---
title: Episode 94 Pickup As Poker
episode_number: 94
era: mid
source_file: Episode 94 Pickup As Poker.mp3
audio_size_mb: 58.5
duration_sec: 1918.2
duration_min: 32.0
language: en
provider: deepgram
model: nova-3
diarized: true
confidence: 0.992
transcribed_at: 2026-05-28T07:40:55Z---

# Episode 94 Pickup As Poker

**Speaker 0:** Tom Torero podcast 94. About to board an airplane, but I thought I'd squeeze one in. Keep my promise. Every week, a podcast coming at you. And rather than me jibber jabbering again, you must be sick of the sound of my voice. I've recruited a guest very kindly, a daygamer and a poker player. He's a man of many talents. He's come onto the show this week because I've always been fascinated with daygame as a hustle, It's skill not luck learning a core skill set, you know, winning against the house, seeing set patterns, winning over time and I've wanted to get a poker player on or a blackjack player on for a long long time because I know so dole about poker. I've probably played about two games in my whole life. I can barely play roulette. So very kindly, a chap from the North Of England called Rob who was a pro, poker player I think for about five years, also a daygamer for a year and a half or so he's coming onto the show in a second to to look at the parallels to look at the technique to look at the similarities to look at the mindsets, and I'll I'll try and ask him how all this relates to pickup improving your pickup keeping it practical so there we go a couple of announcements Stealth Seduction it is out obviously if you're on my mailing list there's a 15% discount for this week only so all you need to do is to go to my blog sign up for my mailing list and you get a code which gives you 15% off stealth seduction if you want live training as I said I'm not doing much this year but my main coach my main instructor my main wing Craig he's back in The UK for UK coaching. Booking is through me, tom@tomterrero.com. Alright. Let's dive in because Rob's on the line. I've got to catch a plane. Are you there, mister Rob? Yeah. Hi, Tom. Alright, mate. Cheers for coming on to the show this week.

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. No problem.

**Speaker 0:** And you are an ex pro poker player. Is that right? You've been doing it for a long time. You were pro for a while.

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. I I played professionally both online and in casinos between I think it was around 2008 to 2013.

**Speaker 0:** Okay. And were you were you nomadic with your online stuff? Were you able to travel, or was that your main main income?

**Speaker 1:** I was about $50.50, to be honest. I stayed put and played The UK casinos quite a bit. Yep. I was lucky enough to get some travel and play online too.

**Speaker 0:** Beautiful. And now you're a daygamer as well?

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. That was I I think I started around 2015.

**Speaker 0:** Yep. So did you did you straight away see similarities? Similarities? Because I've always been fascinated. That's why I called it Street Hustle. You know, I was fascinated with books like Bringing Down the House, the story of the blackjack, Harvard or what was it MIT team, break in Vegas. I was always fascinated by poker and blackjack being taken seriously, guys learning it as a skill, not as a drunken kind of bro late night be a game. Yeah. And winning against the odds, beating the house. Did you see the parallels did you see the parallels straight away?

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. Yeah. Totally. You know, straight away, it's it struck me as one of those things that is somewhat an art and somewhat a science. Yeah. You know, it's it's its own kind of niche community, kinda like daygame also. And the thing I noticed to begin with is to you learn the basic rules of the game, but to progress from just a complete amateur who does it for fun to someone who wants to make money, you need a basic strategic framework. Yeah. This would be a lot like the early London daygame model. Yeah. You know, it's that would be and for poker, it would be learning how to only place certain hands from only paying to see the next card when the odds are correct. Yep. How to stereotype your opponents, how to exploit them once you know, once you've stereotyped them, and a few common kind of set pieces, moves that will just work well, you know. That would be that would be like the classic you look French, you know, in daygame. How long how long does the fundamentals,

**Speaker 0:** the rules, the set pieces take? Let's say you were coaching me. I'm a total beginner. My maths isn't that bad. So let's say I'm willing to learn. You're my coach. I wanna play to earn money. How long would that take me?

