Jaime Staples: OG Poker Streamer And PartyPoker Pro

Welcome welcome. Welcome my friend to another episode of the chasing poker greatness podcast. As always, this is your host, the founder of chasing poker greatness.com Coach Brad Wilson, and today’s guests on CPG is one of the most popular Twitch streamers in the world and Party Poker sponsored pro Jaime staples. As of this episode’s release, Jaime has cashed for over $1.5 million and combine online and live poker tournaments with no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Today’s conversation with Jaime is going to travel to some uncomfortable territory as we have a frank discussion about invisible suffering hiding in plain sight all around us. Unfortunately, this is an area where you’re humble a podcast host has infinitely more questions than answers. But that doesn’t mean it’s a topic unworthy of dragging into the light. It does beg some uncomfortable questions though. Like if you catch poker greatness, what can you do with it that helps alleviate the suffering of your fellow man. And what do you do if you realize that there are some problems much too big for any one person to tackle alone? Perhaps this conversation will set up a future philosophical Friday discussion with Duncan on moving beyond a zero sum game into the realm of gasp nonzero sum games or win wins. If this intro feels like you’re getting set up for something heavy, don’t worry too much. We’re also going to spend an ample amount of time diving into the wide world of everything poker. And if you happen to miss my earlier episode with Jaime, where a very very early episode with his brother Matt, I’d highly suggest checking out those greatness bomb dripping episodes as soon as you’re done listening to this one. Now, without any further ado, I bring to you one of the most thoughtful and noble poker ambassadors in the whole world. Jaime staples

 

Mr. Staples, how you doing, man? Thanks for having me on the show. Yeah, having you back. You know, it’s been a little bit I’ve been doing well, how about yourself?

 

Jaime Staples: Things are good, dude. Things are good. The world is different. I’m fairly similar. Poker and streaming and content. Still love this game. That’s for a madman.

 

Brad: And where are you located these days? I think you’ve at some point you moved. But that may have been like over a year ago.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, about a year, year and a half. I was in Scotland when we last spoke in Edinburgh. And now I’m in Montreal. In Cold Frozen Montreal. It’s been a rough winter. Where are you Brad?

 

Brad: I’m in Atlanta, Georgia. So okay. It’s not frozen. Not so cold right now. I think it’s it’s 73 degrees outside and blue skies. So yeah, things are quite nice. Right now. I’m not a fan of the cold. I’m not built for the cold. So I don’t envy you right now.

 

Jaime Staples: It’s been really ruthless. Like, I’m not even joking around, you know, the whole weather small talk thing. Like I’m not, it’s been a real struggle for me this winter. Up here, like, we had a bad COVID thing. And we are COVID sort of response was pretty aggressive in Canada relative to the rest of the world. So things were like really shut down. My fiance was actually in England for two months. So it was like, minus 20 For the last three months Celsius. But it’s not even far from Fahrenheit when you get down that low. Down I don’t know why alone, you know, and it’s just like, Dude, this is ruthless. You know, there’s no sunlight. It’s been a painful, painful geological experience. I was even thinking like, Man, can I can I do the like to house thing like, can I? What can I make it work where I can go somewhere for the winter? Like, do I really have the financial chops to do that already? I might do it, man. I don’t know. I don’t know. I gotta make a shorter list. 

 

Brad:  Well, there’s dodge. There’s a reason why so many people live in Los Angeles. You know, the joke is about the small talk in the weather. But if weather didn’t really matter, then there wouldn’t be so many people that live in LA the traffic wouldn’t be so bad. And I know weather certainly affects my Outlook, my energy, just really most everything in life. Like when you can have sunlight and it’s warm outside. I’m just in such a better mood. I have more energy. I feel better.

 

Jaime Staples: Yes, absolutely no i 100%. And the thing is, I don’t have a lot of options right now because I am a poker pro for Party Poker. So where can I stream? That is I’m allowed to stream from in the winter months. And you know, I could do I could do like South America, but..

 

Brad: Use some leverage just magical or someone’s it. Yeah, just get them in Portugal be like, guys get in there. You know, I need to move. You some of that?

 

Jaime Staples: Honestly, I mean, pitch that to them and see what they say. Yeah.

 

Brad: Use your Jaime staples pull. You know what, well, what have you been up to? Since you know, we just looked it up is June 2020. So just hanging out streaming, that whole, that whole thing, anything exciting. 

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, so a lot of content, been with Party Poker that whole time, and focusing on just trying to share the tournaments and online story. And then from a poker side of things, I think I’ve improved quite a bit at the the game of poker, but working pretty hard been doing some lessons. And just a lot of time, you know, like with, with some technical tools, like solvers, but also some like quizzing software, and I think taken my game to a level where I’m winning in high stakes, tournaments, you know, like 1k tournaments. So that’s really fun. To win at high stakes, I really enjoy that. And sharing that journey and content, you know, like, that’s, that’s kind of been the, the MO for the last couple of years.

 

Brad: I see you like, you pop up in my Instagram. somewhat regularly, I see you just getting your soul ripped out of you kind of over and over and over again. 

 

Jaime Staples: Those clips do the best man. The clips play to the medium poker player, right? Which really enjoys the bad beats and the big suck outs and the big emotional hands. So yeah, you’re gonna you’re gonna get a lot of those. A lot of those hands on on Instagram. Well, 

 

Brad: Yeah, it’s like, Super Dave, you know, you just see over and over and over again, the Jaime staples getting fucking smashed the shock on his face the slack jaw. Empty stare out into oblivion.

 

Jaime Staples: People love it. They love the pain. 

 

Brad: They love the pain. Yeah, um, you were saying something, and I interrupted you, if you remember what you were saying. But if you don’t remember, then I was going to ask you about, you know, what’s been the most impactful thing that you’ve studied and has helped elevate your game in the past Couple years?

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, so I remember where I was going, I’m sure we’ll talk about but like, there’s been a process of this, figuring out how to balance a professional poker career and content, career and other parts of life and make that sustainable. I’m sure we’ll get into some of that later.

 

Brad: Please help me I need any help. In this regard. I think I’m in the demographic that wants to have this conversation. 

 

Jaime Staples: We were talking about this last time, too. But let’s let’s talk about your strategy for an IRA. Alright. So I think, you know, I realized that for the first five or six or seven years of my career, like the biggest downfall was a really solid understanding of different ranges preflop in various scenarios, because tournaments are so variable, as you know, and as you as people listening to this know, like, when he blinds is different than 15, blinds is different than 30 blinds is different than 40 than 60 than 80. And not and the stacks aren’t all equal. They’re variable. So it’s not like cash games, where everyone’s got 100. It’s like, you’ve got someone with 20, behind, and then someone with 40. And then the big, you know, the big second tournament is in the big blind. And like, all of that just changes everything, you know,

 

Brad: The configuration of what, like who has the chips? Yeah, relative to where you are, how many chips you have, like, there’s, yeah, that’s what makes tournaments so tough are is managing and finding the right variables to prioritize in your decision making.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, well, you know, preflop on the button versus like, cut off or something, you know, this is like very, very mixed strategy of three betting and 100 blinds, and then it starts to like, really go to you know, sort of like polarize a little bit in the 40s. And then you drop some of these hands, and then you add some of these, and you get shorter and then it goes back to the asecs students and like, just all this stuff fluctuates, and how to deal with three legs and four bets. It’s a massive, massive game preflop tournament poker. So I’ve been able to use some stuff with raise your edge and paired, but go through that and I’d quiz a lot and Learn from all these ranges, I just got them down really Pat. And I don’t know plugged like a ton of leaks like improved my win rate hugely, just from not being in stupid spots, because my ranges were like completely out of whack. postflop. And that is a really boring experience. It’s not fun to study preflop ranges and like drill them and like, get some check, but it helped a ton, you know? 

 

Brad: Yes, that’s, you know, the first product that I came out with was preflop bootcamp. And it is not sexy, by any stretch of the imagination, but it is fundamental, and foundational, and high frequency and like, all of those things are just worth their weight in gold when it comes to studying and improving your poker game.

 

Jaime Staples: I agree. I mean, what like what’s more important, like, like a range construction on like, how much of your range wants to better check on the flop and you miss it by 20%. Or like your range being 6% too wide or too narrow? preflop it’s like the preflop makes a bigger difference, you know, in your win rate. And it makes your life so much easier when you know, immediately, like what it looks like. So

 

Brad: Yes, you have bandwidth, right? Again, something that I talk a lot about, it’s a thing that like you can tell people about, but until they like really experience it, then that’s when it kind of sets in and you’re like, oh, like, we were talking about all the variables and like how things can change based on stack sizes, table configuration, all these things? Well, when you know what your strata supposed to be. And it’s just a reflex, then you can start thinking about the additional variables on top of you know, what the range should be, and come to a much better conclusion. And in the in the cash game sense, like when you know what to do preflop Well, now you freed up so much mental bandwidth to think about post flop, that you just make better decisions and you go deeper and you learn more, it’s just a cumulative effect. 

 

Jaime Staples: It makes so much sense why you guys are so good at like, post flop, because I’ve been doing a little bit of cash game study recently. And I mean, the preflop game relative to MTTs is like, doable, bro. Like, you can learn the game, like be preflop game, and in like a month of like steady sort of practice and work like you’ll know, kind of how it works. And you just can’t do that in MTT. So so it makes sense. Like you catch guys get that down. And then it’s you can deviate from that when it makes sense, right? And like, and then you’re just crushing me on on flop range construction, where I’m just like, Dude, I haven’t got this far yet. 

 

Brad: Yeah, like old on different equity, shifting turns and rivers and like multi-way spots. I mean, I just got back from a tournament. The first, I’ve played three live tournaments in the last 10 years, if that gives you any picture of how often I’m battling in the tournament scene, right. But what I realized was a I have no idea what to do with 25 bigs or 30 bigs I am just like, lost, but be like the really skillful and good tournament players, when they get to like a turn. Like the wheels just kind of fall off, you know, their their ability to play, like after the flop was subpar, you know, which may not be super detrimental in tournaments, but like it was, it was something that I picked up on quite quickly was like, Okay, I need to get myself in more postflop situations because, you know, people are just kind of torching. And that was, yeah, part of my game plan. And ironically, I busted out in a post flop situation because one of the worst one of the calibrations I didn’t make was in cash games. People bluff a lot. And I think in tournaments the pressure gets to people. And yes, love catching the value of bluff catching goes down in spots that are just like slam dunk, easy calls in cash become quite easy fold in tournaments. And I think there are just a few like Ace high bluff catches that probably aren’t going to make money in a tournament setting that are like kind of printing in an in a cash game setting.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And the other thing that I think along those same lines is with antes. Like ranges just get out of whack comparative to cash game ranges where they’re pretty, like tight so it’s much easier to visualize without antes but people’s ranges are preflop and post flop, but it’s like an MTTs you know, like button versus big blind people have so many choices of hands to bluff with, because the ranges are so wide 20 blinds deep, like there’s no reverse implied odds, people just get to check raise, like every pair if they want. But like even in a, in a game theory sense, like they can just check raise, like second pair or better all in, because it doesn’t matter on a lot of board textures. You know, like, there’s just a lot of money in the pot. So, so you had these situations where ranges are really wide, and it’s so easy to get out of whack. Like I think for a long time, he was just see bet 85% of range on every board texture, and then just check turn, you know, like, like, just like bet turn 20% of the time or something like that. Right, right. And it’s just like these huge holes were developed.

 

Brad: Yeah. And because like, there’s no because the incentive in tournaments are from what I’ve seen in tournament play for many players is to protect their equity in the pot. actions become much more honest. And so, you know, they bet the flop like they see by the flop, like you said, 80% of the time, and then they check the turn, which means they’re going to over fold the turn by not a small measure, right, like massively massively over folding, and massively massively oversee betting the flop as well. So like that 15%, when they check back on the flop, well, then you just have the turn. And they’re likely over folding in that situation as well. And yeah, I mean, that’s just, maybe it’s just an element of tournament poker. I assume that like as you venture into like the realm of high stakes, tournaments, and you’re battling against consistently strong competition. Things have to shift you have to. 

 

Jaime Staples: Their good, yeah,

 

Brad: You have to understand the full game tree. But yeah,

 

Jaime Staples: It doesn’t it doesn’t exist like that forever.

 

Brad: I mean, in a cash guy. Yeah, in a cash game sense. It’s almost like playing the blinds, like small blind versus big blind, and Big Blind versus small blind, you know, is the loosest formation and you’re raising a lot of hands, like some, like half the combos, you know, like five 600 combos or so and like in a tournament setting, if you’re raising the button with all the aunties, you’re raising that many combos, and then like, you have to manage all these combos post flop, and that is not a small task to do, like, not easy. No, it is not easy at all, like, the wider you are, the harder it is to manage everything in a way that makes you not exploitable. And most people, I would venture to say almost every person is exploitable in some way.

 

Jaime Staples: Yep. Yeah. No, absolutely. It’s, it’s a hard thing to do. And I mean, I think the guys at the top, you know, you’ll often often see them playing like 500 Fast forward, or 500 zoom on the side. Like I think they’ve, they’ve got some chops. And, you know, I’m not suggesting in like the five hundreds or one case online that people are under bluffing turns, they’re probably bluffing turns, because they know that people are, you know, exploitable, right? Like, they’re great. But a lot of these leaks, I think developed over just the history of of like online poker, like just the trends of the day, the exploitability of just like, oh, yeah, raise see bet and people over fold flops. So you just see that your range, because that’s what wins. And we can prove that, based on this math like you. This works this much. And that’s great. And someone’s like, Well, wait a second, do we compare that? To like, if we check, like, how profitable is the term line, you know, card runners EV when it came out? And everyone’s like, whoa, we can’t see that. 100% of flubs, you know, there’s just like this, this, this progression of, of learning. So I feel like a lot of tournament culture isn’t inherent to the game, or the structure of the game, or how it’s set up. It’s just culture that’s developed from these thought processes over time, you know, and people are stuck. Yeah, at various aspects of it. And they’re, you know, I’m sure I have plenty in my game where I’ve got some line of logic that’s based on some idea from a card runners or do scrap video from like, you know, 2008

 

Brad: years ago. Exactly, dude.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah. 100%.

 

Brad: In the past year, I think one of my missions has been to really try to understand poker, like a basic level of how do you quantify a value bet? What is happening when you raise what is happening when you bet, like what makes for a successful bluff? Just how does the game work? Like if I were to build a solver, how would I build a solver, right? Like, how would I go about creating an algorithm and programming it to really just understand what’s going on? And I think in tournament poker, like they’re these just like kind of heuristics come out of like, always be raising or betting never be calling or checking right. And it’s like, well, you just eliminated Some tools that have utility from like the jump. And I think the reason why people latch on to these is because yeah, just somebody told them, that’s really good. Somebody just told them that and then they just accepted it, and then they just moved on. But really, when you understand like, what’s happening in poker, it makes your decision making process like it adds depth there, because it’s like, wait a minute, like, I have aces, and the flop is like deuce, deuce, eight, like, do I want to see but this hand every time? And what am I accomplishing? Like, how many beds do I want to play this hand for how many beds are left? And then like, Where does the value of the beds come from, because beds to go in different ways are worth different amounts, like a bet that goes in, when somebody is betting is worth more than a bet that goes in when somebody is calling because when somebody bets they can have bluffs and low equity hands. And so yeah, just kind of like looking at these fundamental concepts of what’s going on in poker are is extremely helpful in the sense that I got from, you know, my one silly live tournament and just hearing people speak and talk about the game is that it’s kind of like just monkey see monkey do type thing, and not really understanding what you’re accomplishing by, you know, see betting the flop, for instance, right? That was the one I talked about before. I trained my guys to by the way, when it’s like, arrange, see bet, it’s like range. See, that is basically a post flop blind. It’s taking your preflop range, and just putting money out there in the dark, right. And if you have a very wide preflop range, then the player who’s defending should be check raising the bejesus out of this blind bet,

 

Jaime Staples: right? Yeah. Yep. It makes sense. No, absolutely. It’s just like that, that flop situation. Still, to this day is such a complex mind thing to navigate, you know, like, like the deuce, deuce, eight, for example, I don’t know what your process is. And I might expose my my fishing tournament process. But like, I think about, okay, how does my range interact with this board? And then I think about how does their range interact with this board? Right. And then I think about, what do I think I want to do with my range. And those are already very complicated, you got to visualize very complicated questions. And then I get granular, and I’m like, okay, where this hand is in my range? If it’s not arranged bet, you know, is this, like, do I think I want to take the high frequency like bet? Or check, you know, like, an example of we bet two thirds, and we check 1/3 of aces on that board or something like that? Do I want to check with the aces? Or do I want to bet with the aces, right? So like that, those are basically the four steps I go through my board. And, Dan, that it’s just hard, bro. Like, like, poker has so much nuance when you’re trying to play at a high level. And you can come up with these tournament heuristics, like you said, these rules that simplify it, but they’re not, they’re not good enough to compete at the highest levels, you know, like, you just get more and more granular to where you’re thinking about, is it better to have the backdoor flush draw blocked or unblocked? On the turn? Yeah, oh, my God, what are we talking about here? You know, like, this is ridiculous. That’s the game

