Daniel went into great deal about the 2024 WSOP schedule, but also talked about Shaun Deeb's weight-loss challenge and the prop bet on Jeremy Becker vs Landon Tice.
Adam Schwartz: Shaun Deeb booked a bet with Bill Perkins. It was based on a weight percentage, not a pound goal.
Remember, Shaun was a big man, I think he was over 300 pounds, and they wanted to lose some weight. He wanted to get some action on it, and he weighed in at a DEXA scan, I think, at about 40% body fat, somewhere in that range. He had to get down to 17% in about 14-15 months before the World Series of Poker this year.
Shawn wasn't providing updates, which was funny because, you know, I wanted to follow along with it. I know Shaun a little, and I wanted to see his progress. He had a camera crew and started a YouTube channel, and then all of a sudden, there weren't any updates.
I was like, "Okay, what's going on with the bet? How's the progress?" There was the odd thing from the gym here and there, but there wasn't a ton of updates, so we weren't sure where he was at. He did post a recent update where he was shirtless and looking a lot better than he did before. But recently, Bill Perkins bought out of the bet for $800,000. Remember, Shaun put up $100,000 to win Bill Perkin's $1 million, 10 to 1.
Daniel Negreanu: It was 50! It was 20-to-1, so $50,000 to win a million.
Adam Schwartz: I'll have to double check that. Either way, he bought out for $800,000, and Shaun won. So, he was down to 22%. He was about 5% away from hitting his goal. It looked like he was going to make it. I don't know about easily. Like we said, we're only three months away. It doesn't get linear. I'm sure it gets harder and harder to lose that next percent in body fat.
But Bill bought out, and Shaun, you know, I think the main thing here is how great Bill Perkins is to inspire somebody like Shaun to do this and others, theoretically, to get healthier. Just fantastic for somebody like Bill to do that. But Shaun, it'll be interesting to see.
I think we're all hoping that Shaun keeps it off.
(Will Jaffe was also curious, it seems)
Daniel Negreanu: So Bill Perkins wrote a book called "Die with Zero," and if he keeps making these weight bets, he's well on his way.
Adam Schwartz: $800k is not a drop in the bucket for sure. I think this kind of helped Shaun a little bit as far as not being completely emotionally spent by the time he gets to the World Series. We mentioned there's three months out, and now he can, you know, I think he said he wanted to reach his goal still and get to 17% for his kids and to prove that he can do it. And I think there are some side bets or something too, but they might have got settled. I'm not sure.
Terence, first let's go to you. You helped coach me through my bet with Bill Perkins. You helped me get down from 230 to 150 pounds. I don't remember exactly what we thought of Shaun's chances, but he's a determined guy. It looks like he was going to make it.
Shaun even shared some juicy data after the bet finished.
Terrence Chen: I thought he was an underdog. I did not think he was a 10 to 1, 20 to 1 underdog at all. I mean, I thought it was maybe like four, five, six to one, that kind of thing. So I thought Shaun was getting good value. And you know, that's even ignoring the life EV aspect of it. Even if he makes it from 40% to 22%, that's still a huge life EV win, even if he ends up losing the prop.
I'm surprised Bill bought out, for a couple of reasons. Like you said, he kind of does this altruistically. I don't think he made this bet because he thought, "Ah, I've got a real good spot here to grind out $50k, $100k, whatever the number was." He did it to improve the lifestyle of somebody he knows, which is why I'm surprised at the buyout now that he's kind of close. I don't remember what he was at, 20-some-odd percent, 24% or something like that. But like you said, Adam, getting from 24% to 17% is arguably harder than getting from 40% to 24%. They're both really hard.
Daniel Negreanu: It's definitely 22%. Which makes a pretty big difference considering the timeline.
Congratulations from the Poker Community
Numerous poker personalities sent their thoughts about the buy-out and Shaun's weight-loss journey via Twitter/X. Shaun's tweet about the buy-out got hundreds of replies, thousands of likes, and currently has over 350k views. There was tons of support, plus questions about Shaun's future health.
Dealing with Side Action from Deeb's Bet
Terrence Chen: Yeah yeah – It's really hard to get leaner because once you're already lean, the body doesn't like to continue to do that. So, what you're essentially saying if you're buying out for $800,000 is you think he's a 4-to-1 favorite now to do this, right? Because you're saying your only downside is $200k versus the million. I don't know if Shaun is a 4-to-1 favorite to make it down to 17%. I mean, especially now that he's no longer motivated.
The interesting stuff is the side action that other people had.
There's going to be a little controversy with respect to how people do side action. Shaun thinks it should be a similar thing, that the person who bet the "no" side should pay out four-fifths or whatever of the bet. But, you know, I'd be a little salty about that if I was somebody who took the "no" side because the last few percent is obviously so much harder than the first 13% or whatever.
