The Poker Life: GoMukYaSelf

In this classic interview, Chris Sparks and Joe Ingram discuss traveling, living in Hollywood and NYC, and maximizing serendipity.

Video and audio recording below (1h36m). Full transcript following.

I am joined today by GoMukYaSelf aka Chris Sparks. We have known each other for many years now and I used to get pwned by him at full ring NL back in the day...

Video Transcript

Note: transcript slightly edited for clarity.

Joe: All right, guys. Boom. Welcome to another Poker Life podcast. Normal livestream, today's. This is going to be a Poker Life podcast. I'm joined by a very long-time no-limit player. Now he is a professional world traveler. I don't know if he calls himself a professional world traveler, but my opinion and from what I've seen on social media over the past two to three years, he's a professional world traveler: Chris Sparks, AKA GoMukYaSelf. What's up, buddy?

Chris: Hey, what's up, guys. It's good to be here. 

Joe: Thank you for . . . Out there who watch my podcast, normally, who play mainly PLO, they might not know who you are. There's also a lot of people from the No Limit community who are checking us out right now. I'm going to tell the best of my knowledge a bit about who you are for those people that might not know. So you're twenty-x years old. I gotta run a GTO SIM on that to figure out the exact age. You're twenty-x years old. You've been playing poker for—since before me, so before 2008. You started off at the small stakes and then some point in time you won a tournament and then you became one of the best players in the world somehow at full ring tables. You eventually . . . I'm leaving out a lot of things, but we're going to wait. There's a lot to get to. Eventually you moved to Hollywood and Los Angeles with three other guys, and you got a house in Hollywood, giving me the only opportunity of my life to go to a house in Hollywood a couple of times, which was exciting. Then you . . . Wait. What the hell came after that?

Then Black Friday happened. Then you moved to New York City. Then you became a professional investor. Then you started traveling around the world. And last week you were at Burning Man. Or two weeks ago you were at Burning Man. What did I leave out? Did I sum it up kind of nicely, or what?

Joe: Is there any other way to watch, oh. We got some crazy people in the livestream say . . . Oh. Well we're already livestreaming this guy, so for all the people in the livestream, what's up. Welcome here. We'll get some comments a little bit later. But yeah. Okay. So I said I covered most of the stuff. That's true, right?

Chris: Yeah, I think so.

Joe: Okay, cool. So let's go back. So your big kinda break back in the day, you started playing No Limit for a pretty long time, but one of your breakthrough moments was when you won the Sunday Million. That was correct, right?

Chris: Yeah. I mean I'd pretty much just been playing part-time during school until then, and winning the Sunday Million kind of convinced me to take the path less traveled and go pro rather than take a full-time job.

Joe: Hmm. And then so once you decided to go pro, you then also decided that you were going to somehow transform into the best player in the world.

Chris: I mean, that wasn't the idea. The idea was just to avoid having a job. I mean I really didn't play all that much until '08. Maybe like ten hours a week, because I didn't have that much time. But while I was waiting for the job to go through, I was able to basically do nothing but play poker, and that's when I finally started realizing that I had a knack for the game and I wasn't just like, you know, a one-time tournament luck box.

Joe: Well, there are a lot of one-time tournament luck boxes out there. I'm very happy that you somehow managed to not be one of those people. So you won the tournament, and then you kind of started moving up pretty fast after that point in time. And then I want to focus more on kind of what you’ve done in the past couple years, rather than, I guess, that period of time. So I know a lot of podcasts, they give like a whole entire life story on somebody, but for you, I'm going to assume most of the stuff, the big stuff, the cool stuff, man, is like in the past maybe four or five years. So how did . . . At what point in time, what made the decision for you and Kyle and J-Money, and Sunset Seth, and . . . I think you see I picture it. What made the decision for you guys to end up moving to Hollywood and get that place in Los Angeles?

Chris: So I mean, personally, I basically had locked myself in a room for six months only playing poker, and it was just like not an ideal scenario, because Detroit sucks. It's cold, I didn't know anyone, and my birthday was coming up, and I was able to get some of the old school Full Ring grinders together to Vegas to just, like, do the bottle service and Nobu thing. And after the weekend we're all like, "Well we don't really want this to end, and we don't really want to go back to, you know, our parents' basement," or wherever we were. It's like, "Why don't we all get a spot together and just like take off?" So we were all like, "All right, what's the closest beach to Vegas?" And found out it was LA. So a few of us got in a car and started driving out to LA and just spent the day looking at mansions. Looked at ten of them, and the tenth one was pretty sick, so against the advice of pretty much anyone sane, we signed the lease that day and moved in a couple weeks later.

Joe: So, I hope I didn't leave fantasticcow off that list, because obviously fantasticcow was in the house too. fantasticcow, for those people who followed my recent Play Money prop chip bet, made a very important appearance at that bet . . . I think it was maybe like 30k a month in rent, I believe. Or . . . Is that what it was?

Chris: 20k, five ways. Yeah.

Joe: 20k, five ways. I remember there was one point in time I was in San Diego, and I was like . . . I think I . . . I didn't have a very big role at the time, but I was doing okay, and then someone moved out of the house, and you're like, "Oh, there's a room opening up, it's like five K." I was like, "Well, this might be the only time in my life I get to ever do this. I should say yes." But then I nutted up and I said no. And I probably regret that decision still. But we're in the house now. We're living in the house. You got the master bedroom, right?

Chris: Of course.

Joe: Because you were making the most money at the time?

Chris: We had like an auction the day we moved in, and I was the one who outbid everyone, essentially. Because I mean, can you just imagine how great it would be to have a hot tub in the middle of your bedroom? That's worth any price, right?

Joe: No, I can't imagine that. I'm sorry. I want to imagine it very badly, but unfortunately I'm going to have to just live vicariously through these stories that you're about to tell me about what happened. So you get to this house. When you get to this house, what kind of person are you at that time? Because I mean . . . You were kind of like a shy, laid-back type of person. Would that describe you then, or were you kind of a bit more . . . I don't know the word I'd use to describe you right now, but you're certainly not shy and laid back right now. So.

Chris: I mean, if I had to sum it up in a word, I'd say I was really naïve. We were all super young. I think I was like twenty-two years old. Never really been outside of Ohio. Never really gone out to clubs. Just pretty shy and quiet and nerdy, just spend most of my time on the computer reading and playing poker. And I'm kind of just thrown into the deep end of all-night partying and models and bottle service, and it was . . . Yeah. It was quite an education, right?

Joe: I can only imagine. I know that you . . . So you guys got there, I'm sure you guys probably were expecting to play a lot of poker, but I know a couple of your roommates kind of got pretty caught up in that whole entire LA lifestyle. The going out. Obviously, the attractive women . . . I'm not going to get into my normal sayings, bud, because I know there might be some people listening that are family, but you know, LA, man. Tell us about LA. What's it like out there? What's it like living there, what's it like going out there, what's it like bringing people back to the house? You know, tell us . . . Most of the people on the livestream probably have never done that, so why don't you tell us a bit about that?

Chris: It's one of those things that I have absolutely no regrets doing. I mean it was one of the best and most memorable periods of my life. But I wouldn't run back and do it again. LA is amazing if you're young and good-looking and have lots of money and are willing to just like throw it around like it's water, but it's not a good place if you're looking to meet you know, really cool, interesting people who want you more for who you are as a person rather than what you can get for them. And definitely found that the sort of people we attracted there were more friends with us because we had a big mansion with a pool and we were going to get them into bottle service tables, rather than because they thought we were cool guys. Just my personal opinion. I'm not saying that like I have any regrets. I mean, I had an absolute blast. But it's not somewhere that I would recommend for a lot of people to live.

Joe: So it's kind of like a situation where if you go into it with the right mindset, kind of just embracing . . . I mean, I think, you know, one thing you said, you know, I think probably a lot of people will go into that situation with the mindset that, "I'm going to meet a lot of people who aren't good people, who only want to be friends with me for this house or for the bottle service." And . . . Do you think that some people might have a different mindset about it, and they choose to maybe accentuate themselves or present themselves in a different way, that they could probably meet some decent to good people out there?

Chris: Yeah, for sure. I mean I think it's we were just right in the middle of Hollywood, so we were like, you know, deep in industry people. And some people really love that. I mean one of the former guys, Seth, is back out there in LA. Still going out every night. I mean that's his thing. For me it's not really what I'm looking for. But I mean again, it's a big city. It's a lot like, you know, you go from one neighborhood to another, you're going to find different people. We just . . . That's who we happened to find.

Joe: Yeah. Did you happen to find yourself hanging out? Like how long . . . How long did you last kind of in that whole entire going out all the time scene? Because I know you were pretty heavy into grinding and kind of maintaining the ability that you had at the time.

Chris: Yeah. I mean we essentially . . . We'd essentially wake up at like 2:00 PM and play all day until like 10:00 PM when it's like, "All right, what's the good club to go to tonight?" And text all our hosts and see, you know, who was willing to give us the best deal on a table and just head straight to the club. So it was basically like poker, club, poker, club, poker, club, with some sleeping mixed in. I mean pretty consistently through the whole year and a half, I would say we were going out like three or four nights a week. It was a lot.

