Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making

Poker pro & coach | speaker & author.
Lessons from poker on decision making and risk.
Founder @ConsciousPoker
Code: ALEC on @phenompoker

[Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making @AlecTorelli]

Why Poker Is the Greatest Game in the World

After spending most of my life studying this game, I finally sat down to explain exactly what makes poker unlike anything else on earth.

Here are the 5 reasons poker stands alone:

1.The goal isn’t to win, it’s merely to play.
Poker is an endless journey of self-mastery. You don’t beat the game; you grow with it. And there's always another level.

2. It’s infinitely complex.
You will never play the same hand twice. Every decision tree is unique. Poker mirrors the complexity of life itself.

3. The perfect blend of luck + skill.
Short-term variance keeps it exciting. Long-term skill keeps it beatable. Poker teaches resilience, risk management, and emotional control.

4. It’s a game of people, not cards.
From reading emotions to predicting behavior and adjusting to personalities, poker sharpens the same skills that drive success in the real world.

5. It forces personal growth.
Discipline, patience, focus, self-awareness… every flaw gets exposed at the table. To win at poker, you must evolve as a person.

If you’ve ever wondered why this game captures so many minds, and changes so many lives, this video breaks it all down.

https://t.co/WvChNq28i5

Let me know your biggest takeaway after watching.
- Alec♠️

[Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making @AlecTorelli]

@gregisenberg In a surprising turn of events, humans want to connect with other people in real life.

[Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making @AlecTorelli]

@JenShahade Congrats on this Jen. I know it's a massive undertaking and I'm sure it's great. I'm adding this to my list and am excited to read it.

[Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making @AlecTorelli]

@SMB_Attorney I tried the company when it launched and the AI was worse than the default GPT, I burnt all my credits, went in circles, got nothing accomplished and quit.

Support was no help because it doesn't exist.

Was insanely tilting.

[Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making @AlecTorelli]

Similar to poker how the best approach is an exploitative one, perhaps the optimal way to live is sub optimal.

An occasional drink with the perfect meal and company.
A little extra sun mid day when it feels just right.
Breaking the fast once in a while for brunch.
Gelato in Italy and croissants in Paris.

Maybe that slight indifference that can only happen when one is fully present and living in the moment is actually what it means to be fully optimized.

[Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making @AlecTorelli]

@derekhalpern Congrats and well done. Huge market and growing too.

[Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making @AlecTorelli]

@robbiehendricks Have lived part time in Italy for 15 years, am a dual citizen and fluent in Italian, and this is very standard across society from what I've observed.

[Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making @AlecTorelli]

The exact framework I use to think through hands at the poker table and how you can apply it to your games.

-------

Make an account on @PhenomPokerApp
Code: ALEC
200% deposit bonus up to $4,000!

DM me with questions or if you need help.

[Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making @AlecTorelli]

@SaraSmartist Thanks Sara!

[Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making @AlecTorelli]

People ask me all the time how to play better poker.

Here’s what I tell them.

The verb “play” comes from Middle English meaning “to amuse oneself or frolic” and Middle Dutch “playen” meaning “to be glad or rejoice”.

Let’s first make sure you’re actually playing poker, then we’ll layer in the strategy to make you a crusher.

DM me “coaching” for more.

[Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making @AlecTorelli]

@MikeMcDonald89 This is actually the correct take, so I was only $100,800,000 off.

[Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making @AlecTorelli]

I wish I knew that - I tried to look at the schedule the day before but couldn't find it. Prob spent an hour on this - even DL the app.

Had I known that my ideal lineup would be grouped in the evening in the way you described I'd have fired.

Peak idiocy IMHO they didn't release scheduling until the last minute.

I'm glad you went and it was awesome.

[Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making @AlecTorelli]

Growing up, I’d have done anything to be at Warped Tour in Long Beach, screaming punk rock at the top of my lungs.

Today it’s back on. Going strong for 20+ years.

Taking Back Sunday, Jimmy Eat World, All Time Low, Thrice, The Starting Line, Summer Set and dozens of others.

The irony is now that I’m grown up 20 years later, I can go if I want to.



But here’s the thing: I want to want to go more than I actually want to go.

I still have plenty of energy, am young at heart, and jam to the same music.

As I’ve grown up - and people warned me of this – I value comfort and ease much more.

I look at the concert, thousands of people stuck in the 90 degree sun for 10+ hours, with no bathrooms nor reprieve and where you have to commit all day for a front row seat (otherwise, what’s the point?).

Sure, I’d like to catch a few songs from my favorite bands, but I don’t care enough to go through all that effort.

I kind of like the idea of sitting on my couch, watching it live on YouTube with AC while I play poker on Phenom.

A part of me doesn’t want to prefer that, but that’s how it is.

Maybe this is just getting older, but it makes me realize just how so many things in life have a window where you can truly go all-in on them.

It’s easy say you can do whatever in the future, but aside from circumstances changing, it’s possible that you’ll change and that window where it mattered will just be gone.

The real irony of it all is I spent a lot of my childhood dreaming of being an adult, only to get here and realize that perhaps the greatest thing about life is being child-like.

What I didn't understand back then is that the window doesn't close because you run out of time.

It closes because you stop being willing to pay the price – the heat, the standing all day, the discomfort – for the experience.