Daniel Negreanu: I'm actually involved in a bet, which we're going to talk about, where it's really important to think of all these things beforehand.
Either you do one of two things: you come up with arbitrators beforehand just in case something comes up that's weird and awkward, or you have it clearly in writing like you're going to go based on what their bet is.
I think, ultimately, probably the fairest thing to do is go with what Bill did as far as his decision to do that. The 4-to-1 thing, I think what you look at is sort of okay with the process up till now.
Shaun did it, you know. He proved essentially, that he can do this. So really, I think Bill's calculation is that only way that he's going to win this bet, or that Shaun doesn't get there, is if he gets sick or if he gets hurt, and you know, he hasn't really up until this point. And I think maybe he just didn't want to root for the guy to get sick, so it's a way to just save $200k.
For Shaun, I think it's probably a good hedge, right? Even though you think you're probably going to get there, do you really want to bet?
Terrence Chen: Oh, if I'm Shaun, I'm taking this all day.
Daniel Negreanu: Like, you want to risk $800k to win an extra $200k and you know, something might come up?
Like you said, 19% to 17%, what's the deal here? That's not something you can do in a week or two, and you know, that's like a solid month, you would think.
So, it makes sense for both, I guess. And it's like, uh, again, another example of gamblers being crazy.
It's interesting because these types of stories, and I know this because I was just doing some stuff, this that I can't really talk about, but mainstream stuff, and this is what they want to know about. You know, the man with $100,000 breasts (Brian Zembic), these crazy side bets, like the sicko gambler deeds that we are.
You know, Shaun said this, I think, in one of his tweets, he's like, "Poker players are the best at winning these bets because we come from an analytical mindset, and we're going to tackle this and get it done".
I don't know historically how many of these weight bets people didn't win, but it's very low.
Adam Schwartz: Doug's was the one that I can think of that didn't make it.
(In 2022, Doug Polk bet Bill Perkins $200,000 that he could go from 27.7% body fat to 13.85%, but he only reached 15.1%.)
Terrence Chen: If they bet that the Jack of Spades will jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear, you end up with an ear full of cider.
To this day, like, nobody, whenever I'm at the poker table, nobody ever asks me about anything like I've ever really done in poker, not that I'm super accomplished, but they all want to know about the time that I wrestled Huck Seed in the parking lot of the Rio for, no money.
You have a six-foot-six college athlete who's like in his 50s against this tiny professional fighter. Who would win? It's fun, because it's a silly thing that would not happen outside of the poker space.
It'll be interesting to see Shaun go through the World Series of Poker. That's the hardest part, right? And for poker players, Daniel, you do it every year.
You kind of grind in the gym, and then, you're playing poker. I know we're going to talk about your schedule later, but when you're playing poker 16 hours a day, it's hard to stay disciplined, and for Shaun to get through the World Series of Poker, and then get back on track, I think we all hope that'll happen.
The Jeremy Becker vs. Landon Tice Bet
Adam Schwartz: The 2024 WSOP schedule was released on Friday, 99 bracelets, starting May 28th to July 17th, and the announcement kind of kicked off a bunch of interesting discussion, I think, because everybody's chomping at the bit. Let's get our side bets in, let's see who's going to do what.
We've got a guy, Jeremy Becker, who is a tournament player who wins the Daily win tournament every day, it seems like. It's amazing, this guy's run that he's on. And Landon Tice, they booked a bet.
Daniel Negreanu: Well, hold on, you're skipping a bunch! Let me jump right in.
Adam Schwartz: This is my cue for you to jump in!
Daniel Negreanu: Okay, but yeah, we're skipping over stuff. Yeah, obviously, the schedule's released, we start talking about fantasy. One of the things I mentioned is we're not going to do the online events. So as you mentioned, 99 events, not including the onlines this year for Fantasy, we're not going to include the online.
So I was thinking, you know, I used to do Full Contact Poker. I used to do this thing for fans, where I gave them like a $10K sweat, where you just pick from, pick this guy or that guy, pick Adam, or Terrence, or whatever. So I came up with some fun matchups, considering all the beef going around. I got Ike against Phil Helmuth.
One of them I put together was I put together Jeremy Becker versus Landon Tice.
Adam Schwartz: So what was the origin of the beef here?
Daniel Negreanu: I'm going to get there, I promise. There's no beef between Jeremy Becker and Landon Tice. Yeah, I put it together because when you look at it, I think it's a really interesting matchup.
