that. If you’re prepared, you have the skills..

 

Brad Wilson (9:08) As it relates to poker there, there have been guests. I know Matt Berkey. One of the guests of chasing poker greatness where there was a summer where there was a group of guys that were playing steaks that were abnormal in Vegas at the World Series of Poker. And by abnormal I mean, there were multiple million dollar pots played in cash games. And that was an opportunity that didn’t last very long. And while it did last, he took advantage of it. But if he wasn’t prepared, if he didn’t have the systems in place, he would never would have been able to put himself in that position to play in those games. And when it comes to poker, there are a lot of these opportunities that pop up that I’ve seen over the years. There’s the rise of the Chinese apps where the game is really really good. So if you had a good score You’ll base you had a name and poker people were contacting you to put you in these games, where they’re playing for just an absurd amounts of money and not very good. There’s, I talked about Nick, Nick Howard and poker detox and their system, if your breakeven or struggling cash game player, I think this is an opportunity, if you’re mentally strong, if you’re prepared to play full time, that you can take advantage of it and come out the other end, ready to pursue an earnest poker career at the end of the day. So I’m right there with you. I wanted to ask you about the body, right the body while folks are playing poker. So when you say you run a big bluff, right, your adrenaline spikes, your heart rate elevates, and a bluff goes through, and then the hand ends, like what’s happening in those moments in your body? Like, can you quantify that process,

 

Adam Kreek (11:05) So when, so you have two major autonomic parts of your nervous system, you have the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system, you know, the parasympathetic, you can think paralyzes you, it’s your rest and digest system, it’s the system that calms you down, it’s a system that allows you to digest your food. The other one is the fight and flight, we’ve heard of that. And that is the sympathetic nervous system. And when you call the big bluff, or you have a big bluff, and everything’s pumping, pumping, pumping, pumping, that’s what’s firing up, you’re, you’re perceiving the risk, and you’re getting ready to, to do something. And a lot of interesting things happen when, when your nerves start firing at that level one, you start mobilizing more glucose in your body. So in fact, there’s more energy going to your brain, you start absorbing more oxygen. So in fact, there’s, there’s more oxygen going to your brain, your blood vessels start to dilate. So you’re actually getting more nutrients to your brain. So there’s a lot of positive physiological results of of that stress shock and that stress attack, one of your primary responses to that stress at PAX should be simply taking a deep breath. And a funny thing happens when you start taking a deep breath. And actually breathing in so deeply that you’re you’re putting pressure on your lower diaphragm right above your stomach, you start pressing down on something called your vagus nerve. And when you press down on your vagus nerve, you send a signal to your autonomic nervous system that you’re safe, that you really truly Okay. When you start firing up your your, your rest and digest nervous system to it takes a long time for your fight and flight nervous system actually wind down. But you can take advantage of it if you also elevate your rest and digestive system to the same level of as your fight and flight system. And so what happens is, all of a sudden, you have fight and flight going at a high level and then taking deep breaths, telling yourself that you’re safe that you’re okay, having having good mental imagery, you can elevate your rest and digest system up. And that actually puts you into a higher state of conscious consciousness, it can put you into a state called the flow state, where all of a sudden thinking becomes more clear. You’ll have moments of insight, time will pass quickly or seem to move more slowly, it will be almost like you are you’re on a drug or, you know, the ultimate performance enhancing drug. You know, perhaps. And so an adrenal spike, I think there’s there’s three steps that I think we each need to go through to make sure that we’re actually turning on the rest and digest system to to complement the fight and flight system so that you have the ultimate mindset and can take ultimate advantage of that kind of adrenal shock. The first one is to manage it to take a deep breath. And the second one is to own it. So So you say thank you. Thank you stress. Thank you adrenal shock. This is amazing. I’m so glad that I’m being filled with energy. I’m so glad that there’s more oxygen going into my brain, more glucose going to migraine brain, more nutrients going into my brain. I’m now actually a more able human because of this adrenal shock. And then finally, is to actually own the state you’re in. You chose to Play this poker game, you didn’t have to play the poker game, you chose to be here and be in the state. So, so this is amazing, this is yours. And now that you have that, you can move into action. And you can take whatever action that you need to take, you can think about the next move, you can think forward a few moves, you can, I don’t know how to play poker, I’m not a poker player. But I am, you know, I am a performance coach or performance expert. And I’ve had experience playing at the top of the world. But…

