July 4, 2024 • 40 mins
Maria talks with Women’s Chess Grandmaster Jennifer Shahade about what chess and poker teach you about life; how statistics can help you think about having kids; and the time Maria lost a chess match in four moves.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Hey everyone, I'm Maria Kanikova and welcome to a
special episode of Risky Business, our podcast with Nate Silver
about making better decisions. Except today it's just me and
(00:35):
a very special guest, Jennifer Shahade. Jennifer is someone who
I've known for many years, and she is a truly
extraordinary individual. She is a two times Women's US Chess champ,
the first woman to win the Junior Championship, a Woman's Grandmaster,
(00:56):
and the author of multiple books, Play Like a Girl,
Play Like a Champion, Chess Bitch, and Chess Queens, and
the upcoming Thinking Sideways. Jennifer, thank you so so much
for joining. So happy to have you here on Risky Business.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Oh I'm so excited about your podcast. Maria. It's wonderful
to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
So I want to start with your upbringing, because you
are someone who not only is in a risky business,
because you and I are actually members of Poker Stars
Team Pro together, so we also played poker and that's
how we originally met. But you are someone who's been
thinking through this lens of gaming for most of your life.
(01:40):
So I'd like to go back to your childhood and
I'd love for you to tell us about how you
got introduced to the world of games.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Oh, it's honestly before I can even remember. There's a
picture of me when I was two years old playing
against my brother in chess, and obviously I don't think
I knew the moves quite then, but it definitely really
predated any memories that I have. My parents are also
big lovers of card games, poker, bred Everything in our
(02:11):
life is about games, and they were also really big
into sports and sports betting, so I know that's another
aspect of this podcast, so I feel much at home here.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
I actually didn't know that about sports betting, so let's
return to that in a second. But first, your brother
is actually also someone who is well known in the
world of chess, as is your father. Right, so you
are someone who comes from what's known as a chess family.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, that's right, and it's really typical.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Honestly, it's a very very typical way for chess players
to get into the game is via their family, especially
women players. I feel like when you talk to a
female player, it's very very typical that her brother plays,
her father plays, her mother plays, and I think a
lot of that is it just gives them that like
kind of built in support network.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
And what was it about the game chess that first
attracted you? Was it the competitive angle or was it
the fact that you're thinking about kind of decision making
on a different level. Do you happen to remember because
I you know, when I was a little kid, my
parents tried to get me to play chess and that
did not stick.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
I think I heard about this the Scholar's Mate right
before exact listen.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
It happened to Beth Harmon and she recovered from it,
So you know, you're good.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yes for listeners of the podcast who don't know this story.
When I was in fifth grade, I learned how to
play chess and during my first ever chess competition, succumbed
to scholars mate, which is a mate in three moves.
And that was a move that was done by a
five year old when I was in fifth grade, and
I never recovered and have never played chess since then. Such,
(03:52):
you clearly had a very different experience.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah, well, I'm sure I got made it in the
scholars I do remember getting made in the scholars Mate,
and it's a bit of a tangent, but because it's
risky business. I am going to mention a story about
the scholar's mate. So a lot of kids like the
like the horrible five year old who checkmated you and four,
they try the scholar's mate because it works. But it's
not a good opening, right, It's objectively bad because if
(04:16):
your opponent knows to avoid it, then you know you're
gonna get a bad position. So it's very much an
equity calculation. So the Scholar's made at the age of
like five and six, kids are thinking about that. Actually,
and my son actually was sitting in on an online
class with Magnus Carlson, the highest rated chess player in history.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Your son, how old is he?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
He's seven now.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
And he is sitting in on a class with Magnus Carlson.
And what's your son's name, Fabian? And who is he
named after?
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Well, in a way, he was named after the world
number two player, Fabiano Carojuana.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Actually in a way, in a way, all right, So back.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
To your story. So Fabian is in this class with
Magnus Curlson.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
And one of the kids asks Magnus, like, what do
you think about the form of checkmate? And you know
everybody's expecting Magnus is just gonna say no, don't play
the form of checkmate. It's not a good opening, but
it's like, yeah, you know, it's not that bad to
try it. And I really I was like everybody was shocked.
And one of the coaches in the in the room
tried to like actually disagree.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
With Magnus on the air, and I'm like, wait a.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Second, and no, I actually thought about it later and
I really loved it because I think what he was
trying to say.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I mean, he didn't expand on it.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
But as many people might know, Magnus also really likes poker,
and he also really likes sportsbetting. Is that, you know,
why try to take away this instinct of children to
go for equity, Like I actually it's a good instinct,
you know, like, yeah, you're gonna look, you're not gonna
get that check made every time, but the ten or
twenty percent of the time that you do, you're gonna
win in foremos. So you know, it was the first
(05:50):
time I'd ever since heard a grandmaster say that, and
it stuck with me.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
So that's actually a really interesting story. And I love
how you mentioned the idea of equity and how we
think about equity. And now in poker, when you're talking
about equity, you're talking about something very specific, right, the
equity of your hand, the future value of your hand,
how many chips you can imagine getting in the future,
(06:17):
And it's kind of this calculation that you're constantly trying
to make. So when you're talking about equity in chess,
are you thinking about it in the same way or
is it slightly different?
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Well, that's a great question when it comes to talking
about somebody like Magnus Carlson, because I really think that
it used to be very different. When I was a
kid playing chess, we didn't really think about equity or probability.
It was more like we were looking for the best move,
and that is the way that most chess computers taught
us as well. But nowadays I think that chess players
(06:49):
are thinking more like poker players.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
They are thinking about equity even more.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
They're thinking not just about what the best move is,
but more about what move is likely to destabilize.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Your opponent and make them potentially.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Fall for the form of checkmate so that you can
win that ten percent of the times. Right now, so
it's become really a ruthless equity hunting game, just like poker.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
So you're really thinking about not just kind of the
present moment, but the future, and you're trying to make
this probabilistic calculation, not just what does this move mean
right now, but what does this move mean for my
future ability to win? Given that it might there's an
ex probability that it's going to make my opponent get
(07:33):
really nervous, there's a why probability that it's going to
make my opponent blunder. So is that kind of how
we're thinking about it now exactly?
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Of course, in chess, we're always trying to think about
what our opponent will play. But usually when I was taught,
I was always told always assume your opponent's going to
play the best move, because if they play a weaker move,
you'll win anyway. But if they play the best move,
you need to really prepare for that. Nowadays, I think there's.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
A little bit more nuanced.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Well, people will really think about the psychological aspect of
the game of chess more, and in that way, I
think the games of chess and poker are really starting
to converge a little bit. Chess players are playing a
little bit more like poker players, and well, we definitely
know that poker players are a little bit more chess
like these days in the way they study and approach
the game.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, that's that's a really interesting point because one of
the things that you said really jumped out at me.