You've got, you know, the GTO-studied guy versus the guy who doesn't own a computer, and has never looked at a solve
He just plays live and crushes. So it's like, we have this conversation about GTO versus exploit, and what's better in these fields. So we're going to have an opportunity this summer. Obviously over 20-30 events, it's kind of meaningless, but we're going to have an opportunity to follow this narrative, and people are going to put way too much emphasis on what actually happens. We've got the ultimate argument.
You can't really do a sort of like a scientific study on this, right? What's better?
So this is the closest we're going to get, a guy who's literally never looked at a solve and a guy who looks at solves a lot, and they're going to go head-to-head in these big fields to sort of test themselves.
Now, why did I put them together? I put them together in a matchup because I expected, I didn't think it would happen within seven minutes and I didn't offer a cross book or whatever, but I expected them to get riled up by the matchup.
Within 10 minutes, Landon says, "Cross book, my DMs are open." I'm like, I'm thinking, like, this is how old-school people did it, you know, throw it off.
Terrence Chen: Is Landon sold out? It seems like a lot of people were on the backer side.
Daniel Negreanu: Well, it's not really Landon, right? So we're going to get to that in a minute. Obviously, Landon doesn't have this kind of money, so this is really going to end up being Berkey.
So we're going to go back just a moment to see sort of where this came from. Because I've always been friendly with Berkey, I don't have a problem with Berkey. We have one commonality that he seems to be blind about, but I'm aware of. When I'm at my worst, I'm incredibly arrogant and condescending. I'm aware of this. He seems to think I parade it around as though it excuses, no, I'm aware of it, and I see it in him. I see it in his tweets, I see it in his demeanor, I see it in the way that he's certain. And listen, it's not all of who he is, but it is a part of him, right?
Here's the story of Berkey and Daniel's beef over Jonathan Little:
So I stuck up for Jonathan, Then they go on their podcast, and he sort of cluelessly mocks this fold I make with that is theoretically a call. But has no realm of understanding of the depth of the history and the dynamic between me and Jesse and all this sort of stuff, just this kind of narrow view of how a poker hand's played.
Adam Schwartz: Just for some context, Berkey is a cash game player, right?
Daniel Negreanu: Yeah. He doesn't know anything about these tournaments at all.
Let's say Adam and Terrence, you play a hand against each other, okay? Terrence makes a play that I look at and I go, "Well, that's a mistake." I don't know what Terrence knows about you. I don't know what your dynamic is. I don't know that the last seven times that you did this, you know, it led to this. So there's always going to be, from an observer's perspective, all we can do is look at situations and say, "Okay, well, in theory, this is plus EV, or this is minus EV," but that doesn't mean it's the best or right answer.
Anyway, so he goes and mocks me or whatever, which is fine, I don't mind. So it becomes like a back-and-forth thing. We haven't really spoken since. So I kind of felt like they would probably.
Adam Schwartz: You tweeted since, you haven't spoken since.
Daniel Negreanu: Yeah, no, not really. So, so I figured that we would, he would bite here, and I genuinely think that based on my interpretation of how they both play, that this is a plus EV bet for me. I don't know, it's hard to say over a small sample size, but Landon, you know, hit me up in the DMs, and we're sort of working on terms.
But, you know, sort of touching on what Terrence was saying earlier, it's important to make sure what I'm planning on doing is like writing out a full page of the rules and also agreeing to three arbitrators. That's just in case something happens that was unforeseen, like somebody gets COVID, or whatever the case may be.
When you do cross book and mutually played events, you sort of have to stay in touch, and you have to get clear. So the bigger picture idea we have is probably to, like, map out maybe 50 events they might play, right? The way that I look at it is, before the event starts, this is important,
You've got to know, are we on, are we off? Right, because otherwise, angles could be shot. Let's say the bet is okay. So, let's say Jeremy plays, shows up on time, plays three bullets, and busts. Okay, Landon wasn't even going to play the tournament. Well, now he's plus EV to play it. Or if Jeremy were to build up a huge stack, well now he's like not going to play it, so it doesn't count.
So, it's important before the tournament starts for both of them to agree on a mutually played event. The one other stipulation that I think doesn't make sense, and I was going to send you some tweets on this, was I sort of proposed like a $250k cap. Then I realized that's actually dumb because what's going to happen is a lot of the tournaments they play, whether it's a $3K, $5K, or whatever, like first through fourth, they're all going to be like over $250k.
So then they're really not playing for anything once they get fourth in terms of the crossbook. So, I'm going to see if we can up the cap to like $500k. Hopefully, they're interested.
Who is Jeremy Becker?
Terrence Chen: This is a man who does not own a computer; he only tweets from his phone, and has never looked at a solver in his life.
So, what's his background, what's his education and how has he become a crusher? And why do you and other people like his side?
