Ep 13: Algorithms & Aces: Mastering the games of Selling Through Game Theory & Poker Strategies with Randy Heeb

In this episode of the Best Sellers Podcast, host Doug Dvorak chats with Randy Heeb—a business consultant, professor, and pro poker player. They dive into how game theory and economics can shape business and sales strategies.

Randy shares stories and breaks down how poker tactics—like reading opponents, managing emotions, and adapting strategies—also apply to business. He also talks about the importance of spotting behavioral cues in both poker and negotiations. Plus, he gives book recommendations and insights into decision-making under pressure.

Episode Highlights:
00:00 Intro to Game Theory & Poker
00:49 Randy’s Background
02:50 Game Theory in Business & Sales
04:54 Poker & Game Theory Explained
14:03 Applying Poker Insights to Business
19:12 Mental Prep & Discipline in Poker
25:35 The Role of Tells in Poker
34:31 Online vs. Live Poker
36:20 Final Thoughts & Book Recs

Transcript

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When most of our listeners think of game theory, we think of PhDs like yourself in a room with a whiteboard or a chalkboard doing all the calculations. Poker is fascinating because it's a game of incomplete information. You don't know what your opponents have, you don't know what your opponents are thinking, what they know, and they don't know what you know. And so you have to infer that in order to play the game well. The first just very simple game theoretical approach. is to, you know, organize your, your thinking right down the game. And then Saul worked through the solution of the game. And just in that simple exercise of formally sitting down and thinking about the business activity that you're about to engage in, um, you get a lot of really important insights. Randy, when I was doing some research on you and your story, the professional career, both in. Academia and consulting and poker. I saw some images of you with sunglasses. I think a cowboy had a leather jacket that brings me when I watch poker on occasion, I see sunglasses and I see some, some really interesting outfits and characters. What's the deal with the sunglasses? Well, you can get towels from. You are listening to the best sellers podcast presented by Doug Dvorak, where the focus is elevating your sales boom. The best sellers podcast, your ultimate destination for winning sales strategies. Good day. Best seller podcast nation. Hi, this is Doug Dvorak, founder and managing. Principle of the sales coaching Institute, your host of the best sellers podcast, your ultimate destination for winning sales strategies. Our guest today is Randy Hieb, business consultant, professor and professional poker player and Randy welcome. But in fact, you've testified before a judge. citing 120 page research paper that poker is a game of skill, not luck. Randy has over 35 years of experience providing economic analysis in both the public and private sectors. His expertise includes antitrust analysis of tying and bundling, exclusive dealing and pricing strategies. Randy has held posts as an assistant professor of economics at inset and at the university of Chicago graduate school of business. He was a visiting professor at the European school of management and technology and a senior. faculty fellow at the Yale School of Management with a number of areas of focus, damages, estimation, econometrics, energy, market analysis, game theory. Welcome Randy. We're so excited to have you. Thanks for having me, Doug. My pleasure. Randy, with all that experience and that incredible pedigree, how does your experience as an economist and game theorist inform the world of business and sales? Uh, well, like you mentioned in the introduction, um, I used to be a business school professor, and I taught, uh, strategy and negotiation. And both of those, uh, elements of my academic career are in play. Now, I, I testify in court, um, often around, uh, business disputes, and I use, uh, both my insights from game theory on negotiation to analyze, uh, for example, uh, patent licensing, um, and the, the Uh, amount of royalties that the technology is worth or in analyzing an antitrust dispute where competition between businesses, um, can be analogized to competition, um, you know, in the abstract in game theory, which I also apply, uh, when I'm, when I'm playing poker and then I've ended up, uh, testifying in court. Because of this nexus of, uh, poker and, and game theory on questions, uh, related to how much skill, uh, there is in poker relative to chance. And that's been an issue, uh, when determining whether particular laws apply. to, for example, online poker. Um, it's been, I've testified in tax court, uh, with respect to, uh, whether or not the poker players are engaging in a professional activity, uh, with expectations of making a profit and things like that. So, um, that's the sort of, uh, mix of, of professional and personal interests that I bring, uh, with respect to game theory. That's excellent. You know, I think when most of our listeners think of game theory, we think of PhDs like yourself in a room with a whiteboard or a chalkboard doing all the calculations, or they think to a beautiful mind and, and Russell Crowe. Can you unpack a little bit about what game theory is and how that can impact business strategy and possibly sales? Sure. So, um, so game theory. Sort of narrowly construed John Nash, so the beautiful mind, um, uh, Nash basically was one of the early game theorists, uh, and