Tom Schneider: Country Music Crooning Nose Bleed Crusher

Welcome welcome. Welcome 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 guest on CP G is Tom Donkey Bomber Schneider. Tom is a man of many talents and among those talents are singing songwriting, entrepreneurship C suite businessman writing books and public speaking. But in the world of poker, he’s primarily battled in high stakes live cash games over the decades, while also dabbling in MTTs and racking up over $2.3 million in lifetime caches, while also snagging the WSOP Player of the Year. Simply put the man’s a quintessential high performer and a treasure trove of hilarious poker stories and wisdom. So in today’s episode with the Donkey Bomber, you’re going to learn why believing you’re always playing your best has serious consequences in your poker career. The hilarious story behind Tom’s Donkey Bomber nickname, why you should trust those bad feelings in your gut in the middle of your poker sessions, and much, much more. Now, without any further ado, it’s my honor and privilege to bring to you a legend in the world of poker, the one and only Tom Donkey Bomber Schneider. Tom Snyder Welcome to chasing poker greatness, sir. How you doing, man?

 

Tom: I’m good. Thank you. I’m good.

 

Brad: Yeah, so Donkey Bomber here with the Donkey Bomber. I guess. We’ll start there. Where did Donkey Bomber come from? 

 

Tom: So I was playing high stakes cash games and doing fairly well. And the people that I was playing with, I was beating but they were winning tournaments. So I decided to start playing poker tournaments. So I went to Reno my first, you know, con a major tournament, it was a $5,000 entry. And I had been playing with a guy who was the previous His name is Arnold speed. He was the previous winner of the tournament the prior year. So he won a million dollars at Reno. And I was at his table and and he literally started ripping into me. He was calling me a donkey. He was saying you’re so stupid. You don’t know what you’re doing. I, you know, he said, You’re not going to make a pass dinner break. And I go good because I’m hungry. You know, I literally, I don’t get fazed by those kinds of comments. I literally just agree like I am. I know, I have no idea what I’m doing. And I appreciate you know, your council. Thank you. You know, that kind of thing. I’m a I’m a smart SBAC but they don’t know if I’m being a smart so I’m really serious. Right? And so so he called me he he said so many things to me about being a donkey and stupid and so on. That another player at the table said call it floor. This is ridiculous. Right? And to me, it wasn’t bothering me. Right? It was kind of, I beat him out of every hand. Right? And so it was really kind of fun to, to, you know, to beat him out of every hand and have him continue to call me names. I’m happy with that. Actually. That’s kind of the way I view poker in and so I made it to the final table was my first you know, major event, I made it to the final table. And they asked me what my nickname was. And I said, Well, according to Arnold speed, it’s um, my nickname was Donkey. Right? And so at the time, I don’t wear sunglasses ever but I did that time was my first time on TV and I’m like, I don’t know everybody else is wearing sunglasses all wearing and I had you know involved so I had a hoodie on and, and Vince Van Patten goes, you know, he looks like he’s a he’s a Unabomber wannabe, but I think he’s the Donkey Bomber. So that’s how it started. But it was really Thanks, Darnell SPIA have kind of a funny name. For some reason it really stuck. I mean, people started calling, which is kind of weird. Well,

 

Brad: it sticks in the brain Donkey Bomber. It’s not gonna not gonna fall into my my mind anytime soon. You know, you mentioned you, you’re playing high stakes cash, typically. And so let’s talk about your journey, you know, into the world world of poker and games in general. What is your journey through the world of cards look like?

 

Tom: So my family when when they had my parents when they had friends, they would drink and play cards and they weren’t playing for a lot of money. But for me as a kid, it was a lot of money. And instead of going off and playing with the other kids It’s even at like five and six years old. I’m like, I want to play, you know, and I was I wanted to win. And, you know, I might win five or 10 bucks or something. And to them, it was no big deal. But to me, I’m gonna play my very best. And people did stupid stuff. And they played games like, spit or, like bekam and games that, you know, they these people just wanted to gamble because they thought it was fun. And I wanted to win it. So I want money as even a young kid. And then my favorite story is my, my mom was taking photography classes, and I was 12 years old. And I had a two year old daughter, and she paid me $5 a day to babysit. So I would babysit, make $5 a day and I’d ask Well, friends over 

 

Brad: You said daughter, sister, sister, sister, I’m sorry.

 

Tom: I was like you were 12. And I had a two year old daughter. Yeah, no, I’m sorry, my sister, my sister, she seemed like my daughter, because you know, was 10 years different. And nope, she was my daughter, my sister, sorry. And my mom would pay me to babysit her while she took photography classes $5 a day. So I’d call my buddies over and say, Hey, come on over, let’s play poker. And I had $5 to play with. And you know, I had Pete amount of money. And my I didn’t do a good job of babysitting my sister. But I did do a good job of beating my friends out of their money. And I was just, you know, I was a consistent winner in the game. I just want all the time. And I, for some reason, thought about the game differently than they did. What I understood the concept of outs and things fairly early.

 

Brad: Yeah. What year was this to sort of set the timeline?

 

Tom: Well, I’m 62. So let’s call it 50 years ago,

 

Brad: I can’t even do the math. So like, late 70s, late 70s, something like that.

 

Tom: Yeah, whatever. 50 years ago? Yeah.

 

Brad: Literally 77, early, early 70s,

 

Tom: early 70s, early 70s. And so I would play poker, and you know, I would play gin with my dad at the country club, even as a young you know, 1314 year old kid, I would play gin with my dad after golf. And I would be the old guys. I’m playing tn. And I just, it just was something that came very naturally to me. And I, I wasn’t emotional about cars, which a lot of people make very emotional decisions. And I was always pretty unemotional about cars, and always wanting to make good decisions, and then started fairly early.

 

Brad: Yeah. Can you describe how you thought about the game differently back then? Or just how you thought about, you know, you mentioned that you wanted to win. So, you know, there’s a path to winning in a path to losing, right? So like, what did your path to winning look like? When you weren’t playing cards.

 

Tom: So when I wasn’t playing cards, in winning, I was the quarterback of my high school team, I was the pitcher. I was the captain of my football and baseball team. And I played basketball as well. And so I was very athletic. So, you know, I was just very competitive and all things but not in a, I’ve never been a fist conquer, or you know, any of those kinds of things. It’s more of a, I just want to try my best. And if I give my all on every play, and I, and I think through things as best I can, then I feel like I’ve won, right? And yeah, and that’s kind of how I viewed have viewed, you know, think competitive. I was

 

Brad: more speaking to sort of how you thought about poker when you weren’t playing poker, you know how you thought about cards, how you trained or, you know, just kind of taught yourself to think about the game so that when you did play, you would have an edge.

 

Tom: So as I got as I got older, it’s kind of funny, my sister bought me supersystem Doyle, Bronson’s book, there’s a $50 book at the time, you know, and I was like, it was 1978. And that was a ridiculous amount of money to pay for a book. I was already a winning player, but I wasn’t a confident winning player of knowing kind of what I should do and how I should do it. I mean, I thought what I should do, but it was more or less, you know, you know, kind of, you know, approaching like successive approximations, right? You do this, and that’s wrong, you do this. And that’s wrong. You kind of gradually move towards the center where the best play is right? And so, but I read that book, and then I started thinking, like, well, I want to play better than this book. Even though you know, Doyle at the time was an amazing one of the best players in the world. But I actually was just destroying games. Because I was I was played differently than everybody else. I thought about the game more aggressively. Because people played so tight back in when I first started playing, they literally would fold really big hands. And you could bluff in limit poker. Back then it was amazing. Now there’s so little bluffing, right? You typically showdown a hand and limit poker. But back then, I mean, people would would just make an assumption that if you You raised you, you had the heat, right? So I was so aggressive and I thought about the game in a lot of different ways. One is, is that the people sitting at the table are your customers. And I never talked about poker. And so there were two or three players, you know, there was a guy named Mike Watteau, who’s a famous poker player, he was in the game, but he and I, and, and one or two other guys knew that we were the pros in the game, or the winners in the game. And we never talked about about poker, we never, you know, it was always about making the environment fun. So, one, I thought about making the environment fun for my customers, right. And I think that’s a that’s something that’s a lost art is making people want to I had people say, I enjoy losing to you. And I’m like, thank you. That’s, that’s a huge compliment, right? Because that’s exactly what I want is people to enjoy losing. But I would fix it and think about, you know, a lot of it was at the table. So I learned a lot about tails, watching my own feelings, right about when I put chips in. And how did I? Why did I just retract my hands so quickly? When I, when I did that, that was weird. And, you know, have tried to feel my way around myself and go, How am Why am I? Why am I behaving the way I’m behaving. And I believe that other people are going to behave similarly. So I literally would pay attention to the way I put chips in the way I moved in the way I moved away from the table, and toward the table, and all of those things that are very early, you know, when I was in my 20s, I would think about the game that way, from from a tail perspective,

 

Brad: it seems like a lot of learning through failure, right? Like, when something goes wrong, there’s this self reflective process of like, what went wrong? What can I do better in the future? Applying that to not only you know, your opponents, but also to yourself, that sort of allows you to regularly make upgrades at fair in various, you know, different areas of your game.

