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In his pomp, ‘Isildur1’ made prunes of his opponents, pirouetting until they puked into his online purse. Part of the charm was his anonymity. Today, the avatar has a name, and face. Still, considering how he grabbed the game by the scruff of its neck and shook it like a saltwater crocodile, his cogs remain as elusive as ever.

The most intimate insight into the mind and mannerisms of Viktor’ Isildur1′ Blom came from his greatest nemesis. Writing in a 2012 blog post titled: ‘Viktor Blom: The Man, The Myth, The Legend’, we learned about aspects of Blom’s personality, previously deemed too personal for the public.

http://www.philgalfond.com/viktor-blom-the-man-the-myth-the-legend/

Galfond explained how Blom had the lightness of feet to rise to the summit of the high stakes online cash games despite never using a Heads-Up-Display (HUD), reading a poker book or watching a poker training video. 

How did he do it?

Raw talent.

The Beauty and the Beast: “Naturalness Bias.”

If questioned on picking the perfect partner, how many of you would play down the requirement of aesthetics, and play up the need for someone with a beautiful personality before going on to choose the cute girl over the nice one?

Thanks to the research of Chia-Jung Tsay, an Associate Professor in the UCL School of Management, we know that what we say we care about might not match what, deep down, we feel to be more valuable.

In a series of experiments on the benefits of raw talent versus grit, Tsay made an interesting discovery. The research began without surprise. Tsay asked a group of people to choose ‘talent’ or ‘work-ethic’ as the primary element for success in a musician, and the majority chose ‘talent.’

Then Tsay got sneaky.

The group were handed identical biographies in terms of prior achievements, of two pianists. Next, the group listened to clips of both musicians before choosing the best performance. Tsay described one as a ‘Natural’ (someone born with an innate talent), and the second as a ‘Striver’ (someone with high motivation and perseverance), when in fact, a single pianist played in all of the experimental clips. In contrast to their earlier beliefs, the majority chose the ‘natural’ as the likeliest to succeed, and the one they were more inclined to hire. 

Proving her experiment didn’t contain a musical anomaly Tsay ran a similar test with entrepreneurs. The results were the same. Only when Tsay added a $40,000 start-up grant, and four more years of leadership experience were the research group more inclined to select the ‘Striver’ over the ‘Natural’.

It’s a phenomenon known as ‘naturalness bias.’

The Naturalness Bias

My parents raised me in working-class culture, first in Manchester, England, and then the South Wales Valleys. A hard-working ethic ran down the spine of the working-class culture, but it didn’t relate to success. People worked hard to pay the bills and put food on the table. It had nothing to do with ambition. Ambition belonged to the talented. 

In the opening chapter of the New York Times Bestseller ‘Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance,’ by Angela Duckworth, she shares how she became interested in the ‘Talent v Grit’ debate while working as a math teacher. Duckworth could see that talent wasn’t the determining factor in her student’s success. Perseverance played a significant role. Duckworth also noted that students inferior in math, seemed to excel in other areas of life, leading her to wonder if the students with less natural talent in math were ‘talented enough’ to make the grade through adding passion and perseverance into the mix. 

Talented Enough?

While waxing lyrical on the Viktor Blom’s virtues, Phil Galfond, conjectured that one of the Swede’s most significant assets was ‘pure love for the game.’ Galfond is talking about passion, and Duckworth believes that passion and perseverance for long-term goals = grit, a trait that trumps raw talent. 

Ironically, Galfond believes Blom’s passion for the game – his most significant asset – was also his primary weakness. A lackadaisical attitude towards money, coupled with a desire to compete with the best in the world led to poor game selection. Galfond also shared that Blom had an inferior ‘C’ game that would surface during tilt.

Blom is a case in point that raw talent can propel you to the top of poker’s hierarchy, but without the right blend of perseverance and long-term goals, is it sticky enough?

Talent v Grit: A Word From The Pros

Rui Cao is one of the most fearless online cash game players in the world who is also a dab hand in live tournaments, winning the Triton Super High Roller Series Short-Deck Main Event in Montenegro for more than $3.3m. 

