August 1, 2024 • 45 mins
Nate’s election model is back on, and it’s in Kamala Mode. Nate and Maria discuss what the model shows us about Kamala Harris’ chances, and the strange election misinformation that has been going around. Then, they are joined by World Series of Poker Main Event winner Jonathan Tamayo to discuss his win – and the controversy that surrounds it.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kanikova.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
And I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
So today on the show and it we're going to
be talking about a model that you've been working on
for a while and you have flipped the switch to
the new model. We are going to be entering Kamala
mode from Biden mode.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
We will also have probably the last segment on the
World Series of Poker that we're going to do for
this year.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
At least.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
We have main event champion Jonathan Tomayo I with us,
who had an impressive run through actually very tough final table,
but also generating controversy because his supporters we're seen using
a laptop with some poker looking software while he was
in the middle of the final.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
So we'll talk to him about all of that.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Now, tell me what is going on with your model.
So obviously, you know last week you and Matt Glassman
talked about the shift to Kamala as the nominee, and
now you have. There has been more polling, there have
been kind of more inputs and last week you weren't
(01:37):
there yet. But we're recording this on Tuesday, and today
you actually released the updated model for what the Kamala
nomination means. So let's let's talk me through it. Let's
get into it.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Since this is a show for people who like numbers,
at least mostly, I'm going to lead with the top
line number, which is that Harris has a thirty eight
percent chance of winning the electoral college in our forecast,
Trump is at sixty one percent, and there's one percent
chance of a dead block where no cann It gets
two hundred and seventy electoral votes. Trump probably wins those scenarios,
by the way, but we can cover that later. So
(02:12):
thirty eight percent is quite a bit better than Joe Biden,
who was at I think twenty seven or twenty six
and a half when we turned the model off, and
was declining. And moreover, as we've talked about, I think
that probably overestimated his chances by roughly half. Right, his
fundraising had dried up, he was not really capable of
doing basic campaigning things. Voter enthusiasm was in the tank.
(02:36):
Half his party was denouncing him, and so you know,
so whether it's from twenty six percent to thirty eight
percent or two percent to thirty eight percent, I mean,
I think Biden's real chances for maybe ten percent or something,
you know, all of a sudden, in poker terms, Democrats
caught some really good outs. They have like a nut
flush straw or something against Kings where they can we're still.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
But now we're live, very now, we're live, very very live.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
And I should say, you know, I think my assistant
Elan and I waited about the minimum time that was
responsible to win, for enough polling to come in. The
forecast could be a little bit more ballatle up and
down than usual because we don't have a lot of
swing state polling yet, for example. But in national polls,
(03:21):
Harris has drawn the race roughly into a tie with Trump,
which is quite a bit better than Biden, who was
down four points in national polls at the time he exited. However,
as listeners probably know, the popular vote is not what
determines elections in the American presidential race. It's the electoral college,
(03:42):
and there that's why Harris is an underdog.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
The most important states.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Meaning Pennsylvania, Michigan, in Wisconsin. If she were to win
those and hold the other more traditionally blue states, and
she would get two hundred and seventy electoral votes, which
is exactly exactly one more than she needs. Those states
are close to being toss ups, very slightly leaning Trump,
but you know, certainly in the zone of what a
(04:07):
poker player would call it a flip or a race
or et cetera. She still has to win all three
of those. The math this gets a little complicated because
they're correlated. It's not like three independent coin flips. If
you win Wisconsin, then Michigan's a fairly similar state, and
Pennsylvania to some extent, but but enough to make her
an underdog. She also has maybe a route that had
(04:30):
disappeared from Joe Biden, which is a southern route. So
Kamala Harris already has restored some of Biden's depressed numbers
among two important groups, black voters and then younger voters.
And Georgia and North Carolina have a lot of black voters.
Of course, they also have a lot of young professionals.
They have a lot of colleges and universities. So there's
(04:52):
states where that combination is important, and she's drawing live
in Georgia, for example, which I think the polling had
consistently been very.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Bad for Biden.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
So she now actually has these multiple paths that Biden
kind of had, you know, been foreclosed from Biden.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Now she's not a favorite in neither path.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
But look, I think usually if I come out with
a forecast end of July and so the Democrat has
a thirty eight percent chance of winning, I think people
would be like, you suck, Nate Silver, why are.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
You such a maga?
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Whatever Republican you said it, I did it. Yeah, compared
to where Democrats were before, though, I think they're thrilled
if they could take a coin flip, and it's not
a coin flip that she's an underdog, but not that
much of an underdog, you know, thirty eight sixty two
is not so bad.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
And we've only had a few weeks. So I think
that it's really important to remember that, you know, this
is really really new, and the fact that she's been
able to kind of have that much gain that much
in such a short period of time, and she hasn't
even announced her VP PIC, which we can talk about,
but you know, I think that that says something. And
(06:03):
her fundraising has been pretty incredible, very quickly. She's been
able to raise millions from a lot of different groups.
I think that the party has rallied around her more
than people expected. She's gotten all the big endorsements, the
Obamas have endorsed her, and so I'm very curious to
see whether that momentum will sustain itself or whether it
(06:25):
actually it is just because right now people are excited,
and I'm also very curious to see who the VP
pick will be and how that will affect the election. Nate,
I know you've written before about the fact that the
VP doesn't actually matter that much, whereas much as people
would want them to matter in swing states. Do you
kind of believe that in this particular case that's going
(06:47):
to hold. How important do you think that the vpick
VP pick is going to be for the outcome of
this election.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I think it might be a little bit more important
than usual.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
I think due to the fact that Biden's VP became
the presential candidate naturally in the middle of July. I
think there's likely to be more focus on it, and
Trump of course changes VP. You know, after by some
accounts Mike Pence was physically threatened by some of the
protesters on January sixth. That was probably inevitable, but no, look,
(07:20):
you know, so one question is how much does a
VP matter in their home state, And the answer is
not very much. It might be worth half a point,
although half a point isn't nothing if it's an important
state like Pennsylvania or Michigan. Like basically, if if Kamala
Harris were to pick Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania
in our model, that would increase her chances of winning
(07:40):
electoral college by about one percent. So Poker's letters, we
like our back door outs. That's kind of what you get.
That's just based on the home state effect. There are also
questions about like how strong or weak is this candidate.
I think some people on the left think that Josh
Shapiro is too centrist, which to me is another good
reason to pick him. You know, like you said, Maria,
(08:02):
Kamala Harris came through this first phase, which was consolidating
her party support very effectively. And then if you read
not a subjective opinion, if you read the news accounts
Politico or the New York Times or whatever. I have
done stories about like you know, the first not just
twenty four hours, like the first twenty four minutes after
Biden announces he's stepping aside, She's already working the phones,
(08:26):
already making hundreds of calls to people, very ambitious and look,
sometimes when women are ambitious and aggressive, then the society
frownds on that. I like ambitious, aggressive women, And I
think Kamala Harris showed that she has a real hunger
for the nomination and for the presidency by not dawdling
and by understanding that like that was a moment to strike.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
No one else had stepped.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Up, and you had an opportunity, and it literally had
to be within the first hour or something, right to
shut off all their avenues from your rivals, maybe supposed rivals.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
She did it.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Maybe supos tribles would have been better, but probably better
for Democrats to have unification around a nominee than a
drag out fight. We probably should talk about the reason
why she isn't underdog though, right.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Yes, absolutely so. When you're when you're looking at your model,
you said that a lot of things really didn't change,
right when you when you activate kamalo mode. It's not
like you are suddenly changing all of these different inputs.
But she's obviously a very different candidate from Biden. Some
things are much better, right, There's no longer the age
(09:38):
factor that that is no longer an issue at all,
but some things might not be as positive for her.
The last time we had a female candidate was Hillary Clinton,
who also ran against Donald Trump, and that did not
go very well.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
No, and and like I suppose Harris is projected to
do in our forecast, Clinton won the popular vote and
lost the electoral college. So ironically, we spent a lot
of time more me than you, Maria, but spent a
lot of time kind of literally yelling at and getting
yelled at by Democrats about how Biden's age was a
real concern and was dragging down his numbers and maybe
(10:17):
even although maybe not the whole party because like Democratic candidates,
except that we're doing fine. But look, if you think
that Biden's problems were ninety percent about age, then that's
the bowl case for Harris. However, what about inflation which
has abated but is still a concern that voters have
over the past four years. The border, Kamala Harris had
(10:38):
some responsibility for the border. The fact checkers hate when
you call her the borders are borders are, Like I'm
calling her the borders are I mean, that's was my
understanding of things right, and like one of the maybe
hard more difficult assignments that she got. People are just
grumpy in general about incumbent parties. Although incumbent, she's a
non incumbent member of the incumbent party, the incumbent vice president.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I guess you could say, so.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
You know, and then there are issues of race and gender,
you know, and.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Which we can't ignore. By the way, those are those
are real issues for a lot of people. We can't
wish them away because they shouldn't be issues.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Look what I should say, I think is like, of
course the man is talking about this. I don't think
there's settled science on tread carefully, What if any penalty
there is to candidates for being a woman, for being
for being black, or for being Asian American for that matter.