Joe: Wow. At this time . . . I mean I don't know how much you want to get into this, but is there just a lot of drinking going on? I'm not even sure . . . I would assume most people are, but that's just what you hear and the stereotype that you assume when you think about Hollywood and about LA.

Chris: Yeah. I mean, I would say we were relatively clean-cut, but it was snowing all around us.

Joe: Makes sense. I think at that point in time when I came up there, I was like, I had never been in a big city, really. I had lived in San Diego, and then I'd lived in Chicago, but besides that LA is like this totally foreign place. And I was like scared. "I need to get the fuck out of here." And there's like a hill. I had to park my car on like an incline up a hill. I'm like, "What the fuck is this weird place, man?" That was a pretty eye-opening kind of experience. And it was kind of motivating for me at the time, because I was like, "Man, you know, this could be . . . You know, if I work hard, if I get better at poker, this could be a situation I could find myself in one day." And maybe we'll give you guys all the credit. I'll give you guys all the credit for the success I might have had at poker, because that poker house might have been one of those turning points, man. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, GoMuk.

Chris: I mean, it's pretty interesting, because I mean I think for all of us, it was our best year of poker of our entire careers. And probably the year that the games were the worst. So I think there was something to just living in a place like that that was super motivating, where you felt like you sort of deserved to win. And meeting right there with three other players who are just like really, really good and playing all the time motivated me to play more and play better. So I think, I mean, despite the amount of money spent, it might have been a good investment.

Joe: That makes sense. I think that's something that I . . . You know, people always . . . When you talk about being a poker player and traveling and living in a different company, and they talk about sometimes people just rent a shitty place, and sometimes people like to rent a very nice place. When you ask people that, you know, "Why do you guys want to rent an expensive place? Why do you want to rent a nice place?" They feel that, as you said, it is pretty motivating for them to just be in that environment and kind of look around every day and kind of . . . Like that really gets them going. That gets their juices going, that gets them motivated to really work hard. And it kind of sounds like that was a big thing for you guys, as well. You guys kind of, you know, fed off that energy and that whole entire environment and kind of used it for the better.

Chris: Yeah. Not to get too much into strategy, but I think your mindset is absolutely massive. Like the environment that you're playing in is kind of a big part of what you bring to the table, and I think it's important to be in like a healthy environment that's going to keep you happy and is going to bring out the best aspects of yourself.

Joe: That makes sense. Did you . . . Okay. So you lived there for 1.5 years, right?

Chris: That's right.

Joe: When was the turning point? Black Friday happened while you were living there?

Chris: Yeah. So it happened two months before our last lease was going to end.

Joe: Wow.

Chris: So less than ideal timing. We actually had a reality show out there that was scheduled to start in the summer, the whole concept of it being playing online poker in an LA mansion, which was no longer possible. So that kind of got scrapped. We went out to Vegas for the summer, and then the plan was to move out to London right after the World Series. Myself personally, I completely failed at that, and they denied me entry to the country. So I was sitting outside the UK, in Barcelona, actually, with no possessions, no plan of where to go. And just kind of like, "What the fuck am I going to do now?" 

Joe: So I remember that time. I was like, "Wait, what . . ." This has been my thought process when I think about London ever since then. "If GoMuk can't get into London, there's no fucking way they'll let me into London. I'll tell you that." Because . . . I've never thought about going there, because you got denied entry, seriously, I'm like, "There's no chance they're letting me in." Like what happened with that? Why didn't you get in there?

Chris: I think they have that like episode of The Micros where he's going through security and they have all the terrorists and they're helping him out with like their bombs and their ninja stars and the main character in The Micros is like, "Oh, I'm an online poker player. These are poker chips." And immediately like they send in the SWAT team to like tackle him down. And that was like pretty close to my exact experience going through customs, where I was naïve enough, when they asked like, "What are you going to do for money?" And I say, "I play poker." They like backroomed me and held me overnight and just decided that they were not going to let me in. And they said if I came back within a year I'd be arrested on site. Talking to lawyers, they said it would take like months of red tape to get it sorted out, so I just kind of turned my back on the whole idea.

Joe: Wow. So you're sitting here in Barcelona. What's going through your mind? Are you thinking about maybe moving somewhere else? You know, what are you thinking? What happens next?

Chris: It's a pretty emotional moment, because I mean Black Friday represents a pretty big turning point for me, where it's like, okay, how serious am I about continuing with this poker lifestyle? Is this something where I want to live abroad and do this forever, or is it kind of like, time to do something else? And I took it as maybe a sign that maybe I should be doing something else. A big reason that we picked London is that it's a travel hub to get throughout Europe. It's like, all right. If I came over here to play poker and travel, and I can't play poker, I might as well start traveling. So I ended up . . . It started with just visiting a couple friends for weekends, but before I knew it I blinked and it had been six months that I had been traveling through Europe. Staying in hostels, couches. I think I hit about twenty countries total, just waking up every day and deciding which city I wanted to go to. And it was the absolute time of my life, and I realized that I didn't really need to make millions in order to live that kind of lifestyle, and that maybe there was another way to do it.

Joe: So were you playing any poker during those six months when you were kind of traveling over there?

Chris: Essentially, I haven't really played online since mid-April 2011. I have played some live poker. I would say maybe like a couple hundred hours, since then. But, for all intents and purposes I've been retired since then.

Joe: So . . . Interesting. Yeah, I wasn't sure if you played any online. I know you played some live, because I've seen you posting things over the years that said you were in Vegas, kind of grinding, or anything like that. Why haven't you decided to play any online since then?

Chris: It was weird. It's something that I wouldn't say I regret, but maybe I should have done, is I just never went through the process of just like getting physically relocated. Of like having a base, so I can get on there. I mean because, presumably, I've been abroad most of the time. I could have been playing the whole time. But I never actually settled down anywhere long enough to do it. And for me, mentally, I just kind of turned my back on poker. I wanted to do something else. I had larger ambitions where I maybe wanted to get back into business or do something else for a while.

For me it gets kind of like all or nothing. Like when I was playing poker, every waking moment of my life was consumed with how to play poker. But once I was given this opportunity for a clean break, I kind of wanted to embrace it, and I spent all that time doing other things.

Joe: So during this time, this six months that you spent traveling, you know, what were you doing during that time? Like how were you filling your time? If you're not playing poker, were you focusing on something else, or were you just focusing on the experiences and meeting people and kind of enjoying yourself as best you could?

Chris: Yeah. I mean, I had never had the opportunity to just travel without poker. Like when you go to poker tournaments, you show up and you just talk more poker with players in a more beautiful setting. Everyone's sitting there on their laptops in the middle of the hotel. And now I was surrounded by some of the most interesting and smart people I had ever been around, and it was really, really exciting to me.

Joe: So, in kind of that, in that scenario are you . . . You know, I imagine meeting people, making friends, meeting women is like an interesting thing, because you probably are only going to see them for a very short period of time. So when you go into something like that at that period of time . . . Because I'm sure it might be different now, when you go into that same situation. But back then, you know, what was your mindset going into these encounters with people? Were you trying to make friends to travel with? Were you trying to meet someone to fall in love with for the night? What's your outlook on that, at the time?

Chris: All of the above, man. If you've ever seen Fight Club, he talks about single-serving friends, where you're sitting next to someone on the plane and they know absolutely nothing about you, and most likely you'll never see them again unless you really want to. So it's like every day you're waking up in a new city and you can completely create a new persona for yourself. So almost, I would say, ninety percent of the time, I never even would mention the word “poker.” It would always be about other things that I happened to be interested in exploring. So it's like, oh, today I'm, you know, a medical student. I'm thinking about getting my PhD in the next couple years. And just kind of exploring those different conversations. And it was really cool, I thought. It's sort of like, you know, single-serving identities.

Joe: I'm going to have to look more into this actually. It sounds like one day I could pretend to be Tim Stone and talk about how I like little Thailand people. But I don't think you'd want to pretend that you like Thailand men, women, little . . . You know Tim Stone, right? Tim Stone . . . You know Tim Stone out there. Tim Stone's an interesting guy. So Tim Stone, I know you're out there. Hello. Nice to see you. I got to give Tim Stone a shoutout. I got to get some livestream . . . I've never gone this far into a livestream without mentioning anyone in the chat, so I have to give some . . . We've got some people you might know. Obviously we got Marty Rose. Biggie Smalls in the house. We got Tim Stone. We got our boy Ari L, who took us to the Laker game that one day. Areolis. Ari L? What the hell . . . What was his PokerStars name?

Chris: Areolis, I think is how you pronounce it. Yeah.

Joe: I just know him as Ari L now. I don't remember his old name.

Chris: Multi-million hand a year legend.

Joe: Areolis is definitely a legend. He's a true legend.  We got a bunch of livestream reggers that tune in every day out here. Ali Bro, Steve, Monkeyman, Matt. What's up, guys. DC. Games. God, man, you guys come out for anything. I don't understand what these people do all day. They're here every day. They're amazing. I don't . . . These guys just come here every day, man. They've got . . . They're awesome, man. We love 'em. Vinnie—

Chris: No money in Full Ring, everyone's solid.

Joe: Well these guys all luckily play PLO. So, we don't . . . I don't think I know . . . The only people I talk to . . . We've got Dylan, of course. Dylan Duvall, who you know. hoonist was the old Stars name back in the day. We've got Vidinator out there. Yeah, man. So let's get back to this. So you're traveling. Six months goes by, then what happens?

