High-stakes Poker, the training regimen of a world-class mental athlete, and coaching the top 0.01% with Chris Sparks
This week’s guest is pro poker player Chris Sparks. Chris is currently training for the highest-stakes tournament he has ever played after a long sabbatical. He says he has already decided he is going to win, and now he is doing the necessary things to create that outcome.
He talks about the poker world--making money with poker, playing with pros and recreational players, and frequenting a famous comedian’s poker parties. We also talked about Chris’s consulting agency, Forcing Function, where he shares the concept that “if I can control where my attention goes, I will control what I do.”
This interview is packed with so much ideas and fun topics like travel, being a Japanophile, and living with one of the world’s best pianists.
Favorite Quotes:
“When it comes to poker, my body is a temple. I don’t even want to know how much money I’ve cost myself with poor decisions which trace back to saying ‘yes’ to dessert. your profits are a reflection of whether or not your life is in order.” - Chris Sparks
“If you can't recognize the fish at the poker table, you're the fish.” - Chris Sparks
“I don't think free will really exists in the present moment. So, if someone has a pattern, I assume that that pattern is going to keep repeating, unless something is done to divert the dominoes, so to say.” - Chris Sparks
“Everything is a bet. Everything is risk-reward. And sometimes having dessert is like that looks really delicious and I want to do it. And sometimes it's like, well, if I eat this dessert, I'm probably going to have a little bit less sleep and that's going to echo into the day tomorrow, and I have a really big day tomorrow. And I'd rather have a better day tomorrow then have a dessert now.” - Chris Sparks
Learn more about Chris Sparks
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Podcast Transcript
Eric Jorgenson: Hello again, my friends, and welcome to Jorgenson Soundbox, a sandbox of sounds. Holy shit, what a great conversation this is. I’ve just wrapped two hours with Chris absolutely stuffed with amazing stories and examples and ideas. Chris Sparks is a professional poker player. And while he'd say he isn't the best player in the world, he might be the most profitable. And currently, he's in the middle of a very focused program preparing for the biggest poker tournament of his life, which is a very interesting process and we dive into the details of. It's basically what would you do if you knew you would bet six figures on your performance for one specific day, how would you prepare for that? And Chris has a lot of answers to that question. This episode has everything – travel, adventure, meta games, Kevin Hart, and the greatest pianist in the world. There are deep dives into the secret world of private poker cash games, the discipline, habits, and environment it takes to be one of the best poker players in the world, how Chris’s talent for systems thinking helps him find leverage points, bottlenecks, and feedback loops to bring about the desired outcomes with minimal effort for him and his clients in his coaching practices, which we get into as well. I love this conversation. I learned a ton from it. Chris is possibly the most optimized performer I've ever met, forged by playing an incredibly tough game with some of the best in the world. Please enjoy this conversation arriving at your ears in three, two, one.
Chris, dude, I'm so, so excited to have this conversation. I've been absolutely bingeing your stuff over the last week since we got introduced and I'm over the moon. This is going to be an amazing episode.
Chris Sparks: It's an honor. Thanks for the opportunity.
Eric Jorgenson: I absolutely simp over the world of like professional poker, and I absolutely buy into the romanticism, and I see all of the movies. And in my head, your life is basically like some combination of Rounders and Molly's Game. And I just want you to like take us to that world and set the scene and tell us what life is actually like as a professional poker player.
Chris Sparks: Yeah, I wish it was as glamorous as the movies would have you believe. There's definitely moments that are very cinematic. Our friends can be very, let's say, degenerates and quirky and I think the word is interesting, and everything is done very systematically with this curious lens. So, I mean, I bet on everything. Betting is how we settle scores. I would say you don't know where anyone stands until they have something on the line. As [inaudible 3:12] would say, you need some skin in the game. All the time when I hang out with my more normal friends, they'll make some sort of claim, like I'm a hundred percent sure, and then when I offer to bet them, all of a sudden, they start walking that back. So, I'm happy to get in some of the wild bets that I've participated in and witnessed, but that's one dimension. And it's an interesting dynamic because you're frenemies. For a while, especially when I was deep into the game, my peak was about age 19 to 23, all of my best friends were poker players. So, we would go out, we would go travel the world together, and then we would hop on either the real or the virtual felt and try to take each other's money and laugh maniacally when we did so. So, it was like it's a very interesting dynamic and separation where once the cards are in the air, all bets are off. And once you're outside of the table, you have to leave that dynamic there and enjoy the comradery that can only come from there's very few people in the world who can really understand what you're going through. And we really bonded over that. And I think a big part of my success, and you'll see this in any field, is that the greats come up together. So, you have these different cohorts, these generations of players, and I was fortunate to befriend players who were similarly curious and ambitious and willing to put in the work necessary to reach the top. And by pointing out each other's blind spots, by having relative strengths and desires – some people might like studying these types of situations, other people might like studying these situations – by combining forces, keeping an eye out for each other, everyone won. There was a positive sum type of interaction.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, that's awesome. I love those stories. I think there's a bunch- I mean like the LeBron James documentary about like the kids he came up with in high school and Annie Duke talks about this in the poker world of like the crew that she ran with and just I think the startup world is the same way. So, can you give us like a map of the- the overview? The world of professional poker is huge. Like there's online and tournament and kind of like private cash games. How do those all interact? Do people move around between them? Like what are the players in each one?
Chris Sparks: So first, it's important to separate cash games and tournaments. I started in the tournament world and gradually moved over to cash games as I became more professional. So, tournaments, you buy in a set amount. So Main Event, for example, a tournament that a lot of people know in Vegas, a $10,000 buy in, and you compete over a prize pool. So, once you pay the entry, you get tournament chips, and you play until you are out of tournament chips. And the prize structure has a power law dynamic where a lot of the prizes, prize pool goes to the final table and especially the top three spots. So, it's very, very like slugging percentage, swinging for the fences. 10% cash, but 10% at least get their money back, but you were really trying to play for those top few spots. And so, that creates- that structure creates a lot of dynamics similar to the startup world because these are asymmetric bets with a high degree of failure. There's a lot of like secondary markets for taking on investment. So that you can participate in this upside without having to put up the bankroll. Like there's very few people in the world who actually have the bankroll to play $10,000 plus tournaments on a regular basis because the variance is through the roof. No one really understands that. Cash games, where I started to gravitate towards, you’re playing with real money. So, whether that's like represented by virtual chips or casino, real chips, or some casinos actual dollars where you're putting real dollar bills in the middle, it's one-to-one. So, when I make a thousand dollar bet, I'm putting a thousand dollars at risk. And so, you have different communities depending on who specializes in what, and you will see oftentimes that tournaments, especially of late, are really driving the story for poker, where – I'll use the live arena, for example, but the same thing applies for online – a big tournament series will pop up. The World Series Poker in Vegas, most people don't realize is 70 major tournaments over the course of two and a half months. It's not just the one that everyone knows about. So, you have this shelling point, this confluence of tens of thousands of players from all around the world who want to take their shot at playing a tournament. And this obviously attracts people who want to take their shot at people who are taking their shot. So, when someone busts out of a tournament and is like, well, I don't think I'm done for poker for the day, I still have my hotel for the night and maybe I'll hop in some cash games, that's where I typically am waiting with open arms for these players. As cash games go, 24 hours a day, anytime there's someone who you would like to play with, a cash game will magically pop out of thin air. So that's the different dynamic that can play. Obviously, you have live players versus online players. There's a lot of overlap these days, but as in any field, people tend to really specialize. So, there's no good answer to who's the best player. It's who's the best player within a very particular niche. And then you get into the size of the games. So, you have Heads Up, you have Six Max, which is six players, you have Nine Max, which is a typical live game, nine players. You have No Limit Hold 'em, Pot Limit Omaha, hundreds of games that I won't even go into because you haven't heard of them with like crazy rules. As you can see, like it really pays to have this explore-exploit dynamic where you're capable of playing all these different games, but you specialize in one and that's where you really make your bread.
Eric Jorgenson: So I've been reading your stuff for like the last eight hours before this interview, which is why I'm so excited about this, and one of the lines that stuck out to me and like actually slapped me in the face that I think you're alluding to here is like: “I've never considered myself one of the world's best poker players, but I am one of the world's most profitable.” And you go on in this piece, which is a magnum opus about like decision-making and poker and meta games. And like I don't want to spend two hours guiding you through that because people should just go read it, but I think that's a really good frame for the rest of this conversation. And the other thing I didn't realize, it's right kind of adjacent to it that you also mentioned, is: “A typical six handed poker game is comprised of five professionals and one recreational player. The game only exists when a potential recreational player is present,” which makes me never want to sit at a poker table ever again for the whole rest of my life because I'll be sitting across from somebody like you.
Chris Sparks: Yeah, the classic saying is if you can't recognize the fish at the poker table, you're the fish. So, it's important to realize when you think about this in an investing context or a business context, that people are only participating because they think they have something in it for them. I mean, I have a lot of fun playing poker, but I don't play poker for fun. I'm only playing if I expect to make money. And if I don't expect to make money, which is often, I don't play. So that's how this dynamic exists is if an unknown or a known recreational player plays, that is a reason to play because you would expect over the long run this player to not make money against you. So, there's clearly going to be lots of competition in order to get a seat at this table. It's like musical chairs and the music plays and stops at the exact same moment. So, you'll see this online where someone sits down, and the game will fill within a second. So, you're kind of like an eagle hovering over the landscape and you see a ruffle in the brush and you swoop down. So that metaphor, it's a little bit predatory. It's like hard to get around that there is a reason to play is that you think you have an edge. And if you don't have an edge, you're diluting your edge. Every time you sit down and you're not playing your A game, every time you sit down against better competition, hey, you might learn something, but you are paying tuition for that lesson. It's really important to remember that.
Eric Jorgenson: So, show us the delta between the world's best poker players and the world's most profitable. Like why is the best not the most profitable? Because is the bankroll size not the indicator of success?