**Speaker 1:** I I think it takes could take around six to twelve months, I would say. At that point, these fundamentals rather than feeling robotic and very logical, they become more internalized.

**Speaker 0:** Yep.

**Speaker 1:** Just like with daygame, you know, you you start to you get to a point where you know when to stray from the model. You know when to be a little more creative. You treat each situation on its unique merit rather than simply reciting a strategy.

**Speaker 0:** Yeah. That's music to my ears because as you know, I'm against the be yourself, be natural, give it a go model. Sure. And I guess a guy walking into a pro tournament and you just said to me, Tom, yeah. Just give it a go, man. Just just just feel the vibe of the room. Yeah. It Would be suicide. Yeah? Yeah. It'd be very expensive to learn poker by just being yourself, basically. Well, that's what the guys in Vegas do, isn't it? You know, the lads who go on holiday or the the the guys who have a bit of, you know, few rounds of beers and then hit the table, they're letting their emotions run the game and the alcohol run their game. Sure. Yeah. And and they they still haven't spotted that Vegas is hustling them.

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. Yeah. It's exactly that. They're the players who the professionals are waiting for basically. Yeah. And the difference aside from the skill set is the attitude between an amateur and a professional. Yeah. So a professional is looking at a poker table and assessing where the value is. He's he's spotting the players who will potentially lose money. He's the he's also focused heavily on good long term decisions. Yep. Be now, because in poker, any card can come. So there is there's always elements that are out of your control. An amateur might take a gamble hoping to get lucky Mhmm. And might win what that one day. Yet, four or five times he will lose. So to be a professional, you must understand that you win money, you're successful by always making the right decisions and not worrying about the things you can't control. Well, that's that that's a great intermediate

**Speaker 0:** point for daygamers. You know, number one, zooming out, I say, and seeing if you're up at the end of the year. Number two, taking your ego out of it and not letting your emotions run away with a girl, a special snowflake, you know, or that was an amazing set. Break breaking the rules. So, you know, there's fundamentals you're not allowed to break, but you think, oh, she's different from all the rest.

**Speaker 1:** Yeah.

**Speaker 0:** That that This is this is core basics, I guess, of poker and daygame.

**Speaker 1:** Sure. What you said then about you could you could have a great set and then almost become too attached to that one girl. Yet all the signs could be telling you she's crazy. Yeah. In a poker game, you can join a table which looks quite juicy, let's say. Mhmm. You think you're gonna be there to win money, then half an hour in, it turns out actually these guys can play. But often, an amateur's ego will get in the way there. Yeah. They remain attached to the money they thought they were going to win before the game began.

**Speaker 0:** What about volume? Because the way to in daygame to be unattached from results I remember living with a guy who played semi pro poker, and he used to have multiple tabs, multiple games at the same same time. Obviously, he wasn't playing the longer tournaments. He was playing the short term stuff. And that obviously made him care less about each hand, each game.

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. Yeah. Totally. It's it's such an important thing. One, for desensitization, you know, the more times you've been lucky or unlucky, the more it kinda doesn't mean anything, the more you learn to enjoy the process rather than the ups and downs. And then aside from that, there's always what's always referred to as statistical variance. Yep. So that would be kinda like how when you flip a coin, even though it's $50.50, you could get 10 heads in a row, 10 tails in a row. Yep.

**Speaker 0:** Yeah. It's it's winning streaks and losing streaks in daygame. You got the skill but you're waiting for the cards. You know what I mean?

**Speaker 1:** Oh, totally. That's you know, it's something I found to be a complete parallel.

**Speaker 0:** Speaker Yeah. Guys are so invested in each interaction and they're perhaps thinking why did she flake? Why did that one not hook? I say don't worry about her, don't worry about getting her, worry about getting the skill because then when the right girl comes along, I guess for you when the right hand comes along, you're lethal.

