Michael Craig - The Professor, The Banker, and the Suicide King

30:06And around 1970, he moved to Las Vegas. And this was more than a decade after a friend of his, Benny Binion, had moved to Vegas and started Binion's Horseshoe. Brunson came to Vegas because, you know, he was starting to have difficulties as a high-profile gambler. Sure. Not in Vegas. And so— To find a game. Yeah. I mean, the story with both those guys that I hear in various forms is they got sentenced by judges to move to Vegas because, you know, they were running afoul of the law. And they both ended up making their way out to Las Vegas because it was legal there. And Brunson became a big sports bettor and he was a big poker player and supposedly made and lost several fortunes and was during the 70s considered the best of the high stakes players.

31:14And really before then as well. and his contemporaries had long passed away or as they got older, became mediocre players. He was playing pretty high stakes until the very end of his life. And I think you talk about where they thought he had Alzheimer's and I think you even commented that he had trouble, maybe, was it recognized you or recognized someone else? And then he goes in and wins a massive game a day later. Yeah, oh, this was remarkable. When I was working on the book, actually, Doyle helped put me in touch with Andy Beal. And Doyle was also helpful in getting me in touch with some of the other players in the game.

32:02And it's kind of like, you know, Doyle was like a calling card. If I was talking to somebody I didn't know and I said, I'm working on this book. And they said, I don't know. I don't really want to have anything to do with any book. And I said, well, Doyle's helping me on it. That was your goodwill. Yeah. So that was my calling card. Doyle was helpful to me, and I saw him at several tournaments over the course of the summer in, I think this is 2003, although it might have been 2004. And we would always – I interviewed him a couple times, and a few times we just kind of like – So I would just see him in the hallway and say hello.

32:44And one of the times before a tournament in Los Angeles, I forget if it was the Bicycle Club or the Commerce, but it was a World Poker Tour event. I saw him and I said, Doyle, I had a few follow-up questions I wanted to ask you. Is there a time this weekend when you're not playing, when I could just have a few minutes of your time? and he kind of looked at me like he wasn't exactly sure what I was talking about. And he says, you're writing a book? I said, yeah, the Andy Beal game. Remember, you introduced me to Andy Beal. And he said, oh, I don't want anything to do with that. That's just going to be everybody talking about how we all cheated him or how we're all a bunch of crooks or something like that.

33:31I'm not having anything to do with that. And he was up to that moment and after that moment always super friendly with me. But I thought, oh, my gosh, here he's playing in this World Poker Tour event, and they're playing these high-stakes games at night. And this guy's just completely lost his mind. Well, he ended up winning that World Poker Tour event that weekend. Well, by the way, there's a fine line. We've now learned there is a fine line. Between genius and insanity. Yeah, well, when I started playing in World Series events, I sat at a table several times with Doyle during events. And we were playing this one event.

34:06It started, they have events that start at noon, then they have ones that start at 5 p.m. And the ones that start at 5 p.m. tend to either be the higher buy-ins or the ones that are other than No Limit Hold 'em. And so I think this was a horse. I forgot if it was horse or stud high-low. But it started at 5 p.m. And they had a dinner break like at 7. And then it went until 3 a.m. And so we just started playing. And then there's a dinner break. And we get back from the dinner break. And Doyle's grumbling. And he says, I don't know. I don't know why. We play for 45 minutes and we have a dinner break.

34:47Now I spent a half an hour eating. I feel like I just want to go to sleep now and it's just kind of good natured grumbling but he's grumbling complaining anybody will listen and he starts yawning and you know how yawns are contagious and so at our table everybody's getting tired he cleaned up for the next three hours maybe it was a coincidence but I think he planted the seed that way. Yeah. He was, he was, he was crafty. So, so, so Doyle helped kind of get the cartel together and Beal shows up three weeks later. This time there's a wait list. Johnny Chan, Barry Greenstein and others are there.

35:36Teach our listeners about Barry as a picture of the intelligence that's floating around in these high stakes games. Okay. Well, the, well, the, The first time Beal had played, and I apologize because I don't remember. It's like I know that book like the back of my hand, but I don't know the back of my hand so well anymore. I don't recall whether Andy played some in the 1000-2000 game during his first time out after Mike Lang introduced him to some of the high-stakes players or whether he came back and with the expectation that he was coming back. That's when they played the game. But yeah, there was, as I mentioned before, when he first started playing, it was a ring game.

