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Making capital allocation decisions in low information environments and with alot of uncertainty is hard. This show talks to people who do this every day and teases out how to be good at it.
Hi, and welcome to the first episode of The First Bet. Every successful person has been interviewed about how they got successful, but nobody drags it back, people back to the initial idea when they took that first step, that first risk that ended up turning into something successful. And that's what I want to talk about here on this podcast. And I think it's appropriate that we have as our first guest, Alec Torelli, who's a professional poker player. And he said something on one of his streams in Instagram last week that sparked me to want to talk to him and actually catalyze getting this podcast going.
Martin:And he said, he says, I'm not a risk taker. I'm a risk trader. And I got really interested in that idea. So I wanted to welcome Alec. He's a pro poker player turned pro as a teenager, won a bunch of online tournaments has finished eleventh out of 10,000 in the main event, played with Doyle Brunson.
Martin:And now he talks about how he uses some of his risk taking risk trading frameworks for investing. And I wanted to welcome you, Alec, to talking to me about this today.
Alec:Thanks Martin. I appreciate that. And I'm honored to be the first guest. It's cool. We've done this.
Alec:We've had a lot of talks, in the past. It's cool to explore new ideas together.
Martin:Yeah, thanks. So I asked you in preparation of this come with one of those first step, take the first risk things and tell me about, you know, one of those times where you made a first bet into uncertainty, maybe it's the, when you left SMU, the initial thought of leaving college to be a pro poker player, but tell me about a time in your life where you were faced with a big decision and uncertainty and how you thought about it.
Alec:Yeah, you nailed it. I was 18 years old. I had been playing poker for two years. It was my first semester at SMU. It was about October.
Alec:And it's funny because my economics class was early on Monday morning, but I would stay up very late on Sunday nights, which was the best day to play online tournaments. So I would miss this class all the time. I was basically at a crossroads where I realized a month and a half or so into school, and I'm at a pivotal juncture. I either have to quit poker and focus entirely on school, or I have to drop out of school and play poker professionally. But I basically hit a plateau in poker.
Alec:I couldn't go any further in where I was. And I was reaching this tipping point where was I soon gonna be dropped from my classes. So I basically had to, you know, go all in in one decision or the other. And I remember exactly where I was. And I remember what I was thinking at the time.
Alec:And, it's something I, I talk about in this risk trading framework. It's like, it seems like the crazy idea is to drop out of school and play poker. Right? Like everyone I asked around me, my friends at the time. Sure.
Alec:My college counselor, anyone I could ask. I was too scared to tell my parents at the time. Of course I knew, you know, I didn't wanna ask them at the time. So everyone I asked was always telling me, like, it was just so obvious. It was so stupid.
Alec:It was like, you know, what are you even thinking? This was like, you know, they didn't even consider the list of pros and cons. I couldn't even get past stage one. So I was kinda left on my own to make this decision. And I didn't really have a framework for doing it.
Alec:I'd never made a huge life decision before I was 18 years old. So I thought about how to think about it. Like what is the framework I actually need to make to decide? Cause like you said, you have imperfect information. My life could go, you know, one of two paths.
Alec:I have no idea where either path is gonna take me. So how do I decide? Well, I thought about what do I do in pretty much every hand of poker I play? I get two cards. I don't know what the next five are, and I don't know what my opponent has.
Alec:So every single hand of poker, you're making this like risk reward calculus. You're thinking about, okay, is this hand worth playing? Which is another way of saying, is this risk worth taking? And so when people think about risk, they always think about taking the risk, right? Which is it has a loaded term.
Alec:It's a negative connotation. It's like, what could go wrong? Well, sure. You have to think about what could go wrong, right? That's the first part of risk is you understand what the downside is, but you also have to contrast the risk with the reward.
Alec:And the reward is as important as the risk. Frankly, it could be more important than the risk, but a lot of people don't go there because they're so paralyzed by the risk that they stop at the risk, but they don't dream or think about the reward. So I thought about this in the context of my decision to drop out of SMU or not to drop SMU SMU. And I thought about, okay, what is everything that could go wrong? What is the risk?