 

Brad: is beautiful. It is beautiful. And I would say one thing, too, that I would add from, like, the cash game, since is that something I learned, or something that just kind of came to me one day was like, when considering you know, range versus range. This is a mistake that people will make a ton in coaching sessions, where it’s like, my range wants to bet this board, you know, like King seven deuce, and they have jacks, and they’re like, I have a lot of kings in my range. So I’m betting, right? And

 

Jaime Staples: my response is, well,

 

Brad: any hand that you’re playing, that’s in front of you, is in your range, right? And all the hands in your range want to take multiple paths. Just because that’s how the game works. You know, some hands want to check back some hands want to bet some hands, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Some hands want to use a small site in some hands when to use a big sizing. And so really, it’s it’s finding this hand that’s in your range, and the natural path that it’s incentivized to take. makes things much easier, where it’s like that situation I just said, you know, King seven deuce. Well, yeah, your range has a lot of kings in it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you want to bet with Jack’s, because the hand that you have is Jack’s. And like you know what I mean? It’s just one hand that is makes up your entire range. So that’s something that like I try to try to coach my guys up with. Just the concept that like if a hand is in front of you than it is obviously in your range, because if it weren’t in your range, then you wouldn’t be Playing that hey,

 

Jaime Staples: yeah,

 

Brad: you know what I mean? So anyway, but yeah, like the thoughts of all of these sort of like a, let’s be real, like, they’re abstract concepts, you know, like, what is because we work under the assumption that like, How does my opponent’s range interact with the sport? Well, like a hand that I played recently, like, I open under the gun with ace 10, the small blind called flop was for four deuce. And when check check, The turn was like a six, they bet I called the river was a queen, they bet I called down with ace high, and they had the 10, four of hearts. And like, I can say, range versus range, like, how does my opponent’s range interact with this board, but I would not have given them the 10, four of hearts in my estimation of their range. So like, you know, even that can be challenging, you’re basically just impossible. Unless it’s like a player who’s playing at a very high level, and like, you kind of know what they’re setting and the paradigm that they’re working from. When that’s not the case. I just find estimating people’s ranges to be just like a futile endeavor of like, Yeah, I think they I don’t think any bluffs makes sense here. But I know it’s an over bluff spot. And when I call, they show up with a bunch of random shit, and so therefore, I just call and, you know, hope hope for the best. Yeah, you know what I mean?

 

Jaime Staples: I call that the WTF factor, which is just like in every hand in every spot, there’s just always a chance they’re doing something that isn’t rational. And like, Oh, my God, he had this small stakes, you got an 8%? WTF factor? In every hand? You know, you can you can justify a lot of stuff, because it’s just like, well, people do weird stuff. I have. Yeah, that makes sense.

 

Brad: I’ve studied so many different like range breakdowns and done so much data analysis, and I’ve yet to find any spot, you know, the classic line of like, they never bluff. I’ve never found any spot where they never bluff. They always have some air where a sigh, or small pear component to their strategy. Does it mean it’s enough to call for like pot odd reasons, but they always have a bluff. I’ve yet to look at a spot where it’s like, just 100% value.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, no. I mean, I think that would be a bad game plan. If everyone had 100% value in a spot, it wouldn’t be a very good approach to poker unless they were you know, of course exploiting? Right? I think that’s right. You know, like, the point is not to always be correct, it’s to most of the time be correct.

 

Brad: Yeah, do the best that you can with the information you have. And that’s all you have the rest, you just have to kind of set to the side and realize, this is a game with incomplete information. And like, you do the best you can and move on. And that’s really all you can do.

 

Jaime Staples: Every fold you make, you’re getting owned some percentage of the time, you know, and sometimes you’re getting owned, like, a third of the time at worst. And then sometimes, you know, you’re only getting owned, like 1% of the time, but But it’s painful. Like when you make that hero fold. You know, but that’s that’s a that’s a tournament lead to where people you know, people over call people want to see, like, like trying to get people to make hero folds. You just as a lark until you get the highest stakes. Yeah,

 

Brad: you can’t, you can’t have acid, you can’t decide on the turn like you, you need to be fully ready to empty the clip. I found

 

Jaime Staples: two two pot size bets. Don’t get it done. If you’re gonna start on the turn. You need an over bet quickly. And

 

Brad: easily six. Right. Exactly,

 

Jaime Staples: exactly. Yeah, that’s how it goes.

 

Brad: So now we can circle back to actually where we’re I don’t even know where we were in, in the discussion, the tangent that we just went on. But learning and growing about poker, we talked about your thought process. I know that you had a some very strong words for real time assistants, and people selling them like in discord servers. I was going to touch on that. Since I would assume that’s a pretty

 

Jaime Staples: passionate topic of yours. Yeah, so I think we’ve seen sort of tools come up over the years that people could use in real time. I think specifically charts is one of those. That in tournaments. You know, if we look back to 10 years ago, in online poker wasn’t even prohibited because charts were very basic. It was just like, we’ve held raising ranges and none of the Terms of Service had it against the rules. In the last six or seven years with tools like monk or solver and like these really powerful programs, we’ve been able to essentially solve preflop poker to a game theory. Optimal sort of place doesn’t always mean the right decision to make but Like, if robots were playing against each other, they could play optimally against each other preflop. And so that’s a huge problem for tournaments like you can’t be, you can’t have the preflop game solved and utilize that information. I mean, it just completely takes the enjoyment out of poker. So first thing is, I think, Party Poker, the company I’m sponsored by definitely has a handle on stuff like this, and has a good game integrity department and is able to do some really smart things that I can obviously talk about, to sort of catch people that might be doing this stuff. But I also trust the other regulated sites to be on top of this, and I think they are on top of this. But they’re incentivized to be so. Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, no one wants to play against someone that has perfect preflop solutions that they’re utilizing. But then the second thing, which is so annoying, is I’ve seen this shift in culture, and most of it originates in in the US, for better or worse. And that’s, I mean, it’s not shots fired at the country as a whole. But like, it seems to have taken route in some of the online us player space, where people are sort of justifying the use of this real time assistance in this chart, these trading tools, right? And these tools that are even looking at post flop simulations, to get answers, and people kind of shrug it off as like, well, other people are doing it, so it’s not a big deal. And I kind of just wish they would uninstall and go do something else, you know, like it’s just completely indefensible to me, and ridiculous as an idea. So, I mean, sites are on it. And they’re, they’re working on it, right? And they always got to play catch up. But it’s on the poker community to be very clear that like, hey, this shit is not okay. Like, like, you can’t just be apathetic about it, like, Oh, I heard someone else did it. So I’m going to do it, because like, they’re probably doing it like, no, no, that’s not how it works. You know, it’s a very clear cut line in ethics in poker, and this is very clearly on the wrong side of things. So I think yeah, I just feel serious about that.

 

Brad: I mean, as you should, right, and you know, the, the poker platforms is kind of like an existential threat to them, like, just in general is like you don’t want your games to become RTA invested, because then who’s going to play first of all, and once once the consumer loses trust in your brand and your platform, then you’re just toast. So they’re incentivized heavily to catch RTA and this sort of thing. On I think, there’s a weird component to it too. And I understand the incentive of RTA in that, people think they can just make money by running this program, I would argue that they, people who are using it probably are not aware of the swinging nature of using it in the first place. And so like they, there’s obviously they can get whacked, just by variants, and by people putting them in situations that haven’t been covered. And so when you think about like, you need a bankroll to do this, right, like, effectively, you need to be an action somehow. So like, maybe that’s some kind of natural deterrent, like a risk aversion from that side. And also, like people should just be turning people in. I mean, because it’s not, it’s not the point of poker, it’s not fulfilling, there’s no growth, there’s no learning. It’s lazy, and meaningless. And I mean, to me, it’s just kind of pointless, like, why not just go do something else like scam something else or like get into algorithmic trading, or you know, whatever it is that you want to get into. But like, yeah, so anyway, that not only do I not see, not only do I believe that, it’s awful, but it also just, I don’t see the appeal. It doesn’t make sense to me.

 

Jaime Staples: No, I like I’m with you, too. I feel I’ve thought about that in the past. And then I always play devil’s advocate with myself in terms of, well, if I wasn’t a poker pro, and I saw the ability to make money, like maybe I would struggle to understand that reasoning of like, what’s the point? But that’s, I feel the same way, which is like, I wouldn’t play this game. If I wasn’t competing, like if you just gave me that. If you gave me the classic superhero thing where I could see the hand, would I play like No, dude, like, I don’t, I got enough money to be happy. Like, I wouldn’t play where I could see the cards. What’s the point? There’s no point left, like, okay, you’ve got an unlimited money hack. Congrats, you know, like, so. I understand people’s pushback, but it’s, you hear things all the time. The problem I find is they’re unsubstantiated. And for me as a sponsored pro and a representative, I can’t just be firing on substantiate it shots at like, Oh, I heard this and this and this. I can’t be putting people on blast like that. Because I think their integrity is important. And I need some sort of like proof. You know, but people bring things to me with proof. You know, I pass it along the Party Poker and say, Hey, I heard this, here’s the thing and take a look. So yeah,

 

Brad: I mean, in this way, I think poker has always been a community that is, like, we’ve we’ve kind of police things ourselves, for better or worse, just like over time. And yeah, like even an issue such as botting. Right? If you think of the incentives of the platform that has a major bot problem, it’s not always advantageous to get a handle on it. If those bots are generating lots of revenue, collectively, right? The platform’s kind of incentivized to kind of look the other way, honestly.

 

Jaime Staples: No, I mean, absolutely. I think there’s a few I mean, the RTA is is a big deal. Like bots is obvious. But I feel like probably the easiest to catch up of all the things that I could think of, I think some people get around RTA in terms of like, Oh, I’m just learning. So I don’t use it when I’m playing. But then I look up what I did after. It’s like, well, that’s also an unfair advantage, you know, how, how nice it would be, to be able to play and to learn your mistakes immediately with immediate feedback, like, like, that’s a great advantage to actually check guessing check yourself while you play. Like, you can’t do that. I actually

 

Brad: would have agreed with you a few months ago, but now I think I disagree with you. Because what I found out from starting my CFP was that, like, when people are trying to learn and play at the same time, you know, where they’re like, playing, and then you know, in a session and like trying to learn and try to like, look at their mistakes, like directly after whatever it is, like, or, I mean, in some cases, I’m sure people look things up in real time, right, which is like, not a difficult thing to police, like directly afterwards. But what I found is that, like, you can’t perform and learn at the same time. And anybody that uses RTA, actually, where they can look up the answer, it’s not going to be sticky, there’s no need for it to stick in their memory bank, because they can just look it up. And so they actually become worse at, you know, a good example is like preflop charts. If you don’t invest the energy to committing preflop charts and cash games to your long term memory, and you look them up at every decision point. Well, you get distracted, and you don’t learn what the ranges are, because there’s no pressure to recall the information because you just have it readily available. Right? So like, even somebody saying that they use it to learn to me is kind of bullshit, because like you’re not learning. Because why would you? You know, there’s no need, because you could just look it up. Right, then you know what I mean? Yep. Yeah. And learning is supposed to be hard. By the way, this is another thing that I’ve I’ve learned is like, learning should be challenging. It should feel like you’re just about to die. And you can’t take any more. That’s how that’s how, you know, when you’re, you’re doing it, right. Yeah, learning standpoint.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, went through the pain. I think the one that I just just want to say one last piece on the one that is the most egregious to me, and I don’t have sort of substantiated claims on this, like with evidence, but I’ve heard stories of people. And that’s multi accounting. And that to me, is, I mean, the lowest of the low, right? I don’t have any breaking news, tea to drop on you in terms of who it is. But you know, I’ve heard of substantial people, multi accounting, and in online poker tournaments, to where they have card sharing information, and like that stuff is just makes me sick. You know, like, if you’re any level of accomplished player, and you participate in stuff like that. I mean, we’re considered to me,

 

Brad: is it more for like card sharing? Or is it the ability to have like, multiple entries into a single tournament?

 

Jaime Staples: Both but if you know, if it’s a high roller small field tournament? Well, yes, value, right. There is,

 

Brad: I mean, this is, again, the world of tournaments is not not my world, but I am fairly confident that it’s a thing that happens more regularly than you might think, than the listener might think, by people that they probably are very familiar with.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, I mean, there’s big, there’s big games out there that aren’t that aren’t clean, you know, big names that get covered in poker news that that are doing shady things and are all about the dollar and I mean, I don’t want to be all doom and gloom, it’s pretty easy to be just negative about all this I, like I said, I think the integrity part department’s not just Party Poker, but it stars at GG of these regulated sites that are competitors to us. They’re real sharp teams with like, real powerful tools. And this is all they do. So like they’re on it, they’re better than both of us figuring this stuff out. Thank God.

 

Brad: I mean, yeah. And hopefully, there’s like real consequences. Like, I’ve always thought that like poker being unregulated, like in the US, like, there’s very minimal consequences, or downside to whatever you do, right. But like, if there if you’re banned for life from a platform that is quite profitable play on. And then that’s a huge deterrent, right? If somehow people get sued, or there’s criminal charges, and there’s like, you have to play it pay restitution or penalties. I mean, these are real life consequences that will deter people from these sorts of actions. And so maybe one day down the line, that’ll like be a thing, where it’s like, Oh, you are caught using RTA, there’s a criminal penalty. And, you know, you have to deal with that downside, which obviously, will disincentivize folks from from going

 

Jaime Staples: that route? It would be nice if there was some sort of cooperation between sites and between between departments, I don’t feel as if that’s in place, and or it will happen in the short term. But yeah, cuz I feel like there isn’t wide held consequences to these to these things right now. Which is such a shame, you know,

 

Brad: it is a shame and information, I think, should be shared. And I think obviously, like, there’s room for whatever, you know, there’s room for, like, sites being incentivized, you know, for somebody, you know, stars to be like, ah, yeah, we caught staples, multi accounting.

 

Jaime Staples: They can’t though, because of the European laws, with with privacy, they can’t share with other companies.

 

Brad: So it’s a privacy law, it’s not that they don’t cite platforms don’t want to communicate is that they can’t communicate? Well, they

 

Jaime Staples: definitely can’t. And also, I don’t know if they want to, but they can enter the new EU laws. Like, share that information or with the or the community. Right. So like, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t be saying,

 

Brad: Wilson  42:21  

like one of us, you guys, Jaime’s great.

 

Jaime Staples: I would love to get one of the security guys, you know, on a night out or something like that, and just try and get some stories because you’ve got to know they have a treasure trove of dirt on the poker world, and they just can’t you know, it’s like the law, they can’t be talking about that stuff. They can’t release that information. So stupid

 

Brad: privacy.

Brad: if you’d like to join the next round of preflop bootcamp, which starts on the last Saturday of every month, head to chasing at poker greatness.com/bootcamp to lock up your spot. One more time that’s chasing poker greatness.com/bootcamp.

 

So let’s go to living your life as a poker player. And you know, actually living your life not playing poker as just a regular human being out into the world. What is going on in that area in your life?

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, there’s a lot. I’m doing a lot of stuff on the side of poker and content. And I feel like last time we talked, we sort of talked about this whole thing a little bit. But I’ve been through the sort of process since. And when I looked at poker, and when I looked at content, creating in general, it’s just, it’s like, burnout epidemic, like people are their career and their time in the game is so fleeting. And that’s not just true in poker. And it’s not just true in like streaming or YouTube. But it’s just true broadly in that, like, careers are shorter, and people are like, doing things till they absolutely hate it, and then quitting and doing something else. Right. And I didn’t understand why I would want to, why would I want to set my life up that way? First of all, it seemed like not the most profitable, or like being a sponsored Pro and creating content over 15 years, and making it sustainable made a lot more sense than being like number one for three years, and then wanting to never touch the game again, right? Like, listen, I’d make less money and it’d be less enjoyable. So a lot of it has been figuring out how to sustain playing poker at a high level, creating content at a volume to where I retain relevancy. And I’m valuable to partners. And then also having a life where I get to do valuable and interesting things and like pursue other hobbies, other business projects. And that’s been like the last three or four years is figuring that out and and I think have succeeded in structuring that to where I don’t feel overwhelmed. But I’m able to balance doing four or five things and doing them well, I think. So.