(11:38):
I don't think there's Like, even if.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
There's no settled science, I think we can say that
there is a penalty.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I'm not sure we can say that.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
I think we should be careful about because there are
lots of popular Democratic senators and governors who are women,
and a few.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Republicans, not many.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
You know, we had a black president who was quite
popular when was re elected to a second term. We
have now a black female Vice president, Kamala Harris, So
I don't think that's as clear as as one might think.
I mean, you know, the country is not as white
as it once was. Some whites are the white dudes
(12:15):
for Harris, you know, progressive dudes who think, actually.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
You're sure, But I think you can't cherry pick just
like a few different offices. You need to look at
the major numbers. And if you look at the numbers
of politicians, the numbers of senators, the numbers of representatives,
the numbers of every single office, you will see that
there's like one two and you can't You can't point
to that person and say, see, look, just like you
(12:39):
can't point to like fortune five hundred CEOs and be like, look,
the most successful one is female. Great, the other four
hundred ninety nine are male, right, Like, you can't do
that night, and you know that you can't do that.
What we're talking about is is there a penalty for
electability for your gender, for the color of your skin.
And even if you can give me a handful of
(12:59):
examples that show that someone was able to get there
despite those things, that does not mean that there is
not a penalty. This is like the research that was
completely debunk about people with dyslexia saying dyslexia is actually
an asset because look at these amazing dyslexic people who've
made it this far. No, they made it this far
because they're exceptional and despite their dyslexia, they were able
(13:21):
to accomplish all of this. So yeah, when you cherry
pick those at the top, they're truly extraordinary. Does that
mean that dyslexia is actually an asset? No, absolutely not.
And that study was just shown to be like so
full of holes. And I think that's kind of the
logic that you're going for right now, and I don't
think that's right.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
It's good to DestinE debate. I'm looking this as a forecaster, right,
I'm not some gender PhD theorists about like, I'm not
claiming it's not discrimination as women in politics. What I'm
claiming is that I wouldn't put some female or black
variable in my model to therefore lower Harris's odds, right,
(14:00):
because given that she's gotten this.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Far, that's as long as we as long as we agree,
as long as we agree that you're not arguing that
there's not a penalty for being female, that there's not
a penalty for being a minority, that you're just not
putting them in your model for other reasons that I
think we're on. I think we're good.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
I mean, the penalty depends on the context that you're
you know, with a more progressive electorate, maybe you d
furtherer being a bonus, but the average swing voter in
Wisconsin probably a penalty.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
For sure, thank you. But even that she's been it
this far.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
But this is important from a forecast because like if
you have like a six foot one which is short
for basketball NBA player versus like a seven foot h
NBA player, you wouldn't have You wouldn't assume that the
seven foot oh playoff better now, or you shouldn't if
you're building a model, because if you've made to the
pressure of getting through high school and college basketball and
(14:54):
making it to the NBA and making it onto the
starting five or whatever, right then you're you're controlling for ale.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Yeah yeah, Okay, So now we're talking about a totally
different thing. And now I actually completely agree with you.
So you just started from a more extreme version of
this position that I can letely disagree with. But what
you're saying right now, I completely I I don't I agree.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
We actually disagree.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
I'm like, my goal is to make a forecast, right,
And if I thought that this was a that oh,
because she's a woman, that makes a material difference, right,
instead of thirty eight percent, the real number is twenty
five percent or something. If I thought that, I would
say that, right.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Absolutely, and that that makes sense. I do have a
question for you, though, because she is a woman running
against Donald Trump and we've seen kind of the way
that he uses that leverages, that attacks, that does that
matter more than if she were a female running against Pence?
(15:52):
And I don't know the answer. I'm just curious what
you think.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Some of the reportings suggest that actually the Trump campaign
was not rare prepared for Kamala Hara sticking over, which
was extremely stupid because like.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Prediction market and diagrams. She likes the diagram. I find
her funny.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
She's almost she's almost gen x, by the way, there's
never been a gen X president. She Misschaneus by like
two months or something like that. But but yeah, look
at first they were just kind of like tweeting the
same memes and like slightly deep like clips that Democrats
thought were funny and charming and they were like, this
(16:31):
is our opposition research. But now they're dropping real ads,
and you know they're gonna obviously try to portray her
as having been too liberal and woke, and there might
be a little bit of an element of race in there.
But she did run a very progressive twenty twenty primary
campaign and tie her to the politics of the Biden
administration and their problems and the border and things like that.
(16:52):
And those are some recentably effective arguments, I think, more
effective than the race stuff, which which they you know,
which they are at risk of, like making attacks that
they're gonna have to apologize for or not apologize for.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
And look bad not apologize for.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Trump has not into debating her.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Interestingly enough, Yeah, I'm very curious to see whether that
will change, whether there will be a debate. I'm guessing
he's gonna So if I were to bet money on this,
I would say no, I'm guessing he's going to do
everything to weasel his way out of debating Kamala.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Well, you should go on polymarket then, where I am
a paid advisor, Because Trump has an eighty five percent
chance of debating Kamala at least once, according to prediction markets.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Interesting. So my psychology of Trump points a different points
in a different direction.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Trump has had moments where he's been strategically well behaved.
I mean, certainly, in the first debate, I thought he
showed a lot of restraint for not pummeling Joe Biden
harder and letting Joe Biden kind of punch himself to death.
I mean, I thought that that showed some degree of intelligence. However,
he has made some missteps.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Two that come to mind recently. What does I think we.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Please talk about that you're never going to have to
vote again statement? I know that's not where the segment
is about, but it's very very it's a little bit terrifying,
especially since he refused to apologize or walk it back.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
I think he's been taking out of context. I will
can see that it's somewhat ambiguous, but he's been talking
to a group of like Christians for an hour or something,
and Trump tends to ramble on and then he says,
vote for me this time and you won't ever have
to vote again, which I take to mean in that
context and the context of other statements Trump has made
(18:36):
that like some combination of a I don't fucking care
what happens because I won't be on the ballot anymore,
and be it won't matter because I'll make the country
so good that like it's all going to be you know,
honey and rainbows and and sparkly ponies and everything else. Right,
that was a context, So.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Let's agree that it's let's agree that it's ambiguous.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
I think the context is ambiguous by the way Democrats
don't get to get the benefit of the doubt on
this stuff. And the reason why is that, Like, so
jd Vance, I'm going to talk about in a moment,
who I think has proved to be a problematic running mate.
There was a Twitter joke, a meme that someone on
kind of weird left Twitter made about how jd Vance
(19:20):
I'm not sure how to put this.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Are we going to talk about the couch?
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Yeah? I know what are we talking about? It was
about you fake.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
It was about a fake meme in which jd Vance
wrote about like fucking a couch.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Basically, yes, absolutely, and we should absolutely talk about this.
This was he said, you know page you know one
seventy nine to one eighty of Hillbilly Elogy and this
was a joke obviously, but then a lot of people
went with it, and for multiple days, my entire Twitter
feed was, you know, different different takes on this joke,
(19:56):
which I know some some would say that, Maria, you're
on a podcast, you should not be saying this, But
I found hilarious.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
I thought it was a I thought maybe it started
out hilarious, but like, it's misinformation, it's and so like.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
And that's important because there's misinformation on both sides. There's
currently you know that is pretty clear as misinformation, but
there's altered audio of Kamala Harris.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
You know, there is misinformation where Kamal Harris is saying
things that she she didn't say, never said. There's misinformation
related to the assassination attempt against Trump. I mean, there
are Democrats that I thought were relatively grounded in reality
that that thinks somehow this is all set up or
that he wasn't liability with some reflection from a teleprompter
or something.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
And you and I talked about this a few weeks
back about the conspiracy theories around this, that they're coming
from the left. So absolutely, I think both sides are
too blame for this. Some misinformation is much more damaging
than others off Elon Musk's. If Elon Musk is retweeting
or tweeting fake video, fake audio, that's a huge problem,
much more so than some random person making up a
(21:02):
quote from Hillbilly Elegy that some clowd gets picked up.
But he was making a joke, right, he didn't actually
doctor or anything or do anything.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
I'm detecting with a partisanship here.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
No, no, no, no, I think that I think that actually
deep faking and altering things, altering audio, altering video, I
think that that's actually an incredibly serious threat. If the
Democrats did it, I think it would be incredibly serious,
not a laughing matter like this is. This is serious
shit and should be taken very very seriously.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
I'm just saying, I mean, it should be a whole
other episode, right, I YEA. Events of recent days I
think have taken the lid off a certain type of
left leaning misinformation, and I no longer believe that Democrats
should get the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
Right.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
When I watched that Trump clip, I think it's meant
to say, like, I don't fucking care what happens after
I get elected. Think it's going to be so good
and I'll be retired and off the ballot. And Trump
has a lot of weird stuff off the cuff, and
I you know, I don't think he was trying to
darkly shout out to like a hostile takeover of the
American government after he's elected.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
I mean, there's tail risks here for sure.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
If that's the case. If that's the case, I think
that he should have walked it back. When he was
asked about it specifically and he refused, he was like,
I said what I said, right, So I think that
that is actually he could be like I was taken
out of context. I don't mean you'll never.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Have to again.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
You know, I'm someone who thinks you don't. I mean,
I don't think the accusations.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
When you're when you're a presidential candidate and there's audio
of you saying you'll never have to vote again, even
if it's taken, you know, slightly out of context, that
is I think that that's a statement that you should
have said. Yeah, I've praised it poorly. I meant I
don't give a fuck what happens, because I'll be retired
and and happy. You know, it's easy enough to say that,
but you shouldn't. You shouldn't say something that's deeply that's
(22:54):
deeply problematic when it comes to anything, especially which is
about it.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Came out wrong, right, but there, I mean, there are exactly.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
That's all I meant.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
I don't say, like apologize for it, but just like
say yeah, yeah, I was taken out of context. That's
not what I meant at all. End of story.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
I halfway agree.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
I think when people are acting in bad faith, right,
because there are things that like have been taken in
bad faith. Look, politics is blood sport and it's kind
of like the Pokerson we're gonna have later. You know,
if the rules are ambiguous about what's allowed and what isn't,
then people are gonna are gonna exploit those norms and rules.
