Does Poker Erode the Soul?

Pete and Melissa are back for a catch up episode. Topics range from knowing your skill level, to maximising EV in soft live poker games, to Pete's return studying poker seriously in 2025.

Pete and Melissa discuss this episode's philosophy book and how it relates to poker: The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts.

Poker can subject you to periods of darkness beyond what you are normally forced to confront in real life. Do such periods have a long-term effect on the psyche? Is it true that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger or do we emerge out of every downswing with a bit more of the light sucked out of us?

Pete has a proposition for Melissa - a new idea that will change the trajectory of the podcast. Also in today's episode we discuss three ways of strengthening the will covered in Ryan Holiday's book The Obstacle is The Way and how they relate to the poker player.

What if tilt is not actually something poker does to us but something we do to ourselves? In this episode we examine poker as a higher order beauty. Its intricacies exist objectively, even in a realm where humans don't. If we can fix our attention on the objective beauty of the game itself and escape the daily churn of how it makes us feel, we can harness curiosity to free ourselves from the gloom of self awareness and reach a flow state where we can play at our best more often.

Why is it so difficult for humans NOT to look at their short-term poker results. What are the benefits of getting into better results checking habits? Why the feedback of daily, weekly and monthly graphs isn't really feedback at all...and much more.

Overbets and why they're such a fundamental part of No Limit Holdem. Why pot and all multiples of pot are arbitrary. Melissa embarks on an INSANE challenge. Discussion of the Kristen Foxen bust out hand and much more.

Pete and Melissa debate the utility / futility of Range Betting and that mode of thinking before getting into a therapy session where Melissa recounts a recent incident at the poker table where she hit rock bottom in terms of her behaviour and how she's intent on changing her petulant ways.

Pete and Melissa are back with season 3 of Poker Distilled. Season 3 gets underway with a quote from a novel Melissa is reading which sparks a big discussion about how the madness of seeking a perfect theoretical strategy can absolutely ruin your poker progress and how the imperfection of humans vs human play is where the true beauty of the game resides.

Pete and Melissa are back for a one off catch up while you patiently wait for season 3 of Poker Distilled. Topics includes challenging yourself in tough games, how to build armour in poker and in life and why it's so important to have ambition as a poker player.