36:19It was eight or nine seats, and all the seats were taken. And all the seats were taken at the next game at half stakes, waiting for one of these seats to come open. And Beal actually won in this game, but it was boring to him. Yeah. And, you know, and, you know, and also he, you know, he had a, you know, a dose of skepticism, like, you know, these guys all know each other very well. Are they up against me? Yeah. And so, you know, the so the combination of being able to get into a game where he could play every hand, you know, like heads up and where he didn't have to worry about some possibility that, you know, that these guys who were experts were trading some sort of signals or something like that.

37:12that he wanted to play heads up. And then that was, he had talked, I think, with Doyle about it. Or it might have been Chip Reese. Andy was, it's like the two biggest names in Las Vegas in poker, in poker history then and to some degree now. You know, or Ted, I'm sorry, Chip Reese and Doyle Brunson. And while Andy played a lot of high stakes players and had some great matches with them, to him, it was always like, you know, get me to that. Yeah. I got to play Chip Reese. I got to play Doyle Brunson. You know, he's a little bit of a fan that way. And so he had gotten it worked out with Chip Reese where he was going to come and they were going to play heads up at the Bellagio.

38:08And to keep other people from playing in the game, and this is one of the reasons that the group was formed, is that so that people wouldn't flood the game. because, and I understand it might be a little bit different in Las Vegas now, but back then the ethic was, you know, if the game's open to the public, anybody can play. Now, obviously, if it's, you know, if it's, you know, a$10 ,000,$20 ,000 no-limit hold 'em game. There's certain people that won't want to play. Right, yeah. You know, you and I aren't going to walk into that game. Yeah, we're not going to be like, hey, I want to lose, you know, a good$500 ,000 cold.

38:44Right, but the point is, is that while that was higher than anybody who was playing at the time, they couldn't really assure that somebody wouldn't come into the game. So what happened is a group of players, about eight players, pooled their money together and they decided they would take turns playing him. They didn't formally decide they were freeze outs. The point is if you were winning or losing you could quit at any time. But the idea was that more or less they would play until one of them. But they'd be fresh all the time. Well, I wouldn't say that. well here's the other thing too is like I thought because I thought about how he changes poker playing so he plays this you know format to your point and then he goes home and you talked about how he was trying to think about okay how am I going to so you know read a lot of poker books on playing shorter hand but then he went out and this I thought it was really interesting you talk about in your book questions so he went out and had he wrote his own poker program in basic I thought this was great so he asked some certain questions because again he's trying to ask like how can I get an edge or continue to give myself an edge right so here are the questions he asks what is the lowest high card you can have in your hand expect to win more than half the time regardless of second hand second card pardon me what is the unpaired unsuited hand with the lowest high card that could win more than half that time um because again you think about like an like a 10-handed game is a vastly different game than a three or four-handed game uh the other questions he asks is what is the lowest suited hand that would win more than half the time.

40:16Fourth was what are the highest suited hands that would win, not win half the time. And lastly, what are the worst hands that would win more than half the time? So just asking yourselves, what is likely to win that you wouldn't normally play in a 10 handed game, but in a shorthand situation, you need to know the odds of winning. Where's their value? Yeah. And so like, again, I was like, that's what I got done with your book. I was like, oh, King Deuce offsuit. I would, I would never like, if we're playing typically games, Ten-handed, you never touch it. Three-handed, you got a majority winner.

40:47Yeah. Yeah. I mentioned before we started, I'm not playing for real money these days, mostly because I'm too lazy to leave my house to go to a casino and I can play online. He's not there yet. I'm just teasing, right? Because you played last night. I thought, gosh, if I'm going to talk about this book and talk with you, I need to be reminded of what this is like. We hope you're enjoying the podcast. You know, we work hard putting together this show, but we work even harder for our investors at Smead Capital Management. At Smead, we believe in disciplined investing, which is why the Smead funds have a proven track record of long-term outperformance.