And Republicans I think, have been more responsible for Democrats
(23:32):
for fraying norms, and Trump in particular, right, So now
he's benefiting from these these frayed norms.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
And I think that what we're seeing on the Democratic
side is also a result of the fraid norms that
have kind of that have resulted from us. Right, there's
spillover effect.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
There's spill of effect, and people in politics are kind
of crazy. I mean, let's let's campaign of like calling.
I mean, I do think J. D. Vance is kind
of a weird dude. He's an unusual guy, very online
the way that you know, young people, including young conservative men,
talk to one another, right, you might have coded speech.
(24:08):
I don't mean any like deeply dark way by that.
I just mean that, like you know, you're having a conversations,
like not a mainstream conversation. And he said a bunch
of things that I think will come across badly to
the average voter, just like I think some of the
Harris stuff around, like white dudes for Harras might seem
kind of funny the first time, and then it's like
these are racial fani groups, Like what are we doing here?
(24:29):
If you're Hispanic? Are you not allowed in this call
or something? But like so I think both sites have
to like get out of their bubble. And Vance, as
it picked, it's very much in the bubble. And there
was a moment when it felt like Trump could just
say pick Glenn Youngkin, who is seen as relatively more
moderate and as in a state that could plausibly against Biden,
whose polls were in the tank. Pausibly have been turned
(24:51):
into a swing state, right.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
And then the.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
First half hour of that speech of the RNC speech,
where Trump was kind of somberly addressing the assassination attempt,
right like, if they just ended the speech there right like,
that would have been a very effective speech. Instead, he
kind of rambles on for an hour. So all of
a sudden, after having their head up their ass the
(25:15):
whole campaign about Biden's age and the poli and stuff
like that, all of a sudden, it seems like Democrats
are the party that cares more about winning. And you've
seen that reflected. I mean, the shift in the Silver
bulletin models is reflected also in prediction markets when Trump
has gone from seventy to fifty eight percent. Right, still
a favorite, but those are odds that I think Democrats
(25:35):
can look at and not feel so bad about.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Yeah, I think that's a that's a great stopping point.
And I think that it's good to end this segment
on an optimistic note because there are obviously a lot
of a lot of issues and a lot of things
that will be coming back to that are problematic. But
I think that I like, for once ending a politics
segment on a more optimistic note.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
We're a christmastic note. If for one of our trump.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Listeners, this is true, this is true. We'll be back
after this with some World series of poker.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
Nate.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
We're now a few weeks out of the world series.
You and I have both, you know, been able to
take a deep breath and a deep poker afy. That's
a that's a proper verb, right, deepoker if I yeah,
for a little while. But now let's let's actually go
back to the w S O P which was the
largest main event in history, and it was won by
(26:40):
Jonathan Tomyo, who we'll be having on the show a
little bit later. And you know, the wind is obviously
incredibly impressive, but it has come with a little bit
of controversy, which was that during the final table you
kind of have a rail right, lots of people following along.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
And literally a cheering section.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yeah, exactly, literally a cheering section. I mean, it's it's
full full out support. But on tomorrow's rail you had
the cheerly, but you also had two players Joe mccannon,
who is one of his closest friends, his roommate for
many years. During the summers former main event Champ and
Dominic Nietzsche, who is one of the kind of biggest
(27:25):
gto game theory optimal thinkers if German poker, who has
created a solver called dto down Theory Optimal and dom
had brought a laptop, and so there was controversy about
what was on the laptop. Was he running solvers? Was
there any sort of assistance? Was this against the rules?
Basically the optics did not look good.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
Yeah, here is I mean, we just, for full disclosure
to the audience, we have taped our segment with Jonathan,
so we know he's going to say, we shall want
to be transparent.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
It sets up better this way. But I mean, in.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Terms of what the rules say, if you actually are
really interested in the subject. Doug Polk has a pretty
good YouTube clip. This actually goes through the rules. Yeah,
short version in twenty twenty three, they were rules in
the World Series of Poker, very long rule PDF that
(28:19):
says you can't use any type of assistance or software tools,
et cetera. For some reason, that did not appear in
the twenty twenty four version of the World Series of
Poker rules. However, most tournaments, someone would come on the
loudspeaker and say you are not allowed to use solvers
anywhere in the tournament area. I'm not sure what the
(28:40):
terment area is. Basically, it's like, you know, the adjacent
the tables and the adjacent areas. I don't know, but
my understanding was to be very careful about that. So
when I was in the tournament area, I didn't even
want to look at like simple things like two dimes.
Dot Net is a simple application that's been around for
(29:00):
twenty years, where could say I had pocket queens, my
opponent had ace King of diamonds.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
What were the odds? Right?
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Even something like that, I didn't want to run outside
the tournament area. Now, if I played a hand, I'm like,
did I just punt there? Make a bad play? Then
I might go outside the tournament area, sure, and while
getting your coffee or whatever, and then bring the phone up.
But even then I would still be worried about, like
closing that window in the phone. So I understood this
(29:28):
to be a rule that was taken seriously. However, clearly
some players didn't. I mean I had a hand early
in the World Series where a player in let me
think the hijack. This is in late position raises. The
first player pulls out his phone and just kind of
(29:49):
seems now totally disengage from like the poker game in
front of him. It turns out because the other player,
who was actually still involved in his hand and has
a live hand, he's texting his friend I have hand
X and it was called.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
And raised, whichould I do? Lol?
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Right in the middle of the hand. He eventually folds
and the other player folds too.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
But like, by the way, that has been.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
A rule forever, one player per hand, right, Like, what
that guy was doing is just illegal, and no phones
during during a live hand has been a rule forever.
So what that guy did is just like breaking the
rules on every single front. He should have been disqualified.
Please continue, Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
So, And so they fall.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
I get the outcome I want, right, but I called
the floor over and and I'm like, we have multiple
witnesses of this player using a phone in a live
hand about the live hand to seek strategy advice, and
they didn't really and they kind of have this like, oh,
what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas attitude where they
try to like, I don't know, it's as like regis
(30:55):
as I've ever seen, and you have multiple witnesses and
so like to me, first of all, the phone in
a live hand thing, I would have like pretty strict,
absolutely right, and having that rule be strictly in I mean,
they have long been accusations of favoritism at the World
Chairs of Poker. Certain people feel helm with what not
(31:16):
getting away with more in terms of abusive dealers.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
But but yeah, oh, absolutely, you need to consistently enforce
the rules, and you need to enforce them otherwise they're
not rules. And the fact that the WSP is so
damn inconsistent is just absolutely not acceptable. And you cannot
blame the players though for that, like you know, you
(31:41):
have to blame the fact that their rules are inconsistent
and in the use of real time assistants, et cetera.
What is true is that the rule was also ridiculously vague, right,
part of it was just announced and never in the
rule book, And they said that the enforcement would be
at the sole discretion of the floor staff, which is
(32:02):
once again totally bonkers. If you really want to solve
this problem, you have to spell out what you can't do,
and then you have to say exactly what the penalties
will be.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Yeah, because poker players of all people are gonna solve
for the equilibrium, right and they if they know that,
if there is a history of these rules being enforced
as slaps on the wrist at most and not at
all at least, then they're gonna cheat, and they're gonna
or not cheat, but they're gonna, you know, color within
and maybe slightly outside of the lines. Now, look, when
(32:34):
you hear Jonathan, he'll say that whatever he was hearing
on the rail wasn't that helpful in real time, which
I actually believe.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
I believe that as well. It's really hard. By the
way I have been heads up, I have both won
and lost in that situation. I did not get assistance
either time. But when I have tried to, like people
have sent me hands when I've been on televised tables
because and then during breaks you review those hands, and
sometimes it is helpful, and sometimes it just kills you
because your brain goes into overload and you're just thinking,
(33:06):
oh shit, you know I made this mistake. You get
two in your head and it really can fuck with you.
So I don't know, you know, I think it goes
both ways.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Yeah, if I made a bad fold an hour ago.