 

Brad Wilson (15:35) What happens after so these adrenaline spikes are very common in poker, where I think they’re probably less common in other pursuits, were multiple times a session. And obviously, for the folks listening at home, you know, online, this this is applicable Minnesota Online, because if you can’t start breathing real deeply when you’re nervous at a live poker table and get that the you’re incentivized basically to swallow all emotions and just put on stone face in a Live Poker setting, in order to train yourself,

 

Adam Kreek  (16:17) Or you could train yourself in a Live Poker session just to actually take full breaths all the time. I think breathing training would be fundamental to anyone who wants to take their their poker to the next level. Because if you could sit there and just constantly using your your full lungs, instead of just the top 10%. and train yourself to do that one, you’re going to give your body far more X, far more oxygen and energy, you’ll be able to think clearer, you’ll be more present. And then when the the inevitable adrenal spike happens, you’re actually going to be in a higher state of consciousness and have more ability to take advantage of the situation.

 

Brad Wilson (17:03) These are these are greatness bombs, I love them. Like I’m fascinated by this, because this is something that I need to implement into my game on a daily basis as well. What happens after the adrenaline spikes, and then it goes away, say after I’m not even sure how long it lasts, what does the next process look like it in internally,

 

Adam Kreek (17:26) An adrenaline spike will typically last for 90 seconds to three minutes. There’s a guy out of Stanford University, Robert Sapolsky, he’s still studied baboons, and people who worked in health care and large bureaucracies. And he found he said, You on the savanna, it’s after three minutes, there’s like three minutes of screaming fury after which either you’re dead. Or you’re hungry. You’re dead, or it’s dead, or you’re hungry. And so you have all this, like, that’s what we’re designed for. That’s what the adrenaline spike for is to actually to do something in a short period of time. So afterwards, if you don’t have the appropriate if you don’t metabolize the adrenaline, and you don’t metabolize the cortisol on a regular basis it, it ends up leaving remnants in your system. And I don’t know the exact science behind this. And because I’m not a scientist, you’d have to talk to an endocrinologist or someone like this, but I can tell you from personal experience, there are a few things I know that will metabolize this, you need to make sure if you’re having these spikes on a daily basis. You should also have habits to actually clear out your adrenal system and refuel it on a on a daily basis on a regular basis. There are a few things that can rejigger that one is cold water immersion. cold water immersion will help metabolize all of your extra adrenal bits and just help burn it out.

 

Brad Wilson (19:08) What does that little do? What does that look like cold water immersion?

 

Adam Kreek (19:12) How long so you’d want to go you’ll hop into a cold, something that’s called a seven degrees Celsius 44 degrees Fahrenheit, kind of thing. So cold water, enough that you got you step in. This is really cold. This is really uncomfortable. I don’t want to be here. This is awful. That and what will happen is you’ll go in and any normal person who’s not training for anything would go in and within 10 seconds they’re out and you don’t you don’t have any benefit from that. Where the benefit really starts to show up. You’ll go in, you have the freakout and then you stay through the freakout until about three minutes and you get over the hump. And once you’re over the hump, you’ve that’s when you started to actually burn off all of the this excess cortisol and adrenaline and the metabolism, the remnants, and your body starts to reset. And they, and from a recovery standpoint, probably about six minutes is the ideal standpoint, the ideal amount of time to stay in cold water immersion. Cold showers can do something similar, it’s less effective, because obviously, it’s just a trickle of water on your body versus it’s still uncomfortable. So that’s one thing you can do. Sauna is another great thing you can do, you know, 20 minutes in the sauna, get up to a high sweat a hot sweat, work it off, burn off the sweat. That’s another way. It exercise, just exercise at a standard, you know, low level aerobic exercise, I’d probably stay away from lactic threshold type work.

 

Brad Wilson (21:03) What does lactic threshold mean?