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. That that's totally it. You know, I I've known guys within poker who are so emotionally attached to every hand, and they always suffer because they ask the wrong questions. They when they lose a game, they'll bemoan their look. They'll they'll say their opponent got it wrong, etcetera, rather than using that same energy just to work on their own game.

**Speaker 0:** There's a zenness to it, isn't there? There's a there's a stoicism, I think, in daygame, especially for intermediates and above. You learn to accept the probability of life in the universe, and that gives you a nice calmness to go into a set because I'm not invested so much in each individual girl. Is that what like with poker, you can be pretty zen at a table?

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. I I I would say a 100. You know, you you know the process as you've been through it before. You know you've had success before. You know you'll get it again. And you know that any energy wasted on being upset at the game itself is just a waste of time, you know. Yeah.

**Speaker 0:** You have to love the roller coaster to some extent as well. Yeah. I I was saying to a mate yesterday, the game gains you. Like, poker plays you in a in a good way because you get highs and lows and it baits you and you've had a win and then you have a loss and you want another win. It's it's what we call fractionation, isn't it? It's the game game is gaming me.

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. Yeah. It's that that's totally true. Definitely. What about

**Speaker 0:** in chess? The the Russian cliches, obviously, you're thinking x number of moves ahead. And I often say to my students, number one, know where you are. So know where you are in the set. And number two, should be thinking of the end game. You should be thinking multiple moves ahead. Does that make sense in poker?

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. That that that totally does. It happens within an individual hand and within a game. So at any point of a poker game, I'm in reassessing the table. I'm considering how they perceive me and how they might think they're perceived. So Mhmm. Let's say for instance, I have just shown a a really strong hand like a a flush. Yep. So psychologically, whether it's rational or not, my opponents will now tend to perceive me as more likely to have a strong hand. It's they are more likely to now believe me when I bluff. So sometimes, sometimes I may let's assume my opponents are folded. I may show a strong hand, which is almost like a DHV. You are you are planting the seed into the game. Yep. You have strong hands that you can then use on them later to steal steal the money in the pot. So there's obviously intent

**Speaker 0:** because you want to win like in game. We have to have massive intent, but there's this there's this cockiness, there's this self assuredness, which is the psychological element, I guess. We call it frame. But in poker, you're as you said, you're it's a hustle because you're trying to suggest to the others even if you haven't got it that you have.

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. And to so when you join a game to some extent, if you're a good player, you are trying to you do have a cocky edge too. You're you're trying to win the pot when you shouldn't. You are hustling them, basically. You're trying to get them on the ropes. Yeah.

**Speaker 0:** How does that just just out of interest, how does that differ live to online? Because obviously, the phenomenon of learning earning your living off online is massive. A lot of the guys I meet on the road, the daygamers, they play poker semi pro online. But if you're sitting face to face as in Casino Royale, are they all cliches about, you know, staring your opponent out, vibe, frame, swagger? What

**Speaker 1:** I would say is it's not as as it's not as literal as it is in a film. So you don't stare at a guy then see him look at his watch, which means as a pair of aces. Yeah. It it's more similar. It's more instinctive like, you know, just sometimes you're in a day game set and you don't necessarily logically observe every little thing she does. But through repetition and experience Yeah. You pick up the kind of vibe she's giving. You sometimes know even when she isn't saying a lot that she's attracted to you. Yeah. And that comes more internalized thing through repetition and in live when you're in a casino, you are constantly sort of aware of what they think about you, whether it's conscious or whether they verbalized it or not. Would you recommend that guys learn

**Speaker 0:** to play live as a strength, you know, for these guys that just play online? Are they suffering in some form psychologically from this kind of frame battle?

**Speaker 1:** I would say so because you online online can be a little robotic sometimes. My my play in a casino is definitely more creative and varied. You just have that little bit more information on an opponent, which you can use to your own advantage.