41:29If you're an investor who fears stock market failure, like I do, and want to invest in wonderful companies to build wealth, we invite you to visit SmeadCap.com. Past performance is not indicative of future results. investing involves risks including loss of principle please refer to the perspectives for important information about the investment company including objectives risks charges and expenses read and consider it carefully before investing smeed funds distributed by umb distribution services llc not affiliated your book has a lot of touches of an era of an american history okay um think of what we talked about in the chronology of poker and gambling that's that is its own history.

42:10Yes. Secondly, you start, you know, this is starting in early 01. And obviously, by September 11th of 2001, the world was changing quickly. So Beale is coming back later in 01. 9-11 attacks had happened. What was the mood and the atmosphere in a place like Vegas? It was, you know, it was gloomy. I mean, you know, you know, the, I guess, you know, more recently, you could, you know, you could analogize it a little bit to, to the pandemic that the, it's like, you know, you know, no one's going to want to go there anymore. Nobody's going to, you know, you know, Vegas is dead either because people didn't want to fly or because Las Vegas would be such an obvious target, you know, for terrorists.

42:53And so, you know, you know, and, you know, of course the economy, you know, with all the uncertainty at that time, you know, was also hurt. And so the, you know, the pros in Vegas were, you know, they're pretty much like shuffling their money among each other. Well, yeah, all the suckers are not showing up. Right. And I, you know, and I don't think of this so much is that these guys are teamed, you know, that it's the pros against the suckers. And if you're unlucky enough to be the sucker, then you don't have a chance because the pros are ganked up on you. It's just that, you know, if you, you know, if you've got to, you know, if you're a pro player and you've got to, you know, and you're in a game and there's like three of the best players in the world, but then there are two players that are just, you know, like big money tourists.

43:41Yeah. You know, that's a good game for you. That doesn't mean you're not going to be in hands with the top players that are in the game, but the, you know, your positive value is greater. And these players are all very proud. I remember talking with Eric Drake, who was the longtime manager of the poker room at the Mirage in the early days and director of the World Series of Poker back in the 70s. and he said that, you know, if you ask, if you get eight players in a game, a high stakes game, and you ask them all what their edge, you know, like what they think their edge is, they all think they're 50 % likely to win.

44:29Yeah. And so the, you know, it just, you know, it's a much easier living, you know, like, I mean, they'll play against each other and they think they're all better than each other. But, you know, you toss in a couple people that, that are just like high stakes gamblers that enjoy poker a little bit, that changes the equation quite a bit. And so it makes the games much better. So the games in Las Vegas were terrible. There's like no chance to win a whole bunch of money off somebody. Yeah, well, you're going to take it from one of your longtime professional colleagues. Do you want to jump to the Johnny Moss?

45:10Because I love this one. Yeah, a lot of this book is about risk. which, again, we like positive summaries, but can you tell our listeners the story of what the late Johnny Moss told his wife one time? About the house? Oh, yeah. Oh, yes, of course. I apologize. I'm thinking about the one where they got married, and on his honeymoon, he went somewhere where there was a poker game, and she was sitting next to him, and she was holding his hand, and she noticed he wasn't doing so well in the game. And at one point, he started tugging at her hand. He was trying to take her wedding ring off. I was thinking of that story.

45:53I don't think that one's in the book. But Moss had a big win or a series of big wins. And he had won a significant amount in a short time and went back home to, I believe it was Odessa, Texas, which is where his wife lived and said, you know, I want you to take this money. And again, I don't know if it was$50 ,000 or$75 ,000 or$150 ,000, but we're talking about like— Good sum of money. And it's in like the late 40s or something like that. So, you know, you could buy a nice house for a lot different amount than you can now. But he said, you know, I'm going up and down in money. I can't promise you we'll ever have money or not have money, but take this money and buy a nice house and that'll be yours.

46:47And then no matter what happens with me, you'll always have this house. And so he gave her the money, you know, like in cash, like in a bag. And she said, you know i don't i don't feel comfortable carrying this money around uh i'll uh you know let me go look around for a house and then i'll uh come back to you and so so she went with a friend and they just had a blast because uh you know she didn't come from money yeah it's first world living she's doing yeah and yeah and and you know and he you know was making money but you know a lot most of it was going back into poker comes and goes this this was this you know this was like Like, you know, this is like baby's day out.