Cao shared his views on the importance of talent and grit in poker. 

“In most domains, some people learn faster than others, and we refer to these people as ‘naturally talented”, Cao told me. “And in most domains, hard work and passion provide the energy to do the hard work necessary to succeed, which is both very difficult, and the only thing that can take you to the top of that domain.

“Putting the skill of poker on a scale of 1 to 100, learning through playing can only bring you to 50. A real genius can reach 75 maybe (just arbitrary numbers), but the hard work can bring anyone to 95. The last five can be somewhat decided by talent because nobody has the time in a lifetime to assimilate everything within a domain.”

Cao isn’t alone in his thinking that talent only gets you so far.

Mohsin Charania is a member of the Triple Crown club having won European Poker Tour (EPT), World Poker Tour (WPT) and World Series of Poker (WSOP) titles throughout a career spanning more than a decade. 

Here’s the Californian’s viewpoint.

“I think that as industry/sports/games evolve, the naturally talented become less valuable and less likely to succeed,” said Charania. “If in poker we say that hard work is putting in the hours playing online, for example, since books are outdated, and you don’t get enough hands playing live poker, you can make the easy argument that anyone currently considered ‘good at poker,’ or even ‘elite’ has some online poker experience. Natural talent is useless because you legit have to know a lot of things, whereas when I started playing in 2007, I was just smarter than my opponents. Now, was that my ‘natural talent’ for poker or just a higher level of intelligence over the average American?”

Charania used basketball to continue his explanation. 

“In basketball, the naturally talented kids can crush in high school because they are better than average, but in college/NBA they don’t excel because at some point you gotta work on shooting drills, etc. If online poker and solvers are your drills then at some point, being naturally talented can only make you elite amid lousy competition. You can’t ever be elite at anything that evolves around natural talent alone. 

“A lot of times, people who aren’t naturally talented think they are because they got lucky in a tournament or a few cash sessions. It’s not 100% hard work. You still need to be wired a certain way to think about high-level poker, but you need the element of hard work, and hand experience to become outstanding. I would bet on ‘hard work’ over ‘natural talent’ when it comes to high stakes poker.”

Is Charania burning his money on his opinion of high stakes poker?

Igor Kurganov doesn’t think so.

Kurganov has earned $18.7m playing live tournaments, and upon speaking to him, you get the impression that it’s not his first talent v grit debate.

“My view of the importance of talent vs grit switched around 2016,” said Kurganov. “Prior, it was 80% talent, 20% grit, since then it gradually moved towards more grit. Now, it’s roughly 20% talent and 80% grit. The distribution is slightly different from online to live games, and also different for cash vs tourneys with talent more relevant in live games and Sit n Go’s.”

Talent v Grit: A Word From The Non-Pros

You’ve heard the viewpoint of some of the best professional poker players in the business. But what about two of the best in ‘business’ who love a game of poker?

Sosia Jiang is a private investor from New Zealand, who recently took part in the £1m buy-in Triton Million event, and this is what Jiang has to say on the nature v grit debate.

“I want first to clarify that I’m not qualified to comment on how the goats of the game achieve their success. Still, based on life as I’ve experienced it, truly sustaining excellence takes both talent and grit,” said Jiang before continuing. “How those two balance out depends on how much “natural talent” one has. The best in any field always work a ton and have had to overcome many obstacles along the way.

“Sustaining long term success in poker also requires a lot of life management – bankrolls and risk management, physical and mental well being. There are many examples in any field of very talented shooting stars that quickly burn themselves out. Jason Koon is an excellent example of someone who talks about making up for “less talent” through grit and hard work. The guy is mega-talented, but in his eyes, compared to the almost savant-like geniuses in the game, he’s made up for it through hard work.”

Talal Shakerchi also played in the Triton Million, and the Meditor Capital Management founder shares a similar line as Jiang. 

“I think it’s both talent and work, as with everything else,” said Shakerchi. “Practice is also essential. Perhaps the difference is that only the talented have the chance to become truly exceptional. But to do so, they must, of course, work hard!”