Chris: Well, you can't stay in the EU longer than that, so I had to go back. I made a list of all the cities that I was interested in moving to in the US. You know, like real nerdy spreadsheet with like weighted averages, and I'm like, you know, "What are the things that are important to me?" And then New York came up top. So I just booked a flight right to New York and landed with my backpack. And I was like, "Oh, yay. I'm gonna get into startups. This is going to be fun."

Joe: That's . . . Man. I'm feeling inspired by this conversation. Let's keep this going. So, Random, GTO sims, Atlanta, and New York. All right. So now you're in New York. You're with your backpack. You get a place, right? What happens? So I don't actually know what happened in this time period. You end up in a place, then you start working at some type of business. Or you're working for somebody, or you have your own investing thing. What was going on during that point in time?

Chris: So I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I kind of just showed up without any really applicable skill set or any sort of value I could add. All I knew was I wanted to hang out more with entrepreneurs, because I'm a firm believer that you hang out with people who have the skills and the characteristics that you want to have. I want to hang out with people who want to change the world, who are ambitious, who are busting ass and working hard every day. And I was like, "Oh, that sounds like an entrepreneur, so I want to do that." So I was like, "Okay, so what skills do I have?" So as some people know with poker, I was really involved with staking. Particularly in the Full Ring and Six Max games, I was like, "Okay, well I can recognize a profitable investment. Maybe I'll start investing in startups." And I learned early on that pretty much every startup investment that was going to come on my desk was going to be a piece of shit, and I might as well light the money on fire and make a YouTube video of it. That would be a better use of my time and money.

So originally I was a marketing major back in college. That's what I wanted to do. My original ambition was to be the chief marketing officer of a company by twenty-five. So I thought I'd kind of explore that trajectory again and get back into marketing. So the idea of combining marketing and psychology with the statistics and poker tracker analytics-type stuff that I'm working with in poker, and using that to help startups find customers cheaper. So I started consulting, which in reality means that I went to my friends' companies and I did work with them for free, in exchange for them saying that I did work for them. To the point that I finally learned something that was of value about six months in, and joined a fashion startup called The Cools in about May. Full time. Usually . . . I had an interview with the CEO, and he was like, "I have no idea what you're going to do here. I just know that, you know, you're good with numbers and I could probably use someone like that." 

So I started off just being like a numbers guy where if they wanted to know something that required numbers, I would, like, look it up. And a few months later I was running the marketing for the company. But it was just becoming too much work and too much stress, and I felt like I'd kind of gotten all the knowledge out of it, so in December I decided to quit.

Joe: So this was December of which year?

Chris: 2013. About seven months ago. Yeah.

Joe: Wow. You worked there a long time.

Chris: Yeah. Right about eight months.

Joe: Wow. That's a long time for a kid like you, in my opinion. So living in New York City. What was that like? How was that different from living in . . . I guess obviously you weren't living in the mansion, like you were in Hollywood. You know, what was life different . . . How different of a person were you at that point in time approaching that situation, compared to when you approach the Hollywood situation?

Chris: I absolutely love New York. I think it's the greatest city in the world for . . . It's like a vortex for beautiful, interesting, ambitious people. And there are hundreds of things you could be doing that are awesome at any given point in time. Friends are always passing through, you can walk to everything. It's just the place to be. And I was absolutely never bored. And it was very easy just to get swept up in that, like, everyone is just so “work hard, play hard” that I made so much progress in a lot of areas in my life. Professionally I really learned what it takes to run a successful business. Particularly on the marketing side. And I think that's a skill that will really help me in a lot of areas in life. Not to mention just meeting a lot of really talented and extremely rich people who hopefully will stay in my network for a while. So yeah. My daily job was like wake up at the ungodly hour of 8:00 AM. Like, go to work. Bust my ass for literal peanuts. Less than I made in a day of poker was my annual salary.

I would do that for twelve hours straight, get back at 8:00 PM and pretty much head to the bar before falling asleep at 11:00. That was my daily schedule.

Joe: You were doing the regular world grind. The work, bar, home, work, bar, home sort of thing?

Chris: Yeah. I had this glamorous notion that I was going to be sitting around with a whiteboard like, you know, The Social Network and just coming up with ideas and then some other person would come out and do them. And the reality, startups are really hard work, and they have little or no glamor at all. It's really tough. So I mean, I learned a lot. It was sort of like my eight-month MBA where they paid me a little bit to learn a lot, but it's not really a great way to get rich or to have a balanced life.

Joe: So working a job is not the best way to get rich? What do you mean by that? Or no, sorry. Working a job is not the best way to get rich and have a balanced life.

Chris: Working for the Man.

Joe: Working for the Man. Okay.

Chris: I mean, I think you can . . . As long as you can run a business where you set the terms, I think both those are achievable, but if you are an employee taking a paycheck, and your productivity is being measured by the hour, it's not really going to take you where you want to go.

Joe: So don't you think it's easy for you to say that, sitting in a position where you don't necessarily have to worry about money or worry about how you're going to pay your bills in two years, something like that? Because a lot of people . . . Like in . . . Because I agree with what you said, but when I talk to people and I tell them that similar thing, you know, it's easy for me to tell you that when I'm not worried about money. But for people out there who do have to worry about money and do have to worry about how they're going to pay their bills now and pay their bills in the near future, you know, what would you recommend? How do they get from this point where they're working for the man to potentially make some progress to get to that point, where then they are setting their own terms of their schedule and their life?

Chris: I would suggest winning a tournament.

Joe: Winning a tournament? No! My god. Don't fucking tell . . . We don't advocate tournament play on these things at all, unfortunately. I'm sorry, that's just not one thing that we focus on. So you suggest they play high stakes PLO and try to win the money that way, then, huh?

Chris: Honestly, okay. I would reframe the question. So I think . . . You mentioned paying bills. I think a better way for them to do it would be to look closer at what bills they're paying and how aligned they are with their long-term goals. I think especially when it comes to stuff like travel, people tell me all the time, "I can't afford to do it." But they're spending way more money doing nothing than I was spending traveling. Do you know what I'm saying? So I define wealth as the experiences it buys me, not the things it buys me. Unless those things enhance an experience. So sort of like a four-hour workweek style, sitting down and saying, "Okay, what are my goals? What are the things I want to do? How important is it for me to drive an amazing car? How important is it for me to have a five-bedroom mansion in the hills? How important is it for me to spend five thousand dollars on bottle service?” And I realized that none of those things were really important at all to me. They weren't really what I was looking for. 

More what I was looking for were unique experiences which usually didn't cost anything. So I guess the answer to your question would be to figure out what's the bare minimum they need to make in order to create those experiences for themselves and find something that can do that without using all their time. Does that help?

Joe: It helps. It's just a question that I get, I specifically got from my ex-girlfriend all the time. And she would say, "Well, what can I do? What kind of business could I do? How can I work for myself?" And I had some ideas, but at the same time I don't necessarily know. I'm not sure what to say to someone who's like, "Well, how do I stop working my job?" And I think a lot of people that are regular viewers of this, they either play poker for a living or they aspire to be professional poker players, so they're not necessarily looking to stop playing poker any time soon, but I'm sure there's going to be some people listening to this who are in a similar position, who have had success in poker and have some money saved up, and then they want to progress more into a similar type of path that you took. What would you recommend to those types of people who have had success and who do have some money saved up to be able to afford to take some risks in their life or to try something new?

Chris: I think that was two questions.

Joe: Was it?

Chris: The first one you said, people who aren't necessarily in that position and they need to make some money, they aspire to start their business, that sort of thing. And I would say "Stop fucking aspiring and start fucking doing." I'm a firm believer in course correction over planning. And for example, with poker, if you want to play PLO, don't sit there and read books for six months, get out there and start playing hands.

Joe: Exactly, guys.

Chris: The way to learn is to do it.

Joe: Hop in the PLO.

Chris: And the same thing, guys who have some money saved up and are trying to figure out what they want to do with it, figure out what their goals are and try taking small steps towards those goals to see if they're actually in line. So if one of their goals is, "I want to go surfing," well, take a surfing lesson. See if it still interests you. Take steps towards those goals and see if they're still in line.

Joe: I like that. I'm going to start taking . . . I'm telling you, I'm going to get inspired again, man. When was the last time I saw you? I saw you at—

Chris: I think down in Miami, at Ultra Music Festival.

Joe: Oh my God, dude. That was . . .

Chris: You were a shit show, as usual.

Joe: Dude, that was insane. Why don't you . . . I mean, okay. So for those people that didn't know anything about me during that time period of my life, can you explain a little bit about me at that current time when you saw me at that point in time?

Chris: So, I mean there's a big electronic song out that says, "Eat. Sleep. Rave. Repeat." And that was essentially Joe Ingram's life at that point in time, where if there was a festival, he was there with his neon tank top and furry head, like just fist-pumping straight in the front row. Like on another level. Yeah, you were something else.