wrote a very influential book, uh, with, uh, uh, Morgenstern, sorry, I'm going to blank on my, my academic references, but nonetheless, they wrote a very early treatise. on game theory, and interestingly, they analyzed poker, uh, as a classic example of, uh, application of game theory. And, uh, poker is really important and interesting in the evolution of game theory. You know, we've all followed, um, AI, these computerized, uh, game playing programs. Um, computer programmers have used games to hone, uh, their, programming of, of artificial intelligence from the very beginning, starting with, you know, a computer that played, uh, checkers, uh, eventually, um, You know, the, the, uh, computer that solved chess and basically was able to beat the best, uh, chess players in the world, Go, has been solved. Probably the most complex game. But all of those games are games of perfect information. Where you can see everything there is to see when you look at the board. Poker is fascinating because it's a game of incomplete information. You don't know what your opponents have. You don't know what your opponents are thinking, what they know. Um, and they don't know what you know. And so you have to infer that, uh, in order to play the game well. And only just very recently have, uh, computer programmers essentially solved no limit, uh, Multiplayer Hold'em, uh, which is, uh, basically the state of the art of artificial intelligence, uh, represented by the fact that now the, the, uh, best AI poker players can beat the best, uh, human players. Um, so what's, you know, really interesting about that is now we can sort of think about, you know, what are the insights we can deduce from, from game theory that are practically applicable. And there are a lot of them. Um, so, I, when I was teaching, um, I, I would teach sort of two different aspects of game theory, both of which we can talk about, um, through the course of our discussion. But the, the first just very simple, uh, game theoretical approach is to, you know, organize your, your thinking right down the game. And then Saul worked through the solution of the game. And just in that simple exercise of formally sitting down and thinking about the business activity that you're about to engage in, um, you get a lot of really important insights. So the first thing you have to do is, you know, who are the players? And so simple enough, right? I'm playing heads up poker with you. You know, Randy and Doug are the two players. Uh, fair enough. But when you start to then write down that decision making, you very quickly realize there's another player that is sort of not actually making decisions, but the dealer is randomizing and distributing cards to us. And you model the dealer as a player and you start to, you know, understand the interaction between the randomness. That's interesting. I've never heard that. You model the dealer as a player. I've played poker. I've played blackjack. Can you unpack that? That's really interesting. Well, you get the, um, the, when you're modeling, um, random events, the typical way to model them is to describe them as a player and then just limit the strategies or say that the strategies are random. And so the, the player, uh, distributes a particular card to a particular player. The dealer example isn't the best one, but if you have a random event, that can take you off course in a negotiation. You would formally model that as, as a decision point, but it's not a, a strategic player that's making the decision. It's the random, uh, uh, a random event. And so, the, um, this notion of sitting down and thinking about who the players are becomes really crucial. So another, I did an example, I used to teach an example where two firms would negotiate over a joint venture and It would become relatively immediately apparent or, or with, with enough analysis immediately apparent that issues around, you know, how to cite this JV. Implicate the government, they implicate the neighbors, they implicate, um, the voters, if you will, if this is an issue that's going to be, uh, of concern to the public. And so these are all constituencies that actually have actions that need to be modeled, that you can influence, you need to understand what they're thinking, and these are sort of all of the ways that formally modeling a game can help you out. Um, in, you know, with respect to sales, um, I'm often. Called upon to analyze what would be the outcome of a negotiation over, for example, patent royalties. And so I sit down and I formally model, you know, here are the negotiators on both sides of, of this transaction. Uh, the parties are gonna, uh, negotiate over a royalty for a patent license that one of them needs and the other has the, has the patent. Then you have to think about, again, how do they approach their decision? The first thing they need to know is what is it worth to them. So, in order to do that, they have to think about, well, what happens if I leave this negotiation without having successfully concluded the license? Um, what am I going to do? Um, is there another technology I could invest in instead? Um, is there a different product that doesn't require the patent? Um, and suppose there's another technology that's available that costs a million dollars. Um, so now I know I'm not going to pay more than a million dollars for this, in this negotiation. What do I hope to gain? How much do I expect to gain if I get the license, I'm able to sell my product? You know, I've got a forecast of the, for the sales. Um, so, you're