 

Adam Kreek (21:05) That’s where if you were to go stand up and start running as hard as you could, right now, about 30 to 45 seconds into it, you’re all the glycogen in your body would be maxed out and you’d start panting. So this is really uncomfortable, this is really painful. I’m, I don’t want to keep up this pace, and you slow down. And so that’s, that’s right around. The lactic threshold is right, when you’re glycogen metabolism, the ability of your body to create energy out of out of sugars, is at its maximum, and you’re starting to metabolize oxygen, and you produce this byproduct called lactic acid. And your body has to learn how to metabolize lactic acid. And going too deep into that would create more adrenal stress, more adrenal fatigue, more cortisol stress, you’d want to hover right below your lactic threshold, you want to push the upper limits of of aerobic level training. That was so it’s, you know, just uncomfortable, like not really, really uncomfortable. And so if, you know, 20 minutes, 30 minutes of aerobic training, could do that for you. So if you’re getting into that meditative state, that’s a, that’s a great way to burn off the, you know, the extra stress metabolites. And really, what you’re, what you’re trying to do is boost your metabolism, right, this is what we’re taught when we talk about metabolism, we talk about your body’s ability to turn over and to refresh itself.

 

Brad Wilson (22:45) And from a an accountability standpoint, what would you suggest because you know, what you’re saying is fairly uncomfortable for folks, right, like sitting in a cold bath for six minutes, we’re fairly uncomfortable. Maintaining aerobic exercise for 20 minutes will be fairly uncomfortable. How do you stay accountable and make sure that you are doing this on a daily basis so that you’re able to play poker and perform at a peak level?

 

Adam Kreek (23:19) It depends. You know, how motivated you are, don’t can maintain that kind of schedule. Overnight. Change happens slowly. I think it’s important to recognize that if you decide that you want to adopt, we’re talking about habit change and behavior change. Now, you want to actually, you want to make it as easy as possible. So that you will, you will start to engage in the activity. So I would say to, I encourage you to go and get a buddy, who you can do it with, but who can hold you accountable. hire a coach appropriate, you know, a productivity coach, a physical fitness coach, you can get them on the internet, there’s a website called coach.me. You can hire people for like 47 bucks a month, to keep you accountable to taking a cold shower, or to adopting an aerobic regime. It’s even better if you have a friend, a close friend, that you can say, hey, look, I’m trying to do this. Will you do it with me? And that’s, for example, for the Coldwater immersion I wouldn’t do it on my own as regularly as I do. If I didn’t have a group I got a group of like four guys. We get together old Olympians, small business owners. All old guys who worked in the Special Forces in paratroopers that kind of thing schlubs We loved. Like we get together and More than like, well hop in the ocean. And if I didn’t have this group, I’d like, I wouldn’t do it. Because it’s uncomfortable. Like even for me, I’ve been doing it at least once a week for the last two and a half years, and it’s still uncomfortable.

 

Brad Wilson (25:16) Yeah, I guess that’s sort of that’s where the power lies, right? If it were comfortable, then maybe it wouldn’t be as beneficial.

 

Adam Kreek (25:23) No, it’s, if you want to do great things, you have to do hard things.

 

Brad Wilson (25:29)  

I love that. I love that.

 

Adam Kreek (25:32) If you have a new habit, you have to be a better poker player, you also have to have a healthy body healthy mind, you have to flush out your adrenals sis adrenaline system so you don’t get Adrenal Exhaustion. You know, to a certain extent, you can be if you start to experience Adrenal Exhaustion, you can be afraid of your adrenaline more than you can be afraid of the risk that you’re facing in a poker game.

 

Brad Wilson (26:00) What does that look like? How does that manifest?

 

Adam Kreek (26:03) Well, I can I can go back to my own experience as as an Olympic rower or as an Olympic rower, we could only race probably three times a year, because we would push so hard and so deep and put our body into such a pit of exhaustion, that you would be physically terrified to go to that level again. And you had your you know, all of your hormones with fire up Max, when you when you’re sitting on the start line, it’s international racing, you got the Germans, you got the Chinese, you’ve got, you’ve got the British and you’re, you’re looking at them and you’re, you’re terrified. But then you’re also taking the deep breaths and you’re activating, you know, that higher state of being, you know, sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are all firing. But then on the, on the other side, you’re exhausted, you’re fried, you’re absolutely fried. And if you were to, like three days later, after the race have to do something, you would have a subpar sub optimal performance at the best, because everything in you is burnt out. But you, you wouldn’t be able to do that unless someone had their gun to your head. Because you would be physically you just mentally your your brain would stop you from going there. Your brain wants to be safe, it doesn’t want to doesn’t want you to be hurt. And so if you’re if you’re experiencing adrenal overload, the need to make sure that you’re giving your adrenal system time to recover so that your your brain and your body isn’t having some kind of physiological response saying, I need I need some rest here. But you’ve, your brain wants to go, but your body’s saying no. Yeah,

 

Brad Wilson (28:04) I mean, from a poker sense, this just would mean that you’re not going to put in as much energy, you’re going to play your C game, to avoid taking the steps that that are needed to play your A game and push yourself back to that point,.