**Speaker 0:** Yeah. Which is why we preach daygame and not Tinder and online. Although Sure. You can make there are guys that win online making it robotic, mathematical. But yeah, it's it's just nice to be with human beings, isn't it? It's it's that will never go away. This face to face battle whether that's chess or poker or daygame.

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. It it it's it's a somewhat healthier way to do it really. I I always found just because the social aspect and, you know, poker again, kinda like daygame because you are working a normal job, you're not with not necessarily with people all the time, you're out there on your own, your results are entirely on you. It's an intense emotional rollercoaster as you said, isn't it? Sure. It could potentially be lonely through a time just like, you know,

**Speaker 0:** daygame could be. Oh yeah. And there's an addictive element of course to womanizing and poker which should be obvious to everybody listening. Alright. Coming back to coming back to calibration. Right? And coming back to fractionation. In game, we've got this paradox that you've got to be on. So you've got to be aggressive like driving in London. You know? If you drive like a pussy in London, you don't go anywhere. Yeah. So so with my students, I'm saying, come on, man. 99% of my guys are nice guys, and I'm saying on on on. You wanna win. Endgame. Endgame. Endgame. But at the same time, the deeply frustrating thing about game is that you've got to be off. You gotta be chill. You gotta smile. You've gotta not care. So there's this horrible paradox that you wanna win the poker game Yeah. But you don't need to win the poker game. Does that do you do poker players have that?

**Speaker 1:** That that is pretty much a perfect parallel. You know, a good poker strategy is somewhat aggressive. Most poker players 95% of poker players are not aggressive enough. They're not trying to win the game really. They are passive. They just they're letting the cards kind of rule them. So when you learn, you learn that you need to start trying to bluff, you need to make it uncomfortable for your opponents. Now, the problem with overdoing this being on all the time Yep. Is that opponents will start to resist you. They'll no longer believe you when you make a bluff because they're fed up, basically. Yeah. So you within a game, you need to fractionate a bit. You know, if you have sudden if you have just played the last five hands, you may need to take a back seat for a little bit. Let let them, you know, get involved, just maybe stay out of trouble. So you're constantly adapting to the situation. And on the flip side, if you have been the quiet man at the table, you haven't played any hands, people will know people will now have an image that you're a tight player. So at this point, you can make a bluff. You're more likely to get away with a bluff. Mhmm. And this if you are to make a bluff, it must be congruent. You must you you must understand how you play good hands hands in order to take a bluff. So if your bluff doesn't look like how you'd play a strong hand,

**Speaker 0:** it won't make any sense and your opponent a good opponent will be able to read you and get out the way. Yeah. This is this is the problem of teaching fractionation. I find it really hard because when I say to a student, be on or when I say to the student, look like you don't care, you know, push her away, go quiet, give her a nag, qualify her. Unless it's calibrated, unless you know why you're doing it and therefore when to do it, it could completely backfire. Like, if you do if you try and qualify a girl before she's hooked, it'll backfire. Right? If you over neg, it'll backfire. If you go quiet on the wrong girl over text, she'll vanish. And if you roll off the wrong token LMR in the bedroom, she'll go. And the frustrating thing is, I say, it's situation dependent, it's girl dependent, and it's dependent on your experience. So it's deeply frustrating to teach, and I guess a poker tutor must must find that because you've got to be in the game. You've got to have seen those situations thousands of times before.

**Speaker 1:** Sure. Like, I I I would say a good poker coat gives this kind of outline, but the player himself must find the calibration. So Yeah. And to I mean, myself, you need to sometimes be the crazy guy who bluffs all the time. You need to be the tighter guy. You need to be the unpredictable guy. Sometimes you'll go too far, but you only find the happy medium by that experimentation.

**Speaker 0:** Yeah. Perfect. And it's safe to say for poker new poker players and for new daygamers, it's better to be too aggressive and it's better to go too far, isn't it?