Alec:If I play this hand, let's say I'm going all in, right? I have my two cards. I go all in. What is every that could go wrong? And let me get comfortable with that downside because it real is possible.
Alec:I could lose all my chips. So I had 20 or 30,000 saved, which frankly was more than any other 18 year old, right? Where I was supposed to have And no if I drop out of school and I give myself a year to play poker professionally, the worst case scenario is I lose all of my money and I waste a year of my life. Right? Like I get an experience, but I come back to square one.
Alec:Round trip the whole thing and I'm back at SMU a year later, I'm 19 years old. I'm one year behind everyone else on this trajectory toward wherever that path was gonna take me. Business school or, you know, starting a business or working for a company or working for a Fortune 500, whatever. So I'm one year behind. That's my worst case scenario.
Alec:Okay. Can I accept that risk? Maybe. But I can only accept that risk if I understand what my upside is. I can't just stop at my risk and what everyone's gonna tell me and the shame I'm gonna feel if I come back a year later and what my college counselor is gonna say, and all the students are gonna laugh at me that I'm a year older than them and all my peers have moved on and I'm stuck in a, as a freshman.
Alec:Okay. That is the risk, but what is my upside? And this is where, what empowered me to kind of make the decision as I thought about, okay, what is everything that could go right? Well, everything that could go right is I could make it. I could like live my dream of traveling the world to play professionally.
Alec:Could go to all these countries. I can meet all these people. I can have a life where I control everything on my own time. Could play a game I love. And you know, that's the upside.
Alec:So that, that was the framework I used.
Martin:Did you also consider the potential financial upside? Your downside was capped at $30,000 for that year. But did you try to risk adjust some potential upside? Like it could be zero, it could be a 100,000, could be 200,000 or did you just say the benefits of doing something I love or is, are going to be enough, even if the financials are sort of a wash?
Alec:Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I didn't have a good barometer for what the upside could be because remember there was no
Martin:You were playing small stakes games and you might be playing bigger stakes games and you're gonna change a little bit. Yeah.
Alec:But there also were no models for people that have done what I did. It wasn't like, Hey, I could look up to a generation of expert traders that had made this much money if they make it. There were no generation of people that played online poker. Online poker was brand new. It literally just came out.
Alec:So there was no model for what the world could, the future world could There look were no people that were traveling the world playing online poker. I mean, generation, I was like, I'm the oldest So one that did I didn't think about the financial upside, but I did think about like, what it could my lifestyle look like? And I honestly thought like if I could travel the world for a year or two and break even and have poker pay for me to see 10 or 20 countries and go play poker around the world and go play with my heroes and go have these experiences, like that to me was the dream upside. Like that that was enough. Obviously That was enough for the dream upside.
Alec:I wasn't expecting that at the time.
Martin:Exactly. And when you steel man that against the quit poker, in school, you said, I'm going to just be around the people that I know in school. The result at the end of a year of school is going to be limited. How did you steel man the other side of that? My risk is capped at 30,000 here and I have all these potential upsides, but then if I'd make the take the other road you thought that the quality of the people you would meet and the experiences you would have during that year would be so much less.
Martin:Is that how you thought about it?
Alec:Yeah, I did. I mean, I thought about more like what, what my spirit was looking for. And I thought like, okay, if I do this path, it feels really like a compromise. It feels a little bit like I'm staying on the normal path, but it's not what I really would want to do. I'm doing it because because I'm unsure about what would happen.
Alec:If I was sure I was gonna make it in this poker path, there's no question I would do it. I thought about like, what am I more likely to regret? And like, there's only, I thought to myself, like, even if I play poker and I make it, I could still come back in two, three years and go do a bit this and go the normal path. But I only have this one chance to play poker. So it's kind of binary.
Alec:Like I'm either gonna write off playing poker and I'm never gonna do it, or I'm gonna do it right now. And so like, to me, the more important decision is the one that is, has like expiry. Like if you're buying an option, it's much more important that the option performs well than if you're buying spot on a stock because spot you could hold forever. The option has to perform now. It was kind of like have an expiration on my ability to even take my shot and this is it.