Chris Sparks: Yeah, it's a bit of semantics. And I kind of introduce this as people love debates. This is the whole reason that Twitter exists is people just love debating things. And especially when there's no objective truth, these debates could go on forever. It's like what is considered the best? Is it the person who's made the most money lifetime? Is it the person with the most skill? Is that the player who's most feared by their competitors? There's a lot of different definitions. And when you see these debates occur, ad infinitum, of who's the best player, they're rarely the player who's making the most. The player who's making the most in the world is someone who we have never heard of. It is someone who's like in Macau or London or New York and is probably known as a like hedge fund guy or a real estate guy but uses that background to play with likely billionaires who just enjoy playing poker, and their recreational game, where we might play for like a $500 buy-in, they add on several zeros to that. And that's like a good day for them, where if they lose that, it doesn't ruin their day and it gets them a little adrenaline rush. So that's why I say like the best player. Now, would you consider this player the best? Like you see a lot of these guys. And like I said, what I see is relative, like I don't know who they are, but I know these things exist, through the grapevine. They're essentially little leaguers playing T-ball. If you're a little leaguer playing a T-ball league, your MVP every single year. It doesn't mean you're the greatest baseball player known to man. You just are really good at getting into good games. And that is one of these meta skills that I talk about in this piece you reference, Play to Win: Meta Skills in High Stakes Poker. If your goal is to make the most money, which for me, playing poker, I play to win. I play to make most money. There are other ways to make more money other than increasing my actual skill in the game.
Eric Jorgenson: Interesting. So, the metagame that you talk about in that post is really a combination of like game selection, because it's very relative and you can make this world small. And what surprised me was even within the world of online poker, game selection is very nuanced. Like big tournaments, small tournaments, geo-fenced poker sites, different currencies, different nationalities, it is very, very cool. So how do you go about evaluating-? Like how do you play the game of choosing the games?
Chris Sparks: It's nuanced, as you said. So, there is definitely a if you build it, they will come component where a lot of online sites in particular have shifted their business model from attracting high volume, high profit players to attracting low volume, low profit recreational players. Because if there are recreational players, the pro players will come to play with them. And essentially, you follow the money. So, I'm usually looking for a site that is, I call this like a relative blue ocean. This is in marketing terms, like the blue ocean strategy. You think about the opposite, so imagine like Vegas in the summer where all the pros go, this is a red ocean. There's lots of blood in the water. And so, I didn't go out to Vegas for the summer. I go out to smaller casinos that are a little bit off the map, or I play on smaller sites where the action isn't big enough to attract the best players, because it's relative skill that's important. In the book The Signal in the Noise, Nate Silver, before where he got into the FiveThirtyEight fame, he has a chapter on poker, and he shares that at a ten-handed cash game, a typical ten handed cash game, you have four winners and six losers. The reason that that number is not five and five is because the game takes a rake. You have an economy that is being taxed, where there’s money coming out. So continually you need new money being replenished in order for the economy to not go to zero because you have these liquidity crunches, and it's almost a pyramidical structure in that if you don't have new money coming in, the whole structure collapses. But an interesting thing happens – if you remove the worst player from this game where four players are winning, and six players are losing, all of a sudden, you have one player winning and nine players losing. So, a lot of the winnings of the players are actually coming from this worst player. So that's your summary right there – if there is a player who is reliably playing enough and reliably losing enough, for lack of a better way of putting it, I'm looking for that player. Now, I'm not like hunting them down, but if they're there, I'm going to find them. And so that's like the game, the dance you have to play is where do these players like to hang out? And can I be one of the only pros at the party?
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. So that's super interesting. Those two scenarios are really interesting because that means you either have to be- you have to be the best person at the table, unless there's a rube. And if there's a rube, you have to be basically in the top half, you have to be in the top like four out of ten.
Chris Sparks: Your margin of error is much larger.
Eric Jorgenson: Much larger, super interesting. So, talk to me about that in the world of like high stakes, private games where you're like flying to Macau on a private jet with like a Bond girl and everybody's wearing tuxedos. Is that a thing that exists in playing with like celebrities and travel and like-?
Chris Sparks: It absolutely exists. I don't consider myself an expert in it. When I lived in LA for a couple of years during my heyday, I played in some of these celebrity games where X celebrity – I'll use Kevin Hart's name because he's a very known poker player. I played with Kevin Hart a lot back in the day. He's like, hey, I want to have a game with my boys, and you're playing in the backroom at his house. And he has a full set of dealers and cocktail waitresses and masseuses, and he serves dinner. And it's a whole party. And the game goes as long as Kevin wants to play. And when Kevin gets tired, everyone leaves. And so, this is happening all around the world. And the only reason we don't know about them is because we're not invited. So that is the interesting dynamic that occurs in private games is how can you be someone who is adding value to the point that you get invited? It's just like in startup investing, like if all you had to do was to pick winners, there'd be a lot more winners out there, but everyone knows who the best company is, but these deals are super competitive. They're oversubscribed. You have to find a way to get in. What is the value add that you can deliver? So, I mean, I'll share, it's like, first, table stakes is I show up early, I'm friendly, I like tip well, I am really nice to the staff, like I pay out promptly when I lose. That is just like basic table stakes. And then it's like, okay, well I try to crack some jokes. I try to, if there's a host, I absolutely make sure that the host is having a good time. But even then, I expect to make money in this game. And sometimes just because I'm retired, but just because I once was a pro, that's a nonstarter for some of these games where they want only recreationals in. And so, like not to throw some shade, but there's a lot of like recreationals out there who have an entire backstory that they've concocted to cover up that they actually make most of their money from poker. That's just a whole interesting dynamic. And obviously when you have things that are privatized, I've experienced, I’ve had issues getting paid, I’ve had issues getting cheated. I don't want to go into specifics there, but like it does happen.
Eric Jorgenson: That seems totally reasonable to not go into specifics.
Chris Sparks: A lot of these games, they're taking out large amounts of money out as rake. And so sometimes the game might be really good, but you can't even overcome that. So, there's lots of these other factors. But the trajectory is really clear is that progressively over the years, particularly in live poker, but also in the pandemic and online poker, the games are becoming increasingly more privatized. Where in my heyday, for example, there was two main sites, Poker Stars and Full Tilt, and that's where all the action was. And you can hop in at any time and find a game. And now progressively more and more often, these games are taking off based on private apps, in private rooms, in garages or penthouses. And the critical skill for maximizing your wealth as a poker player is almost business development. It's staying in the know, it's going to the right conferences, it's like befriending the right people. And for me, it's like I've always had a clear moral line, like I don't befriend anyone who I don't want to hang out with. I don't do business with anyone that I don't love, respect, would like pick up the phone in a minute, invite them over to dinner, invite them to stay at my house. Like that's where I draw the line, and other people draw the line at different places. So just because of that, I'm not able to access some of these games. And sometimes I am able to access some of these games because they like me, I'm friends with the organizer, this type of thing. So, it's a very interesting meta layer to it in that your greatest skill is finding a way, not only to get invited, but to stay invited because you're winning, and people tend to not like losing to someone over and over again. So, can they enjoy losing to you? It's a whole interesting dynamic.
Eric Jorgenson: I mean, Kevin, it seems like it would be absolutely hilarious to play poker with Kevin Hart. So just that off the bat is amazing. I'm glad you went into detail there because my first question was like why the hell would they want you there if they have any inkling that you are as good at this as you are and have put as much effort into getting as good as you are, which we'll get into in a second here.
Chris Sparks: I'll answer that, if you don't mind.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, please.
Chris Sparks: Everyone has different preferences. So, there are some- I'll just use recreational as a broad category. There are some people who want to have a nice home game and they only want other recreational players there. And there are some recreationals who are generally very high performers, so these could be like portfolio managers or someone from Silicon Valley who is a venture capitalist, like you probably know some of these names, who love going up against the best, and they feed off competition and they're okay losing in the long run in order to maximize their learning speed, that they're seeing poker as a sandbox for improving their own decision-making and for becoming a stronger investor or a stronger person outside of the game. So those are generally the people who I love to play with because I don't have to hold back against them. I don't have to put on my kid gloves. And I can talk like a little bit of strategy at the table because they're excited to learn. But it varies greatly.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. That's really interesting. It makes sense. I mean, like, I would want to play basketball with an NBA player, like even if I got my ass kicked, just because that's a cool, fun story and like shows me where I am against the best in the world. So, yeah, that's really interesting and where the personality piece comes down to it. So yeah, the [inaudible 25:00] metagame is really interesting and the game invites and stuff. My full education on this came from Molly's Game. So, I appreciate you giving me like some corroboration of that, but it does seem like a really interesting kind of like sub economy.
Chris Sparks: Yeah. Rounders is the classic, Molly's Game is the second. People will ask me what poker movies I recommend; those are the only two. The interpretations of poker cinematically, other than those two movies, is very poor.
Eric Jorgenson: Casino Royale doesn't really cut it.
Chris Sparks: You don't have the nuts against the second nuts against the third nuts with some obscure tell where the guy itches his right nostril. That just doesn't occur.
Eric Jorgenson: Okay. So, let's talk about kind of what it takes to be this good and play at this level. Like I'm very recreational, like buddy's house poker, so I understand the game, but I definitely only appreciated maybe the first two layers. And like talking to you even for 10 minutes, it kind of showed me that there's actually like six obvious layers and three more non-obvious layers. So, I would love to kind of keep just peeling that onion for a minute and see just really the reality of all the detail and skill and meta skill that goes into this, starting with maybe like just the game and the rules, and then going up to kind of the emotional and player game, and then the context of it.
Chris Sparks: Sure. I'll do my best. There's a lot to unpack.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, you're going to have to give us bullet points, not like your full- I have a feeling you could write quite a long book about that if you set your mind to it.
