Octopi Poker is the brainchild of renowned poker pros and business professionals, and it's gaining traction on the tournament circuit. Led by Andrew ‘LuckyChewy’ Lichtenberger, Victoria Livschitz, and a more recent addition of Stephen Chidwick, the goal is to make the process of learning sound poker strategy as enjoyable and frictionless as possible.
Together, they set out to build a solid and diverse team of tech-savvy individuals to harness the rising tech of AI in combination with the present-day training tools of solvers, hand history trackers, and GTO trainers.
We sat down with the CEO of Octopi Poker, Andrew Lichtenberger, to better understand their mission to bring an all-in-one integrated platform for collaborative poker study to players worldwide.
Can you talk about the team’s mission at Octopi Poker?
Our goal is really to be able to optimize the process of studying and learning poker through one fully integrated social platform, where people of all skills and backgrounds can come together and enjoy learning about the game of poker, as well as learning about themselves and understanding just how intertwined those two things are.
Your team combines poker minds with tech-savvy professionals and leans heavily into AI. Are you pleased with how that came together?
Compiling a fantastic team over the last two years has been incredible. The more differing views you have, the more you can have those ideas bounce off of one another to see different angles and perspectives of a vision for poker training tools and, ultimately, the benefit of the community.
It's been a riveting journey, and it seems to get more and more exciting day by day, which is undoubtedly a good thing. I feel like I'm making seismic leaps in my understanding of myself and business in the world around me. I have a lot to be grateful for.
You recently released a series of videos called Beginner's Guide to the Philosophy of Poker. What’s your thinking behind that series?
I want to help people understand the big picture of poker: which factors encourage decisions to be made, how they do it, where they show up, and why it matters. I will be creating more content entirely aligned with that same topic of exploration.
It will become progressively more granular as Octopi creates an extensive library of content that plugs into our tooling. The more we can have various frameworks for understanding poker more in-depth, the more our logical mind can use those tools to discern between different options and aspects of gameplay.
I think it's most beneficial to take those frameworks and let them come alive when you play poker. And this is one of the things that I believe The Trainer will offer because of its nature to simulate real poker scenarios.
Can you explain what The Trainer is?
The Trainer will assist you in dissecting what is going on in each hand you play and in many ways, it allows for your creative mind to bloom. I think that's the best way to learn and excel in poker – letting your heart guide you in the process of discerning in the moment which option is most viable, while being backed by your intellectual faculties and having understood why certain plays make sense.
Once you start to grasp these theoretical ideas, you can take them more practically and understand that while the models may not often map 1:1 onto reality, you will be given a solid understanding of what's happening. It will train your intuition to discern, in each moment, the most essential things to be aware of when making each decision during actual gameplay.
I think The Trainer is a great starting point. That's the jumping-off point for studying and learning with us at Octopi Poker.
The gamified aspect of being able to play hands against George, our affectionate and omnipotent Octopi Poker God, is and has always been my favorite way to train my abilities and learn more about the nuances and complexities of the game while also continuing to drill the basics.
Co-founder Victoria Livschitz said in an interview with us that the optics of using solvers in the main event FT was 'terrible for the game' and said she'd be happy for the WSOP to ban all solvers from the premises during WSOP. Is that a stance you agree with?
I think it is optically bad but feel that the effort to completely eradicate them from the playing environment is unrealistic. My reason for this is simple: if phones are allowed, which I think they are likely to continue to be, you simply cannot police against someone receiving a text message with solver data, calling a friend for information on a break, or browsing the internet/accessing a personal server from their mobile device.
I found it interesting how much outrage there was given the fact that none of this is new in the industry and that there must be countless instances where people had friends or coaches running simulations for them at home. The laptop being on the rail was only relevant in so far as making it obvious what was going on, but the practice of someone running simulations for a player that they have a vested financial interest in is not novel.
My biggest concern would be that some flimsy rule gets put in place, designed to combat the optics of the situation, but makes no substantive difference and only serves to create the illusion of change whereby nothing really materially is altered.
Do you feel that companies like yours have a responsibility to ensure tools are not used in real-time?
Yes, I think tools like those we have at Octopi, or any other study solutions for that matter, have no place at the table. We are well aware of the fact that we have a responsibility to police against such things, but as previously noted this is an issue which is not easily accomplished.
Andrew 'Lucky Chewy' Lichtenberger is considered one of the best high-stakes MTT pros in the game, with career earnings of more than $20,000,000. He has also written an ongoing series for PokerOrg, where he outlines his approach to some of the strategic and mental aspects of poker. You can follow Andrew and Octopi Poker on Twitter/X.