Alec:So it's sort of binary.
Martin:Absolutely. And, and you were maybe unconsciously using Jeff Bezos's regret minimization framework
Alec:before he even talked about it.
Martin:Cause you said, Hey, now's my chance. I mean, the other thing you're talking about is it's it's with potentially a two way door, right? You're not doing something that you can't turn back from. You could always come back to school.
Alec:I feel like most decisions that people think are permanent are actually not permanent. Can undo a tattoo and you can undo most things you do in life where you could get back to baseline or relatively similar. Of course, there's consequences. I would have lost all my money and been a year behind. So there's like, I'm not exactly back at zero.
Alec:It's not a complete free roll. There is risk. Right. There is risk. But I look at the asymmetry, right?
Alec:Like what is the risk multiple relative to the reward? So like the downside, let's say is, you know, 30,000 in a year. Let's call that one. Right? You lose everything.
Alec:That's one. But what is the upside relative to the downside? Not just in terms of how much money I can make. Of course I can make many multiples of 30,000, but like what is the satisfaction or the joy or the, or the, or the personal upside of dropping out and making it. And so like how many multiples of that is that of the downside?
Alec:And that's kind of like how I think about a poker hand. It's like, if I have a pocket pair, like two sevens, I'm probably going to lose the hand. I don't only, I don't have a great hand, but if I hit a third seven, I'm going win all of my opponent's money. So I could lose one bet pre flop, or I could win a 100 bets post flop. So I have a 100 to one asymmetry.
Alec:It's not that simple, but just to simp, to simplify it, have this a 100 to one odds on my risk. And so I guess I'm going to lose the hand most of the time, but if people stop there and they don't think about what they're going to win, they do hit, that's like, that's the miscalculation I feel like a lot of people make with. And that's why I said I'm a risk trader. I'm not a risk taker. I'm actually really conservative.
Alec:Like people come to me like, Oh, I can never gamble. Like I don't gamble. Like I am very like cautious of the risk reward calculus of every time I risk money. And so I'm, I would say I'm like pretty conservative in a lot of ways. Just because I only look to risk money when I feel like I have an edge.
Alec:So it depends on how think about it.
Martin:That's another good important thing is that you look for to risking money where you believe you have an edge. And I love the small pocket pair thing. I think that's something that a lot of people who aren't used to making these low information decisions don't get right is what in poker you call the pot odds. You know, the odds of return on your multiple. If the pot odds are right, even if you have a low probability situation, if you have a 30% chance to win and you're getting 10 to one on your money, you should put your money in every day.
Alec:Yeah. And I think a lot of people don't see the, the, the, that side of the equation. They just think, okay, it's binary. Like if I'm unlikely to win, I don't risk. But if you're unlikely to win, but when you do win, you make a 10X or 100X.
Alec:It's actually good to lose money in those spots in the sense that if you, if you spread your risk out and you diversify and you make 20 of those bets, one of them or two of them are gonna return the whole portfolio. And that's sort of the way poker works as well. You lose a lot of hands, but the hands you win, you win more than you lose. Just the way we win.
Martin:Let's go back just a little bit more to the beginning. I want to talk a little bit more about the case against you making the thing and see if I forget the guy who calls it the resistance. Anytime you're doing something, there's the resistance telling you you shouldn't do it. Yeah. Can you categorize where the resistance came from?
Martin:I'm sure some of it was your own fears of failure. Some of it was your friends. You already mentioned one major resistance, your parents, you didn't tell them anything because you knew there would be lots of that. Where do you think people find? How did you get over each category of resistance?
Alec:Yeah, it's a great question. I think the macro is that I, what I find in observing other people I talk to about these sorts of things, because I think it's common that people share ideas with close friends, like everyone has sort of a dream or let's say everyone has music inside them and they're afraid to play. It doesn't have to be music. It could be art. It could be a book.