Chris Sparks: Yeah. It's in the works, backlog. So, let's say that there's a yin and a yang when it comes to poker. And the yin is mathematics, particularly probabilistic thinking. So, the lens of a poker player is to view the world as a probabilistic universe, that everything has some probability of occurring. That what we're experiencing in this moment is just one permutation, one parallel universe of the infinite universes that could have occurred. So, the results are just one example. And when you look at things through this lens, that everything can occur some percentage of the time, well, first, thinking in those terms allows you to calibrate. Like what does 20% feel like? That's like getting punched in the face over and over again from you get it in as an 80% favorite and you lose, then you're like, oh, that's what it feels to lose 20% of the time. You start to calibrate. And most humans are just not good at probability where they have like it's definitely going to happen, definitely not going to happen, and it's a coin flip. And everything else in the middle is like super gray. So becoming sensitive to these small deltas in probability. Or for example, something happening 55% of the time, that's a 10% edge. Like if you multiply that out over millions of hands, you're a millionaire. But in a singular instance, that feels like coin flip. So, it's becoming really sensitive to those differences. So, there's a good amount of math in poker, but I don't actually know a lot of the like exact probabilities. Like there are people who are kind of brain man like with this, but I'm very good at estimating plus or minus 5%, like what my chances are at any given time. And when I have enough of that margin of safety, let's say it's like, okay, I'm at least like 55%. So worst case scenario, it's a coin flip. Like I'm really pushing the action. It's like pushing these small edges. It's like Blackjack, card counting, all of your money comes from when you go from like a 0.5% house edge to a 0.5% edge in your favor, all of a sudden, you ten x or a hundred x your bet. You're putting more money in the pot when you have this small edge. So that's one aspect.
Eric Jorgenson: How can you develop that sensitivity? Like what is the training that you go through to become better than average at feeling that a shift?
Chris Sparks: Guess and then calibrate. So, there's tools where you can put in the situation, and it will spit out the probability. Now, obviously there's a lot of assumptions that can go into that. It's like the probability is exact when everything collapses on one hand, when you know exactly what your opponent has. But you're playing against an unknown range of hands. So that input is something that you have to learn to calibrate over time, which I'll get into. But you're essentially like testing yourself. And so, you think about this in like a real world, everyone just wants the answer key. So, if someone's explaining something, you pause it and say, okay, what would I do here? And then you see what they did and see how what you did different from what they did. Otherwise like if you get spoon-fed, you'll never actually have the change necessary. You won’t have these new synapse connections that allow you to start to hone in. And the cool thing is that as you start to calibrate and you acquire evidence that, hey, my intuition about my edge here is correct, well, that allows you to trust it. And when you trust it, you can be a lot more confident. That creates this positive feedback loop where your edge increases. And so that's the real power there is like with confidence, comes increased edge, but confidence needs evidence. So that's why I said anytime someone's doing a trade, for example, crypto or otherwise, download all of those assumptions onto a piece of paper. What are all the things that are going on with your decision, externalize them, and then when you come back to them later, you can see what you missed and, most importantly, see what you get right. And if you're able to get something right consistently, that allows you to move faster. And it's like speed kills. I think everything comes down to the tightness of the feedback loops.
Eric Jorgenson: I like that. Okay do, we've got sort of the math and probabilistic piece of poker. What's the next layer on top of that?
Chris Sparks: So, the yang to meet yin of probability is psychology. And I hinted at this just now, inherent in any model are hidden assumptions, and the black box in poker and in life are humans. Like we live in complex adaptive systems and humans just cannot be predicted exactly. Psychohistory aside, like no one knows what one person is going to do. So, all we can do is hope to approach some sort of understanding. And this is another way where we are in probability terms, it is called Bayesian updating. As we receive new evidence, we're updating our priors. So psychologically, how do we predict what other people are going to do before they know what they're going to do? So, this starts with creating a baseline of behavior and then becoming sensitive to deviations from this baseline as someone's emotional state changes, as you see, oh, the way they played this hand is signaling that they're thinking this way at this moment, this is the emotion that's driving them. Well, with this new information, how do I expect them to deviate from their current baseline? This allows you to make predictions so that that variable in your calculation, you can compress the range of outcomes. Instead of going three standard deviations, you are two or one. The psychological dimension has another element that I think is really interesting. And I think you'll like this term, it's psychological leverage. So that there is an edge that comes from being more psychologically ready to play, ready to make high stakes decisions under conditions of uncertainty. So, it's both can I understand you better than you understand yourself? And can I understand myself, my own triggers, my own biases better than you understand me? And can I put myself in the position to perform, to play like all the things that happen outside of the table so that when I show up, like I'm in flow, I'm playing my A game more often, I'm super dialed in, that I can acquire leverage over my competition by being more ready for my A game?
Eric Jorgenson: So, I think the word ready, I know you well enough to know that the word ready is doing a lot of work in that sentence. And that that'll kind of be our next topic. But maybe the right interlude before we get there is what does it feel like inside you when you are playing these high stakes games and making these big bets? Like, are you are like zen mountaintop? Are you like in turmoil but in control of it? Or are you like you know it's going to be- you could feel your heart racing, but you anticipated this moment, so it's all fine? Like what is it like in there?
Chris Sparks: I like to say that intuition is internalized experience. And I have the benefit of lots of experience at this point. I've played over 2 million hands of poker, and although every day I'm surprised, I've seen a lot. So, the confidence that comes from lots of evidence that I know what I'm doing, allows me to be pretty calm and collected at the table, at least I like to think so. And sometimes this might be the duck where everyone else thinks that I'm just totally checked out, inside, I'm like running all of these calculations. But it's really important to not give any impression that you're trying hard. Like they can't see you sweat, you have to make it look effortless. That's the last mile of all of this stuff is like you acquire this psychological leverage where everyone's like, man, he's just making it look so easy, he's not even trying, like what chance do I have? And then they just lay over and let you steam roll them. So that's a little bit of what's going on. Obviously, when I place a bluff, especially putting like an actual brick of money into the table, it's something that's important to practice because as easy as it looks on TV, it's not. So, I have different breathing exercises that I do. I have different routines so that I don't give anything away in terms of physical tells. So, I'm looking at a specific spot on the table. I am telling myself specific things so that I'm not acting, I actually believe that I have a hand. I'm not bluffing. This is like what I do no matter what I have, these types of things. And it's all about trying to stay as close to this emotional baseline as I can, where I win the hand, I don't react; I lose the hand, I don't react. And the more that I'm on this baseline, this is a really important point, the more I become sensitive to deviations from this baseline. Like I want to control all the variables in my life. I mean, we can psychoanalyze that off the table, but like it's true. It's like the more that I have control over these variables, the more I can become sensitive to deviations. So, tuning into my body, if I feel like, oh, I'm hot in the back of my neck, what is that telling me? Is it, oh, I'm getting a little bit agitated or is like this player's story not quite adding up, or it's just getting hot in here? Who knows, but if I know that I've controlled for a lot of these variables, I can start to tune in to what my body is telling me. And it's something with this confidence that I've acquired over the time is like subconsciously I know what's going on, even if I can't put language around it. So, it's just this ongoing practice of tapping into what I know. So, that's a really big part of it is just like trying to flatten-
Eric Jorgenson: How do you know, especially when something comes from the subconscious, how do you know that it is like the hard-won trained intuition or like uncontrolled emotional response that this like feeling is coming from?
Chris Sparks: That's a deep question. I think I have progressed more from thinking things through and more through feeling things through. And if we're thinking about the meta level, the infinite game of this, is the more you trust your intuition, the more you will be able to trust your intuition. Expect that your intuition, as you're new to something, won't be well calibrated. But the more that you just go with it, you see, hey, I should go talk to that person and you walk over the room and be like, hey, I don't know what to say, but my intuition said come over here, the more that you do that, the more you will be able to trust that and act on it. And like I said, that's why I led with that story of like internalized experience is you can trust your intuition to the extent that you have relevant experience, that you've been in this context in this situation before. But how do you know what that feeling is telling you? The only way that I have found is by correlating it. So, the most valuable practice for me is morning pages. And in the morning, it is just like offloading my brain onto the page. And I have a captain's log that I do after every session where what were things that went well, things that didn't go so well, things that I learned? And this is the space that I have created to upload observations. And if I start to see patterns, my assumption is that these patterns recur. So, if I can identify an underlying emotion and tie that to a situation and that duality, that pattern recurs, I can assume that there's something there. And if that situation reoccurs again, I'm on the lookout for that emotion, or if the emotion recurs again, I'm like, hey, is this situation recurring again? Either one becomes the trigger to be aware, to observe. And it's this hyper vigilance that we can use our emotions or our context as a trigger to pay attention.
Eric Jorgenson: That's incredibly interesting. Where did you pick up those practices, the morning pages and the captain's log?
Chris Sparks: Morning pages comes from a book, I think it might be behind me. This is the Artist's Way, I'm a huge proponent of. It's designed for artists, the different practices to get out of your way creatively, but hey, I think we're all creatives, we’re all artists. And it's just like verbal diarrhea in the morning. So, it's just a good metaphor for like if you get all the stuff out of your head, it creates space for magic. The captain's log, this is something that you see a lot in investing. You see it a lot, and I think it originated with like Star Trek, that just by having a place to leave observations, you create this objective record that you can refer back to later, because what is one of the- The things about human OS that maybe we would change if we could, is that we're really, really good at rationalizing things. And if we don't have this record of some- if every store everything in our head, we can just overwrite that information anytime that it's convenient for us. So, by having it on the page, I can't deny that reality. Like that's something that I felt at one point, that's something that I saw. So having it there, it creates an [inaudible 41:47] is a design term, that it allows me to do something about it. And I don't know what's going to come up, but I have that space to write, and I have to write something. So, there's a sort of a trust in that process that sooner or later, if I can wait without waiting, everything that I'm putting on the page will be useful. So, let's just put it on the page and not judge it.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. That's very interesting. And it's definitely a common thread that I've heard from a lot of creatives and professionals that are just high achieving. It seems like something so simple, but it seems to be a wonderful habit and have a lot of underappreciated or unanticipated benefits.