 

Tom: Yeah, and, you know, it’s things like playing, you know, in a in a, you know, raise pot back then if somebody raises in early position, and you play an h3, you know, you get your head pounded in enough with a bad kicker. And, you know, you kind of realize that that’s a, you know, and I came up with kind of a different theory about like, ace, bad kicker, isn’t when there’s an ace on the board, and you have a bad kicker, you they’re gonna lose, you know, to someone with a better kicker, or you’re not going to make any money, because an ace scares everybody away, you know, which I think is actually a little bit more important than the losing with a, you know, worst kicker, because you can kind of play accordingly. But you literally aren’t going to make any money if no one else has an ace, you know, unless they flop you know, you don’t get away from it. I, I just learned a lot of that stuff by I would just sit and think about the game, I would just think about it and go, you know, it because I just I had this real yearning to win. And not even so much about the money, but I just love winning, you know, very competitive and I just don’t like losing.

 

Brad: Yeah. And you mentioned, treat the other players like your customers, which sort of blends in, you know, business, which is the other your other path. Tell me, like about your business career. And then how poker you know, just how how poker was woven into your, your business career during your 20s and 30s.

 

Tom: Yeah, so I’m, I ended up becoming a CPA, but I’m not a traditional CPA, where I’m doing taxes and things like that I was a controller for ping golf. $300 million company with, you know, 1500 employees. I was CFO for a public company, and it was a president of a public company. I’m now a CFO for a private equity owned company. And so I have always used numbers as part of, kind of who I am and how I apply mathematics to decisions where a lot of people don’t think about the mathematics of business, and I think the mathematics of business are, are very similar to the mathematics of poker, and a lot of people don’t don’t realize that or apply them.

 

Brad: In what way? In what way? Are they similar?

 

Tom: Well, I mean, you’re literally thinking about pot odds, right? When you’re making a decision, sometimes you’ve invested in some sort of a, of a advertising campaign or a, you know, an asset you’re looking at acquiring some sort of fixed asset, that you want to understand really what that’s going to do for you and the investment that you’re going to make and then in the net present value or the internal rate of return on on that asset and see whether it’s really a valuable purchase, you know, and then you rank you know, you rank the assets are the investments that your attempt to your you’re going to make and then what you watch what I do is I look at things like from a expected value standpoint, which a lot of people don’t use In business, right? So there’s different expected values for a scenario, right? And they should add up to 100%, you can determine whether whether that investment actually has a positive expected value. And a lot of people don’t don’t look at things that way.

 

Brad: Yeah, it makes sense. It’s, like a lot of risk analysis, right?

 

Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I listen, I’ve been turned down for jobs, because I was a poker player. Really? Yeah, I have been turned down for jobs. And you know, people who happen, people who don’t play well. So as a Financial Officer, right, you have control the money that scares people, that everyone has an uncle who, you know, went to the racetrack and lost all of their, you know, lost the house, or, you know, they had to take their family and because the douchebag lost all their money, and they equate those two things to being a really good professional poker player. And those aren’t obviously you and I know, those aren’t the same. But to them, they are because they don’t gamble on anything. Right? And I tried to, you know, I had I had the chief operating officer come to me when I was at ping, he said, I hear you’re a gambler. And I said, No, I said, I play poker. And he goes, Well, isn’t that gambling? I said, Well, the way I look at it is, you know, like, if you own a casino, and you have a house edge over all of the players, you can almost predict your you know, casinos can other than the economy if the economy stays the same, casinos can predict predict their revenue, better than most other companies, right, because they know their house edge on all the games, they know which games people are going to play. And so they can predict their revenue pretty pretty, you know, unless some whale comes in and does some damage. But typically, it’s an easy thing, because you have a consistent edge, right? And so I have an agile where, you know, I explained that I have an edge over players, and he goes on, why do you think that I go, What if you and I played poker? Do you think I would beat you? And he goes, Well, yeah, I go, that’s the whole point. Right? And so and so if you, you know, you have to explain that to people who aren’t who are in business that don’t gamble, kind of what you know what it means. And then I start talking to him about plays that I’ve made and things that I’ve done in poker, where they’re like, how did you do that? And I go, Well, let me tell you how I did it. And here’s why the thought process I went through when I made that decision, and then they go up. Okay, this is different than what I thought it was. So,

 

Brad: yeah, I mean, it, I always find it interesting that like that, that connection isn’t made more quickly, just because everything in life is risk, you know, there’s risk with every single decision, and especially in business as well, like, you do the best you can with the data points and the information you have. And then you place a bet, and then hope that it works out, right, given given the information, they don’t all work out, you know, you make a bad hire, you place a bet that went south, right? So well, then

 

Tom: that’s that’s how I tried to sell it when I remember interviewing is that, you know, poker in business or are so similar, and especially in one one area, it’s, it’s the accumulation of great decisions over and over, you will be successful if you make great decisions over and over. And that doesn’t mean the results will be positive. It just means the decisions are great. And, and people have trouble divorcing those concepts, you know, results in decisions. But you know, you could you could decide to open up a business, and it’s an amazing decision. And then a freeway comes in, and it’s totally out of your control, and then shifts all the customers to somebody else, right. And so at the time, you made a great decision and you had no other information. i It’s funny because I have people come up to me all the time, and they get knocked out of the tournament. And then I say I played so great. You know, I played the greatest poker I’ve ever played. And I go really, you know, let’s say I’m watching him, right? There was one case where I was watching him and I said, did you notice that when you were in the caught off seat that the two other people to your left, were gonna fold their hand? Did you notice that? He goes, Yeah, I had seven years ago. Did you notice that? Right? If you didn’t notice that if you weren’t paying attention to that you aren’t. That’s just one example of how you weren’t playing the best poker you could possibly play. It might have been the best you put you can play. Yeah, those are two different things. Right. Right. And, you know, I’ve when I was at my very best, I had intense concentration. I mean, I noticed things that were unbelievable. And I was you know, I literally would mimic people’s breathing when they were in a big pot, whether I was in it with them or not. I would mimic their breathing so it know what it would feel like to breathe, like their breathing when they had a big hand. Wow. Or when they had when they had a bad hand. Right? And so I would literally sit there and breathe like they breathe. Because it’s different than you and I breathe right you and I breathe differently, no matter what situation but it If you’re in a big situation, and you watch someone’s chest and see how high it goes out, listen to how long their breath is and how much they breathe in and breathe out. You can notice a lot of things that’s a big, that’s just a something that no one can control. Right? Is their breathing, especially in a high, high risk situation. So

 

Brad: what did you learn from that sort of experiment of like just trying to breathe like other people breathe and in those spots,

 

Tom: so I would, I would watch them when they’re in a big hand, right? And it doesn’t mean that I have to be in a big hand. So let’s say that you’re in a big hand in and your breathing is super calm, right? It’s just, you know, that’s it. That’s one way of breathing. Another way of breathing is you know, and it could, it means different things for different people. But if you can sit there and do that, and notice that the guy turned over a huge hand, right, and he was breathing super calmly, or he was breathing. Like that, it’s the everybody does things differently, right. And that’s why you want to corroborate what that’s why it’s so important to not pay attention to the cute waitress it’s walking by, it’s so important when someone’s in a big hand to do nothing but focus on on what they’re going to turn over and how they behave. While they’re in the hand, I had tells for checking would count how long people would take to check when it was their turn, I would count how many times they would tap the table, I would look and see whether their hand was open or closed. You know, all of those things, I literally would just just do nothing. And typically what you want to do is you want to focus on the bad players, right, because of the ones who are gonna get more tells. And I also wanted to focus on the people that we’re in more hands, because I can get more opportunities to pick up tails on people who play a lot, even if they’re good players. You know, I had one, I picked up a tail on Eric Seidel, just by watching how he put his chips on upon. So

 

Brad: it’s, it seems to me that the thing that yeah, this skill that you love cultivating is discovering and prioritizing data points that may not be obvious to other people, right? In the instance of like, the cut off and like, did you notice that the button and the small blind had like pre folded already, right, in that case, the priority,

 

Tom: but they gave prefold? They’ve kept folding, folding? Yeah, right like that

 

Brad: they were consistent with previous folding towels. Exactly. Right. So. So that’s the priority. And the decision making there is that the two players on your left are most likely going to fold and it’s not the absolute strength of your hand is the priority. In that case, the absolute strength of your hand doesn’t really matter. So much given that we know these two guys have or will most likely prefold. And then the other, you know, the other things are, are paying attention to Yeah, just hidden data points that are available, readily available to everybody else at the table. You’re just trying to analyze them and weight them and then prioritize them and use them to make better decisions. In the future.

 

Tom: One of my favorite things to do when I go to a World Series event is you know, if you’re going to play in a band with two or 3000 people, it’s likely that there’s going to be six people, seven people that you’ve never seen before. And so you know, I will make sure that I introduce myself to people and and talk to them. You know, I see a guy with a Nebraska shirt on Are you from Nebraska? Yeah, I am I go. How many events do you plan this year? He goes, Oh, this is the only event I go. Looks like you’re married? What’s your wife? Think about that, right? And he goes, she’s not happy that I’m here. Like, Oh, okay. So guess what, guess what that guy’s motivation is that guy’s motivation is on the first break to be able to call his wife and go honey, I’m still in. Here’s my step doesn’t want to next on the next break. I’m still in it, right? Because she’s not happy that he’s here. And so all he needs, all he wants to do is make it through day one. That’s it. And so now I know, unless he’s got a monster, I can push them around, which is something I’ll do, right. And he’s already given me information that other people and you know, you talk you talk to other people, what do you do for a living? Well, I’m an accountant. Okay, that’s good to know. Typically, accountants don’t play like me, you know, are pretty conservative. And, you know, you get an idea of what they do, whether they’re married, whether their wife likes them be in there, and you’ve already gathered enough information, know who you want to play hands against, right? At least to start. It’s just things like that. And that’s the things that I really when I was playing my best when I really cared. I think I was really good at that.