You said, in chess, we no longer kind of assume
that that your opponent is going to make the best move,
and in poker, you actually are now assuming that your
opponent is going to play game theory optimal is going
(08:43):
to make the best move every time, and you're trying
to counter that because you know, in an interesting way,
I think poker is at a stage of its evolution
where chess has been for a while, where there are
now solvers and kind of ways that try to approximate
ideal behavior quote unquote, even though in poker it's it's
different than in chess because it is an imperfect information game,
(09:05):
but I do think it's this really interesting overlap in
terms of decisions and in terms of what we consider
to be optimal decision making.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
I think that's like the reason why honestly poker is
so tantalizing, why it stood the test of time, that
you kind of have to balance the two polls. To me,
like the word poker itself, Like playing poker means adjusting,
like being present, right, it's paying attention and like actually
thinking about what your opponent is doing. And the other
(09:34):
stuff is like the theory that you fall back on
if you don't really pick up on anything, if your
ability to try to pay attention and see what your
opponents doesn't give you much of a read, and then
you're just like, well, I guess this is what I
have to do. And that to me is that like
everlasting tension between like what you think and what you
feel and having to choose between them in every situation.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
So it seems like what you're saying, and this is
also me being biased as someone who plays poker and
doesn't play chess, but it seems like poker is a
better if we're trying. If we then go from the
world of games to the world of real life, it
(10:18):
seems like poker might be a better way of thinking
about risk and decision making as we interact with people
and make decisions away from the game table.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Yeah, I think poker does mirror life more than chess does,
partly because it's not fair. You know, there's some people
who get lucky. There's people who get lucky three or
four times in a row. There are people who start
out with the ability to rebuy, you know, over and
over again and keep buying into the game even if
they play badly or bust. So there's just a lot
(10:52):
of more similarities with life. And then the fact that
the currency of poker is money is chips, which stand
for money, and so much about life is what power
you have based on how much money you have and
how much capital you have. So for sure, I think
there are more like day to day decisions that you
can make from poker. That said, as a lifel chess player,
(11:16):
I have to give some shout outs to chests too,
because one of the beautiful things about chess is that
it does.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Bring you into this like beautiful flow state.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
And that's really why I love chess for children too,
because you can see them kind of achieve that state
even at like six, seven, eight years old. And maybe
they're not going to be professional chess players, I mean,
very few of them will, but my hope is always
that they'll remember that flow state and be able to
kind of, you know, jump into that in other parts
of their lives and just like forget about everything else
(11:46):
that is going on and just, you know, enjoy the moment.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
So I think that that's an interesting thing about about
chess versus poker that I hadn't really thought about, because
for me, you know, poker is a way that I've
actually been able to achieve flow states quite often because
when you're really in the zone. Since it's the only
game I play, it's the only time that kind of
I've found myself in that sort of situation. When did
(12:12):
you make the switch from chess to poker. Obviously you've
never switched entirely, you still play chess, but in terms
of kind of your interest, when did you start migrating
in that direction?
Speaker 2 (12:24):
You know, it was kind of gradual.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
My brother got into poker, and I was dabbling in
it via him and some of my other chess friends,
because at the time of the poker boom, a lot
of chess players, backgammon players, anyone who really had an
interest in any kind of game were flocking to poker
because they thought, honestly, it was easy money. And it's
funny because I was a little slow to the game
(12:47):
compared to them, And I remember my mother, who was
the stone opposite of all my other poker friends' moms,
because she she called me once and she.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Was like, Jen, why aren't you playing more poker like
your friends? What's going on?
Speaker 1 (13:00):
I love that?
Speaker 3 (13:03):
And so yeah, but I finally did take her advice
and I got a bit more into it.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
But you know, I always have.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
I think one of the issues that it's a little
underestimated and poker is that it's really important to have,
especially if you want to play live poker, and in
the United States right now, unfortunately, there's not a lot
of regulated places that you can play online. You really
need a decent chunk of money. It's not that easy
to get in there. I mean, it's it's probably better
than most games because you can kind of hang out
(13:31):
and you know, spend go to like the UH one
two or one three tables, like the lower poker table,
the lowest buy in that you can find in Vegas
or Atlantic City, and you can maybe have a few
hours of entertainment for a couple hundred bucks.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
But overall, like it's an expensive hobby.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
I would say, so that that's probably why it took
me a little while to get more into it.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
So your son plays chess, right now, but not poker, correct.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Right, that's right. But he loves he loves watching poker.
You're you're one of his favorite players. He likes, he
likes you, Maria Hoe and chuannlu and well, of course me.
So it's all about the top of women buyers. I love.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
I love that it's so female centric because that's actually
that's so important, and you know, that's it's a really
wonderful thing to see that women can also excel in
a game that is so incredibly male dominated. When he
watches poker, is he interested in the strategic elements? Is
he thinking of it kind of in the same terms
(14:33):
that you've taught him to think about chess.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Yeah, but I find that kids it's harder for them
to understand poker than chess, even though you know, technically
it probably is easier to teach an adult the roles
of poker than the roles of chess, partly because kids
don't usually know that much about about money, and I
think also the probabilistic thinking is pretty tricky for them
as well. So, yeah, he's definitely looking to see what
(14:57):
people have and whether they're going to make their hand.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
But I wouldn't say it comes supernaturally to kids.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
And I think that that's a really crucial point because
one of the things that I love about pokers that
it does each probabilistic thinking, which is something that does
not come naturally to the human brain at all. Right,
we are so bad at calculating risk, at calculating probabilities,
at thinking in that way. It's just not something that
comes naturally at all to the human mind. We'll be
(15:31):
back in a minute now, switching away from kind of
you as gamer, and you now kind of in your
professional life, so you are a writer as well. You're
(15:55):
someone who's been involved professionally in chess organizations, in teaching
and mentoring women in all of these things. How has
your thinking about risk, about risk taking migrated over from
the fact that you you up kind of trained in
this game's way of thinking, and how has it not?
Because I think that you obviously hear both perspectives, right.
(16:17):
You hear the people who say, oh, you know, chess, poker,
et cetera. They really helped me and they helped me
make decisions. And then there are some people and maybe
they wouldn't say it, but I know some poker players
who are really good at poker and then just so
so dumb away from the poker table. So I I'd
love to hear how you think about it and kind
of how your non poker life, non chess life has evolved.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Oh, poker, absolutely, I'll start with poker because it's like
more forefront of my mind. Poker absolutely helped me because
I never took a finance class or an econ class,
and I really feel like poker is just like a
miniature lesson in finance, and just even the idea that
if you just put your money in a checking account
and don't do anything to it, you're technically losing money
(17:02):
because of inflation. I mean, poker teaches you that very quickly,
because you got annie and so the annies go up
as the turn of it progresses, So you will lose
money if you.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Don't do anything.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
And I just love that analogy because I feel that
you feel it very viscerally. If you play poker in
a few tournaments and you don't play enough hands, you
lose your money slowly. You play too many hands, you
lose your money quickly. I mean, what better metaphor there
is there for like investing wisely? I can't think of one.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Did do you feel like you have a higher risk tolerance,
because obviously you know, as a fellow writer, I know
that writing books has a huge risk, both financially and personally,
because you're putting yourself out there. Do you think that
you were prepared more prepared to do that because you
understand the way that risk works.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
I also started to understand, especially with bluffing, that if
you in poker are never getting called and realizing that
you know, hey, you've got it high, that you're actually
not bluffing enough. And so I started to realize that
maybe in life I wasn't taking enough risks because I
wasn't getting told no enough. That people were too happy
with me all the time. If people are always happy
(18:15):
with you, it means that maybe you're not asking for enough,
You're not putting enough pressure on them, You're not asking
for enough money, you're not getting told no that is
too high. And so I definitely figure that out from poker,
and I think that that's a lesson that a lot
of women have to learn from poker.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
I'd love to actually talk about that a little bit. Obviously,
poker is an incredibly male dominated area, and chess is
also an incredibly male dominated area. Now, when you start
negotiating while female, right, it's like driving well drunk negotiating
(18:51):
well female. I'm using that. I'm using that language on
purpose because it's a very very different beast and I
found that. You know, I was horrible at negotiating pre poker,
and I am much better at negotiating now than I
ever was before. But you still get penalized for trying
(19:11):
to ask for more, for trying to actually get what
you're worth as a woman, because the exact same tactics
and this is true at the poker table too, that
work for men don't work for women. You know, if
I try to be as aggressive as you know some
of the best male players, that might not work for
me in the same way that it works for them.
These are all things that you have to consider because
(19:31):
decision making here isn't existing in a vacuum. You know,
when you're making decisions and you're female and you're perceived
as female, that's very different than when you're making decisions
as a man and being perceived as a man.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Absolutely, And I mean I think that's the reality, is
that it's logical a lot of times for women to
be less risky, and that's what we need to change.