Can a Player With a Modicum of Talent Become’ Exceptional?’

The evolution of poker and the availability of so many varied forms of learning is one of the reasons our pros and non-pros alike believe the edge between the talented and the grit paragons is slight. 

First, there were poker books.

Then there were forums.

Then came personal coaching and online training videos, and workshops.

Today, you have solvers.

Barny Boatman is a two-time WSOP bracelet winner, and a founding member of the iconic Hendon Mob and he points to the relevance of training materials when questioned on the nature v grit question. 

“The more material there is to study, the more is ‘solved’, the less scope there is to win as a maverick or to get by on ‘talent,’ said Boatman. 

Rainer Kempe has earned more than $21m playing live tournaments, and he also believes the availability of more advanced tools makes a significant difference.

“I think the further the learning tools develop, the more it’ll be hard work>talent,” said Kempe. “When the tools were as inefficient as talking through individual hands with friends or watching videos of successful-ish coaches, talent could get you a long way.”

Rui Cao has a similar view.

“Poker is a straightforward game to work with,” said Cao. “With all the knowledge available, an average player could become very good just with hard work alone. That said, solvers alone won’t make someone a genius. It’s boring work, but the time I’ve spent working in this area has changed my game tremendously.”

It’s that ‘boring work,’ that according to Galfond, didn’t appeal to Blom, hence his inability to block the leaks he had in his game at that time. 

“We all naturally work by playing,” said Cao, “that’s why having passion helps. I would say that humans are lazy. Normal people go to work because they need to pay the bills. Poker players “work” on their game because they want to increase their win rate. But when you have passion, playing is fun, not work – like athletes of artists. But to become exceptional, you need to do the hard, tedious work.”

Cao believes that a player with a modicum of talent can become an exceptional poker player, and he isn’t alone.

“Sadly, yes,” said Igor Kurganov, “that’s if you stretch ‘elite’ to the top 25 players, and define grit as two years of dedicated 60hrs+ of work. Mid-stakes live tournaments is over 70% talent, and high stakes live tournaments 40-50%, in my opinion.”

Charania also gives grit the nod.

“If they had the right way of thinking, and capable of being a good student, then, yes.”

Barny Boatman is a ‘probably.’

“For a while, at least. But their game would probably be somewhat exploitable by other elite players who spot the purely ‘unexploitable’ nature of their game, ironically.”

I don’t know if Charles Darwin played poker, but if he did, I am sure he would have also been on the side of grit versus talent.

“I have always maintained that, excepting fools, men did not differ much in intellect, only in zeal and hard work; and I still think this is an eminently important difference.” – Charles Darwin.

Grit didn’t make a slam dunk. 

Shakerchi doesn’t believe that someone with a modicum of talent can become exceptional, and neither does the former Super High Roller Bowl (SHRB) winner, Rainer Kempe.

“I think it’s significantly more likely that someone with a modicum of passion and hard graft, but the exceptional talent is going to become exceptional,” said Kempe. “For ‘exceptional’, there are just too many people out there who combine both to make it likely.”

Galfond believed that Blom had the talent to be the best in whatever form of poker he focused on, but that he needed to work on his discipline if he wanted to have sustained success in the game at the highest level. 

Blom may have had more raw talent than anyone Galfond had ever seen, but it wasn’t enough. The majority of poker players who helped with this piece, and Duckworth herself believe that to get to the top and stay at the top grit becomes more relevant.

The majority of people that contributed to this piece chose grit over talent. Had Duckworth had her say, it would have been the same, but as Galfond said when questioning whether Blom could do the hard work needed to plug his leaks.

“Sure, he can… but it doesn’t sound very fun.”

To be an elite poker player talent is a must, as is hard work, but more important than both, and the glue that holds them together is passion, because when you lose that you lose your grit. 

So, the next time someone grabs the megaphone and begins espousing the virtue of ‘making poker fun again,’ instead of sighing into the moon, we should maybe pay attention.