not going to pay more, you're not going to pay more than a million dollars because you have another alternative. You then, you, you certainly don't, um, You want to pay as little as possible always, but you need to know how much your product is going to be worth if you, um, if you get the license and can sell that licensed product. And then, um, and then basically the other side does the same thing. They think about, um, how much do, can they, if they're going to give you an exclusive license, they can't sell it to somebody else? And they have to figure out what the market for the product is outside of this negotiation. Uh, think about other, uh, alternative uses that they have for the technology. And then that analysis of both sides, so the min, minimum and maximum, uh, certainly the minimum that each side hopes to get. And they both want to do as well as possible, then when they get together, the minimum for each side sets the boundary of how much will be paid, uh, for this license. And then again, you think about third parties, um, that you might not initially think there may not even be decision makers, but they're relevant here. So what are the competitors doing? You know, is, is this a product for which there's a lot of competition that's going to dissipate the profits if you enter the market? So you have to think about, you know, by the time you get to market with this product, is there going to be somebody else that has a competitor? as well, then it's going to be worth a lot less. So now you're going to, you've sort of broadened the game. You've looked beyond the two people that are negotiating right now at who else is going to interact with you, you know, over the, the, related to the value of what we're negotiating over. Um, so anyway, that's, that exercise in game theory, starting from the very basic, you know, first time you learn to, to write down a game, um, all the way through, you know, you get a PhD in game theory and you still learn something every day. No, that's awesome. To your point, you know, formally sit down, organize your thoughts, write down the game, write down the players. This is all part of the sales process in the qualification and discovery, understanding the client's business, who the decision making unit is, who the decision makers are. Some have more impact than others, but really a strategic plan on the game or the the opportunity pursuit. Randy, you taught at the Yale School of Business and you cited, uh, In the past few minutes, um, how you used poker, uh, to illustrate a variety of different business concepts. You, uh, taught along with, uh, Professor Barry Nailbuff and his book, A Coopetition. Anything you'd like to share with our listeners about that book, specifically as it relates to game theory, poker, or some s business or sales strategies? Sure, so, um, I, I really like that book because it's on one hand an introductory level book but it takes you immediately to some real business insights and it's written for, uh, business professionals, uh, professionals as well as, uh, MBA students but, um, and, uh, this, the, he breaks down game theory, um, and, and, Sort of gets past the formal aspects and the mathematical acts aspects and gets very quickly to the concepts that allow you to use the Techniques almost immediately and he starts out with a framework they call parts so first one is players and I described this, you know exercise of figuring out who the players are and A is value added, and you were just talking a minute ago, Doug, about, um, value added. And a big insight is that, you know, it's, it's not the total value of what something's worth. It's what you're adding to it by making a particular, uh, decision or, uh, particular choice as opposed to an alternative. And you need to think about what, how much value is added under, you know, course A or course B. Um, you know, with respect to, to the poker world. You know, it's sort of obvious that the money that's already in the pot, um, you've already, you've already exhausted. It's a prize that you can win at the end. Um, but it's only the incremental value that matters. You might have put. 100 into this pot already. But if you know, you've gotten new information that your chances of winning this pot are very small, you know, it's foolish to just keep putting good money after bad. But a lot of people fall So it's only the, the incremental value as adjusted as you get information over time that's relevant to your decision making. And so when you, you know, when you formally look at, at the game payoffs, you want to be thinking about, you know, what do you get out of it, not what you've put into it in the past. Um, you know, there's a fun example, um, Some game theorists studying taxi drivers were looking at their, um, at their, uh, decisions about whether to, to continue working or not. And, and lots of taxi drivers and lots of poker players and lots of salespeople, um, have like a target, how much money, how many sales do you need to make in a week? How much money do you make in a, in a session of poker? or in a session of driving the taxi. And, um, what they found was that all three of those, um, different types of professionals tended to make an irrational decision. So the poker players, I've seen this poker player that, you know, tries trying to earn 200 a night. Um, sits there and waits for hours and hours, you know, goes way past midnight and well into the morning, just trying to get to their daily target. Taxi drivers in this, uh, this economic study, um, were