**Speaker 1:** Oh, yeah. Totally. Totally.

**Speaker 0:** Beautiful. That brings us on look how smooth this is, Rob. That brings us on to the psychology of game and the psychology of poker. It's not something I've spoken much about in my new seminar, for intermediates. I'm gonna talk about psychology. The reason I don't talk about psychology with new guys is what you've already said. I say fuck in a game. Work on your technique, your fundamentals, your rules, your hands, your counting, your statistics. Yeah? Yeah. But then once you play poker for a year or daygame for a year, two years, you got you're you're very self aware of your mood. I'm very self aware of is it a good vibe day? Is it am I being reactive? Am I being snappy? Am I too invested? Etcetera, So psychology obviously comes into play with pro athletes, pro chess, pro poker, pro degging. So what you played at pro as in you were earning your living from it for a while, what what we what was your psychology framework for for surviving this roller coaster?

**Speaker 1:** Well, kinda like I said earlier, really. It it was the heavy focus on the long term, you know. It it it it's some of the sort of what what would you say the some of the self help cliches to some extent. I would Yeah. I would what I wanted for poker, why I was doing it, I would learn to laugh and enjoy even when I was unlucky, almost in a

**Speaker 0:** I do I do it almost in a sadistic

**Speaker 1:** way like if she leaves Yes. I just laugh. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly couldn't think of a way to put it. Yeah. It is almost like I I would almost laugh after losing an enormous Yeah. Part after one card was extremely unlucky rather than rather than sulk or get angry. I mean, sometimes it would bother me. I'm I'm certainly wasn't entirely stoic, but Of course. I would try and make a joke of it. I would talk to a poker players. We would we would discuss strategy. We would, you know, have a laugh about it. Yeah.

**Speaker 0:** No. But nobody can ever be not invested because otherwise, you wouldn't be a good athlete or a good poker player or a good daygame. You gotta care, and you gotta want it. And I think sometimes a little bit of anger is good. Like what I call the royal flush. I don't know what that means in poker, but when I do the royal flush, it's quite good actually because I lay down the boundaries. It kind of resets my my thing. Sometimes it gets the girl back. Do you ever well, let's go into poker terms then. What is what what are some of the poker terms that are relevant to a daygamer?

**Speaker 1:** I'm not sure there's a direct parallels, but obviously, some of the famous ones, obviously, when you just said is royal flush, which is the strongest hand.

**Speaker 0:** Yeah.

**Speaker 1:** One that I hear I've used a lot in both is results orientated. Yeah. That is a detachment between between your actions and the stuff you can't control. Yep. What

**Speaker 0:** about to draw your opponent? What does that mean?

**Speaker 1:** Well, the the term draw tech is my is slightly more of a technical term, but you are you are I suppose it's often referred to in poker as inducing your opponent, which is would be the same thing as, like, taking a certain action daygame, which you know she'll react in a certain way.

**Speaker 0:** Yeah. Yeah. They're very useful tools. Things like qualifying her, push pull, negging, bouncing. They're very predictable moves to get her to do a counter move.

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. So a similar one would be something like in daygame, vacuuming, you know Yeah. Her to talk. So in poker, the equivalent would be when you have an extremely strong hand, you sometimes play in a quite passive manner to induce your opponent to attack you. Yep. You've kinda you've you've created that vacuum. You you don't look like you're interested. He fills it by trying to be aggressive, trying to win the pot, and, you know, you can then win his money. Yeah. No. I like that because

**Speaker 0:** one of the comments from people watching Stealth Seduction is sometimes on the date, it is just nothing. Like, it is just you could call it baby talk or a little little bit of chitchat. And the guy's like, well, this is not what's on YouTube. This is not what's on oceans eleven eleven. This is not fucking flashy. What's going on? And I say, well, if only you knew, mate. If only you were there, you know that it's like the spider waiting for the fly. Yeah. And you can't see what I'm doing with my hands or you can't see what I'm doing with my eyes. Again, it's very hard to describe a a kind of a drawer, isn't it? Or the tells. Somebody somebody watching like me watching a game of poker, you playing poker, I wouldn't be able to spot all these very subtle shifts in energy, would I?