 

Brad: Going back to, you know, you being in your 20s and playing poker, improving your skill, wanting to play better than supersystem What was that time in your life? What did your poker journey look like back then? You know, as you were like, like what stake were you playing? And then, you know, when you bought into the 5k tournament, you mentioned that you’ve been playing high stakes poker. So like what what constituted high stakes poker in that time, so

 

Tom: I’ll give you, I’ll give you an idea. It’s kind of a funny story of a buddy of mine that he and I played poker together at my house, you know, with three or four friends and 112 dollar, but we always, you know, I always want and he, he called me when I was about 2021 22. Maybe he goes, Did you know that there’s legalized poker in Phoenix? And I said, No, he goes, it’s out at Fort McDowell. And it was like a 3040 minute, 40 minute drive. And he goes, Do you want to go out for somebody to go? Yes, I want to go out there. So he and I went out there, we pulled into the, into the app to the casino. And he looks at me and he goes, our lives have changed. Right? And, and it was a you know, like, for 20 years, he was a good buddy of mine. And it turns out, he it didn’t change his life at all. He played a few tournaments and did pretty well, but didn’t, didn’t seem to care about it as much as I do. But I, I started spending a lot of time out there. And I started it three, six, and four, eight, and, you know, 510 and 1020. And when I got to about 20 to 23, and I was making money and, and I told my wife, I wanted to go to Vegas, and she wasn’t a big, she’s a lady that recently died in a car crash. But I told her that, you know, I wanted to go to Vegas and play up there. And so she wasn’t a big fan. This is a pretty funny story. So I flew up to Vegas to play 1020 Hold’em. They didn’t have anything that big in Phoenix at the time. And she would only let me take $200.10 bets. So so I’m flying to Vegas, I, you know, 20 $21 ticket both ways, you know, $42 I’m literally I get in a limousine that takes people to every hotel, it was $1.75. And, you know, I tip the quarter, you know, $2 Because I had to have my $200 stake for the 1020 game. I literally went up and one five times in a row taking $200 So and she still didn’t like it, you know, it was just not her thing or dad was very conservative. So, you know, I played and then I started playing out at Fort McDowell and playing a little bit higher up there, they started getting higher games. And so then then later, you know, we got divorced around 36. And I was able to start playing higher and felt comfortable playing higher and I ended up playing. I was pretty much irregular at the foreign 800 game up at the Bellagio and we played three and a 600. Here we play pot limit 100 or any Raz and Pot Limit Omaha 100 or Annie and one and 200 here in Phoenix so big game. But there was a guy that we played RAS with you Danny $100 You know he had a king he’d bring it in for 100 You pot it he’d call you know you’d catch it a nine he catch a queen, he moved the two cards over and say I don’t need those you bet the pot he would call like it was it was insane. Right? And every once in a while he would make a wheel on you have to

 

Brad: do but as they do, yes,

 

Tom: they do. And at the same time you go nice and right. That’s that’s the way you do it. But so I started playing pretty high. You know, I’ve worn 800 And, you know, I played as high as two and 4000 like limit up there. Bellagio. And yeah, those are massive games. Yeah, I played 1500 3000 quite a bit. One 1000 2000 quite a bit. You know, that’s when I was playing guys. And they would come in, they want to tournament and they’d come in and they’d lose a lot of money. And I’m like, I’m better. I think I’m better than that guy. Why don’t I play tournaments, right. I never really cared a lot for no limit Hold’em. I was more of a mixed game player. But I had some success, you know, a couple final tables at WP T and you know, had some deep runs in the main event twice.

 

Brad: Could you could you speak to you know, your your first marriage and sort of the you know, the friction as it relates to playing cards and gambling that I’m sure lots of folks who listen right right now in the audience may feel from you know, their significant other just which, to me can take a pretty big toll and just create a, you know, a fairly negative situation. Do you have any wisdom or advice as it relates to that?

 

Tom: So yeah, I do. She was not happy about it. Her father came, you know, had a job, same job for 30. Some years. Came home. They had dinner at 530 every night. No risk. No, no I often just, you know, had two weeks vacation and just nothing, nothing not align, right. And so when you’re, when you want to play poker, it’s it creates a lot of stress for somebody who doesn’t like risk. And she was very risk averse. You know, so she, she, I did it. But what I did is I created rules. And if the rules weren’t in place, because I already know I’m kind of a little bit starting in the hole, right? If I’m gonna go out and play poker, I’m already in the hole. So I had a list of about 10 things. One is, do I have all the things done that she wants me to do? So you know, she wanted me to take the garbage out or paint the house, or whatever it is, you know, there’s some sink that’s not working, or whatever? Do I have that done? Right? Are my kids in bed? Right. And so there were literally about, I would say, eight to 10 things, it was a checklist that I wouldn’t play, unless those things were clear. Because I knew if I went out, and I knew I was gonna get my head handed to me, I will not be successful. So the one thing, the one reason I can keep playing, the one way to keep playing is to keep winning. And so you won’t keep winning, if you don’t do all of the right things to go out and play. And that’s so my mind needs to be extremely clear. I have a very guilty, you know, I was raised Catholic, so I’m very guilty kind of a conscious kind of a person. So I can’t play poker if I had anything wrong. Like that. So winning meant I kept playing. So that was, you know, that was key. Yeah,

 

Brad: that’s So rule number one is winning. And rule number two is making sure you know, the Ducks are in a row, everything is taken care of, before you go out, yeah,

 

Tom: have a checklist, whatever it is that your wife, you know, doesn’t like or doesn’t, or, you know, it made me do a lot of chores that I really didn’t want to do, or maybe do a lot of projects that I you know, I would put off but I did them because I’m going to have a happy wife and she’s going to it’s kind of my reward to go out and play poker. Listen, I just painted the bedroom. And, you know, this weekend or whatever. And so all of that stuff’s really important

 

Brad: to me. Yeah. For sure. You mentioned, you know, that she was risk averse. And you are risk inclined, I assume if you’re applying to K, you’re pretty inclined to risk. Yeah. So after, you know, after the divorce, I guess you’re moving up stakes, like after buying in for $200. The 1020. Coming home, like just over time, you’re just kind of steadily building your business career and moving up in stakes when you play poker at the same time.

 

Tom: Yeah, yeah. I mean, after I got divorced, I, I felt, you know, listen, it’s just, I will have a roof over my kids heads, and I will feed them. But I do think I’m better than most people. And my results, I was very passionate about keeping records. Yeah, because there’s a lot of times when, you know, let’s say you’re let’s say you’re playing poker, and you’re winning. But you’re spending the money on things that you know, put new wood floors in or do something, right, you’re spending the money. And you start thinking like, Am I really winning? Right? Or you’re losing, and you take money out? You know how people say, Oh, I’m about even if anybody says everybody even they aren’t, I promise you, they are not about even. But so I was passionate about keeping records, because I wanted to understand whether I’m actually good at this or not. And also understand at some point, can I quit my job? Can I just quit my job and feel like, yeah, I can, I can support my family. I’m not taking, you know, I was not afraid of risk. But I was also you know, if you have data, and you make a decision, like, you know, it’s no different than if you’ve got a wife that doesn’t like you playing, well show her what you’re doing, right, show her that. This is what I do. This is how much money I’ve made. This is my hourly rate over a long period of time. And so I take this extremely seriously, right? And if she doesn’t think you take it very seriously, and you come home drunk or you, you know, like you’ve literally have leaks, it’s going to be hard to support your decision to do that. And, but if you if you can show that you’re running it like a business and I’m taking it really as seriously as I possibly can. I take this more seriously than my job. So I want to win and I’m going to do everything I can to win. And here’s how I’m doing. I’m making x dollars an hour playing poker. You can start to have them Some women may never get there, right? It’s just It goes against, you know, and it’s it’s similar. Like, it’s one of the things that I’ve always believed in, right? Find your success first, then find a woman. Because it’s really hard. You know, let’s say you want to be a musician. It’s really hard for a woman to stick with you, when you’re playing gigs and bars and doing stuff and you’re not having you know, you’re, you know, it’s really hard. But if you become success, it’s really easy for your woman to go. Yeah, he’s playing his music. He needs time. I gotta leave him alone. Yeah, that’s what I think. And so if you if you want to poker career, it’s a it’s a bad idea to get away first.

 

Brad: Yeah, like, like we we talked about in the pre call, you know, the graph goes up and down. It is not linear, straight up. And so waiting until you know, you have enough data to where it is up enough to where you can sort of quantify that that success, and really doesn’t really apply only to poker, but in any field, I would imagine.