I'm not sure that it's helping me whatsoever to say, oh, actually,
actually he had a gut shot.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
He was bluffing there with.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
That said, I mean, I look, the World Series gets
a lot of mileage out of its brand, and we
like the brand too. We've talked about the World Series
half the segments we've done on the show so far.
But this is a case where they're shooting themselves in
the foot by not thinking carefully through like brand management.
I mean, I assume they'll say no laptops on the rail,
(33:47):
which doesn't I mean, should also be no phones on
the rail or no phones?
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Yeah, I mean, if it were up to me, right,
if I were doing the rules of the World Series,
I would do, first of all, no electronics at televised
or streamed tables, and whenever I play in streamed games.
By the way, that's already the case. We give up
our phones. They're put away on breaks, you can get them, right,
So I'm fine with that. Sure, I like listening to
(34:10):
music sometimes, but like that's totally cool. So at the
table itself, zero electronics when it's a streamed table, when
it's a final table, not just the main event, at
the main event. No electronics at the rail. You can
leave the rail get electronics, but I think that the
most important thing is no electronics at the rail or
no contact with the rail other than like high five, right,
(34:31):
But no strategy advice, no electronic kind of back and
forth until you're.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
On a break.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
But if I were the ones doing the rules, that's
what I would do, and for next year, I would
also have just explicit rules. No solvers when you are
inside the tournament area in the hallways, just like no
solvers if anyone sees you on the phone with solvers,
as you said, Nate, like you were even like hesitant
to open things on a break. And I think that
(34:57):
that is, you know, absolutely the way to go, especially
like if you're at the table, like if you're at
a you know, I don't think there should be a
three strike policy. I think strike one, you know, you
get a major penalty, not one round. I would give
more round strike to disqualification, and strike three. After you're disqualified,
you're disqualified from the whole fucking series. You're out.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Yeah, come back next year, right exactly.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
Okay, Well, our interview with Jonathan will air next So
we're going to welcome him to the show.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
So we're really excited to have Jonathan to mya on
the winner of the twenty twenty four main event, which
is the largest WSP main event in history. So Jonathan,
thank you. First of all, congratulations, thank you, and thanks
for having me. I know, I know that we're both
very excited.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
Oh I'm really excited. And it hasn't sunk in yet.
It's partially sunk in because the money is in my
bank account, so that part is sunk in the rest
of it.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Penny, are you afraid you're gonna wake up one morning
and like it was just a dream or it was
a typo or something in your ATM receipt.
Speaker 4 (36:17):
I thought that when I really watched it, somebody I'm
getting punched in the face and then the dream's over.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
I mean, what kind of mentality did you go into
the main event with this year? Or it's just like
it's a tournament. I play a lot of tournaments. Did
you Did you have anything specially you did to prep
this year?
Speaker 4 (36:33):
Nothing special? The prep beforehand, because once you get there
in the summer for the series, what you got, what
you got. I went in there saying that you're eventually
going to bust the main in some way and just
deal with it, because I see a lot of people
getting super depressed. Day one bus, day two bus, I
see them drinking. Everyone does their own thing to keep
(36:56):
their sanity. It's basically keeping your sanity. You see. There
were few people, even they're in the main. A couple
of bad things happen and then they lost their minds,
and that can get expensive. The latter it gets, the
letter it gets when you lose your mind, the more
expensive it is. Because okay, it starts as a ten K,
(37:16):
so they take what is it's eight hundred seven hundred dous,
So you're playing a ninety three hundred and on day
two you're basically playing like a fifteen K. When you
get to the final table, you're basically playing what is
at that point in a two and a half million
dollar buying sit and go.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
That's looking at it. I've actually never heard someone describe
it in quite those terms. So of course, you know,
we're we're interested. You know, obviously it's absolutely incredible that
you won. And how does it feel to have kind
of a controversy attached to it with all of the
for people who don't know there's some controversy that Dom
(37:55):
was on the rail with a laptop during the final table,
and why don't yeah, why don't we just get your
take on it.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
I mean Dom brought the laptop and it was what
I was like, my job was to play, and he
said I'll take care or whatever, and basically advising me
on breaks or whenever there's an opportunity, like any game adjustments,
anything he sees, and if there's anything I decided to
on the fly, that was okay, just to do it,
(38:23):
and you were still playing poker. Kind of there's only
there's only so much that can be done, Like the
study was done, but you know, you just don't it
was well as you don't know how everybody was gonna play.
You know, we have a day. People changed their games,
they might not change their games, and it's kind of
(38:43):
a wait and see. So it's more adjusting to the
situation on the fly. H Clearly there's a feed there
because you'd be crazy not to get the hands from
an hour ago. It's just it's just another set of eyes.
Is he two sets of eyes? Because Joe's there too, so.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
He's running sims or solves and Dominic Netzsche for people
don't know is no is one of the purest most
gto minds and poker meaning game theory optimal. He owns
a training site called.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Dt dt O or something very optimal optimal.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
So is he running his dt O sims on slots
from an hour, spots from an hour ago or what?
Speaker 2 (39:26):
What's he using the laptop for?
Speaker 4 (39:29):
I think he was chatting with a bunch of people. Uh.
I know we did run his dt O stuff the prep,
but those weren't Those weren't on the screen. I know
that because there was a lot of drilling post lop spots.
It's okay, okay, what do you do here? What do
you do here? What do you do here? So whatever
(39:50):
he was doing to adjust, I don't know what the
process was at all. And he's like, don't worry about it.
My jobs to play.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
What did you understand the prevailing World series rule to
be about about using solvers or any type of And
to be clear, no one at all is accusing you
yourself of having done anything.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
It was your your rail.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
But what did you understood understand the rule to be
in general about kind of celebri use.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
I remember the twenty twenty three year rule, but it
was more of than a dendem and there was an
announcement and then the twenty twenty four rules said nothing
about the sword, if you start, if you search in there,
nothing about a computer or nothing else, like it's well
established in a hand with cards in front of you,
(40:43):
no electronics, no cell phone, which is you know, on
day one and for years been very loosely enforced. So
it's you know, it's basically once the hands out, my
understanding is all electronics are gone. And that's basically my
basic understanding of it.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Yeah, I mean, I think I think as far as
the written rules that that is correct, that there was
nothing explicit in there. There wasn't announce made at the
beginning of every single event after the first week or
so to try to address this, but to say that
you know, no solvers in the tournament area at all,
and you obviously, like I said, and I've written about this,
(41:22):
you didn't have a solver. I don't think you actually
broke any rules. But you know, given that, what is
your take on kind of what the optics of the
situation are and how would you you know, how would
you advise the World Series handle this? In twenty twenty five,
because obviously right now, you know we're done, right like
we're we're done with the World Series. So what would
what would you say kind of should be should be
(41:45):
the norm going forward?
Speaker 4 (41:47):
So the just sure fireway to do it is you
would have to strictly enforce a strictly enforced the electronics rule.
You know, day ones, day two's, you know, out of
parts of the tournament, there's a lot of new dealers
(42:07):
of the series. They're already over well do we want
to do that? You know that that's a road that
can get ugly fast, and I've seen it get ugly
already with the electronics people yelling, yelling at each other,
yelling at dealers. Dealers get frustrated. A second, if if
you really really wanted to do something, you could go
(42:29):
the chess route and put us in the glass key.
The downside of that is the production value goes way down.
A lot of the production value I've heard from it
is having the crowd there, having the noise, having the atmosphere,
and you'll lose that. So now you have to weigh
(42:51):
how pure you want the competition to be. Two other
factors that may make the game more appealing or more exciting,
or better for production or better for broadcasts, and the
given the range of answers on the air and everybody
(43:12):
yelling at each other, I don't know if there's ever
a correct answer to this.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Well, we'll see what the WSOP does. But just I
don't want to end on that note. I want to
end on the note of once again, like, whatever whatever
happens in twenty twenty five, you defeated over a ten
thousand players, the most ever. That's absolutely incredible. You should
be very proud, and I hope that you don't let
(43:37):
this kind of take that experience. What are you going
to do with your winnings?
Speaker 4 (43:42):
I've already moved money into a bunch of savings vehicles
before the tax bill comes, which is going to be
very large, I might as well collect interest on it
before I decide what I actually want to do for growth.
I'm probably going to stay in my lane as far
as poker goes gives me ability that think takes some
(44:06):
good tournaments that might be out of my normal buying
range and fire at them, but mostly like I'm going
to probably be camping out in what I call mid Steaksville.
I don't think I'm beating ten K six max. I'm
not beating twenty five K six maxis I might have
been slightly beating them ten years ago, but everyone got smarter,
(44:29):
everybody got better, and information is better out there and
more refined. Even the players that are bad are still
pretty good.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Yeah, well, we're going to be rooting for you in
mid Stakesville. Congratulations again. We're really glad that you were
able to come on and share your experience with us.
And yeah, we hope that you now take some time
to relax and really be proud of what you've accomplished.
Speaker 4 (44:53):
Definitely taking time to relax right now. Thanks a lot
for having me.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
Thanks Cool.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Risky Business is hosted by me Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
And met Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
The show was a co production of Pushkin Industry US
and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by Isabel Carter. Our
associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our engineer is Sarah Bruger.
Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
If you want to listen to an AD free version,
sign up for Pushkin Plus For six ninety nine a month.
You get access to ad free listening. Thanks for tuning in.
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kanikova.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
And I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
So today on the show and it we're going to
be talking about a model that you've been working on
for a while and you have flipped the switch to
the new model. We are going to be entering Kamala
mode from Biden mode.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
We will also have probably the last segment on the
World Series of Poker that we're going to do for
this year.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
At least.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
We have main event champion Jonathan Tomayo I with us,
who had an impressive run through actually very tough final table,
but also generating controversy because his supporters we're seen using
a laptop with some poker looking software while he was
in the middle of the final.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
So we'll talk to him about all of that.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Now, tell me what is going on with your model.
So obviously, you know last week you and Matt Glassman
talked about the shift to Kamala as the nominee, and
now you have. There has been more polling, there have
been kind of more inputs and last week you weren't
(01:37):
there yet. But we're recording this on Tuesday, and today
you actually released the updated model for what the Kamala
nomination means. So let's let's talk me through it. Let's
get into it.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Since this is a show for people who like numbers,
at least mostly, I'm going to lead with the top
line number, which is that Harris has a thirty eight
percent chance of winning the electoral college in our forecast,
Trump is at sixty one percent, and there's one percent
chance of a dead block where no cann It gets
two hundred and seventy electoral votes. Trump probably wins those scenarios,
by the way, but we can cover that later. So
(02:12):
thirty eight percent is quite a bit better than Joe Biden,
who was at I think twenty seven or twenty six
and a half when we turned the model off, and
was declining. And moreover, as we've talked about, I think
that probably overestimated his chances by roughly half. Right, his
fundraising had dried up, he was not really capable of
doing basic campaigning things. Voter enthusiasm was in the tank.
(02:36):
Half his party was denouncing him, and so you know,
so whether it's from twenty six percent to thirty eight
percent or two percent to thirty eight percent, I mean,
I think Biden's real chances for maybe ten percent or something,
you know, all of a sudden, in poker terms, Democrats
caught some really good outs. They have like a nut
flush straw or something against Kings where they can we're still.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
But now we're live, very now, we're live, very very live.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
And I should say, you know, I think my assistant
Elan and I waited about the minimum time that was
responsible to win, for enough polling to come in. The
forecast could be a little bit more ballatle up and
down than usual because we don't have a lot of
swing state polling yet, for example. But in national polls,
(03:21):
Harris has drawn the race roughly into a tie with Trump,
which is quite a bit better than Biden, who was
down four points in national polls at the time he exited. However,
as listeners probably know, the popular vote is not what
determines elections in the American presidential race. It's the electoral college,
(03:42):
and there that's why Harris is an underdog.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
The most important states.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Meaning Pennsylvania, Michigan, in Wisconsin. If she were to win
those and hold the other more traditionally blue states, and
she would get two hundred and seventy electoral votes, which
is exactly exactly one more than she needs. Those states
are close to being toss ups, very slightly leaning Trump,
but you know, certainly in the zone of what a
(04:07):
poker player would call it a flip or a race
or et cetera. She still has to win all three
of those. The math this gets a little complicated because
they're correlated. It's not like three independent coin flips. If
you win Wisconsin, then Michigan's a fairly similar state, and
Pennsylvania to some extent, but but enough to make her
an underdog. She also has maybe a route that had
(04:30):
disappeared from Joe Biden, which is a southern route. So
Kamala Harris already has restored some of Biden's depressed numbers
among two important groups, black voters and then younger voters.
And Georgia and North Carolina have a lot of black voters.
Of course, they also have a lot of young professionals.
They have a lot of colleges and universities. So there's
(04:52):
states where that combination is important, and she's drawing live
in Georgia, for example, which I think the polling had
consistently been very.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Bad for Biden.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
So she now actually has these multiple paths that Biden
kind of had, you know, been foreclosed from Biden.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Now she's not a favorite in neither path.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
But look, I think usually if I come out with
a forecast end of July and so the Democrat has
a thirty eight percent chance of winning, I think people
would be like, you suck, Nate Silver, why are.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
You such a maga?
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Whatever Republican you said it, I did it. Yeah, compared
to where Democrats were before, though, I think they're thrilled
if they could take a coin flip, and it's not
a coin flip that she's an underdog, but not that
much of an underdog, you know, thirty eight sixty two
is not so bad.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
And we've only had a few weeks. So I think
that it's really important to remember that, you know, this
is really really new, and the fact that she's been
able to kind of have that much gain that much
in such a short period of time, and she hasn't
even announced her VP PIC, which we can talk about,
but you know, I think that that says something. And
(06:03):
her fundraising has been pretty incredible, very quickly. She's been
able to raise millions from a lot of different groups.
I think that the party has rallied around her more
than people expected. She's gotten all the big endorsements, the
Obamas have endorsed her, and so I'm very curious to
see whether that momentum will sustain itself or whether it
(06:25):
actually it is just because right now people are excited,
and I'm also very curious to see who the VP
pick will be and how that will affect the election. Nate,
I know you've written before about the fact that the
VP doesn't actually matter that much, whereas much as people
would want them to matter in swing states. Do you
kind of believe that in this particular case that's going
(06:47):
to hold. How important do you think that the vpick
VP pick is going to be for the outcome of
this election.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I think it might be a little bit more important
than usual.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
I think due to the fact that Biden's VP became
the presential candidate naturally in the middle of July. I
think there's likely to be more focus on it, and
Trump of course changes VP. You know, after by some
accounts Mike Pence was physically threatened by some of the
protesters on January sixth. That was probably inevitable, but no, look,
(07:20):
you know, so one question is how much does a
VP matter in their home state, And the answer is
not very much. It might be worth half a point,
although half a point isn't nothing if it's an important
state like Pennsylvania or Michigan. Like basically, if if Kamala
Harris were to pick Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania
in our model, that would increase her chances of winning
(07:40):
electoral college by about one percent. So Poker's letters, we
like our back door outs. That's kind of what you get.
That's just based on the home state effect. There are also
questions about like how strong or weak is this candidate.
I think some people on the left think that Josh
Shapiro is too centrist, which to me is another good
reason to pick him. You know, like you said, Maria,
(08:02):
Kamala Harris came through this first phase, which was consolidating
her party support very effectively. And then if you read
not a subjective opinion, if you read the news accounts
Politico or the New York Times or whatever. I have
done stories about like you know, the first not just
twenty four hours, like the first twenty four minutes after
Biden announces he's stepping aside, She's already working the phones,
(08:26):
already making hundreds of calls to people, very ambitious and look,
sometimes when women are ambitious and aggressive, then the society
frownds on that. I like ambitious, aggressive women, And I
think Kamala Harris showed that she has a real hunger
for the nomination and for the presidency by not dawdling
and by understanding that like that was a moment to strike.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
No one else had stepped.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Up, and you had an opportunity, and it literally had
to be within the first hour or something, right to
shut off all their avenues from your rivals, maybe supposed rivals.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
She did it.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Maybe supos tribles would have been better, but probably better
for Democrats to have unification around a nominee than a
drag out fight. We probably should talk about the reason
why she isn't underdog though, right.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Yes, absolutely so. When you're when you're looking at your model,
you said that a lot of things really didn't change,
right when you when you activate kamalo mode. It's not
like you are suddenly changing all of these different inputs.
But she's obviously a very different candidate from Biden. Some
things are much better, right, There's no longer the age
(09:38):
factor that that is no longer an issue at all,
but some things might not be as positive for her.
The last time we had a female candidate was Hillary Clinton,
who also ran against Donald Trump, and that did not
go very well.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
No, and and like I suppose Harris is projected to
do in our forecast, Clinton won the popular vote and
lost the electoral college. So ironically, we spent a lot
of time more me than you, Maria, but spent a
lot of time kind of literally yelling at and getting
yelled at by Democrats about how Biden's age was a
real concern and was dragging down his numbers and maybe
(10:17):
even although maybe not the whole party because like Democratic candidates,
except that we're doing fine. But look, if you think
that Biden's problems were ninety percent about age, then that's
the bowl case for Harris. However, what about inflation which
has abated but is still a concern that voters have
over the past four years. The border, Kamala Harris had
(10:38):
some responsibility for the border. The fact checkers hate when
you call her the borders are borders are, Like I'm
calling her the borders are I mean, that's was my
understanding of things right, and like one of the maybe
hard more difficult assignments that she got. People are just
grumpy in general about incumbent parties. Although incumbent, she's a
non incumbent member of the incumbent party, the incumbent vice president.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I guess you could say, so.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
You know, and then there are issues of race and gender,
you know, and.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Which we can't ignore. By the way, those are those
are real issues for a lot of people. We can't
wish them away because they shouldn't be issues.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Look what I should say, I think is like, of
course the man is talking about this. I don't think
there's settled science on tread carefully, What if any penalty
there is to candidates for being a woman, for being
for being black, or for being Asian American for that matter.