47:29I mean, she's going and looking at houses and, you know, like everything's in their price range based on the amount of money she has. And she spent like a week or so touring all the houses in the area. And she finally, you know, she finally picked out the one that she wanted. And she said to John, can you give me the money? And John said, it's not around anymore. Yeah, it's not longer there. So let's keep on going on that with these people because, I mean, these people just love taking risk. I mean, there's something about it that really drives them. So you talk a lot about the person. Like there's these side bets.

48:02I love these side bets. These are all just great. So can you explain like Huck Seed and Howard Letters' personal side bets they made with each other, for example? Yeah. Well, you know, Ted Forrest was involved in a lot of these and John Hannigan. And there was one of the bets. I don't think this one made it in the book because I was told about it later on. But Huckseed and Ted Forrest were working out a proposition bet where for a million dollars, Huckseed would live in a closet in Ted Forrest's house for a year. And they got close to doing it. But eventually, you know, and Huck was ready. You know, he was ready to live in a closet for a year.

48:50Pretty tall, wasn't he? What? He was pretty tall, wasn't he? Yeah, he was like 6 '7". It's got to be a sizable closet. Yeah. Well, Ted had a nice house at the time, so it probably was. But, you know, what happened is that Ted decided he didn't want Huck living in his closet for a year. So he ended up not doing it. But, I mean, there was a version of that bet that a number of guys were involved in. and this is one, this has even happened in more recent years, where guys would bet whether, you know, whether you could live in a bathroom for a month. Or like Ted Forrest, like what was a Ted Forrest bet was like to run a marathon with someone and then like he runs it in the dead of like a Nevada summer at the UNLV track and he almost kills himself.

49:38Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He told me that story, and I reminded him of it a couple years later. And he said, oh, yeah, that's a time when my then-girlfriend tried to kill me. Because what happened is she was supposed to meet them there with water. Yeah. She never shows. She never woke up. And so they ended up, there was some guy who was walking by, and they ended up, like, you know, bribing him to bring them water. but they didn't get nearly enough water. That happened. The bathroom one was, and I think this was done more recently, where a couple of guys rented a room at the Bellagio for a month and then one of the guys lived in the bathroom of this room for a month for, I think it was$300 ,000 or something like that.

50:35But the original version of it, which wasn't in Las Vegas and it was older, it was like for$25 ,000. And the guy whose apartment it was, who was betting, was trying to influence the outcome to get the guy who was betting, who was living in the bathroom, out. He was bringing people by to use the toilet in the room. The other really famous bet, and we'll jump to another question here, but you talked about Howard Letterer. He's like a vegetarian. Yeah. And so there's this bet that he won't eat a burger. Yes. Right? And I can't remember what he got paid, but he said during the book, you write about it.

51:20He says, order the burger. He eats the burger, and they're expecting he won't be able to take it in. His body will give it up. And in my mind, I'm thinking, Letterer's mind is saying, I hate the burger, but I love caffeine. The money. Yeah, I love the money. Hopefully it was in and out because that's pretty close to the strip there. It was David Gray who was a regular high stakes gambler, poker player in Las Vegas and a good friend of letterers. And it was just one of these idle things because they had food service at the tables. The poker director would call somebody from one of the restaurants to bring menus to the table and they would order and the food would be brought over.

52:02and uh gray said uh you know i'll you know i'll bet you know i'll bet you won't eat a cheeseburger for ten thousand dollars and and howard says i don't want to eat a cheeseburger but so i don't want to bet you but uh you know if you're saying you're going to give me ten thousand dollars to watch me eat a cheeseburger i'll take it and so david said let's order it and and so they ordered it. And Howard said, you know, you don't have to go through with this. This isn't a two-way bat. They thought he'd get a couple bites into it and bail. Right. But, you know, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't strictly speaking a bat.