We need to change the circumstances so that they can
take more risks wisely, because if you're going to be
penalized if you take risk, if there's no childcare, if
there's no you know, policies for women who leave the workplace,
(20:05):
if they don't have as much capital, if their wages
are lower, then actually it's really small art for them
to be risk of ours, right, And so I do
think it's not about telling women you should.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Take more risks. That's only part of it.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
The other part of it is how do we create
a circumstance where they can take more risk.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
I think that's a really really important point. And Nate
and I, on actually the first ever episode of Risky Business,
talked about the gender paid gap and how a lot
of that is because women have to make different decisions,
different choices, because women are penalized for having children, that
there are a lot of things that society just isn't
equipped for when it comes to negotiating well, female, deciding well, female,
(20:46):
working well female.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Absolutely, and I did listen to that episode, and I
also really like the part in your book the Biggest
Bluff where you talk about how you raised your speaker rate,
and I believe you got an immediate yes. So it
turned out that risk was one that worked out very
much in your favor. But I'm sure occasionally you asked
for so much they said they said no, and you
had to enjoy that experience because it was part of
you raising your rates for that Occasionally you get.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
To know, right, that's absolutely right. I think you have
to become more comfortable with hearing no and with saying
you know what, that's fine because this is what I'm
worth and if you don't want to pay me that
then then that's okay. And learning how to walk away
as I think a skill that I learned from the
poker table as.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Well, absolutely super important. And I think even so through
all that, I think I am still pretty risk averse
in a few things like I am going to show
off at the airport two and a half hours and
if I'm only two hours early, I get a little
bit stressed out.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
So you know.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
That is funny. I'm planning a trip to the airport
and it's an international trip, and I'm trying to figure out,
if you know, if I'm going to be pushing it
if I arrive with an hour to spare, if that's
going to be okay.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Yeah, And there's that saying that if you're always if
you're always on time for flights and you're not missing
it off flights.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
I'm not sure I really buy that.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
No, it took me missing one very important flight for
me to never never take that saying seriously. But I
probably have a slightly higher risk tolerance in flights than you,
so that'll be an individual difference. I do want to
talk about since we are now talking about kind of
being female in a world of men and the decisions
(22:31):
that that women make in light of recent remarks by
Andrew Huberman about women's pregnancies and some pretty fundamental misunderstanding
of how probabilities work. I you know, I'd love for
you to just kind of recount that a little bit.
(22:51):
But it also reminded me of an abed that you
wrote for The Wall Street Journal where you were correctly
calculating similar probabilities about childbirth.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
So I think it was a few weeks ago that
Uberman put out Its actually was on his podcast, so
it went viral on Twitter. But doctor Kuberman had podcast
where he was talking about the chances of a woman
getting pregnant after six cycles, and well, he said, well,
it should be twenty percent the first time, right, and
(23:22):
then twenty percent the second time, So then forty percent
that you'd be pregnant by month two, and then sixty
percent that you'd be pregnant by month three, eighty percent
by month four, and then one hundred percent chances that
she will be pregnant by month five. Right, And I think,
then I don't know what happens on month six. I
guess the incident. Okay, oh yes, because of course there's
(23:45):
like a chance that you'd have twins.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
So that's where the twenty percent consent.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
And well, he got like, predictably, you know, a crush
for this tweet, Like it must have had like thousands
and thousands of quote tweets making fun of his incorrect math,
and some people would would correctly state it, and to
his credit, he did. He retracted it and explained what
he got wrong, and he did it in a nice way.
(24:11):
And I was actually really happy to see it because
I was like, oh, this is a great learning opportunity
because this has gone viral that this is not the
way to calculate probability, because I have to tell you,
before I played poker and before I tried to get pregnant,
I don't think I knew exactly the correct way to
set this up either. I mean, I've probably learned it
in like middle school or high school math, but I
don't know if I remembered it until a little later,
until college, or even when I learned poker. So I
(24:33):
think there's a lot of people out there who also
didn't know, because it seems like, yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Why wouldn't you just add up the probabilities.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Right, But what you really need to do is multiply
the chance of me not pregnant a month one that's
eighty percent, and then the second month is also eighty percent,
and then you get sixty four and then minus that
from one and.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
You get thirty six percent.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Right, so that's my actual chance of pregnancy, and then
it gets it continues on, and yeah, it's a bit
frustrating because it means that your chances are actually lower
than it would seem because you aren't more likely to
get lucky just because you got unlucky the first time.
It's basically a version of the gambler's fallacy, right that
(25:17):
if you are healthy and there's no like medical reason
for you not to be able to get pregnant. If
you've got an unlucky the first four cycles and tough luck,
you know you're still only got a twenty percent chance. Sorry,
And we know that from poker, right, Like you could
lose your hand where you're a fifty to fifty chance
to win five times in a row and you're still
(25:39):
fifty to fifty on that six chance. And it's very
frustrating if you're getting unlucky, and it's super awesome if
you're getting lucky, right. And I had personal experience on
this in both sides. So with my son Fabian, who
I mentioned earlier, I got lucky on the second try.
So my husband and I we got pregnant almost immediately
(26:03):
and it was a healthy pregnancy. It was an awesome pregnancy.
Everything went perfectly. And so I'm like the person who
just starts playing poker and wins their first tournament, I'm like,
and I know this is very sensitive subject. So you know,
to anybody who finds this very sensitive, you know, to
feel free to pause and come back to the next section.
(26:24):
But I, as a poker player and somebody who struggles
with this. It actually helped me to think about in
these terms. It could seem craven to other people, but
I got super lucky, and then I had, of course
an inflated sense of confidence that when I tried a
couple years later, I would probably get lucky again, and
unfortunately that was not the case.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
And this is more common than people think.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
It's called secondary infertility, where you have an easy time
the first time, but then the second time you don't.
You don't get there to use a poker expression, And
when I finally did get pregnant, unfortunately, I had a
pretty pretty late miscarriage.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
So yeah, it was, it was. It was a real nightmare.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
And I think that the experience of poker did help
me because it taught me that I still had made
some really good logical decisions.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
And like my husband and.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
I trying to get pregnant, and in most universes we
would have had our two kids, but it just didn't
work out in the one that we live because of
the math going against us and us being in that
kind of like unlucky category.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Well, thank you so much for sharing that, and you know,
I'm so I'm really sorry that you had to go
through that experience. It's obviously, you know, a very emotional
experience to have, and I really appreciate you sharing that
because I do think that you know, it's important for
people to hear it, but it's also important to just
(27:49):
viscerally understand how probabilities work, and that's the world right.
Probabilities are not correctly quote unquote distributed. They're not as
pretty as you think they're going to be. And you know,
nothing ever adds up to one hundred percent somehow, you
always have those missing percents somewhere that go into another
universe where something else happened.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Absolutely, and I think it's really important for people to
be aware of that, because I don't think I was
fully aware of that. Like I certainly glanced at some
of these charts earlier in life, but I don't think
I was appreciated the odds of miscarriage, and being that
I'm somebody who likes to show up at the airport
three hours early. I do think that I probably would
have started a family a little bit earlier if I
(28:32):
had been as aware. So I like that people are
being educated at it now. I'm very much a feminist,
and so I think it's a completely awesome choice for
people to have one child, to have no children. But
what bothers me is the idea that there's somebody who
wants children's but isn't really acquainted with the math, and
then you know, has to struggle financially and emotionally through
(28:53):
this kind of you know, turmoil.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
And if doctor Humerman is getting it wrong them, I can.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Tell you there's a lot of women's in their twenties
thirties who are men too, who were married to women
and they want to have kids with like that don't
know this math and you know, get hit by it
and are a little bit disappointed and strung.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
And so, yeah, I was happy to see that. Fee.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Yeah. Well, so PSA for people who like me have
always said I hate math and math is not important.
Math is really important and plays out in unexpected ways
in life decisions, throughout your life. And I took statistics
classes in grad school because I needed to, you know,
have statistical analysis when I was working on my dissertation,
(29:33):
et cetera, et cetera. But it never hit home in
kind of an actual practical way until I sat down
at a poker table and actually saw these probabilities at play,
actually experienced what it felt like to be, you know,
a seventy percent favorite ten times in a row and
lose every single time, and say, wait, how is that happening?
(29:53):
Right now you understand why all of these psychological fallacies exist.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
And then also just being grateful for the times that
you're eighty percent hits. I think there's this feeling like, ah, yeah,
well I was supposed to win, so I won. But no,
I actually feel like gratitude when I, you know, have
like a pleasant trip to wherever I'm going to, I'm.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Like, wow, nothing went wrong, like ninety percent I got there.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Yeah, and it's it's good, right, It's a good feeling
to appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Yeah, it's funny that you say that. I'm so glad
you think about that as well, because whenever you know,
I'm all in and I have aces, I always and
this is totally irrational, but I give, like the poker
gods a little prayer, and so you know, I hope
it holds, right. I hope my ace is hold I
hope that my chance of winning actually ends up turning
into the outcome of winning. Because those two things are
(30:44):
not one and the same.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
Absolutely. Yeah, appreciate every day that nothing goes horribly wrong.