Daniel Negreanu: He's never played online poker. So here's the interesting thing. I saw Johnny, Johnny Vibes, he tweeted this out. He said, "Landon's more studied", right. I understand based on the definition, absolutely right. Like if you think of study as looking at solves, breaking down theory, and all that kind of stuff, there's no question – it's like study versus zero.
However, that's not the real world because Jeremy does study in a very different way. Do you know he studies? He sits his ass in the chair every day, playing live, playing against the types of players that you're going to play, has been crushing for a while.
In addition to that, he watches the PokerGO final tables, he watches the GGPoker Millions every Tuesday. I love it because I was actually thinking about this when I was watching some Tritons. Can people learn how to play poker today just by watching the best players and trying to copy what they do? I believe yes.
Again, maybe at the highest levels, it becomes more difficult, but there are, and I didn't mention, but there are a couple of guys who play super high stakes, win, and don't look at solvers at all.
Adam Schwartz: Just let me ask a quick question here. If you're watching Triton as a beginner No-Limit Holdem tournament player, are all the plays and the different things that those guys do, the Jason Koons and all these guys – is that relevant playing a $100 buy-in?
Daniel Negreanu: Of course, it is. That's almost like saying well, LeBron could never beat my little community college game, right? Of course. So here's the thing, you're learning what the best of the best do. How could it not be applicable?
The concepts that you learn when you watch those things, generally speaking, are ICM-related, right? If you're watching final tables specifically, you're watching a lot of play that is heavily affected by ICM. If you watched one of those Super High Roller bowls where they show, let's say, from the early levels, you're going to see play be a lot different.
That's essentially one of the most important aspects of making money at final tables, right? Is that ICM stuff. So this is what Jeremy studies. He doesn't study it with computers; he studies by watching how people play and how they react in these certain situations. And again, when it comes to experience and learning, I don't know that in the last few years, anybody's put in more hours in these things than him, right? The question is, are these $200 dailies, are these, you know, $1600 MTTs, are they comparable to the World Series of Poker fields?
Yes, they are exactly what the World Series of Poker fields look like. So for me, when you talk about study, Landon has all the theoretical study, Jeremy has none. Jeremy has the practical study of playing against those fields. So that's where I think a lot of people feel like maybe that gives them an advantage.
Adam Schwartz: Is there any run hot here? Obviously, he's just crushed the dailies and some of the tournaments and wins at an absurd rate if you look at his ROI, but I'm wondering if there's, you know, some small sample run good here.
Daniel Negreanu: It's also possible that he's actually run pretty bad but still wins. I mean, it's so hard to know, right? It's a different field. I mean, obviously, if you're playing the $200 nightly, you're not facing the same players as the $10ks.
However, Jeremy did come into the studio, and he played some $10ks, and I will say that his table presence, his ability to focus, his ability to pay attention – he fits right in. Like, he didn't look out of place. He wasn't, you know, a fish out of water. He's making deep runs, he's making good plays, he's focused, he's in. And again, he's kind of like an old-school type player, where he just figured out, learned how to play these live tournaments, comes to Vegas on a short bankroll, and he's playing these dailies and trying to grind his way up.
It's like a little bit Rocky versus Drago because, Drago uses the machines and the science and all that, and you see this kid.
Me and Josh are like, I think this kid has some chutzpah. I didn't know him. All I did was see he's winning all these freaking tournaments, and me and Josh were like, that can't be a fluke. It could be, but it's very unlikely. Let's get to know him. Let's see if we can do some business with him, maybe. And then, of course, like I said, you know, he's entered the studio and stuff like that. Talking to some other people too, who played with him. At those stakes, he's probably among the most feared, for sure.
I won't name names because I don't want to get people in trouble, but I talked to some really good players at the studio and they say like, "I didn't see him do anything wrong. Like, I didn't see him doing anything goofy, weird, or whatever. He was just like playing good poker."
Adam Schwartz: You put out a bunch of possible matchups, I guess we'll look for. Is that the only one so far that's garnering any action?
Daniel Negreanu: Well, none of them were really designed to garner action.
These matchups that I put together, I'm not like booking them. I put these matchups together because this is part of what that freeroll is going to look like. So generally, what I'm going to do is I'm going to create 20 or 30 fun matchups. If you have some creative ones, you think we can add, we'll do that. What it'll be is whoever wants the freeroll, they just pick one side or the other.
So let's say it's, you know, let's say it's Hellmuth versus Ike Haxton. You pick one, and then, you know, you're going to have some duplicates, of course. A lot of people, but then your whole team will play against other teams, and then the person with the most points will win a prize. I haven't decided what the prize is yet or anything like that, but we're going to figure something out.