The CEO

The Interview with Dr. Norm McAuliffe

Norm McAuliffe is a lifelong entrepreneur. Educated at Yale, he has started many successful businesses. His latest venture, Primate Poker, utilizes great apes trained to play poker online. The playing process uses a winning “pre-flop move-in” strategy originated by David Sklansky, author of the several books on how to play winning poker. His Primate Poker™ venture has been profitable since day one, and the interview is revealing and makes several important points. Read on.

Q. Wow. Tell us a little about how all this online poker started.
A. Primate researcher Dr. James McAullife is my brother. He was the researcher that discovered primates could actually program computers. My training is in biology and biotech. I helped Jim on the training end of the primate learning research effort. We gave the apes .NET training, Java training, JSP training, that kind of thing. Later, Mark Bajek read the research and created Primate Programming Inc (PPI) , in effect commercializing my brother’s research into ape intelligence.

After PPI took off and had like 300 apes at the Des Moines campus, some of the apes learned cards games, games like “Bullsh*t” and “GoFish”. Bajek loves online poker tournaments, and taught some of his favorite programmers No Limit Texas Hold’Em. At first it was just for fun, but later when they introduced playing online poker with real money, it started getting serious. At the same time, online poker for high stakes was taking off. We put 2+2 together and created Primate Poker. Now we make money 24 X 7 with our apes playing poker online.

Q. What is the style of play used by the online poker apes at Primate Poker.com?
A. We taught our players no-limit, big-bet poker, because that was where the biggest return on investment can be found. We use a modified version of David Sklansky’s “The System”, as described in a chapter in his book “Tournament Poker for Advanced Players”. That keeps things very simple. Our method plus the basic aggressive and instinctive temperament of our players are the main ingredients in our success at the online poker tables.

Q. How many hours do these apes play online poker?
A. We run in shifts 24 by 7. Four hours of play for every 12 clock hours is the basic formula. These apes need social time with other individuals in the group, far away from the computer. Every primate needs to pinch the parasites of other individuals in their social circle to maintain that social bond.

Q. The money stats are very impressive.
A. Over 2 million in cash so far on a $2500 investment plus basic living expenses. The results are nothing to sneeze at. We’ve been able to build condominums in St. Maarten with all the excess cash. It’s a great business model.

Q. What is the hourly rate for all this online poker play?
A. That depends on the number of players. We are netting about $25,000 a day right now so the hourly for the whole enterprise is about $1000 per hour. Each ape is pulling about $300 per hour playing online. We gain another $12000 per day for every 10 apes we get playing online.

Q. Which games?
A. They all play the larger, single table no-limit tournaments.

Q. Who came up with the idea to actually bankroll the apes?
A. It was a gradual thing and many of us had input. I discussed it with Mark Bajek (The CEO of Primate Programming Inc) and explained the likely return on investment. Bajek had taught the apes basic Texas Hold’Em, and they did OK with that. They would play here for cigarettes, time off, etc. We later introduced poker chips, then online poker. That’s when we really realized the potential. They were just so impressive.

Bajek decided to put ten individuals through a special training program and turn them loose, playing poker online. I ran the actual training program. I was also the seed money behind the business later, because Bajek did not want even the appearance of a conflict of interest with his clients. Many of the executives at client corporations worldwide play online poker almost every single day. It’s a little-known fact that some of the most successful people in the world greatly enjoy the game of poker. The average Joe is just getting involved this year.

Q. There have been press reports of chimps that can play online poker, and some well-known poker players are saying “monkeys could win” no-limit Texas Holdem with a very simple pre-flop move-in strategy. What do you have to say about that?
A. Everyone knows that Sklanky’s writing in his book starting on page 122 is very startling. It’s actually a kind of primate poker manifesto. The problem is, most people can’t stick to that system. Thay make all kinds of excuses to deviate from it.

REQUIRED READING. The Primate Poker Manifesto.

Most people bring their psychological baggage to the online poker table. That baggage plays out as drama, and flawed play. Apes don't have baggage. They live in the moment. As such, they are hyper-aware and they just execute. This is the key to successful no-limit poker, especially online.

Q. Phil Hellmuth has recently been promoting the term “monkey poker” to describe a style of poker play where you bet your cards without even looking at them. Do you care to comment?
A. First of all, all our players are apes. Great apes. Not monkeys. So we take no offense. We like Phil Hellmuth and we wish he would demonstrate more tolerance of all higher primates at the online poker tables. We often play at his online poker venue, www.UltimateBet.com, so we don’t want to tick him off. The idea that apes play without looking at their cards seems absurd, but Phil is actually expressing his highly developed intuition here, in some sense. Phil prides himself on his highly developed perceptive senses and intuition about people, his "reading" skills. His is right on the mark this time.....