Joe: You know what, you kind of saw me right . . . Like at a very peak. That was like, that was the middle of it. There was a ten-month time period, and all-through music festival in 2013 was like right after Australia, right in the peak of like a bunch of traveling, a bunch of festivals, and then . . . Ah, yeah. That was an interesting time, my friend. That was interesting. I remember that. I was really fucked up, I'm pretty sure, during the whole time period, but yeah. That was the last time I saw you, man. Yeah, that was fun. And the time before that, I think I raged with you at Lollapalooza one time. Me, you, and Marty.

Chris: Yeah, that was a blast, too.

Joe: And that when I first realized you raged. I was like, "Wait. What the hell is GoMuk doing here? I didn't know he liked music and dancing and like did this kind of stuff." That was my . . . I didn't know that, previously to that point.

Chris: I was a big festival ho for a while, man. I've been to a few dozen of them. I try to be a little more selective, on which electronic shows I go to now, because I think the music in general has kind of gone downhill since it's become more mainstream, but I still absolutely love that scene.

Joe: So we've got a couple other people in the chat that want to say "hi". So, "Tell Chris Tim Lee says what's up." Tim Lee says what's up.

Chris: What's up?

Joe: We got Andre S. He's a regular. Josea Campo. I can't remember Jose's friggin' PokerStars name, but he says "hello" too. I know he's a long-time Full Ringer out there. What else we got? Travis Petty. Uh-oh. T-Petty. The guy I took . . . He's the one I went up to your house with. We took a nice drive up there. That was fun. He made me drive. I hate him for that. "Why is Joe such a podcaster now?" Calm down, Petty. I'm going to call your sister up, man, you don't calm down right now. Oh, we all got sisters, man. It's okay, man. We all got a sister. GoMuk's got a sister, I'm pretty sure.

Chris: Yeah.

Joe: So you just touched on music festivals. And you actually just recently got back from a festival. I don't know if I'd call Burning Man a music festival, but it's . . . How would you describe Burning Man? Was that your first time there? What was your experience like?

Chris: Shit, I mean I've tried so many times, and I don't think I've ever successfully given justice with the description. I imagine it's sort of like trying to tell a blind man what the color pink looks like. If you've never seen it, there's no way of knowing. It's a festival, but I'd say it's more like an art festival than a music festival. And what I've sort of discovered is that Burning Man and other such groups around are essentially these secret societies that you can join and be a part of just super-interesting, exceptional people. That once you go and attend and meet people there, your life will be completely transformed. And any time you meet someone who's had that same experience, you can just sort of give them that secret wink, like, "You know. You know what's up." It's really like self-selection. We're both on the same level now. If you needed help, I would help you out, and vice versa. So I'm a huge proponent of Burning Man. It's just the greatest collection of the world's greatest people for one week. Essentially everyone builds a city in the desert.  

So at its basest level you have a thousand bars which are giving out alcohol twenty-four hours a day, with music and DJs. Anything from super underground house, to the top guys, like Skrillex and Diplo and . . . Who else? Like deadmau5, Above & Beyond, all these huge electronic guys are also Burners. And they go and they put on massive sets for free. You have people teaching classes on everything from circus to sex positions to meditation and yoga. All of the above. And you just go there, wear crazy clothes, and be whoever you want for a week, and it's an absolute blast.

Joe: Well, fuck, man. I'm in. Sign me up. I'm ready to go. So did you go with a group of people you already knew, or did you go by yourself, or . . . How did that come up?

Chris: So this is the second year that I went. Last year I went with a group of people I knew pretty well. It was pretty small and tight-knit. This time I was part of a theme camp called Camp Awesomeness, which was a hundred twenty people together, building basically a massive bar and club which hosted crazy parties throughout the day, including naked Twister and that kind of stuff. It was definitely a different experience. A lot of work but a lot of fun.

Joe: Were you part of the naked Twister?

Chris: No, I got the time wrong and I missed out, but I heard it was pretty epic.

Joe: Were you going to play naked . . . You were going to be naked playing Twister?

Chris: I don't know. I don't know. It's one of those things, like you don't know how far you're going to push your edges until you're in that spot. I have been naked before there. It's not my thing. It's sort of one of those check-off-the-box kind of things. Like, okay. I was naked at Burning Man. But I usually prefer to keep my bits in clothes. But that kind of stuff does happen.

Joe: What was this . . . naked at Burning Man. What is that, how so? So how do you end up naked at Burning Man? Is it just you, girl, you meet an attractive girl, she's like, "Hey, take off your clothes," or what? How does that work?

Chris: I mean there are so many attractive girls there, but it's like an anarchist society there, so there are no rules. So you don't have to wear clothes there if you don't want to. So some people don't.

Joe: Burning Man sounds like my kind of spot, man. This sounds like a place I'd really enjoy. Wow. So you mentioned attractive girls, right? So during this time period of worldwide adventurements, have you had a girlfriend during that period of time? Have you been kind of single the whole time?

Chris: Officially I've been single the whole time. I've met girls who I really adore, but usually our paths diverge after a period of time. The travel lifestyle isn't super-conducive to a long-term girlfriend.

Joe: So, can you repeat that? You lagged out again. So you said traveling like that isn't conducive to having a long-term girlfriend.

Chris: Yeah. Essentially I mean I've had girls who I really like a lot, and we've had a really great relationship that's intense, but usually the path diverges because she's going somewhere and I'm going somewhere else. So it's, you know, traveling in general is really only conducive to being single.

Joe: That's what I was going to ask you. I was going to say, did you feel like you made a conscious decision to remain single during this period of time because of that thing right there, if you want to have these experiences and travel and have all these things it's much, much easier, slightly . . . Slash I mean, it might be not possible to do that if you were in a relationship with somebody. Is that a decision you've actively chosen to make, or it just happened to be that way?

Chris: Both. Both. I mean I certainly have a much higher standard now than I would have had before for someone I would want to have a long-term relationship with, just because it would be difficult, and the opportunity cost of doing so is so high, not only with not being able to travel so much, but not being able to meet, you know, all of the other amazing women around the world.

Joe: How old are you right now?

Chris: 27.

Joe: All right. We'll talk . . . Let me ask you that question again in four years, see where your head's at on that one, buddy. When you get to my age, kid, you know I'm an old man now. I don't think I would have something like this to you ever in my life, but when you get to be my age, you start seeing things a little bit differently, man. Who are these . . . People . . . Bobby, he said, "Ask him if he's ever been curious about having a boyfriend." I don't know. Maybe. Who knows? Fucking crazy guy like you, you ever been curious about having a boyfriend?

Chris: Oh, I'm supposed to justify that one?

Joe: I mean, answer the question. He's interested in you, you know? A good looking guy like you, you got a beard, you got the cool checkered shirt, they might wanna know, you know? They might wanna know. Jose, you can—

Chris: I'll take a shot at that humor. I mean, I am in San Francisco, after all. I just walked through The Castro and had a little lunch. I mean I've thought about it in the sense that having a boyfriend would be way better than a girlfriend, because you know, they're not like little bitches. Right? You can just be like, "Hey, I'm gonna like go play sports." And, "Hey, we're gonna have sex now." That kind of thing. I mean that would be pretty nice, but yeah, I'm pretty squarely on the straight side. So, thanks for your question, Bobby.

Joe: Yeah, Bobby, thanks for the question my friend. I ask questions all the time like that. You know, my advice is you wanna try something, you go try it, all right? You wanna be with a guy, you go be with a guy. You know, you do what you want to do, guys. You know, don't be scared. Don't be scared to try whatever you want to try, man. Andre S, I don't think Chris is a big girl grinder. I don't think so.

Chris: Yeah, so I don't know if you or the audience knows, I'm moving down to Argentina in November. My current play is I'm traveling around the States, going to some National Parks and big cities and visiting friends. But I'm moving down to Argentina. I'm very much into that like skinny, exotic, petite girl you find in like Columbia and Argentina. So yeah, not a big girl at all, unfortunately. 

Joe: Nope. Nope, nope. One-sixty or below, gotta go. You're only allowed to date girls one-sixty and above. One-sixty and above, we show you love, man. That's kinda . . . Tim Stone made that saying up, actually. But yeah, that's how it works. But I don't think the Argentina girls are . . . They're not . . . You're right, they're a little bit tinier. So. What's your plan now? So you're in San Francisco right now. You're going to be traveling through the United States of America, and then you're going to travel down to Argentina?

Chris: Yeah, that's what I haven't penciled in. It's nice that I can kind of just wake up and do whatever. So right now what's kind of interesting me is kind of like seeing the country. I realized that there is just so much in the US that I'd never gotten a chance to see. Both natural beauty and just like amazing cities. Great food, great nightlife. And that's my grind right now.

Joe: So what do you have planned out in San Francisco? Is there anywhere specific you have penciled in?

Chris: Gonna bike around. I'm doing some day trips. I just got back from Yosemite yesterday, which was pretty amazing.

Joe: Saw some photos.

Chris: Did a lot of hiking up there. Going like whitewater rafting later this week. There's a pretty sick No-Limit game down in San Jose I'm gonna check out. Play it by ear, honestly.

Joe: Wait a second. How much fucking money did you make that you just don't do anything? You don't do anything for money now? What the hell?

Chris: So Joe, I'm going to blow your mind right here, right.

Joe: Uh-oh.

Chris: All right. So when you go out to the bar, like how much are you spending on a drink?

Joe: Well I've only drank maybe five times in the past year, so I don't really drink that often. So not much money, luckily.