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. That that again, that's the totally total parallel. I've often wondered when it's shown on TV, it it for someone who wouldn't understand poker, it it just all looks so random. Yeah. It looks like the players are just behave there's no pattern to what they're doing or why they're doing it. Yeah. Yeah. The hand they're showing on the TV could have been building for the last three three hours, basically. Yeah. They couldn't both players have history, you know, that's built to that. And like daygame, good poker doesn't always look glamorous. Yeah. It's sometimes very good fundamentals done well. Yep. That's a yeah.

**Speaker 0:** Like a like a game of cricket or chess. It's a it's it's you're in for the long haul. Alright. To to finish and to come to come back to these characters, characters, guys at the table, obviously, it's fascinating for for movies and books. That's why I read, you know, Bringing Down the House or Breaking Vegas by authors like Ben Mesrich. People are fascinated by this underworld of characters that don't have jobs. They travel around the world. Obviously, there's girls involved and money involved. And it's very, very black sheep. And as I said, a lot of the daygamers I meet all over the world who are sitting in cafes working, they're they're poker players.

**Speaker 1:** Sure. So

**Speaker 0:** what what's this community like? Is it very similar to the underground world of of pickup? Have you got all sorts of characters, all sorts of theories, conflicting coaches?

**Speaker 1:** Sure. Yeah. Totally. You have it it does have the very secret society vibe, you know, own set characters. You've got sort of your unwritten rules, etiquette. It's very slang heavy. Yep. Definitely the strange mix of characters.

**Speaker 0:** Yeah, the colorful characters.

**Speaker 1:** Oh, and totally. You have the you also have the theorists, like the kind of keyboard warrior types who who will argue forever about a little bit of theory, but probably aren't a stronger player themselves. You meet the the real eccentric guys who just lived in a casino for the last ten years. Yeah. Yeah.

**Speaker 0:** Is it You know. Is it changing? Is it evolving? I know with, you know, things going online and more people playing and different backup databases that you can check out your opponent on, all that stuff. Is it is it changing rapidly?

**Speaker 1:** I I would say so. Yeah. You know, probably, you know, if you take it back, say, ten years or so, the cliche of probably men sat on a table smoking was probably close to the truth, whereas if you if you look at a big tournament now Mhmm. It's probably with millions on the line. It's probably a table of 24 year old guys Yeah. Who've all learned online and learned very mathematically and probably only played for three or four years.

**Speaker 0:** Daygame is starting to change, but luckily, it's still in its very early days, it's still very underground. It's still there's very, very few people doing it. So, yeah, it's encouraging. If you if you enjoy if you're a listener and you enjoy this underworld of poker, then daygame is in its infancy right now, you know. The rule book of the fundamentals is only just being written. So, yeah, there's a lot of guys quitting their job to do it. There's a lot of guys on the road doing it. If you can work out how to fund yourself and travel around the world, whether you're an online marketer, whether you're a poker player or you rent your house out and do Airbnb, more and more people, every country I go to, there's guys in a cafe working on laptops and then I see them daygaming. So thank you, Rob. Grandfather time is approaching half an hour which iTunes and listeners enjoy so we could go on forever and and a book deserves to be written I think on the similarities between, blackjack, poker, pickup in general not just daygame because pickup is pickup isn't it so, whether you write that book or we write it together or we make future podcasts and videos on it, it's it's a great topic and I hope people appreciate how technical poker is and how technical daygame is.

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. Totally. Totally. It's a great great subject to talk about.

**Speaker 0:** Cheers, man. And perhaps you can help me with my poker basics, and I'll and I'll and I'll help you with your daygame in any way, shape, or form. But that was podcast 94 with Rob. Cheers, Rob. Ta da now.

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. To

**Speaker 0:** you next week. Ta da.