June 6, 2024 • 48 mins
This week on Risky Business, Nate gives his analysis of what Trump’s guilty verdict may mean for the election, Maria shares the biggest mistakes she’s seen at the World Series of Poker so far, and Nate reveals an interesting ripple in the sports betting ecosystem ahead of the NBA Finals.
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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 Kanakova.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
And I'm Nate Silver. Today on the show, we'll talk
about former President Donald Trump, who was convicted last week
on thirty four at Filamy Charges.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
And we're also going to be talking about an update
from the first week of the World Series. I'm going
to go into some of the psychological mistakes I've seen
people make. But we're also going to give a big
shout out to Nate, who is deep in an event
of his own, fifteenth out of over twenty five hundred
players who started this event.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
And this week Thursday night, if you listen to this
on Thursday, the NBA Finals begin. The Boston Celtics are
at home against Dallas Mavericks. There's a big gap between
betting markets and Cisco models. We will discuss why.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
So, Nate, before we get into the Trump verdict, I
want to talk about I just want to nod to
the fact that you're even here this morning, so in
at like four thirty am, so I'm back on the
East coast right now taping this from New Haven. So
I get a text because as it turns out, I
forgot to turn off my phone, so that was good. Sorry,
(01:40):
it's okay, it's okay. Then I turned it off after
that from Nate saying, you know, just bagged for the
day in the fifteen hundred six Max. I am number
fifteen of like three hundred and something left in chips.
I'll still make the recording. And this is ten am
my time, so Eastern time at seven am, Vegas time,
(02:01):
and Nate is here and let the record show risky
business listeners. Nate is a much more devoted host than
I am, because damned if I would be recording after
bagging at two am, five hours later, I would have
sent a text to everyone being like, guys, we're really
really sorry, we can't record today. I am fifteenth in
(02:24):
chips and right now recording is negative ev for me.
So anyway, Nate, thank you for being here. Let's get
into Trump, so we'll.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Talk about that. But look, I mean it happens. We're
going to talk on this episode about kind of real
life intruding into best laid plans, because we'd be hypocrites
if we if we didn't. By the way, I don't
want to make this Trump thing about us and me also,
but It's another thing that, like, I did not plan
on Trump getting convicted of all these felony charges while
(02:53):
I was out at the World Series, and that also
kind of blew up a day. But you know, we'll
talk about Trump first on his own terms and then
in the polast I would get more into planning versus reality.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So let's do that. So, as our listeners probably know,
last week, former President Donald Trump was convicted guilty on
all thirty four charges that he was up on in
New York. So Nate, let's talk about that. Let's talk
about what that means. And actually let's start with the
(03:25):
fact that you said that you did not expect this
to happen while you were at the World Series. Is
that because you thought that the verdict would be later
or because you did not expect him to be convicted
on all of the thirty four charges.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Marie, I think you would probably have a better term
for this than I would. It's a cognitive load kind
of thing. Does some extent. I think people who are
able to navigate multiple tasks are able to kind of
shut things out and say I'm going to ignore this
for now. Right at some point I understand that like
Trump is before this jury, and if you've actually like
(03:58):
looked at prediction markets, I'll took about that on the
show from time to time. They had expected a verdict
last week, and in fact expected a guilty verdict more
likely than not. But no, this is not like two
kind of the smart sharp traders. This is not an
unexpected outcome. Trump had not been I didn't watch the trial,
I want to be clear about that, but by the
(04:18):
conventional wisdom people who watch it more closely, Trump had
had not offered very much compelling argumentation. He had fallen
asleep at various points during the trial. I think he's
a little bit defiant obviously about seeing it as an
opportunity for like a campaign exercise, spin exercise. And you know,
I assume he thinks he won't go to actual jail
(04:41):
at any point, although there's some chance in theory that
he could. We are not legal analysts. I don't know
if we're going not for much opinion about like is
this the right case quote unquote to bring against Trump.
I'm here to analyze public opinion a little bit more.