Chris: No. So let's say if you were going to buy a drink, how much would you pay for one drink?

Joe: Fourteen dollars.

Chris: All right. What if I would tell you for that fourteen dollars, you could live in a lot of cities around the world?

Joe: I would need more information on how this is possible, of course.

Chris: Think about it as like currency arbitrage. If you're earning dollars and you're spending in a currency that's not worth as much, say you go down to like Southeast Asia or South America, you're essentially getting like two to one, three to one, four to one return on your money. And you can live pretty comfortably on like twenty dollars a day. So it's ironic in that I'm making like literally zero dollars, but I'm saving money compared to like living in New York and like working twelve hours a day. Just 'cause cost of living difference.

Joe: Yo, that was so GTO. That was like so sick. That was such a . . . There might be some people watching that know you that don't know about what GTO means, but trust me, that was GTO. Just google GTO. That was GTO as fuck right there, man. We're very . . . Okay, guys. Did you guys hear that out there? I know a lot of people out there are going to want him to expand on that one idea right there, because that was super GTO. But—

Chris: So like a big factor in this, like, we got paid back from Black Friday, right? Full Tilt finally this April, after three years. And I got that deposit in my bank account. I'm sitting on—

Joe: How much?

Chris: A large enough amount that I can't say it publicly. But very large. I'm sitting on this beach in Thailand in this bungalow. This most beautiful white sand beach, perfectly clear water, you have half-naked women walking right across my field of vision, as I look down at my bank statement and see this number, and I look down and I do a quick calculation. I was like, "I can sit in this exact spot for the rest of my life and never work another day again." And that's when it really put it into perspective for me.

Joe: Wow. I think that's . . . Let me do a quick sim in my head right here. Doot de doo . . . That's a lot of money, kid. Well, like, Thailand though . . . Tim says Thailand's cheap, so I mean I don't know. That's, wow. Well, you mentioned businesses earlier. You mentioned investing. Is that still something that's on your mind? I'm guessing . . . Is that something a year or two or three down the road, or is that something more in the short term right now?

Chris: I'm always looking for investments, it's just a matter of whether I come across good ones. So I've had some good one-time things that were sort of like flashes in the pan. One coming to mind was betting on the election in 2012. There was some really good arbitrage there. I'm kind of interested in investing in people again, not in as a business but like literally investing in people is an idea I'm starting to explore. But it's more being heavy in cash, so that when these rare opportunities come up I can just back up the truck. Not so much as starting a fund, being real formal about it anymore.

Joe: So you're kind of keeping your options open right now.

Chris: Yeah. I'm pretty massive on maintaining optionality in life.

Joe: Optionality.

Chris: So you think about like . . . Everything you do has an opportunity cost, because you could be doing other things. Right? So the more you keep your options open, the more likely you are to have something come up that's of higher value. So trying to live my life in such a way to maximize serendipity, essentially.

Joe: See, guys, this was why I wanted to have motherfucking GoMukYaSelf on the podcast. For this shit right here. There's a reason. People were saying, "Who is this guy? Why you have him on?" I say, "Trust me. I'm gonna have this guy on, you guys are going to enjoy him. I promise you, I'm not going to have somebody on if you're not going to enjoy him. I swear to god." Thank you for backing up my word, my friend. I appreciate you, man. I appreciate you bringing your A-game today. That was very kind of you. Someone said they wanted to see a graph. You ever post any graphs?

Chris: I posted some back in the day. I think I stopped when I didn't have as big of an ego and it wasn't as important to get 2+2 fanboys. But like, yeah. I mean the best . . . I was on pace for the best month of my poker career April, 2011, when Black Friday hit. So I always like to say I was sort of like Deion Sanders. Forcibly retired at the top of my day. I was really crushing at that point, but . . . I mean, honestly, right now I'd be surprised if I could beat like 1/2 Full Ring. It would take me a while to get anywhere near that point again.

Joe: You were at the top . . . You were over a million dollars on Full Tilt, right?

Chris: On PokerStars I was. Not on Full Tilt. Most of my play was on Stars.

Joe: Oh, yeah. PokerStars. You were still Plat on Full Tilt though, weren't you?

Chris: I think according to PTR, I was up around 500, I think.

Joe: I forgot how much money you made playing poker. You just reminded me. I was like, "Wait, you had a top hat. I'm pretty sure you had top hat on PokerStars." I remember, man. I made a bad decision. I was taking some 10/20 shots and I decided to get all in against you. Those weren't—

Chris: You were the fish in those games, man. You were like 4-Bet calling King/10 off. That was . . . I appreciate that.

Joe: I was very . . . We don't use that adjective around here. We call them "fun players.”

Chris: You were the catalyst.

Joe: I was a very fun player, it's true. Yeah. That's pretty sad, man. Thinking back on it. I was pretty . . . Wow. I was a degenerate back then, that's for sure. It's actually kind of making me very sad right now. What was this viewer asking great questions? App . . . What the hell? "The Podcast [inaudible] is real." So this is an official podcast. Usually when I do livestreams, people run absurdly well. Yesterday, Dankness . . . You know Dankness, right?

Chris: Yeah.

Joe: Yesterday Dankness came on, talked for a bit, and then he won a goddamn tournament. And then the guy we're railing for the prop bet, he got second place in WCOOP. It was an amazing run good day, man. It was just, oh. It was great, man. It was great. Jose says, "It seems a bit silly that you wouldn't just play for a few hours a week and get, say, 2K a month or something." Hmm.

Chris: So that's sort of my plan in Argentina. So I'm getting back into poker, if that isn't clear, but I'm really only going to be playing like 1/2, 2/4. Maybe some lower stakes PLO, just because I'm kind of curious about learning, as we discussed. 

Joe: Back up the truck. Oh, I'm moving out of the country to play with you. Ima pwn you up as long as I can, man. I'm getting you back, son.

Chris: You're going to have to come down to like 50 NL to find me, so if you do crop up down there, we'll spar.

Joe: Wherever . . . If you play PLO, I don't care what stakes you're at, I'm coming to those stakes. I'm getting my money back, I don't care.

Chris: Yeah. So we were talking cost of living. I mean, it's going to be pretty cheap to live down there. Maybe like three or four thousand tops to have the best apartment in the city, and go out for every meal, that kind of thing. So I figure I can play like ten to twenty hours a week of 1/2 and easily do that, and then have the rest of my time to just explore and live life. So for me, it's kind of unclear whether I'll be able to do that, because I've such an all-or-nothing personality, where I think it would be interesting to see if I could be like a part-time player and not just get completely sucked back in. Which I'm trying to avoid, by the way.

Joe: That's what I was going to say, because you mentioned earlier you were pretty all-or-nothing whatever you do. So if you end up do going down there and you find yourself maybe doing okay or struggling at 1/2, 2/4, I could potentially see you getting the juices flowing a bit like that, kind of maybe putting in more hours than you might have anticipated.

Chris: Wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

Joe: It would be the worst thing in the world for those people playing there right now. They don't want to see you back there. I know that. They're like, "Please leave, GoMuk." Someone says, "Does he honestly not think he can beat 200 NL? It seems absurd." I agree, it does kind of seem crazy that you might think you can't beat 200 NL right now.

Chris: The game has changed a lot, right? I mean imagine like . . . I haven't even really thought about poker in over three years, whereas people in those games have been playing day in and day out for three years. So I'm not saying that I couldn't, but I'm saying that I wouldn't right now.

Joe: You're a modest guy, my friend. We like that around here. We like modesty. We like positivity. We like happiness. We like good things and good people around here. So we like that about you, man. We like your modesty. What do I have here on the list? You're moving down there by yourself, right?

Chris: Yes, just me and I'm going to hope to recruit some more, but yeah. It was just more I was down there in February, and I really loved it, and you know, rather than sitting here and making a huge analysis of like the best place to live, I figure I'll just go down there and see if I like it.

Joe: So you, did you already find a place to rent, or are you going to be looking?

Chris: I'll be looking, but there's a big expat population. There's plenty of places that cater to the typical poker player, with the penthouse and rooftop pool and walkable location. I don't think it should be hard.

Joe: That's cool. I do know some former friends and guests of the podcasts who lived in Argentina that I could always put you in touch with, and they can, if you ever . . . I'm sure you probably easily can meet some people, so it wouldn't be too hard to find people down there. So.

Chris: No, I don't think so.

Joe: Yeah. I have a couple things on my notes. So I got through your story. Now I can ask my more other topic questions. So you never joined a training site to make videos, right?

Chris: Yeah, I was recruited by them. I was very close to signing at various points with CardRunners and BlueFire. I'm friends with the CardRunners guys. I don't even know if they still . . . Actually I think they moved it on, but at the time. And I really loved what they were doing, but like the amount of money they could pay me just wasn't worth it for the information I was going to be giving out. I just didn't feel good about putting out videos that weren't going to be my best work, and my best work would just cost me way more than I was getting paid. BlueFire approached me about becoming a part-owner in the site, but the . . . Again, I disliked the terms and the personalities didn't fit, so I ended up just kind of sticking to coaching. I mean from an hourly rate perspective, teaching one person poker is probably much more profitable than teaching the entire community poker, because every single person you'd play with on a daily basis is going to be watching those videos and figuring out how to play against you better. At high stakes at the time, there were maybe like fifty players. So the cost of giving out information was really high.