Chris Sparks: Yeah. Something that has been a practice for me that I am really working on is slowing down. I can’t emphasize this enough. I used to schedule my day down in like 15-minute windows. Obviously, that has a lot of insidious effects on mental health as well as on relationships. People tend not to be like, hey, oh yeah, I got like 15 minutes to hang out, let's do it. As I've grown I think a little bit more mature, I've really emphasized slowing down. And a lot of this comes to prioritization, saying no to most things so that I can say yes to the things that are a hell yes. And trusting that if I create space, if I have practices that allow me to slow down, that the answers will come, that a lot of this tuning into what your body is telling you, tuning into your emotions, requires silence, requires space. And if you're always running from one thing to the next, you don't know what you think about anything because you haven't taken the time to listen.
Eric Jorgenson: Very interesting. So, how is your- I want to talk a little bit about your preparation and your training regimens to perform at this level and maybe how they've changed over time. But let's start with what you're at, where you're at right now and how you're preparing for this next big event.
Chris Sparks: Yeah. So, this is actually a fun time to have this conversation because I'm coming out of a sabbatical. I haven't played any poker since June and I just this week picked it back up. I wanted to take the summer off to travel, spend time with friends. As you might tell, I'm kind of an all or nothing type of guy. So, this allowed me to sync my schedule up with the natural world because poker tends to be nights, weekends, goes really late. So, it has a lot effects. I was able to wake up early and surf and do stuff like that. But now I'm ramping back up again. And so, the catalyzing event is there's a very large tournament that I am playing in three weeks. And this will be the largest tournament that I've ever played by a factor of six. And I am very confident. I'm predicting right now that I am going to win. I've already decided that I'm going to win, and it's just a matter of doing the things now necessary for me to win in the future. I've visualized it. Every day I wake up and I think about how good it's going to feel when I win this tournament that's life-changing money. So, what do I need to do to prepare? Well, I need to learn tournaments. I haven't played a lot of tournaments, especially recently. And so, I'm working with someone who's essentially downloading the math into my brain, and it's a lot of, hey, Chris, what do you think are the hands you should play here? And I say that, then the machine learning algorithm spits out here are the hands you actually should want to play, okay, try again to the point that I can have the paradigm of mathematically correct play drilled into me. Once I have that paradigm drilled into me, I know I can subvert that. I can decide, hey, I want to play more hands with this player, or I want to play a little bit less hands when my edge is lower. So, it's starting to get the confidence that I need and the statistics in order that I can subvert those paradigms. I'm doing lots of things to really dial in mentally, psychologically. So, I've really upped my spiritual practices recently, doing lots more yoga, meditation, eating extremely clean, working with various coaches, spiritual, trainer etc., to really dial in my mindset. And I want to walk in there feeling like I'm a billionaire and that this largest amount of money that I've ever placed on the line in my life like doesn't mean anything to me, I've already won. Like this is just another day for me. So, a lot of that type of stuff. I'm thinking about my strategy. I have like training tournaments that I'm doing. So, I played 26 tournaments on Sunday with like different specific areas of my game that I was looking to train on. I'm flying to Miami right after; I'm saying bye, Mom, and hopping on a plane to Miami to play five tournaments five days in a row of escalating buy in so that I can practice playing against players who admittedly are probably better than me at this stage, but that by playing against these players and having the confidence that I can hold my own, it'll allow me to hop into a larger tournament, which honestly, the players aren't going to be as good and feel very confident because I've already played against the best. Like this is a walk in the park. Lots of things. And like I think that edges come from information asymmetries. So, I'm gathering information. I think a key role of any CEO is you're always gathering information. So, I want to know everything there is to know about the venue. I want to know everything there is to know about the organizers. Who are the dealers? What are the dealers like? Like what are their interests? Who are the other players? What's their bankroll? What's their situation? What's their schedule? Did they have to catch a flight that night? Like anything that I know coming into the game is a potential source of advantage. So, I want to walk in there feeling like I'm the expert in the room. That's a few of the things. I'm already planning out what I'm doing on breaks. It's like having- like the classic saying is like the planning is worthless, but planning is essential or something like that. Eisenhower said it. So, I'm going to have a really, really good plan, so I walk in there feeling super confident, knowing that I'm going to rip the plan up the second I walk in there. But the whole goal is to walk in there feeling like I've already won and let that be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Eric Jorgenson: Is this different from how you prepared and how you trained when you were younger?
Chris Sparks: Yeah. Yes, absolutely. So, in my heyday, I think I was a little bit both naive and hubristic, which is a little bit of a toxic combinations.
Eric Jorgenson: That sounds like pretty much every young man in his twenties.
Chris Sparks: Yeah. I mean, generally, my days began where I would get a text in my bed, probably around something like 2:00 PM to wake me up that some player that I wanted to play with was hopping on, and I would go right from bed and hop into like ten to a hundred thousand dollar buy in poker games with still like crusties on my eyes and just like try to figure it out. Throw a DiGiorno in the oven, like have my two-liter soda next to me. It was like really, really bad habits. But I mean, luckily, my skill was able to overcome some of that. The margin of error has gotten much smaller over the years. And whereas you used to see like a poker tournament was really a big party. It's like you think you're going to play poker, but really, you're like hanging out in the hotel lobby, throwing back shots all night. Now that is completely changed. And you see the top players, myself included, training like we are Olympic athletes, like exercising for an hour every day, tracking all of our macros. Like I sleep eight hours a night every night. Like all of these things that like if I want to be a cognitive athlete, I need to perform like a physical athlete because like energy is real. If I am not showing up energetically correct, if I have poor energetic hygiene, that is going to show up in the way that I do things and the way that I make decisions. So, all this preparation off the table pays off on the table. And a lot of this, especially when it comes to tournaments, it's a marathon. Like you are in a chair sitting for 12 plus hours a day every day if you're playing a tournament series. It's a grind and you are- 90% of the time you sit down, you're going to lose. So, imagine that, like 90% of the time you're like, well, I would've been better off just sleeping in and doing nothing today then what I did, and it can take a real mental and physical toll. So, you need to make sure that you've maximized your capacity, that you've controlled the variables that you can control. Because then hey, at this point, I've done all I can. I have no regrets. Let the chips fall where they may.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. How do you adjust for or train for the length of these things? The stamina that it takes to be mentally super active and optimal for 12 hours a day for days at a time, especially with escalating stakes. In a tournament, like the longer it goes, the higher the stakes. So, the more tired you are, the better you have to be. How do you- what are the things that you kind of do to counteract that or prepare for it?
Chris Sparks: Yeah. It's different from my usual. So, on my specialty high stakes cash games, my average session length is only three hours. And there's a lot of evidence that performance degrades like notably after three hours at an increasing rate, like it gets at a certain point, you might as well be playing drunk. And so, I historically had always built it for I'm only playing when I’m at my peak. And as soon as I'm no longer at my peak, I hop off. Well, there are some times where the action is too good where it'd be irresponsible to quit. So, a good example is New Year's Eve. Like I don't celebrate New Year’s Eve because that's the best night of poker for the year. And if I play 12 hours on New Year’s Eve, I can take the rest of January off because I might be making ten times more an hour during that time than I will the rest of the year. So, it really makes sense to be able to stay up all night and play well. And there's an interesting dynamic as well as, like because these games are built around specific players, maybe these players play for 30 minutes and they have to go to dinner, maybe these players want to play for three days, and if you get up, you lose your seat. So, you have to find a way to stay for three days. A good friend of mine, I was talking to him on my podcast, his name's Garrett Adelstein, and he shared the really interesting tidbit that he estimates that 80% of his winnings lifetime, and these are in the seven figures, have come after hour twelve of the session, that almost all of the money that he has made has come after he's already been playing for twelve hours. So, in the live arena, these games can go quite long. It's important to note that like, I mean, Garrett works out for two hours every single day. I mean, he's about as physical beast as you can get. His performance is still degrading, but notably is that if his slope is linear, other players are exponential. So, because skill, because energy, because attention is relative, you know you're going to have some mal effects, but you have to be getting worse not as bad as everyone else, if that makes sense. Like you could be totally delirious, but at least you're not falling asleep. That's the thing you have to keep in mind is like you're not going to be performing at peak, but can you be performing relatively well?
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. So, somebody sent me this quote that you have, and I don't know which post it's in, but I think it's a perfect encapsulation. And I want to hear how you are applying your own advice here. “When it comes to creating your environment, assume you have free will. When it comes to living in it, assume you have no free will.” I think that's an absolutely perfect summary of, and maybe a good like one line way to accomplish almost anything in life. But I'm curious how it's applying to the kind of grind that you're going through now in preparation for this tournament.
Chris Sparks: Yeah. That line you're referencing came out of a conversation in Oaxaca with our mutual friend, David Perell. And this is a post that I've been working on for the last six months, and hopefully this will be some accountability to get it out by the end of the year. It's almost there. But the idea is that our free will is very limited. And everyone immediately gets in resistance to that idea is like I'm a sovereign individual, like look at all these things that I make with my bare hands. I wake up and I hit that alarm and I hop into my cold plunge. Yes. But recognize that everything that you do is contextual. That context of your present moment is already set. And that's what that quote is referencing is assuming as I'm acting, talking to you right now, I'm not deciding, I'm not choosing what I'm doing. The choices have been made already for this context that I find myself in. So, the interesting implication is that by surrendering control, again, something that for me is an ongoing practice, I regain control, that the way that I exercise my free will is to create contexts for my future self which are advantageous, which are in alignment with my long-term goals. This is again another meta level intervention of what do I want to want? What is a context that would support that? How do I create that context? How do I make that context occur more often? And it's interesting when you see life through this lens, and anyone listening, I really recommend that you just try it for a day, just go through the day imagining that you don't have any free will. You don't need to do anything different, but just experience what that lens is like. And you realize that you don't do things, you try to make things you want to do easier to do. And a lot of that is secret of how I'm able to help some of the highest performing investors and executives in the world get a little bit more satisfaction out of their day is can we take the context that you're in and make it a little bit more supportive of what you want to do and trust that the score will take care of itself?