Q. How so?
A. All apes have extremely sensitive, well developed social instincts. They can smell the fear....the reality is, they can and do win online poker without ever needing to look at their cards. We encourage the apes to look, since that increases the earn slightly on a per hour basis. So Phil is actually right about not looking at the cards.

Q. How is that possible?
A. Our great apes at Primate Poker literally sense the fear, or greed, the weakness or strength in their opponents- even online. This is part of what makes them unbeatable in the long run, over say, a sample of 5000 hands. These are highly instinctive online poker animals.

Q. Everyone knows more hands get played in an hour of online poker as compared to the pace at a typical casino table. Is the fast pace of online play an advantage for your “people”?
A. Yes. The fast pace is conducive to a longer attention span. It’s less boring than live play and more like a video game. These apes are incredible Halo (game) players, by the way. They absolutely love it.

(Editors Note: Halo is a violent video game featuring assault weapons and combat situations requiring sub-second response time. The game is very popular with male teenagers and mature great apes worldwide.)

Q. Daniel Negreanu is saying that a monkey could play a basic pre-flop all-in strategy for no-limit Texas Hold’em successfully. Care to comment on that?
A. Have any monkeys actually pulled this off? No. Only apes. Great apes. Our apes. Certified Primate Poker™ apes.

Now, we like Daniel. He’s a kind of poker prophet, a poker philosopher. He is emblematic of the new generation of players in this new era for poker. Daniel is not afraid to write incendiary articles that may tick people off. He is helping move the community in the right direction. He's gained influence lately, playing well, and he's good for poker. He innovates. He tells the truth. We like that. He is really the first writer to hang the truth out there, so to speak.

The truth is, his article in 2002 really, really got us thinking. At that point, online poker was taking off. After I examined that article in CardPlayer, I was like "wow. This is a business." (Editors Note: See the full article here)

Daniel Negreanu is among the first in the poker press to say that a mixed-game format, or at least a pot-limit format, may be the best overall platform for determining the World Champion. Will the format for determining the poker world champion change? Yes. Someday. Does anyone doubt this?

On the other hand, long after this change comes to pass, there will still be millions of human online poker players playing no-limit Texas Hold’Em online. In a mediocre way. And we’ll be there, taking their money as they donate it freely. So we have nothing to worry about. We want the online poker cash, not the fame. The poker cash is online. The fame is on TV.

Q. And that is why do your guys only play no-limit, and only online poker?
A. Yes, right. Because that’s where the easy money is.

Q. And it’s that simple?
A. Thanks to David Sklansky, yes. It’s really, really that simple.

Q. Can you give an example of how this Sklanksy "system" works in a face-to-face tournament setting?
A. Sure. This one was on TV. World Series of Poker, in 2003. Chris Moneymaker moves all-in with a pair of eights. Umberto Brenes has a pair of aces and has to think about. Hard.

Q. But Umberto called.
A. Yes. Moneymaker was in trouble. He ran into a pair of aces. But he still had a hand, and got lucky. Sklanky discusses this exact situation on page 125 of his book. Moneymaker was familiar with the Sklansky ideas.

Q. Didn’t you say earlier that the training technology is the "real story here"?
A. Yes, that's quite correct...

Q. Can you elaborate?
A. The training technology used to train the apes also works extremely well on humans. Imagine being able to become a medical doctor in like, 18 months. We have training technology that makes it possible. What we did with the apes playing cards is just the tip of the iceberg....the technology can be used to train humans incredibly fast. So with Primate Poker we are promoting that indirectly. All you have to do, to believe, is see the results we are achieving.

Q. Now, how exactly are these apes trained? Why can’t anyone else train the apes to play online poker at the level of the players at Primate Poker?
A. Because our training method is proprietary, and patent-pending.

Q. WHAT training method?
A. A better question to ask is “Why can’t anyone compete with Primate Programming Inc, the so-called Evolution of Java and .NET training? I mean, they provide high-quality IT services for less than a dollar per hour, using chimps and gorillas. You might want to ask how exactly these apes get trained. Why can’t anyone else pull it off? What does PPI have going that no one else has going? How can these apes “get” the .NET training and Java training they receive?

Q. What exactly does Java training have to do with poker playing apes?
A. Well, our apes come from Primate Programming Inc. These apes program computers, and they play no-limit Texas Hold’Em. Perfectly. And poker is complex. So they obviously learn quite quickly, right?