 

Adam Kreek (28:22) To stay sharp to stay on top, take the right risks.

 

Brad Wilson (28:26) It’s just you, it’s just maintaining that level of peak performance. If you if, if you’re scared of it, then naturally you’re not going to maintain it. So you’re going to try to conserve, and you’re going to just by nature, not invest as much energy into each decision. And each decision which leads you to playing you know, a C game or a D game, you’re putting in volume you’re putting in time, but it’s not super high quality, high intensity time. Look like you want to say something.

 

Adam Kreek (28:58) I’m just thinking of just different aphorisms that have been told to me over over time. One is mileage makes champions and the second in their to their combatting aphorisms, right. One is mileage makes kit champions. So that was from my Olympic coach, who also got it from this great guy called through Nielsen, who’s under region coach. And the other one is perfect practice makes perfect. So there is you want to be training in the right groups. When you’re training. You don’t want to be so exhausted that your bad habits become your main habits. But at the same point in time, sometimes you just need to put in the hours and you need to put in the hands and put in the miles.

 

Brad Wilson (29:50) So when you think of high performance in your life, and joy, what’s the first memory that comes to mind?

 

Adam Kreek (30:00) High Performance and joy, I think of just being free, as a child playing outside, high performing living. I perform a kid well, I think there’s an element of high performance, your ultimate high performance shows up when you are in flow. You to a certain extent you, you want to be living your childish nature, when you are in high performance, you want to have enough skill that you can let go and follow instinct as much as your intellect.

 

Brad Wilson (30:39) What is instinct mean? can we quantify that because I love I love this. And there’s this there’s a big debate as far as like, especially in poker, where poker is a game, you know, there’s an insult that folks like to throw around on the internet that somebody is a quote unquote, field player, versus somebody being a more mathematical or strategic player. And so tell me what instinct, intuition means to you.

 

Adam Kreek (31:05) The body holds intelligence that the brain can never understand. So say one more time, the body holds intelligence that the brain can never understand. But we’re using our brain right now we’re talking through it to try and communicate an experience. But when we talk about instinct, or we talk about being a feel, player, there’s a lot of knowledge held within even the neurological fibers within our arms, within our gut, within our legs, within our loins, within all these different parts of our body, that the brain, brain can have access to you can have a sense of intuition. And I think there’s, you know, we have a greater sense of feeling, you use your brain to actually you can be a cognitive analytical player, and I’d say the best players would probably have a little bit of both, but you’d have to have, you’d have to have good feels, as well as having a good intellect. So if you have a very good strategy, as well as high attunement to your feelings and the energy sphere, then that that’s where you take your game to the next level. And so what needs more work? Do you need to be more analytical? Or do you need to work on your feeling sense? When I talk about intuition, and you think about intuition, there’s, there’s, there’s shared experiences, I think that all of us have had that proves there, there is a deeper level of this intuition. For example, have you ever sat there been working focused on something you feel like someone’s watching you and you look up and someone’s staring at you? Yes, a coffee shop? Or where does that come from? How do I sense the fact that someone who’s over there who’s 12 feet away from me, just kind of staring at me thinking like, Who’s this balding Viking large human? And why does that laptop laptop looks so small on his hands? Who knows what they’re thinking, but you feel it, and then you look up? And the other one was? You’re thinking of someone, and you haven’t thought of them forever? You’re thinking of someone, and then you decide to call them and then you follow them up? You say? Yeah, I just felt like I should give you a call. And they’re like, I was just thinking about you, too. I was just about to give you a call, too. 

 

Brad Wilson (33:37) Yeah, this this happens happens all the time. Like, oh, that’s really weird. I was just thinking about you, I was thinking about giving you a call tip, what do you make of that?

 

Adam Kreek (33:45) So there’s all that’s intuition.

 

Brad Wilson (33:48) That’s so the, the human brain can’t make anything out of it?

