Name: Norm Macdonald on America's Cardroom (June 2019) Talking poker with the pros - 2 interviews
Uploaded: 2021-08-22T19:53:33.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm Macdonald on America's Cardroom (June 2019) Talking poker with the pros - 2 interviews' from Happy the Dog on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-08-22. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm Macdonald on America's Cardroom (June 2019) Talking poker with the pros - 2 interviews' from Happy the Dog on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-08-22. Transcript available.

Norm Macdonald on America's Cardroom (June 2019) Talking poker with the pros - 2 interviews

All right, welcome. I'm here with Norm Macdonald, comedian and actor. I'm your
host, Michael Longcar.
Norm, how has your experience been playing on America's Cargum so far?
Oh, it's really been a lot of fun. You know, Black Friday was particularly
black for me because I was a little bit,
but, you know, after Internet poker went away, I had to figure out a way to
spend nine hours of my day.
So, you know, I had to get out and, you know, play with my son, things like
that. It was pretty rough.
You actually had to do other things with your life.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when it came back, and I'll never forget when I first came
on, I was like,
Oh, this looks exactly like old days, and it feels like it, you know?
Because I thought it was going to be something weird, like...
Totally something you've never seen before weird.
Yeah, something totally different, because I really liked the old paradigm, you
know?
So that's great.
And also, you know, I like that they don't have avatars.
I just thought about this, but you remember the, oh, there'd be an avatar, be a
sexy lady or something like that?
Yeah.
And so, and then you pick the sexy lady, and everyone's hitting on you.
And I go, I'm not a good woman, even. I'm a guy. I just picked this avatar.
Still, they go, like, nice rack. I'll tell you, nice rack. Your rack of your
breasts.
Well, a lot of poker sites out there, they have giant teams, they're kind of, I
guess you could say, hidden behind a curtain.
America's Card Room?
Yeah, you guys are like that.
America's Card Room has been very out in the open.
Yeah.
The CEO of America's Card Room, Phil Nagy, is a prime example of that.
Yes. I compare it to a Japanese restaurant.
I feel like most, you know, like you were saying, you know, the hidden behind,
you're not quite sure what's, it's not very transparent.
Most of these sites, I compare that to a Chinese restaurant where you don't
know what's going on in that kitchen,
but, you know, they're going to bring out something with some phosphorescent
red sauce all over it and you don't want to go in the kitchen.
But America's Card Room is more like the Japanese restaurant.
The guy's right in front of you, you know, doing everything, you know, and if
it doesn't work out and you get sick, he gets shut down because he's right
there.
So that's why transparency is important.
Because we know without transparency what has happened, you know, in the
website, yeah.
I personally know you and I've always known you, obviously, as a comedian, an
actor.
How did you get your start in poker originally?
Well, mostly it was when I was very young, I played backgammon.
And so I played, these are backgammon tournaments.
It's so weird now to think about.
But that's all gone, and then so they moved on, those guys, you know, not me,
but they moved on to poker.
Then, like, years later I was gambling a lot.
I was in casinos a lot.
And I thought if I play poker, I'll just bleed it slower.
Yeah, because I was playing limit, you know, I played limit.
And so I couldn't have one just, like, at the pits.
Here's all my money, I'll bet, you know.
I have a hunch, you know what I mean?
That's always the worst thing.
So that's where I started, was just to bleed the money slower.
And then I really liked it because of the, you know, it's funny.
I like the...
Social aspect?
Exactly.
How do you know what I was going to say?
Because you're Norm Macdonald, come on.
I like the social aspect, but I also like it on, I think I like it on internet
even better, because you get the social aspect without having to meet anyone.
Interesting.
So, would you, okay.
What do you think?
Yeah, no, absolutely.
I personally love the online grind.
I love...
And you get to know some people.
Yeah.
If you play them, you know, a lot.
So that's fun.
On that note, are there any poker players that you model your game after?
And who's your favorite poker player out there?
My favorite poker player to watch is Phil Helmuth.
Phil Helmuth.
Because I think, yeah, he's the most entertaining.
You love the antics.
Yeah.
He's definitely entertaining.
You can't deny that.
Love him or hate him, he's definitely entertaining.
Absolutely.
And just to watch a guy, like, that's just never moves for five minutes with
sunglasses.
I'm not talking about Phil, but, you know, a big guy that's completely still.
It's a camera shot of him for 10 minutes.
I don't want to see that.
No, that's not a lot of fun.
And these guys make a decision over, you know, whether the other guy is a queen
of clubs.
You know what I mean?
It takes them longer to make that decision than it does for me to, like, buy a
house.
You know what I mean?
Like, the clock is going, you know, people are shaving, you know, the guy's
still in the
tank, you know, and then all these calendar pages going through the wind, you
know.
Two months later.
Yeah, and then the trees turn green, and then they turn yellow, and then crimson,
you know.
And then I grow a long white beard, shave, and then this guy goes, clock, clock,
you know, clock.
I have a great old picture of them playing poker in the Old West, and it's a
cartoon.
The guy says, clock, and another guy, fellow walks in with a grandfather clock,
you know.
Okay.
What poker books have you read?
Have you read any poker books?
Yeah, I've read, you know, all the ones that make you an obsolete player.
I've become an expert in all of those.
By the time I cut up, you know, I'm like, yeah, I just finally finished that
goddamn Harrington
thing, and none of it's right.
Okay.
All right, fair enough.
Well, you're a TV guy.
What's your favorite poker TV show?
Well, I used to love Hive Stakes.
That was my favorite.
Hive Stakes was great.
Yeah, that was my favorite by far.
Gabe Kaplan.
Oh, my God.
