Dorian Vale

thinking in probibilities is my key to greatness

WSOP 2017 final table

[Dorian Vale @iamdorianvale]

https://t.co/gk5OEUieEI

[Dorian Vale @iamdorianvale]

one man bet against the British pound and walked away with over a billion dollars. in 1995 he sat down and explained how he actually thinks about risk.

it's George Soros, the investor who broke the Bank of England, talking with Charlie Rose about money, power, and the future. the whole conversation has been sitting online for years and almost nobody watches it now.

where the real value sits:

0:00 - Charlie Rose lays out who Soros is: the fund that made a billion against the pound, and a man who gives it away as fast as he makes it

6:03 - the trap of giving money away, how charity corrupts both the taker and the giver, and why he fights it inside his own foundations

12:06 - Soros on the pound trade in his own words: he risked less than a billion, could have lost a few hundred million, and calls that "perfectly acceptable"

29:09 - his read on Japan in the 90s, why the machine everyone admired was already stuck in a hole it hadn't started to dig out of

40:09 - the part that aged the sharpest: he calls the internet as important as the printing press, years before most people had touched it

the reason this is worth an hour of your time is simple. you get to watch one of the sharpest risk minds alive size up currencies, nations, and a brand new technology in real time, and see which calls he nailed.

bookmark it, watch it, then read the article below where I connect his thinking to today.

[Dorian Vale @iamdorianvale]

https://t.co/gk5OEUieEI

[Dorian Vale @iamdorianvale]

the man who ran the biggest mutual fund on earth stood at a Washington podium in 1994 and told a room full of pros the truth almost nobody wanted to hear: predicting the market is a total waste of time.

it has been sitting in the open for three decades. most people who watched it still trade like the thing they were told to stop doing.

his point is brutal in its simplicity. stocks are not lottery tickets. there is a company behind every one of them, and if the company does well, the stock does well. that is the whole game. people drown it in noise, chasing the Chile fund this week and the Argentina fund next week, trying to time interest rates. his line on that: if anyone could call rates three times in a row, the planet would be crawling with billionaires. it isn't. so stop.

the man at the podium is Peter Lynch, who turned Fidelity Magellan into the fund every other manager measured himself against.

skip to where he talks about buying what you already see. the drug your whole family suddenly takes. the store filling up in every city. he made five or six times his money on a pill two years after it hit the market, not because he had a secret, but because he paid attention to what was in front of him.

no forecast. no hot tip. one company, understood better than the crowd.

he even said he loves volatility. the swings that terrify amateurs are exactly where the edge lives, and a poker friend of mine says the same thing about a table full of scared money.

people torch fortunes trying to predict the unpredictable. the fix has been free for thirty years and they still guess. watch it first, then read the article below for the rest of how I use it.

[Dorian Vale @iamdorianvale]

https://t.co/gk5OEUieEI

[Dorian Vale @iamdorianvale]

A Boston money manager with the best five-year record in the business made his TV debut in 1982, and the first thing he did was admit how much money he lost chasing a falling stock.

it aired on Wall Street Week on October 29, 1982. it has sat in the archive for over forty years, and almost nobody who quotes his famous line has actually watched him say it.

his warning is one most investors still get wrong. they buy a stock only because it dropped from X to two-thirds of X to half of X. price fell, so it must be cheap. that is called bottom fishing, and it is one of the fastest ways to bleed a bankroll.

the man at the board is Peter Lynch, and he does not preach from a pedestal. he tells the story on himself. he watched one stock fall from 90 to 60 and told everyone it could not go lower. it went to 50. then 40. then under 30, and by then he could not even remember what the company did. so he backed away.

the edge he hands the ordinary investor is the opposite of a screen full of falling tickers. you work in an industry. you see products turn months before I do. buy what you know, not what dropped.

no chart. no tip. one hard rule about the difference between cheap and falling.

a trader friend of mine reruns this two minute clip before he ever touches a stock just because it looks beaten down.

a falling price is not a reason. it is bait. watch it first, then read the article below where I break down how to tell one from the other.

