MOPP E17 – Matt Berkey on how to deal with million dollar poker swings

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In today’s episode, we will chat with long-time high-stakes poker player Matt Berkey. Matt will share his 20-year journey in poker, which found him reflecting on if this is something worth pursuing ten years after having gone broke several times. At some point, he was down $5,000,000 playing 300/600/1200 in Ivey’s room while simultaneously dealing with a personal loss. In the pod, he will share with us the mindset and technical abilities he had to develop to turn things around. Enjoy!

Follow Matt and his work over at solve 4 why
► https://www.youtube.com/@SolveForWhy
► https://www.instagram.com/berkey11/?hl=en
► Join Berkey’s coaching site https://academy.solveforwhy.io/

0:00 – Intro
03:19- Shout out to our sponsor GTO wizard
04:19 – Matt’s background in competitive baseball
08:06 – Getting into baseball strategy and developing his work ethic
13:22 – Why Matt stopped playing computer games
16:49 – Discussing Bencb’s tweet on what it takes to make it in poker and the role of talent
21:55 – Do we over glorify working hard?
27:30 – Why Matt refused to quit at baseball even after getting dropped from the team
30:56 – Taking on a bet that he can dunk a basketball in 6 months and refusing to accept limitations
33:10 – Switching to poker and chasing imposter syndrome
38:22 – Picking your lane and becoming a specialist to succeed in poker
44:00 – Why Matt treats every poker decision uniquely
46:58 – Reading players and separating signal from the noise
48:50 – Getting talked into poker and being riddled with self-doubt
51:35 – Riding the wave of variance and going broke
55:08 – Building his bankroll to $300k and then losing it all
1:00:49 – Going through a dark period and not knowing where to turn
1:02:50 – Gaining positive momentum with exercise and eating well
1:06:04- Being given $5k from a friend to coach him and going on a heater
1:10:03 – Doing deep inner reflection and what Matt learnt about himself
1:14:35 – A key skill Matt learnt through the adversity
1:20:20 – Having an unhealthy obsessions and trying to be in the top 0.1%
1:27:24 – Why it’s tough to be a high volume player
1:30:14 – Check out the Mechanics of Poker program
1:32:20 – Renes approach to poker and never caring about his hourly
1:36:56 – Pursuing alternative strategies and generating extra EV
1:41:26 – How Rene seeks control which often costs him volume
1:43:33 – How Matt deals with uncertainty, being half as rich and twice as happy
1:45:48 – Why Matt doesn’t like to rewatch his hands
1:49:50 – Playing some of the biggest games in the world in Iveys room
1:54:44 – Getting invited to some big $200/400 games and making $1.4million
1:59:50 – Offering EV back to the losing players to keep the games flowing
2:02:45 – Where all the EV is made vs weak opponents
2:04:30 – Going $5million into make up and how Matt dealt with it
2:08:55 – Finding out his mum had over dosed whilst in a poker tournament
2:14:08 – Winning it all back and going from 5 million down to 1 million up
2:17:04 – How Matt works on his game and why he cares about “why”
2:22:26 – What studied online players get massively wrong playing live
2:27:00 – A tip for online players who are playing live
2:30:20 – The main “aha’ moment Matt had when studying with solvers
2:34:50 – Meeting Nick Howard and discovering mass data analysis
2:41:40 – Our strange relationship with measuring risk
2:53:12 – How Rene uses data to improve his game
2:56:24 – The most important lessons poker has taught Matt
3:00:10 – A belief that Matt had to let go of to keep progressing
3:03:06 – How do you make big leaps in your poker career?
3:11:22 – When Matt first discovered Rene was using him as a meme
3:15:06 – Rene and Adams main takeaways

LEARNING RESOURCES
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