52:41It was, you know, it was David paying to watch Howard eat it. And he was hoping that Howard gets sick. Not because that would somehow invalidate the bat, but just because that was, to him, that was winning. So let's jump to Lyle. Let's jump to the question on Lyle right below because I think that's the, he was super important. Okay. So how fundamental was Lyle Berman to the transformation? And explain how these poker kings and queens turned into stars. Well, Lyle Berman was a longtime player in the World Series and a high-stakes poker player. He was, I believe, he started a leather store that swept malls across the country.

53:29It was like a reasonably priced leather store, and he had hundreds of locations, and he had sold it. And so he was a high-stakes amateur, but considered a very good player. I mean, one of the things is that if you play against the best players in the world and you show up pretty often, you're going to become pretty good. So even if we talk about, oh, this guy was no good. He was donating to the games. The point is that these guys who like to play the best players in the world, they recognize that they're not necessarily getting the best of it. that if they moved down a couple levels, they would clean up on everybody else.

54:13And I think the common understanding when the top players talk about, you know, somebody who's like an amateur who joins their game, you know, oh, this guy stinks. That means he's really a bad player. He's actually better than everybody except for the people he's playing against. Except for the best. Larry Flint, the late Larry Flint, was like that. who was an outstanding seven-card stud player, but he only wanted to play against people like the caliber of Ted Forrest. Yeah, that way he said, who did I lose? So I lost the best players in the world. Which means he was an excitement junkie is really what that amounts to.

54:51So we're going to jump ahead. Doyle's son, Todd, who himself was a well-respected professional, busted Andy up pretty well, as did Jennifer Harmon, Kind of interesting, brings back to watching this stuff on TV. In the spring of 2003, teach us about Todd's background. I happen to work with my son. Was Todd's success foreknown? Not really. I mean, it's possible that, you know, I mean, I've got the story from the horse's mouth. And, you know, you never know exactly how good that is. But, I mean, Doyle said that when Todd was growing up, they never played poker. They never talked about poker. I kind of think Doyle was, you know, to some degree an absentee parent because he was, you know, he was on the road a lot playing.

55:41And Todd, you know, so I don't know, you know, Todd said, you know, he played like in local games, but he went off to college. And the first year, he won enough money playing poker his first year in college where he didn't go back for the second year. and that was kind of how Doyle learned that his son was playing poker. Probably disappointed in a way. Yeah, it's like the godfather thing. You work your way up so that the next generation has it easier and the next generation doesn't have to get their hands dirty the way you did. And so his son was going to be following in his footsteps, which he didn't necessarily want.

56:24To quote Don Corleone, I apologize. I spoil my children. Yeah. So Beal leaves Las Vegas having lost millions in late 03 on a commercial plane. Why was he disgusted and why was he flying coach? Subsequent times, I think Beal was, you know, because they played some more after I wrote book and I was and it actually would be a subject for an even better version of this book I had written about because I was I was allowed to sit at the table while they were playing and I was at least unofficially an intermediary between the two sides of them you know when one's the you know Beal's being unreasonable the players think Beal's being unreasonable they'd say you know how you know how are we going to get you know is Beal really serious about wanting to play this amount or something like that or is he really serious that he won't let us sit at the you know he's letting You sit at the table, but he won't let one of us sit at the table and watch.

57:24And so it was a phenomenally interesting set of games. I couldn't get the publisher interested in doing a second book or doing an expansion of this book. But they had played again back in 06. But in 03, I guess the thing I would say is that Andy's problem as a poker player, and this is one of the reasons why I, in my own tournament playing, and in my own poker playing, I prefer playing in tournament formats than cash game formats, is that Beal's two biggest problems were he didn't know when to quit when he was winning, and he didn't know when to quit when he was losing. And this is a highly underrated skill.

58:16Sleep or take a nap. I mean, didn't he go without sleep a lot? Well, but he'd set rules up. I think you talked about he'd set rules where he'd say, I'm not going to play in this situation where I get tired. Yeah. And then he'd still play. And he'd play through being tired and make mistakes. Right. And he tried to tilt things in his favor where he could. He always wanted to play early in the morning. And poker players, they play late at night. And so it was usually, you know, one of the reasons people were so reluctant to, I mean, you know, it's like they were reluctant to play him because they weren't used to playing with other people's money.