 

Tom: Yeah, it does. It does. You know, it’s funny I have I have friends that are professionals, and one of them was on a losing streak. And I’m like, why are you going to go play? Right? He goes, I gotta get my hours. And I’m like, no, no. And because I don’t believe it’s about getting your hours. And I know that goes contrary to a lot of people. But there’s something else going wrong. When you’re on a on a granted, I’ve been on losing streaks, I’ve run bad. But then I start thinking, Am I really running as bad as I, as I think I am? Am I making things happen that are bad, right? And so like, if I lose, if I lose a couple times in a row, or I have a big loss, I won’t play for three weeks. And I think one of the other rules that I have, I haven’t always done this, but I’ve been pretty successful at doing this is I will never lose more than a game that I think I could win next time I come out and play. And because of next time I come out in play, I don’t want to feel like there’s no way I could possibly win what I lost last time. Mentally I think that really screws with me. I don’t know about other people. But I’m a little bit more mental, when it comes to those psychological issues. And so I guard against that. Yeah,

 

Brad: well, you’re a human being. Last, last I checked, poker is comprised of human beings playing the game. So as it relates to, you know, your friend getting in their hours, right, and this is sort of, I mean, this is something that I’ve experienced, and I feel like I’ve learned from throughout my career, is it like poker is a gig where you don’t get paid to show up. You get paid to play with intensity, you get paid to make good decisions. And as you said earlier, right, like, it’s just making good decision after good decision. Did the side effect is that you win money from those good decisions. And anytime that I’ve ever just been like, Okay, I’m going to like play 50 hours this week. And then I’m just like, showing up to get my hours in my, the level of my play drops off a cliff, like I, it’s somehow in my brain, I think, Oh, if I just fill this seat for 10 hours every day, like the money will just come I’m not focusing on like playing at a high level and making great decisions, which like, that is where the winning comes from. That’s where a successful career comes from is just making high level intense. Good decision after good decision after good decision.

 

Tom: Right. Yeah, I mean, that’s what people think. Just show up. No, no, it’s not. It’s, it’s, it’s it. You can’t do that at work either. Right? You can’t just show up and sit in a chair and hope good things happen. You got to make shit happen at work, you know, you gotta go in and drive results. And it’s no different in poker, you have to drive the results you can’t eat, you know, and that’s where I was really good about, I think I was really good about when I wasn’t ready to play mentally, and I wasn’t ready to play my best. I wouldn’t go. I wouldn’t go like I would lose every time I would go and feel this. You know, like, I don’t know if I want to be here like, but I gotta, you know, I want to win money and

 

Brad: yeah, learning from our mistakes, learning from our failures, you know? Yeah. Yeah,

 

Tom: Absolutely. I have something that I think it’s really interesting that your listeners might might enjoy. I have this and I think everyone has this and you have to tap into it. Right. So I was up in Vegas. And I was with my wife and her mom and we were going to meet for dinner. So I went over to play poker which she was fine with and I was I was what I was up like 30,000 Playing a three and 600 by ps3 and 604 and 800 game mix can do certain stuff. And you know, there were like four players, I was in like the eight see with my feet up on the seven seat, you know, I had my shit all over the table sprawled out everything I just kind of leaning back and just this, all I was doing was this, you know, and in the middle of a deuce to seven hand. Cindy violet comes up, and she’s a nice lady. But, you know, she’s a New Yorker kind of person, just whose stuff is this. And I was in the middle of a hand and everything just felt wrong all the sudden, right? Like, my mojo was, you know, everything was good having a beer, you know, drink sipping on my fear and everything. And all the sudden, I was two hours before dinner, and I had this feeling like, I should just quit, I lost that hand. And I was just rolling over the game. And I’m like, everything now I gotta move my shit. You know, I gotta put my feet I gotta everything’s different. And just, and I know, this is stuff that mathematicians hate, right? No, you don’t do that. But I have this thing where so anyway, I didn’t quit. Given the wine. I said to myself, I should quit. I was up like, 30 ended up losing 20. Right, just lost every pot. And so I started I had this theory, and it was called the leaving feeling right? I don’t know if you’ve ever had this, we’re just something click, some guy sits down and he smells. Some guy’s breath smells like cigarettes. And it just like, all of a sudden, you were feeling good all sudden, boom, like something just doesn’t feel right. Right. So every time I had that feeling, I would write down that I have that feeling. The goal was the goal was to quit every time I had that. But I wanted to also gather data, right? So I was playing 75 150, mostly in Phoenix at the time, and not leaving. So I would write all this down, right? Like, this is where I am when I have that feeling. I lost some 100 grand by not leaving when I had that plan 75 150 100 of that. So it’s a lot of bets. And it was over, you know, six months, right? And I still won, I still won. But there’s just something where you’re, everything’s right. Everything’s right with your head. Everything’s right with the environment. And all of a sudden, it for me, for me. I listened to that, like, it’s religion. Because I just, I just,

 

Brad: what do you make of it? Like, what are what are the sort of cues

 

Tom: if I so it’s, it’s literally anything like that was a perfect example, Cindy coming going in the middle of a hand in draw where you literally need to pay attention to how people are looking at their cards, you know, how many they drew each round, and all of that stuff? How they’re putting their bets in. And you know, she’s approach she knows better to ask when someone’s in a hand who’s sitting whose shit is this.

 

Brad: She’d like coming to the NHL, or just he was getting she wanted

 

Tom: to sit down. She was trying to figure out where she was gonna sit. I’m gonna hand my stuff sitting in the seat right next to me. Who is this? Like? Hey, do you mind if we finish saying that? Right? Yeah. And I just, it just felt like, I don’t want to be here all of a sudden, and I have this weird feeling where I can instantly go all of a sudden, I don’t like what just happened? I’m not it’s not good. Right? And so it’s just, I don’t know, I think if you start paying attention to that, because I know that you’re not supposed to do stuff like that you get your hours in blah, blah, blah. You know, but but I’m very sensitive to to, to the environment changing the game changing me not, let’s say and it’s not about an unlucky dealer. It’s about a dealer that’s been, you know, weird or dick about something or there’s an argument at the table. And I’m like I just

 

Brad: said, right. Yeah, it sounds like it’s feel sounds like it’s more of something affecting you, that sort of turns your on switch to OFF and recognizing that you’re not on anymore. It does. Yeah, that’s interesting.

 

Tom: Yeah. And I, you know, I documented it because I’m like, Elon, I don’t want to be you know, like, this fufu crap, right? You know, and not have a but but for me, for me every time I stayed when I had that feeling, but I was kind of like pissed, like, going, okay, that son of a bitch beat me on my part. I’m gonna beat him, you know, he’s not good or whatever. You know. It didn’t work out well for me saying yeah, and and so Sometimes I was losing, and I just felt like this is gonna be bad or, and I know that that’s, you know, I think there’s more to our brains, then we give it credit. And so I can’t explain it. But I can understand that it’s there.

 

Brad: Could you dive a little deeper into that more in our brains than we give credit? So

 

Tom: I was, yeah, I was raised. I had three sisters. So I feel like I’m more empathetic than most dudes that had three brothers, right, they got sick beat out of them, and blah, blah, blah, right. And I feel that that’s helped my poker career. Because I can literally, I feel like, feel what other people are feeling a little bit better than other people can. And so therefore, I can put myself in their position a little bit better than other people can. And I think that’s helpful when playing poker and understanding kind of how they’re feeling. Right? Yeah. And, and I can’t explain it. But I do think that there are some people that are more in tune with others, you know, you’ve you’ve been around people who have oblivious to someone who’s like, you know, lost their dog or something. And they’re just oblivious. They don’t even know that this guy, there’s something different about him, right? He’s hurting or, or, or, you know, whatever it is, right. There’s some people that can pick up on that. And I think that’s been a real, a part of my successes is kind of being able to feel other people and how they’re how they’re feeling.

 

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

 

So there’s this phenomenon that I just discussed a few podcasts back about, when a tight player sort of just goes off like a rocket, just like crazily where it’s like, just totally unexpected with like a hand that just is just weird. It’s just like bizarre, like, if you chose to go off with that hand, like what was preventing you from going off with the last 100 hands that you played. But if for some reason, like you, like I can feel it about to happen, like, I just know that, for whatever reason, this player is about to go off. And I think that like a lot of the edge, a lot of edge in poker comes from knowing your opponent’s better than they know themselves knowing knowing their strategy better than, you know, they themselves know their strategy, so that then you can see the vulnerabilities. And in the sense of like, emotions, understanding people’s emotions better than they understand their own emotions, you

 

Tom: can see it, you can see it, you can feel it, there’s an interesting experiment about rats, they had two rooms of rats, one room with rats had soothing music on and like playgrounds for the rats to go up and down and plenty of food. And then there was another room that had like art rock or acid rock and, and they had electrical impulses that they were giving to the rats, you know, randomly. And so you could take all rat from this great environment and put it into this other environment. And without shocking it or doing anything, the rats heart rate would match the heart rate of the rest of the rats in the room. And vice versa, right, you take the rat of the of the one room where it’s we’re being stimulated them scared to death, and all of a sudden you take them to the room where these rats have a very calm heartbeat, then they start to mirror that. And so therefore you can kind of sense like what you’re saying you can sense someone else’s heart rate in their, in their, their, you know, their agitation and their this, you can walk into a room. And you can go whoa, what’s going on in here, right? You know that someone just had a fight or there’s some really heavy emotions and feelings, right? And it’s so like, some people can pick that up in humans better than others, because they’re just more observant. And not necessarily staring at people but being able to feel that I 100% believe that.

 

Brad: Yeah, I believe it too. And I think there’s just a lot of like biological reasons as to why that’s beneficial to us as as human beings, you know, and then at the poker table is sort of like, this interesting stage of pressure and emotions and just human psychology, behavior and math. Like, all these things are kind of thrown together. I think the pressure aspect of it is one of the more important ingredients as it relates to understanding and predicting behavior.