 

Adam Kreek (33:52) No, the human brain can’t make anything out of it. And we haven’t proven it and maybe someone who’s who’s smarter than me and are smarter than you who you know, they can, they’ll figure out why this works. At the end of the day, it’s empirical knowledge, we just we know that it exists. We know that we have an intuition, you know, that you can go and you can, I can put my hands over different people and I can, I can sense from them. I can sense from them, whether they’re stressed or whether they’re relaxed, or whether they’re and I can I can read all this knowledge just by by sensing and being open to your the energy field that the person is putting off and we have and it’s something beyond beyond what we can cognitively define and we can talk about it and we can develop the skill a little bit. But I was I go down a little bit more of the towards Well, I want to maximize both. I want to maximize both my intuition and my intellect. And even when I went to when I went to the Olympics, one of the things that I learned about was this was this therapy called Body Talk. We’ve talked, I think we’ve talked about this before.

 

Brad Wilson (35:15) I don’t think so. No, I don’t think so.

 

Adam Kreek (35:18) Those. So there’s a there’s a woman by the name of Susan Stenson, she became my BodyTalk practitioner. And there are blockages that each of our bodies will hold energetic blockages that will will be held. 

 

Brad Wilson (35:34) And this is like accurate, she just does, right.

 

Adam Kreek (35:38) It’s it’s kind of like acupuncture, except she goes through a question a matrix of questions, and she does muscle testing on my thumb and social. She’ll ask me a question in her mind. So she won’t ask it out loud. Just ask me a question in my mind, if my thumb resists, then it stops. And if it’s not on, or if it resistance, yes. And if I give out it’s no. So she asked me the questions. And I don’t know exactly the technique. But she’ll go through and I went through this. So remove emotional blockages and shall remove spiritual blockages that your body or the body is putting up that will stop you from getting what you truly need.

 

Brad Wilson (36:30) Yo, Coach Brad here and I have a very simple question. How would you like an opportunity to join Nick Howard’s crew at poker detox. This is a chance for you to have world class coaching and hop on the fast track to destroying online cash and MTTs without risking your own money or in during years of pain trying to figure things out on your own. I recently had the good fortune to go behind the scenes with Nick and his detox crew to experience for myself their training methods, and quite frankly, I was blown away and have never seen anything like it. The poker detox system is both powerful enough to supercharge your game, and simple enough to implement hand after hand. And the last year, they have verifiably fast track multiple players from 50, no limit all the way up through 1k no limit. And on average, their players are winning eight big blinds per 100 on non AP sites across all stakes, with the majority of volume being played at 200 through 500. No limit. However, this opportunity is not for wannabes or lazy bums. This is for folks who are obsessed and want to do the work so that they can reach their full potential as poker players. To qualify, you must be able to provide a breakeven or winning graph in cash games or MTTs over the last three to six months, and be willing to play full time to take the next step, all you have to do is send me that graph via email, Brad at enhance your edge.com or send a direct message to add enhance your edge on Twitter. And I’ll personally guide you through the next step in the process. Once again, that email is Brad at enhancer edge.com. And the Twitter handle is at enhance your edge. Thank you for your time. I’d love to hear from you soon. And now back to the show.

 

So this this is this is in the realm of whooley. So I do want to invest a little. Yes, tangible benefits. Do you think there’s a placebo effect? what’s your what’s your experience tell you?

 