out there driving on a bad day. They would drive longer because they're trying to meet their target. Sales people, you know, putting a lot of effort in time in, um, even when it wasn't productive. And ironically, you should do just the opposite. You know, when the when the conditions are poor, you should go home, relax, you know, enjoy a day off. And when the conditions are ripe and and there's, you know, you're being successful, you should, you know, work harder and longer in those periods of time. Then you do the other times, but in fact, people have a tendency to do exactly the opposite. So when things are good, they hit their sort of mental target, and then they go home exactly when they're leaving money on the table. And then conversely, they were, um, you know, put an extra effort in when the, when it's less productive. You know, that's again, a, a, a sort of a, an exercise in making sure that you're understanding what's the value of your incremental effort at each point in time and reevaluate that regularly. Uh, so that, that when you've got, you know, you found a, uh, uh, uh, market that's, that's really untapped, you know, put all of your effort in there, really exploit that. And then when you find, you know, you're working in a, in an area that isn't successful, learn from that. And, you know, uh, readjust your strategy or at least reevaluate your strategy. Excellent. Randy, you've played in a number of, uh, world series of poker. tournaments as well as other poker tournaments. Can you walk us through and unpack sort of your preparation pre tournament research study? Do you just chill out? You know, take us through that mental preparation, uh, research study that, that your mindset and, you know, a day or two before that big, big tournament. Sure. Let me, let me set it back to a slightly different time scale. So when I was first learning, To play poker, I spent a lot of time worrying about, thinking about how to remain in emotional control throughout this, and poker, you know, sort of like standing guard during a war, it's like boredom, boredom, boredom, boredom, boredom, and then terror, and so you, you have, and you have to deal with that, and you have to deal with both sides of it, so you have to be mentally prepared, to be bored, to sit there, to be frustrated by the cards stealing you hand after hand that isn't playable or that, you know, that, uh, look promising but don't initially go anywhere. And then you've got to be ready when the big hand happens, when you've got a hand, when the big opportunity comes and when the big risk comes and suddenly you have to shift gears and your emotions take over and they can distract you from Making the best decisions. So a lot of preparation goes into being ready for both sides of that equation. Um, and a lot of it is just practice and some people are naturally better at it than others. Everybody can get better from practice. So when I was, you know, sort of early in my poker career, for example, if I ever got into a situation where I lost a big, had a pair of aces, expected to win, and lost a big hand. Um, I would literally just get up and walk away from, from the table for even, it turns out I could walk around the parking lot in the amount of time it takes to, uh, play just two hands. So, I only missed two hands, and I didn't make any mistakes in those two hands, other than I wasn't there to, you know, if it happened to have been a great one. Uh, but when I got back to the table, you know, emotional, um, equilibrium restored. After, you know, a lifetime of doing that, I can now react the same way if, if I have a bad hand. And so, you know, I can just take a deep breath and, and, you know, go on to the next hand. But you need to be able to do that and you need to be able to be self aware enough to know if you've somehow gotten out of equilibrium. Um, when I'm testifying in court, it's often very stressful and again, you know, I'm trying to maintain, uh, even keel at all times. And, you know, I have certain disciplines, sort of things that I do routinely to just sort of stay in a good mental place. Um, and part of that is, you know, just take a deep breath, look around, you know, if I'm in the courtroom, make eye contact with the judge, and then answer the question. That little ritual takes me out of any emotional distraction. Uh, that comes from a stressful situation, you know, and the same thing in poker, um, You know, if I observe, if something's happened to me that I think is emotional, I go through my little ritual of just looking around the table. There was a really interesting episode, actually, at this year's World Series of Poker, in the main event, at the final table. Um, anybody in your audience that is a poker player has heard about this. But, um, there was a big controversy because at the final table, um, one of the players, who went on to win, uh, the event, um, Um, was going to the rail to the, to the edge of the, the public seating and talking to his friends and they had a computer and they were doing something discussing over the computer and um, there were a lot, a lot of back and forth was there cheating involved, was there, you know, all sorts of, of questions and there's some interesting answers and questions, but um, from what I could see as I look at it, there wasn't What some people thought that the computer was somehow giving him inside information with respect to any particular hand because he only did this between hands. And there was a delay in the broadcast such that, um, you know, the