And our guess is about what effect this might have
on the polls most members of the public, if they
(05:01):
were aware of the trial at all, did not expect
a guilty verdict. I think because Trump has kind of
of skated by so often with with relatively few consequences
to become president after all for four years and may
become president again for another four years. Expected there not
to be consequences for his actions. So that's one reason
(05:25):
why you might expect it to affect the polls, is
because it comes as a surprise to to rank and
file voters.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
But isn't it true? And please correct me if I'm
wrong that New York is the only state where he
has actually faced consequences because he did have to pay
for you know, the hush many payments he did, and
the defamation earlier, which.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Is a separate case, right, and each Jan Carol sexual
assault case. So yeah, New York is kind of and
and you know, I don't know how much you want
to get into the I mean, this was considered of
the four criminal cases, which is separate, by the way
from the defamation case, which is a civil case, right.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
This one was considered the weakest. Is is kind of
the background that I had seen.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Correct, I mean, the way Republicans would convey it is
it's kind of like al Capone being convicted on income
tax fraud instead of all the other stuff that al Capone, the.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Guy was convicted, it didn't matter, that was on income
tax fraud.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Look, let me so let me you want to give
us a little bit. You know, I am worried a
little bit because the argument that worries me a bit
is that in authoritarian countries, oftentimes, if there is an
opposition leader who you want to disenfranchise, then you trump
(06:48):
up some legal charges that may range from technically correct
but exaggerated to entirely fabricated. You know, Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor,
had had talked about, I mean kind of campaigned on
being tougher on Trump. Right, it's in Manhattan, the place
where something like eighty five nine of the voters that
jurypool voted for Biden, although to be fair, there are
(07:09):
some of them consumed media from sites like truth Social
Trump's alternative to Twitter slash x. But look, the fact
that Trump has been prosecuted and criticized and persecuted that
may feed into his appeal for a certain strain of voter. However,
(07:29):
given that reality, which you cannot undo, for better or worse,
this point I think Biden is much better off with
a guilty verdict than an acquittal, right, because you can't
take back the fact that there are all these charges.
You can't take back the fact that, like you know,
to me, the election overturning January sixth stuff is a
(07:50):
couple of orders of magnitude, meaning literally hundreds of times
more serious than anything involving a former porna. But you know, again,
plans to always kind of match the deal reality. I
think the more buttoned up prosecutions in the January sixth
try have taken a long time. But anyway, Trump has
(08:12):
been convicted on this first set of charges. He will
almost for sure appeal. I would think the sentencing phase
will still occur in July, just before the Republican National Convention.
But that's where we stand.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Yeah, And obviously I'm not an expert in the polling
part of this, And so I'm curious because you know,
I've been reading the news like I'm a good news consumer.
I've been following the trial. I'm still a little bit
bummed that it wasn't televised, but it wasn't so I
was following from Afar and I have read kind of
takes on both sides that, as you said, you know,
(08:49):
given that this happened and that we can't control the timing,
it's great that at least the verdict was guilty. However,
I have also seen kind of the other side that
this just strengthens Trump's position among a huge, kind of
swath of Trump voters and that a lot of people
see this as kind of part of his brand.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
This is the guy who said I can stand in
the middle of fIF if I haven't even shoot someone
and still be elected. And here he is saying, like, see,
I don't follow your laws, like I'm you know, I'm
a renegade. I'm my own man. And they're like, yeah,
you know, And this this just shows that, you know,
the judicial system is corrupt. So I guess there are
two separate questions here. One, do you have a sense
(09:28):
now or is it a little bit too early to
figure out how this is going to go down kind
of in the polls in the Trump base? And two,
and this is a kind of a separate question, let's
talk a little bit afterwards about the judicial impact of
this and kind of the delegitimization of the judicial system
that Trump is trying to push as a story.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
So as gamblers or poker players, we think in terms
of the marginal effect on something. Right, if you beamed
to twenty twenty four from ten years ago, you'd be
shocked by a lot of things. You'd be shocked that
a a Town Trump had become president. You'd be be
(10:10):
that Trump had was running for president again and in
fact was tied her ahead in the polls, despite his
various criminal charges, and how kind of his first term
ended with January sixth, and with COVID, you'd be surprised
that the trial wasn't in some sense a bigger deal.