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, that's- I talk about that a fair amount in leverage, in the leverage course too, is like probably the most productive thing you can do on a per minute basis is like throw your TV out the window or something to control your environment for your future self forever. And the returns to those things are incredible. So, in your context, it sounds like basically hiring these coaches is the creation of accountability and controlling the environment for your future self. You probably threw away all your junk food to be sure that you were eating clean. Do you like leave out workout clothes? Do you like- what else do you do to like control future Chris?
Chris Sparks: Yeah, the name of my consultancy, Forcing Function, the term Forcing Function is to bring to consciousness. And so, this is a concept that's very near and dear to me, is if I can control where my attention goes, I will control what I do. Man, there's such a rabbit hole here, but like a really quick summary of what we know about consciousness, which is very little, is that a tiny percentage of things we are perceiving are actually perceived consciously. It's about a million to one ratio. What we're perceiving consciously is only about three dozen bits of information versus millions of bits subconsciously. And what's the key takeaway there is like the world is tiny points of signal in a sea of noise and that our advantage comes from knowing what to pay attention to and the vast sea of noise to ignore. Constantly, this practice for me is like how can I bring my attention by creating forcing functions to what is that which is most important. So, you mentioned some of those things that I install in my life and, when appropriate, I help clients install is all right, well, I want to have experts who can help me level up in this thing and tell me what I should be looking out for or what I should be paying attention to and trust them. I want to create an environment that makes it most likely that I do the things that I want to do, whether it’s some of those things that you mentioned, going to sleep at are reasonable, getting sunshine on my face, eating things that make my body feel good, and listening to what my body's telling me as I'm eating there. Hey, writing articles that hopefully people get some value out of and install things in their life. What can I do to keep these things top of mind, to bring attention to them, and at the same time, turning down the volume on all the other things that are getting in the way, that when you take this lens, most things in life are a complete distraction. That, hey, they might be good things, they might have value in themselves, but do they have more value than this thing that you could be doing instead? Opportunity cost is always the biggest cost. So, you have to, in this metaphorical buffet that we call life, you have to pass up some of these things in the buffet in order to get the things you want most.
Eric Jorgenson: I love that. Which leads me to the question, I think you had a really good phrase in there, like what do you want to want? How do you decide what you want? Like I think with this sort of mindset and outlook and level of talent, you could be accomplishing almost anything that you decided to do. How did this level of professional poker and coaching and the other things that are on your plate become the thing that you want to want?
Chris Sparks: What an amazing question. I mean, it's something that, it's a belief that I'm trying to sit in and absorb is the realization that I can accomplish anything, that the only limit that is placed upon me is my ambition. So that comes with a great responsibility as well. If I can do anything, oh my God, what do I do? Like that's what- It would be very easy for that to be paralyzing. And for various points in my life, it was paralyzing because with so many good things to do, well, maybe I should just do more research and read more books and talk to more people before actually going out and bumping up against the world because I got to make sure that I'm doing the right thing because that would be the worst to waste years of my life doing the wrong thing. And my antidote to this has been what I refer to as experiments. So, this is encapsulated, I put out a workbook a couple of years ago called Experiment Without Limits. This is me taking a year to compress everything that I've learned about productivity and performance from 500 coaching conversations, and like here's what I think like I would recommend doing, step-by-step exercises. But the first exercise I think is the most important is just framing something as an experiment. And when you have an experiment, what are you doing? You're being curious and, hey, let's try this and see what happens. And I just try to view my life as I'm constantly trying things and collecting data, and I commit to a period. It's like a month is a good baseline. You can commit to something for a year, you can commit to something for the day. But like commit, and give it your all. Like, all right, I have five options here. Option one seems to be the best, it seems like a marginal winner, but it seems to be the best. For the next month, I'm going to act as option one is like my hundred percent pick and I'm going to just like full steam, red line after that option. At the end of the month, I take a step back, I do my captain's log, and I'm like, hey, what did I learn about that? And it's every decision is like double down or stop. Is this going well enough that whatever I'm doing, I want to go after it twice as hard, I want to like take it to the next level, I want to invest even more? Or do I want to say, hey, let's try option number two. That was interesting. That was fun. That was cool. I want to try out option number two. So, every dimension in my life – health, relationships, personal, financial – I'm constantly trying to experiment and learn things. And my hope is that if the pace of learning is high and I'm iterating quickly, it's coming back to tight feedback loops, that eventually I'll stumble and fall on the right answer. But I'm not going to find it like sitting at my desk like reading the internet, I'm going to need to like try things and figure it out.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. I like that a lot. So, poker was an experiment that became something that you kind of kept doubling down on. And you're in one of those moments again. So, before we- I want to talk about a few more things that are unrelated to poker, but before we move on, there's a few kind of open loops that I want to close that I'm still very curious about. So, when you said this is the biggest tournament you've ever been a part of, biggest by what measure? Is that like by number of people, by size of pot, by buy-in? Like what is big?
Chris Sparks: By buy in. This is going to be a six-figure buy-in. My previous large tournament is 25,000. So, this is a tournament size that occurs maybe a couple of times around the world a year.
Eric Jorgenson: Okay. And that puts the pot, the winnings at what? I mean, got to be seven, maybe eight-?
Chris Sparks: Seven figures.
Eric Jorgenson: Okay. A life-changing amount of money.
Chris Sparks: Yep. It’s going to be really good when I win.
Eric Jorgenson: Go get 'em champ. I like it. So where does poker fit in the long arc of your life as this experiment?
Chris Sparks: So, I like to view things in terms of a portfolio, and I think values are no different. An alternative answer when you ask like how do you figure out what do you want to want? I love this exercise. This comes from another book behind me. I’ll just pull it out. It’s called The Fifth Discipline Field Book. The exercise is called the Top Values Exercise. We have a version that we recreated [in notion 1:05:20] if anyone wants to try this, but it's essentially, hey, what are all the things that you value? And then you eliminate it down to what are your top three values? What are your top two values? What do you value the most? Where any decision that you're making really reduces down to this question of what are you optimizing for most? And for me, I think like the leverage point of the system is what is the value by which we decide. So, for me, the current value is adventure. And I find that poker brings a lot of adventure to my life. It's really fun to have this sandbox to constantly be learning about the world and myself. It brings me in front of lots of interesting people. It allows me to travel. It allows me to like really explore the boundaries of my own performance. And I'd like it at least to be considered in a part of my portfolio for the rest of my life. And it's had at some points, if I continue this metaphor, I've rebalanced. I took six months off completely. I actually retired at the age of 23 and didn't play a single poker hand for five years, traveled around the world, worked in startups, did some investing, like completely walked away, and then came back. So, something can leave your portfolio and it can come back in. But inherently, as we've talked about today, poker at its base, it's a zero-sum game. And so, I've really made efforts to boost other parts of my portfolio that feel much more positive sum. Forcing Function for me is a total mission where I have the privilege of working with really smart and talented people, even having a direct impact on them, but most importantly, taking what I learn and trying to open-source it and share it with as many people as I can. So, anyone out there can like, hopefully, take some of these things that I've been fortunate enough to learn and put them in to practice. I've really gotten more into investing, not only just for obvious financial reasons where poker has linear returns, as we've talked about offline, you can only put so much of your bankroll at risk, whereas in investing, you have the value of compounding. You can put your entire bankroll at risk if you think the bet merits it. But I also have found progressively that most of the most interesting and intelligent people that I know invest. And so, by being involved in these circles, it allows me to grow and to get access to a lot of really interesting minds. So that's kind of been the three-legged stool that I've been working with recently is mission Forcing Function, poker performance and then investing. And I assume that other parts of the portfolio will come into play, and I'll have to see how they fit in, what are the missing allocations that I want to exposure to?
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. I think that's really interesting. I was actually planning to ask you about your philosophy on zero sum games, so you kind of beat me to it. Something that kind of clicked for me a few years ago was Silicon Valley especially is very positive sum oriented, to the point where they almost like don't- they are like anti zero-sum games. And I understand why, because there's people in industries that I think real estate is like more zero sum then tech, and sports are more zero sum than startup investing and things like that. And it helped me to kind of see this like barbell strategy of like play zero sum games to train yourself, to harden yourself, to sharpen yourself, to grow because they are fucking hard to win. And it is much easier to know if you are good and getting better and if your systems for improving are good, but also bring positive sum games into your life to connect and cooperate with people and live and build. And it's certainly not all or nothing.
Chris Sparks: Yeah, I'd love to comment on that.
Eric Jorgenson: Please.
Chris Sparks: I mean, first, I'm pretty skeptical of a lot of that stuff. I mean, there's a lot of virtue signaling and other things that people see themselves as much more virtuous than they really are. And if people took a hard look at who's on the other side of what they're doing, they would find it is a little bit less positive sum then what they actually think. Obvious exceptions on both sides. But I think there's a lot of people who are kind of fooling themselves. That's all I have to say about that. Going back to the values portfolio, a common piece of advice that I give is you don't need to satisfy every value you have with the same position, that you can have different sub selves that have expression that satisfy different urges that you have, different values that you want to satisfy. And you don't need to find this unicorn camara pursuit that somehow allows you to support yourself and do something that's as fun as playing a game, and what do you know, allows you to change the world. Because like that thing doesn't exist, that it's okay to do something that allows you to support yourself. And it's okay to do something that's fun but doesn't make any money and not turn it into a project. And it's okay to do something to change the world. But like you don't need to find them all in the same.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, that's really interesting. And I imagine quite liberating for people who feel like how will I ever find this thing? It’s like well, you won’t.