(11:38):
I don't think there's Like, even if.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
There's no settled science, I think we can say that
there is a penalty.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I'm not sure we can say that.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
I think we should be careful about because there are
lots of popular Democratic senators and governors who are women,
and a few.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Republicans, not many.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
You know, we had a black president who was quite
popular when was re elected to a second term. We
have now a black female Vice president, Kamala Harris, So
I don't think that's as clear as as one might think.
I mean, you know, the country is not as white
as it once was. Some whites are the white dudes
(12:15):
for Harris, you know, progressive dudes who think, actually.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
You're sure, But I think you can't cherry pick just
like a few different offices. You need to look at
the major numbers. And if you look at the numbers
of politicians, the numbers of senators, the numbers of representatives,
the numbers of every single office, you will see that
there's like one two and you can't You can't point
to that person and say, see, look, just like you
(12:39):
can't point to like fortune five hundred CEOs and be like, look,
the most successful one is female. Great, the other four
hundred ninety nine are male, right, Like, you can't do
that night, and you know that you can't do that.
What we're talking about is is there a penalty for
electability for your gender, for the color of your skin.
And even if you can give me a handful of
(12:59):
examples that show that someone was able to get there
despite those things, that does not mean that there is
not a penalty. This is like the research that was
completely debunk about people with dyslexia saying dyslexia is actually
an asset because look at these amazing dyslexic people who've
made it this far. No, they made it this far
because they're exceptional and despite their dyslexia, they were able
(13:21):
to accomplish all of this. So yeah, when you cherry
pick those at the top, they're truly extraordinary. Does that
mean that dyslexia is actually an asset? No, absolutely not.
And that study was just shown to be like so
full of holes. And I think that's kind of the
logic that you're going for right now, and I don't
think that's right.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
It's good to DestinE debate. I'm looking this as a forecaster, right,
I'm not some gender PhD theorists about like, I'm not
claiming it's not discrimination as women in politics. What I'm
claiming is that I wouldn't put some female or black
variable in my model to therefore lower Harris's odds, right,
(14:00):
because given that she's gotten this.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Far, that's as long as we as long as we agree,
as long as we agree that you're not arguing that
there's not a penalty for being female, that there's not
a penalty for being a minority, that you're just not
putting them in your model for other reasons that I
think we're on. I think we're good.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
I mean, the penalty depends on the context that you're
you know, with a more progressive electorate, maybe you d
furtherer being a bonus, but the average swing voter in
Wisconsin probably a penalty.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
For sure, thank you. But even that she's been it
this far.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
But this is important from a forecast because like if
you have like a six foot one which is short
for basketball NBA player versus like a seven foot h
NBA player, you wouldn't have You wouldn't assume that the
seven foot oh playoff better now, or you shouldn't if
you're building a model, because if you've made to the
pressure of getting through high school and college basketball and
(14:54):
making it to the NBA and making it onto the
starting five or whatever, right then you're you're controlling for ale.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Yeah yeah, Okay, So now we're talking about a totally
different thing. And now I actually completely agree with you.
So you just started from a more extreme version of
this position that I can letely disagree with. But what
you're saying right now, I completely I I don't I agree.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
We actually disagree.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
I'm like, my goal is to make a forecast, right,
And if I thought that this was a that oh,
because she's a woman, that makes a material difference, right,
instead of thirty eight percent, the real number is twenty
five percent or something. If I thought that, I would
say that, right.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Absolutely, and that that makes sense. I do have a
question for you, though, because she is a woman running
against Donald Trump and we've seen kind of the way
that he uses that leverages, that attacks, that does that
matter more than if she were a female running against Pence?
(15:52):
And I don't know the answer. I'm just curious what
you think.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Some of the reportings suggest that actually the Trump campaign
was not rare prepared for Kamala Hara sticking over, which
was extremely stupid because like.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Prediction market and diagrams. She likes the diagram. I find
her funny.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
She's almost she's almost gen x, by the way, there's
never been a gen X president. She Misschaneus by like
two months or something like that. But but yeah, look
at first they were just kind of like tweeting the
same memes and like slightly deep like clips that Democrats
thought were funny and charming and they were like, this
(16:31):
is our opposition research. But now they're dropping real ads,
and you know they're gonna obviously try to portray her
as having been too liberal and woke, and there might
be a little bit of an element of race in there.
But she did run a very progressive twenty twenty primary
campaign and tie her to the politics of the Biden
administration and their problems and the border and things like that.
(16:52):
And those are some recentably effective arguments, I think, more
effective than the race stuff, which which they you know,
which they are at risk of, like making attacks that
they're gonna have to apologize for or not apologize for.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
And look bad not apologize for.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Trump has not into debating her.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Interestingly enough, Yeah, I'm very curious to see whether that
will change, whether there will be a debate. I'm guessing
he's gonna So if I were to bet money on this,
I would say no, I'm guessing he's going to do
everything to weasel his way out of debating Kamala.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Well, you should go on polymarket then, where I am
a paid advisor, Because Trump has an eighty five percent
chance of debating Kamala at least once, according to prediction markets.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Interesting. So my psychology of Trump points a different points
in a different direction.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Trump has had moments where he's been strategically well behaved.
I mean, certainly, in the first debate, I thought he
showed a lot of restraint for not pummeling Joe Biden
harder and letting Joe Biden kind of punch himself to death.
I mean, I thought that that showed some degree of intelligence. However,
he has made some missteps.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Two that come to mind recently. What does I think we.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Please talk about that you're never going to have to
vote again statement? I know that's not where the segment
is about, but it's very very it's a little bit terrifying,
especially since he refused to apologize or walk it back.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
I think he's been taking out of context. I will
can see that it's somewhat ambiguous, but he's been talking
to a group of like Christians for an hour or something,
and Trump tends to ramble on and then he says,
vote for me this time and you won't ever have
to vote again, which I take to mean in that
context and the context of other statements Trump has made
(18:36):
that like some combination of a I don't fucking care
what happens because I won't be on the ballot anymore,
and be it won't matter because I'll make the country
so good that like it's all going to be you know,
honey and rainbows and and sparkly ponies and everything else. Right,
that was a context, So.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Let's agree that it's let's agree that it's ambiguous.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
I think the context is ambiguous by the way Democrats
don't get to get the benefit of the doubt on
this stuff. And the reason why is that, Like, so
jd Vance, I'm going to talk about in a moment,
who I think has proved to be a problematic running mate.
There was a Twitter joke, a meme that someone on
kind of weird left Twitter made about how jd Vance
(19:20):
I'm not sure how to put this.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Are we going to talk about the couch?
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Yeah? I know what are we talking about? It was
about you fake.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
It was about a fake meme in which jd Vance
wrote about like fucking a couch.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Basically, yes, absolutely, and we should absolutely talk about this.
This was he said, you know page you know one
seventy nine to one eighty of Hillbilly Elogy and this
was a joke obviously, but then a lot of people
went with it, and for multiple days, my entire Twitter
feed was, you know, different different takes on this joke,
(19:56):
which I know some some would say that, Maria, you're
on a podcast, you should not be saying this, But
I found hilarious.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
I thought it was a I thought maybe it started
out hilarious, but like, it's misinformation, it's and so like.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
And that's important because there's misinformation on both sides. There's
currently you know that is pretty clear as misinformation, but
there's altered audio of Kamala Harris.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
You know, there is misinformation where Kamal Harris is saying
things that she she didn't say, never said. There's misinformation
related to the assassination attempt against Trump. I mean, there
are Democrats that I thought were relatively grounded in reality
that that thinks somehow this is all set up or
that he wasn't liability with some reflection from a teleprompter
or something.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
And you and I talked about this a few weeks
back about the conspiracy theories around this, that they're coming
from the left. So absolutely, I think both sides are
too blame for this. Some misinformation is much more damaging
than others off Elon Musk's. If Elon Musk is retweeting
or tweeting fake video, fake audio, that's a huge problem,
much more so than some random person making up a
(21:02):
quote from Hillbilly Elegy that some clowd gets picked up.
But he was making a joke, right, he didn't actually
doctor or anything or do anything.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
I'm detecting with a partisanship here.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
No, no, no, no, I think that I think that actually
deep faking and altering things, altering audio, altering video, I
think that that's actually an incredibly serious threat. If the
Democrats did it, I think it would be incredibly serious,
not a laughing matter like this is. This is serious
shit and should be taken very very seriously.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
I'm just saying, I mean, it should be a whole
other episode, right, I YEA. Events of recent days I
think have taken the lid off a certain type of
left leaning misinformation, and I no longer believe that Democrats
should get the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
Right.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
When I watched that Trump clip, I think it's meant
to say, like, I don't fucking care what happens after
I get elected. Think it's going to be so good
and I'll be retired and off the ballot. And Trump
has a lot of weird stuff off the cuff, and
I you know, I don't think he was trying to
darkly shout out to like a hostile takeover of the
American government after he's elected.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
I mean, there's tail risks here for sure.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
If that's the case. If that's the case, I think
that he should have walked it back. When he was
asked about it specifically and he refused, he was like,
I said what I said, right, So I think that
that is actually he could be like I was taken
out of context. I don't mean you'll never.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Have to again.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
You know, I'm someone who thinks you don't. I mean,
I don't think the accusations.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
When you're when you're a presidential candidate and there's audio
of you saying you'll never have to vote again, even
if it's taken, you know, slightly out of context, that
is I think that that's a statement that you should
have said. Yeah, I've praised it poorly. I meant I
don't give a fuck what happens, because I'll be retired
and and happy. You know, it's easy enough to say that,
but you shouldn't. You shouldn't say something that's deeply that's
(22:54):
deeply problematic when it comes to anything, especially which is
about it.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Came out wrong, right, but there, I mean, there are exactly.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
That's all I meant.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
I don't say, like apologize for it, but just like
say yeah, yeah, I was taken out of context. That's
not what I meant at all. End of story.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
I halfway agree.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
I think when people are acting in bad faith, right,
because there are things that like have been taken in
bad faith. Look, politics is blood sport and it's kind
of like the Pokerson we're gonna have later. You know,
if the rules are ambiguous about what's allowed and what isn't,
then people are gonna are gonna exploit those norms and rules.