I mean, people have been pretty tuned out to this
until the verdict occurred, in to even people like me,
(10:32):
I guess, in the news business to some extent. However,
people in our world, Maria, the poker kind of gambling world,
think in terms of what's priced in quote unquote to
the stock. So if you look at betting markets a
week ago, which was just before when we're taking its
its Tuesday morning Vegas time, in prodiction markets, Trump had
(10:54):
a fifty three percent chance of winning the election before
the verdict. Now that is fifty one percent, So he
has follown by two percentage points relative to where he
was pre verdict. And by the way, because people assumed
before or that he was more likely than not to
be guilty. If this had come totally on the blue,
it might have been a bigger shift. But basically, like
(11:15):
people putting money on the line, follow the conventional wisdom
that outlined earlier, which is that you know, being a
convicted felon is probably bad, right, I mean, this is
kind of where we are probably in politics now. It's
certainly worse for Trump than being an acquitted, accused felon who,
even in New York could have been found guilty. I
(11:36):
mean imagine that, right, That would have been I think
a big feather in Trump's cap and a big disaster
for Biden. Now, with that said, for the most part,
now people are making educated guesses about the impact. There
is some kind of instant turnaround polling, some of that
shows Biden gaining a point or two. Net is actually
(11:58):
one poll from Morning Consult that has Biden actually losing
a point or so. But we don't have a high
quality traditional pollster going and doing a proper sample with
a proper amount of time, asking the right questions to
a demographically balanced sample, because that just takes a little
bit of time, and the Polsters apparently didn't necessarily plan
and advance with this verdict occurring either.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
They're probably at the World Series of Poker with you.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
You never you never know, Maria, I mean, you never
know who you'll see at the World Series. However, this
is important because Trip raised one hundred and forty one
million dollars in May, bolstered in part by this guilty verdict.
He had a massive amount of four eight hour fundraising.
I think money's a little bit overrated in presidential campaigns.
(12:42):
But the point is, yet his base is really enthused,
and by the way, Biden's base is really enthused too.
They're tweeting lots of memes about, you know, Donald Trump
in a prison jumpsuit and things like that. I wouldn't
have dared to even watch MSNBC. What would have happened
(13:04):
on Thursday and Friday and all of that right to me, though,
these are not the voter who matter because their votes
are already locked in. Instead, it's the kind of casual,
normy voter who says, no matter what else, Donald Trump
is a condicted felon, and even the New York Post,
for example, which I used. The New York Post is
(13:24):
like a benchmark of conservative but not totally red pilled
Fox News opinion. They're trying to in a competitive news market.
They're trying to, you know, they like the actual news.
And the New York Post had liked the banner headline
about Trump being guilty. They weren't trying to spin it
too much. So everybody saw this headline about Trump is
(13:44):
guilty of thirty six or thirty four. I mean, Trump
is guilty of thirty four.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Fallon each Inflation's rail. Inflation's rail.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Another problem for Bide. But look, but like part of
it is what are the basic, simple, stylized facts about
the election? You know, for Biden, the fact is that
prices are a lot higher than they were four years ago.
Now you can debate that and say, well, most that
happened in twenty twenty two, and inflation has slowed down now.
And by the way, you've had inflation all around the world,
(14:15):
and it's kind of maybe not entirely Biden's fault, and
and and the jobs market is good. But in politics,
when you're explaining you're losing, is the is the axiom,
It's simplar like when Biden is the fact that Biden
is eighty one years old, and I think often looks
an acts like it is a simple fact. By the way,
Trump is seventy seven, will turn seventy eight before too
(14:36):
much longer. You know, that fact is very hard for
Biden to overcome. You can spend and say, well, Trump
is almost as old and Biden Biden is, you know,
managing the toughest job in the world, and whatever else.