Q. Right….OK….and….your point is?
A. My point is, we have a special, proprietary training method that works incredibly well. And no one else has it. These poker players here are proving the effectiveness of the method. The full story will eventually come out. When it does, it’s going to revolutionize education-- worldwide.

Q. You mean, the training of animals?
A. No. I mean, the training of people. At the university level. Worldwide.

Q. So maybe we’ll see another venture from you soon, launched in the education space?
A. Oh yes. Most definitely.

Q. OK. So you use apes trained to make money playing online poker. Some would say that's very exploitative. Perhaps even harmful. Have the animal rights people weighed in?
A. Yes, and they are buying tons of our Primate Poker hats, t-shirts, etc. These people buy anything with an animal on it, as you know. Seriously. The reality is, they love us. They especially like the short work day and all the time off our players receive. We support The Great Ape Project and PITA and other animal rights groups. We support the Primate Bill of Rights. We are pushing hard for a right-to-gaming clause.

We are a strong supporter of the individual's right to liberty. Alot of our apes are getting aware of politics, they are all libertarians and they're all programmers. As such, most of them support the Open Source President project.

Q. What's that?
A. The Open Source President project is a libertarian effort to create a software-driven Presidential figure who represents the people democratically, and makes sound decisions based on reason and game theory. Any citizen can see the source code.

The Foreign Policy Module is a generalized no-limit Texas Hold'Em decision-making engine customized and tuned for geopolitical decision-making. (Editor's Note: Learn more about the Foreign Policy Module here.)

Q. These apes are skilled computer programmers. Have they written any programs to help in playing successful online poker?
A. The players at Primate Poker currently play online poker only. There is a reason for that.

Q. Care to elaborate?
A. Let’s just say that some of the time spent away from the tables is utilized writing certain computer programs. Similiar to what they did previously at Primate Programming Inc.

Q. What kind of programs?
A. Without gettnig too specific here, what I can say is that our players are making excellent use of their Java skills, ASP.NET training, and C# .NET training.

Q. Do they program in teams?
A. Yes, of course. Any successful software development effort must be highly organized.

Q. Some in the media are saying the players at Primate Poker are PLAYING in teams online. Care to comment?
A. Look, each ape is a very competitive individual. OK? They compete for mating partners, living space, social status. Etcetera. They are not going to be helping each other at the tables. For a lot of these players, there is a lot of pride in being #1, being tha alpha animal. There is no collusion.

Q. Which species play the best?
A. The chimps, surprisingly. You would think the gorillas, right? The male gorillas are just a little to eager to go all-in. Some lack of self-control there….the female gorillas do OK though. Excellent online poker, in fact. Much better than most people give them credit for.

Q. How many apes are playing online poker as of today?
A. There’s about twenty right now.

Q. Who are the most successful players?
A. There is a “Gang of Four” we call the “Ninja Turtles” because of their names. These guys are not to be played with. They are: Raphael, Michaelangelo, Leonardo, and Donatello. They only play in the highest stakes online tables at www.PartyPoker.com and www.PokerStars.com. These guys are averaging $481 per hour. Some lawyers don’t make that kind of money. Rafael is really kicking some ass.

Q. This whole thing is causing quite a stir in the poker community.
A. That was our intention. The idea that chimps are taking money from humans playing online poker will be unsettling to many people. In some sense our apes here at Primate Poker are exposing the harsh reality: most players online are playing some very marginal hands on a regular basis. Our guys just won't play the "idiot-end" of a straight, or even a weak ace from late position. They like to play the nuts or neo-nuts, do you know what I mean?

Q. I think so... We are near the end of our time for this interview. Any final comments?
A. We know that what we are doing at Primate Poker is going to push online poker skill to a new, higher level. As people come to understand that chimps and gorillas are taking their poker money online, people are going to have to ”up their game”. That will be good for the entire online poker industry. Also, many people will go online to observe the games, out of curiosity. This will ultimately add new players also. What we are doing is a very good thing for poker.

Q. The shocking reality is that primates win online no-limit Texas Hold'Em poker tournaments against skilled opponents, using Sklansky's pre-flop ideas. Do you think this realization will ultimately create pressure to change the World Series Championship game from Texas Hold'Em ... to one based on more overall skill?
A. I honestly don't know. That's a rather loaded question, don't you think? I'm going to pass on that one. Will I tune into the Travel Channel on Wednesday night? Yes. I hope you do also...what the WPT has done for the game is incredible. I'm happy with the situation, as it is. I love my work. I love my great apes.

Q. Thanks for the interview!
A. My pleasure.