I mean, that's that's a good way that you can
kind of become happier from poker.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Absolutely, it has made me a happier person because it's
made me able to let go of negative outcomes in
real life much more easily, because you know, it's just
a mindset of I can't control it. Did I make
the right decision?
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Right?
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Was I in eighty percent face? And then if it
didn't go my way, I didn't hold but but I
did the right thing. And sometimes that can be hard
in practice, but it's it's definitely become much easier for
me over time.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Yeah, I've noticed that about you.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
You're very positive and like the things that you surround
yourself with and the things you talk about and the
people that.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
You surround yourself with.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
And I think that's like, you know that conscious choice
is so important because obviously you have to be aware
of negativity and bad outcomes, but you can control some
parts of it. And it seems like you've done like
a conscious job of that, Am I right?
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Ah?
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Yeah? Yeah, I mean it has been a conscious choice
and I have called kind of the people that I
associate with, so that I only really try to spend
time with people who bring me joy and who put
me in a positive space, and I try to focus
on the positive elements because you know, the way that
I think about it is life's too short to dwell
on bad beats, and bad beats are going to happen.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Yeah, you're your first rule from Eric's sidel right, absolutely
bad beat stories.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Yes, that is correct, And for people who haven't read
the Biggest blow off Eric's Sidell is a poker legend
and was my coach and mentor from the movie Rounders.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
But I feel like there's a life corollary for that
for people who don't play poker, Like I think a
really good one would be like a story about how
you mister flight, or you miss your train or your
travel was really unpleasant.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
I feel like that's a kind of like a bad
beat story in a way.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Sometimes they're interesting, and occasionally bad beat stories are interesting too,
but I guess it's like the exception, not the rule.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
I think you're absolutely right, and I think that something
that I actually learned from my mom that I've tried
to internalize and that you know, Eric, the no bad
beat stories for my whole life. She said, you know,
don't complain, right, don't try to blame other people when
things go wrong. Don't say, oh, well, you know, I
can't believe this person scheduled this year. I can't believe
(33:02):
this happened. I can't believe. Oh it's so unfair. She so,
don't do that, because you can't control it. You can't
control other people. So instead of blaming other people, just
take the blame on yourself and try to figure out
what can I do, what can I do differently next time,
and what can I do right now to mitigate the situation.
And that's just I think, a much more positive way
of thinking about risk and of thinking about how you
(33:23):
deal with it in the moment when those percentages, when
that variance does not go in your direction, especially when
you knew you were taking a gamble. Right, If I'm
as a flight and I cut it close, that is
on me. I should not blame the traffic. I should
not blame the cab driver for taking the wrong route.
You know, it is on me. It is not on
any of those things. We'll be right back after the break.
(33:57):
So now I want to actually just pause for a second.
You're talking about you know, who you surround yourself with
and life circumstances and all of these things, and your
life circumstances have changed a little bit over the last
few years because you know, you were incredibly brave and
took a huge, huge personal risk when you exposed someone
(34:21):
very well known in the chess community. And when you
did that, multiple other women came forward as well. But
you were reprimanded for it, you were blamed for it,
and you ended up leaving your role in a lot
of very prominent chess organizations which were a huge part
of how you made a living.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Yeah. Yeah, that has been a very big part of
my life. And I should say that the abuser also
was banned from these chess institutions, and so I am
very proud of kind of the awareness that it's caused
in the TESS community.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
And I can't speak in.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
More detail about it right now, but yeah, I really
appreciate you know, your support on that, Marie as well,
because I must say that having community in poker and
in chass has been really beneficial to me because I
found that the poker world has been so supportive, which
you know, I wasn't honestly completely expecting. But you know,
one of the things I think people do go to
(35:22):
poker a lot of the time because they want to
have their own, you know, their own careers, and sometimes
that ends up being a secondary career as well, where
they do poker and something else. And that always gives
you more power, doesn't it.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
It absolutely does. And we won't talk about this more,
but I do want to say that I'm very proud
of you, and you clearly have taken kind of this
risk taking from from the world of games to a
very personal place in your life. You made the calculation,
you knew what the costs could be, and you did
(35:56):
it anyway. And being able to act like that and
to do that in real life and not just to
go all in at the poker table, because this is
effectively what you were doing, right. You went all in
and it was not a bluff, and that is something
that takes a lot of guts and a lot of
courage because it did upend your life. So I just
want to I want to say that I think you
should be incredibly proud of your ability to, you know,
(36:20):
take risky decision making to an extreme that a lot
of people would not be able to do.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
I would love to hear kind of what you have
next in store. I know you have a new book
coming out, Thinking Sideways, which is also about you know,
risk and that kind of thinking, So i'd love to
hear a little bit more about it. But i'd also
just love to hear about how you're thinking about your
life kind of moving forward, how your equity calculation. To
bring it back to the beginning of our conversation, how
(36:48):
that's looking right now.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Well, you know, it's really an interesting time for me.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Is I kind of like diving more into writing and
to poker as well, And I feel like it's a
very intellectually rich time for me, and it's just like
so fun. I know that you're working on a book
on cheating, and one thing that came up a lot
in my recent book, Thinking Sideways, is also kind of
the cheating and chess scandals that have erupted, and that's
(37:15):
something I've really been thinking a lot, because it's just
a story that doesn't die.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
What's kind of the basic idea of the book, what
can we expect?
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Well, really, the basic idea of the book is ways
you can learn about life from chess, and I add
a lot of poker in there as well, And I
think that the title will be quite interesting to people
because when you ask a chess player how many moves
you think ahead, you're often expecting that to be the
secret of success, that they think ten moves ahead, whereas
a weaker player would only think eight moves ahead. And now,
(37:42):
whether there's some truth in that really good to chess
players can think many moves ahead, like Beth Harmon staring
at the ceiling. The truth is really more that great
chess players think sideways, and that just means that they
see an option that their opponent did not see, sometimes
on move one, sometimes unmoved two. And it's much more
likely that a chess player will see one of those
options that you didn't see and that's why they beat you,
(38:05):
than that they'll like out calculate you twenty moves ahead.
This is really important for life right now too, because
it's just like we were talking about with my own life
and probably so many other listeners' lives as well, that
you might not be able to plan for five years
ahead right now, and that can be scary, but honestly,
that's kind of the way of a chess player. It's
(38:26):
unlikely that you're going to predict what five moves ahead
looks like, but you can predict two or three better
than your opponent. That's going to give you a really
good chance to win.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
That's great, and I think that that's such a great
metaphor for how we should be thinking in ways that
are not necessarily the expected way of thinking. I love
that idea of thinking sideways.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
I'm getting very much more into writing and speaking and
also kind of diving back into poker and yes, which
is a really interesting moment in my life where I'm
kind of just like exploring kind of not totally new areas,
but definitely I'm not exactly sure what the next few
years are going to look like, and that's really exciting, scary,
but also exciting.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
It is exciting. One thing poker teaches you is to
be comfortable with uncertainty and excited about the prospect of
not knowing what the future holds exactly.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
That's so well put. I love that.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
Yes, I mean, and it's not something that we're used
to as much in like midlife, right Like, I think
people are often trained that when you're young, you have
no idea what's going to happen. Next, and that is normal,
but in mid life, this idea of uncertainty, I think
is very uncomfortable for people, especially if they have kids.