Alec:Could be a painting. It could be a passion project. A lot of people have that thing inside. And then why don't they do that thing? There's a great book called The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield.
Alec:It's an amazing, book.
Martin:He's the one who talks about the resistance. Pressfield.
Alec:Yeah. It's not The Art of War. It's The War of Art. Obviously it's a pun on that sort thing. That book is incredible for anyone that has music inside them and struggles with expressing it and letting it out.
Alec:I do think that the biggest thing I notice is that people's opinion of other people and what other people think is more important than what they think of themselves. They might not actually consciously think that, but if you look at their behavior of why they don't do things, a lot of it is that fear of the judgment of other people around them. And then, and that social circle around them, if the thing doesn't go right. Of course, if the thing goes right, everyone's gonna praise you, tell you you're great. Some people are gonna be jealous and they're gonna, you know, whatever.
Alec:But like, there's also the fear of success in some ways, because if you change your situation dramatically, you might not be close to the tribe that you started out with. There's a comfort level that people generally are in within a certain range of temperature. If it gets too hot or too cold, you you go up too high or down too high, there's gonna be some challenges around people's social circle. And so like people are very concerned, I find, about the perception that they have, that other people have of them. And that sort of supersedes their own perhaps internal desire to do the thing that they wanna do.
Alec:And some of this is luck. Like I think my, my mom in particular instilled a lot of self confidence in me. She had me read this little like poem every day before bed. She put this like little thing next to my bed. And when it was like this little, I'm the only unique me that I'll ever be.
Alec:I have a power to make a difference in the world. Oh, awesome. And I still remember it. I still have the thing in my in my closet at my at my parents' house. So like, it I guess I was sort of dealt a good hand.
Alec:I think a lot about context of luck and like what things you can't control versus what things were given to you. I was dealt a a a solid hand in this respect where like I had a lot of internal self confidence and I was largely given that, like I said, by my parents. Right. To be able to make this decision and be comfortable with accepting that other people would judge me or not, you know, think that I was Or if I failed that they would all say I told you so. And I was like, fine, I could live with that.
Alec:Like I, I fall a lot in public. I mean, frankly, have, know, I play poker on TV and people could see my cards and they could see every single mistake I make. I also make videos about my hands and, you know, I've been sharing my hands on YouTube for twelve years and I make videos about my mistakes. And yeah, again, they're on TV. It's not like I can hide these things, but So yeah, like you get comfortable with that sort of playing poker.
Alec:I wasn't comfortable with that at the time. So going back to the First Bet, obviously wasn't, didn't have this level like of comfort playing poker on TV at the time, but yeah, I did. So I think that's the biggest thing that, that people need. Being more sure about your own opinion for about yourself and what you're doing and trusting your own internal spirit more than you outsource that to trust the opinions of other people around you. And that's hard to do.
Alec:And it's, it's also hard to dance the line between like delusion and ego and, and truth, because like sometimes you could be delusional about your own ability or whatever. And sometimes the other people around you actually have the reason. And so it's, it's really hard to like, to know that internal, internal line. That's why I said, I listened to my spirit. Cause I was like, in my heart of hearts, I know this is right.
Alec:And I know that the reason I wouldn't do this would be because of that fear that I just described. And that's how I knew it was the right thing.
Martin:Okay. Yeah, that's a good framework. I am always interested in how people get over that because you always have your own self doubt. You have your societal pressures to not do something stupid. And it sounds like you were dealt a good hand in the self confidence category.
Martin:But I keep coming back to the phrase that you heard a lot, you know, journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Yeah. I just encourage people to take the step. And even if they're scared, even if their friends say that it's stupid, it's you just need to do the small first thing. And you know, think things will come after that.
Martin:But many times these decisions that are life changing,
Alec:you know, our life committing decisions can feel like one way doors. And you said a couple of things
Martin:I think that are helpful to people. First frame or a frame that you talked about is not everything that sounds like a one way door is a one way door. Most things are two way doors or swinging doors more than you think. I think a lot of people get themselves stuck in yes, no, no third option type things, or this is a one way door or they ratchet the consequences up. I actually wrote a blog post one time about all these weasel words that I try to get out of my system.