So great.
So entertaining.
I like AJ Best, but I love Gabe Kaplan.
So cool.
That guy's got a cool life.
They should do a, you know, they should do a documentary on that dude, because
he's a fascinating
journey.
And on the TV topic, you've been an actor for years.
How does preparing for poker compare to preparing for TV, comparing for a role?
You're supposed to always be in the moment, you know, and as I've heard with
acting, but
it really is true with poker, you know what I mean?
Because a lot of times, right, the big mistake that you can make, that I made
for years, is
you're playing the hand you had, rather than the hand you have, right?
That's why people are so, you know, they don't want to fold, in a way they don't
want to fold their
pocket aces, even though they know they're B, because they want to show the
pocket aces, you
know?
So they're playing the hand they had, you know, the pocket aces were really
good pre-flop.
But, you know, so I got caught doing that.
I made a terrible, terrible mistake in the end of the tournament.
Oh no.
Yeah.
Because I try to, now I try to look at my mistakes that I make, because, you
know, I used
to be like, oh, I had a bad beat, but then I realized, well, it's good to have
bad beats,
that's what you want, you know, because that means you, you had it in with the
best, the
badder the beat, the better for you.
So, uh, instead I just try to look at the mistakes.
I'm amazed that I still make like such bad mistakes under pressure.
We all do.
We all do.
And you know what I realized?
I snap, I've got to stop doing this.
I will snap call and all in and think about like a regular-
Take a little bit longer and take a second.
Yeah.
Why don't you take, it's your whole tournament and I'm like, oh, you know, oh,
you have that?
Oh, bye.
You know, and I'm walking away.
I go, why did I do that?
Going back to the social aspect of live poker, I'm sure you obviously have had
a lot of interesting
encounters with people, asking you questions at the table.
Do people ever ask you to give your Burt Reynolds impression at the table or
your Bob Dole impression?
Oh yeah, that's the worst thing ever.
Why was that your next question?
Here's where it hurts.
It's like, it's hard to like run a bluff because sometimes the guy will go, I'm
sure you got
me, but it'll make a good story.
And I'm like, oh no, you could just make up a story.
Like, I'm fine.
And so then the guy calls you and you're like, I don't know.
So, but I've heard that from a lot of the celebrity poker players, even worse.
You know what I mean?
Because they'll go like, well, Daniel Negrano, if I beat him, it'll be a huge
story.
And if he beats me, big deal.
That's a good story too.
It can be a big disadvantage.
Yeah.
It is a disadvantage.
Those superstar poker players have advantages and disadvantages.
According to HendonMob.com, your $44,000 of live tournament cashes rank you
about 3,000th all-time for the all-time Canada cash list.
Tell me about that.
How do you feel about that?
That's hilarious.
That's hilarious.
That's hilarious.
That's hilarious.
Yeah, because like a lot of the people that make the Canadian list, you know,
you don't need a lot.
Like, I mean, my uncle made that list just from his scratch-off tickets.
You know, he does the scratch-off tickets every month.
So you once said the following about poker going offline due to Black Friday,
and I quote,
it kind of saved my life because I was just grinding out and couldn't even
sleep.
What's your relationship with online poker now, and how do you go about it in a
healthier way?
Well, I don't do any of those multi-tables, you know what I mean?
Like, I don't know why.
You can do one table?
Yeah, or a tournament or something that's fun.
Like, I don't know why I thought I needed to make a living, you know what I
mean?
Like, I need to make $20 an hour for putting myself through some insane
psychedelic experiment,
you know?
Like, when I went to sleep, it felt like the CIA had injected LSD into the eye
of my cock.
But, you know, you get a, and then I go, why am I doing this anyway?
Like, because I used to play like 16, 50 cent a dollar limit, you know, games.
Yeah.
So it's just like ABC out of, you know, and you make 20 bucks an hour or
something like
that.
But I go, why am I doing this?
Like, this is not a fun life.
So that's results oriented, you know what I mean?
Just throw in a bunch of, just play the right way like a whole bunch of times,
and it'll
all regress to the mean.
That's not fun, you know?
So the tourneys are the most fun, you know, because you get the big decisions
and stuff
like that.
Definitely.
In 2018, you had the fortune of playing on Poker After Dark, a 100-200 game
with two of
the best trash talkers in poker history, Phil Hellmuth, your favorite, and Jean-Rivert
Ballon.
Tell me about that experience.
That was funny, because they're both great guys, but mostly they're always
after each
other, so you don't really get hurt if you just, you know, stay out of the way
until you
have a hand, you know.
But on the last hand of that poker after dark, Jean-Rivert raised and then Phil
Hellmuth went
all-in with Aces.
I heard about it.
I saw that.
I saw that.
Yeah.
It was what I remember called with Ace-10 and lost.
So, but it was funny because Phil had sold his, you know, had sold himself to,
so he had
to call, you know, he had to, he didn't really want to be all-in because it
wasn't his money
that time.
But he won.
The Aces held up.
But that's how sick Jean-Rivert was because it was, because there was only one
hand left.
That's why.
You know what I mean?
Like, he was like, oh, I have to, I can't, if I don't call this, I don't get to
play a
hand of poker.
It's so weird.
So you've, you've been an avid sports better over the years.
Oh yeah.
I love sports.
You've done a lot of live tweeting and big games.
If you had to choose one, if you could only sports bet or play poker for the
rest of your
life, which game would you choose?
Well, I would choose poker because, you know, um, you're in the arena, you know,
you're either
in the arena or you're in the seats, you know, I guess you're still in the
arena, but you're
in the seats.
The seats are also part of the arena.
Let me start over.
Uh, you know, listen, you can be 