But you know what, it's something that I think a
lot of people are going to have to deal with
(39:40):
more as the world is changing so rapidly, that we
just have to get more comfortable with uncertainty, no matter
what your circumstances are.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Certainly me, but really for a lot of people, I.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Think those are wise words. And even though we don't
know what the future holds, I know that I'm very
excited to see what it holds next for you. And
I'm excited to read your new book, and I'm excited
to see where you end up. And I'm so grateful
that you've come here today to share your wisdom and
your experience about decision making with us. I know it's
(40:11):
been incredibly useful and inspirational to me, and I hope
that our listeners feel the same way. So thanks so much, John,
Thank you, Maria.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
This is awesome.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova. The show
is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. This
episode was produced by Isabelle Carter Our associate producer is
Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Pushkin. Hey everyone, I'm Maria Kanikova and welcome to a
special episode of Risky Business, our podcast with Nate Silver
about making better decisions. Except today it's just me and
(00:35):
a very special guest, Jennifer Shahade. Jennifer is someone who
I've known for many years, and she is a truly
extraordinary individual. She is a two times Women's US Chess champ,
the first woman to win the Junior Championship, a Woman's Grandmaster,
(00:56):
and the author of multiple books, Play Like a Girl,
Play Like a Champion, Chess Bitch, and Chess Queens, and
the upcoming Thinking Sideways. Jennifer, thank you so so much
for joining. So happy to have you here on Risky Business.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Oh I'm so excited about your podcast. Maria. It's wonderful
to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
So I want to start with your upbringing, because you
are someone who not only is in a risky business,
because you and I are actually members of Poker Stars
Team Pro together, so we also played poker and that's
how we originally met. But you are someone who's been
thinking through this lens of gaming for most of your life.
(01:40):
So I'd like to go back to your childhood and
I'd love for you to tell us about how you
got introduced to the world of games.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Oh, it's honestly before I can even remember. There's a
picture of me when I was two years old playing
against my brother in chess, and obviously I don't think
I knew the moves quite then, but it definitely really
predated any memories that I have. My parents are also
big lovers of card games, poker, bred Everything in our
(02:11):
life is about games, and they were also really big
into sports and sports betting, so I know that's another
aspect of this podcast, so I feel much at home here.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
I actually didn't know that about sports betting, so let's
return to that in a second. But first, your brother
is actually also someone who is well known in the
world of chess, as is your father. Right, so you
are someone who comes from what's known as a chess family.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, that's right, and it's really typical.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Honestly, it's a very very typical way for chess players
to get into the game is via their family, especially
women players. I feel like when you talk to a
female player, it's very very typical that her brother plays,
her father plays, her mother plays, and I think a
lot of that is it just gives them that like
kind of built in support network.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
And what was it about the game chess that first
attracted you? Was it the competitive angle or was it
the fact that you're thinking about kind of decision making
on a different level. Do you happen to remember because
I you know, when I was a little kid, my
parents tried to get me to play chess and that
did not stick.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
I think I heard about this the Scholar's Mate right
before exact listen.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
It happened to Beth Harmon and she recovered from it,
So you know, you're good.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yes for listeners of the podcast who don't know this story.
When I was in fifth grade, I learned how to
play chess and during my first ever chess competition, succumbed
to scholars mate, which is a mate in three moves.
And that was a move that was done by a
five year old when I was in fifth grade, and
I never recovered and have never played chess since then. Such,
(03:52):
you clearly had a very different experience.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah, well, I'm sure I got made it in the
scholars I do remember getting made in the scholars Mate,
and it's a bit of a tangent, but because it's
risky business. I am going to mention a story about
the scholar's mate. So a lot of kids like the
like the horrible five year old who checkmated you and four,
they try the scholar's mate because it works. But it's
not a good opening, right, It's objectively bad because if
(04:16):
your opponent knows to avoid it, then you know you're
gonna get a bad position. So it's very much an
equity calculation. So the Scholar's made at the age of
like five and six, kids are thinking about that. Actually,
and my son actually was sitting in on an online
class with Magnus Carlson, the highest rated chess player in history.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Your son, how old is he?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
He's seven now.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
And he is sitting in on a class with Magnus Carlson.
And what's your son's name, Fabian? And who is he
named after?
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Well, in a way, he was named after the world
number two player, Fabiano Carojuana.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Actually in a way, in a way, all right, So back.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
To your story. So Fabian is in this class with
Magnus Curlson.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
And one of the kids asks Magnus, like, what do
you think about the form of checkmate? And you know
everybody's expecting Magnus is just gonna say no, don't play
the form of checkmate. It's not a good opening, but
it's like, yeah, you know, it's not that bad to
try it. And I really I was like everybody was shocked.
And one of the coaches in the in the room
tried to like actually disagree.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
With Magnus on the air, and I'm like, wait a.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Second, and no, I actually thought about it later and
I really loved it because I think what he was
trying to say.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I mean, he didn't expand on it.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
But as many people might know, Magnus also really likes poker,
and he also really likes sportsbetting. Is that, you know,
why try to take away this instinct of children to
go for equity, Like I actually it's a good instinct,
you know, like, yeah, you're gonna look, you're not gonna
get that check made every time, but the ten or
twenty percent of the time that you do, you're gonna
win in foremos. So you know, it was the first
(05:50):
time I'd ever since heard a grandmaster say that, and
it stuck with me.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
So that's actually a really interesting story. And I love
how you mentioned the idea of equity and how we
think about equity. And now in poker, when you're talking
about equity, you're talking about something very specific, right, the
equity of your hand, the future value of your hand,
how many chips you can imagine getting in the future,
(06:17):
And it's kind of this calculation that you're constantly trying
to make. So when you're talking about equity in chess,
are you thinking about it in the same way or
is it slightly different?
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Well, that's a great question when it comes to talking
about somebody like Magnus Carlson, because I really think that
it used to be very different. When I was a
kid playing chess, we didn't really think about equity or probability.
It was more like we were looking for the best move,
and that is the way that most chess computers taught
us as well. But nowadays I think that chess players
(06:49):
are thinking more like poker players.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
They are thinking about equity even more.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
They're thinking not just about what the best move is,
but more about what move is likely to destabilize.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Your opponent and make them potentially.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Fall for the form of checkmate so that you can
win that ten percent of the times. Right now, so
it's become really a ruthless equity hunting game, just like poker.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
So you're really thinking about not just kind of the
present moment, but the future, and you're trying to make
this probabilistic calculation, not just what does this move mean
right now, but what does this move mean for my
future ability to win? Given that it might there's an
ex probability that it's going to make my opponent get
(07:33):
really nervous, there's a why probability that it's going to
make my opponent blunder. So is that kind of how
we're thinking about it now exactly?
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Of course, in chess, we're always trying to think about
what our opponent will play. But usually when I was taught,
I was always told always assume your opponent's going to
play the best move, because if they play a weaker move,
you'll win anyway. But if they play the best move,
you need to really prepare for that. Nowadays, I think there's.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
A little bit more nuanced.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Well, people will really think about the psychological aspect of
the game of chess more, and in that way, I
think the games of chess and poker are really starting
to converge a little bit. Chess players are playing a
little bit more like poker players, and well, we definitely
know that poker players are a little bit more chess
like these days in the way they study and approach
the game.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, that's that's a really interesting point because one of
the things that you said really jumped out at me.
You said, in chess, we no longer kind of assume
that that your opponent is going to make the best move,
and in poker, you actually are now assuming that your
opponent is going to play game theory optimal is going
(08:43):
to make the best move every time, and you're trying
to counter that because you know, in an interesting way,
I think poker is at a stage of its evolution
where chess has been for a while, where there are
now solvers and kind of ways that try to approximate
ideal behavior quote unquote, even though in poker it's it's
different than in chess because it is an imperfect information game,
(09:05):
but I do think it's this really interesting overlap in
terms of decisions and in terms of what we consider
to be optimal decision making.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
I think that's like the reason why honestly poker is
so tantalizing, why it stood the test of time, that
you kind of have to balance the two polls. To me,
like the word poker itself, Like playing poker means adjusting,
like being present, right, it's paying attention and like actually
thinking about what your opponent is doing. And the other
(09:34):
stuff is like the theory that you fall back on
if you don't really pick up on anything, if your
ability to try to pay attention and see what your
opponents doesn't give you much of a read, and then
you're just like, well, I guess this is what I
have to do. And that to me is that like
everlasting tension between like what you think and what you
feel and having to choose between them in every situation.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
So it seems like what you're saying, and this is
also me being biased as someone who plays poker and
doesn't play chess, but it seems like poker is a
better if we're trying. If we then go from the
world of games to the world of real life, it
(10:18):
seems like poker might be a better way of thinking
about risk and decision making as we interact with people
and make decisions away from the game table.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Yeah, I think poker does mirror life more than chess does,
partly because it's not fair. You know, there's some people
who get lucky. There's people who get lucky three or
four times in a row. There are people who start
out with the ability to rebuy, you know, over and
over again and keep buying into the game even if
they play badly or bust. So there's just a lot
(10:52):
of more similarities with life. And then the fact that
the currency of poker is money is chips, which stand
for money, and so much about life is what power
you have based on how much money you have and
how much capital you have. So for sure, I think
there are more like day to day decisions that you
can make from poker. That said, as a lifel chess player,
(11:16):
I have to give some shout outs to chests too,
because one of the beautiful things about chess is that
it does.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Bring you into this like beautiful flow state.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
And that's really why I love chess for children too,
because you can see them kind of achieve that state
even at like six, seven, eight years old. And maybe
they're not going to be professional chess players, I mean,
very few of them will, but my hope is always
that they'll remember that flow state and be able to
kind of, you know, jump into that in other parts
of their lives and just like forget about everything else
(11:46):
that is going on and just, you know, enjoy the moment.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
So I think that that's an interesting thing about about
chess versus poker that I hadn't really thought about, because
for me, you know, poker is a way that I've
actually been able to achieve flow states quite often because
when you're really in the zone. Since it's the only
game I play, it's the only time that kind of
I've found myself in that sort of situation. When did
(12:12):
you make the switch from chess to poker. Obviously you've
never switched entirely, you still play chess, but in terms
of kind of your interest, when did you start migrating
in that direction?