 

Brad: Tell me about the structure, how you know what that structure looks like? Sure. So

 

Jaime Staples: I sort of have like a Northstar in terms of things that I’m that are important to me right now. So like my fiance, and health, and then poker and contents in business or whatever, right? So I kind of have an idea of that. And I’ve just gotten a lot better at structuring the things that I have to do in a day. I had a tweet thread the other day in terms of how I suster like all of my To Do lists. And I guess from a mental perspective, I don’t really beat myself up over the amount of time I put in, or I don’t put any expectations on myself in terms of what I need to accomplish. It’s mostly like at the beginning of every day and the beginning of every week. What is it that I think is most important to work on? How much can I do? And then I do that and that’s it. So functionally, that means is I play poker Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I create content out of that poker and then Monday, FF de tos, and that’s, you know, sort of turned into like 25 pieces of content for cross the internet, which gets put out. Did I watch it? Thank you. You watch my bad beats on Instagram. Thanks for that.

 

Brad: How’s Jaime gonna get fucked today?

 

Jaime Staples: I study poker, mostly Monday to Thursday. And then I keep on top of Business Administration stuff Monday and Tuesday. And then I collaborate with think about four projects right now. They’re outside of poker in various ways, helping with marketing and or just sort of like making decisions for those companies. That’s Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and have like, a Wednesday and Thursday that are pretty relaxed and chill, do some podcasts, play some video games? Hey, hang out with my fiance. Um, and that’s it. So it’s like 22 year old Jaime would be freaking out, he’d be beating himself up, that, like, everything sucked, and you’re not doing enough. And like, you know, would would be panicking at the amount of shit going on? Well, yeah,

 

Brad: It’s working well, yet, we can only do so many things in our lifetime. And I think a lot of growing up is just kind of realizing that like, Okay, you do the best you can. And that’s all you can do. And we just kind of move on, and we need time to recover. And we need time to rest. And we need time to pursue other things that are outside of, you know, the main thing that we spend our time doing, you know, one thing that I yeah, I wanted to ask you about was the last time you and I talked, you know, we talked about this, this coaching thing, project that, you know, you were, I guess lightly involved with at the time, and I noticed you put up a video on like Facebook, and just talking about the platform, right? And saying, like, Hey, I like this, I think it’s a great idea. If you guys wanted to join, then join. And if you don’t, don’t, I mean, that’s was basically the gist of it. And you got so much heat for even suggesting that somebody spend money doing a thing. It was like, unbelievable to me, like it was it was, like, outlandish, like, really, like he’s charging like $3 a month to ask like a question. And people are like, outraged by this. And I can’t, I can’t imagine that if there was so much outrage over something that’s small, that that isn’t, you know, an insignificant portion of energy sent your way. Is that sort of outrage? And like, how do you deal with that? You know, I noticed back then you replied to some of them, and then I was just like, this is just out of control. Like I don’t? How does that as the kid sleep at night, like this is just crazy.

 

Jaime Staples: I’m, like, I just don’t really put any respect on a lot of that stuff. You know, like, I think they’re the things that are most painful, or when like, very reasonable people, you know, are reasonable, have legitimate gripes and they’re not usually mean, they’re just like, Ah, I disagree with you. Because I think this and this and this, and like, those are the most impactful, the ones that most make you question, but you have some an on says lol not worth it, it’s like at some point, if you’re communicating on the internet, like on Twitch and YouTube and Facebook, like I’m probably connecting with 100,000 people a week, in some way, right? And they’re not only engaging, but take a sampling of 100,000 of the population, there’s gonna be 1000 of them that are in crisis that are in pain that are dealing with mental health difficulties, and or just like our mean, or rude or had something tragic happen, and or just don’t like me, you know, but so it’s unavoidable. You know, like, if you go to a sporting events, there’s going to be bad fans, you know, it’s just the way it is. It is

 

Brad: The way that it is. And I’m smiling, because yeah, within any percentage of a group that that is large, you will get those people but it still hurts. At some level, you know, it’s still like, stings, when you you’re trying to do something good. And then you get pushed back that is just like really weird. It’s like, you have any number of targets to shoot at in the world. And you’re choosing me to like, it’s just kind of like a, I guess a good example is like, a friend of mine started a new trading platform, selling his course and like, we were talking about it, and he showed me an email that somebody sent him that was just like, it was the worst. And we talked about it. And we talked about dealing with that sort of thing. And, you know, I got to think about afterwards and I realize there must be 100 or 50 emails that were grateful and happy, right but the one that he showed me was this awful one, right? Because humans have this negativity bias. And so yeah, I mean, I know what you’re saying, and you’ve been in the game a long time. I have to imagine that there was sort of a transition in dealing with that sort of thing.

 

Jaime Staples: Definitely. Yeah. wasn’t immediate. Like it. It’s a skill set you develop. I remember actually a streamer, saying that I was bad on stream. I remember crying. This was like, right at the start of my stream was crying because it’s just painful. Like they were announcing to seminary people, they thought I sucked at poker. And it’s like, I was streaming and having to deal with people saying, hey, they say you suck at poker. I just never experienced that. Like, I don’t know, I’ve never talked to seven other people before. People shouting at us, and you suck. Like, it just takes a second to feel that, I guess. Yeah. But I don’t know, man. Like, when you’re streaming people have poker advice for you. You know, you’re you’re firing one case, you’ve been doing this for a long time. And like, you know, your $11 tournament player comes in and like, Oh, that was terrible. Because they’re on some 2009 shit, you know? And it’s, I approach it the same way, which is like, hey, they might be right. Okay, but I don’t know if they’re right. And the best way for me to figure out if, if they’re right, is to talk to the people I know, are experts. Right? So on my stream, I don’t listen to any poker advice. I don’t put any respect on it. And it’s not because they couldn’t be right. It’s because I can go to Ben CB. And I can ask him, I can ask the ads. I can ask Sam graft in like, I can send a text and get answers from the best in the game. So like, why would I take this on? It’s just, there’s I put no respect on it. I brushes past me the same thing with negativity to like, I just, it doesn’t register. I’m like, the problem. Probably having a tough time. Is the first thought as opposed to they might be right. Like, just don’t even entertain it.

 

Brad: Neither one of those thoughts are my first thought in general. What’s your first thought? Like yourself? That’s my first thought. Like, that’s, that’s the first thing that goes goes into my head. And actually try to use, I try to use any sort of criticism as fuel for the projects that I’m working on. It’s like, you know, yeah, you think poker coaching is like a joke. Okay? Well, we’ll see. I’m going to show you that. Like, we can turn, you know, breakeven players into fucking smashers. And that there’s just a lot to be gained by investing into the things that I create. And so like, for me, it’s just a driver, to my audience, to my customers, to my people to create shit. That is ultra impactful. Where, you know, I can just scoff at whatever thing is said and be like, Yeah, well, you’re an idiot. Because, you know, whatever. The thing is that people buy for me is worth 10x what they pay so and then just kind of move on. But like, I really like having a chip on my shoulder. I think it’s a big driver for my energy and the actions that I take.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, I feel you, man. I’m feeling I mean, it’s helpful if you’ve got it in spots, I think use it. I’m with you. Yeah, with you. I lost that. In poker though. I’ve been so used to being the fish in the lighter in the public light. Like, really, at the beginning of my career, Joey Ingram did a lot to sort of, like, position me as that in the poker world. Like when I first came out, he would do podcast weekly, being like, what’s Jimmy stapler up to this week and like having on JMO, where they basically just rag on me for like, 30 minutes, you know, I’m just some 25 year old kid like playing $50 tournaments. But I got signed by stars. So like, I was there punching bag. And a lot of the part of that feel like, by the way, just being well, I mean, I hated them for that. I was like, why are you making my life? So difficult? I haven’t done anything to Yeah, no, I used to listen to your podcast. Like, I’m just trying to put my best foot forward and, and share the game of poker, like, I don’t deserve this. Sorry, you hate stars. But like, you know, they’re a company and I’m just going to try and represent poker. So I don’t know, like that. That was not easy to deal with. I didn’t enjoy being the punching bag for like the new era of poker. But hey, I got rewarded for it and went through it and it’s fine. But that carries over. Like, I think the hardest part about it. And the thing that bothers me the most about what people say is when people make up motivations for the actions that you have that don’t match your your motivations, like those are the hardest comments. I tweeted the other day about something. Someone says, you know, had a whole discussion with another poker player in terms of like, I was doing it for engagement. And it just it bothered like that one bothered me. Which like you don’t know why I’m doing what I’m doing. You’re just filling in gaps. That gets to me a little bit, I would say, yeah, the motivation stuff is trying to get a rise or Oh, he’s just trying to make money or Oh, he’s just trying to strike up drama. Like, probably you don’t know me, I’m not on Twitter to get engagement. I don’t care. I don’t like I don’t care about Twitter, right to talk with people.

 

Brad: I think people just project, whatever they want on to whoever they want, and sort of just make some weird assumption that they know the situation when the reality is they don’t know shit. And they’re just, it’s just full on projection. And, yeah, I mean, that’s the thing. I guess that thing doesn’t get to me as much anymore, just because I kind of know what my vision is, and where my level of integrity lies and what I’m working towards. And so if somebody wants to presume that, then I would assume they’re not in my audience, and they’re probably not going to ever buy anything, and I just, they’re not anywhere near my inner circle. So fuck them. It’s sort of my, my approach to that. But yeah, the we, the thing is, like, people get content for free, right? Like, people watch you on Twitch for free. And like you do put out you have a positive benefit into the world that for all intents and purposes, 99% of the time, is unpaid. And like, that’s not nothing. And of course, human beings who work really hard to build a brand or build their names deserve to be compensated monetarily. Else, how the hell do you think they feed their family? How do you think they eat? How do you think they make it make their way through life? You think they they’re just like some, like silly monkey that just deserves to do your bidding all the time. And you don’t shouldn’t pay them anything like I that That, to me is like, it’s weird that like, very intelligent people in the poker space are just like, very antagonistic towards anyone selling anything, ever. That to me has always been a little bit mystifying how poker players who are really good at the game don’t understand basic economics and business.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, I think misplaced anger often, right. And I think the anger is really people have a lot of anger at poker sites. But I, I can’t feel the same anger in that we just have no leverage in this relationship as professional poker players, you know, when we have leverage, great, utilize it, right? If a site needs to get off the ground and need some traffic, as a poker player, you’re providing value. But if you’re talking to the giant, and you’re saying, I want this, and they’re saying, Okay, well, we are a business, and we want this, like you don’t have leverage in that relationship. And that just people were really angry at that at the time, but I just don’t understand. Sort of like what utopian universe we’re all living in, like we’re playing. Basically, we’re playing capitalism in cards. You know, like, that’s what we do for a job is we compete, and we exploit, and, and then when they see the game, above the game, get confused. I just don’t really get it. You know, I don’t I’m a pragmatist in that sense. Like,

 

Brad: I would say, like the whole stars debacle could have been handled better, and should have been handled better. And I do think there were long term consequences to those decisions that affect stars, probably even to this day, business wise,

 

Jaime Staples: You know, 100% Yeah. I mean, it’s still a mark on their business. Like if they could go back and change that decision. I’m sure everyone at that company would do that. For sure. Like it was a disaster. Yeah. Like it. They could have, it didn’t even cost them that much money. Like it wasn’t going to cost them much. How many supernova elites were there? Like 650? You know, yeah. And it was like 100,000 per per lead or something like it was? It was a couple million, but like, they’re a gaming company. Yeah. Making hundreds of millions. It’s ridiculous.

 

Brad: Yeah, I mean, so basically, that was just a poor business decision that had long, long downstream consequences, and greatly affected a lot of a lot of players just because of the way that it went down. But again, as a community, you know, we can kind of vote with our action and vote with our dollars and choose where we play. And while it may seem small, if 1000 or 2000 people stop playing somewhere that’s going to have a big impact on most platforms that exists in the world. Yet

 

Jaime Staples: 100% And it’s, well it’s not hard to switch either. I mean, I’ve I’ve been with Party Poker now for a couple years and Party Poker has From my point of view, I’ve always done things in favor of players, you know, when it was sort of pads and Rob and Tom that were heading the ship on every decision, like it was lower rake and higher rewards and like everything for grinders, and people didn’t come over, and I just I don’t really understand like, why, you know, like, why wouldn’t you play here? When everything’s better for you and it’s the same.

 

Brad: It’s poker, like people are really sticky for some reason. And I feel like poker players should be better at that. They just don’t like the way it looks. It’s like it’s just this comfortability issue of like, the software looks different. And there’s this fear of changing and like humans are just very resistant to change.

 

Jaime Staples: Why bro, like, I’m that way with the Venetian. I mean, shots fired, but like Sheldon Adelson, the biggest lobby against getting poker in the US, and he’s died now. So I don’t know how my Phoenician stances, but I haven’t played poker. Think I’ve played poker once there. And that was before Black Friday, and I haven’t spent $1 there since. Because I’m just like, bro, like, what? I could go anywhere in Vegas. Like, why would I give money to the number one lobby against what I do for a living? Yeah. So you do not play there?

 

Brad: Well, it’s the prisoner’s dilemma, right? And the reality is that like in this game, when people feel like they have value, or have an edge or get an overlay, they’re just willing to do whatever it takes, which is to the poker platform or the Venetian. It’s to their benefit, right? I mean, what a joke it was to have a tournament that basically a guaranteed prize pool that is the prize pool, right?

 

Jaime Staples: That yeah, I mean, that’s so that’s, that’s annoyed me.

 

Brad: That’s an obvious fuck you to the poker community. That’s them saying we know you’ll come. And it doesn’t matter what we do. And guess what? We came?

 

Jaime Staples: Huh. I remember that. Yeah, that was a that was ruthless. And like, it might be like, I don’t want to be preaching here, right? I don’t, because there’s an element of being really up in a privileged position, to be able to say no to this sort of stuff, right? If life is tougher, then the dollar is more important. So I’m not trying to say like, Hey, if you’re in a spa, you got to do what you got to do. But if you’re not in a spot, like, why not just choose the integrity choice and like, play somewhere else, like play at the ARIA do? Like, what? What are you going to lose? $5 in equity, like whatever? Like, just go there. Play the win? Yeah, but I don’t know. He’s dead now. So maybe I have to revisit that things are different. Yeah, I might play there. One day, we’ll see.

 

Brad: Maybe one day you’ll do anything to get out of the cold, frigid tundra that you’re in right now. Send me to desert

 

Jaime Staples: read, I don’t know where to draw the line on that sort of stuff, though. And honestly, I’ve been thinking about a lot of my life, because it’s just, I’m curious how you navigate that, because things happen. You’ve got a feeling you’ve got a thought on something? How much does it matter? How much do you care? To me? Seems completely arbitrary. It seems like I can just choose what to care about what not to care about, and how much and I don’t have a guide on what that answer should be. It’s like I’m making it up as I go.

 

Brad: Right. So there is no answer here. I think it’s to me, I went through this phase of, like, all of the all of the causes in the world, right, like, okay, clothes that are not made in Bangladesh, right, because folks live in Bangladesh, you know, they often walk six miles to work and six miles back and work like 150 hours a week, are there even 150 hours a week, I don’t even know. But basically, they’re spending all their time making clothes, so that we can buy them cheaply. And by the age of, you know, their mid 30s or early 30s. They’re done physically, they can’t do it anymore, right? Those they get fired, they get let go, they get sent back to their families. And they’re just kind of broken people. And so when you buy clothes from Bangladesh, you know, I realized like, oh, shit, like I’m supporting this, you know, by getting my clothes for half off or whatever. And so like, there was a long time where I paid very close attention to the tags. And then there’s like, living conditions and working conditions and like China, with various electronic equipment, just various items across the board. There’s the cause of you know, factory farms and the way that animals are treated and like bread and just very deeply unhappy and just it was this thing of like, whenever I could find any kind of silent suffering, I went out of my way to avoid that. thing. And you quickly realize that like, it’s hard to be a member of society and avoid all forms of silent suffering, you know. And ultimately, it was just, I’m going to do the best that I can, and not actively partake, and try to educate myself. But I’m going to make mistakes, I’m going to screw up just because I can’t know everything about everything. And then just kind of, you know, let the chips fall where they may and forgive myself and just say you’re doing your best and just kind of move forward, you know?