 

Tom: Absolutely. I love watching people under pressure, enhance, I’ve made a lot of money from, from watching people under pressure and what they do and how they do it. I mean, it’s, it’s a lot of fun, because it’s become so predictive, with some people, not everybody, but there’s some people that you just, you can watch them and go wow, they’re literally telling me what they have based upon the way they’re behaving. And it’s, it’s, it’s fun. When one of my favorites was was playing this one hand was out in Atlantic City, playing Pot Limit Omaha, it was probably like a 2550 pot limit Omaha game. And it was I want to say 8000 in the pot. And this guy, this guy I had maybe, let’s say 1000 left, and he bet 660 500 Right. I did not have much of a hand at all. I like literally can only beat a bluff. And, and I wasn’t sure it could be the bluff. So I just sat and thought and go wow, like what play do I have here? Right? I only have like 1500 more. So I’m gonna raise 1500 And he’s gonna have to fold right into a pot. That’s, you know, call it 15,000 Like, that doesn’t make any sense. You know, but I was sitting watching you watching and watching him and he literally pushed away from the table like he was getting so uncomfortable and he got as far away from the table as he possibly could. And I’m like, Wow, he looks really uncomfortable. So I raised him my I’ve called his 6500 bet and raised him 1500. And he instantly folded. You know, like, it’s a play that most people wouldn’t even think is a possibility, right? But if the guy has absolutely nothing he missed, like wraps and all this stuff, like small wraps and in, you know, just just being able to pay attention to noticing, like it made me a lot of money that just one play. One of my favorites I was playing at the World Series, main event of a guy that I know, was at the table, and he’s a pro. But I didn’t play much with him. He was mostly a limit guy. But he raised preflop and early position, and I had two queens and I reraised him. And it came around to him and he reraised right. And he was, you know, not a tricky player. But he wasn’t straightforward all the time. But all of a sudden, his nostrils were like, I felt like they were gonna hit me, right. And so I literally, there was a biggest natural flare ever. That’s what it felt like to me, right? And so I’m like, Well, I think he’s got two aces or two kings. I just knew it right, based on his nostril flare. And so what I wanted to do was, I wanted to get the information. And you know, if I just folded and said, Hey, nice hand, I’m not going to get the information. He’s not going to turn over his hand. So I’m like, Well, what’s a creative way that I can get him to feel like he was unlucky? And he’ll show me his hand. You’re thinking about this, like on the fly? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’m thinking about I want to see his hand. But I know if I just fold he won’t show it to me. So I’m like, wow, you know, I was gonna call you, but I gotta pee. So Pat had turned over to Queens, right? I turned over to Queens. And he’s like, I’m so unlucky. I’m so unlucky. It’s over two aces, right. So now I know that this big nostril flare anytime he has it. Now, I don’t mind playing like a hand like four or five suited or something like that against him. Because I’m not, you’re not going to lose much, right? But I could, I could bust him. But I also know where he is when he’s got this big nostril flare. And it happened again, later on in the tournament. And I was able to play accordingly. I can’t remember exactly what happened. But but you know, like, literally, so. So people need to think about like, how do I get this tell? Right. And, you know, if you’re playing with a good player, he’s not going to show you his hand, he wouldn’t have shown me his hand if I just threw it away. But anyway, that’s that’s the level where you, you get to the point where you’re even trying to figure out how to see somebody’s hand. Right, where instead of just folding and going, I I wanted to get the information right then. So I could use it for the rest of the tournament. Right? Yeah.

 

Brad: You had a theory, and you needed evidence to support the theory. Yeah. And that was kind of like figuring out some way to get him to show you and confirm. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned that you’re not at the top of your game these days. How much poker Are you playing? You know, what’s the, what’s the life of the donkey? Ballmer these days look like,

 

Tom: Ah, so I have a job as a CFO for a company that makes offroad aftermarket parts. So for vehicles, like jeeps, and trucks, or, you know, lift kits and suspensions, and things like that, you know, I have a small piece of equity and, and, you know, I just, I kind of go back and forth between poker and business, but if I feel like I’m not playing my best, and the truth of the matter is, it’s, it’s, I lost my love of the game. You know, where that’s the kind of stuff I wanted to, I wanted to sit and think about, right. That’s what I wanted to think about. That’s what I wanted to do. And I loved being able to figure that stuff out. And I got to the point where it wasn’t a passion of mine to get that deep into the game, right? And so why do you think that happened? I’ve, well, I’m married, I’m married my third wife, she wasn’t that much into poker, and I kinda was, you know, it’s really hard to be married to somebody that’s not really into what you do. Right. You know, and, also, you know, there’s the parts of the casino that, you know, people who don’t go to the casino have visions of the poker room as hot chicks walking around, in slinky outfits in the poker room, and I’m like, it is the exact opposite of that, you know, it’s a bunch of crusty old people that are pissed off and dance and you know, yeah, and I told her I like you know, if a hot woman was if a naked woman walks by in a poker room, everybody’s gonna go look at that. She’s fucking hot right? Deal the cards right? That’s this next line, right? Deal. The cards. What are you waiting for, man? I’m stuck. Right? But they don’t get that. You know, my first my first wife’s father. Thought I was cheating on her Because no one plays poker till six in the morning, right? What’s he doing? He’s not playing poker till six in the morning. Yeah, I’m like, I would literally play 24 hours if I could. Right, which everyone plays poker. Do you know like, when you’re first learning the game and you the game is good, you know, you played Oh, six in the morning. That’s, that’s, that’s a nothing right? Yeah, that’s the all the time that’s life. Right. That’s, that’s when the game starts. That’s when the guys get off to work. And they, you know, they play till they get off at eight and come into play. Right. So, but you know, people just don’t understand it. And she didn’t. My third wife, I think didn’t understand it or appreciate it as much. Well, a World Series was a little bit different for her but your second second wife was a professional poker player, right? Or poker poker player. She, she. She was a poker dealer. When I met her and she had some really good runs. She had two or three final tables at the World Series. She’s a good, like, limit. You know, Omaha and do seven triple draw. And, you know, she was really good at those games.

 

Brad: Yeah. So you went no poker, poker? No poker? Yeah,

 

Tom: I went no poker to, you know, I could call her and Sam’s stuck. 30,000 She’s, you’ll get it back. Yeah. Do you want to play longer? You’ll get it back. You know, it’s kind of a very, you know, like, not a panic. Like, I didn’t, you know, there was no panic there. Right? It was literally, you know, you know, stay as long as you need, you know, and I could play those six in the morning. And she didn’t think a thing about it. She didn’t think I was doing anything, which I wasn’t, you know, but it was very, it was easy to play poker around her. And you know, that’s not to say the other women are wrong. It’s just, you know, it’s it’s just what you’re used to, you know, she’d been dealing poker her whole life.

 

Brad: Yeah. Different different life experiences. Right. And yeah, take things different ways. And I mean, that’s, that’s just how it is. But yeah, so third wife didn’t really like poker so much. And you started? Not? Yeah, just kind of fell out of love with with poker as well.

 

Tom: Yeah, yeah, I did. And I think partially because, you know, I’m not feeling good about going to the casino. Right. Once again, you know, and so, um, and, yeah, so I have three ex wives. And

 

Brad: what have we learned is a fourth poker again, is

 

Tom: that the secret? I haven’t learned anything. The funny thing is, is I’m good friends with with all of them. Unfortunately, my first wife just died. But I was good friends with her. Like, you know, I, I don’t have I don’t like hard feelings. Right? You know, everybody’s like, you say it’s life. And we all have our own experiences. And, but they’re all good ladies. And you know, I was I am. I’m friends with them. And it makes life better that way to be friends with, you know, people that you’ve had relationships with. There’s obviously something there. And nobody was like doing terrible things or, you know, just, just just a way to just right. Yeah, but no, I don’t know if there’s I don’t know if there’s another? I don’t know. Well, I won’t say no. Because I’ve said no to I’ve said never again twice. Yeah, I haven’t been able to stick with

 

Brad: it. Have you gotten back into poker since the third ex wife.

 

Tom: So not much I haven’t played in six months. And partially because my job is extremely stressful. I mean, like, just constantly solving problems and, and working on on difficult issues and, and, you know, going 100 miles an hour at work. So it’s, you know, it’s just not the right mindset to play poker. And I think, you know, in a fairly short period of time, I did play on the one of the World Series this year, but I’m not vaccinated. So I just didn’t go. But I hope that all of that kind of gets back to normal and I can play the World Series. That’s really my, my, you know, if I had to give up cash, or the World Series, I would give up cash just because I love the that it’s such an electric electrifying environment, then it’s it’s so much fun to be there and see all my friends and, you know, I love that part of

 

Brad: it. Yeah, that’s, I mean, that’s, that’s quite the, the journey from like, only playing cash, no tournaments to being like, yeah, if I never play Cash again, I would do okay, as long as I can play these tournaments at the WSOP.

 

Tom: Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s, it’s, it’s weird. But you know, I know people who go through the same, same kind of thing and get out here. I stopped going to the casino two years ago, because of COVID. And, you know, having to wear a mask which I know I would want to kill myself if I sat at a table Warren had to wear a mask, and people were wearing a mask, which is, you know, taking away some of my edge, I think. And so I just don’t like that environment. So I also know that if I went and played, I would literally lose money. So I’m like, I can’t, I can’t go. It’s just, it would drive me insane.

 

Brad: Um, any advice for somebody that has been in poker and wants to transition out of poker, like transferable skills, you know, from poker, to another industry? Or another trade?