Speaker 2 (12:24):
You know, it was kind of gradual.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
My brother got into poker, and I was dabbling in
it via him and some of my other chess friends,
because at the time of the poker boom, a lot
of chess players, backgammon players, anyone who really had an
interest in any kind of game were flocking to poker
because they thought, honestly, it was easy money. And it's
funny because I was a little slow to the game
(12:47):
compared to them, And I remember my mother, who was
the stone opposite of all my other poker friends' moms,
because she she called me once and she.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Was like, Jen, why aren't you playing more poker like
your friends? What's going on?
Speaker 1 (13:00):
I love that?
Speaker 3 (13:03):
And so yeah, but I finally did take her advice
and I got a bit more into it.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
But you know, I always have.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
I think one of the issues that it's a little
underestimated and poker is that it's really important to have,
especially if you want to play live poker, and in
the United States right now, unfortunately, there's not a lot
of regulated places that you can play online. You really
need a decent chunk of money. It's not that easy
to get in there. I mean, it's it's probably better
than most games because you can kind of hang out
(13:31):
and you know, spend go to like the UH one
two or one three tables, like the lower poker table,
the lowest buy in that you can find in Vegas
or Atlantic City, and you can maybe have a few
hours of entertainment for a couple hundred bucks.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
But overall, like it's an expensive hobby.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
I would say, so that that's probably why it took
me a little while to get more into it.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
So your son plays chess, right now, but not poker, correct.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Right, that's right. But he loves he loves watching poker.
You're you're one of his favorite players. He likes, he
likes you, Maria Hoe and chuannlu and well, of course me.
So it's all about the top of women buyers. I love.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
I love that it's so female centric because that's actually
that's so important, and you know, that's it's a really
wonderful thing to see that women can also excel in
a game that is so incredibly male dominated. When he
watches poker, is he interested in the strategic elements? Is
he thinking of it kind of in the same terms
(14:33):
that you've taught him to think about chess.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Yeah, but I find that kids it's harder for them
to understand poker than chess, even though you know, technically
it probably is easier to teach an adult the roles
of poker than the roles of chess, partly because kids
don't usually know that much about about money, and I
think also the probabilistic thinking is pretty tricky for them
as well. So, yeah, he's definitely looking to see what
(14:57):
people have and whether they're going to make their hand.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
But I wouldn't say it comes supernaturally to kids.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
And I think that that's a really crucial point because
one of the things that I love about pokers that
it does each probabilistic thinking, which is something that does
not come naturally to the human brain at all. Right,
we are so bad at calculating risk, at calculating probabilities,
at thinking in that way. It's just not something that
comes naturally at all to the human mind. We'll be
(15:31):
back in a minute now, switching away from kind of
you as gamer, and you now kind of in your
professional life, so you are a writer as well. You're
(15:55):
someone who's been involved professionally in chess organizations, in teaching
and mentoring women in all of these things. How has
your thinking about risk, about risk taking migrated over from
the fact that you you up kind of trained in
this game's way of thinking, and how has it not?
Because I think that you obviously hear both perspectives, right.
(16:17):
You hear the people who say, oh, you know, chess, poker,
et cetera. They really helped me and they helped me
make decisions. And then there are some people and maybe
they wouldn't say it, but I know some poker players
who are really good at poker and then just so
so dumb away from the poker table. So I I'd
love to hear how you think about it and kind
of how your non poker life, non chess life has evolved.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Oh, poker, absolutely, I'll start with poker because it's like
more forefront of my mind. Poker absolutely helped me because
I never took a finance class or an econ class,
and I really feel like poker is just like a
miniature lesson in finance, and just even the idea that
if you just put your money in a checking account
and don't do anything to it, you're technically losing money
(17:02):
because of inflation. I mean, poker teaches you that very quickly,
because you got annie and so the annies go up
as the turn of it progresses, So you will lose
money if you.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Don't do anything.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
And I just love that analogy because I feel that
you feel it very viscerally. If you play poker in
a few tournaments and you don't play enough hands, you
lose your money slowly. You play too many hands, you
lose your money quickly. I mean, what better metaphor there
is there for like investing wisely? I can't think of one.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Did do you feel like you have a higher risk tolerance,
because obviously you know, as a fellow writer, I know
that writing books has a huge risk, both financially and personally,
because you're putting yourself out there. Do you think that
you were prepared more prepared to do that because you
understand the way that risk works.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
I also started to understand, especially with bluffing, that if
you in poker are never getting called and realizing that
you know, hey, you've got it high, that you're actually
not bluffing enough. And so I started to realize that
maybe in life I wasn't taking enough risks because I
wasn't getting told no enough. That people were too happy
with me all the time. If people are always happy
(18:15):
with you, it means that maybe you're not asking for enough,
You're not putting enough pressure on them, You're not asking
for enough money, you're not getting told no that is
too high. And so I definitely figure that out from poker,
and I think that that's a lesson that a lot
of women have to learn from poker.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
I'd love to actually talk about that a little bit. Obviously,
poker is an incredibly male dominated area, and chess is
also an incredibly male dominated area. Now, when you start
negotiating while female, right, it's like driving well drunk negotiating
(18:51):
well female. I'm using that. I'm using that language on
purpose because it's a very very different beast and I
found that. You know, I was horrible at negotiating pre poker,
and I am much better at negotiating now than I
ever was before. But you still get penalized for trying
(19:11):
to ask for more, for trying to actually get what
you're worth as a woman, because the exact same tactics
and this is true at the poker table too, that
work for men don't work for women. You know, if
I try to be as aggressive as you know some
of the best male players, that might not work for
me in the same way that it works for them.
These are all things that you have to consider because
(19:31):
decision making here isn't existing in a vacuum. You know,
when you're making decisions and you're female and you're perceived
as female, that's very different than when you're making decisions
as a man and being perceived as a man.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Absolutely, And I mean I think that's the reality, is
that it's logical a lot of times for women to
be less risky, and that's what we need to change.