Adam Kreek (38:48) Well, placebo effects are great. So my, my opinion is that if you can believe in it, and I’ve got a friend who’s a sports physiologist, and he’ll say, I believe in the placebo effect. And I try to get, I try to encourage that with my athletes as much as possible. Because the more belief that you have, the more positive results you will have. So I think there there could be an element of placebo effect. I can also tell you a story before the went to her initially, because I have bad I have back pain. And so she went through and she said oh, you’re having some issues with your your father in connection to like the male energy in your life that’s just released that and so she helped with, you know, help with the back pain. And then she said, when you go to the Olympics, I want to give you a performance energy shield. And I want to make sure that this performance energy shows up so that you have your best game at the Olympics. And it’s like well, what’s, what’s the cost? And she says I’ll just throw it in for free. Okay. Sounds great. You How much time will this take? Oh, it might take 15 minutes. Okay, let’s do that give me my she’ll she started. Yeah, give me my performance energy shield. And so like she did it. I didn’t tell anyone about it on my team because there’s, it’s kind of weird. Yeah. And so I show up to the Olympics, and I’m starting to think where’s my performance energy shield? So she said two things. One, it’s going to show up at your heat and my as the Olympic rower we have a heat, a rubbish charge, and a final and social and she’s like, Okay, I know I can put the shield around on your heat, but your reps charge. It’s not I’m not able to, I can’t give you on for the representation. I said, Well, if I wouldn’t my heat and i There’s no rubber shot. It’s like, Well, looks like you’re gonna win your your heat. Okay. Okay, I’ll give you one for your final. So just put one around for the final. So we show up, run the race course we’re in Beijing, China. And obviously I’m thinking like, oh, performance energy shield gonna show up. She said it will show up one hour before you cross the finish line. So energy knows time, no time or space. If anything changes, like the energy will know what it needs to show up. And we go up we put the boat on the water and it’s just shit. Like the boats like, flopping around. Nobody’s in time, it doesn’t feel very good. And I’m thinking where’s this performance energy shield it should be showing up. And then it was about 20 minutes before the race was about to start and lightning came. A race got delayed. We next day, we show up boom boats set like a rock. Go off the start the Aziz braker rudder their boat to ram into our boat. We able to leapfrog them get ahead, we win. We win the heat by a mile, no rubbish charge, go to the final win the final performance energy shield boom. And did the performance energy shield caused me to win the Olympics? No, no, but was it a tool in my toolkit? Yes. Could it have given me a point 00 1% advantage over the competition? I think it did. Maybe even more than that. It caused the lightning. That’s what caused it could have caused late or you just knew that the lightning was showing up.

 

Brad Wilson (42:22) That’s true. It knew the lightning was showing up. And it’s not time to activate yet. We’re doing this tomorrow.

 

Adam Kreek (42:28) Yeah, we’re gonna activate when you need to. And so there’s, it’s making sure that your your body is in alignment with your mind. And it’s in alignment with energies space. And I had her give, give me a performance energy shield when I took the rowboat across the ocean as well. And how that story ended up? Well, we capsized in the Bermuda Triangle. We were safe. We had the adventure of a lifetime we generated a story of her lifetime. And in fact, the result was actually better than I could have even imagined. The capsize created more opportunity for me than a successful completion would have been. So it turned out being the perfect row, I wouldn’t have changed anything about it. And then I’ve also done it for various business I had to do one for I did a pitch competition and I won like a business pitch competition. And we won like $25,000 for this. This this business I was running, I had to do it again, for a park near my house that we’re trying to save. And it hasn’t been saved yet. But it’s still like it’s on it’s on its way. And so I just I keep coming back when I have big things, big events that I want to work out. I have her do the performance energy shield around it just to make sure it’s

 

Brad Wilson (43:53) Just to try try to get that edge, you’re going to be at the edge, you’re going to be inundated by folks who want their own performance energy shield after this episode goes live, by the way, so just be prepared to release the information.

 

Adam Kreek (44:08) It will you can get it in my book, the responsibility ethic, chapter 12 Embrace providence. It’s simple. It’s really simple. No, and I think that there is it is part of the mental game. And if you can, and I think this is what it comes down to, if you can find something that gives you confidence, you can find something that gives you an edge that it inspires belief, then do it and if there is if if there seems to be a relatively low cost and the results even if the result is just a positive feeling. A feeling of I did something that’s worth it. Whether or not you can prove it or not. And I think you can even do the Pascal was wager. And if I do this, and it works, well, then it’s worth it. If I do it and it doesn’t work well, how much did I lose?

 

Brad Wilson (45:09) For those that might not be familiar? What’s What’s the Pat, what’s Pascal’s Wager?

 

Adam Kreek (45:13) Or Pascal’s wager was about us deciding whether or not he should believe in God and become a Christian. And so Pascal was figuring out, should I be a Christian and believe in God or not? So, say there’s a heaven, let’s, let’s say there’s a heaven if there’s a heaven, and I believe that I’m going to heaven, there is a heaven, I don’t believe I’m going to hell. If there’s no heaven, and I believe, Oh, I’m just dead. If there’s no heaven, and I don’t believe, well, I’m just dead. And yet I’m sending Well, the biggest risk is if there’s a heaven, and I don’t believe, and either way, whether I believe or don’t believe I’m just dead at the end of it. So I might as well just believe that there’s a heaven and that I’m going to go there.