We have better healthcare, But like the more explaining you're doing,
you're losing it. In this case, it's Trump and his
team on their heels, right, They're the ones who are
(14:57):
saying this prostitution is unfair and how can you expect
a jury verdict in New York to be fair? And
blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Right, Yeah, and I'd actually I'd love to just pause
and just go deep, more deeply on to that point,
because I think that elections aside, right, since we don't
have the poll numbers yet, and we probably won't when
this podcast comes out in a few days, but what
we are already seeing is kind of what I'd alluded
to before. The arguments that Trump has been making for
(15:26):
quite some time about the fact that you can't trust
our judicial system, right, the judicial system is corrupt, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera. And he's been making this argument
at every single level of government. And I think that
that's kind of another a long term consequence that might
actually kind of last longer than this particular election, this
particular trial, because what he's doing is undermining one of
(15:49):
the pillars of democracy and the system that traditionally the
American public has had the most trust in. And now
we see that trust eroding because Trump keeps repeating over
and over and over these statements which are blatant lies.
But as a psychologist, I can say that it doesn't
matter because the more someone repeats a lie, it starts
to feeling like the truth.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah. Look, trust in almost every major American institution to
some extent. The military is an exception, but almost every
major American institution has declined over the past ten twenty
thirty years. How much Trump is a cause of that
versus a symptom is a debate I'm sure that academics
(16:34):
and historians will have for a long time. I mean,
you know, Trump takes advantage of low trust voters. We're
in a downward trust spiral in the US. Trump is
a major kind of cog in that machine, but not
the only cog. I mean, I don't know, I Maria
(16:55):
on the show. I want to be able to express
ambiguous or ambivalent opinions. I have ambivalent feelings about the
prosecution by Alvin Bragg. If I spent one hundred more
hours looking at it, I might have stronger feelings one
way or the other. But you know, I do think
it's probably right. I think if you kind of surveyed
most nonpartisan legal experts, they would say that, like to
(17:18):
turn these into felony charges is not unheard of, but
is unusual. And in a cistical sense, you would infer
that Trump's status as a former president kind of as
part of that. But you know, it's not great for
the country that you have a active presidential candidate who's
(17:39):
fifty to fifty to become president again, and that it
took so long to bring these charges to trial, that
the ones that do go to trial are I think,
by anyone's definition, the weakest charges by in the more
kind of partisan jurisdiction. It's not it's not ideal.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
No, it's not so, Nate. If I'm going to go
back through this and try to metabolize all of it,
what are the key Let's say two things I should
take away from this analysis from our conversation.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Look, I say number one, pay more attention to the
marginal voter, not the cable news punted, but the marginal
voter who was not paying attention to every detail in
the white and the race for the White House, but
who sees big banner headlines Trump convicted, Trump guilty. Number two,
be patient as you wait for the polls, because these
(18:30):
marginal voters are hard to reach. The quick and dirty
polls may not reach them yet, so we're going on
limited information. And number three, I think separate out the
question of is this good or bad for the country
from is this good or bad for Joe Biden and
Donald Trump? Right, I mean, those are different questions. We've
tried to mainly focus on the electoral impact here and
(18:54):
not pretend that we're legal scholars.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Nate, I am so excited for you. Week one of
the World Series has wrapped. I unfortunately have left Las Vegas,
so I haven't been able to play after the first
two events because I have some other commitments. I'll be
back next week. But you, while I've been traveling the
world to glamorous New Haven, you've been running up quite
(19:33):
the trip stack in the fifteen hundred dollars six max event,
which is incredibly exciting. So you are in the money.
So for people who don't play poker, that means that
Nate has already cashed. So every single player eliminated from
this point on is going to be making money. You
are about to start day two of the tournament. So
you found your first bag of the series, which means
(19:55):
you've bagged up chips. There are over three hundred players left.
I don't remember how many. I looked this up before
we started taping, but I don't remember. It's like three
hundred and thirty something like that. Does that sound right
to you?