Chris Sparks: We’re so hard on ourselves. We're so hard on ourselves. We create these impossible standards, and we're just humans bumbling around trying to figure things out. And the more that we can be gentle with ourselves, I know it's like, hey, the more that I try things, the more that I get in touch with what I think and believe and want out of life, the more likely I am to get it. But this pursuit of perfection that it doesn't exist, it's again a self-fulfilling prophecy. By going after this ideal, we ensure that we never find it.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. So, so let's talk about your coaching practice and kind of when that emerged and what it looks like.
Chris Sparks: So, it emerged because someone asked to pay me and I said yes. But the longer backstory is I did a lot of coaching in the poker world. And I coached over a hundred players, and it's notable that these are a hundred of the best players in the world. They just happen to be not quite as good as me. And I realized that the best way to learn something is by teaching. I think that was one of the reasons I was able to rise to the very top of poker is that I had this broad sample size of how all of these other really, really smart minds were thinking about the game. And I was able to just like take little pieces of what everyone was doing and make it my own. And not only that, by having to explain things like I'm explaining it now, I had to understand it much better. I was able to excavate these gaps in my own thinking. It's like, oh, I really don't understand how to play this situation, I should study it more. And then next time I have a conversation, it’s like yeah, that sounds right. I think I understand that a little bit better. And you see this feedback loop that was taking place. And the same thing occurred when I retired from poker, a lot of it, there was this big event in poker called Black Friday where poker got shut down in the US. Boohoo, sad story, we were all on the side of the road, what are we going to do with the rest of our lives and all of our money? And a lot of these guys who I was once coaching in poker created startups, they went and raised VC money, or they went and started angel investing themselves. And so, the conversations we were having around performing as poker players, I found surprisingly that the same conversations were happening with them in these new contexts, that the same skills were necessary in order to compete and to compete well. So, when one of these former friends said like, hey, would you be interested in coaching me but in a business context, I was like, sure. I'm just sitting on a beach in Thailand, I'm not doing anything, let's talk. And that was 2016. And just referral by referral, bird by bird, it's slowly grown up. I have a small team around me now that helps with the backend and helps me get content to the place that it needs to be. I, inspired by you and others, just launched a podcast last week, so excited to have more of these conversations. And I really hope that I'm coaching in some form for the rest of my life. I don't know whether it'll be professionally, but I think there's so much value in having someone who's an objective third party to point out your blind spots. So, I have my own particular lens of looking at things and some people find that helpful, but most importantly, having people in your life who you trust to call you out on your ish because we all need that.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. Is that a pithy description of most of the coaching, like just bullshit calling and accountability reminders? Not to take anything away from it. I do think it is- like probably the better question to ask is like what role does coaching take in these people who become your clients’ life? It's somewhere- It's not therapy and it's not nannying, but is it like people who are at an eight and want to go to a twelve? Is it people who are at a three and want to go to a five? Does it encompass all of those things? Is it people who just want to get introduced to something new? Like it's one of those big, poorly termed worlds of coaches and life coaches and therapists and trainers and all of these things that are just kind of like a messy soup that everyone has their own little world to carve out in there. So, carve us out your world and who you like to work with.
Chris Sparks: Yeah, it's messy. I wish there was another word, but this is the language that we're stuck with, and it's the best we've come up with so far. I like to think that I'm taking someone who's already in the top 1% of their field and helping them get to the 0.001%. So, they're already operating at a nine and I want to help them be at a nine all the time, or sometimes they hit a ten and I want them to hit a ten more often. So, it can be either really tactical optimizations, or it could be subtle reframes or flips in the way that they do things that just improves their subjective experience of reality or makes them feel a little bit more fulfilled, even if nothing on the surface has changed. It really can vary. But where I think I add the most value is I just have this uncanny ability with patterns, and I recognize patterns in people. And as we've talked about, I don't think free will really exists in the present moment. So, if someone has a pattern, I assume that that pattern is going to keep repeating, unless something is done to divert the dominoes, so to say. So, recognizing, hey, what are the positive patterns? And there's lots of them. A lot of the things we've accumulated are great. Let's amplify that, let's make those patterns happen more often. When you do that, you have a great day, great, let's have a great day every day. Why not? But also, we're holding ourselves back all the time. And this could be environmental, this could be beliefs, things that are limiting ourselves, invisible boxes that we're putting around us that, hey, if we only decided to step outside of the box, who knows what we could do. And sometimes it requires somebody else to point out that obvious. And sometimes like some days I'm just like, hey, you already know this, like, hey, you said that recruiting a new engineer was your top priority, but you showed me your schedule, and I don't see any interviews on there. So, like is it a top priority or not? And someone on the outside would be like you’re paying him thousands of dollars to look at your calendar and tell you to do something? But sometimes pointing out the obvious to someone and holding them accountable is really valuable. Especially if this person has no one else that they're answering to, that they're giving orders all day long, and they need someone to say, hey, yeah, maybe you should start doing that thing you said you were going to do, or not, or decide it's not actually important, one or the other. It can't be both.
Eric Jorgenson: I think it is almost impossible to do that for yourself as often as you need it to be done. And for people who are in that situation, the value of getting that engineer recruited two weeks earlier is well worth the few thousand dollars that it takes to get that task accomplished. So, you have an amazing post about the systems that you see in the world and the kind of mental models within it. It is like systems, bottlenecks, leverage, and feedback loops all kind of briefly tied together in this one post that I think is exceptional. And I hear that in your- I hear this post in your description of your coaching, like looking at the systems that guide people's lives, looking for the bottlenecks and the high leverage points of intervention and how that affects the next day's behavior and the next day’s behavior and the dominos, as you said. And I think it is absolutely reasonable that someone with an uncanny talent for seeing those points of intervention and just putting them in front of your face all the time can drive orders of magnitude change in the outcome.
Chris Sparks: Thank you. I appreciate it. I mean, systems thinking is completely foundational to everything that I do. And if there's one thing that I can leave every client with, it is being able to embody this lens, that if I can help them see things as a system, I know that everything will work out all right. Because some of the implications of systems thinking are just so powerful that I just want to shout them from the rooftops. When you think about bottlenecks, realizing that almost every single thing that we do has no impact whatsoever. Everything that we're doing is a waste. Well, like why are we doing so many things? Let's just like take a moment to think, hey, maybe I should be thinking about what I should do that actually will have an impact because most of these things are shuffling deck chairs. Leverage, like, okay, I can have a small impact on one person or I can have incrementally more effort and have a small impact on millions of people. Okay, well, let me take that extra step to do so. Instead of doing this thing over and over again, why don't I take five minutes to write out a crappy SOP and then assign that SOP for someone else to own and improve, and all of a sudden, I don't have to do this thing over and over again, but no, I'm not going to take five minutes just to write out what I'm doing. I want to keep it in my head so I can own it. It's like these things that are so obvious when you say them out loud. It's like, well, yeah, why wouldn't I do that? So yeah, I really, really just like think it's so foundational thinking in systems, anything that Donella Meadows has written, all this stuff coming out of Santa Fe Institute. Like if I was to go back into academia, and like I've played with this, like complexity systems thinking, there's just so much to be mined there that you could literally just say systems applied to X and just everything would change. I don't know. I'm getting off my rocker here.
Eric Jorgenson: That's exactly what I was hoping for. Have you read the Systems Bible?
Chris Sparks: Oh, it's so funny. It's hilarious.
Eric Jorgenson: I fucking love it. It is absolutely hilarious. Okay, good. I was hoping you had, I assumed you would, but yeah.
Chris Sparks: It wakes you up to the realization that everything around you is a dysfunctional system. And so, you either need to, one, like find a way to work within the dysfunction or, two, figure out why the system is dysfunctioning.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. And then just kind of accept it with like a nihilist shrug and a giggle and go on about your life.
Chris Sparks: This is the world we live in, what are you going to do? Stop beating your head against the wall with things you can’t change.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, exactly. Okay, so God, we're a ways into this, and I still have like whole chunks of stuff that I haven't gotten to yet. So, people that I talked to on Background told me very specifically and multiple times to ask you about Japan specifically amongst your global travels. I know that you're an incredibly well traveled person. But Japan specifically came up, though I was not told why. So, I'm just going to pull your string on Japan and see what happens.
Chris Sparks: Yes, I'm a big Japanophile. I try to visit every year. I was supposed to be in Japan this year to live for three months, overlapping with the Olympics. Unfortunately, that was not to be, but very excited to go back next year and the year following, probably between one and three months on each of those visits. So, it's just, I can't wax poetic enough about the country. I was just in the Galapagos for my birthday, and I think the Galapagos is a very good metaphor for Japan in that it culturally evolved independently because they were just closed to outsiders until the Americans showed up with gunboats in 1850s. So, you have some influence from China and Korea, but essentially it was its own animal in its own ecosystem. So, some of the implications of that I think are really fascinating. I think just they have this striving for excellence and perfection that is just so cool to witness. And if you think you're honing your craft, go find like the Japanese grandmother who's been making the same dumpling for 50 years because five generations back, that's what she was doing. Or these onsens that have been in the same family since the year 1000, like talk about like a big load to bear is like you're the 26th generation onsen owner. No, no, you're not going to be a professional baseball player, you're an onsen owner. So you have the family legacy to uphold. Just amazing service, just like this counterculture that is completely rebellious against the somewhat like repressive conformist over layer. This creates so cool art and design and music and yeah. I mean, if it was a practical time zone, otherwise, like I would be there already. But I find it as a tourist, it just has infinite depth and I'm super excited about it.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. Japan is so cool. I went to- I've only been to Tokyo, but I found it to be like the most other worldly place I have ever traveled. And it's incredible in that way. It's deeply clean and quiet and polite. It's just an amazing place.
Chris Sparks: There are more stories, and I say stories like tales, narratives, characters, in a single office building in Tokyo then in some countries. I really believe that.
Eric Jorgenson: I found it- I loved it, but I also found it frustrating. Me and my fiancé were there as total like- she was the only blonde person and I'm the only like giant, so everybody's very polite, but not very like accessible. And I was like looking into those windows of those office buildings and being like, oh my God, there's incredible depth in this city and in this building and in this place, but I can't- I'm not drawn into it. And I don't know how to get in. And so, I really want to go back and explore more of the country and more of the city with like even pseudo locals so that I can like feel more of that depth and get a couple more layers.