 

Brad Wilson (46:07) Now, poker players call this implied odds.

 

Adam Kreek (46:10) Implied odds. Okay, yes, it’s

 

Brad Wilson (46:12) A implied odds mean, like, basically, you risk $2. And if you make your hand, you make an additional like, $200, right. So like, you risking a very small amount for an asymmetrical result of something very large. And with Pascal’s Wager, you’re risking only belief that has a lot of implied odds behind it. And that you can exist in some form or fashion forever.

 

Adam Kreek (46:44) Exactly. And so when we’re talking about, you know, the energetic realm, and finding, can you find some kind of spiritual advantage, some kind of placebo advantage? Can you say, your little prayer to the gods? Can you light your incense? Can you have someone do energy work upon you? Can you ask someone, can you pay them five bucks on Fiverr, to come give you a positive energy shield shock? Well, maybe you could do that, maybe that becomes your little ritual. And you, you have someone to deliver prayer on your behalf, before every big game. And if that gives you that extra edge, and sometimes it can only be a fraction of an inch. Sometimes that’s what you need to make it over over the hump. And every person is different. And they need to figure out what works with their intellect and what works with their intuition.

 

Brad Wilson (47:43) A previous guest of the show, Andrew lucky, Chewy, Lichtenberger. We’ve talked up we’ve talked about,..

 

Adam Kreek (47:52) okay, Chewy, Lichtenberger, that’s great name.

 

Brad Wilson (47:56) He’s big. He’s, he’s, I love I love lucky, chewy. He’s just he’s a great guy. I love his outlook on life. And he’s a big believer in energy at live poker tables and reading his ability to read energy and the fact that humans are emitting energy. And he said a few times that based on the energy that he’s gotten, and he can’t even prove it, that he just knows the cards of the opponent based on his intuition and the energy that he’s getting at the table. can’t quantify Billy, prove it, because those hands never went to showdown. He never actually got the knowledge. But he does believe that he was right. And he does trust his intuition when it comes to energy. And, you know, for a lot of people this is especially a lot of analytical, mathematical driven human beings. This is sort of outside of their realm of comfort, if you will.

 

Adam Kreek (48:58) Oh, and I think it’s, it’s important to recognize what kind of personality you have, you’ll think of the ESTP or the Myers Brigg personality assessment. Right II, you’ve got the four components that you got introversion and extraversion. Right. And then you’ve got sensing versus feeling, right. Then you have sensing versus intuition, thinking versus feeling and judging versus perceiving. So you have these, these four different opposite ends of the of the personality spectrum. So you’d have, for example, thinking versus feeling. You’d have analytical types who are very thick, they don’t have good perception and you’re borderline autistic. And if you’re borderline autistic, you’re not going to have very good intuition. You’re not going to be able to feel what other people are saying because again, Guess what, you can’t even read other people’s emotions when you’re having conversations with them. So of course, you’re gonna poopoo it because your experience shows you that you can’t sense other people’s feelings, and you’ve never really had that skill set. And chances are you won’t, because that’s just how your brain How are you born and how your brain actually works. Okay? And then there’s people who’ve got a really strong into intuitive standpoint. And you know, what, if you’re trying to argue on online forums about whether thinking versus feeling who’s gonna win every single time, the thinkers are always going to win, because the feelers won’t know the logic to use, they won’t, they just won’t have they won’t have that. That’s not their skill set arguing. You’re finding a path logical pathways. So I think people who are all about like the thinking poker, they’re high in sensing, they’re high and high and thinking that people who are got intuition, they’re high and high intuition hind feeling from Myers Briggs standpoint, and I wouldn’t say, I’d say both, from my worldview, both would be pretty effective, and being a good poker player. But you’d really just need to own how you’re, you’re operating it, and people are not going to like you, like the extreme. Intellectuals will poopoo you because they can never understand it. And then the intuitives will, like, they might just want to keep it a secret because they can’t one, they can’t explain it. And two, it’s a secret advantage. So why share it?

