Poker Pro Liv Boeree spreads Poker Wisdom via TED Talks

When it comes to poker success stories, we notice that many who were able to make it to the top come from different types of people from various walks of life; however, it seems like individuals who had the highest success rate are the ones who are analytically-minded and highly-knowledgeable with numbers.

Take for instance Liv Boeree, currently a PokerStars pro team member, who can't seem to shut off her profound love for numbers, and it's probably one of the main reasons why she's been performing excellently at poker tournaments.

She believes her love for numbers and poker can become a doorway to becoming helpful to others, which is why she did a TED talk. The TED (technology, entertainment, design) Conference, held yearly at Vancouver, has become a place for presenting leadership and vision, with previous speakers known as some of the most influential people in the world such as Al Gore, Bill Clinton, and Bill Gates.

She contacted TEDx Manchester and asked if she can make a presentation. TEDx conferences are actually composed of hundreds of satellites of some sort, organized by local groups. With less than a month before the conference begins and while Boeree was at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, the organizers responded and told her she can have a slot for her presentation if she'll take it.

With little time to prepare, Boeree still accepted.

Boeree said, "I wanted to find a way to teach poker thinking for everyday people. Maybe we're just so in our bubble, trained and used to thinking in probabilities. But, I think it's a super important skill."

According to rules at TED Talks, speakers need to formulate 15 minutes worth of material to talk about and they need to memorize it so it could be delivered note-free. The presentation also required a flow, visual aids and personal examples so that the audience can understand and relate to.

The easy part for Boeree was obtaining a list of material she wanted to discuss, but the hard part was editing herself as well as being able to impart interesting information combined with deadpan delivery.

She said with a laugh, "When you're trying to crack a joke, you're not allowed to laugh at your own joke."

Two weeks worth of rehearsing and about 40-50 hours of work later, she then finally presented her piece to an audience of around 2,000 people.

Here's one of her past videos (in mid-February) about her speech on probabilities and how to use it to improve our "everyday decision making".

Through these talks, Boeree aims to reach her two goals of improving her own public-speaking skills and at the same time growing the game.

On future TED talks, Boeree had to work harder on edits and delivery because the main TED conference makes use of a format with auto-advancing slides so her timing has to be perfect. Moreover, a limit of only 6 minutes means more self-editing has to be done. She said, "There's so much you can say about poker, trying to trim it down to six minutes is hard. It's like, 'I love this sentence. Oh, doesn't really add enough, got to cut it."

Source:
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