 

Tom: Yeah. So I think, as I said before, if you understand things like expected value, right, and it’s a simple concept, but you can take the probabilities of different events occurring, right, and multiply them by the expected financial outcome, and usually come up with better decisions. And most people in business, right. I also think that, you know, most poker players are mathematically inclined. And I think that the mathematics of poker lends itself really well to the mathematics of business. And, you know, you can, you can think of things differently than people in business, and people will go, Wow, I’ve never thought of it that way. Right. And you can, you can literally stand out, by the way that you talk about decisions and numbers and things like that. And I think though, it’s really important, you know, if you’re, if you’re especially looking for a financial job, it’s a bad idea to lead with poker, right? With, if you’re looking for a job, anywhere, it’s a bad idea to lead with poker. Just your, you know, once they once you get the job, it’s okay to let people know, but it’s a bad idea to lead with poker. So like, even on my resume, I would put, because I felt like it was important to be honest. But I would just put player the year of World Series, you know, 2007, so that they’d go, okay, he’s an accomplished poker player, not a degenerate, right? And some people understand the difference there, but not everybody. And so, um, but literally, you know, like, I have had people in, in business CEOs asked me, Hey, I’m going into a, into a negotiation, can you give me some pointers on tells things that I should look for. And I literally write a page of tails for them. So that they could, they could watch how people are reacting to various things. And they’ll know whether they’re going down the right path or not on these negotiations. And, but all of that stuff is really important. Being aware of, of how people are our accent, accepting your message, right, is really important in business. And I think, you know, creating, you know, culture is really important. And I think that’s when you take culture, from the poker table, which I think the culture of most poker tables has gotten a lot worse, really than it used to be. Yeah. What do you mean by that? For instance? Well, for instance, the idea of sitting at a table 2030 years ago, with nobody having iPods and, and things in their ears, the conversation is what keeps the business guys coming. They want to hang out with the fellas, right? They want to feel like a gambled, you know, and I hung out with the fellas, and we were talking about chips and basketball and whatever. You create an environment with your words, it poker, if everybody’s sitting there playing Words with Friends and staring at their phone or watching a movie, and hey, it’s your turn, and you don’t have camaraderie with the bad players that come out of the bad players get tired and leave, they come for an experience, right? And that’s the thing that people have lost is the bad players want the experience, and they’re not even getting bad anymore. And then they’re getting made fun of for playing. You know, I’ll never forget when people started telling these bad players. Hey, listen, you were only getting three to one odds and you return to one underdog. And they like I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Right? So now all of a sudden, these bad players know they’re getting they’re getting picked on. They’re out skilled, which is not what you want them to think. You want them to think they’re gambling with the fellas and Damn, that guy’s lucky. That’s what you want them to think. And as soon as you start talking about poker, and then they then they understand you have a skill they don’t have. You’ve literally trained your customer either to to quit because they’re out skilled or to figure out how to learn the game better because business people don’t like getting beat. And so that’s the environment that I’m talking about that’s changed that I really it’s in some ways ruin the game. Like I want to go off to I want to, you know if I don’t play very much anymore. I don’t want a bunch of people with headphones and I want to talk to people right? In Hangout, right?

 

Brad: I want that. I’m a big fan of the conversation, like as a professional and having, you know, an hourly rate and the game that I play in, right? Like, I enjoy speaking with businessmen that can give me life advice and wisdom and just having conversations getting to know people. I mean, I just can’t even describe the good things that have come from building those relationships and just being like, a fun person to play poker with, right? Like, that’s, that’s ultimately what what you want to be, in my opinion.

 

Tom: And by the way, if you’re the Pro, that’s the fun guy to have. You’re the pro that’s gonna get invited. Sure, right. Of course, you’re gonna you’re gonna be the one that’s gonna get invited to work mostly business, guys. But hey, I know you’re not going to be a dick to these people. We’re going to have fun. I’m going to tell jokes at the table, I’m going to they’re going to have a good time playing with me. That’s what I want. I mean, you’re the dick that sits there and stares at your phone. You don’t get invited, even to games where there’s a lot of professionals, you’re no fun.

 

Brad: Yeah, I mean, like, I’m the, I guess, when anybody asked me at the poker table, I guess, you know, I’m 38 now and people are aware that poker, professional poker players are a thing. I’ve never lied about what I do, or whatever, why in there. But always try to be fun and courteous. And just like a good loser. I think that’s something that’s like, other people take a lot of delight in when you lose, and you’re a good loser as well. One of my favorite personal stories is I made friends with a guy in at Commerce in Los Angeles, who is a billionaire. And just by playing poker and laughing and having conversation with him. You know, like, a week later, I was like flying to Vegas on his private jet with him, right? Like, he invited me a poker player, like into his world, when he had played poker forever and hadn’t invited any poker players into his world. And that’s just like, you know, it’s a one off weird thing that happened. But the reality is that, like, people want to have fun, they want to make friends. They want to hang out with the boys and have a good experience. And like you said, that’s what brings them back to playing poker tomorrow and next week, and pros should really bear that in mind.

 

Tom: Yeah, oh, it’s huge. It’s huge. I’m like, there’s so many people I don’t want to play poker with to, you know, so many people don’t want to play with and sometimes it’s because they’re good. But most of the time, I don’t mind playing with a good player. But if they’re a dick, oh, man, I just, I literally don’t want it, it throws my five off. Because I like I don’t want to see the dealer get their cards thrown at like, it just, it’s just doesn’t work for me. So, you know, I have a lot of things like that, that I’m probably weak at, because I should just sit there and you know, but I just, you know, I don’t like being around it. And and you’re right. Like I was playing with Rene Angela Leal, Selena’s husband, right? And so I played a decent amount of poker with him. And, you know, if I played in a tournament, he would literally ask everybody at the table, if they were nice, you go, Hey, let’s go to dinner on break. I’m buying a new bike, like a, you know, a $600 meal for everybody. And then I called him up and I said, Hey, I got a friend coming in town. She’s had cancer, you’ve had cancer, you’re an inspiration to you know, and I go off, hey, whatever I want. I want good seats for him. He goes, Okay, I’ll take care of it. And so anyway, he goes, they tell him to go to the box office. And this lady is like a Celine, like, a super fan. Super fan, right? So hit my buddy picks up the tickets, and they keep walking and keep walking. They’re walking down and like they ended up with his seats. You know, Renee seats, she wants to show cried the whole way through. And I called and said, and I want to thank you. And he goes, No, thank you for allowing me to do them. Like what a classy dude. Right? But if I was a douchebag, he wouldn’t do that. You know, he’s a billionaire. They’re billionaires, too. You know, like it’s, but you have an opportunity to hang out with some really impressive people. And by the way, when you start running bad at poker, but you’ve handled yourself really classy, and he’s he’s got something that you know, when you she sees it, you’re smart, maybe that you do make a transition into business, right? If you’re running bad, but if you’re if your deck at the table, which, you know, listen, they’re your customers, man. That’s the thing that I don’t. And some of them are your competitors. The good ones are your competitors, but there’s your customers and you you got to treat them so they come back right that’s that’s the whole idea.

 

Brad: Yeah. And even as it relates to your competitors, I think that like there’s a lot to be gained by fostering friendships with like minded people who are also competitors, like iron sharpens iron. And most of the the biggest upgrades that I’ve made over the course of my poker career have been through having high level discussions with my fellow poker professionals. Yeah, because they have a lifetime of experience. And a way they look at things and they can give you insight in ways that you maybe you didn’t never consider. And you can do the same for them. And when both of you make that connection, you’re just both better for it. So like, yeah, there’s no reason to be discourteous or a shithead, to really anybody that you play poker against. Unless they start making fun of somebody or start, like throwing cards to the dealer or something. And that is in that case that kind of like get that gets me going.

 

Tom: Yeah, yeah, I can’t, I can’t take a lot of this stuff I’m talking about actually actually was, I don’t know if you notice I wrote a book. It’s the same kind of stuff. It’s not really it’s like, it’s like life advice is seen through a poker player in business person’s eyes. Yeah. And oops,

 

Brad: I want too much money. I got it here in my research paper.

 

Tom: Oh, there you go. Beautiful. Beautiful.

 

Brad: There you go. Yeah,

 

Tom: that’s a funny story. The title there is about, I was playing 75 150 and cross booking with a guy who presumably been running fairly hot. But I think he’d start, you know, he wanted to cross book with me. People always like to cross book with me. It’s kind of funny.

 

Brad: Could you cross cross booking, if there’s a listener doesn’t understand? Yeah,

 