 

Brad Wilson (51:45) Yeah, that’s great. I love that. So basically, understand yourself, understand how you’re operating how your personality works, and then lead into your own strengths. So that you can maximize your ability based on your, you know, the your biology, how you were born, your genetics. That’s, that is another greatness bomb, this conversation has been full of them. By the way, I’ve, I’m loving this, I have a few lightning round questions for you. And then we can get if you could recommend one book on performance to the chasing poker greatness audience, what would it be and why? 

 

Adam Kreek (52:23) Well, other than my own book, the responsibility ethic, which I recommend you guys, I would get, I’d recommend the power of full engagement by Jim Mora and Tony Schwartz. It’s an older book, maybe 1015 years old, but it it’s it really speaks to the holistic mindset that you’re promoting on this podcast, it talks about the importance of, of periodized rest, the importance of good nutrition, the importance of good, strong relationships in your life to keep performance at an optimal level.

 

Brad Wilson (53:06) I love that. And I do want to talk about your book, by the way, because I’ve, your book is one. I have read your book, right, I read your book pre release, I haven’t read the actual full finished version of it, because I read it and then gave you some of my small little feedback. But I loved it. I’ve read a lot of books before I did the chasing poker greatness podcast, I did another podcast called the process. And everybody on the show pretty much had was an author in some form or fashion and 98% of those books. I did not love. They were they were struggles to get through yours. I loved I read it from you know from cover to cover very, very quickly. It resonated with me very much. I am still of the opinion that I liked inches better. But you know, your focus group throughout inches because of a parent’s sexual connotation. But

 

Adam Kreek (54:10) I think the exact words were your cover looks like a big black dick. And it says inches. That was the cursor. Okay, yeah, well, well, let’s call it the responsibility ethic instead, because of the robots.

 

Brad Wilson (54:26) Now everybody, you just gave everybody a great reason to look up the responsibility ethic to look at the cover and see what it reminds them of, but you are writing uh, you know, you’re you’re gone for book number two. So you could have had two inches and three inches. You could have just could have gone on forever.

 

Adam Kreek (54:45) I could have kept growing and growing and growing. You know, eventually get to the 12 inch

 

Brad Wilson (54:52) 1616 inches. can no more.

 

Adam Kreek (54:58) What reminds me of some of those Coronavirus memes going around? Have you seen them?

 

Brad Wilson (55:01) I haven’t I haven’t seen the meme.

 

Adam Kreek (55:04) I will, I will send you some texts afterwards. Maybe you can put it in the show notes? Or maybe not. We’ll see.

 

Brad Wilson (55:14) I’m sure they’re great. We’ll see how much courage I have for the shownotes portion of the of the after the pod for folks who were, you know, driving on their way to the casino, ready to play cards? If they were going to drive past a billboard? What would you put on that billboard?

 

Adam Kreek (55:38) What would I put on there? Put, breathe, be grateful. Own it.

 

Brad Wilson (55:46) I love that. That’s brings everything full circle, very perfect, easy billboard, material, breathe, period, be grateful period. and own it. My friend, it’s always a pleasure. Speaking with you spending time with you, you know, engaging in fellowship, you’re one of my favorite people in the world. I very much enjoy it. And the final question is, Where can the chasing poker greatness audience find you on the worldwide webs? World

 

Adam Kreek (56:17) Wide Web, you can use this great tool. It’s called Google. Have you heard of it?

 

Brad Wilson (56:23) Maybe a little, a little familiar, kind of like,

 

Adam Kreek (56:25)  

kind of like Bing and DuckDuckGo. But if you go to Google, you couldn’t put in my name, which is k r e. K. Adam Kreek. And you can find me on Twitter. I’m on Instagram. I’m on LinkedIn. And I’m a pretty accessible guy. So if you you want to know more, just reach out and chances are, we’ll have a conversation. I love it.

 

Brad Wilson (56:53) Man. I hope folks do reach out for you. Not too many. But some that need help. Because you are you know, you’re a boon to folks who are trying to attain greatness. And just a great guy. I wish all everybody could be friends with you. You You just just a great dude. But thanks. 

 

Thanks for your time. Thanks for your energy. I appreciate it. Let’s do it again. Yes. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of chasing poker greatness. If you have yet to subscribe to the show. Please take a second to do so on Apple podcasts or wherever your favorite place to listen to podcasts may be for more content from me, Coach Brad, please visit our YouTube channel at youtube.com/enhance your edge and I’ll see you next time.