most recent information of a current hand wouldn't have been available even to somebody online. Um, but what I think actually he was doing, and like I said, he went on to win. Um, was the mental discipline of getting up and going to the sideline and what they were probably doing was updating the analysis of the probability that each player had of, of winning or of achieving, you know, in that tournament, the final table, you make more and more money, the more other people are eliminated. So how many chips somebody else has actually influences your probability of winning quite a lot. So if somebody, if they all have the same number of chips, they all have the same probability of winning, they're all the same skill. But the, the probability of getting, say, one more step higher changes a lot if one of those players, say, has just one poker chip left and will have to play, you know, the next hand. And so, if somebody is going to have to play the next hand, there's a high probability they're going to get eliminated on the next hand and everybody else is going to make more money. Right. So that was what I think was really going on is they were updating, you know, what were his prospects at each hand, which I try to do every hand as I'm sitting at the poker tables, one of those rituals to calm myself down, but also to know the latest information. But by getting up and going to the rail, he was disciplining himself to To think about the things that are important and not about the hand he just lost. Or the excitement of being, you know, there in the moment. So anyway, it's, it's um, Yes, staying in your game, uh, is crucial, no matter what your game is. Randy, when I was doing some research on you and, and your storied, uh, professional career both in academia and consulting and poker, I saw some images of you with sunglasses, I think a cowboy hat, a leather jacket. That brings me, when I watch poker on occasion, I see sunglasses and I see some, some really interesting outfits and characters. What's the deal with, uh, the sunglasses? Um, well, you can get tells from, um, What's a tell? Would you share with our audience what a tell is? A tell is, is something that somebody does that gives you some insight into either what their hand is or what they're thinking about. So, a tell, um, the most common tell, the easiest tell is, um, heartbeat. So it's very difficult, you know, unless you're like a yogi to, um, control your, your heartbeat and people when they're excited, um, their, their heart pounds both harder and faster and you can see that. And so people and I wear, um, a collared shirt like this. Um, Most of the time, um, and a lot of the younger players, I'm not comfortable in a hoodie, but lots of them wear hoodies, and a lot of that is to cover up their, um, their pulse, their breathing rate, you can see somebody's heart rate pounding in their chest, um, you can see which way people look, in principle, in theory, people's eyes dilate when they see things they like, I've never actually been able to see anything like that, but you can see, you know, small muscle changes in the muscles around the eyes and are you looking for those subtle tells when you're playing at a big game? Really? All the time. And in fact, it's interesting because of these advances in the strategy. Um, more and more players are making better and better decisions and it's less There's, in my mind, it actually increases this element, this, this sort of recognizing what someone, uh, how they're behaving because they're much more likely to, to have learned through practice what the best bets are and strategic moves are, uh, but it's, they're all human and even the best players in the world don't want to lose and that fear of losing and excitement about winning Um, is there for everybody, and the best players learn to control that. Uh, but, there's a, actually there's a famous, not a famous story, it's famous to me. Uh, there's a story that Barry Nailoff put in one of his, uh, business strategy books that I told him about. Um, I was playing poker, uh, heads up with a guy named Amarillo Slim, who was one of the old school, famous, uh, poker players. And, um, We were playing in, in Europe in a heads up, uh, poker tournament, uh, with a pretty significant buy in. I think there was like 10, 000 a piece. Everybody put in, I think, 10, 000. Um, and Slim was always talking, and just a non stop and very interesting, gregarious guy. And, um, at one moment, then I won't tell the whole story, but the, the, the key was I had a pretty good hand, but I was afraid of his hand. And so I decided that, um, if, if an ace came on the board, um, I thought he had an ace and I was going to fold. And he was rab, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. And then the card comes and I look at it and I realized not only has the card that I told myself I was going to fold come up on the board, but I had a pretty good hand. But I realized I gave it away with the way I looked at it, and I could feel myself being disappointed when it happened. And then I noticed that Slim had stopped talking. And he was watching me. And then as soon as, as he saw me react with disappointment, he started talking again. Interesting. And so I called him and I won because I, right, so he got a tell on me because I was disappointed and I showed it. But he gave me a towel. by letting me notice that he saw my disappointment and then reacted, um, to my disappointment. So I knew that he needed my disappointment in order to want to expect to win, uh, that