58:53But they were also reluctant to play him because they didn't like getting up at eight o 'clock in the morning. As a business person, business people are morning people. Poker players are nighttime animals. Absolutely. Hey, I want to give a big shout out to everyone who's been working so hard on the show. You know, we recently hit the top 10 investing podcasts on Apple Podcasts and even number one in the business category in several countries. As you may know, this show is brought to you by Smeet Capital Management. Smeet Capital Management understands how frustrating and illogical the stock market can be.

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1:00:03was distraction one of the other plays that he made beyond the stakes. In other words, he wanted to up the ante on the stakes. He was trying to find ways to give him an advantage over these. But at the same time, this is like 2004. The World Series of Poker has taken off. World Poker Tour. I mean, these are celebrities in American culture. And so, you know, he's coming into town out of nowhere. Right. Saying, here's my high limit stakes. And oh, by the way, you need to get out of your World Series of Poker event to come play me. Yeah, and it's, you know, and it's kind of a conflict, conflict among individual players and almost a conflict among generations is that the, you know, part of the ethic, you know, of poker players, you know, high stakes players, and there's really not just one, but, you know, part of the ethic is, you know, we make our living off of amateurs that come into our games.

1:00:56And so we don't ever want to turn those people down. And we don't even want to turn them down when they beat us because— They'll be back. They'll be back. They'll be back. They'll be back. Or something like them. Or, you know, the word that, you know, some nobody came and won a million dollars off us. They're going to tell everybody. Yeah. You know, and so, you know, it's like, you know, never turn down a game. On the other hand, the more modern view is, no, we should play when we have the edge and not play when we don't have the edge. And maybe you could argue, well, we always have the edge because we're the pros, but let's not play them at these highest stakes if we have to bring a whole bunch of people in to get us enough money to play.

1:01:45and we're worried our bankroll's not enough, let's not play at those stakes. And so there wasn't any, it wasn't so much that they were afraid of the stakes or there was fear of being ruined because one thing is poker players don't really care that much about being ruined. That's part of the swings though. Yeah, most poker players go broke many times. I remember hearing stories about guys in the book who, you know, I'd heard about like, you know, these, you know, these big mansions that they had. And when I was following poker, like five years later, I would, you know, I would see him and I'd say, you know, I, you know, do you still have like, you know, the home next to the Pacific?

1:02:30And he said, you know, I said that, you know, lost a couple million Chinese poker to Ted Forrest and I had to sell that house. Oh man. Yeah. So, so they sit down for this, you know, really the biggest game of all time. Andy has his runs during the game. He was down by 7 million and then up by 8 million. And then in the middle, he breaks for lunch with Steve Wynn, which is like, I mean, this has just got to be such a fun and interesting time in the game of poker. Yeah. Because it was still, it was cloistered enough that they were very tight relationships, not as big as it is and wide as it is today.

1:03:04So, you know, he takes over 6 million in the end. He was back two weeks later playing Phil Ivey, another big name very successful player Phil you know side note for our listeners if you want to go look into like playing the games you want to play there's obviously his game in London that he set and he brought the lady along and he's very famous for that Tiger Woods of poker Tiger Woods of poker and Howard Letterer is the other player he plays after Letterer ends up taking him for nine million and obviously Letterer's sister Annie Duke is a you know famous poker player in her own right with many books as we talked about before Beal says he would never be back I was trying to think about what's my takeaway from your story because it's terribly intriguing all the dynamics of these interesting people their education whether it be Andy Beal or Harmon or Letterer for their education they're terribly interesting people one of the conclusions I want to ask you about is there's been a lot of research on humans in that we have all this logic and then we just do things for doing them we don't do them for logical reasons is that your kind of takeaway from Andy Beal or do you draw away something else from Andy Beal like you know he likes risk and he's just going to be driven to find risk even it doesn't make a lot of sense yeah I mean that that's part of it also part of it that the times when Andy was most involved in poker back then tended to be periods where there wasn't a lot of uh there weren't a lot of good deals in the type of banking he was doing.