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, no, I mean, I think that’s a great way of approaching it. Right. And and it resolves that question in terms of what what it is that you pay attention to? Because there is no answer, but I think one that troubles me is, you know, let’s say you’re talking with a friend from your hometown, or whatever, right? And they say something in a conversation that like, doesn’t fly, you know, it’s not okay, anymore. When do you step in? Right? Basically, you have to make a decision in terms of who you want to be as a person. Do you want to be the let it slide guy? Or do you want to be the stickler? That is less enjoyable? Yeah. And I have no idea, Brad, I have no idea where to draw that line. I don’t it’s the same line as the Venetian. Is it unreasonable? I’m not sure. I don’t know. I am lost. You

 

Brad: being honest, this has taken us Yeah, this has taken a turn. So for me, I try, I will try to educate when if I think the communication is not going to lead to immediate conflict. And otherwise, I just don’t say anything, if somebody has behavior and takes actions that I know is going to be a fight. If I say something, then I just tend to not say anything. But then I also choose who I associate with in the future as well. So in that way, you know, I have just kind of stopped calling people and stopped maintaining relationships or friendships with people who just like aren’t growing, that aren’t learning that don’t seem to care about their fellow man or any of these things, then, like, it’s my choice, who I want to hang out with. And so I just kind of move on. But yeah, I mean, I think creating a big fight, and a big situation, just doesn’t really do any good. Because people don’t argue well. And the way that most people kind of argue and have discussions is they just want to prove their side. So at all, at all costs, they want to prove that they’re right. So there’s no there’s not even a rational discussion to be had. So, you know, in that way, I just kind of let things go and then make my decision afterwards. I also say to like, on like, a much lesser degree, I let things go better than I ever have before. If somebody says something that I know is like, factually incorrect, I just, I don’t correct people anymore. I just like let them say the thing and move on because it drives me absolutely batshit crazy if like I misspeak, or people are trying to find some, like avenue to disprove something just because they think that they’re clever or smart. On the internet, especially poker, Twitter is like the perfect example of that, like, oh, well, what if this happens, then then you’re wrong. Ha ha, ha, gotcha. It’s like, dude, go fuck off. Like, leave me alone. I don’t need that person in my, in my space. But yeah, it’s a tough question. And I mean, I would say, I mean, if something is done to offend another human being, then I think it’s different. Where somebody is actually actually affected in the moment by some idiot saying something that obviously is like out of bounds, then I think there is a correction that’s needed there just for the sake of the human being who’s for whatever reason, just like close by or near or the cause of their angst or whatever it is.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah. No, it’s I mean, some good. Some good thoughts on that. I mean, there’s that It troubles me. It troubles me, I think about it quite a bit. And yeah, still very uncertain in terms of how to how to approach that sort of stuff. With things like the Venetian with things in poker. Just generally. So yeah,

 

Brad: the question for me is like, do I know the owner of the Aria? Do we know that They haven’t done some atrocious things, right. Like we don’t we don’t really know what anybody who owns a casino has done in their life. I mean, things come out about Steve Wynn, right? Like these are. And it’s like, what do you do? I mean, I don’t have the answer. And I don’t want to live in complete ignorance. But I also want to do stuff and like,

 

Jaime Staples: yeah, not be like, like, totally trapped in your own world. Right? I can’t do anything. Yeah, like, yeah, that’s it.

 

Brad: build my own city. Free of all suffering. I guess that’s, that’s an alternative. But yeah, it’s tough questions. And I think that like, honestly, I’ve come to, it’s caused great depression, I think the amount of suffering and especially silent suffering that exists in the world has felt at times, like, a weight just on me. And because you feel small, and the challenge seems just so immense, you can’t even really visualize it, you can’t comprehend how hard overcoming these difficulties are. And I’ve just kind of come to the conclusion that I just do the best that I can as a human. And that’s kind of all I can do.

 

Jaime Staples: You know, yeah. Yemen, absolutely. I had a discussion with another poker player about that, in terms of, like, how, how much selfishness is reasonable. If we assume that being here on this planet, some amount of like advocating for yourself as opposed to others, is reasonable. And some people say all of it, you know, like, oh, yeah, just do everything for yourself, Max. I, I feel as if there should be some share of the pie, you know, like, if you are incredibly fortunate, or incredibly wealthy or lucky, or whatever it is, that you perhaps share some of that is, is a good approach. I mean, how much you know, like, where,

 

Brad: I mean, you do what you can, like, this is a thing. I struggle with this too in poker, because like, it’s obviously a game where the goal is to beat other people and take their money, right? This is like, literally the goal of poker, right? And you have the sort of existential crisis is of what am I giving to the world? And what am I doing, you know, this, like, really, my purpose is just to beat people out of money. And I think over time, I’ve learned that there’s a lot more that goes into it, I think, first of all, if somebody is like, a loser at a poker tournament, or even in a cash game, and they enjoy being there, and it gives them a break from their life, and it’s an activity that like, they just love doing, even though they losing money, then having access to that activity is a good thing. Having good conversations, the experience, all those things, I think can be good. And also like, you know, as poker players, it’s not as if we have to win all the money. And we’re not allowed to help people with that money. Right? Yeah,

 

Jaime Staples: you know, we can give back right? Like we we can, it doesn’t have to be Mac’s exploit at all times and everything.

 

Brad: Like, you can like win money, and then use that money to help a good cause. Right? There’s nothing that like against that, and a lot of poker players have. And it has given that level of fulfillment. So I would say that, like if you’re listening right now, as a poker player, and you’re wondering, What am I doing? What am I giving back, like realize, you can go buy a pizza for a homeless person right now and go give them a meal, like you can help people, there’s nothing that is stopping you. Other than, like, you know, our own kind of laziness and really, our own egos that think of us and only US 24 hours a day.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, not here’s, here’s a crazy one. And I’ve talked to some players that play in like, private cash games and high stakes cash games, you can even let off the gas in poker sometimes. And I never hold it against people to be pedal to the metal because I think in competitive play you all the way, but if you’re playing and you know, you see someone and like they’re having a tough night or something, like sizing down your value bet row you can do that. Like that’s allowed in the rules of society that like you can show compassion, even in the Battle of our game that we study and we learn, you can you can do that. I mean, you gotta Of course, abide by the rules, tournament rules, like no, no soft flag, etc. But I hear about that. And in high stakes private games. The great poker player, of course, gives action less off the gas, like lets people, you know, allows people to have wins and, and good moments like that’s, that’s part of having a good experience. If they’re not having a good experience. Then they’re outgrow, like their own play.

 

Brad: And it’s just, you know, not kicking people when they’re down. I think it’s like high stakes poker players, very high level poker players have, in general, extremely high levels of empathy. And so like, we can feel that You know, you can feel somebody’s energy when it is just, they’re just toast and like, having compassionate is okay. Even in the poker space, I mean, one of my, I have a memory of being probably, I don’t know how old I was maybe 24 or 25, and playing on absolute poker, and I was playing heads up, and this kid bought in, and like, we were battling. And he was like chatting to me. And I told him like, dude, and clearly having a bad time of it, I’m like, dude, just quit, you know, like, I’m going to, I’m going to bust you. Like, that’s the end result of this. Just log off, like, close the close your account log off. He didn’t log off, and we battled. And I did bust him. Which, ultimately, you know, I remember that story. I wish there was a happy ending, but there’s no happy ending, he didn’t leave. I did boss him, I tried to warn him. I did what I could. And then he asked for his money back, like, after we got done, and I was like, Sorry, man, like you had an opportunity to quit. But you didn’t. And like this is the consequence. But yeah, there is room for compassion in poker. And I think it’s just, we oftentimes over prioritize our bottom line, but under prioritize our soul, and our spirit, and doing things that are satisfying to our soul and our spirit are very impactful. And there are lots of long term gains to regularly doing such things.

 

Jaime Staples: Absolutely, I 100% 100% agree with that. When it comes to the money stuff, to like, the the wealth, accumulation in poker and stuff like that, I mean, something that I’ve come to think about is, what I didn’t want to do is be in the state of flux and feel like an element of shame, right? You know, like where you’re, you always feel as if the more successful you get, the more you question as to whether you’re living your five years, your life like justly or fairly, or ethically or whatever. So I’ve kind of come up with this idea of a sort of, like a personal expenditure cap. That, to me is like a level of, of selfishness in the world, you know, that I that I’m okay with. And then beyond that, I’m not okay with that anymore. So I kind of like drew a line and arbitrary line in the sand. It’s really freed me up to, to have some, some clarity in that aspect of my life in terms of Sure, go ahead and like maximize the Evie. But like, if you get to this point, you know, you’re not going to anymore, or you’re going to stop accumulating, basically, for the sake of accumulating?

 

Brad: How has that been freeing for you? Like, how does it? How did it release weight?

 

Jaime Staples: Well, I don’t know, man, like, like, people in Bangladesh live on $3 a day. Yeah, like we can, we can just not think about that. And, and go ahead and live our lives and buy the new iPhone, right that I have right here. But like, also, you could probably spend $1,000, and like save an actual human life. And so it’s only ignorance, like, you can just be ignorant to that. And you can go on and you exist. But to me, that seems like a kind of cowardly way to go about being here, and sort of just confront the ugliness of the world confront the elements of selfishness that people have as individuals, and recognize that like part of living is this risk element is this chance elements of the deck, you’ve been dealt in the ability to transcend where you’re dealt and improve your position from there, like part of the value of life is that experience of making the most of where you are? Some, even at a certain point, it gets to be too much, you know, like, Bezos, Bezos yacht is, you know, like $500 million, or something like that, like his boat. That’s a pretty easy example of like, you’re in the money. He built the most successful company in the world, but like, that could have literally saved like, 1000s of people’s lives. I find that unethical. I’m not saying put rules in place to where he can earn that money. I’m just saying, like, if that was me, I’d feel really terrible about myself making that decision. So I kind of just, I wanted to frame my own reference for how he’s going to navigate that financial part of my life. So I could just operate and like don’t beat myself up if I made a bunch of money and I spent it on myself to feel okay about it. Yeah. That’s really smart. That was the idea.

 

Brad: Yeah, I think it’s a great idea. And I think it’s, it’s quite smart. And yeah, I think I was. I thought about this a while ago of like, at what point is like, infinite money enough? I don’t know. Like, is there a point have like, where 100 billion, like gets you more than 10 billion, right? It’s like,

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

 

Brad: You know what i mean, but anyway, we kind of went, Yeah, we went, I think, to an important place. And these are all important topics, I think that human beings just think about in general, because like, you mentioned, just like, where you’re born, the hand that you’re dealt, there are a lot of folks and souls in the world that are dealt not great hands that stand very little chance. And the reality is that like, Pete, folks, like you and I have clearly been dealt decent hands. Otherwise, we propagate and he’s

 

Jaime Staples: even great crushing it brad.

 

Brad: So yeah, it’s, it’s always easy to like, look up at what you don’t have, and where there is to go without looking down at what you’ve accomplished, and what you’ve done. And then giving back to folks who just haven’t had as much opportunity or access or any of these things, you know, as you

 

Jaime Staples: I have a like a fit, like a math thing that I thought of in my head that really spurred this on, right. And it’s a lottery thing. Okay. So it’s like, if someone, let’s, let’s say that someone’s personal, like wealth cap in this system, that is a device. And for some people, it could be 100 million. So some people that could be half a million, right? Let’s say it’s 10 million for some person, they decide that’s there. Okay. And anything over that, like they’re not going to take? So someone wins the lottery for $11? million? Like, how much of that do you think they’re going to donate? Or give away to other causes are like things that are, are utilized, I think a high percentage, the world would give away at least a million of that 11 million, like most of the world, I think, would probably do that. Someone wins the lottery for 100 million. How many are gonna give away 80 $90 million? Like, almost none, like almost 0%. And the actual utility increase as an individual is small. But obviously, that’s a 9x difference, you know, so preventing that, like, if one of these companies I’m working with hits the moon, and I, you know, I bank, the next Facebook or something, the next eSports superstar. Having that in place, prevents the lifestyle creep, where you just give a percentage. Yeah, like, that seems broken with the billionaires and 150 millionaires. Like, if there,

 

Brad: the reality is you don’t I’ve been, I’ve been friends with, you know, a billionaire. And it’s not even as if the billions made him fundamentally happy or satisfied, you know, it was always more ambition and always wanting more and actually a deep sense of unhappiness, because they, you know, he didn’t know who actually wanted to be in his circle, because they liked him as a human being right? Because he always had, yeah, people always needed money, or resources, or connections, or whatever it was. So like, even at that point, like, there, there wasn’t fulfilment, right? Like, there wasn’t this deep sense of happiness. And yeah, so anyway, I don’t know exactly where I’m going with that. But it’s just like the chase of endless wealth and resources doesn’t necessarily end in some sort of fulfillment, or in game happiness. And ultimately, we’re human beings. We’re part of the human race. And I think helping our fellow man is the number one thing that we can do to give us fulfillment and joy.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, agreement, Nam, same page, it’s like, it’s really nice to not have survival needs, you know, not have food, shelter clothing needs. But then when you have that, I feel as if the problems are pretty similar, you know, once you have that health, food, shelter, clothing, down, net net worth 300k, and net worth 30 million, I feel like probably have similar problems. At that point, I could be wrong. But

 

Brad: they’re definitely they’re a billionaire problems.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, I mean, they’re typical problems, for sure. But it’s like, there’s fulfillment problems for billionaires where they’re unhappy, I have no doubt in my mind, that some billionaires are unhappy. It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.

 

Brad: Yeah, I think the system that humanity is kind of built on is obviously flawed. Because of what just because of the way that the world works, I think and like I don’t know of a better way, but maybe there is somebody that does come up with a better way eventually that is is very obvious and means that all humans have a better chance of living a happy life and have shelter, clothing, food, clean water, all of these things. But on this giant positive note here of the podcast now that everybody is just not totally depressed and sad I’ll ask you a couple questions here. On the template, we can wrap up and connect again, you know, in the near future, because it’s always a pleasure having you on the show and having these these great conversations that, you know, not always are specifically about poker, but should matter to anybody who loves poker and doesn’t love poker, you know? That was given. Have you ever strongly believed something about poker? Only to change your mind later on? And if so, what led to that change?

 

Jaime Staples: I mean, very functional in 2000. When was Black Friday? 2011. Right, or 2009? April 15 2011 2011? Yeah, okay. So I mean, 2009 2010 2011 2012 MTT poker, sort of, like figured out the math on shoving, or at least it became popular to where people were like, oh, okay, so you can just pick up like Ace 10. And you can shove the button and it’s this profitable, because we can calculate this and this and therefore we shove. So like, we figured out how to measure. And therefore we put everything into the measurement, and figured out what was profitable. And we just did that. But no one asked the question of, is another line more profitable? So my process for playing poker back then it was, Is this a profitable shove? And the answer was, yes, I would do it. Now, as I’ve evolved, there’s comparison involved, which is, is race folding, more profitable is raised calling more profitable, is limping, more profitable, limping, more profitable? Absolutely. And how do I want to balance my lines, so that each of those has some race folds, and some race calls and some, etc, you know, some limp raises, some limb calls someone folds? So that’s changed. It’s not about whether something’s profitable is whether something’s the most profitable line?

 

Brad: Absolutely. And this was somebody asked this question in bootcamp, a while back where there was a spot, I believe, where you flat kings and position, and they asked the question of like, why is it not profitable to just five vet gym kings? And I was like, of course, it’s profitable. Like, there’s not a world where that’s not profitable. But the question is, like, what’s the most profitable thing to do? Right? Like, there’s that the saying, In chess that like when you find a good move, look for a better move? And I think that like, this is something that should always be at the forefront of poker players minds is like, well, you found a good move. You played the hand, well, was there a better move possible? Can you find something else? And I think it’s easy to get lazy, and complacent and just be like, yeah, it makes money. So I did it without ever asking, you know, the follow up question.

 

Jaime Staples: Yep. Absolutely.

 

Brad: What’s a project you’re working on? that’s near and dear to your heart.

 

Jaime Staples: I got a few men. I’m not really ready to announce any of them. But one of them is in the NFT space. And I don’t want everyone’s alarm bells go off because NFT space does not have a particularly great name with a lot of people.

 

Brad: Sure, sure, Jaime, you only want X number of dollars, but it’s not by this NF

 

Jaime Staples: dog. It’s not a it’s not a 10,000 JPEGs project, it’s actually a platform. And I’m not totally ready to sort of talk about it yet. But the idea is sort of taking some of the things that we hold near and dear on the internet and providing them a bit of a frame and a bit of a history and allowing the people that created those things to meet them and, and people that are fans of that stuff to collect it and stuff. So I’ve been working on that for about a year. We’ll be coming out this year. And excited about it, you know, celebrating stuff that a lot of people already like on the internet. So

 

Brad: yeah, there you go. You heard it here. First, Jaime state Drew’s going JPEG in Ft. Nan’s. We have him with the beard without the beard no beanie with the beanie. Glasses on glasses off.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah. Combination NFC is that I don’t maybe I’ll make some of my own but probably not. Probably won’t. I’m just I want to empower other people too. Are

 

Brad: there you go? Well, to close, you know, final question is if the CPG audience wants to learn more about you, and you know the projects that you’re working on that are near and dear to your heart, where should they go on the worldwide web?