he didn't in fact have the ace that I was afraid of. So anyway, you can get tells, you do get tells, and you can get tells, I mean, we all get tells all the time, right? People learn from, The cues in conversation when somebody's excited when they're bored, you know, you're dating when they whether they like you or they don't So we're all we're designed to notice those tells but we mostly notice them subconsciously but if you you know practice and pay attention you get a lot of tells and And they're useful in all sorts of things not just negotiations or poker games, but you know to help you understand if somebody is, um, comfortable in the position they're in, and if they're a subordinate you can recognize you need to give them more emotional support and reassurance. Um, you know, if, if they're, uh, confident, um, you know, you can exploit that if they're gonna be overconfident, if they're your adversary. Um, or, you know, you can, you can help guide them if, if, you know, there's somebody that's working with you. You can help guide them to, to, um, make decisions that aren't, Just driven by emotions. Excellent. You know, in, in sports, specifically football, coaches, players, view tapes, video. Do any of the professional poker players, as part of their preparation, view tournaments on people that will be competitors in an upcoming game? For tells, style? Yeah, they definitely do. And, and also they just, they, they, they watch a lot of, of poker videos and they study, um, poker games and other poker simulations that tell you, and this is back to the, the learning to play so called optimally. It, which is the equilibrium best strategy. Um, they spent a lot of time studying. And in fact, it's it's difficult for somebody like me to keep up because I have a day job. Um, so, you know, I recognize the players are much better than they were when I was playing more often. Although, you know, I played in last year's from this year's World Series. The best players now are studying constantly. They're very, um, they're, they're, tremendously skilled, but they also practice, um, not showing emotion and, and they, they talk with each other about talking through hands to help understand what the best strategies are. They can use computer simulation, um, to get what the, you know, sort of computer view on what's the right strategy. So yeah, there's a lot of analytics, uh, involved in poker. There's less Um, studying, um, of players, except in, in situations like, you know, at the multi day main event, um, you'll have the, whatever, uh, TV tapes were available from the, of other players, and you'll, you will maybe get some tendencies, or maybe some tells, although at that level the people aren't giving very many tells, but like I said, everybody gives some tells, you can't, nobody plays, You know, like a perfect robot. Um, so definitely you can study, you can learn from what they're doing. The other thing you can do though is you can, there's sort of a tell, that's not a tell about what they have in this hand, but poker players will consciously, um, shift into a more and more aggressive strategy as it's optimal to do so during the game. But again, they have to recognize when it's optimal to, to become more aggressive. And, um, That's a decision that they've made. Again, because they're human, when they make that decision that they're going to be a little more aggressive, you'll start to see different aspects of the way they present themselves that you can interpret as being, okay, they've decided to be more aggressive. You keep track of how often they play, but that could be affected by the randomness of the cards. But, you know, somebody who's playing 30 percent of the time is suddenly playing 50 percent of the time. Um, could be that they've gotten just a, a run of good cards, but could also be that they've shifted into a more aggressive mindset. Interesting. Randy, can you, uh, give us your opinion on where are the odds better, online or a live table? That's a really interesting, uh, question. So, one issue about online is the concern that players are using, um, computers to assist. Or even that, that you could be playing against bots instead of, uh, of people. Going back, when I think that was not an issue, right? Because it's only very recently that, that computers have been able to compete against the best players. So, this was never an issue before. And, uh, before it's a lot easier to stay in, you know, a comfortable place, a mentally sound place when you're, you know, sitting in your living room, you know, in a comfortable chair. The physical reality of playing online, or playing in person, um, you know, is a real factor. And you need to stay, you know, poker tournament, main event, uh, players go from about noon to about two o'clock or one o'clock in the morning. It's, uh, not continuously there, you know, there are breaks every two hours for a few, for a few, for twenty minutes and then, you know, a dinner break. But, um, It's grueling, physically demanding, people that know to get up and move around do better than people that sit in a chair for, for 12 hours. So there's a lot of physical aspects to that game, um, but the in person game also gives you this, the ability to read players, gives you the question of being able to pay attention without, uh, the aids that you might have playing online. So if you're better at those things, then you're better off, uh, playing in person. Excellent. Randy, this has been a fascinating, uh, discussion about game theory, business, economics, um, sort