Tom: yeah. So I’m, like, let’s say you’re playing 75 150. And you’re cross booking. If you if I’m cross booking with you, and you win 1000, I’m going to pay you 1000. And if I lose 1000, I’m going to pay you that also 1000 712 1000. It’s the difference between our results, basically. And sometimes you’ll cross book at 50% or 100%, or 150%. If you’re playing at a low game, you want to play higher. And so I crossbuck with him, and I won and he lost I want like 13, five off of them. And I called him the next day. And this is what I’m talking about feeling right. I called him the next day. He said, I’ll I’ll reach out to you the next day. That’s like noon, and he didn’t reach out to me, and I knew he left. So he wasn’t at the casino. And so it wasn’t like he was up late. And so I reached out to him at noon, or reached out to him at two. And I just wanted and he didn’t respond to my email, my call or my voicemail. So the next day, I’m at the casino, and I said, Hey, this guy owes me $13,000. Does anybody want to buy it? Like he’s good for the money? What are you talking about? Like, I just want to sell it and I sold it for 50%. And it took him two and a half years to get like $9,000. But it’s going with your gut, right? I’m really big on the going with your gut. There’s this. Another interesting story. There was this book written by Malcolm Gladwell, I think called I think it was like, you know, and there’s this there’s this concept called intuitive repulsion. And they had this, these aren’t these these people, historians, right, that could look at art, and determine how are relics and determine whether they were fake or not and how old they were right? So they had these people 10 People come and look at this one thing that this guy said was 10,000 years old, and he brought it to the museum and these 10 people they said we want you to to give us your opinion, after looking at it for a second. Nine out of 10 people said it’s not real. They then gave them as much time as they wanted to research this. And then it turned out that eight out of 10 of them eight out at a time, reversed their opinion and said, No, it’s real, right. And after, after they did the real studies, and they took whatever samples and did things they found out it was fake. But the idea that they nine out of 10 of these people had this immediate intuitive repulsion where they just said just feels wrong, right. So I started using that concept. And I’d had a couple of times at poker where I felt sick when a card hit. Or I felt sick. Like literally, like almost like a sick in my stomach when something happened at the table. A card hit or a guy threw a bet out when he wasn’t I wasn’t expecting him to bet most of the time. It was a card hit. And I had decent hands. And I still ended up calling them after I had this immediate intuitive repulsion right. And so I end up losing and I go I’m every time I have that I’m not going to do them. Playing at the World Series, Greg Raymer is at my table. The flop is like Ace Queen seven, he raised preflop and I called I just called with two queens for some reason. The flop came ace queen seven and he bet out I think I raised and he raised me and I like wow. I just had to get sick and I throw away you know? A flop To set in a truthful way, he’s like, How the fuck can you do that? Like, I just, I felt, you know, I didn’t say this, but I’m like, I felt sick to my stomach. And he turned over a set of aces. And I’ve done that several times where I’ve had this, it’s it’s a, you know, it’s a feeling that I can’t describe or understand why it happens. But it’s that same same kind of immediate intuitive repulsion. You know, listen, I listen to that stuff. I’ve had enough experiences where I didn’t listen to it. And it costs me money. And so I just, I people would get so mad at me for you can’t fold that hand. Like, usually when ham beats you? How could you possibly do that? I’m like, I don’t care anymore. I’m going to listen to that, to that, that when I get sick, physically sick, I’m going to listen to that. So yeah,

 

Brad: to me. To me, it’s like, there’s this there’s an intuitive intelligence or an intelligence, it’s subconscious that’s beneath conscious thought. And it’s kind of bubbling beneath the surface. And sometimes it just bubbles up and you feel it, and you cannot describe it or explain it, but you feel it nonetheless. I mentioned this in another podcast recently, too, that took me down this weird rabbit hole of chicken sexers. And in Japan, there’s an occupation that is a chicken sexer. And the way that they train folks to tell the sex of a baby chick, right? Because they look very similar, right? But there isn’t this need to separate the males from the females. Yeah, the training is done through intuition only, where the person who’s doing it just says, you know, these are males, these are females, right? They can’t describe why or how they know. And they train people by just going through it over and over and over again. And the people eventually get this intuitive sense. And they can tell between a male and a female without being actually able to describe how they know why they know, they just know, which is quite, both reassuring and quite bizarre at the same time. But it’s just cool information as it relates to like the power of our subconscious and the power of our intuition.

 

Tom: We will find out one day, one day, one day when we’re dead, or one day when they finally figure this out. You know, dogs do this all the time. You know, they can they literally know, you know, whether a person is a bad person or a good person they think. Yeah, and, and I believe we do, too. We just don’t know how and one day well, one day, we’ll know how. And we’ll be able to tap into that, I believe, but right now, that’s why I believe that’s why I do what I do. Sometimes I make plays that people I fold it to Kings preflop, when people told me I was an absolute, I had swim with David Baker, he raised is in an event and he raised preflop. And it was like we’re playing pot limit and he just admin race, right. And I literally fell sick to my stomach felt sick to my stomach. And he had two aces. And I had two kings, and I, I literally, you know, it was at a time when I’m, I my you know, I hung out with all these guys that do just it’s everything’s about math, and you know, and I call it because they don’t want to get yelled at by my friend. Like I raised and raised because I knew I should and, and I called knowing I was beat but I like I don’t want to get yelled at by my friends. When I told them I fell into gangs. preflop. So anyway,

 

Brad: the interesting thing is that if your opponent only has aces, the math still checks out a folding kings, right, that the math still checks out, if you know that that’s what they have. The difficult part is in knowing with certainty or trusting, you know, that gut instinct that that is all that they have are exactly what they have. Right. And I think that like there is an important sort of, there’s an important caveat for the listener here. And that’s that you need to be operating at an exceptionally high level to to trust that intuition. Because it’s based on a lot of things. It’s based on a lot of knowledge, a lot of data points that you’ve considered a lot of the hours you’ve spent playing with a specific human being and even picking up on like nonverbal cues, all these things sort of lead you down this road of like, okay, this is what they have, even if you can’t describe it, so yeah, just want to

 

Tom: be careful. That’s a good point. Yeah. I don’t do that. You know, that stuff, does it? It doesn’t happen all the time. But when it happens, I like literally no, I know. And I don’t know how I know. But another thing that was interesting, so when I in 2013 I won two bracelets. And when there were, like 15 or 18 people left. I told my wife Julie at the time. I’m not the kind of guy that goes, I’m gonna win this and I’m gonna, you know, like, I don’t like try to pump myself up. I want to and I said, winning like, this is weird, but I know that I’ve already won this tournament, like, literally knew that I won the tournament. And I did that both times. And I didn’t do it on any other tournaments. I cashed in seven events that year. The other events I didn’t say I’m gonna win. But the two events I won, there were like, 1518 people left and they go, this is really bizarre. I’ve already won this tournament. Like, all I have to do is go through the process. And she’s like, Why do you say that? I go, I just know. I just know I’m winning the tournament. Like it wasn’t a, like a bragging thing. It was like, just a it’s weird. I know. I’m winning. Yeah. So

 

Brad: you saw through saw through the simulation?

 

Tom: Yeah, yeah, it was just bizarre. Like, I don’t I don’t know how that happened. But, you know, I didn’t say it when I was, you know, deep in other events. I didn’t say that. I just knew it’s just weird. But I there’s a lot to this. And it’s there’s so much to, to this, what we what we don’t know so much. It’s fun to explore it.

 

Brad: It is for sure. And friend of mine, Olympic gold medalist. Adam Creek likes to say that the body has intelligence that the brain doesn’t know. And speaks to that a lot. You know, when you think about somebody and then your phone rings, or you’re in a coffee shop, and you know, somebody’s staring at you and you look up and somebody’s like, staring at you these these types of like, very subtle things that you we do regularly. And don’t really give much thought to but like something’s happening there. You know? Right, right. I agree. And yeah, so we’re at the hour 30. Mark. Let’s just do a couple of lightning round questions, man. And then we’ll wrap up, you can go about the rest of your Saturday. Let’s do it. If you could gift all poker players one book to read, what would it be? And why? Doesn’t have to be about poker, by the way? Yeah.

 

Tom: No, I enjoyed reading. I enjoyed reading the stories. Right. So there was a book that I think Amarillo Slim wrote. And it wasn’t so much about but it was about the the stories that were it opened my eyes to how people could have an edge on you, and you don’t know it. For instance, Amarillo, slim wrote about how there was this guy that beat him at ping pong, you know, they would you would lose, you know, 21 to 12 or 13 all the time. And so the guy so Amarillo Slim, decides that he wants to beat the guy and he says, I’ll tell you what, I’ll bet you $5,000 Come over next week. I’ll I’ll I’ll, I’ll have two paddles, you can pick which paddle you want first, and we’re gonna play for 5000 guys because you got it right. So Emeril, Islam has been already practicing for a month with frying pans, playing ping pong. And, you know, the idea that the idea that there’s some great stories about Titanic Thompson in the in that book and it just the idea that people are a step ahead of you, I think is really important when you think they’re a step behind, right? Especially if they’re in the gambling world. And they’re there. They’re kinda they’re gonna kind of guy that tends to win at most things. That’s the guy that you got to watch out for. Right. And so it just I enjoy the stories because it talked about a lot of different stories. And I just I I read

 

Brad: that book, and I love it as well. It’s Amarillo Slim, in a world full of fat people.

 

Tom: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I haven’t read it. And but I remember some stories, and they’re great stories to tell. You know, I tell business people those stories, and they just really get a kick out of out of it. And I was at the time. And you know, I’d watch Amarillo Slim on Johnny Carson. And that’s really one of the reasons I’m like, Okay, it’s like cagey, like, he seems dumb, but he’s cagey. You know, and always, always liked his persona.

 

Brad: Yeah. Most of the time, when you don’t have an edge. You think you do have an edge, especially if you’re like skilled in something and you’re like, when you’re like convinced that you have an edge against somebody and yeah, that’s when the bottom is about to fall out. Or if they’re, you know, a clever individual. Yeah. If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about poker, what would you change? I probably do too. That’s just greedy Tom,

 

Tom: I know I’m grading but there’s, there’s there’s a lot of things that would change. I would I would make it easier to kick people out of out of games, you know, people that are or are being dicks and, you know, granted, I know they’re good for the game, but it just it ruins the environment I think for for business, you know, business people that just want to go out most business people don’t want to go out and see like, people being dicks and treating them bad. And you know, I wouldn’t do that. I would also change. Like I stopped playing No Limit Hold’em tournaments because of the speed of play. A mix game player typically, but the speed of play is just, it’s brutal.