 

Jaime Staples: Thanks for having me on. Jaime staples is my name. I am poker staples for all poker content. You can search poker staples on any platform on there, and there’s poker content coming out. So Twitch is my main, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, tick tock, Twitter, tick tock, yearly tick tock game got to be on the tick tock game you have to be. And then Jaime staples is where I have like personal accounts. So Jaime staples on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. And I talked about things that usually aren’t poker on those accounts. And yeah, it was a pleasure. And it was it was a lot of fun as always great to talk to you and and and refund on some ideas poker and otherwise,

 

Brad: just sir. Always good having you and we got a lot of stuff to talk about, you know, and then next year, so come back on for round three. excited to hear more about NFT project and yeah, just actually dealing with some of these like bigger issues that are have a lot of scope. And yeah, happy to see where you go

 

Jaime Staples: on all those things, isn’t it? Yep. Thanks for having me on, Brad. Peace up.

Thanks for listening to chasing poker greatness. You can subscribe on Apple podcasts or on your favorite podcast app. Go to chasing poker greatness.com to get the newsletter. Join the greatness village community book a coaching session or dive into the latest data driven poker courses. Follow the show on Twitter at CPG podcast

 

Mr. Staples, how you doing, man? Thanks for having me on the show. Yeah, having you back. You know, it’s been a little bit I’ve been doing well, how about yourself?

 

Jaime Staples: Things are good, dude. Things are good. The world is different. I’m fairly similar. Poker and streaming and content. Still love this game. That’s for a madman.

 

Brad: And where are you located these days? I think you’ve at some point you moved. But that may have been like over a year ago.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, about a year, year and a half. I was in Scotland when we last spoke in Edinburgh. And now I’m in Montreal. In Cold Frozen Montreal. It’s been a rough winter. Where are you Brad?

 

Brad: I’m in Atlanta, Georgia. So okay. It’s not frozen. Not so cold right now. I think it’s it’s 73 degrees outside and blue skies. So yeah, things are quite nice. Right now. I’m not a fan of the cold. I’m not built for the cold. So I don’t envy you right now.

 

Jaime Staples: It’s been really ruthless. Like, I’m not even joking around, you know, the whole weather small talk thing. Like I’m not, it’s been a real struggle for me this winter. Up here, like, we had a bad COVID thing. And we are COVID sort of response was pretty aggressive in Canada relative to the rest of the world. So things were like really shut down. My fiance was actually in England for two months. So it was like, minus 20 For the last three months Celsius. But it’s not even far from Fahrenheit when you get down that low. Down I don’t know why alone, you know, and it’s just like, Dude, this is ruthless. You know, there’s no sunlight. It’s been a painful, painful geological experience. I was even thinking like, Man, can I can I do the like to house thing like, can I? What can I make it work where I can go somewhere for the winter? Like, do I really have the financial chops to do that already? I might do it, man. I don’t know. I don’t know. I gotta make a shorter list. 

 

Brad:  Well, there’s dodge. There’s a reason why so many people live in Los Angeles. You know, the joke is about the small talk in the weather. But if weather didn’t really matter, then there wouldn’t be so many people that live in LA the traffic wouldn’t be so bad. And I know weather certainly affects my Outlook, my energy, just really most everything in life. Like when you can have sunlight and it’s warm outside. I’m just in such a better mood. I have more energy. I feel better.

 

Jaime Staples: Yes, absolutely no i 100%. And the thing is, I don’t have a lot of options right now because I am a poker pro for Party Poker. So where can I stream? That is I’m allowed to stream from in the winter months. And you know, I could do I could do like South America, but..

 

Brad: Use some leverage just magical or someone’s it. Yeah, just get them in Portugal be like, guys get in there. You know, I need to move. You some of that?

 

Jaime Staples: Honestly, I mean, pitch that to them and see what they say. Yeah.

 

Brad: Use your Jaime staples pull. You know what, well, what have you been up to? Since you know, we just looked it up is June 2020. So just hanging out streaming, that whole, that whole thing, anything exciting. 

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, so a lot of content, been with Party Poker that whole time, and focusing on just trying to share the tournaments and online story. And then from a poker side of things, I think I’ve improved quite a bit at the the game of poker, but working pretty hard been doing some lessons. And just a lot of time, you know, like with, with some technical tools, like solvers, but also some like quizzing software, and I think taken my game to a level where I’m winning in high stakes, tournaments, you know, like 1k tournaments. So that’s really fun. To win at high stakes, I really enjoy that. And sharing that journey and content, you know, like, that’s, that’s kind of been the, the MO for the last couple of years.

 

Brad: I see you like, you pop up in my Instagram. somewhat regularly, I see you just getting your soul ripped out of you kind of over and over and over again. 

 

Jaime Staples: Those clips do the best man. The clips play to the medium poker player, right? Which really enjoys the bad beats and the big suck outs and the big emotional hands. So yeah, you’re gonna you’re gonna get a lot of those. A lot of those hands on on Instagram. Well, 

 

Brad: Yeah, it’s like, Super Dave, you know, you just see over and over and over again, the Jaime staples getting fucking smashed the shock on his face the slack jaw. Empty stare out into oblivion.

 

Jaime Staples: People love it. They love the pain. 

 

Brad: They love the pain. Yeah, um, you were saying something, and I interrupted you, if you remember what you were saying. But if you don’t remember, then I was going to ask you about, you know, what’s been the most impactful thing that you’ve studied and has helped elevate your game in the past Couple years?

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, so I remember where I was going, I’m sure we’ll talk about but like, there’s been a process of this, figuring out how to balance a professional poker career and content, career and other parts of life and make that sustainable. I’m sure we’ll get into some of that later.

 

Brad: Please help me I need any help. In this regard. I think I’m in the demographic that wants to have this conversation. 

 

Jaime Staples: We were talking about this last time, too. But let’s let’s talk about your strategy for an IRA. Alright. So I think, you know, I realized that for the first five or six or seven years of my career, like the biggest downfall was a really solid understanding of different ranges preflop in various scenarios, because tournaments are so variable, as you know, and as you as people listening to this know, like, when he blinds is different than 15, blinds is different than 30 blinds is different than 40 than 60 than 80. And not and the stacks aren’t all equal. They’re variable. So it’s not like cash games, where everyone’s got 100. It’s like, you’ve got someone with 20, behind, and then someone with 40. And then the big, you know, the big second tournament is in the big blind. And like, all of that just changes everything, you know,

 

Brad: The configuration of what, like who has the chips? Yeah, relative to where you are, how many chips you have, like, there’s, yeah, that’s what makes tournaments so tough are is managing and finding the right variables to prioritize in your decision making.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, well, you know, preflop on the button versus like, cut off or something, you know, this is like very, very mixed strategy of three betting and 100 blinds, and then it starts to like, really go to you know, sort of like polarize a little bit in the 40s. And then you drop some of these hands, and then you add some of these, and you get shorter and then it goes back to the asecs students and like, just all this stuff fluctuates, and how to deal with three legs and four bets. It’s a massive, massive game preflop tournament poker. So I’ve been able to use some stuff with raise your edge and paired, but go through that and I’d quiz a lot and Learn from all these ranges, I just got them down really Pat. And I don’t know plugged like a ton of leaks like improved my win rate hugely, just from not being in stupid spots, because my ranges were like completely out of whack. postflop. And that is a really boring experience. It’s not fun to study preflop ranges and like drill them and like, get some check, but it helped a ton, you know? 

 

Brad: Yes, that’s, you know, the first product that I came out with was preflop bootcamp. And it is not sexy, by any stretch of the imagination, but it is fundamental, and foundational, and high frequency and like, all of those things are just worth their weight in gold when it comes to studying and improving your poker game.

 

Jaime Staples: I agree. I mean, what like what’s more important, like, like a range construction on like, how much of your range wants to better check on the flop and you miss it by 20%. Or like your range being 6% too wide or too narrow? preflop it’s like the preflop makes a bigger difference, you know, in your win rate. And it makes your life so much easier when you know, immediately, like what it looks like. So

 

Brad: Yes, you have bandwidth, right? Again, something that I talk a lot about, it’s a thing that like you can tell people about, but until they like really experience it, then that’s when it kind of sets in and you’re like, oh, like, we were talking about all the variables and like how things can change based on stack sizes, table configuration, all these things? Well, when you know what your strata supposed to be. And it’s just a reflex, then you can start thinking about the additional variables on top of you know, what the range should be, and come to a much better conclusion. And in the in the cash game sense, like when you know what to do preflop Well, now you freed up so much mental bandwidth to think about post flop, that you just make better decisions and you go deeper and you learn more, it’s just a cumulative effect. 

 

Jaime Staples: It makes so much sense why you guys are so good at like, post flop, because I’ve been doing a little bit of cash game study recently. And I mean, the preflop game relative to MTTs is like, doable, bro. Like, you can learn the game, like be preflop game, and in like a month of like steady sort of practice and work like you’ll know, kind of how it works. And you just can’t do that in MTT. So so it makes sense. Like you catch guys get that down. And then it’s you can deviate from that when it makes sense, right? And like, and then you’re just crushing me on on flop range construction, where I’m just like, Dude, I haven’t got this far yet. 

 

Brad: Yeah, like old on different equity, shifting turns and rivers and like multi-way spots. I mean, I just got back from a tournament. The first, I’ve played three live tournaments in the last 10 years, if that gives you any picture of how often I’m battling in the tournament scene, right. But what I realized was a I have no idea what to do with 25 bigs or 30 bigs I am just like, lost, but be like the really skillful and good tournament players, when they get to like a turn. Like the wheels just kind of fall off, you know, their their ability to play, like after the flop was subpar, you know, which may not be super detrimental in tournaments, but like it was, it was something that I picked up on quite quickly was like, Okay, I need to get myself in more postflop situations because, you know, people are just kind of torching. And that was, yeah, part of my game plan. And ironically, I busted out in a post flop situation because one of the worst one of the calibrations I didn’t make was in cash games. People bluff a lot. And I think in tournaments the pressure gets to people. And yes, love catching the value of bluff catching goes down in spots that are just like slam dunk, easy calls in cash become quite easy fold in tournaments. And I think there are just a few like Ace high bluff catches that probably aren’t going to make money in a tournament setting that are like kind of printing in an in a cash game setting.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And the other thing that I think along those same lines is with antes. Like ranges just get out of whack comparative to cash game ranges where they’re pretty, like tight so it’s much easier to visualize without antes but people’s ranges are preflop and post flop, but it’s like an MTTs you know, like button versus big blind people have so many choices of hands to bluff with, because the ranges are so wide 20 blinds deep, like there’s no reverse implied odds, people just get to check raise, like every pair if they want. But like even in a, in a game theory sense, like they can just check raise, like second pair or better all in, because it doesn’t matter on a lot of board textures. You know, like, there’s just a lot of money in the pot. So, so you had these situations where ranges are really wide, and it’s so easy to get out of whack. Like I think for a long time, he was just see bet 85% of range on every board texture, and then just check turn, you know, like, like, just like bet turn 20% of the time or something like that. Right, right. And it’s just like these huge holes were developed.

 

Brad: Yeah. And because like, there’s no because the incentive in tournaments are from what I’ve seen in tournament play for many players is to protect their equity in the pot. actions become much more honest. And so, you know, they bet the flop like they see by the flop, like you said, 80% of the time, and then they check the turn, which means they’re going to over fold the turn by not a small measure, right, like massively massively over folding, and massively massively oversee betting the flop as well. So like that 15%, when they check back on the flop, well, then you just have the turn. And they’re likely over folding in that situation as well. And yeah, I mean, that’s just, maybe it’s just an element of tournament poker. I assume that like as you venture into like the realm of high stakes, tournaments, and you’re battling against consistently strong competition. Things have to shift you have to. 

 

Jaime Staples: Their good, yeah,

 

Brad: You have to understand the full game tree. But yeah,

 

Jaime Staples: It doesn’t it doesn’t exist like that forever.

 

Brad: I mean, in a cash guy. Yeah, in a cash game sense. It’s almost like playing the blinds, like small blind versus big blind, and Big Blind versus small blind, you know, is the loosest formation and you’re raising a lot of hands, like some, like half the combos, you know, like five 600 combos or so and like in a tournament setting, if you’re raising the button with all the aunties, you’re raising that many combos, and then like, you have to manage all these combos post flop, and that is not a small task to do, like, not easy. No, it is not easy at all, like, the wider you are, the harder it is to manage everything in a way that makes you not exploitable. And most people, I would venture to say almost every person is exploitable in some way.

 

Jaime Staples: Yep. Yeah. No, absolutely. It’s, it’s a hard thing to do. And I mean, I think the guys at the top, you know, you’ll often often see them playing like 500 Fast forward, or 500 zoom on the side. Like I think they’ve, they’ve got some chops. And, you know, I’m not suggesting in like the five hundreds or one case online that people are under bluffing turns, they’re probably bluffing turns, because they know that people are, you know, exploitable, right? Like, they’re great. But a lot of these leaks, I think developed over just the history of of like online poker, like just the trends of the day, the exploitability of just like, oh, yeah, raise see bet and people over fold flops. So you just see that your range, because that’s what wins. And we can prove that, based on this math like you. This works this much. And that’s great. And someone’s like, Well, wait a second, do we compare that? To like, if we check, like, how profitable is the term line, you know, card runners EV when it came out? And everyone’s like, whoa, we can’t see that. 100% of flubs, you know, there’s just like this, this, this progression of, of learning. So I feel like a lot of tournament culture isn’t inherent to the game, or the structure of the game, or how it’s set up. It’s just culture that’s developed from these thought processes over time, you know, and people are stuck. Yeah, at various aspects of it. And they’re, you know, I’m sure I have plenty in my game where I’ve got some line of logic that’s based on some idea from a card runners or do scrap video from like, you know, 2008

 

Brad: years ago. Exactly, dude.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah. 100%.

 

Brad: In the past year, I think one of my missions has been to really try to understand poker, like a basic level of how do you quantify a value bet? What is happening when you raise what is happening when you bet, like what makes for a successful bluff? Just how does the game work? Like if I were to build a solver, how would I build a solver, right? Like, how would I go about creating an algorithm and programming it to really just understand what’s going on? And I think in tournament poker, like they’re these just like kind of heuristics come out of like, always be raising or betting never be calling or checking right. And it’s like, well, you just eliminated Some tools that have utility from like the jump. And I think the reason why people latch on to these is because yeah, just somebody told them, that’s really good. Somebody just told them that and then they just accepted it, and then they just moved on. But really, when you understand like, what’s happening in poker, it makes your decision making process like it adds depth there, because it’s like, wait a minute, like, I have aces, and the flop is like deuce, deuce, eight, like, do I want to see but this hand every time? And what am I accomplishing? Like, how many beds do I want to play this hand for how many beds are left? And then like, Where does the value of the beds come from, because beds to go in different ways are worth different amounts, like a bet that goes in, when somebody is betting is worth more than a bet that goes in when somebody is calling because when somebody bets they can have bluffs and low equity hands. And so yeah, just kind of like looking at these fundamental concepts of what’s going on in poker are is extremely helpful in the sense that I got from, you know, my one silly live tournament and just hearing people speak and talk about the game is that it’s kind of like just monkey see monkey do type thing, and not really understanding what you’re accomplishing by, you know, see betting the flop, for instance, right? That was the one I talked about before. I trained my guys to by the way, when it’s like, arrange, see bet, it’s like range. See, that is basically a post flop blind. It’s taking your preflop range, and just putting money out there in the dark, right. And if you have a very wide preflop range, then the player who’s defending should be check raising the bejesus out of this blind bet,

 

Jaime Staples: right? Yeah. Yep. It makes sense. No, absolutely. It’s just like that, that flop situation. Still, to this day is such a complex mind thing to navigate, you know, like, like the deuce, deuce, eight, for example, I don’t know what your process is. And I might expose my my fishing tournament process. But like, I think about, okay, how does my range interact with this board? And then I think about how does their range interact with this board? Right. And then I think about, what do I think I want to do with my range. And those are already very complicated, you got to visualize very complicated questions. And then I get granular, and I’m like, okay, where this hand is in my range? If it’s not arranged bet, you know, is this, like, do I think I want to take the high frequency like bet? Or check, you know, like, an example of we bet two thirds, and we check 1/3 of aces on that board or something like that? Do I want to check with the aces? Or do I want to bet with the aces, right? So like that, those are basically the four steps I go through my board. And, Dan, that it’s just hard, bro. Like, like, poker has so much nuance when you’re trying to play at a high level. And you can come up with these tournament heuristics, like you said, these rules that simplify it, but they’re not, they’re not good enough to compete at the highest levels, you know, like, you just get more and more granular to where you’re thinking about, is it better to have the backdoor flush draw blocked or unblocked? On the turn? Yeah, oh, my God, what are we talking about here? You know, like, this is ridiculous. That’s the game

 

Brad: is beautiful. It is beautiful. And I would say one thing, too, that I would add from, like, the cash game, since is that something I learned, or something that just kind of came to me one day was like, when considering you know, range versus range. This is a mistake that people will make a ton in coaching sessions, where it’s like, my range wants to bet this board, you know, like King seven deuce, and they have jacks, and they’re like, I have a lot of kings in my range. So I’m betting, right? And

 

Jaime Staples: my response is, well,

 

Brad: any hand that you’re playing, that’s in front of you, is in your range, right? And all the hands in your range want to take multiple paths. Just because that’s how the game works. You know, some hands want to check back some hands want to bet some hands, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Some hands want to use a small site in some hands when to use a big sizing. And so really, it’s it’s finding this hand that’s in your range, and the natural path that it’s incentivized to take. makes things much easier, where it’s like that situation I just said, you know, King seven deuce. Well, yeah, your range has a lot of kings in it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you want to bet with Jack’s, because the hand that you have is Jack’s. And like you know what I mean? It’s just one hand that is makes up your entire range. So that’s something that like I try to try to coach my guys up with. Just the concept that like if a hand is in front of you than it is obviously in your range, because if it weren’t in your range, then you wouldn’t be Playing that hey,

 

Jaime Staples: yeah,

 

Brad: you know what I mean? So anyway, but yeah, like the thoughts of all of these sort of like a, let’s be real, like, they’re abstract concepts, you know, like, what is because we work under the assumption that like, How does my opponent’s range interact with the sport? Well, like a hand that I played recently, like, I open under the gun with ace 10, the small blind called flop was for four deuce. And when check check, The turn was like a six, they bet I called the river was a queen, they bet I called down with ace high, and they had the 10, four of hearts. And like, I can say, range versus range, like, how does my opponent’s range interact with this board, but I would not have given them the 10, four of hearts in my estimation of their range. So like, you know, even that can be challenging, you’re basically just impossible. Unless it’s like a player who’s playing at a very high level, and like, you kind of know what they’re setting and the paradigm that they’re working from. When that’s not the case. I just find estimating people’s ranges to be just like a futile endeavor of like, Yeah, I think they I don’t think any bluffs makes sense here. But I know it’s an over bluff spot. And when I call, they show up with a bunch of random shit, and so therefore, I just call and, you know, hope hope for the best. Yeah, you know what I mean?