Speaker 2 (20:07):
And it's like, what those counts are? Delay? It's like,
all right, so twenty five hundred started, of which about
I think one to ninety remain, and I'm in fifteenth place.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Sound yeah, So Nate, you are in fifteenth place, and
we're going to talk about the three biggest mistakes I've
been seeing at the tables in the week that I played.
But it seems like before we get into that, it
seems like you have probably not been making these mistakes
because you are now fifteenth in chips. So just you know,
first of all, congratulations, so well say thank you. We
(20:40):
are say thank you, we are able to Okay, thank you, Maria. Okay,
now I won't Okay.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
This is fun because we can put this episode in
a little bit of a time capsule again in the
realities of the highly produced podcast world. We are taping
this on early Tuesday morning, Vegas time. It will come
out in your feeds on Thursday. By the time you
listen to this, the tournament that I'm playing right now
will be over. I could have won my first bracelet.
Much more likely suggests I will been knocked out at
(21:11):
some point, you know, just after lunch today, and then
be disappointed about that's about.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Just after lunch. You're lasting through lunch. That's great.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
I mean, look, I do have a lot of chips,
It's true, a lot of chips. I have a lot
of short stacks at my table. So but like one
thing I like to do if I make a Day
two or Day three is to situate myself in terms
of rational expectations, right, in this tournament. Last year, only
ten percent of the field who made Day two made
(21:43):
the final day Day three. Now I have a well
above average chip stack, but even knowing that, I know
that seventy five ish percent of the time, if I'm
being realistic, my day will end with busting out of
this tournament and deciding whether to enter a different tournament instead.
So I think always kind of situating yourself and understand
that you can have a great Day one and the
(22:03):
odds are still against you. Just it's a very very
hard marit to winning tournament or making a final table
when there are twenty five hundred people. You need to
kind of keep rolling the dice and having it coming
up six is like three times in a row, or
maybe more than that, more than that, right, like yeah,
four times in a row. Right, It's pretty it's pretty
hard for that to for that to happen. And having
(22:24):
the first six and the second six come up six
is is just kind of the first the first you know,
halfway through the marathon, so to speak.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Well, I think that that's a very healthy attitude. I
think too many people get very excited about having lots
of chips. That said, having lots of chips is better
than not having lots of chips. And from what I
know about your playing style, you're an aggressive player who
knows how to push that advantage, which I think is
really important. And I think you have a very good
(22:52):
attitude coming into this. So now let's you know, have
a positive mindset and say that this is going to
be your first bracelet or at least a final table.
And I say that completely selflessly because we have no
swap in this event, because I have not played it.
So so this is this is all you, and I
(23:14):
really I wish you the best, and let me give
you some advice for the three top things not to
do that I've seen.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Yeah, what have you been What have you been seeing that? Uh,
that players shouldn't be doing?
Speaker 1 (23:27):
All right, So I've been seeing a lot of things
that players shouldn't be doing. So I played, let's say,
I played two World Series events this past week, and
then I played a win event, so the Win eleven
hundred event as well. So I've seen a few different
player pools. And this is me generalizing from everything that
I've been seeing, what are the three most common mistakes?
(23:49):
By far? Number one that I have seen is what's
known in psychology as the sunk cost fallacy, and what
the sunk cost fallacy means is that you make a
decision and then when the decision environment changes, when the
information changes, when the data change, and your decision no
longer makes sense. Instead of walking away, instead of saying, Okay,
(24:13):
I made the right decision before it's no longer the
right decision, you stay. You stick with it. You put
good money after bad, you know, good time after bad.
You stay in that decision because you say, well, I've
already invested so much. In poker, there's a concept known
as pot committed, meaning I've already put so many chips
in the middle that I am committed to the pot.
(24:35):
And I think that that is actually one of the
stupidest concepts in poker. I mean, I just think it's asinine,
like so so dumb. I cannot I can't even begin
to say. Because decisions are not made in a vacuum.