Joe: So do you think looking back that it was probably bad that there was some . . . Like do you think the training videos had that big of an impact on the No-Limit community at that time?

Chris: They certainly had an impact, but I think probably the biggest impact was public results. Notably poker table ratings, where . . . And also, I mean, kind of sub-that, like a poker tracker. Where you know, with mined hands you can essentially know who was winning how much and losing so much in the games. Before that, you know, there were players who played weird that people assumed were fish who ended up being like massive winners. Kelisitaan probably being the best example, where like at that time he was min-raising, and everyone's like, "Oh, well only fish min-raise, so this Kelisitaan must be a fish." And then as soon as results became public everyone realized he's the biggest winner of the games, and started emulating his style, which took a lot of money out of the games. So, not only could you know who the good players were and emulate their style, you know who the bad players were, and just started relentlessly bum-hunting them, which was just like really, really bad for the economy and just the general outlook of the games, in my opinion.

Joe: That's interesting. I never thought about that particular thing right there, where PTR . . . I never thought about PTR having that big of an impact on things back then, because I think you're right. I mean, yeah. When you think about it it's a great point, where when you don't know how people are doing, when you only have hands that are in your database, then you can go off that, but you know that's not the actual story. So if you have twenty thousand hands in your database and this guy's down this amount of money, well, you can assume this guy might be a weaker player, but you can't know for sure. Whereas with PTR they have every fucking hand the guy's played. Then you could, yeah, as you said you could emulate that person's style, you could maybe go take advantage of the weaker players. And that's where the whole entire bum-hunting thing even started. Obviously you knew about Scout931. A recent fish into the PLO community. We welcome Scout with open arms. But yeah, did people know about Scout before PTR came around? Was he already known as one of the most fun players of all time?

Chris: You could actually get a seat with him sometimes. It wasn't like there were forty people on the list instantly. He just became notorious because of the gross amount he had lost. Not because he was absolutely horrible. There were lots of fish who were way worse, he just happened to be the most famous.

Joe: Fun players. Not fish. We don't call 'em fish around here. We call 'em fun.

Chris: Ah. He was the most fun to play with.

Joe: Thank you.

Chris: Right. He was the most notoriously fun player to play with.

Joe: Do you remember any 2+2ers that might have been fun to play with? 

Chris: Not off the top of my head, no. Sorry.

Joe: Do you have any favorite 2+2ers that looking back from being on 2+2, that you remember them in a fun way?

Chris: Oh, man. Let me think about that one, and I'll get back to you. I

Joe: Do you remember anything about 2+2?

Chris: Dude, I mean . . . I went from probably spending like a couple hours a day on there to like a couple hours a year now. I'm pretty out of the loop, honestly. So I mean I could drop some names, but they'd be so old.

Joe: I'll know who they are. You can drop some names. It's fine, I'll probably know who they are. Let's give some names, man.

Chris: I always loved the wells. I think the wells were extremely interesting. Even if there wasn't any skill there, getting inside the heads of the people you played with every day. I mean I always have to give a shout out to like the small stakes Full Ring. Wait, no, the . . . Well, small stakes as well, but like the medium-high Full Ring is the one that I was really involved in. I mean most of my close poker friends and like still some of my really good real-life friends came from participating in that forum. It was sort of like my social outlet when I first got into poker. So that was really huge. I love all those guys.

Joe: Yeah, I found that too, that a lot of my better friends that I have now, I met from micro-stakes or small stakes Full Ring, and then now in high stakes PLO, which is where I spend most of my time. But I think it's interesting that you spend so much time in a forum or a community, and then you end up becoming real, like legitimate real-life friends with these people that, you know what I mean, you've never really met before, and then all of a sudden you're like living in a house in Vegas and living in a house in Hollywood with them. That's a pretty cool experience.

Chris: Yeah. It's both that like no one else really understands. Like when you make a commitment and like, "Oh my god I'm on a 25/50 table with Scout," everything else just goes out the window. All those other commitments, I mean, no longer exist. No one really understands that except for another poker player. And it's also you see this a lot in other industries, you know, music being an obvious one. Guys who quote/unquote "come up together," who sort of had that same growth curve, tend to stick together for a long time, just cause that's a really intense bonding experience.

Joe: Do you know a lot of people in the music industry or the music world these days, from your worldwide adventures?

Chris: Yeah. I mean I would say so. But I've kind of found that the most talented musicians are going to be ones who you've never heard of. Just like the most talented poker players are going to be ones you've never heard of.

Joe: Wait. I've heard of Odd Oddsen. I've heard of Isla Droon. I've heard of Lefort. I've heard . . . What do you mean? Those are the most talented PLO players, and I've heard of all those guys. Number one CTS, Cole South, the current number one 6 Max player in the world. I've heard of him.

Chris: And I'm not saying those guys aren't among the best in the world. I'm saying the best player in the world right now is going to be someone that you've never heard of. I don't know who that person is. But he's out there.

Joe: True. I agree. Do you . . . We got John The Main in the house. You know John The Main, obviously.

Chris: Yeah. He's actually got my beard beat, so mad props to him.

Joe: He's got your what?

Chris: He has a better beard than me.

Joe: Does he really? Is he living in . . . I think he's living in some Asian country right now.

Chris: Back in Vancouver, I believe.

Joe: Oh, John, why'd you move back, bro? He was in South Korea. What's this girl he's in a relationship with? Hir Kenzhouzhi? He must have imported something. He must have imported somebody. All right. We know who he imported. John, congratulations on the import, my friend. Congratulations. We wish you luck. John doing an import, man. The kid goes over to Korea and just fucking imports, man. That's good to see. Ricky. I wish Ricky was here. You obviously know Ricky, right? Mask.

Chris: I do. 

Joe: I enjoyed hanging out with those people in Vancouver. We had a lot of good times together. They were the worst influences in my life.

Chris: You are who you surround yourself with.

Joe: AJ Fenix, Fantasticcow, and Ricky. Thank you. Thank you guys for getting me addicted to the life of Rage. I appreciate that, my friend. That was very nice of them. Well guys, all right. If we got some questions, guys, you guys got any questions for GoMuk, here's the time to ask. Let's get some fire questions here. Nick Dalizi says, "Why aren't guys like this," this meaning probably you, "ruling the poker media? Instead it's Dan Colman.” Yeah. Do you know anything about Dan Colman?

Chris: Yeah. He talked to the high stakes Heads Up Sit & Go players, which is like a crazy sub-community in and of itself. They refer to him as the best if not one of the top five players in that super-competitive niche. So like, yeah. Obviously he's having like the heater of a lifetime, but not surprised to see him do well. I mean he's crazy talented. As far as his not talking to the media, I think it's one of those things that blew up out of proportion and now there's no way of putting it back in.

Joe: Yeah. I don't really have an opinion on it. I don't necessarily care, it's . . . It's what it is . He doesn't want to do it, he doesn't want to do it. It doesn't . . . What can you do? I don't know. It's not that big of a deal.

Chris: Yeah. I mean it's really easy to say, "Look at Daniel Negreanu and those other guys who are doing such a great job promoting poker." Well, it's because they're getting paid seven figures a year to do so. Either they have a percentage of one of the sites that was sponsoring every poker show or they're getting directly paid all their buy-ins. Right? If you don't have that direct monetary incentive, it would be very interesting to see how things would have been different with those guys.

Joe: Yeah. I agree. It's . . . Man, on the one hand, obviously, with what I'm doing now I'm trying to have a positive impact in terms of entertainment, I guess, or providing some type of . . . I'm not sure of the word I'm looking for right now. I've been awake for quite a long time. But I mean I can understand his viewpoint on just not wanting to make poker more popular or more . . . He thinks it's bad for people, basically. He thinks it's a bad lifestyle or a bad whatever. So I understand where he's coming from. You know, I understand why he might not want to bring more glamor to it than . . . That people want to see. Or something like that. So.

Chris: I can see that too. I mean I get a little bit depressed about it too sometimes when I play live poker. It can be a pretty, like, predatory way to make a living, and it's certainly not for the weak of heart or people who are interested in being healthy and balanced. Because it's very tough to do that. But I also think that it can be definitely a means for good and self-improvement. And I don't really have any moral qualms about poker as a way of making a living, but it's definitely a position that I wouldn't fight against. Does that make sense? I don't necessarily agree at this point, but I think it's a good point.

Joe: What was the first thing you just said right there? I was concentrating on something else you just said. The first thing you said was . . . Okay. It's very predatory. You said poker itself is very predatory. And that's one of the reasons why I started doing these. That's actually the biggest reason, is because I wanted to do something with my life that wasn't just me exploiting people or preying on weak players. And you know, it kind of gets draining on you after a while. If your only goal is to just fucking take advantage of others's weaknesses, that's not a very day-to-day enjoyable thing to have for years and years and years. So that was definitely a reason why I wanted to find something different in poker I could do where I could have a more . . . I mean now I'm just turning people into degenerate gamblers that maybe would have never played PLO. So in a way, I might actually be doing worse off than I could have been. But. Somebody says you look like Zlatan Ibrahimović, the soccer . . . The football player. Sorry, guys. I know we got a lot of Euros out there. Football player. Do you take that as a compliment?