And Republicans I think, have been more responsible for Democrats
(23:32):
for fraying norms, and Trump in particular, right, So now
he's benefiting from these these frayed norms.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
And I think that what we're seeing on the Democratic
side is also a result of the fraid norms that
have kind of that have resulted from us. Right, there's
spillover effect.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
There's spill of effect, and people in politics are kind
of crazy. I mean, let's let's campaign of like calling.
I mean, I do think J. D. Vance is kind
of a weird dude. He's an unusual guy, very online
the way that you know, young people, including young conservative men,
talk to one another, right, you might have coded speech.
(24:08):
I don't mean any like deeply dark way by that.
I just mean that, like you know, you're having a conversations,
like not a mainstream conversation. And he said a bunch
of things that I think will come across badly to
the average voter, just like I think some of the
Harris stuff around, like white dudes for Harras might seem
kind of funny the first time, and then it's like
these are racial fani groups, Like what are we doing here?
(24:29):
If you're Hispanic? Are you not allowed in this call
or something? But like so I think both sites have
to like get out of their bubble. And Vance, as
it picked, it's very much in the bubble. And there
was a moment when it felt like Trump could just
say pick Glenn Youngkin, who is seen as relatively more
moderate and as in a state that could plausibly against Biden,
whose polls were in the tank. Pausibly have been turned
(24:51):
into a swing state, right.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
And then the.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
First half hour of that speech of the RNC speech,
where Trump was kind of somberly addressing the assassination attempt,
right like, if they just ended the speech there right like,
that would have been a very effective speech. Instead, he
kind of rambles on for an hour. So all of
a sudden, after having their head up their ass the
(25:15):
whole campaign about Biden's age and the poli and stuff
like that, all of a sudden, it seems like Democrats
are the party that cares more about winning. And you've
seen that reflected. I mean, the shift in the Silver
bulletin models is reflected also in prediction markets when Trump
has gone from seventy to fifty eight percent. Right, still
a favorite, but those are odds that I think Democrats
(25:35):
can look at and not feel so bad about.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Yeah, I think that's a that's a great stopping point.
And I think that it's good to end this segment
on an optimistic note because there are obviously a lot
of a lot of issues and a lot of things
that will be coming back to that are problematic. But
I think that I like, for once ending a politics
segment on a more optimistic note.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
We're a christmastic note. If for one of our trump.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Listeners, this is true, this is true. We'll be back
after this with some World series of poker.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
Nate.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
We're now a few weeks out of the world series.
You and I have both, you know, been able to
take a deep breath and a deep poker afy. That's
a that's a proper verb, right, deepoker if I yeah,
for a little while. But now let's let's actually go
back to the w S O P which was the
largest main event in history, and it was won by
(26:40):
Jonathan Tomyo, who we'll be having on the show a
little bit later. And you know, the wind is obviously
incredibly impressive, but it has come with a little bit
of controversy, which was that during the final table you
kind of have a rail right, lots of people following along.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
And literally a cheering section.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yeah, exactly, literally a cheering section. I mean, it's it's
full full out support. But on tomorrow's rail you had
the cheerly, but you also had two players Joe mccannon,
who is one of his closest friends, his roommate for
many years. During the summers former main event Champ and
Dominic Nietzsche, who is one of the kind of biggest
(27:25):
gto game theory optimal thinkers if German poker, who has
created a solver called dto down Theory Optimal and dom
had brought a laptop, and so there was controversy about
what was on the laptop. Was he running solvers? Was
there any sort of assistance? Was this against the rules?
Basically the optics did not look good.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
Yeah, here is I mean, we just, for full disclosure
to the audience, we have taped our segment with Jonathan,
so we know he's going to say, we shall want
to be transparent.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
It sets up better this way. But I mean, in.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Terms of what the rules say, if you actually are
really interested in the subject. Doug Polk has a pretty
good YouTube clip. This actually goes through the rules. Yeah,
short version in twenty twenty three, they were rules in
the World Series of Poker, very long rule PDF that
(28:19):
says you can't use any type of assistance or software tools,
et cetera. For some reason, that did not appear in
the twenty twenty four version of the World Series of
Poker rules. However, most tournaments, someone would come on the
loudspeaker and say you are not allowed to use solvers
anywhere in the tournament area. I'm not sure what the
(28:40):
terment area is. Basically, it's like, you know, the adjacent
the tables and the adjacent areas. I don't know, but
my understanding was to be very careful about that. So
when I was in the tournament area, I didn't even
want to look at like simple things like two dimes.
Dot Net is a simple application that's been around for
(29:00):
twenty years, where could say I had pocket queens, my
opponent had ace King of diamonds.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
What were the odds? Right?
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Even something like that, I didn't want to run outside
the tournament area. Now, if I played a hand, I'm like,
did I just punt there? Make a bad play? Then
I might go outside the tournament area, sure, and while
getting your coffee or whatever, and then bring the phone up.
But even then I would still be worried about, like
closing that window in the phone. So I understood this
(29:28):
to be a rule that was taken seriously. However, clearly
some players didn't. I mean I had a hand early
in the World Series where a player in let me
think the hijack. This is in late position raises. The
first player pulls out his phone and just kind of
(29:49):
seems now totally disengage from like the poker game in
front of him. It turns out because the other player,
who was actually still involved in his hand and has
a live hand, he's texting his friend I have hand
X and it was called.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
And raised, whichould I do? Lol?
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Right in the middle of the hand. He eventually folds
and the other player folds too.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
But like, by the way, that has been.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
A rule forever, one player per hand, right, Like, what
that guy was doing is just illegal, and no phones
during during a live hand has been a rule forever.
So what that guy did is just like breaking the
rules on every single front. He should have been disqualified.
Please continue, Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
So, And so they fall.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
I get the outcome I want, right, but I called
the floor over and and I'm like, we have multiple
witnesses of this player using a phone in a live
hand about the live hand to seek strategy advice, and
they didn't really and they kind of have this like, oh,
what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas attitude where they
try to like, I don't know, it's as like regis
(30:55):
as I've ever seen, and you have multiple witnesses and
so like to me, first of all, the phone in
a live hand thing, I would have like pretty strict,
absolutely right, and having that rule be strictly in I mean,
they have long been accusations of favoritism at the World
Chairs of Poker. Certain people feel helm with what not
(31:16):
getting away with more in terms of abusive dealers.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
But but yeah, oh, absolutely, you need to consistently enforce
the rules, and you need to enforce them otherwise they're
not rules. And the fact that the WSP is so
damn inconsistent is just absolutely not acceptable. And you cannot
blame the players though for that, like you know, you
(31:41):
have to blame the fact that their rules are inconsistent
and in the use of real time assistants, et cetera.
What is true is that the rule was also ridiculously vague, right,
part of it was just announced and never in the
rule book, And they said that the enforcement would be
at the sole discretion of the floor staff, which is
(32:02):
once again totally bonkers. If you really want to solve
this problem, you have to spell out what you can't do,
and then you have to say exactly what the penalties
will be.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Yeah, because poker players of all people are gonna solve
for the equilibrium, right and they if they know that,
if there is a history of these rules being enforced
as slaps on the wrist at most and not at
all at least, then they're gonna cheat, and they're gonna
or not cheat, but they're gonna, you know, color within
and maybe slightly outside of the lines. Now, look, when
(32:34):
you hear Jonathan, he'll say that whatever he was hearing
on the rail wasn't that helpful in real time, which
I actually believe.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
I believe that as well. It's really hard. By the
way I have been heads up, I have both won
and lost in that situation. I did not get assistance
either time. But when I have tried to, like people
have sent me hands when I've been on televised tables
because and then during breaks you review those hands, and
sometimes it is helpful, and sometimes it just kills you
because your brain goes into overload and you're just thinking,
(33:06):
oh shit, you know I made this mistake. You get
two in your head and it really can fuck with you.
So I don't know, you know, I think it goes
both ways.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Yeah, if I made a bad fold an hour ago.
I'm not sure that it's helping me whatsoever to say, oh, actually,
actually he had a gut shot.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
He was bluffing there with.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
That said, I mean, I look, the World Series gets
a lot of mileage out of its brand, and we
like the brand too. We've talked about the World Series
half the segments we've done on the show so far.