Martin:So for example, if you say something like, I can't do something, the minute you tell yourself you can't that is a hard blocker. Your limbic system is saying it's existential. I can't do it. And it's like, like, like I'm going to die if I do it. Reality is most things you can do.
Martin:You just don't want to. Yeah. I really liked this idea of changing the word from risk taker to risk trader.
Alec:I've worked with a lot of mental coaches in the past twenty years. So one was a well trained, well known hypnotist that worked with elite mental performance athletes, golfers, race car drivers, etcetera. And so I learned the power of linguistics and like basically words are our programming and words shape how see we reality. So without getting too much into NLP and all this stuff, which I've since studied a lot. When you say risk, taking a risk you're, and this is the thing I put out on Instagram.
Alec:It's like, you are looking at the downside of what could go wrong. So you're taking something in that you don't want. Nobody wants risk. If I could, sure. I was gonna, you know, make a $100,000,000 was your risk.
Alec:That would be the best, but there's always a risk. So like when you say I'm taking a risk, what is your mind doing? Your subconscious mind is focusing on the risk that you're taking. It's not focusing on the reward that you're getting. So that's why in poker we have, you know, EV, which is expected value because there is risk, but there is reward.
Alec:So you think of things in terms of what is the expectation of the decision I'm making. So the reason I coined this phrase, risk trader is because I'm taking risk in exchange for reward. So when I, when I change the linguistics and I change my programming about my relationship with risk, and I say I'm a trading risk, I start to see risk in a different way. And when you see risk in a different way, you approach it differently. You mentioned words that are dangerous.
Alec:I think should and have to are very dangerous words. You say I should something or I am. So in English, say I am. I am sick. I am tired.
Alec:In Italian, which I've since become fluent and it's like a while ago moved to Italy and I married an Italian woman. You say there's like a transitive and an intransitive. So you say, I feel sick. You're not, I am sick. Cause when you are sick, your identity is sick.
Alec:So you are a sick person and then you're in a chronic state of sickness. Exactly. And you know, depends on what you believe about energy. You could be like shaping your nervous system to be a sick person. Whereas if you feel tired, you feel sick, you feel hungry.
Alec:In English, you say I am hungry. In Italian, you say I feel hungry. Yep. You say I have the hunger, but it's it's sort of like translates to I feel. Like it's very different.
Alec:And so linguists are super important. And I think that's like a really important way to think about, to think about things. And I think the last thing is like, there's there's almost always a way to mitigate the downside. When you think about trading risk, you first wanna think about your downside. So I always assume any poker game I go into, I could lose all the money I'm taking.
Alec:Could lose all the money I'm sitting down with. Anytime I enter a tournament, I could lose all of that money. But there's there's ways to mitigate risk even in poker. You can sell action to other people, right? So there's always things you could do that are creative and outside the box.
Alec:When people are looking at big life decisions that I've I've made since a lot of these, I sold everything I owned when I was 24 and I moved to Italy. I there, I met my wife, but there's like, there's risk in that decision as well. But it's like, how do you look at the worst case scenario and then put planners in so that it's not a one, one waste door. There's like a two way door, there's a backdoor. And yeah, it's not gonna be a 100% of where you were, but if it's 80% of where you were, and so you cap the downside and you still have most or all of the upside, that is a really powerful play to, to do it.
Alec:So like hedging or mitigating the downside risk is another way to, to take those decisions a little more comfort comfort.
Martin:That, that is another good concept to when you're faced with these decisions, find a way to hedge it, sell your action or, you know, prepare a backdoor for you. You said this another time, I think you know, about tilt control and stuff like that. If you're going to a game and let's say it's a $5,000 buy in, have in your mind before you start, I'm willing to invest three bullets in the buy in or something like that. And if I go three bullets or, or, you know, when I'm up three X, I'm going to leave. Having some guardrails around the session will prevent you from getting sucked into the constant rebuy or the you know, I'm up so much, so I'm going to play too many hands, but framing before you go into these decisions, some of those guardrails, I think is a very good heuristic that you talked about.