[Dorian Vale @iamdorianvale]

https://t.co/gk5OEUieEI

[Dorian Vale @iamdorianvale]

in 1964 a math professor sat between two impostors on national tv and dared a panel to spot which one of them actually broke a Vegas bank for $17,000.

the show is To Tell the Truth. the man is Edward Thorp, and the 9 minute clip is the moment the casinos realized one guy had solved their game with a computer.

MIT filmed nothing here. this is older and rarer. a black-and-white time capsule that has been sitting in the open for decades and almost nobody has watched it.

his point: blackjack was never a game of luck. it was a pricing problem. Thorp was an associate professor of math who ran the odds the way a quant runs risk, built a system, tested it with two backers, and in two hours doubled up twice for 17k.

the man on the panel is Edward Thorp, whose book Beat the Dealer was once the most requested volume in the Las Vegas public library.

skip to where he talks bankroll. he starts with 10k and only ever dips into 1,300 of it. that is the whole lesson right there. not a hot streak, not a big night, a repeatable edge sized so it can never bust you.

then sit with the line where he admits he cannot keep doing it. the houses started barring the man who turned their own edge against them. an edge is only worth something while you are allowed to press it.

no system seller. no lucky streak. one professor who priced the house out of its own game.

a quant I know still points to this clip when a junior confuses a big win with an actual edge.

the takeaway is not blackjack. players torch fortunes chasing variance because they never learn the difference between a good night and a priced edge. this cost me plenty at the tables before it clicked. watch the clip first, then read the article below where I lay out how Thorp's thinking still prices risk today.

[Dorian Vale @iamdorianvale]

https://t.co/gk5OEUieEI

[Dorian Vale @iamdorianvale]

a man ran two billion dollars from a beach house in the Bahamas and beat the funds he used to run from a Wall Street tower.

this interview has been floating around since 1985. barely anyone watches it, and the three men in it quietly explain how the smart money actually thinks.

his edge was not information. it was distance. he told the interviewer he moved a thousand miles away on purpose, because sitting in the same meetings as every other analyst made him think like every other analyst. it is much easier to be odd when nobody is whispering in your ear.

the second man made the same call from a corn town in Nebraska. he said the ticker only tells you the price, and price tells you nothing about a business. he values the company first, then looks at the number to see if it is way out of line. he compared it to baseball with no called strikes. the pitcher throws you US Steel at 25 and General Motors at 68, and you can stand there and let a thousand of them go by until one lands exactly where you want it, then you swing.

he is Warren Buffett, and this was one of the first times he ever sat for a camera. the first man is John Templeton, who bought a hundred dollars of every stock under a dollar on the eve of World War II and turned it into a fortune.

the whole thing is one idea. buy when others are despondently selling, sell when others are avidly buying, and value the thing before you ever glance at the crowd.

no signal. no screen. one man who cared whether the market was even open tomorrow.

a friend I play with runs the same discipline at the table. wait for the spot that is clearly mispriced, fold everything else, ignore the noise from the rail.

people burn small fortunes chasing action they never had to take. these three told you the fix for free forty years ago. watch it, then read the article below where I lay out how I use it.

[Dorian Vale @iamdorianvale]

https://t.co/gk5OEUieEI

[Dorian Vale @iamdorianvale]

a 17 year old kid snuck into an underground card room, played the owner heads up, and walked out with a habit that would carry him to millions on the biggest stage in poker.

this is TJ Cloutier, one of the most feared tournament players of his era, telling it in his own words in under 5 minutes.

where the real value sits:

0:00 - caddying two bags for 8 dollars, then getting hustled out of it by older guys, and the night a lucky 20 dollar bill pulled him into his first game

1:11 - the 2000 World Series final six, low man in chips against Chris Ferguson stacked deep, and the plan he told his wife: let them all knock each other out and break the last man standing