It does not matter how many chips you put in
one move ago you know, pre flop or on the flop,
as long as you have chips left. If you now
(24:56):
know that your beat right, if you now know that
the decision environment has changed, fold walk away, keep the
chips that you have. It's a huge lesson for life,
by the way, being able to walk away, and I
still have something left, and I should, you know, I
should be able to use that. I think that's a
really important life skill. But one of the most important
(25:17):
that I've learned from poker is kind of that. And
let me tell you a specific hand where I saw
this play out that I think is kind of illustrative
of this idea. So in this hand, I think we're
playing eight handed, and I raise from under the gun,
so I'm first to act, and I have pocket kings,
(25:37):
so I raise, and then another player three bets me,
so he re raises from the button. So that's, you know,
very strong position. Obviously he'll always be lost to act.
The button is yours, your best position. I don't love,
you know, playing huge pots out of positions. So I
four bet, which means I then reraise him. At this point,
the only hand I lose to is aces, and I'm
(25:59):
not particularly you know, you can't see monsters under the bed,
so I reraise and he calls and we go to
the flop, so it's just the two of us and
the flop comes Queen High and it's all hearts. I
think it's six or eight Queen, all hearts. I do
not have the King of Hearts. I check, and he bets,
(26:21):
and I call, even though you know, at this point
I could be drawing dead, right, he could have Ace
King of Hearts, right, he could have Ace Jack of Hearts.
He could already have flopped the nuts. And he beats
pretty big, but I can't fault to one bet and
then the turn is an off suit king. So at
this point I now have top set, and so I
(26:43):
check and he bets again, but he bets really small, right,
So he bets like a quarter pot, and I was like, okay,
you do not have a flush right at this point,
it really just looked like he just did not like
that king at all. And so I raise because you know,
that seems like the appropriate thing to do. And he
(27:05):
does not have that many chips left behind, and you
can just see him just completely pained, and then just
like shakes his head and like puts all his chips
in the middle and he turns over pocket queens and
he's like, I knew I was be And I was like, well,
you know, if you don't say that, right, if you
know your beat just fold. He still had a lot
of chips behind, but he just couldn't let it go.
(27:27):
He had flopped, you know, top set. He knew that
he was kind of ahead of me, and he even
though the world changed on the turn, he just couldn't
acknowledge it and he couldn't walk away. And I've seen
that so many times.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
I mean, look, in his defense, he could think that
you have a flush and he has some outs to
draw to a full house. But yeah, poker players stick
their chips in almost as a form of self punishment sometimes,
you know, I'm a fish. And by the one thing,
(27:59):
as you were speaking, Maria, you know, obviously if there's
new information, I think also people need to give themselves
permission to read things, things right, to say, maybe there's
not new information. But I've had time to think about
this more, and I just don't think it's plausible that
my opponent is bluffing very often. Here. I had time
while the dealer was dealing the cards to think about,
(28:21):
like what bluff would Maria have in her range? And
like in this spot, it's hard on these flushboards with
the king coming, you know, making a life choice belatedly,
that's a positive life choice is still better than saying
it's a sunk cost. I can't make any change at all. Okay, Maria,
let's go into your tip or mistake. Yeah, tips for
(28:45):
last week. This speaks about mistakes were in the messy
real world. Now, what's mistake number two you've been seeing
at the time.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Yes, the mistake number two is actually probably one of
the most famous biases in psychology. And so it's always
so fun to me as a psychologist to see the
things that you know that theoretically should be very strong,
see them actually in reality play out this way. And
that's risk aversion. So this is part of Danny Knnoman
and Amos Turiski's famous prospect theory right where losses and
(29:14):
gains are looked at differently, and depending on how you
frame losses, depending on how you frame gains, people will
be more or less risk averse. And so what I
have seen is that people have been too risk averse
at stages of the tournament where they should be taking
risks because they value kind of their tournament life too
much and they don't understand how tournament poker works. So,
(29:37):
as an example, I saw a hand I was not
in this hand where someone raised, you know, someone re raised,
and then this person ended up folding Ace King face up,
aas King suited, having like thirty big blinds left saying
you know it's too early, it's too early for me
to flip, and it was just such a bad mistake.