Chris Sparks: Yeah. Again, this is subjective, and I'm going to try to report it objectively without judgment. I think there are definitely some trade-offs that Japanese culture brings. And one of them is just the inability to show emotions or speak your mind outwardly. And a lot of that comes from Japan is extremely hierarchal. So, if you see two people meeting, the first five minutes is going through where is their family from, where do you work, all these different things in order to determine relative status. And then that determines the pronouns that they use to refer to each other for the rest of their lives until one of those variables changes, until maybe he gets at Sony or Panasonic, which is perceived as more status. But essentially like now this is the relationship. And the implication is that there are no peers in Japan and that makes it very, very hard for deep friendships. Not only for like outsiders who never actually become insiders; I've had friends who lived in Japan for 15 years and their friends for 15 years still remark on how good their Japanese is and how nice it is that they're practicing. Like you'll never be an insider and you have to just deal with that. But also like you'll never be on a peer relationship with someone and that it makes it really hard. And it's a big reason why drinking culture is so big in Japan, but also in Korea and China, because it creates this social plausibility or say like plausible deniability is a better way of putting it, that things that you say when you're wildly intoxicated won't be held against you. So, it's the one time, just like the fool telling the king what he needs to hear in this joke, that you can tell your boss to go shove it. And next thing, you have a little fistfight on the street and you're like, man, like you made me work a hundred-hour week again, F-you. And then the next day, you wake up and you go back into the office at 5:00 AM and everyone pretends like nothing happened. So, it’s interesting, you have these kinds of social lubricants that emerge through like the veins of this repressive structure. That's like the anthropology that I find really interesting.
Eric Jorgenson: And that's incredibly interesting and beautiful. Yeah. I hope we can go together someday. So, is there, just to tie this roughly back in, is there a professional poker world in Japan? Like can you go and play there?
Chris Sparks: Technically poker, I believe, is not legal in Japan. I assume that it is taking place underground. But I think this is a big part of the appeal of places like Korea and Macau is like there's a large Japanese contingent there.
Eric Jorgenson: Okay. That makes sense. So, let's do a little interplay between your poker sort of mindset in the world and the investing that you do. Because I think from the investor's lens, like people would say in a sort of a derogatory way like that's not an investment, that's a gamble. And I imagine that you have a different outlook, and I'm curious sort of how those two things sit in your mind in your worldview.
Chris Sparks: Yeah. I think a good prerequisite is to realize that we're placing bets all the time. I think you mentioned Annie Duke, she's really popularized this common notion from the poker world that we think in bets, that when we cross the street, we decide to getting to the other side of the street is worth the risk of getting hit by a car. And I would encourage any investor who's closed minded enough to think of what they do as investing and what a lot of other people do is gambling to reconsider what those definitions are and how that lack of imagination might be costing them in other areas of their lives. And so, for me, when I hear gambling, I think investing without an edge. Like gambling is flipping coins with friends, and I've seen friends gamble and flip coins and lose six figures in a night because they wanted an adrenaline rush. Gambling is, hey, I'm going to bet on the Patriots to win the Super Bowl, but I have never watched the Patriots play, and I just like their uniforms. Like it's putting money or other resources at risk, time, attention, etc., without an open clear-eyed view of the risk-reward calculation. I try to be as clear eyed as possible. And I'm aware that everything that I do, every investment that I make, time, attention, energy, monetary, relationships – is an investment. And that I hope to more than recoup every single investment that I make. And that I am playing the longest game possible. I'm making lots of small bets that might not pay off, but when they do over the course of a lifetime, well, it'll be really interesting.
Eric Jorgenson: I'm particularly interested in the long game piece of what you just said because I'm always- I think the same way. And I'm always looking for new perspectives because I feel like everybody playing a long game is looking at it a little bit differently. So, when you say I'm playing the long game, what does that mean? How does that change what your bets are or what your investments are?
Chris Sparks: Compounding everything. Recognizing that when you have a lifetime of compounding with something, whether that's a relationship where every friend, I want to be friends with this person for the rest of my life, hopefully that's the case. My health, well, any investment that I make now maximizes the chances that not only I will be alive in 80 years, but that I'll be cognitively healthy and able to like do things. Man, like how crazy that would be, I'm a hundred years old and I'm still thinking well with all that experience, that's going to be, I hope that to be really interesting. It comes up with like finances, it is just so obvious that I can make investments into things that help me to learn and to grow my own skills, my capabilities, my ability to earn or meet people or get deal flow, that basically any investment that I expect to have a long compounding period is a hell yes. And the same thing is especially like any investment that can get paid off over and over and over again. So, it really, for me, comes back to intangibles. For someone who really likes to measure things, sometimes back in the day, down to multiple decimal points, it's like really flipping the script on that. Well, what can I invest in that puts me in the position to find great opportunities, to be able to capitalize on those opportunities, and to just trust that I'll be able to recognize them when I see them and move quickly so I can take advantage of them. So, yeah, I think that someone said this to me, I wouldn't take authorship of this quote, but I think it's really true is like the ultimate con is the long game. Like if you're having fun and you're doing things with like no desired payoff, you keep adding value to people with no desire, no even thought of someday, this day may never come, I'm going to ask a favor of you. Like if you're completely non-transactional with everything, you have no worries about things coming back to you. It's really counterintuitive, but like the less that you think about the immediate ROI on doing something, the more that ROI is going to stack. It's a really crazy notion.
Eric Jorgenson: I've seen that play out and prove true over and over and over again. I think it's so correct, the like play the long game, don't keep score, give, give, give, give, give, give, it'll all work out. The karma bank is real, but it's invisible and it's intangible and it keeps score, but in only intangible numbers and you can never check your balance, you just have to trust it. I think that's so totally right.
Chris Sparks: It's a little woo, but I have to go there. It's like if I'm directing my energy at things I want, and it comes back to you, like being very clear on what wants, at least like having an idea and experiment that like, hey, I'm acting as if this is the thing I want. And the more you just redirect your energy that way, the more it'll come back many fold.
Eric Jorgenson: So, what do you consider your edges when you look at the world of investing? And you're not about to put money down without feeling like you've got an edge and you're picking the games, quote, unquote, that in the investing world you would pick in the poker world. What are those as you kind of put your head in that direction?
Chris Sparks: People. It really comes back to people. I don't feel like I have an edge in a lot of other areas of investing. I might if I had dedicated years of my life. But something that I do have a lot of confidence and conviction and evidence is, is that I have a good understanding of people. My first investing experiences is probably important to note is I backed over two dozen poker players for a number of years, and it was completely trust-based where I had no way of knowing other than just like seeing them on video. Hey, is this someone- they're like halfway across the world, is this someone who's going to like send me my share of the profits, and is this someone who's going to actually work hard, that I can trust them, etc.? And I did very well, and I seem to have a knack for recognizing like good people. And I see a lot of what I'm doing at Forcing Function is investing in people, seeing someone who I think is going to go on to do great things and just giving them a little bit of like a nudge on their trajectory, just like give it like a couple more degrees on that X. And the same thing is like I generally invest in managers. I've gotten more into like early stage. I've started doing some seed investments, backing some crypto projects. And I don't pretend to be like technical enough to understand what they're doing, but if I know the person, I know how hard they're working, I know the effort and their integrity, that I'm comfortable placing a bet on the person that even if the final vision looks nothing like the thing they sold me on on the call, that I can trust them to execute. And ironically – I mean, I keep saying the word ironically, I don't think it's ironic at all – a lot of my best investments have come from friendships. Like people who I met on the other side of the world staying at a hostel and we hit it off. And a few years later, like, hey, I'm doing this thing, I don't know if you're interested, but would you take a look? And you never know where these opportunities are going to come from. So, I realized it's like just recognizing good people and continuing to invest in them.
Eric Jorgenson: I think that is so true, and I completely agree. Like that's my criteria for investment as well. It starts with like do I know and love and trust this person enough to basically just give them the money and not ever worry if I will get it back. And ironically, those end up being the best investments. Yeah, exactly.
Chris Sparks: If you're going to be like hovering over this person's shoulder or making sure that they're a good steward, they're not a good steward. Your intuition is telling you that.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. Okay. So, there's one thing, I hesitate a little bit to bring it up, but doing research, I was talking to a friend about you, and I feel very certain that I misheard this. And maybe he was pranking me, but I just have to ask you this question, ask him what it's like to live with one of the greatest pianists in the world.
Chris Sparks: Oh, so pianist as in piano player, I just want to make sure I really enunciate. Okay. So, shout out to Eric Lewis, ELEW. In my opinion, one of the top five pianists of the world and my former roommate for five years in New York, also an excellent short movie producer where he's kind of like a John Carpenter where he writes, directs films, creates the score for primarily like short horror films, like a really smart guy. What have I learned from him? A lot of life comes down to preparation for important moments. When people see Eric perform, it's like an explosion. I mean, when he gets on the piano, he like goes to the point of breaking it. It is ferocious. It is animalistic. It is this just like cyclone of energy. And people assume that this level of intensity is his baseline. No. There is like this principle from physics that energy is neither created nor destroyed. It's merely shifted from one place to the other. And I think this is very true when it comes to productivity as well is like you aren’t creating energy. Let's say, when you drink caffeine in the morning, you're not getting energy out of anywhere, you're paying, you're essentially opening up a debt that needs to be paid back later. There's going to be a crash. So, you might have more energy now, but you're just shifting it from the future. And again, that's a whole other story, like we're constantly like opening up these debts, not realizing that we're not creating them out of thin air, that they'll need to be paid back. Anyway, people see this explosion of energy and assume that's how he is all the time. But no, like a lot of times Eric is like a cat and is just like recharging, relaxing, thinking, playing chess, reading psychological papers, just like doing things to fuel his body and mind so that he can unleash himself on the audience when he has a performance. And that was a really good object lesson for me because I see so many people operating at an anxious seven all the time. And when you see the best in the world, and I would put Eric in that category, they're operating at a ten or a one. And most of the time, it's close to a one.