As a kid I'd have paid any price. As an adult I do the math first.

It's not that I got 'too old' for Warped Tour.

I just stopped being the kind of person who'd sit in the 90 degree sun for 10 hours just to feel something.

Do it now.

[Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making @AlecTorelli]

This is one of the most depressing things I've read this month.

We've completely lose the plot on AI.

Totally cooked.

[Ole Lehmann @itsolelehmann]

btw anthropic's internal document on this literally said "we don't want it to be known that we are working on this.”

it was called project panama.

here's exactly what happened:

1: anthropic concluded that books were the cheapest way to build a world-class model because they gave claude curated facts, structured arguments, compelling stories, and writing “an editor would approve of.”

2: once anthropic decided it needed books at enormous scale, its first solution was piracy.

it downloaded 7m+ books from online libraries including libgen. the judge later wrote that although anthropic had legal ways to buy them, it chose piracy to avoid what dario amodei called the “legal/practice/business slog.”

3: that piracy created a massive legal risk.

so in february 2024, anthropic hired tom turvey, the former head of partnerships for google books, to find a legally safer way of obtaining “all the books in the world.”

4: turvey first contacted major publishers about licensing their catalogs.

those attempts didn’t produce agreements, so anthropic chose a route that required no publisher permission: buying millions of physical books through distributors and used-book retailers.

5: within about a year, anthropic spent tens of millions acquiring and scanning millions of books, including many rare and 1/1 titles. one vendor proposal targeted 500,000 to 2 million books in six months.

6: to scan that many books within months, the vendors physically dismantled them.

a hydraulic cutter removed each spine. the pages were trimmed to size, fed as loose sheets through high-speed industrial scanners, and converted into searchable PDFs. the paper remains were then sent for recycling.

7: these PDFs were fed into claude as training data.

the complete collection became a private, searchable anthropic library that the company planned to “store forever.” the scans aren’t available to the public and were never open-sourced.

[Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making @AlecTorelli]

It was lonely being a bear at the top with @mikealfred but when everyone was long and it was the most hyped IPO I've seen in my lifetime, the only place the stock could go was down.

Investing has always been simple.

Human emotion (ego/greed/fear) are what complicate it.

[Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making @AlecTorelli]

Someone has to say it, but I don't get buying SpaceX at 100x earnings, while it's losing money and has a $2T market cap.

I much rather buy $HIMS at $5B, which could balloon into a $1T company, which will be a 200x return.

The same thesis applies to $LMND, $OPEN, $IREN, $BETR, $DUOL and other companies which I've shared here and on my newsletter.

Even if SpaceX is a "winning" investment, one has to consider their risk/reward.

Could it go to zero like the ones above? Of course. It's aiming to do something never been done in history.

So the downside risk profile is still 1 (although not all companies have the same odds of busting).

But what is the upside? It's already $1.77T. The world's largest company, Nvidia ($NVDA) is $5T.

Even if it becomes the largest company in the world, it's only a 2.5x. Yet $NVDA is a cash generating machine, while SpaceX is losing money and trading at 100x sales.

I'm not saying SpaceX isn't a great idea or even a great company. I'm saying the risk/reward on the price one is paying makes absolutely zero sense to me.

This is even more true given the fact that everyone has limited capital, and therefore there's always an opportunity cost to every dollar invested.

In other words, the fact that it could still theoretically be a profitable (+EV) bet, doesn't mean it's one worth making.

One must consider the opportunity cost to capital.

Everything popular is wrong. And this is the most popular IPO of all time.

Curious to hear your thoughts or what I could be missing, but as of now, I just don't get it.

[Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making @AlecTorelli]

Why pay for that "overpriced" food at the grocery store when I can just plant my own crops?

[Neha Kalani @thericebowlgirl]

quick update on how this is going: they have gone back to linear because maintaining their internal tool that they vibecoded was taking away from their actual work’s bandwidth.

[Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making @AlecTorelli]

Got spanked online yesterday, but Monday's are always my favorite because both revenue share and rakeback rewards are distributed passively from @PhenomPokerApp

DM me if you have a poker network and want a passive income side hustle.

[Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making @AlecTorelli]

This is not even close to how I'd imagine one maximizing their upside.

This would be maximizing within the paradigm of "gambling" and a marginal increase over what existing winners have done in the past.

I'm talking about a new paradigm completely - someone winning and turning it into a mainstream celebrity brand.

How much is Magnus' #1 spot worth for example? Play Magnus sold for a reported $83M alone.

This is one product one time and doesn't include any of the other branding, marketing, speaking, etc.

[Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making @AlecTorelli]

Warped Tour + Phenom Poker cooking here on Sunday.

Can skip all the songs and bands I don't like, and 3-4 table games I have no idea how to play.

Would have loved to see "Weightless" by All Time Low live, but 3-betting trash is also fun.

Code: ALEC
200% deposit bonus.
DM me.

[Alec Torelli | Poker & Decision Making @AlecTorelli]

@kwansfull I agree it's unlikely, but I'm saying that the outlier result is 100M.

Outliers are by definition rare :)

I've been clear that it's not the norm. The norm is like $1M - most do basically nothing.

It would take an enterprising / marketing person to win.