저자: ChamathPalihapitiya/AlecTorelli · 외국인
요약 보기
Chamath는 Michael Acevedo의 'Modern Poker Theory'가 포트폴리오 구성과 게임이론 기반 투자 사고에 도움이 된다고 말함. Alec Torelli는 포커가 저위험 훈련장으로서 리스크-보상 비대칭, 불완전 정보하 확률적 판단, 실행력(감정·자금 관리)을 길러준다고 주장. 종목·시장 가격에 대한 예측은 없음.
다듬은 글
From an investing perspective, I've said this, you know, also many times, but there's a book from Michael Acevedo called Modern Poker Theory. And you would say, well, what the hell does that have to do with investing? I think that Michael's book is the best way of translating modern game theory in a digestible way through the format of a game, in this case poker.
But the way that he writes and the math and the exercises are quite phenomenal. It anchors me a lot in how I think about portfolio construction and game theory in investing. Exceptional book. Hey, I'm Alec Torelli, professional poker player and coach. And why I think this is so interesting is because we're seeing people at, you know, the highest levels of of success in business, but that are using poker as, of course, a social game and for fun and and stimulation, but really as a training ground to make better decisions in their field of expertise.
You're hearing Chamath say, you know, he he uses poker to help think about how to make better investments. And that's fascinating coming from someone who's, you know, one of the most successful investors in the world. So, it's incredible. What What is it about poker that makes it so unique? What is it about poker that makes it what what I believe in and what I've talked about on this channel or you've seen uh at alextorelli.com, my articles, is why is poker the greatest game in the world?
Why do I believe it is one of the the best uh games? And so, the reason is because it mimics the real world and the decisions that you have to make in life in so many ways. First and foremost, poker is a very low-risk training ground. If you manage your the stakes that you play, you can choose to play very small games.
And you play in a session, if you play especially online or even if you play live, you play hundreds of hands, maybe thousands of hands in a day. And so, every hand you're making multiple decisions about many things that translate to the real world. So, for example, you're always thinking about your risk and your reward.
You're thinking about what is the opportunity, what is the upside, how much can I win versus what is the downside, what do I have to be concerned about, and how much can I lose. And you're doing that every single decision point in every single hand. Now, that's a great framework, of course, in Chamath's case or many people's cases, to think about investing in terms of like, if I invest in this startup, where can it go?
What's the TAM? What's the total addressable market? How many multiples of my money can I make? Or what is the risk? How much can I lose? What is the downside? And so, you're always making that risk-reward calculation. And what poker players look for is what's called asymmetry, meaning the upside, the the reward, is many multiples of the risk.
So, you can win a lot and only lose a little. And those are the best opportunities in poker. For those that play poker, hands like middle pocket pairs, pocket sevens, are amazing hands to play, suited connectors, because if you call a few chips uh with your first two cards and you miss, no harm, no foul.
You just fold, you lose very little. If you hit your hand, you can double up and win the entirety of your opponent's stack. And that framework, that mental model of risk-reward and asymmetry applies to investing, of course, but so many things in life. How do you position yourself in situations to get lucky?
Well, you take calculated risks where the downside is very small, but the upside is huge. This is why it seems like some people get lucky over and over, but they're constantly putting themselves in a position to get lucky. Maybe that's with who they network with, who they meet, what conferences they go to, what events they go to, uh sending cold DMs, just like connecting with people, putting themselves out there on social media to, you know, collect um people that are like-minded to bring them into their network.
That all of these things create luck and serendipity. And so, they're basically like little bets that you can make and where the upside is huge and the downside is small. The second thing is poker is really the ultimate training ground because it's a game of incomplete information where you still have to make the best decision possible under time constraint.
And that is so powerful for everyday life. Because in life, you don't have all the facts. Life is not like chess. Chess is a game where everyone can see all the pieces, the players are not concealing anything other than their strategy, of course, but like you can see all the pieces on the board. Life is not like that, and poker's not like that.
In poker, you can't see your opponent's cards, right? So, you don't know what they have. So, you're always trying to make like a probabilistic wager of what they likely have based on the incomplete information, based on their betting patterns, based on their facial expressions. And that's what you're trying to do in the real world.
Not only in a business negotiation, of course, when someone's trying to conceal perhaps their true intentions or the price that they really want to pay for a business or whatever it is in a negotiation, but also in life. Like you don't have all the facts. If you want to decide to move to a different city or pursue a different career or pursue a different major or go on a new date or go to a conference, you don't know what's going to happen, right?
There's more that you don't know than what you do know. And poker's the same way. You only know your cards and the cards on the board, but you don't know the most important thing, which is what your opponent has, right? What you have doesn't really matter. It matters what you have relative to what your opponent has.
And life works the same way. It's like there's more than you don't know than what you do know. If you're going to move to New York City from LA and take a new job, you have a lot of things that you don't know. So, you're trying to make this probabilistic wager about weighing, of course, what we talked about before, the risk and reward, but right weighing the pros and cons and determine, uh like Kenny Rogers says in the famous song, like know when to hold them, know when to fold them.
Is this an opportunity worth pursuing or is it an opportunity that's better to pass on and wait And that calculus you're making over and over again at the poker table, hundreds of times, thousands of times a day, and millions of times over the course of your career, which is why it makes it such a great training ground for the real world.
One of the other things, I could go on forever, and I encourage you to check out Alec Torelli.com and Alec Torelli on X, where I share much more strategies and frameworks from poker that apply to life and business as well as investing. Uh especially my newsletter on Alec Torelli.com talks about this.
It's all free. But uh one of the last thing I guess the last things I'll cover in this video is just that poker rewards execution. It doesn't reward knowledge. You could be very good at playing poker, right? Like you could intellectually know what the right decision is. You can score high on a test, for example.
But, that doesn't really matter, right? You don't You don't get graded on your knowledge. You get graded on your ability to execute. And life is the same way. If you are good at playing poker, but you're not a good poker player because you can't manage your emotions, you can't manage your bankroll, you can't manage yourself, you have a big ego, you're not disciplined, you lose focus, you play while you're you know tired or drinking or you don't manage your energy, you're going to lose, right?
And so, it doesn't matter what your knowledge is. What matters is your ability to compose and manage yourself and be not just good at playing poker, but be a good poker player. And it's the same way in all great sports, frankly. I mean, that's why we see some athletes that are otherwise good, but they they can't perform under pressure, right?
They crack in the moments that matter the most. And we see other great athletes that that do better when there's pressure. And that's what is about execution, not just their own innate talent. But, it's also true in life as well, right? It's like you get graded on your performance. And so, poker is great because it's really a mental performance sport.
And you have to focus for very long hours. You have to sit at the table sometimes for 12 hours or longer, or maybe 6 days in a row. And any single one mistake can cost you the entirety of your stack. It can cost you your whole tournament. You can lose all your money. And so, it's very unforgiving. And so, you're taught to be like, you know, focused on essentially perfection and really trying to play your best, but also to guard and manage your emotional state at all times because it's very much like tennis.
If you slip behind and you lose focus for, you know, a set or like a game or two, that could cost you the whole match. And poker's the same way. One hand could cost you your whole stack, your whole night's work, your whole tournament. And so, you really have to have that incredible self-discipline and focus and concentration and emotional mastery to be able to excel at the highest level.
So, so many great reasons to learn poker. I encourage you to check it out. If you want the next steps to learn poker, head over to consciouspoker.com. It's a poker training site that I manage and I coach thousands of other players as well on their poker journey. I hope you enjoyed this. Please share it with someone that you think would benefit and I'll see you in the next one. See you.
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