 

Jaime Staples: I call that the WTF factor, which is just like in every hand in every spot, there’s just always a chance they’re doing something that isn’t rational. And like, Oh, my God, he had this small stakes, you got an 8%? WTF factor? In every hand? You know, you can you can justify a lot of stuff, because it’s just like, well, people do weird stuff. I have. Yeah, that makes sense.

 

Brad: I’ve studied so many different like range breakdowns and done so much data analysis, and I’ve yet to find any spot, you know, the classic line of like, they never bluff. I’ve never found any spot where they never bluff. They always have some air where a sigh, or small pear component to their strategy. Does it mean it’s enough to call for like pot odd reasons, but they always have a bluff. I’ve yet to look at a spot where it’s like, just 100% value.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, no. I mean, I think that would be a bad game plan. If everyone had 100% value in a spot, it wouldn’t be a very good approach to poker unless they were you know, of course exploiting? Right? I think that’s right. You know, like, the point is not to always be correct, it’s to most of the time be correct.

 

Brad: Yeah, do the best that you can with the information you have. And that’s all you have the rest, you just have to kind of set to the side and realize, this is a game with incomplete information. And like, you do the best you can and move on. And that’s really all you can do.

 

Jaime Staples: Every fold you make, you’re getting owned some percentage of the time, you know, and sometimes you’re getting owned, like, a third of the time at worst. And then sometimes, you know, you’re only getting owned, like 1% of the time, but But it’s painful. Like when you make that hero fold. You know, but that’s that’s a that’s a tournament lead to where people you know, people over call people want to see, like, like trying to get people to make hero folds. You just as a lark until you get the highest stakes. Yeah,

 

Brad: you can’t, you can’t have acid, you can’t decide on the turn like you, you need to be fully ready to empty the clip. I found

 

Jaime Staples: two two pot size bets. Don’t get it done. If you’re gonna start on the turn. You need an over bet quickly. And

 

Brad: easily six. Right. Exactly,

 

Jaime Staples: exactly. Yeah, that’s how it goes.

 

Brad: So now we can circle back to actually where we’re I don’t even know where we were in, in the discussion, the tangent that we just went on. But learning and growing about poker, we talked about your thought process. I know that you had a some very strong words for real time assistants, and people selling them like in discord servers. I was going to touch on that. Since I would assume that’s a pretty

 

Jaime Staples: passionate topic of yours. Yeah, so I think we’ve seen sort of tools come up over the years that people could use in real time. I think specifically charts is one of those. That in tournaments. You know, if we look back to 10 years ago, in online poker wasn’t even prohibited because charts were very basic. It was just like, we’ve held raising ranges and none of the Terms of Service had it against the rules. In the last six or seven years with tools like monk or solver and like these really powerful programs, we’ve been able to essentially solve preflop poker to a game theory. Optimal sort of place doesn’t always mean the right decision to make but Like, if robots were playing against each other, they could play optimally against each other preflop. And so that’s a huge problem for tournaments like you can’t be, you can’t have the preflop game solved and utilize that information. I mean, it just completely takes the enjoyment out of poker. So first thing is, I think, Party Poker, the company I’m sponsored by definitely has a handle on stuff like this, and has a good game integrity department and is able to do some really smart things that I can obviously talk about, to sort of catch people that might be doing this stuff. But I also trust the other regulated sites to be on top of this, and I think they are on top of this. But they’re incentivized to be so. Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, no one wants to play against someone that has perfect preflop solutions that they’re utilizing. But then the second thing, which is so annoying, is I’ve seen this shift in culture, and most of it originates in in the US, for better or worse. And that’s, I mean, it’s not shots fired at the country as a whole. But like, it seems to have taken route in some of the online us player space, where people are sort of justifying the use of this real time assistance in this chart, these trading tools, right? And these tools that are even looking at post flop simulations, to get answers, and people kind of shrug it off as like, well, other people are doing it, so it’s not a big deal. And I kind of just wish they would uninstall and go do something else, you know, like it’s just completely indefensible to me, and ridiculous as an idea. So, I mean, sites are on it. And they’re, they’re working on it, right? And they always got to play catch up. But it’s on the poker community to be very clear that like, hey, this shit is not okay. Like, like, you can’t just be apathetic about it, like, Oh, I heard someone else did it. So I’m going to do it, because like, they’re probably doing it like, no, no, that’s not how it works. You know, it’s a very clear cut line in ethics in poker, and this is very clearly on the wrong side of things. So I think yeah, I just feel serious about that.

 

Brad: I mean, as you should, right, and you know, the, the poker platforms is kind of like an existential threat to them, like, just in general is like you don’t want your games to become RTA invested, because then who’s going to play first of all, and once once the consumer loses trust in your brand and your platform, then you’re just toast. So they’re incentivized heavily to catch RTA and this sort of thing. On I think, there’s a weird component to it too. And I understand the incentive of RTA in that, people think they can just make money by running this program, I would argue that they, people who are using it probably are not aware of the swinging nature of using it in the first place. And so like they, there’s obviously they can get whacked, just by variants, and by people putting them in situations that haven’t been covered. And so when you think about like, you need a bankroll to do this, right, like, effectively, you need to be an action somehow. So like, maybe that’s some kind of natural deterrent, like a risk aversion from that side. And also, like people should just be turning people in. I mean, because it’s not, it’s not the point of poker, it’s not fulfilling, there’s no growth, there’s no learning. It’s lazy, and meaningless. And I mean, to me, it’s just kind of pointless, like, why not just go do something else like scam something else or like get into algorithmic trading, or you know, whatever it is that you want to get into. But like, yeah, so anyway, that not only do I not see, not only do I believe that, it’s awful, but it also just, I don’t see the appeal. It doesn’t make sense to me.

 

Jaime Staples: No, I like I’m with you, too. I feel I’ve thought about that in the past. And then I always play devil’s advocate with myself in terms of, well, if I wasn’t a poker pro, and I saw the ability to make money, like maybe I would struggle to understand that reasoning of like, what’s the point? But that’s, I feel the same way, which is like, I wouldn’t play this game. If I wasn’t competing, like if you just gave me that. If you gave me the classic superhero thing where I could see the hand, would I play like No, dude, like, I don’t, I got enough money to be happy. Like, I wouldn’t play where I could see the cards. What’s the point? There’s no point left, like, okay, you’ve got an unlimited money hack. Congrats, you know, like, so. I understand people’s pushback, but it’s, you hear things all the time. The problem I find is they’re unsubstantiated. And for me as a sponsored pro and a representative, I can’t just be firing on substantiate it shots at like, Oh, I heard this and this and this. I can’t be putting people on blast like that. Because I think their integrity is important. And I need some sort of like proof. You know, but people bring things to me with proof. You know, I pass it along the Party Poker and say, Hey, I heard this, here’s the thing and take a look. So yeah,

 

Brad: I mean, in this way, I think poker has always been a community that is, like, we’ve we’ve kind of police things ourselves, for better or worse, just like over time. And yeah, like even an issue such as botting. Right? If you think of the incentives of the platform that has a major bot problem, it’s not always advantageous to get a handle on it. If those bots are generating lots of revenue, collectively, right? The platform’s kind of incentivized to kind of look the other way, honestly.

 

Jaime Staples: No, I mean, absolutely. I think there’s a few I mean, the RTA is is a big deal. Like bots is obvious. But I feel like probably the easiest to catch up of all the things that I could think of, I think some people get around RTA in terms of like, Oh, I’m just learning. So I don’t use it when I’m playing. But then I look up what I did after. It’s like, well, that’s also an unfair advantage, you know, how, how nice it would be, to be able to play and to learn your mistakes immediately with immediate feedback, like, like, that’s a great advantage to actually check guessing check yourself while you play. Like, you can’t do that. I actually

 

Brad: would have agreed with you a few months ago, but now I think I disagree with you. Because what I found out from starting my CFP was that, like, when people are trying to learn and play at the same time, you know, where they’re like, playing, and then you know, in a session and like trying to learn and try to like, look at their mistakes, like directly after whatever it is, like, or, I mean, in some cases, I’m sure people look things up in real time, right, which is like, not a difficult thing to police, like directly afterwards. But what I found is that, like, you can’t perform and learn at the same time. And anybody that uses RTA, actually, where they can look up the answer, it’s not going to be sticky, there’s no need for it to stick in their memory bank, because they can just look it up. And so they actually become worse at, you know, a good example is like preflop charts. If you don’t invest the energy to committing preflop charts and cash games to your long term memory, and you look them up at every decision point. Well, you get distracted, and you don’t learn what the ranges are, because there’s no pressure to recall the information because you just have it readily available. Right? So like, even somebody saying that they use it to learn to me is kind of bullshit, because like you’re not learning. Because why would you? You know, there’s no need, because you could just look it up. Right, then you know what I mean? Yep. Yeah. And learning is supposed to be hard. By the way, this is another thing that I’ve I’ve learned is like, learning should be challenging. It should feel like you’re just about to die. And you can’t take any more. That’s how that’s how, you know, when you’re, you’re doing it, right. Yeah, learning standpoint.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, went through the pain. I think the one that I just just want to say one last piece on the one that is the most egregious to me, and I don’t have sort of substantiated claims on this, like with evidence, but I’ve heard stories of people. And that’s multi accounting. And that to me, is, I mean, the lowest of the low, right? I don’t have any breaking news, tea to drop on you in terms of who it is. But you know, I’ve heard of substantial people, multi accounting, and in online poker tournaments, to where they have card sharing information, and like that stuff is just makes me sick. You know, like, if you’re any level of accomplished player, and you participate in stuff like that. I mean, we’re considered to me,

 

Brad: is it more for like card sharing? Or is it the ability to have like, multiple entries into a single tournament?

 

Jaime Staples: Both but if you know, if it’s a high roller small field tournament? Well, yes, value, right. There is,

 

Brad: I mean, this is, again, the world of tournaments is not not my world, but I am fairly confident that it’s a thing that happens more regularly than you might think, than the listener might think, by people that they probably are very familiar with.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, I mean, there’s big, there’s big games out there that aren’t that aren’t clean, you know, big names that get covered in poker news that that are doing shady things and are all about the dollar and I mean, I don’t want to be all doom and gloom, it’s pretty easy to be just negative about all this I, like I said, I think the integrity part department’s not just Party Poker, but it stars at GG of these regulated sites that are competitors to us. They’re real sharp teams with like, real powerful tools. And this is all they do. So like they’re on it, they’re better than both of us figuring this stuff out. Thank God.

 

Brad: I mean, yeah. And hopefully, there’s like real consequences. Like, I’ve always thought that like poker being unregulated, like in the US, like, there’s very minimal consequences, or downside to whatever you do, right. But like, if there if you’re banned for life from a platform that is quite profitable play on. And then that’s a huge deterrent, right? If somehow people get sued, or there’s criminal charges, and there’s like, you have to play it pay restitution or penalties. I mean, these are real life consequences that will deter people from these sorts of actions. And so maybe one day down the line, that’ll like be a thing, where it’s like, Oh, you are caught using RTA, there’s a criminal penalty. And, you know, you have to deal with that downside, which obviously, will disincentivize folks from from going

 

Jaime Staples: that route? It would be nice if there was some sort of cooperation between sites and between between departments, I don’t feel as if that’s in place, and or it will happen in the short term. But yeah, cuz I feel like there isn’t wide held consequences to these to these things right now. Which is such a shame, you know,

 

Brad: it is a shame and information, I think, should be shared. And I think obviously, like, there’s room for whatever, you know, there’s room for, like, sites being incentivized, you know, for somebody, you know, stars to be like, ah, yeah, we caught staples, multi accounting.

 

Jaime Staples: They can’t though, because of the European laws, with with privacy, they can’t share with other companies.

 

Brad: So it’s a privacy law, it’s not that they don’t cite platforms don’t want to communicate is that they can’t communicate? Well, they

 

Jaime Staples: definitely can’t. And also, I don’t know if they want to, but they can enter the new EU laws. Like, share that information or with the or the community. Right. So like, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t be saying,

 

Brad: Wilson  42:21  

like one of us, you guys, Jaime’s great.

 

Jaime Staples: I would love to get one of the security guys, you know, on a night out or something like that, and just try and get some stories because you’ve got to know they have a treasure trove of dirt on the poker world, and they just can’t you know, it’s like the law, they can’t be talking about that stuff. They can’t release that information. So stupid

 

Brad: privacy.

 

Brad: if you’d like to join the next round of preflop bootcamp, which starts on the last Saturday of every month, head to chasing at poker greatness.com/bootcamp to lock up your spot. One more time that’s chasing poker greatness.com/bootcamp.

 

So let’s go to living your life as a poker player. And you know, actually living your life not playing poker as just a regular human being out into the world. What is going on in that area in your life?

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, there’s a lot. I’m doing a lot of stuff on the side of poker and content. And I feel like last time we talked, we sort of talked about this whole thing a little bit. But I’ve been through the sort of process since. And when I looked at poker, and when I looked at content, creating in general, it’s just, it’s like, burnout epidemic, like people are their career and their time in the game is so fleeting. And that’s not just true in poker. And it’s not just true in like streaming or YouTube. But it’s just true broadly in that, like, careers are shorter, and people are like, doing things till they absolutely hate it, and then quitting and doing something else. Right. And I didn’t understand why I would want to, why would I want to set my life up that way? First of all, it seemed like not the most profitable, or like being a sponsored Pro and creating content over 15 years, and making it sustainable made a lot more sense than being like number one for three years, and then wanting to never touch the game again, right? Like, listen, I’d make less money and it’d be less enjoyable. So a lot of it has been figuring out how to sustain playing poker at a high level, creating content at a volume to where I retain relevancy. And I’m valuable to partners. And then also having a life where I get to do valuable and interesting things and like pursue other hobbies, other business projects. And that’s been like the last three or four years is figuring that out and and I think have succeeded in structuring that to where I don’t feel overwhelmed. But I’m able to balance doing four or five things and doing them well, I think. So.

 

Brad: Tell me about the structure, how you know what that structure looks like? Sure. So

 

Jaime Staples: I sort of have like a Northstar in terms of things that I’m that are important to me right now. So like my fiance, and health, and then poker and contents in business or whatever, right? So I kind of have an idea of that. And I’ve just gotten a lot better at structuring the things that I have to do in a day. I had a tweet thread the other day in terms of how I suster like all of my To Do lists. And I guess from a mental perspective, I don’t really beat myself up over the amount of time I put in, or I don’t put any expectations on myself in terms of what I need to accomplish. It’s mostly like at the beginning of every day and the beginning of every week. What is it that I think is most important to work on? How much can I do? And then I do that and that’s it. So functionally, that means is I play poker Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I create content out of that poker and then Monday, FF de tos, and that’s, you know, sort of turned into like 25 pieces of content for cross the internet, which gets put out. Did I watch it? Thank you. You watch my bad beats on Instagram. Thanks for that.