of the, the, behind the, the curtain of a professional poker player. Any other, uh, ideas as it relates to game theory, and or poker that you'd like to share as we close our segment? Sure, I was gonna tell you one more, um, little insight that I think might be relevant, uh, For, for sales as well. There's a difference between, uh, playing in a cash game and playing in a tournament that is related to the payout structure. In a cash game, every hand, you win or lose, that money is yours, you can get up and leave and, and keep it, so every hand Sort of has the same value. There are differences related to, you know, if the players that you're playing against are weaker Or somebody's on tilt or playing badly for any other reason, you know, that's an opportunity to Do better make more money? in a cash game and so you can recognize those differences, but there's a fundamental difference between a Tournament and a cash game and that is that the tournament puts Most of the money on the, at the, to just the winner. So, literally in the main event, there's, there's, um, 10, 000 people playing in this tournament, approximately. And, um, the winner is going to get 7 percent of all the money. And the final table is going to get, I think, half of the money. And so, or on that order anyway. So, getting, you know, to these very, uh, rarefied, levels in a tournament, that's where all the money is. And that's a big insight that comes up all the time in the real world in all sorts of situations. That, um, you know, if you need to win, and that second, you know, in the extreme, if it's a winner take all, um, second place is the same as last place, and the only thing that matters is getting first. So your strategy has to be changed to maximize your probability of getting, of winning. You know, a tournament with many, many players as opposed to just maximizing your value on any given hand and a lot of, um, incentive structures, you know, for salespeople and also in, you know, in business when often, you know, it's the big success that is worth so much and modest levels of success, you know, maybe just barely better than not playing. Um, and so when you're in those kinds of situations, You need to adjust your strategy. First of all, you need to be Your trade off between variance and expectation changes fundamentally, right? In a, in a cash game, you just want to maximize the, the probability of, of earning your, your expected value of each hand and your, and play each hand for its, uh, maximum value. But in a tournament, you need to play for the expected value of, of going to the end, of lasting and maximizing your chance of winning, so you're going to be, um, much more risk seeking. Much less risk averse. The tradeoff between expectation and variance. Um, you know, normally you want to maximize your expectation conditional on your variance. Um, and, you know, if you can hold the expectation the same, you want to minimize the variance. Um, ironically, in a tournament, conditional on expectation, you want to be risk seeking. So if you could gamble more, if you will, without sacrificing the expectation, you should do that. So you take more, um, flush draws to be, you know, concrete in a poker tournament context. You'll, you'll accept more flush draws. You should still only take them if they're odds on bets. But you should be more willing to take more risk the more the payouts are, are weighted. That's true for salespeople, that's true for business strategists, uh, certainly true for poker players. Interesting. Randy, you had recommended, uh, incited, uh, Barry Nailbuff's competition book. Any other books on game theory, um, poker strategy you'd recommend for our listeners? Barry Nailbuff has written a number of different, uh, strategy books. He writes them for a business audience, but with, um, really interesting and deep, uh, game theoretical insights. And he has two or three books, um, all of which I would recommend. Thinking Strategically, um, and Coopetition are my favorites. I, I mostly read poker books for the enjoyment as opposed to the, the strategy. Um, but, you know, I, I enjoy a good poker story. I'll put in a, uh, a plug for a friend of mine who plays, uh, in my home game, uh, is a, uh, mystery. Uh, author, uh, named, uh, Jane Hitchcock, and she wrote a book called Bluff that, uh, there's another book called Bluff, which I've also, um, uh, read good reviews on, but in any way, in any case, Jane wrote a, uh, mystery, I guess it's a murder mystery, uh, mystery novel, uh, that centers around poker, and the, some of the players might be recognizable as well in that, in that, so that's a fun book. Excellent. Well, our guest has been Randy Hebe, economist, business strategist, teacher, as well as professional poker player. Great insight, Randy. I love the, the, the nail buff, uh, parts model. I love, uh, your early podcast about, you know, when market conditions aren't right, you know, Wait to get into that zone. And then when the market is optimized, spend more time, don't get burnout, take care of yourself, work life balance. It's been fascinating. Thank you. Uh, best sellers podcast nation for listening. Check us out at salescoach. us forward slash podcast. Carpe diem. If you made it all the way here, thank you for listening to the best sellers podcast, your ultimate destination for winning sales strategy. We hope you loved this episode. Be sure to subscribe to us on YouTube and follow us on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode. See you on the next one.