Chris: That's awesome. I'm sure he does pretty well for himself, so I'll take that as a compliment. 

Joe: I'm pretty sure he's a crusher of women, so I think that's a good—

Chris: I think what you're doing is awesome. I mean you're giving a great outlet for people of all levels to learn more about poker, and I think you're giving great exposure to players who deserve to have their voice heard. It's . . . The ability to host something like this is pretty far out of the skillset of a traditional poker player. I know that a lot of my friends who have a podcast, it's an extreme amount of work and pretty limited direct financial return. So I'm all in favor of what you're doing. Obviously I'm pretty excited to be here.

Joe: Yeah, man. I agree. That was one of my initial goals. I wanted to . . . I thought PLO needed a . . . I thought it was dying down as far as the name players, or people you tune in for. The Sigmund, David Benyamine, The Durst, those guys weren't playing anymore. And then you have all these new guys that no one knows anything about, and I wanted to kind of showcase those people for people to learn more about. And you know, now there's someone like . . . You know Lefort? You know Sean Lefort?

Chris: Of him. I haven't met him.

Joe: So he's one person that before I really had him on, you know, no one really knew much about him. He had some videos on Run It Once, but outside of that he was pretty unknown. Once they got a chance to hear this motherfucking guy talk, they were like, "He's my new favorite poker player." Like he's the god of PLO, now. He's overtaken Alfani, in a way. So that's a cool thing to be able to help catapult people or just get them out there, meeting people or maybe they want to make an impact on someone positive in their own life, and, yeah, man. It's cool. What does HigherPrimates say? He says, "Do either of you guys own/invest in Bitcoins?" I don't, but do you? You probably do.

Chris: Bitcoin is still a pretty sore spot for me, because . . . So if you remember Seth, one of my roommates in the house, he was essentially spending like his entire waking hours reading about Bitcoin, to the point where I'm just like, "Just tell me a little bit more about what you're wasting your complete life on, just for my peace of mind." And he goes into a little diatribe, and it's like, "All right, that sounds kind of interesting. Like just put one percent of my net worth on that." Did I cut out?

Joe: Yeah, it's okay.

Chris: And then I'm like, "All right. If you're spending your entire life reading about this, it's got to be a little bit interesting. You're a pretty smart guy, I trust you. Put like one percent of my net worth in there as a long-term investment." And I completely forget about that. This is when Bitcoin is worth, like, three dollars. I just . . . Someone mentions Bitcoin to me one day, and it's like, "Oh, I wonder how much Bitcoin is worth. I'm going to go on there and check." It's like, "Oh, it's worth fifteen bucks." It's like, "Well, shit. You know, 5x return on my investment, I'm going to cash that out." I cash out every single cent. Whereas if I had kept those Bitcoins, I'd be rolling in the dough like DuckTales-style right now. If I had just either, one, been lazy and never ever checked it, or, two, been like, "Okay, I'm going to at least keep some of this in there because my original idea of keeping one percent, you know, just because I know Seth's smart," was good. But I was like, "All right, fuck it, I'm going to cash it all out." And that trade didn't work out too well for me.

Joe: So is that how Seth is still living this high-class lifestyle in Hollywood over there?

Chris: Yeah. I mean he's traveling around a lot to like conferences, but he's in LA right now. And he's still . . . I mean he wears a Bitcoin shirt every day. He's like their evangelist.

Joe: Seth, Seth, Seth, man. I enjoyed that guy. Weather Reg: "GoMuk, are you a fan of the book 4-hour Workweek? Have you read any other of Tim Ferriss's books?"

Chris: I'm a huge fan. I'm absolutely a huge fan. It really gets you thinking. That idea I had before about making a list of the things that you want to do and have so you can figure out how much money you need to make every month, I pretty much stole that directly from 4-hour Workweek. The idea essentially is work smarter and know what you're working towards, right? Not all work is created equal. So yeah, really kind of the turning point in my life, reading that, and it spawned a lot of lifestyle changes that I made after.

Joe: What was the biggest lifestyle change that you feel like you made directly from that?

Chris: The idea of comparative advantage. So in economics, they talk about, where you're better at doing something than someone else, and someone else is better at doing something than you, and you should let them do the thing that they're good at doing and just pay them to do it for you and stick to the things that you're best at. So trying to spend as much of my energy on the areas where I have the highest hourly or the highest return, whether that be happiness or productivity, whatever. And trying to outsource all the other stuff. So getting groceries delivered. Having a virtual assistant to take care of minutiae. Having a regular house cleaner to come by and take care of all that stuff. Just kinda getting rid of all the things that I either, one, don't enjoy doing, or two, am not good at. And diverting all that time and energy to things that I do enjoy doing and am good at.

Joe: I gotta read this book.

Chris: And that's a big way that he gets down to the proverbial four hours, is that he gets rid of all his other work.

Joe: I could definitely learn to do that. What is that . . . What are your other favorite books? Do you have any books that you'd recommend that are some of your favorites?

Chris: So many. I'm a huge reader now, and I think it's the biggest ROI activity you can do. Particularly non-fiction stuff. I recently . . . I can only think of ones that I recently read. One was Man's Search For Meaning, by a guy named Frankl about his time in the concentration camps, and essentially his takeaway from that is that, men can live forever as long as they have a reason to do so. So your whole quest and reason for living is to find what that reason is.

Joe: 1946, published?

Chris: Yeah. It's super old. But very, very good. I recently read Vagabonding, which is all about the art of long-term travel, and both the mindset and philosophy of what you should be thinking about and some practical tips to start doing so, if you're interested in the nomadic lifestyle. Which I am. So that one's really good. What else? My probably all-time favorite book would be a tie between Think And Grow Rich. Napoleon Hill. Which is basically he went around and interviewed the five hundred most successful people in the world and then wrote down what they all do. It'd be The Magic of Thinking Big. A guy, I think . . . I forget his first name. Last name is Schwarz. Essentially he's just like, "Stop wasting your fucking time with small things and think about the big." Like have big goals and dreams and aspirations. Like working on things that are going to be mentioned in your obituary, not that you'll forget about tomorrow.

Joe: I saw you post something on him on Facebook.

Chris: Yeah. It's something that I think a lot about, lately. And then number three is the all-time classic, but one I try to read once a year, it's . . . I'm going to get the name wrong. But it's How To Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie. And I—

Joe: That's the book in my . . . I'm reading it right now. That's the book I've been starting to read.

Chris: It's the handbook to having great relationships, and the key thing that he really hammers home is that everyone only gives a shit about themselves, so the best way to get people to care about you is to ask them questions and care about them. And yeah, that one's really good.

Joe: Well, how do you find that you read so many books? What's your strategy for reading? Do you take notes when you read them? Do you kind of try to read it fast? Do you take your time? Or what?

Chris: I haven't, but I am now. I usually . . . I try to just read fast, and then if something really catches my attention, I'll re-read it to try to reinforce it. What I'm doing now, this is a very recent, like last week thing, is any time I have a brilliant idea, which hopefully is often, I write it down. I pretty much went my entire life without writing anything unless it was a class assignment, and I found that writing things down really helps me create associations between things. So this weekend we were hanging around the woods, and literally any interesting thought I had, I wrote it down. And now I feel like I can just recall all those from memory, and I have this bank of interesting things I want to explore more. Whereas, like, yeah. A lot of things I've done, right, I couldn't tell you a single thing about them, because I never wrote them down. So definitely something I want to keep doing, moving forward.

Joe: Do you feel like writing them down is different than putting it in your phone as a note?

Chris: Yes. I mean the great thing about a phone is you can do it with one hand, and you're always carrying it around. The thing about writing is that you get that movement of your hand, too, so there's a little bit of muscle memory that's created.

Joe: So you mentioned that you have these ideas written down now. So what's your plan of attack . . . You know, how do you go from the ideas on this sheet of paper to actually doing these ideas or starting to learn to do them or trying them? You know, what's your . . . Do you have a process? Are you still kind of learning that right now, what the best way to go upon that is?

Chris: Yeah. That's the million-dollar question. Something that I found out really quickly in the startup world that's kind of a mantra is that ideas are worthless. Execution is priceless. So having . . . You hear all the time, your friends in a bar would be like, "Okay, okay, okay, I have this idea but you can't tell anyone, because someone is going to steal it and they're going to get a million dollars off it." I'm like, "First of all, one, your idea probably sucks, and two, even if it was good, if I could just take it and run with it and become a millionaire, it's probably not that hard to do, and someone's already way ahead of you on it."

So just the idea that like you need to just start. Like you were saying before, don't be aspirational, be . . . Have some action. So if you have this thing that's like, "All right, this might be interesting." What's the absolute first step there? So say like, "Oh, I think I might want to learn salsa." Well, instead of sitting around there, sign up for one class, and invest one hour of time, and after an hour of learning, you'll know whether it's something you want to pursue or something that was just a flash in the pan, worth exploring. But you'll never know unless you take that first step.