 

Brad: How’s Jaime gonna get fucked today?

 

Jaime Staples: I study poker, mostly Monday to Thursday. And then I keep on top of Business Administration stuff Monday and Tuesday. And then I collaborate with think about four projects right now. They’re outside of poker in various ways, helping with marketing and or just sort of like making decisions for those companies. That’s Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and have like, a Wednesday and Thursday that are pretty relaxed and chill, do some podcasts, play some video games? Hey, hang out with my fiance. Um, and that’s it. So it’s like 22 year old Jaime would be freaking out, he’d be beating himself up, that, like, everything sucked, and you’re not doing enough. And like, you know, would would be panicking at the amount of shit going on? Well, yeah,

 

Brad: It’s working well, yet, we can only do so many things in our lifetime. And I think a lot of growing up is just kind of realizing that like, Okay, you do the best you can. And that’s all you can do. And we just kind of move on, and we need time to recover. And we need time to rest. And we need time to pursue other things that are outside of, you know, the main thing that we spend our time doing, you know, one thing that I yeah, I wanted to ask you about was the last time you and I talked, you know, we talked about this, this coaching thing, project that, you know, you were, I guess lightly involved with at the time, and I noticed you put up a video on like Facebook, and just talking about the platform, right? And saying, like, Hey, I like this, I think it’s a great idea. If you guys wanted to join, then join. And if you don’t, don’t, I mean, that’s was basically the gist of it. And you got so much heat for even suggesting that somebody spend money doing a thing. It was like, unbelievable to me, like it was it was, like, outlandish, like, really, like he’s charging like $3 a month to ask like a question. And people are like, outraged by this. And I can’t, I can’t imagine that if there was so much outrage over something that’s small, that that isn’t, you know, an insignificant portion of energy sent your way. Is that sort of outrage? And like, how do you deal with that? You know, I noticed back then you replied to some of them, and then I was just like, this is just out of control. Like I don’t? How does that as the kid sleep at night, like this is just crazy.

 

Jaime Staples: I’m, like, I just don’t really put any respect on a lot of that stuff. You know, like, I think they’re the things that are most painful, or when like, very reasonable people, you know, are reasonable, have legitimate gripes and they’re not usually mean, they’re just like, Ah, I disagree with you. Because I think this and this and this, and like, those are the most impactful, the ones that most make you question, but you have some an on says lol not worth it, it’s like at some point, if you’re communicating on the internet, like on Twitch and YouTube and Facebook, like I’m probably connecting with 100,000 people a week, in some way, right? And they’re not only engaging, but take a sampling of 100,000 of the population, there’s gonna be 1000 of them that are in crisis that are in pain that are dealing with mental health difficulties, and or just like our mean, or rude or had something tragic happen, and or just don’t like me, you know, but so it’s unavoidable. You know, like, if you go to a sporting events, there’s going to be bad fans, you know, it’s just the way it is. It is

 

Brad: The way that it is. And I’m smiling, because yeah, within any percentage of a group that that is large, you will get those people but it still hurts. At some level, you know, it’s still like, stings, when you you’re trying to do something good. And then you get pushed back that is just like really weird. It’s like, you have any number of targets to shoot at in the world. And you’re choosing me to like, it’s just kind of like a, I guess a good example is like, a friend of mine started a new trading platform, selling his course and like, we were talking about it, and he showed me an email that somebody sent him that was just like, it was the worst. And we talked about it. And we talked about dealing with that sort of thing. And, you know, I got to think about afterwards and I realize there must be 100 or 50 emails that were grateful and happy, right but the one that he showed me was this awful one, right? Because humans have this negativity bias. And so yeah, I mean, I know what you’re saying, and you’ve been in the game a long time. I have to imagine that there was sort of a transition in dealing with that sort of thing.

 

Jaime Staples: Definitely. Yeah. wasn’t immediate. Like it. It’s a skill set you develop. I remember actually a streamer, saying that I was bad on stream. I remember crying. This was like, right at the start of my stream was crying because it’s just painful. Like they were announcing to seminary people, they thought I sucked at poker. And it’s like, I was streaming and having to deal with people saying, hey, they say you suck at poker. I just never experienced that. Like, I don’t know, I’ve never talked to seven other people before. People shouting at us, and you suck. Like, it just takes a second to feel that, I guess. Yeah. But I don’t know, man. Like, when you’re streaming people have poker advice for you. You know, you’re you’re firing one case, you’ve been doing this for a long time. And like, you know, your $11 tournament player comes in and like, Oh, that was terrible. Because they’re on some 2009 shit, you know? And it’s, I approach it the same way, which is like, hey, they might be right. Okay, but I don’t know if they’re right. And the best way for me to figure out if, if they’re right, is to talk to the people I know, are experts. Right? So on my stream, I don’t listen to any poker advice. I don’t put any respect on it. And it’s not because they couldn’t be right. It’s because I can go to Ben CB. And I can ask him, I can ask the ads. I can ask Sam graft in like, I can send a text and get answers from the best in the game. So like, why would I take this on? It’s just, there’s I put no respect on it. I brushes past me the same thing with negativity to like, I just, it doesn’t register. I’m like, the problem. Probably having a tough time. Is the first thought as opposed to they might be right. Like, just don’t even entertain it.

 

Brad: Neither one of those thoughts are my first thought in general. What’s your first thought? Like yourself? That’s my first thought. Like, that’s, that’s the first thing that goes goes into my head. And actually try to use, I try to use any sort of criticism as fuel for the projects that I’m working on. It’s like, you know, yeah, you think poker coaching is like a joke. Okay? Well, we’ll see. I’m going to show you that. Like, we can turn, you know, breakeven players into fucking smashers. And that there’s just a lot to be gained by investing into the things that I create. And so like, for me, it’s just a driver, to my audience, to my customers, to my people to create shit. That is ultra impactful. Where, you know, I can just scoff at whatever thing is said and be like, Yeah, well, you’re an idiot. Because, you know, whatever. The thing is that people buy for me is worth 10x what they pay so and then just kind of move on. But like, I really like having a chip on my shoulder. I think it’s a big driver for my energy and the actions that I take.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, I feel you, man. I’m feeling I mean, it’s helpful if you’ve got it in spots, I think use it. I’m with you. Yeah, with you. I lost that. In poker though. I’ve been so used to being the fish in the lighter in the public light. Like, really, at the beginning of my career, Joey Ingram did a lot to sort of, like, position me as that in the poker world. Like when I first came out, he would do podcast weekly, being like, what’s Jimmy stapler up to this week and like having on JMO, where they basically just rag on me for like, 30 minutes, you know, I’m just some 25 year old kid like playing $50 tournaments. But I got signed by stars. So like, I was there punching bag. And a lot of the part of that feel like, by the way, just being well, I mean, I hated them for that. I was like, why are you making my life? So difficult? I haven’t done anything to Yeah, no, I used to listen to your podcast. Like, I’m just trying to put my best foot forward and, and share the game of poker, like, I don’t deserve this. Sorry, you hate stars. But like, you know, they’re a company and I’m just going to try and represent poker. So I don’t know, like that. That was not easy to deal with. I didn’t enjoy being the punching bag for like the new era of poker. But hey, I got rewarded for it and went through it and it’s fine. But that carries over. Like, I think the hardest part about it. And the thing that bothers me the most about what people say is when people make up motivations for the actions that you have that don’t match your your motivations, like those are the hardest comments. I tweeted the other day about something. Someone says, you know, had a whole discussion with another poker player in terms of like, I was doing it for engagement. And it just it bothered like that one bothered me. Which like you don’t know why I’m doing what I’m doing. You’re just filling in gaps. That gets to me a little bit, I would say, yeah, the motivation stuff is trying to get a rise or Oh, he’s just trying to make money or Oh, he’s just trying to strike up drama. Like, probably you don’t know me, I’m not on Twitter to get engagement. I don’t care. I don’t like I don’t care about Twitter, right to talk with people.

 

Brad: I think people just project, whatever they want on to whoever they want, and sort of just make some weird assumption that they know the situation when the reality is they don’t know shit. And they’re just, it’s just full on projection. And, yeah, I mean, that’s the thing. I guess that thing doesn’t get to me as much anymore, just because I kind of know what my vision is, and where my level of integrity lies and what I’m working towards. And so if somebody wants to presume that, then I would assume they’re not in my audience, and they’re probably not going to ever buy anything, and I just, they’re not anywhere near my inner circle. So fuck them. It’s sort of my, my approach to that. But yeah, the we, the thing is, like, people get content for free, right? Like, people watch you on Twitch for free. And like you do put out you have a positive benefit into the world that for all intents and purposes, 99% of the time, is unpaid. And like, that’s not nothing. And of course, human beings who work really hard to build a brand or build their names deserve to be compensated monetarily. Else, how the hell do you think they feed their family? How do you think they eat? How do you think they make it make their way through life? You think they they’re just like some, like silly monkey that just deserves to do your bidding all the time. And you don’t shouldn’t pay them anything like I that That, to me is like, it’s weird that like, very intelligent people in the poker space are just like, very antagonistic towards anyone selling anything, ever. That to me has always been a little bit mystifying how poker players who are really good at the game don’t understand basic economics and business.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, I think misplaced anger often, right. And I think the anger is really people have a lot of anger at poker sites. But I, I can’t feel the same anger in that we just have no leverage in this relationship as professional poker players, you know, when we have leverage, great, utilize it, right? If a site needs to get off the ground and need some traffic, as a poker player, you’re providing value. But if you’re talking to the giant, and you’re saying, I want this, and they’re saying, Okay, well, we are a business, and we want this, like you don’t have leverage in that relationship. And that just people were really angry at that at the time, but I just don’t understand. Sort of like what utopian universe we’re all living in, like we’re playing. Basically, we’re playing capitalism in cards. You know, like, that’s what we do for a job is we compete, and we exploit, and, and then when they see the game, above the game, get confused. I just don’t really get it. You know, I don’t I’m a pragmatist in that sense. Like,

 

Brad: I would say, like the whole stars debacle could have been handled better, and should have been handled better. And I do think there were long term consequences to those decisions that affect stars, probably even to this day, business wise,

 

Jaime Staples: You know, 100% Yeah. I mean, it’s still a mark on their business. Like if they could go back and change that decision. I’m sure everyone at that company would do that. For sure. Like it was a disaster. Yeah. Like it. They could have, it didn’t even cost them that much money. Like it wasn’t going to cost them much. How many supernova elites were there? Like 650? You know, yeah. And it was like 100,000 per per lead or something like it was? It was a couple million, but like, they’re a gaming company. Yeah. Making hundreds of millions. It’s ridiculous.

 

Brad: Yeah, I mean, so basically, that was just a poor business decision that had long, long downstream consequences, and greatly affected a lot of a lot of players just because of the way that it went down. But again, as a community, you know, we can kind of vote with our action and vote with our dollars and choose where we play. And while it may seem small, if 1000 or 2000 people stop playing somewhere that’s going to have a big impact on most platforms that exists in the world. Yet

 

Jaime Staples: 100% And it’s, well it’s not hard to switch either. I mean, I’ve I’ve been with Party Poker now for a couple years and Party Poker has From my point of view, I’ve always done things in favor of players, you know, when it was sort of pads and Rob and Tom that were heading the ship on every decision, like it was lower rake and higher rewards and like everything for grinders, and people didn’t come over, and I just I don’t really understand like, why, you know, like, why wouldn’t you play here? When everything’s better for you and it’s the same.

 

Brad: It’s poker, like people are really sticky for some reason. And I feel like poker players should be better at that. They just don’t like the way it looks. It’s like it’s just this comfortability issue of like, the software looks different. And there’s this fear of changing and like humans are just very resistant to change.

 

Jaime Staples: Why bro, like, I’m that way with the Venetian. I mean, shots fired, but like Sheldon Adelson, the biggest lobby against getting poker in the US, and he’s died now. So I don’t know how my Phoenician stances, but I haven’t played poker. Think I’ve played poker once there. And that was before Black Friday, and I haven’t spent $1 there since. Because I’m just like, bro, like, what? I could go anywhere in Vegas. Like, why would I give money to the number one lobby against what I do for a living? Yeah. So you do not play there?

 

Brad: Well, it’s the prisoner’s dilemma, right? And the reality is that like in this game, when people feel like they have value, or have an edge or get an overlay, they’re just willing to do whatever it takes, which is to the poker platform or the Venetian. It’s to their benefit, right? I mean, what a joke it was to have a tournament that basically a guaranteed prize pool that is the prize pool, right?

 

Jaime Staples: That yeah, I mean, that’s so that’s, that’s annoyed me.

 

Brad: That’s an obvious fuck you to the poker community. That’s them saying we know you’ll come. And it doesn’t matter what we do. And guess what? We came?

 

Jaime Staples: Huh. I remember that. Yeah, that was a that was ruthless. And like, it might be like, I don’t want to be preaching here, right? I don’t, because there’s an element of being really up in a privileged position, to be able to say no to this sort of stuff, right? If life is tougher, then the dollar is more important. So I’m not trying to say like, Hey, if you’re in a spa, you got to do what you got to do. But if you’re not in a spot, like, why not just choose the integrity choice and like, play somewhere else, like play at the ARIA do? Like, what? What are you going to lose? $5 in equity, like whatever? Like, just go there. Play the win? Yeah, but I don’t know. He’s dead now. So maybe I have to revisit that things are different. Yeah, I might play there. One day, we’ll see.

 

Brad: Maybe one day you’ll do anything to get out of the cold, frigid tundra that you’re in right now. Send me to desert

 

Jaime Staples: read, I don’t know where to draw the line on that sort of stuff, though. And honestly, I’ve been thinking about a lot of my life, because it’s just, I’m curious how you navigate that, because things happen. You’ve got a feeling you’ve got a thought on something? How much does it matter? How much do you care? To me? Seems completely arbitrary. It seems like I can just choose what to care about what not to care about, and how much and I don’t have a guide on what that answer should be. It’s like I’m making it up as I go.

 

Brad: Right. So there is no answer here. I think it’s to me, I went through this phase of, like, all of the all of the causes in the world, right, like, okay, clothes that are not made in Bangladesh, right, because folks live in Bangladesh, you know, they often walk six miles to work and six miles back and work like 150 hours a week, are there even 150 hours a week, I don’t even know. But basically, they’re spending all their time making clothes, so that we can buy them cheaply. And by the age of, you know, their mid 30s or early 30s. They’re done physically, they can’t do it anymore, right? Those they get fired, they get let go, they get sent back to their families. And they’re just kind of broken people. And so when you buy clothes from Bangladesh, you know, I realized like, oh, shit, like I’m supporting this, you know, by getting my clothes for half off or whatever. And so like, there was a long time where I paid very close attention to the tags. And then there’s like, living conditions and working conditions and like China, with various electronic equipment, just various items across the board. There’s the cause of you know, factory farms and the way that animals are treated and like bread and just very deeply unhappy and just it was this thing of like, whenever I could find any kind of silent suffering, I went out of my way to avoid that. thing. And you quickly realize that like, it’s hard to be a member of society and avoid all forms of silent suffering, you know. And ultimately, it was just, I’m going to do the best that I can, and not actively partake, and try to educate myself. But I’m going to make mistakes, I’m going to screw up just because I can’t know everything about everything. And then just kind of, you know, let the chips fall where they may and forgive myself and just say you’re doing your best and just kind of move forward, you know?