 

Brad: Yeah, don’t play tournaments, and especially not live tournaments. Like there’s just no chance like waiting to play 30 minutes a hand or just like just it’s just it’s it’s almost obscene like it just it hurts me because like, in cash in cash, you’re incentivized to play fast. In tournaments, you’re incentivized to play slow. And somehow the tournament operators have got to figure out how to disincentivize stalling because it is horrendous. Like, there’s no way that you should benefit from taking three minutes a hand, like how is that a thing? We got to figure this out?

 

Tom: Yeah, it’s It’s brutal. I stopped playing. No Limit tournaments, because of it. I played in this event. It was a free zone. And I won my first table and I got to the second table, I get there, like two minutes late. There’s 10 people at the table, there’s no room. And so I say, Hey, everybody, Can you scoot over and they scoot over, and they really let go like that, you know, like, like, it’s so now I’m sitting like this. And dark Sands is my table. And this is when I don’t know how he plays now. But he literally would sit and think for like 15 seconds, when it was his turn, before he looked at his cards, he would sit like this, and wait and count to like 10 or 15. And then he would go look at his cards, and his hands would go like this. And he would he would move like this slowly. And then when he looked at his cards, it was like this, you hold him up for like five seconds, put him down. And then he took his hand like this. And then he set for like a minute. I timed and it was three minutes. And you know, he loves times he would make his hand right. And so I literally after that I said I can’t do it anymore. And what I blew it because I came up with this thing after I got knocked out because I couldn’t take it right. So I came up with this thing. If somebody’s going to do that, I’m going to I’m going to tell them, Listen, I’m going to ask everybody, you think you’re the best player here, right? You know, I’m going to ask everybody, I timed you, you took three minutes. So I’m gonna ask everybody to take three minutes, and we’ll see a flop and a half an hour. So either you speed up play, or we’re all just going to like you’ll have no chance of winning this tournament, you’re going to take all of the skill out of it, because now we’re going to be at higher blinds and it’s going to be all luck. Is that what you want? Like it really like, you know, imagine a guy makes a table, right? And he’s from someplace and all he wants to do is play poker, because he doesn’t get to play in a lot of events. And he’s literally sucking the life out of the out of the game like it pissed me off. So it it’s

 

Brad: it’s terrible. I mean, it just is really really really bad. I don’t even know that shot clocks are like the right solution, because then guys are just taking like 60 seconds for for everything. I mean, but it’s just something it’s got to

 

Tom: ruin the game for me. It ruined the game for me. It really did. Like Listen, I don’t mind if somebody takes five minutes to make a decision or even 10 minutes if it’s like their tournament life and they’ve been folding quickly and acting quickly and all of a sudden they gotta no that’s everyone should respect that. Right? But it’s it’s the it’s the guy that does it. When he goes do seven. And he sits there and looks at it. I literally just said I’m not I’m not playing No Limit Hold’em anymore. That’s why like, uh, you know, mixed limit games because it’s like literally this decision decision decision. I mean, you know, the better player is going to do better

 

Brad: to me, like, have somebody on the sidelines when when you call the floor on a guy look at do do tan from under the gun and if it like doesn’t meet a certain threshold, take five big blinds from them. I mean, just do something to punish them. Like there’s gotta be, there’s gotta be a

 

Tom: way. It’s terrible. Yeah, I can’t play the play the game anymore.

 

Brad: All right, so on that positive note if you could erect a billboard, every poker players got to drive past on the way to the card room. What’s it say?

 

Tom: Nice to losers. I don’t know something like that. Be nice to the dealers and losers. You know, be nice. Yeah, just put But like by driving away bad players because you’re a dick to them like it’s just, I, I don’t even understand like, you know, sometimes it’s a smart person like what is what’s going through your mind treating this guy who gives you money like shit? Like I don’t I don’t get it like, often times poker being fun,

 

Brad: oftentimes what’s what’s more, What’s funnier than that or more ironic is the person that is being mistreated is way more successful than the poker player who’s doing the mistreating? You know, which is like that’s a funny irony is that like, for some reason, a poker player because they are good at a card game, believe that they’re superior to another human being and all facets of life. Like that’s exactly.

 

Tom: That’s a great point.

 

Brad: You’re working on any projects that are near and dear to your heart, we’d even talk about your singing and songwriting at all. By the way, I just realized we got to an hour 40 And I told you that that first question, it’s quite a doozy.

 

Tom: Yeah, I write songs all the time. I haven’t written as many in the last six months or so. But I, I write and perform do shows, like, you know, in theaters, and in do gigs, sometimes at a restaurant or bar just because there’s something to do. But most of the time, I like to do shows at a theater, you know, like small theaters at 100 people. And, you know, I’ll play my songs tell my why I wrote it and, and, you know, have songs that make people cry, have songs that make people think, and songs that make people laugh, you know, have some pretty have a song called, it’s about getting your prostate exam, you know, called Don’t fear the finger. You know, so funny songs, and I have songs about my daughters and songs about, you know, relationships and things like that. So, but it’s really I started playing guitar at 52. And I would say most people would say, I’m a pretty decent guitar player. And I’ve had some songs, I have covered it in some song, a bunch of songs with a friend of mine up in Canada, who’s who’s like an award winning songwriter, we have a couple that made the top 10 in Canada. He released he released those up there and have a couple of top 10 songs and so it’s cool.

 

Brad: What is it about writing songs singing? That resonates with you so, so deeply, you know, you mentioned it, that it is your passion, right for the for the last few years? So how’d that happen?

 

Tom: Um, it’s kind of weird, because when I was younger, all I did was play sports. So singing was for you know, non athletes. I mean, I hate to say it that way. I could say harsher than that. But I hate that. I thought that right. And that’s just I’m just telling you how I thought when I was in high school, right? It was all about being a macho dude and all that. But so I never even sang till I was like in my 30s. And I went to a karaoke and I didn’t want to do it. And I was like, What the fuck, and I’m like, you can do some just like Garth Brooks. Right? And so then I didn’t do anything with it. And I was doing audio poker audio for a show that I was, like, the color commentator on at this studio. And at the same time, I was the CFO for a company called loudmouth golf. John Daly wears their clothes on tour, and I wear their clothes on TV, you want to play poker. And so the CEO, I said, you know, we ought to go on America’s Got Talent, he had a good voice, the founder could play electric guitar to go not to win, but just to play is to have our clothes on right just to market our clothes. And so he goes, we got to have a song and I go along, write a song. I’d never written a song to my life. And so I’m happened to be doing poker audio at this studio, and I go, Hey, do you do music? He goes, that’s what I do. I don’t do poker audio for a living. You know, he’s got

 

Brad: poker audio. Yeah.

 

Tom: I’ve been living. Yeah. And so anyway, so I wrote this song called the most fun you can have with your pants on. And I recorded it there. And I’m like, this is the most fun I’ve had in a long time. So no pants. Yeah, exactly. And so I The funny thing is I sent I sent this out to everybody in the company, and they’re going like, this is the greatest thing. Like it’s so cool. That’s badass, you know, like, in the head of sales who I didn’t care for it. He was so negative he goes don’t quit your day job and like, Oh, perfect motivation, right. So when someone tells me I can’t do something, I’m like, I’m going to you know, especially if I like it. I’m going to do it as well as I possibly can. So yeah, I so when I wrote that song, and I just started writing songs like they were coming out of me like, like an idea. Even though I could do it, you know, I didn’t even think about stuff like that. But, you know, I feel deeply right. I wrote a song about Sandy Hook, and the tragedy on my drive home from Vegas, when I heard about that story, and it’s called just another day. And it’s about how parents, you know, when they wake up, and they read the paper, look at the emails, and they eat breakfast with their kids, it’s, it’s just another day, and then they find out that it’s not just another day. Yeah, and, but no, I’ve so I’ve written probably written or recorded probably 3540 songs. And I’m just, it’s, I love it. I love it. And I, you know, I get really good reactions when I perform and, and I do someone. So if you’re friends with me, send me a friend request anybody? I do Facebook Lives. You know, sometimes when I’m bored, I’ll drink beer and then hang out with my friends on Facebook Live and, and do that. So it’s a lot of fun. I love it. I wish I’d done it. You know, when I was younger?

 

Brad: Send me if you wouldn’t mind, you know, send me send me a song and we can we can put it out outro to this episode. I think that’s a good, okay. Good way to close down the show. And so Tom, final question here is it where can the CPG listener, learn more about you on the worldwide web? If you want them to, if you don’t want him to

 

Tom: know I’m happy to I you know, so I’ve written a book called oops, I won. I want too much money when he was sent from the boardroom to the poker table. And it’s really about my life lessons. So you can learn stuff there. I have written a lot of articles for a magazine called southwest poker news. I don’t know if those are they’re still out there but most people the probably the biggest one of the biggest compliments I got was people say I don’t read anything in there but your your article because it was usually pretty entertaining and it was it was more about life and kind of seeing through a poker players eyes and and then, you know, my songs are on Spotify and iTunes and I need to upload a lot of my newer songs but yeah, probably got 1520 songs uploaded on on there. And but yeah, follow me on Twitter, Donkey Bomber I don’t post as much as I used to but I post a lot of stuff on Facebook I’m I’m very politically minded. And it’s not not really about politics, I think what’s going on in the world, it’s more about good versus evil. And so I post a lot of stuff about that as well.

 

Brad: And it’s been great having you on I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you better and you know know your story. Let’s run it back in a year or two hopefully, you know the world will have will be different. You had a couple of years as it relates to just I hope so. Logistically being able to do things in that sense.

 

Tom: I hope so.

 

Brad: Yep. Take care man.

Tom: It’s been really nice. I appreciate it nice to spend time with.