Joe: I think there's going to be a lot of people out there who are going to be able to hopefully take something away from some of the things you're saying, which I hope they're able to, because you know, I think there's a lot of people that you meet . . . I'm sure you're probably meeting a bit more motivated people right now, but I'm sure you encounter people who have a lot of hurdles in their life when it comes to trying to do new things or trying to get out of their situation, trying to better the situation they feel like they're stuck in, and you know, I think there's a lot of poker players out there who find themselves feeling like they're stuck in the situation they're in, whether that's what stakes they play or if they have a real job, and they might be playing live or online on the side, and they want to quit that job. So you know, hopefully maybe they'll take something away from this conversation. Obviously you've said a lot of great things about just in terms of how to get out there and how to potentially travel and escape the norm of a lifestyle kind of thing. 

Do you find that when you meet people now that are in a career, where they feel like they're going to probably be in that career for the next ten to fifteen plus years, do you feel like you look at them differently or do you feel like you have a . . . You know, I mean, do you feel like you can gain something out of that potential relationship with that person? It's . . . I can try to explain it a different way, but do you understand what I'm saying by that?

Chris: I think so, but I'll try to spin it in a way that's good. I think something I've been thinking about a lot in terms of my relationships and my interactions with people is being super present. So that for example, when I meet a new person, they're a potential new best friend or new dream wife. Right? And going into that interaction with that intention, that I'm going to try to get as much out of it as I can, and that this person has something interesting to offer. So if I meet someone, for example, and they're working in this IT job for the last fifty years and they've been living in the same city in Nebraska their entire life, I mean my usual reaction in the past would be to completely dismiss them as a waste of time, but now it's like, "Okay, this person has something that they can teach me, and my goal is to figure out what that is." So maybe they're an expert in something that's important to me, and I try to find that out and learn from them. And if they're not, then okay, I move on to someone else, because who you are is who you surround yourself with. But not immediately dismissing people.

I think particularly as poker players, we get in the habit of really thin-slicing people, where we meet someone and then five seconds after we're like, "Wow, that girl is so stupid," or like, "Wow, that guy's a douchebag." And trying to get past that, your initial impression, more towards who is this person really?

Joe: Definitely. That was me a couple years ago when I was in Spain. I had that epiphany when someone told me something, and I was like, "Wait a second." I was exactly like that. I . . . I don't know, man. I had such a bad outlook on life and about other people at that time, just because I felt like from poker, and then that's one of the biggest things I've worked on over these past couple years, is just kind of being able to look at everyone I meet open-minded and trying to look at them in a positive manner and then figure out, you know, as you said, "Can I learn something from this person? Could this person, could we be friends? Do we have something in common? What if we don't have something in common? Maybe I might learn something from them." I don't know, I just definitely go into interactions with people a lot more open-minded, and I'm sure obviously to be able to travel around the world and to be able to be happy or live comfortably or find new encounters, you have to be able to have that type of mindset really down pretty well.

Chris: Yeah. That being said, with not immediately dismissing people, you also need to be very intentional about the people you spend time with. So just thinking clearly about who do I want to be, and who has those traits that I want to have? And going out of your way to keep those relationships strong. Because there's a sort of limited number of next-level people in the world. Say the one percent, for lack of a better world. And those people are just leaps and bounds beyond other people, and they can be leaps and bounds for you in terms of your development if you can cultivate a relationship with them, and you can add value to them. But you have to be really active about finding these people and staying close with them. And that's been a big focus for me lately.

Joe: Trying to find these—however you want to classify them—type of people and then building relationships with them and kind of seeing what that leads to?

Chris: So, yeah. Have you ever met someone and you're just like, "Holy shit, this guy has his shit together." Like, "This is someone that I can really learn from." It doesn't happen that often, but when it does it leaves a really good impression, and I'm like, "Okay, I need to find some way to spend more time with this person. How can I do that?" And if they're a level beyond you, which some people are, they don't have time for you. Right? They're too busy. They have their choice, they could have anyone, so it's like, "Okay, what do I have that I could add value to this person?" You know, maybe they want to learn poker. For me, maybe they want to learn analytics for their business, and they're interested in travel, they want to hear about destinations. Everyone has something to offer. You're trying to have to think about like, "What do I have to offer that this person would be interested in?"

Joe: Kind of the idea of treating yourself as a . . . You've talked about this once, maybe. As a video-game character. A roleplaying character. You're trying to boost your exp levels in different categories to make yourself more, I guess, valuable or appealing to other people that exist out there in the world as well.

Chris: Yeah. If you think about it, you have a video game character, and when you start off your quest you can choose what your attributes are going to be, and so every time you have an interaction you can sort of stack yourself to maximize your chances of making it to the boss.

Joe: Exactly, man. It's a fun outlook that I know not many people out there have, but hopefully more people will have that one day, as they continue to grow here. Let me see. I got a couple more topics we'll talk about, then we'll wrap this up. Doot doot doo. What's your career achievement?

Chris: My what?

Joe: Your career achievement, so far. Your biggest accomplishment. Your thing you're most proud of. Which could be two different things, or the same thing.

Chris: I mean, I think in poker the hardest thing I did was being a consistent winner in those 25/50 6-Max games they were running on Stars. I mean, probably like the hardest games in the entire world to win in, and I did it pretty consistently. Which at the time seemed normal, but in hindsight it was pretty mindblowing, because people just literally . . . They probably don't still, but at the time they just did not make any mistakes. Whereas moving up, even regulars playing every day, you could see obvious mistakes they were making. I mean, these guys, for lack of a better word, played pretty perfect fundamentally, and really the only way to beat them was being one step ahead of them. Either you found out they had a certain tendency on a street that they weren't aware of and you could take advantage of that, or maybe they were a little bit too aggressive, a little bit too passive in one spot, but yeah. I think back, and it's like, "Holy shit, I was pretty good at poker when I played." And that's pretty cool to think back. 

I mean, professionally, I think going from limited or no value that I could add to a startup to leading marketing for a pretty quickly growing startup in a very competitive market was pretty good, and I was pretty happy about how fast I was able to grow. Because a big thing for me was I didn't even know whether I could hack it in the real world anymore. I thought that I had just completely fucked up my work ethic and my ability to learn things other than poker that had an immediate financial return, that I would just show up and completely get fired. That they realized, "This guy doesn't know what he's doing, he's lazy, he adds no value." Like, "We want him out of here." And to be able to exceed in that environment that was pretty unfamiliar I thought was pretty cool too.

Joe: Those are two awesome things, man. Great answer. Great answer. The answer, I know to this question . . . I have ideas, but I don't necessarily have something specific right now, and that is what I guess are your goals for these next two to three years? Do you have anything tangible? Is it kind of, get down to Argentina, kind of see what happens or see what comes up, or do you have something specific that you'd like to be at this area of life, or you'd like to get this done?

Chris: I don't necessarily have plans as much as . . . Sorry, I don't have goals as much as intentions. I intend to move down to Argentina and crush poker and go out and eat steak every day, and have a great time. But that could change between now and then. I mean, my only ongoing goal is just to live an interesting life, and to do things that I find fulfilling and cool. And in the meantime, plans get in the way of plans. I don't want to do anything that's going to necessarily lock me in. I want to maximize my serendipity. So I'm just trying to do as many cool and interesting things now while I still can, before something comes up. And two or three years just seems like an eternity away for me. I mean until I get to your age and I'm an old man, I can't even think about that.

Joe: Shit, man. Two or three years, you're going to be my age, now. How does that even feel? Oh my god, man. When I met you you were just a little kid, man. You were a little fucking, little guy. Just a little guy down here, man. "GoMuk, what's up. Nice to meet you my friend." Even though I thought you were always older than me. And debatably, you might act older than me. And you might look older than me too, actually. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see how this lasts in a couple years here. All right. Let's wrap this up. Chris, GoMuk, I very much appreciate you coming on. 

You've inspired me. I'm gonna go back and listen to this tomorrow again, because I feel like I'm gonna wake up more energized and more motivated than I might have normally woken up. And guys that came, checked it out live, I hope you guys enjoyed yourself. If you ever want to get in touch with Chris, if you wanna ask him any question, tell him that you love him or tell him that you enjoyed hearing what he said, what's your twitter? At what?

Chris: @SparksRemarks. I'll put it in the chat.

Joe: @SparksRemarks. All right. And then obviously me @Joeingram1. Future live streams coming up tomorrow. I'm doing one with Lodi, who is a longtime PLO reg, and this week, I think maybe Friday, I'm going to do one with King Dan, Dan Smith, who is one of the best tournament players in the whole entire world. Online and live.

Chris: Nice.

Joe: Yeah, it's going to be fun, man. Looks like a podcast week. We're going crazy with podcasts here. And I still got to put up my David Sklansky podcast out. I have not edited that, unfortunately. But that's coming soon. We'll be back for another livestream tomorrow with Freddy RNE. Chris, thank you, my friend. I wish you much luck in your future. I'm excited to follow along with what happens. Maybe I'll get up the courage to muster up a random trip down to Argentina and try not to get kidnapped. But—

Chris: I would absolutely love to have you down in Argentina. I think it would be a blast. Thank you so much for having me on. I mean this is amazing. I really enjoyed it. All you old school Full Ring guys who have been lurking there, get in touch with me. I'd love to talk. I haven't been as good with keeping in touch with all you guys as I'd like to be. And yeah, hopefully our paths cross again sometime soon. Thanks, Joey.

Joe: All right, bud. See you soon. Thanks, guys.

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