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, no, I mean, I think that’s a great way of approaching it. Right. And and it resolves that question in terms of what what it is that you pay attention to? Because there is no answer, but I think one that troubles me is, you know, let’s say you’re talking with a friend from your hometown, or whatever, right? And they say something in a conversation that like, doesn’t fly, you know, it’s not okay, anymore. When do you step in? Right? Basically, you have to make a decision in terms of who you want to be as a person. Do you want to be the let it slide guy? Or do you want to be the stickler? That is less enjoyable? Yeah. And I have no idea, Brad, I have no idea where to draw that line. I don’t it’s the same line as the Venetian. Is it unreasonable? I’m not sure. I don’t know. I am lost. You

 

Brad: being honest, this has taken us Yeah, this has taken a turn. So for me, I try, I will try to educate when if I think the communication is not going to lead to immediate conflict. And otherwise, I just don’t say anything, if somebody has behavior and takes actions that I know is going to be a fight. If I say something, then I just tend to not say anything. But then I also choose who I associate with in the future as well. So in that way, you know, I have just kind of stopped calling people and stopped maintaining relationships or friendships with people who just like aren’t growing, that aren’t learning that don’t seem to care about their fellow man or any of these things, then, like, it’s my choice, who I want to hang out with. And so I just kind of move on. But yeah, I mean, I think creating a big fight, and a big situation, just doesn’t really do any good. Because people don’t argue well. And the way that most people kind of argue and have discussions is they just want to prove their side. So at all, at all costs, they want to prove that they’re right. So there’s no there’s not even a rational discussion to be had. So, you know, in that way, I just kind of let things go and then make my decision afterwards. I also say to like, on like, a much lesser degree, I let things go better than I ever have before. If somebody says something that I know is like, factually incorrect, I just, I don’t correct people anymore. I just like let them say the thing and move on because it drives me absolutely batshit crazy if like I misspeak, or people are trying to find some, like avenue to disprove something just because they think that they’re clever or smart. On the internet, especially poker, Twitter is like the perfect example of that, like, oh, well, what if this happens, then then you’re wrong. Ha ha, ha, gotcha. It’s like, dude, go fuck off. Like, leave me alone. I don’t need that person in my, in my space. But yeah, it’s a tough question. And I mean, I would say, I mean, if something is done to offend another human being, then I think it’s different. Where somebody is actually actually affected in the moment by some idiot saying something that obviously is like out of bounds, then I think there is a correction that’s needed there just for the sake of the human being who’s for whatever reason, just like close by or near or the cause of their angst or whatever it is.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah. No, it’s I mean, some good. Some good thoughts on that. I mean, there’s that It troubles me. It troubles me, I think about it quite a bit. And yeah, still very uncertain in terms of how to how to approach that sort of stuff. With things like the Venetian with things in poker. Just generally. So yeah,

 

Brad: the question for me is like, do I know the owner of the Aria? Do we know that They haven’t done some atrocious things, right. Like we don’t we don’t really know what anybody who owns a casino has done in their life. I mean, things come out about Steve Wynn, right? Like these are. And it’s like, what do you do? I mean, I don’t have the answer. And I don’t want to live in complete ignorance. But I also want to do stuff and like,

 

Jaime Staples: yeah, not be like, like, totally trapped in your own world. Right? I can’t do anything. Yeah, like, yeah, that’s it.

 

Brad: build my own city. Free of all suffering. I guess that’s, that’s an alternative. But yeah, it’s tough questions. And I think that like, honestly, I’ve come to, it’s caused great depression, I think the amount of suffering and especially silent suffering that exists in the world has felt at times, like, a weight just on me. And because you feel small, and the challenge seems just so immense, you can’t even really visualize it, you can’t comprehend how hard overcoming these difficulties are. And I’ve just kind of come to the conclusion that I just do the best that I can as a human. And that’s kind of all I can do.

 

Jaime Staples: You know, yeah. Yemen, absolutely. I had a discussion with another poker player about that, in terms of, like, how, how much selfishness is reasonable. If we assume that being here on this planet, some amount of like advocating for yourself as opposed to others, is reasonable. And some people say all of it, you know, like, oh, yeah, just do everything for yourself, Max. I, I feel as if there should be some share of the pie, you know, like, if you are incredibly fortunate, or incredibly wealthy or lucky, or whatever it is, that you perhaps share some of that is, is a good approach. I mean, how much you know, like, where,

 

Brad: I mean, you do what you can, like, this is a thing. I struggle with this too in poker, because like, it’s obviously a game where the goal is to beat other people and take their money, right? This is like, literally the goal of poker, right? And you have the sort of existential crisis is of what am I giving to the world? And what am I doing, you know, this, like, really, my purpose is just to beat people out of money. And I think over time, I’ve learned that there’s a lot more that goes into it, I think, first of all, if somebody is like, a loser at a poker tournament, or even in a cash game, and they enjoy being there, and it gives them a break from their life, and it’s an activity that like, they just love doing, even though they losing money, then having access to that activity is a good thing. Having good conversations, the experience, all those things, I think can be good. And also like, you know, as poker players, it’s not as if we have to win all the money. And we’re not allowed to help people with that money. Right? Yeah,

 

Jaime Staples: you know, we can give back right? Like we we can, it doesn’t have to be Mac’s exploit at all times and everything.

 

Brad: Like, you can like win money, and then use that money to help a good cause. Right? There’s nothing that like against that, and a lot of poker players have. And it has given that level of fulfillment. So I would say that, like if you’re listening right now, as a poker player, and you’re wondering, What am I doing? What am I giving back, like realize, you can go buy a pizza for a homeless person right now and go give them a meal, like you can help people, there’s nothing that is stopping you. Other than, like, you know, our own kind of laziness and really, our own egos that think of us and only US 24 hours a day.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, not here’s, here’s a crazy one. And I’ve talked to some players that play in like, private cash games and high stakes cash games, you can even let off the gas in poker sometimes. And I never hold it against people to be pedal to the metal because I think in competitive play you all the way, but if you’re playing and you know, you see someone and like they’re having a tough night or something, like sizing down your value bet row you can do that. Like that’s allowed in the rules of society that like you can show compassion, even in the Battle of our game that we study and we learn, you can you can do that. I mean, you gotta Of course, abide by the rules, tournament rules, like no, no soft flag, etc. But I hear about that. And in high stakes private games. The great poker player, of course, gives action less off the gas, like lets people, you know, allows people to have wins and, and good moments like that’s, that’s part of having a good experience. If they’re not having a good experience. Then they’re outgrow, like their own play.

 

Brad: And it’s just, you know, not kicking people when they’re down. I think it’s like high stakes poker players, very high level poker players have, in general, extremely high levels of empathy. And so like, we can feel that You know, you can feel somebody’s energy when it is just, they’re just toast and like, having compassionate is okay. Even in the poker space, I mean, one of my, I have a memory of being probably, I don’t know how old I was maybe 24 or 25, and playing on absolute poker, and I was playing heads up, and this kid bought in, and like, we were battling. And he was like chatting to me. And I told him like, dude, and clearly having a bad time of it, I’m like, dude, just quit, you know, like, I’m going to, I’m going to bust you. Like, that’s the end result of this. Just log off, like, close the close your account log off. He didn’t log off, and we battled. And I did bust him. Which, ultimately, you know, I remember that story. I wish there was a happy ending, but there’s no happy ending, he didn’t leave. I did boss him, I tried to warn him. I did what I could. And then he asked for his money back, like, after we got done, and I was like, Sorry, man, like you had an opportunity to quit. But you didn’t. And like this is the consequence. But yeah, there is room for compassion in poker. And I think it’s just, we oftentimes over prioritize our bottom line, but under prioritize our soul, and our spirit, and doing things that are satisfying to our soul and our spirit are very impactful. And there are lots of long term gains to regularly doing such things.

 

Jaime Staples: Absolutely, I 100% 100% agree with that. When it comes to the money stuff, to like, the the wealth, accumulation in poker and stuff like that, I mean, something that I’ve come to think about is, what I didn’t want to do is be in the state of flux and feel like an element of shame, right? You know, like where you’re, you always feel as if the more successful you get, the more you question as to whether you’re living your five years, your life like justly or fairly, or ethically or whatever. So I’ve kind of come up with this idea of a sort of, like a personal expenditure cap. That, to me is like a level of, of selfishness in the world, you know, that I that I’m okay with. And then beyond that, I’m not okay with that anymore. So I kind of like drew a line and arbitrary line in the sand. It’s really freed me up to, to have some, some clarity in that aspect of my life in terms of Sure, go ahead and like maximize the Evie. But like, if you get to this point, you know, you’re not going to anymore, or you’re going to stop accumulating, basically, for the sake of accumulating?

 

Brad: How has that been freeing for you? Like, how does it? How did it release weight?

 

Jaime Staples: Well, I don’t know, man, like, like, people in Bangladesh live on $3 a day. Yeah, like we can, we can just not think about that. And, and go ahead and live our lives and buy the new iPhone, right that I have right here. But like, also, you could probably spend $1,000, and like save an actual human life. And so it’s only ignorance, like, you can just be ignorant to that. And you can go on and you exist. But to me, that seems like a kind of cowardly way to go about being here, and sort of just confront the ugliness of the world confront the elements of selfishness that people have as individuals, and recognize that like part of living is this risk element is this chance elements of the deck, you’ve been dealt in the ability to transcend where you’re dealt and improve your position from there, like part of the value of life is that experience of making the most of where you are? Some, even at a certain point, it gets to be too much, you know, like, Bezos, Bezos yacht is, you know, like $500 million, or something like that, like his boat. That’s a pretty easy example of like, you’re in the money. He built the most successful company in the world, but like, that could have literally saved like, 1000s of people’s lives. I find that unethical. I’m not saying put rules in place to where he can earn that money. I’m just saying, like, if that was me, I’d feel really terrible about myself making that decision. So I kind of just, I wanted to frame my own reference for how he’s going to navigate that financial part of my life. So I could just operate and like don’t beat myself up if I made a bunch of money and I spent it on myself to feel okay about it. Yeah. That’s really smart. That was the idea.

 

Brad: Yeah, I think it’s a great idea. And I think it’s, it’s quite smart. And yeah, I think I was. I thought about this a while ago of like, at what point is like, infinite money enough? I don’t know. Like, is there a point have like, where 100 billion, like gets you more than 10 billion, right? It’s like,

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

 

Brad: You know what i mean, but anyway, we kind of went, Yeah, we went, I think, to an important place. And these are all important topics, I think that human beings just think about in general, because like, you mentioned, just like, where you’re born, the hand that you’re dealt, there are a lot of folks and souls in the world that are dealt not great hands that stand very little chance. And the reality is that like, Pete, folks, like you and I have clearly been dealt decent hands. Otherwise, we propagate and he’s

 

Jaime Staples: even great crushing it brad.

 

Brad: So yeah, it’s, it’s always easy to like, look up at what you don’t have, and where there is to go without looking down at what you’ve accomplished, and what you’ve done. And then giving back to folks who just haven’t had as much opportunity or access or any of these things, you know, as you

 

Jaime Staples: I have a like a fit, like a math thing that I thought of in my head that really spurred this on, right. And it’s a lottery thing. Okay. So it’s like, if someone, let’s, let’s say that someone’s personal, like wealth cap in this system, that is a device. And for some people, it could be 100 million. So some people that could be half a million, right? Let’s say it’s 10 million for some person, they decide that’s there. Okay. And anything over that, like they’re not going to take? So someone wins the lottery for $11? million? Like, how much of that do you think they’re going to donate? Or give away to other causes are like things that are, are utilized, I think a high percentage, the world would give away at least a million of that 11 million, like most of the world, I think, would probably do that. Someone wins the lottery for 100 million. How many are gonna give away 80 $90 million? Like, almost none, like almost 0%. And the actual utility increase as an individual is small. But obviously, that’s a 9x difference, you know, so preventing that, like, if one of these companies I’m working with hits the moon, and I, you know, I bank, the next Facebook or something, the next eSports superstar. Having that in place, prevents the lifestyle creep, where you just give a percentage. Yeah, like, that seems broken with the billionaires and 150 millionaires. Like, if there,

 

Brad: the reality is you don’t I’ve been, I’ve been friends with, you know, a billionaire. And it’s not even as if the billions made him fundamentally happy or satisfied, you know, it was always more ambition and always wanting more and actually a deep sense of unhappiness, because they, you know, he didn’t know who actually wanted to be in his circle, because they liked him as a human being right? Because he always had, yeah, people always needed money, or resources, or connections, or whatever it was. So like, even at that point, like, there, there wasn’t fulfilment, right? Like, there wasn’t this deep sense of happiness. And yeah, so anyway, I don’t know exactly where I’m going with that. But it’s just like the chase of endless wealth and resources doesn’t necessarily end in some sort of fulfillment, or in game happiness. And ultimately, we’re human beings. We’re part of the human race. And I think helping our fellow man is the number one thing that we can do to give us fulfillment and joy.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, agreement, Nam, same page, it’s like, it’s really nice to not have survival needs, you know, not have food, shelter clothing needs. But then when you have that, I feel as if the problems are pretty similar, you know, once you have that health, food, shelter, clothing, down, net net worth 300k, and net worth 30 million, I feel like probably have similar problems. At that point, I could be wrong. But

 

Brad: they’re definitely they’re a billionaire problems.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah, I mean, they’re typical problems, for sure. But it’s like, there’s fulfillment problems for billionaires where they’re unhappy, I have no doubt in my mind, that some billionaires are unhappy. It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.

 

Brad: Yeah, I think the system that humanity is kind of built on is obviously flawed. Because of what just because of the way that the world works, I think and like I don’t know of a better way, but maybe there is somebody that does come up with a better way eventually that is is very obvious and means that all humans have a better chance of living a happy life and have shelter, clothing, food, clean water, all of these things. But on this giant positive note here of the podcast now that everybody is just not totally depressed and sad I’ll ask you a couple questions here. On the template, we can wrap up and connect again, you know, in the near future, because it’s always a pleasure having you on the show and having these these great conversations that, you know, not always are specifically about poker, but should matter to anybody who loves poker and doesn’t love poker, you know? That was given. Have you ever strongly believed something about poker? Only to change your mind later on? And if so, what led to that change?

 

Jaime Staples: I mean, very functional in 2000. When was Black Friday? 2011. Right, or 2009? April 15 2011 2011? Yeah, okay. So I mean, 2009 2010 2011 2012 MTT poker, sort of, like figured out the math on shoving, or at least it became popular to where people were like, oh, okay, so you can just pick up like Ace 10. And you can shove the button and it’s this profitable, because we can calculate this and this and therefore we shove. So like, we figured out how to measure. And therefore we put everything into the measurement, and figured out what was profitable. And we just did that. But no one asked the question of, is another line more profitable? So my process for playing poker back then it was, Is this a profitable shove? And the answer was, yes, I would do it. Now, as I’ve evolved, there’s comparison involved, which is, is race folding, more profitable is raised calling more profitable, is limping, more profitable, limping, more profitable? Absolutely. And how do I want to balance my lines, so that each of those has some race folds, and some race calls and some, etc, you know, some limp raises, some limb calls someone folds? So that’s changed. It’s not about whether something’s profitable is whether something’s the most profitable line?

 

Brad: Absolutely. And this was somebody asked this question in bootcamp, a while back where there was a spot, I believe, where you flat kings and position, and they asked the question of like, why is it not profitable to just five vet gym kings? And I was like, of course, it’s profitable. Like, there’s not a world where that’s not profitable. But the question is, like, what’s the most profitable thing to do? Right? Like, there’s that the saying, In chess that like when you find a good move, look for a better move? And I think that like, this is something that should always be at the forefront of poker players minds is like, well, you found a good move. You played the hand, well, was there a better move possible? Can you find something else? And I think it’s easy to get lazy, and complacent and just be like, yeah, it makes money. So I did it without ever asking, you know, the follow up question.

 

Jaime Staples: Yep. Absolutely.

 

Brad: What’s a project you’re working on? that’s near and dear to your heart.

 

Jaime Staples: I got a few men. I’m not really ready to announce any of them. But one of them is in the NFT space. And I don’t want everyone’s alarm bells go off because NFT space does not have a particularly great name with a lot of people.

 

Brad: Sure, sure, Jaime, you only want X number of dollars, but it’s not by this NF

 

Jaime Staples: dog. It’s not a it’s not a 10,000 JPEGs project, it’s actually a platform. And I’m not totally ready to sort of talk about it yet. But the idea is sort of taking some of the things that we hold near and dear on the internet and providing them a bit of a frame and a bit of a history and allowing the people that created those things to meet them and, and people that are fans of that stuff to collect it and stuff. So I’ve been working on that for about a year. We’ll be coming out this year. And excited about it, you know, celebrating stuff that a lot of people already like on the internet. So

 

Brad: yeah, there you go. You heard it here. First, Jaime state Drew’s going JPEG in Ft. Nan’s. We have him with the beard without the beard no beanie with the beanie. Glasses on glasses off.

 

Jaime Staples: Yeah. Combination NFC is that I don’t maybe I’ll make some of my own but probably not. Probably won’t. I’m just I want to empower other people too. Are

 

Brad: there you go? Well, to close, you know, final question is if the CPG audience wants to learn more about you, and you know the projects that you’re working on that are near and dear to your heart, where should they go on the worldwide web?

 

Jaime Staples: Thanks for having me on. Jaime staples is my name. I am poker staples for all poker content. You can search poker staples on any platform on there, and there’s poker content coming out. So Twitch is my main, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, tick tock, Twitter, tick tock, yearly tick tock game got to be on the tick tock game you have to be. And then Jamie staples is where I have like personal accounts. So Jamie staples on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. And I talked about things that usually aren’t poker on those accounts. And yeah, it was a pleasure. And it was it was a lot of fun as always great to talk to you and and and refund on some ideas poker and otherwise,

 

Brad: just sir. Always good having you and we got a lot of stuff to talk about, you know, and then next year, so come back on for round three. excited to hear more about NFT project and yeah, just actually dealing with some of these like bigger issues that are have a lot of scope. And yeah, happy to see where you go

 

Jaime Staples: on all those things, isn’t it? Yep. Thanks for having me on, Brad. Peace up.

 

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