We need to change the circumstances so that they can
take more risks wisely, because if you're going to be
penalized if you take risk, if there's no childcare, if
there's no you know, policies for women who leave the workplace,
(20:05):
if they don't have as much capital, if their wages
are lower, then actually it's really small art for them
to be risk of ours, right, And so I do
think it's not about telling women you should.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Take more risks. That's only part of it.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
The other part of it is how do we create
a circumstance where they can take more risk.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
I think that's a really really important point. And Nate
and I, on actually the first ever episode of Risky Business,
talked about the gender paid gap and how a lot
of that is because women have to make different decisions,
different choices, because women are penalized for having children, that
there are a lot of things that society just isn't
equipped for when it comes to negotiating well, female, deciding well, female,
(20:46):
working well female.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Absolutely, and I did listen to that episode, and I
also really like the part in your book the Biggest
Bluff where you talk about how you raised your speaker rate,
and I believe you got an immediate yes. So it
turned out that risk was one that worked out very
much in your favor. But I'm sure occasionally you asked
for so much they said they said no, and you
had to enjoy that experience because it was part of
you raising your rates for that Occasionally you get.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
To know, right, that's absolutely right. I think you have
to become more comfortable with hearing no and with saying
you know what, that's fine because this is what I'm
worth and if you don't want to pay me that
then then that's okay. And learning how to walk away
as I think a skill that I learned from the
poker table as.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Well, absolutely super important. And I think even so through
all that, I think I am still pretty risk averse
in a few things like I am going to show
off at the airport two and a half hours and
if I'm only two hours early, I get a little
bit stressed out.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
So you know.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
That is funny. I'm planning a trip to the airport
and it's an international trip, and I'm trying to figure out,
if you know, if I'm going to be pushing it
if I arrive with an hour to spare, if that's
going to be okay.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Yeah, And there's that saying that if you're always if
you're always on time for flights and you're not missing
it off flights.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
I'm not sure I really buy that.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
No, it took me missing one very important flight for
me to never never take that saying seriously. But I
probably have a slightly higher risk tolerance in flights than you,
so that'll be an individual difference. I do want to
talk about since we are now talking about kind of
being female in a world of men and the decisions
(22:31):
that that women make in light of recent remarks by
Andrew Huberman about women's pregnancies and some pretty fundamental misunderstanding
of how probabilities work. I you know, I'd love for
you to just kind of recount that a little bit.
(22:51):
But it also reminded me of an abed that you
wrote for The Wall Street Journal where you were correctly
calculating similar probabilities about childbirth.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
So I think it was a few weeks ago that
Uberman put out Its actually was on his podcast, so
it went viral on Twitter. But doctor Kuberman had podcast
where he was talking about the chances of a woman
getting pregnant after six cycles, and well, he said, well,
it should be twenty percent the first time, right, and
(23:22):
then twenty percent the second time, So then forty percent
that you'd be pregnant by month two, and then sixty
percent that you'd be pregnant by month three, eighty percent
by month four, and then one hundred percent chances that
she will be pregnant by month five. Right, And I think,
then I don't know what happens on month six. I
guess the incident. Okay, oh yes, because of course there's
(23:45):
like a chance that you'd have twins.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
So that's where the twenty percent consent.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
And well, he got like, predictably, you know, a crush
for this tweet, Like it must have had like thousands
and thousands of quote tweets making fun of his incorrect math,
and some people would would correctly state it, and to
his credit, he did. He retracted it and explained what
he got wrong, and he did it in a nice way.
(24:11):
And I was actually really happy to see it because
I was like, oh, this is a great learning opportunity
because this has gone viral that this is not the
way to calculate probability, because I have to tell you,
before I played poker and before I tried to get pregnant,
I don't think I knew exactly the correct way to
set this up either. I mean, I've probably learned it
in like middle school or high school math, but I
don't know if I remembered it until a little later,
until college, or even when I learned poker. So I
(24:33):
think there's a lot of people out there who also
didn't know, because it seems like, yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Why wouldn't you just add up the probabilities.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Right, But what you really need to do is multiply
the chance of me not pregnant a month one that's
eighty percent, and then the second month is also eighty percent,
and then you get sixty four and then minus that
from one and.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
You get thirty six percent.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Right, so that's my actual chance of pregnancy, and then
it gets it continues on, and yeah, it's a bit
frustrating because it means that your chances are actually lower
than it would seem because you aren't more likely to
get lucky just because you got unlucky the first time.
It's basically a version of the gambler's fallacy, right that
(25:17):
if you are healthy and there's no like medical reason
for you not to be able to get pregnant. If
you've got an unlucky the first four cycles and tough luck,
you know you're still only got a twenty percent chance. Sorry,
And we know that from poker, right, Like you could
lose your hand where you're a fifty to fifty chance
to win five times in a row and you're still
(25:39):
fifty to fifty on that six chance. And it's very
frustrating if you're getting unlucky, and it's super awesome if
you're getting lucky, right. And I had personal experience on
this in both sides. So with my son Fabian, who
I mentioned earlier, I got lucky on the second try.
So my husband and I we got pregnant almost immediately
(26:03):
and it was a healthy pregnancy. It was an awesome pregnancy.
Everything went perfectly. And so I'm like the person who
just starts playing poker and wins their first tournament, I'm like,
and I know this is very sensitive subject. So you know,
to anybody who finds this very sensitive, you know, to
feel free to pause and come back to the next section.
(26:24):
But I, as a poker player and somebody who struggles
with this. It actually helped me to think about in
these terms. It could seem craven to other people, but
I got super lucky, and then I had, of course
an inflated sense of confidence that when I tried a
couple years later, I would probably get lucky again, and
unfortunately that was not the case.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
And this is more common than people think.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
It's called secondary infertility, where you have an easy time
the first time, but then the second time you don't.
You don't get there to use a poker expression, And
when I finally did get pregnant, unfortunately, I had a
pretty pretty late miscarriage.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
So yeah, it was, it was. It was a real nightmare.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
And I think that the experience of poker did help
me because it taught me that I still had made
some really good logical decisions.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
And like my husband and.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
I trying to get pregnant, and in most universes we
would have had our two kids, but it just didn't
work out in the one that we live because of
the math going against us and us being in that
kind of like unlucky category.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Well, thank you so much for sharing that, and you know,
I'm so I'm really sorry that you had to go
through that experience. It's obviously, you know, a very emotional
experience to have, and I really appreciate you sharing that
because I do think that you know, it's important for
people to hear it, but it's also important to just
(27:49):
viscerally understand how probabilities work, and that's the world right.
Probabilities are not correctly quote unquote distributed. They're not as
pretty as you think they're going to be. And you know,
nothing ever adds up to one hundred percent somehow, you
always have those missing percents somewhere that go into another
universe where something else happened.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Absolutely, and I think it's really important for people to
be aware of that, because I don't think I was
fully aware of that. Like I certainly glanced at some
of these charts earlier in life, but I don't think
I was appreciated the odds of miscarriage, and being that
I'm somebody who likes to show up at the airport
three hours early. I do think that I probably would
have started a family a little bit earlier if I
(28:32):
had been as aware. So I like that people are
being educated at it now. I'm very much a feminist,
and so I think it's a completely awesome choice for
people to have one child, to have no children. But
what bothers me is the idea that there's somebody who
wants children's but isn't really acquainted with the math, and
then you know, has to struggle financially and emotionally through
(28:53):
this kind of you know, turmoil.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
And if doctor Humerman is getting it wrong them, I can.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Tell you there's a lot of women's in their twenties
thirties who are men too, who were married to women
and they want to have kids with like that don't
know this math and you know, get hit by it
and are a little bit disappointed and strung.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
And so, yeah, I was happy to see that. Fee.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Yeah. Well, so PSA for people who like me have
always said I hate math and math is not important.
Math is really important and plays out in unexpected ways
in life decisions, throughout your life. And I took statistics
classes in grad school because I needed to, you know,
have statistical analysis when I was working on my dissertation,
(29:33):
et cetera, et cetera. But it never hit home in
kind of an actual practical way until I sat down
at a poker table and actually saw these probabilities at play,
actually experienced what it felt like to be, you know,
a seventy percent favorite ten times in a row and
lose every single time, and say, wait, how is that happening?
(29:53):
Right now you understand why all of these psychological fallacies exist.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
And then also just being grateful for the times that
you're eighty percent hits. I think there's this feeling like, ah, yeah,
well I was supposed to win, so I won. But no,
I actually feel like gratitude when I, you know, have
like a pleasant trip to wherever I'm going to, I'm.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Like, wow, nothing went wrong, like ninety percent I got there.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Yeah, and it's it's good, right, It's a good feeling
to appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Yeah, it's funny that you say that. I'm so glad
you think about that as well, because whenever you know,
I'm all in and I have aces, I always and
this is totally irrational, but I give, like the poker
gods a little prayer, and so you know, I hope
it holds, right. I hope my ace is hold I
hope that my chance of winning actually ends up turning
into the outcome of winning. Because those two things are
(30:44):
not one and the same.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
Absolutely. Yeah, appreciate every day that nothing goes horribly wrong.