Eric Jorgenson: But they're allocating their energy and effort towards being the very best version of themselves when they unleash all of that energy and attention and effort in very well-chosen moments.
Chris Sparks: The hibernation is just as important as the [inaudible 1:40:49]. I'm pronouncing that wrong. The emergence. I don't know. We’re live, I can’t pronounce words.
Eric Jorgenson: I've seen that in programmers too, actually computer programs. Like some of the most genius engineers I've ever worked with didn't just sit at the computer for two weeks and crank out code. They like sat there and played video games on their iPad and looked like the laziest bum in the world for nine days, and then sat down and wrote one beautiful, elegant function in eight hours that no one else could have written at the company, no matter how long they worked at it. It's really incredible.
Chris Sparks: One maybe utopian, perhaps dystopian, version of reality that I think we're heading towards is we spend most of our lives in this fever dream. And we're occasionally woken up to make some small change to the algorithm, to execute on our behalf while we recharge. And I think an important part of that story, hey, this might be true for this programmer. So, again, I'm coming at this place of non-judgment, it's important to recognize that not all activities recharge. And I think this is why I'm really big on reducing social media usage. I spend barely time on there because while it feels like a break, it's not a break that recharges, it actually saps your batteries. So, in general, when you're not in one of life's most important moments and you don't need to be performing at a ten, like go read a book, like go sit by a lake and contemplate, like put your feet in the grass, like do something that is proven to recharge you rather than something that turns off your brain.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. This is something that I think you mentioned earlier, like cognitive athletes have to train like physical athletes. This is something physical athletes really get – the power of rest and recovery. And they rest just as hard as they train. Renaldo sleeps like 12 hours a day and LeBron. But I think mental athletes and performers tend not to do that nearly as effectively.
Chris Sparks: There's no shortcuts in this game. I mean, everyone wants to buy the shortcut. That's how Men's Health Magazine survives. Like no one wants to hear just like go to the gym three times a week and lift some heavy things and then sleep eight hours. Like there are no shortcuts. The shortcut is to be consistent. So yeah, like if we need to sleep eight hours, it is for a reason. Like we wouldn't- like imagine ourselves on the Savannah when we aren't surrounded by walls and guns, like we wouldn't just like turn our brains off and like lay down while lions are roaming around us if it wasn't absolutely essential. And you think that you can hack that and that you can reclaim four hours a day by only sleeping half that? Come on, man. Like there are other places to make that up. And I think the way that you do is just by doing things of higher average importance.
Eric Jorgenson: I love that. So, you don't drink caffeine?
Chris Sparks: I don't drink caffeine when I play poker. As we were saying before, I want controlled variables, and I don't want anything in my system, caffeine, sugar, etc., that could affect my energy level, could affect my aggression levels, my processing. That being said, I do have a caffeine pill, which has a hundred milligrams of caffeine, 200 milligrams of l-theanine and every single day, this is like for the last seven years, at 9:00 AM every single day. So, Saturday, Sunday, I'll cycle off on vacation, but generally, I have it every single day. And like recognizing that I'm mostly just alleviating some withdrawal symptoms, but again, I think the debt payment is worth it.
Eric Jorgenson: I think that's- that wasn't meant to be a gotcha. I was truly interested because I think there's two things there. One is like that I recognize in you is sometimes it's intimidating to think about optimizing these things because you project it forward forever. You're like, fuck, I don't want to have to live at like a 12 out of 10, hyper optimized, like 15 minutes schedule for my whole life. And that's what I love about the experiment framing that you use and the kind of like you're hyper optimizing for one event in three months, which is very clear for this particular thing. And I think the rest of us could do more to define areas or programs or projects and focuses for areas of time.
Chris Sparks: I'd like to comment on that. I think it's clear that I think about this deeply, but I don't want to give any impression that I'm some sort of automaton that's hyper optimized. Like I struggle with this stuff just as much as anyone. And I would be very, very cautious of taking advice from anyone who finds this easy. Like it is not easy. And everyone wants to just go from zero to 60 overnight. We're about to see this with the turning of the calendar. Everybody's going to wake up on January 1st and be like this is the year that I put on 20 pounds of muscle. And this is the year that I run a marathon. And it is like, no, what we're doing is stacking bricks, one brick at a time, one small change at the time. And if this change, like if it's paying rent, if it's showing that it's valuable, we stack another brick on top of it. And so, like what you're seeing, what I'm talking about in the context of poker performance, this is like a decade of iteration and lots of things that didn't work for me. Something might work for me, something might work for Eric, it doesn't mean that it works for you. Try it, do your own research, see, and if it does work, great, double down on that. If it doesn't work, awesome, there's a million other things you can try. And I think that's a really good framing is to come at things with abundance. You see something on Twitter, you listen to something on a podcast, and you're like, man, I couldn't do something like that. Isn't it awesome that this person is out there on the frontier exploring the boundaries for you and is going to report back and say like, hey, this is really cool, you should try it. That like these are all opportunities, they aren't obligations. So, like, yeah, I can't emphasize this enough, like when you're zooming out, when you're playing the long game, make the changes very small and sustainable. Like, start with the one pushup. If you like the one pushup, go to two. You don't need to go from like I haven't worked out in a year to I'm going to work out two hours a day. There's a lot of steps in the middle. And if you take those small incremental steps, it'll be a lot more sustainable. It'll be something that actually sticks.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, I love that. And it helps you to see the impact of each of those small incremental steps. One of the other quotes here that you reminded me of with what you said about caffeine is, “When it comes to poker, my body is a temple. I don't even want to know how much money I've cost myself with poor decisions, which trace back to saying yes to dessert.” I mean, like that is a perfect encapsulation of I think like two hours of the attention to detail, the systems and feedback loops that impact on decision-making, the high stakes involved with some of these things, and the sort of granularity of knowing where the dominoes fall. And that you're not an automaton, you just know what the levers are that control the outcomes and when to flip those things on and off. And when you want to go travel and drink and eat, you travel and eat and drink. And when you want to win a fucking tournament and become a champion and make a life-changing take a life-changing pot down, you skip dessert because you know what the impact is. I love that.
Chris Sparks: Exactly. Everything is a bet. Everything is risk-reward. And sometimes having dessert is like that looks really delicious and I want to do it. And sometimes it's like, well, if I eat this dessert, I'm probably going to have a little bit less sleep and that's going to echo into the day tomorrow, and I have a really big day tomorrow. And I'd rather have a better day tomorrow then have a dessert now. But you weigh those with the decision and you go in with eyes wide open. And sometimes you're like, man, I shouldn't have had that dessert last night. And instead of punishing yourself, you're like, okay, well that situation is probably going to come up again many different times. What's something I can do next time to make it more likely that I make a decision that I'm proud of? And having that mindset is like everything that's happened is going to recur a bunch more times. The results of any given decision don't matter, let's approach this from how would I like to make this decision on average and try to create a supportive context for that?
Eric Jorgenson: I love that so much. So, we're about to bump up into two hours, but jam-packed with stuff. As we kind of wind down here, I want to ask you just for kind of two things. One is like some of the most formative books that have hit you and where people should go to dive into more of your stuff. You sent me a very comprehensive email. I know you have a ton of great writing. But yeah, tell me about some of the formative books that really shaped you and your worldview into kind of where you are now.
Chris Sparks: So, we're going on another two hours then. So, there are many. Two I mentioned earlier Artist’s Way and The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, both of these are kind of workbook style, things you can go through. I really like both of those. If you want to learn more about the way I see things, a bunch of free articles and resources are on forcingfunction.com including some posts about my favorite reads over the years. You can also check out the Forcing Function library, that's forcingfunction.com/library that at this point, is 200 different resources that I have curated with the love and patience of a true librarian of here are the best podcasts, articles, books that I've read over the years, tagged and categorized depending on what you want to learn. So, I'd recommend you check that out. I'm kind of remiss to mention another book because I'll go on forever.
Eric Jorgenson: Fair enough. This is a very comprehensive list and website. And I appreciate you, all of your writing is very considerate and dense. It's not like you're posting every week. You are waiting until you have something like really awesome to write and writing the best article you can write about it. That play to win, meta skills and high stakes poker post is really, really, really incredible. Thank you so much for putting all this work together and sharing this with us. I'm a little confused as to why you want us all to know how good you are at poker. This feels like a thing that you should keep a secret.
Chris Sparks: Hubris. The ego death is still a work in progress. It's nice to be loved and respected. And I think there was a lot of educational component there. And sometimes when I want to play in a poker game and they link me to this piece and be like, sorry, dude, you can't play, I'm like, God, I shot myself in the foot. Darn it. But I don't know. I just get a lot of fulfillment and joy out of sharing this stuff with you, in written or spoken form. So hey, everything in life has tradeoffs. I try to open source whenever possible and can’t win them all.
Eric Jorgenson: It's beautiful. I really appreciate you doing it. I learned a lot from it. I think others will too. And I don't think that Kevin Hart listens to this podcast, so you're probably all right. Thank you so much. Good luck on the tournament. You are going to win. I know it. I can't wait to see you take it down, and we're all rooting for you.
Chris Sparks: Eric, this was an absolute pleasure. Thanks for creating this space. Thanks for being an awesome host. I'm really loving diving into your catalog and what you do. So, I’m really honored to be here. Thank you again for the opportunity.
Eric Jorgenson: Later, Chris.
I appreciate you hanging out with us today. Thank you for listening. I'm still buzzing with excitement over that. I hope you are too. I hope you take something away from this conversation. For me, it's this question: What can you change today that will make the desired outcomes more likely for your future self? What's a few things you can do now that'll set you up for success in the future? Take a few quiet moments for yourself, breathe deep, and be well.