1:04:34He got bored. Yeah. And so the, you know, one time I was visiting him in Texas and, you know, we were talking and, you know, I was trying to ask, he didn't really answer deeper questions. Like when I asked him, why are you doing it? I didn't really get real thoughtful answers. But I mean, he would say things like, you know, what am I going to do? Go to work, go home at one o 'clock in the afternoon, go to sleep at seven. You know, it's like the, you know, he was bored by some of the stuff he was doing. Now, that, you know, that goes in ebbs and flows. Yeah, it goes away. You know, suddenly, you know, there's a shift in the market.

1:05:11And, you know, that's, you know, by far the most exciting thing you could be working at. I don't know, didn't know much about Andy Beal before I read your book. Reminds me a lot of Mark Cuban. That's the first thing I thought of. No, not bad. Way more private. Not even, I would say. Well, no, way more private. But you know what I mean? In other words, seeking thrills in other ways. Yeah. Why? I just say, cause like, uh, why don't you mention to, uh, uh, why don't you mention to Michael what your picture of heaven would be on the craps table? Cause I think it's a better way of thinking about what you're saying.

1:05:39Well, now you're asking me about something I haven't thought of for a long, long time. Okay. Let's say heaven would be like having an infinite amount of money to sit to the cold streets of the craps table. That's right. That's what it was. And Andy had the money to sit through the cold streaks to your point. Yeah. He could sit through the cold streaks. Uh, and, and that's basically, in our positive sum game that we participate in investing that you sit through the cold streaks. Our discipline works most of the time. A lot of the time it doesn't work. Sometimes the guys that are playing the worst poker in the investment world are hot as a pistol.

1:06:16And by the way, kind of reminds me, everybody worried about somebody getting drunken on a hot streak because nothing was more damning than a dangerous drunk. And that same thing happens in the investment world that the people buying the most aggressive stuff, by the way, that's kind of happened for the last 15 years, that momentum has been the best trade. Right, yeah. So let's see, there's a lot we didn't talk about. I was just going through my notes. First off, I'm really glad that the movie Rounders never came up. I consider that a badge of honor for all of us because obviously Johnny Chan is pretty famous in that movie for him winning the World Series of Poker.

1:06:53We didn't go into a lot of the history of the Binion family, which I think you did a wonderful job of teaching people about the history of the Binions, the breakup of the Binion family with Benny and his son and the family. And it's a great history. We didn't go much into Harmon's background, but again, really good stuff. I was trying to look to see if there's anything else. We didn't talk about Jennifer's husband and how that would suck to be married to a professional poker player. But I just want to ask, kind of put out to you, is there anything else that comes to mind that you would like to mention to our audience?

1:07:24Yeah, this is the most trivial thing I can think of, but one of the ones that always brings a smile to my face. David Gray, consummate gambler. And yes, it's like I talked to a bunch of high-stakes players, and they'd say, oh, the guy we least wanted playing with our money was David Gray. David Gray sucks. Well, David Gray was a successful player for decades and successful in every sort of game and in every sort of gambling. and a great storyteller. And he told me a story when he was first starting as a gambler. He was betting on horse races in New Jersey. And there was like another group of horse players that, you know, you kind of get to know the same people.

1:08:09And most of them were bigger bettors than him. But, I mean, he was like he was guarding like a few thousand dollars trying to grow it. And after the races would end at night, and they would go to dinner or something like that. Well, one night they went bowling and there was this one guy in the group, Ira the Whale, who was a great bowler and, as David says, a whale. I love the name. And after they bowled for a while, they decided to get something to eat. And based on the time and the neighborhood they were in, the only thing that was available was White Castle. And so they got into this discussion about whether Ira the whale could eat 100 White Castle hamburgers.

1:08:52Oh, my gosh. And what happened, this is a group of like, I don't know, like 10 or 12 guys. And they were talking about different numbers. And when they finally got to like 100, they said, oh, there's no way the whale could eat 100. And just about everybody agreed. The whale said he could do it. And David thought he could do it. And so they set up a bet. Did they take odds on it? No, I think it was a straight bet. Wow. And David said at the time, like$20 to bet on a horse race was a lot for him. And I think he said he had$2 ,000 with him, which was a substantial amount of all the money that he had.