I mean, that's that's a good way that you can
kind of become happier from poker.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Absolutely, it has made me a happier person because it's
made me able to let go of negative outcomes in
real life much more easily, because you know, it's just
a mindset of I can't control it. Did I make
the right decision?
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Right?
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Was I in eighty percent face? And then if it
didn't go my way, I didn't hold but but I
did the right thing. And sometimes that can be hard
in practice, but it's it's definitely become much easier for
me over time.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Yeah, I've noticed that about you.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
You're very positive and like the things that you surround
yourself with and the things you talk about and the
people that.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
You surround yourself with.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
And I think that's like, you know that conscious choice
is so important because obviously you have to be aware
of negativity and bad outcomes, but you can control some
parts of it. And it seems like you've done like
a conscious job of that, Am I right?
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Ah?
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Yeah? Yeah, I mean it has been a conscious choice
and I have called kind of the people that I
associate with, so that I only really try to spend
time with people who bring me joy and who put
me in a positive space, and I try to focus
on the positive elements because you know, the way that
I think about it is life's too short to dwell
on bad beats, and bad beats are going to happen.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Yeah, you're your first rule from Eric's sidel right, absolutely
bad beat stories.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Yes, that is correct, And for people who haven't read
the Biggest blow off Eric's Sidell is a poker legend
and was my coach and mentor from the movie Rounders.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
But I feel like there's a life corollary for that
for people who don't play poker, Like I think a
really good one would be like a story about how
you mister flight, or you miss your train or your
travel was really unpleasant.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
I feel like that's a kind of like a bad
beat story in a way.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Sometimes they're interesting, and occasionally bad beat stories are interesting too,
but I guess it's like the exception, not the rule.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
I think you're absolutely right, and I think that something
that I actually learned from my mom that I've tried
to internalize and that you know, Eric, the no bad
beat stories for my whole life. She said, you know,
don't complain, right, don't try to blame other people when
things go wrong. Don't say, oh, well, you know, I
can't believe this person scheduled this year. I can't believe
(33:02):
this happened. I can't believe. Oh it's so unfair. She so,
don't do that, because you can't control it. You can't
control other people. So instead of blaming other people, just
take the blame on yourself and try to figure out
what can I do, what can I do differently next time,
and what can I do right now to mitigate the situation.
And that's just I think, a much more positive way
of thinking about risk and of thinking about how you
(33:23):
deal with it in the moment when those percentages, when
that variance does not go in your direction, especially when
you knew you were taking a gamble. Right, If I'm
as a flight and I cut it close, that is
on me. I should not blame the traffic. I should
not blame the cab driver for taking the wrong route.
You know, it is on me. It is not on
any of those things. We'll be right back after the break.
(33:57):
So now I want to actually just pause for a second.
You're talking about you know, who you surround yourself with
and life circumstances and all of these things, and your
life circumstances have changed a little bit over the last
few years because you know, you were incredibly brave and
took a huge, huge personal risk when you exposed someone
(34:21):
very well known in the chess community. And when you
did that, multiple other women came forward as well. But
you were reprimanded for it, you were blamed for it,
and you ended up leaving your role in a lot
of very prominent chess organizations which were a huge part
of how you made a living.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Yeah. Yeah, that has been a very big part of
my life. And I should say that the abuser also
was banned from these chess institutions, and so I am
very proud of kind of the awareness that it's caused
in the TESS community.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
And I can't speak in.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
More detail about it right now, but yeah, I really
appreciate you know, your support on that, Marie as well,
because I must say that having community in poker and
in chass has been really beneficial to me because I
found that the poker world has been so supportive, which
you know, I wasn't honestly completely expecting. But you know,
one of the things I think people do go to
(35:22):
poker a lot of the time because they want to
have their own, you know, their own careers, and sometimes
that ends up being a secondary career as well, where
they do poker and something else. And that always gives
you more power, doesn't it.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
It absolutely does. And we won't talk about this more,
but I do want to say that I'm very proud
of you, and you clearly have taken kind of this
risk taking from from the world of games to a
very personal place in your life. You made the calculation,
you knew what the costs could be, and you did
(35:56):
it anyway. And being able to act like that and
to do that in real life and not just to
go all in at the poker table, because this is
effectively what you were doing, right. You went all in
and it was not a bluff, and that is something
that takes a lot of guts and a lot of
courage because it did upend your life. So I just
want to I want to say that I think you
should be incredibly proud of your ability to, you know,
(36:20):
take risky decision making to an extreme that a lot
of people would not be able to do.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
I would love to hear kind of what you have
next in store. I know you have a new book
coming out, Thinking Sideways, which is also about you know,
risk and that kind of thinking, So i'd love to
hear a little bit more about it. But i'd also
just love to hear about how you're thinking about your
life kind of moving forward, how your equity calculation. To
bring it back to the beginning of our conversation, how
(36:48):
that's looking right now.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Well, you know, it's really an interesting time for me.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Is I kind of like diving more into writing and
to poker as well, And I feel like it's a
very intellectually rich time for me, and it's just like
so fun. I know that you're working on a book
on cheating, and one thing that came up a lot
in my recent book, Thinking Sideways, is also kind of
the cheating and chess scandals that have erupted, and that's
(37:15):
something I've really been thinking a lot, because it's just
a story that doesn't die.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
What's kind of the basic idea of the book, what
can we expect?
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Well, really, the basic idea of the book is ways
you can learn about life from chess, and I add
a lot of poker in there as well, And I
think that the title will be quite interesting to people
because when you ask a chess player how many moves
you think ahead, you're often expecting that to be the
secret of success, that they think ten moves ahead, whereas
a weaker player would only think eight moves ahead. And now,
(37:42):
whether there's some truth in that really good to chess
players can think many moves ahead, like Beth Harmon staring
at the ceiling. The truth is really more that great
chess players think sideways, and that just means that they
see an option that their opponent did not see, sometimes
on move one, sometimes unmoved two. And it's much more
likely that a chess player will see one of those
options that you didn't see and that's why they beat you,
(38:05):
than that they'll like out calculate you twenty moves ahead.
This is really important for life right now too, because
it's just like we were talking about with my own life
and probably so many other listeners' lives as well, that
you might not be able to plan for five years
ahead right now, and that can be scary, but honestly,
that's kind of the way of a chess player. It's
(38:26):
unlikely that you're going to predict what five moves ahead
looks like, but you can predict two or three better
than your opponent. That's going to give you a really
good chance to win.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
That's great, and I think that that's such a great
metaphor for how we should be thinking in ways that
are not necessarily the expected way of thinking. I love
that idea of thinking sideways.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
I'm getting very much more into writing and speaking and
also kind of diving back into poker and yes, which
is a really interesting moment in my life where I'm
kind of just like exploring kind of not totally new areas,
but definitely I'm not exactly sure what the next few
years are going to look like, and that's really exciting, scary,
but also exciting.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
It is exciting. One thing poker teaches you is to
be comfortable with uncertainty and excited about the prospect of
not knowing what the future holds exactly.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
That's so well put. I love that.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
Yes, I mean, and it's not something that we're used
to as much in like midlife, right Like, I think
people are often trained that when you're young, you have
no idea what's going to happen. Next, and that is normal,
but in mid life, this idea of uncertainty, I think
is very uncomfortable for people, especially if they have kids.
But you know what, it's something that I think a
lot of people are going to have to deal with
(39:40):
more as the world is changing so rapidly, that we
just have to get more comfortable with uncertainty, no matter
what your circumstances are.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Certainly me, but really for a lot of people, I.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Think those are wise words. And even though we don't
know what the future holds, I know that I'm very
excited to see what it holds next for you. And
I'm excited to read your new book, and I'm excited
to see where you end up. And I'm so grateful
that you've come here today to share your wisdom and
your experience about decision making with us. I know it's
(40:11):
been incredibly useful and inspirational to me, and I hope
that our listeners feel the same way. So thanks so much, John,
Thank you, Maria.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
This is awesome.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova. The show
is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. This
episode was produced by Isabelle Carter Our associate producer is
Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
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