Life After Poker - Matt Hawrilenko

Life After Poker

[Edit 3-Sept-14: Welcome 2+2 PokerCast listeners! If you got here through the PokerCast, you may want to check out notes at the bottom to save yourself some time.]

Life After Poker is a series of conversational interviews with former poker pros. Many familar -- and less familiar -- poker pros have moved on to the business, academic, and other worlds and I want to talk about their stories.

Matt Hawrilenko, known online as "Hoss_TBF", was one of the most successful high-limit mixed-game players of his era. He accumulated millions of dollars in cash game winnings, and won the 2009 6-max NL hold'em WSOP bracelet in 2009. Matt spent his summers living in the "Math of Poker House", discussing poker theory alongside fellow bracelet winners Bill Chen, Jerrod Ankenman, Gavin Griffin and Matt Grapenthein, and non-bracelet winners like the guy interviewing him for this episode.

These days, Matt is working on his Ph.D in Clinical Psychology. He lives with his wife Emily. I dropped by his home in Boston to talk with him about a wide array of topics ranging from clinical psychology, depression, how to optimize life decisions, performing self-assessments, and what Bill Chen thinks of him now as a poker player.

Note: The following (approximate) parts of the interview also played on the September 3, 2014 edition of the 2+2 PokerCast:

• 8:03-14:55
• 22:23-28:56
• 37:28-1:10:30