But this is a case where they're shooting themselves in
the foot by not thinking carefully through like brand management.
I mean, I assume they'll say no laptops on the rail,
(33:47):
which doesn't I mean, should also be no phones on
the rail or no phones?
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Yeah, I mean, if it were up to me, right,
if I were doing the rules of the World Series,
I would do, first of all, no electronics at televised
or streamed tables, and whenever I play in streamed games.
By the way, that's already the case. We give up
our phones. They're put away on breaks, you can get them, right,
So I'm fine with that. Sure, I like listening to
(34:10):
music sometimes, but like that's totally cool. So at the
table itself, zero electronics when it's a streamed table, when
it's a final table, not just the main event, at
the main event. No electronics at the rail. You can
leave the rail get electronics, but I think that the
most important thing is no electronics at the rail or
no contact with the rail other than like high five, right,
(34:31):
But no strategy advice, no electronic kind of back and
forth until you're.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
On a break.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
But if I were the ones doing the rules, that's
what I would do, and for next year, I would
also have just explicit rules. No solvers when you are
inside the tournament area in the hallways, just like no
solvers if anyone sees you on the phone with solvers,
as you said, Nate, like you were even like hesitant
to open things on a break. And I think that
(34:57):
that is, you know, absolutely the way to go, especially
like if you're at the table, like if you're at
a you know, I don't think there should be a
three strike policy. I think strike one, you know, you
get a major penalty, not one round. I would give
more round strike to disqualification, and strike three. After you're disqualified,
you're disqualified from the whole fucking series. You're out.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Yeah, come back next year, right exactly.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
Okay, Well, our interview with Jonathan will air next So
we're going to welcome him to the show.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
So we're really excited to have Jonathan to mya on
the winner of the twenty twenty four main event, which
is the largest WSP main event in history. So Jonathan,
thank you. First of all, congratulations, thank you, and thanks
for having me. I know, I know that we're both
very excited.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
Oh I'm really excited. And it hasn't sunk in yet.
It's partially sunk in because the money is in my
bank account, so that part is sunk in the rest
of it.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Penny, are you afraid you're gonna wake up one morning
and like it was just a dream or it was
a typo or something in your ATM receipt.
Speaker 4 (36:17):
I thought that when I really watched it, somebody I'm
getting punched in the face and then the dream's over.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
I mean, what kind of mentality did you go into
the main event with this year? Or it's just like
it's a tournament. I play a lot of tournaments. Did
you Did you have anything specially you did to prep
this year?
Speaker 4 (36:33):
Nothing special? The prep beforehand, because once you get there
in the summer for the series, what you got, what
you got. I went in there saying that you're eventually
going to bust the main in some way and just
deal with it, because I see a lot of people
getting super depressed. Day one bus, day two bus, I
see them drinking. Everyone does their own thing to keep
(36:56):
their sanity. It's basically keeping your sanity. You see. There
were few people, even they're in the main. A couple
of bad things happen and then they lost their minds,
and that can get expensive. The latter it gets, the
letter it gets when you lose your mind, the more
expensive it is. Because okay, it starts as a ten K,
(37:16):
so they take what is it's eight hundred seven hundred dous,
So you're playing a ninety three hundred and on day
two you're basically playing like a fifteen K. When you
get to the final table, you're basically playing what is
at that point in a two and a half million
dollar buying sit and go.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
That's looking at it. I've actually never heard someone describe
it in quite those terms. So of course, you know,
we're we're interested. You know, obviously it's absolutely incredible that
you won. And how does it feel to have kind
of a controversy attached to it with all of the
for people who don't know there's some controversy that Dom
(37:55):
was on the rail with a laptop during the final table,
and why don't yeah, why don't we just get your
take on it.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
I mean Dom brought the laptop and it was what
I was like, my job was to play, and he
said I'll take care or whatever, and basically advising me
on breaks or whenever there's an opportunity, like any game adjustments,
anything he sees, and if there's anything I decided to
on the fly, that was okay, just to do it,
(38:23):
and you were still playing poker. Kind of there's only
there's only so much that can be done, Like the
study was done, but you know, you just don't it
was well as you don't know how everybody was gonna play.
You know, we have a day. People changed their games,
they might not change their games, and it's kind of
(38:43):
a wait and see. So it's more adjusting to the
situation on the fly. H Clearly there's a feed there
because you'd be crazy not to get the hands from
an hour ago. It's just it's just another set of eyes.
Is he two sets of eyes? Because Joe's there too, so.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
He's running sims or solves and Dominic Netzsche for people
don't know is no is one of the purest most
gto minds and poker meaning game theory optimal. He owns
a training site called.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Dt dt O or something very optimal optimal.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
So is he running his dt O sims on slots
from an hour, spots from an hour ago or what?
Speaker 2 (39:26):
What's he using the laptop for?
Speaker 4 (39:29):
I think he was chatting with a bunch of people. Uh.
I know we did run his dt O stuff the prep,
but those weren't Those weren't on the screen. I know
that because there was a lot of drilling post lop spots.
It's okay, okay, what do you do here? What do
you do here? What do you do here? So whatever
(39:50):
he was doing to adjust, I don't know what the
process was at all. And he's like, don't worry about it.
My jobs to play.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
What did you understand the prevailing World series rule to
be about about using solvers or any type of And
to be clear, no one at all is accusing you
yourself of having done anything.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
It was your your rail.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
But what did you understood understand the rule to be
in general about kind of celebri use.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
I remember the twenty twenty three year rule, but it
was more of than a dendem and there was an
announcement and then the twenty twenty four rules said nothing
about the sword, if you start, if you search in there,
nothing about a computer or nothing else, like it's well
established in a hand with cards in front of you,
(40:43):
no electronics, no cell phone, which is you know, on
day one and for years been very loosely enforced. So
it's you know, it's basically once the hands out, my
understanding is all electronics are gone. And that's basically my
basic understanding of it.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Yeah, I mean, I think I think as far as
the written rules that that is correct, that there was
nothing explicit in there. There wasn't announce made at the
beginning of every single event after the first week or
so to try to address this, but to say that
you know, no solvers in the tournament area at all,
and you obviously, like I said, and I've written about this,
(41:22):
you didn't have a solver. I don't think you actually
broke any rules. But you know, given that, what is
your take on kind of what the optics of the
situation are and how would you you know, how would
you advise the World Series handle this? In twenty twenty five,
because obviously right now, you know we're done, right like
we're we're done with the World Series. So what would
what would you say kind of should be should be
(41:45):
the norm going forward?
Speaker 4 (41:47):
So the just sure fireway to do it is you
would have to strictly enforce a strictly enforced the electronics rule.
You know, day ones, day two's, you know, out of
parts of the tournament, there's a lot of new dealers
(42:07):
of the series. They're already over well do we want
to do that? You know that that's a road that
can get ugly fast, and I've seen it get ugly
already with the electronics people yelling, yelling at each other,
yelling at dealers. Dealers get frustrated. A second, if if
you really really wanted to do something, you could go
(42:29):
the chess route and put us in the glass key.
The downside of that is the production value goes way down.
A lot of the production value I've heard from it
is having the crowd there, having the noise, having the atmosphere,
and you'll lose that. So now you have to weigh
(42:51):
how pure you want the competition to be. Two other
factors that may make the game more appealing or more exciting,
or better for production or better for broadcasts, and the
given the range of answers on the air and everybody
(43:12):
yelling at each other, I don't know if there's ever
a correct answer to this.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Well, we'll see what the WSOP does. But just I
don't want to end on that note. I want to
end on the note of once again, like, whatever whatever
happens in twenty twenty five, you defeated over a ten
thousand players, the most ever. That's absolutely incredible. You should
be very proud, and I hope that you don't let
(43:37):
this kind of take that experience. What are you going
to do with your winnings?
Speaker 4 (43:42):
I've already moved money into a bunch of savings vehicles
before the tax bill comes, which is going to be
very large, I might as well collect interest on it
before I decide what I actually want to do for growth.
I'm probably going to stay in my lane as far
as poker goes gives me ability that think takes some
(44:06):
good tournaments that might be out of my normal buying
range and fire at them, but mostly like I'm going
to probably be camping out in what I call mid Steaksville.
I don't think I'm beating ten K six max. I'm
not beating twenty five K six maxis I might have
been slightly beating them ten years ago, but everyone got smarter,
(44:29):
everybody got better, and information is better out there and
more refined. Even the players that are bad are still
pretty good.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Yeah, well, we're going to be rooting for you in
mid Stakesville. Congratulations again. We're really glad that you were
able to come on and share your experience with us.
And yeah, we hope that you now take some time
to relax and really be proud of what you've accomplished.
Speaker 4 (44:53):
Definitely taking time to relax right now. Thanks a lot
for having me.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
Thanks Cool.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Risky Business is hosted by me Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
And met Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
The show was a co production of Pushkin Industry US
and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by Isabel Carter. Our
associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our engineer is Sarah Bruger.
Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
If you want to listen to an AD free version,
sign up for Pushkin Plus For six ninety nine a month.
You get access to ad free listening. Thanks for tuning in.
Hosts And Creators
Maria Konnikova
Nate Silver
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