1:09:36He bet$2 ,000 on Ira the Whale. Ira the Whale, I think, bet$10 ,000 on himself. and then everybody else took a piece of the other side. And David told me that they went into the White Castle and Ira went to order and he was afraid about him getting cold. So he ordered, he was going to order them 25 at a time. So he said, 25 White Castle cheeseburgers and I'll take a large order of fries and a chocolate shake. and David said to me David said to me that was the moment that I knew I was a lock yeah I knew I was a lock that's so funny okay so I have another idea for you so I just I was thinking of this whole story because it's like it has a it has a feeling of like a Hollywood movie where it's like you got the outsider coming in to play the pros and it's just it's you know you got this billionaire have you ever had someone come to you to say like can we turn this into script and make a movie out of this oh like every year Every year.

1:10:38And what's happened is the people who have like the best ability to get a movie made haven't expressed interest. It's mostly been people that have been either amateurs to filmmaking who were avid fans of the book and had some money or, you know, people who were, you know, involved in production companies. But, you know, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't Universal Studios or Sony Pictures or anything like that. And so, you know, it's been optioned several times. People have expressed interest several times, but it's just never – none of those projects has ever gotten off the ground. There's one I think that somebody has an option on it currently for, I don't know, another six months or another year.

1:11:22And I don't think it's going to go anywhere. Well, because I also think like that, taking your book and then kind of using as a storytelling of, you know, poker in America, you know, because it touches so much of that history. I was trying to think about like who'd play Andy Beal. And I was like, well, I mean, I think of, I think of, you know, like a Matt Damon or someone like that showing up to play like an Andy Beal. And at the same time you could have like a, I'm thinking of who played in Barbie, but you'd have someone sitting there dialoguing about the story of all this. And then here's what happened.

1:11:52And then, and then he walked in and then Johnny, you know, I mean, you could see all this playing out. I think Rob Reiner should make it because he looks a little bit like Rob Reiner. Yeah. So I was going to ask you, Michael, Well, where can people follow you going forward on either any of your books or just your thoughts on life? You know, I keep in circulation, but I tend to not leave my house that much. I am working with Annie Duke. And so all the writing that I do is really like researching and editing for her books and her posts on Substack and when she had a blog, her blog. And so I'm mostly working with her.

1:12:34I'm on Twitter, but I don't even think I updated the software when X took them over. Gotcha. And so I'm not even sure if I'm available. I mean, if somebody wants to reach me, I'm reachable. My email address is write, that's W-R-I-T-E, dot Michael Craig at gmail.com. So you just write Michael Craig at gmail.com. It's been too hot to go outside lately. Yeah, it's been pretty hot. Well, that's the other thing, too, is that it doesn't seem like the summer is ever going to end. I, you know, I'm hoping. I mean, I do look somewhat like Rob Reiner, but I want to look like Rob Reiner from early days of from the early days of, you know, of All in the Family by walking more outside.

1:13:21But I haven't been able to do it. He's trying to build studios here in Arizona. Yeah. Good for him. Yeah. I have to find out if he's interested in the book. Yeah. Well, let's see. First off, thank you for joining us. This is like total treasure. And I'm trying to think you are our second in studio guest. So it's just like nice to have a fellow native Arizonan to come in and talk about their work and discuss this with you. Bill, thanks for hosting me alongside of this. Michael your book makes me think a lot about risk money the value of time you know was this worth Andy Beal's time is what I kept asking myself as an example and it was worth the players no question because they could make a lot of money off him I also think about the randomness of life that we try to find meaning in but as we know from Andy there might not be any our listeners should go out and buy a copy of The Professor The Banker and The Suicide King to think of a world inside the mind of a billionaire really against the pros If you enjoy this podcast, go to Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to a book with legs.

1:14:19Give us a review. Tell others about the books and great authors like Michael Craig that we have the opportunity to understand and study the world with and through. For our tribe, if you have a great book you'd like to recommend, email podcast at smeedcap.com. That's podcast at smeedcap.com. You can also send your suggestions to us on X. Our handle is at smeedcap. Thank you for joining us for a book with legs podcast. We look forward to the next episode. Thank you for listening to A Book with Legs, a podcast brought to you by Smead Capital Management. The material provided in this podcast is for informational use only and should not be construed as investment advice.

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