1:44 - his read on aggression when you are short, lowering your criteria, finding a hand you are willing to go with and doubling up until you are the leader

3:10 - the ace queen against ace nine, one card to come, Ferguson catching the nine that swapped the whole stack away from him

3:44 - three tournaments in a row, three opponents dead to a nine on the river, three nines, and roughly two million dollars gone

here is the part that stays with you. he had all three of those men drawing to one card. all three hit it. that is variance at the highest level, and the edge is not dodging it, it is how you carry it when it lands on you.

watch it, then read the article below where I break down thinking in ranges instead of results.

[Dorian Vale @iamdorianvale]

https://t.co/gk5OEUieEI

[Dorian Vale @iamdorianvale]

one bad habit quietly drains more money than every bad beat combined, and almost nobody at the table can see themselves doing it.

MIT put an entire course online for free, and this 33 minute lecture is taught by CardRunners pro Will Ma, who walks a room of students through the exact math that decides whether you go home or go deep.

where the real value sits:

0:59 - the fast preflop calls: which hands to flat with seven big blinds, and the exact spot where ace nine suited is a call but ace two off is a fold

3:37 - the single biggest mistake he keeps seeing: raising to two big blinds under 15 deep instead of shoving or folding, and why the middle option quietly bleeds you

7:15 - the pot odds math laid bare, 8 to win 22.5, why 36% equity is the whole line, and why nothing after this makes sense if you skip it

16:49 - effective stack size finally explained clean, why it equals your stack unless you tower over the table

30:01 - why your raise size has to shrink when three players limp in front, because a big raise hands the caller great odds

good results hide bad decisions and bad ones hide good calls, so the scoreboard never teaches you where the leak is. this is the free hour that finds it.

bookmark it, watch before your next session, then pull up your own hands against the article below.

[Nash Archive @imperiumNash]

https://t.co/28fCkigIO2

[Dorian Vale @iamdorianvale]

@Rossst_03 watching this in your 20s feels like embracing the cheatcodes to life

goated one!

[Dorian Vale @iamdorianvale]

A working poker pro sat down, pulled up hands from a real online tournament he actually played, and walked an MIT room through every decision he made, including the ones he got wrong.

MIT filmed it. it has been free for years, buried in the OpenCourseWare archive, and almost nobody outside that class has watched a professional narrate his own mistakes out loud.

most coaches show you the hands they won. this one is different. he opens King Jack off from a spot he admits is not even in his own recommended range, says he did it because he was bored, and then shows you exactly what that costs.

that is the whole edge here. not the wins. the honesty about the leaks.

his core point lands early. at 28 big blinds deep the money is not in the obvious spots, it is in the hands that are close, King Queen off, King Jack, the ones good enough to play but not good enough to raise. get those marginal calls wrong all night and you bleed out slow, never feeling it.

then he shows why tournaments break the cash game math. a short stack behind who can shove all in changes what you are even allowed to open. suddenly ten nine suited, a fine steal in a cash game, is a trap, because someone can pick up a real hand and put you to the test for your stack.

skip to where he sits with a big stack and a small stack at the same table and has to compromise. a play that prints against one is a disaster against the other, and you cannot have both. that tension is the entire game.

no results screen to hide behind. no ego. one player showing his own math in real time.

a friend I play with does exactly this before a serious run, replays his own hands out loud and grades the decision, not the pot.

players burn thousands at the tables never learning to separate a good decision from a good result. watch it first, then read the article below.

this lecture was live for years, now is the moment.

[Voltex @VoltexGar]

https://t.co/mvYfX85y61

[Dorian Vale @iamdorianvale]

@Rossst_03 a great story from one of the greatest

- Vale

[Dorian Vale @iamdorianvale]

@velesxbt i swear i watched almost every tournament he played

absolute legend and living example of how consistency determines success i guess

good one indeed