Alec:Yeah. For poker, I mean, poker teaches you bank hole management is one of the key principles, which I, you know, learned and invest, like learned to apply to investing as well. Because when you, you know, invest in options, like a lot of times they go to zero. Options are very much like a poker tournament. Buy spot is much more like a cash game.
Alec:And so it's like, it's fine if an option goes to zero because if it goes up 20 x, it, you know, it only has to work one out of one out of 20 times. It's sort of like thinking about those things in terms of risk reward and then being comfortable with the downside because, you know, you know that your bankroll is a 100 and you only risk one or two on any one individual bet. So it's okay that that bet doesn't work out or it loses 50% because you have so many other bullets to achieve the long run expectation that you're gonna achieve if you have enough at bats. It's the same reason why casinos don't let certain people bet more than a certain amount because they need volume of hands in order to manifest their edge. Their edge is only one or 2%.
Alec:They live off that edge. Poker players' edges are is much greater than than one or 2%. I mean, good players win 70% of their sessions. So as long as you can manage your risk accordingly to achieve that long term outcome, I mean, you're going to be fine.
Martin:Okay. There there's one other concept that I find causes people making these decisions to make bad decisions in the future is this thing called resulting or outcome based things. It's like, if something turns out well, you're like, oh, it must've been a good decision, but it could have been a bad decision that went into it. How do you avoid this, the trap of resulting? Like, you know, I invested in a stock and it made a bunch of money and I think then I'm a really good stock picker, but in fact, I just got lucky.
Martin:Like how do you think about being honest to yourself about outcomes that were random versus outcomes that, you know, were a result of the right decision in the beginning. It turned out for you, poker was the right risky decision to take. I think the outcomes have been good for you, but I don't think that the outcomes were, are necessarily the right way to judge a decision. Decision was right, regardless of the outcome. Yeah.
Martin:Decision, the
Alec:EV of the decision is locked in when you make it, given the information you had. So like my decision wasn't right because I made it. It was right because at the time with the information I have, which is always limited, it was the right decision for me at that time. The way, the way you know that it was right is if the decision went the other way, would you still feel as good as you feel about it? So if I dropped out of school and I didn't make it, I'm now 39.
Alec:I'm sure like that I would be happy that I did it. Because I think about other things in my life that I didn't do that I wish I had done. And I feel like I wish I would've done them and they were much less important to me than playing poker. They weren't even that big of a thing. They were just like little things that like, ah, it would've been cool if I'd done that.
Alec:And I regret the things I didn't do more than things I do do. So it's like, I'm sure that this would've been the right decision even if I round tripped it and went back to school. So the way you know is you look at the outcome that you didn't have, if the decision goes your way, whatever it is in life or poker or business or investing. When you win, it's much more important to do this when you lose. When you lose and you know, it's, it's easy to look critically at the situation and say what went wrong and think that you actually did the wrong thing because you lost.
Alec:So we're much more conditioned to look at things when we lose than when we win. But when you win, you have to say like, if this went the other way, would I still feel that this is the right decision? And that's a good way to check yourself to know, you know, if you're, if you're resulting or not.
Martin:I'm a big fan of that. It happens to me in poker all the time. I was, I was in a hand last week and I have pocket Queens, have an over pair. I go all in, the guy calls me with pocket fours and he hits a four on the river. He had a 5% chance of winning, but I lost, but I didn't care about the loss because my decision at the time with the information that I had was the right decision.
Martin:And the result went against me, but it doesn't matter. I'll keep playing that same decision a 100 times because over time the odds will go in your favor. If you make the right decision at the time you have the information that you have.
Alec:It's a great point. And poker teaches that so well because you're in every single hand, you're forced to face, you know, the own your own decision making process. And it's easy to just say, oh, well, I lost the hand. I got unlucky or I won the hand. I'm so good.
Alec:But the reality is any I mean, as Kenny Rogers says in The Gambler, every hand's a winner and every hand's a loser. So like any two cards could win and any two cards could So your challenge and what poker teaches you is to look objectively at the quality of the decisions you're make making and not really worry about the outcome. And the way to do that is really to become obsessed with the process. So when I win, I put the same exact rigor into studying the session as when I lose because I don't care that much about the results. I care about how I feel about how well I played and the quality of the inputs.
Alec:And making money at poker is not really my job. Making money at poker is the result of me doing my job correctly, which is to make great decisions under pressure with imperfect information. And that's what I do. And I do that well. That's why I win at poker.
Alec:So like, I don't focus on the money. I don't focus on winning. I just focus on the quality of the decisions. And then I'm really ruthless about my my play. I have a very strong circle around me of people that tell me, Hey, you know, and tell me honestly, and I coach poker too.
Alec:I coach a lot of clients and I tell them honestly, look, this was a brutal mistake that cost you a lot of money. This was horrible. You should never do this again. Because like people need to hear the truth. They need to understand that like, this was not a good decision and this was a great decision.
Alec:And so poker players have this like unspoken ethos that like, if you ask someone that you respect about a hand, they're gonna just lay it on you. There's no sugarcoating in poker. There's no pity party in poker. In fact, the the worst thing that could be in a poker group is someone complaining about a bad beat. Like that's not tolerated.
Alec:And frankly, no high stakes poker players talk about bad beats. They only talk about decisions that were close regardless of whether they won or lost. So Right. There's kind of this training that you go through in poker to, to even move up in the ranks and get to an elite level where like just consistently bombarded with like ruthless feedback from other people. And you welcome that because you know that that's the way to get better.
Alec:And then you're also just constantly thinking about like, could I have done differently? What could I have done differently? You have to become obsessed with that process.
Martin:I agree. I think in order to get good at making decisions, you have to have a good feedback loop and be honest about the quality of your decisions over and over. This is again, why, like, for example, in my pre seed investing, saw 4,500 companies last year, I wrote 11 checks. I have an AI thing that goes out and looks at what happened to the 4,489 companies that I said no to. Honestly tells me, did I miss fucking something?
Martin:Did something become a unicorn that I said no to? And some people could think that's self flagellation. I think it's better decision accountability. Absolutely. If I made a mistake in the beginning, I want to know about it.
Martin:I want to know how to correct my algorithm to make a better decision in the future. I actually want that feedback that I made a mistake.
Alec:Yeah, me too. I love, I don't love making mistakes. I hate making mistakes.
Martin:I don't love making mistakes I
Alec:love knowing in hindsight that I made a mistake because then I could correct the mistake and not make it in the future. So it's painful, but there's nothing more painful than losing at poker. Losing really sucks. So I'd much rather go through the short term pain of knowing I made a mistake and that I'm human and I'm flawed and correct it than suffer the continual consequence of making the mistake over and over and keeping losing more money and opportunity in poker. Absolutely.
Alec:Well, thank you,
Martin:Alex, for going back in time and taking us to that big decision you made in your life with low information. If you had to summarize in one sentence, for people that are faced with an uncertain environment, what would that be?
Alec:There's gonna be a conflict between your head and your heart. And I find that most of the time when I override my intuition with logic, I pay the price. And when I trust my spirit, it ends up being the right decision. That's what 3,000,000 hitters have taught me.
Martin:That's what happened to you. I appreciate that. And just for the show notes too, and for everyone else, where can people connect with you online or hear more if they like how you think about decisions?
Alec:Yeah, thanks. So I'm at alectorelli on all social media and alectorelli.com has a free newsletter called Beyond the Felt, where I talk about lessons from poker that apply to decision making. I'm gonna have a bunch of articles and then consciouspokerpoker.com is my training site. So if people wanna actually learn poker training or get coaching or learn from some of our programs, that's, that's where to do it. So follow me and connect.
Alec:I'm very active on social media.
Martin:All right. Well, thank you very much.
Alec:Thanks guys. Thanks, Martin. Appreciate this.