Right when I saw that, I was like, what do
(29:59):
you mean it's too early to flip? You have thirty
big lines. That's not that you know you should be flipping.
You have to take those spots. If you're valuing your
tournament life, valuing not busting so incredibly highly. That means
that either you're playing too high. You know you're in
the wrong spot, because that's not the rational decision to make.
(30:19):
The flip side of this. At EPT Paris back in February,
which was won by Barney Boatman, who's kind of an
old school legend, there was a really great televised hand
where they were at the final table, the final two tables,
and someone ran kind of a big bluff against him,
putting him to the test. Right, Barney had to call
(30:40):
off all of his chips and it was a really
hard call. Barney finally made it, and when his opponent
kind of turned over the cards saw what Barney had
called with he said, how could you call for your
tournament life here? Like, you can't do that? And Barney
looks at him and says, it's my tournament life, not
my actual life. It's just such a great line because
(31:00):
that's how you have to write. It's fine to be
too risk averse when it's your actual life. It's when
you're playing in a tournament. You have to make those
calculated risks, have to take those slips, you have to
take those spots, otherwise you ain't ever winning a tournament.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Ria, I got news for you now that we're into
the second week of the World Series of Poker that
like that virginal risk aversion bubble has popped a little bit.
In the fifteen hundred yesterday, all my chips, or ninety
five percent of them are from making hands and extracting value.
The bluss were not working. I lost money on my
bluff yesterday, and I'm so many people believe it or
(31:35):
not actually like to fold to Sometimes people were getting
a little bit rambunctious. I think you kind of get
into this point in the tournament where maybe you have
fired four or five or six entries. People are getting
though a little bit friskier, I think, with kind of
a lot of these smaller events. And the Mystery Millions
(31:56):
is a tournament where you can enter like literally eight
times if you want the first event after that. See
people who are a little bit on tilt from you know,
literally as we're playing, by the way, people are drawing
prizes from this bounty pool winning a million bucks where
two and fifty thousand bucks, right, and here you are
plotting along your fifteen hundred dollars tournament. That was encouraging
(32:16):
I think a lot more risk taking. So so this
is self corrects a little bit. But I agree in
CHERYLD that as a default, as a default, even in
the poker world, as default, people are usually too risk averse.
For the Barney Boatmen reason that it's just a fucking
poker tournament, right, I understand that you make day two,
day three, the money can be significant. It's just a
(32:36):
fucking poker tournament.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
That's that's very true.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
If you're putting your life on your line to enter
the tournament, then you've made a bad decision in the
first place. So I can't really guide you. But but
this is kind of a laboratory where you can repeat
the experiment and enter a different tournament, especially the World Series.
And so don't be a knit is one of our
favorite things to say, and it means a neurotic risk averse,
(33:00):
you know, turn in the punch bowl basically, Maria.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Absolutely, So that's you know, that's number two. But I'm
glad that you're saying that it's been self correcting because
that actually goes to mistake number three that I've been seeing,
which is people becoming too emotional and making decisions based
on how they're feeling and what just happened, as opposed
to based on data and based on kind of what
(33:25):
they should be using in their logical rational decision making.
So they're going on tilt and basically making just really
egregious errors. So once again, you know, I think it's
always good to have an example. I was playing this
was I think it might have even been during the
five thousand dollars event. No, it was a five hundred
(33:46):
dollars event, so the second event, slightly smaller event. It
was a freeze out, which is important, which means people
can't read buy this is not the mystery bounty. And
I had a gentleman to my left who'd been, you know,
playing fairly. Well I didn't know him, but I think
he played a lot of poker, and then he got
into a spot against someone else where he was you know,
(34:08):
on the river and facing a huge bet and he
needed to decide whether or not he was going to call,
and he just tanked. And it's a pretty turbo structure, right.
The levels are thirty minutes long.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Meaning that you're a chip count dwindles and real or
in absolute terms.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Yeah, so very quickly, so you need to act quickly.
So here's this guy and he's been thinking for two minutes,
so I very I think nicely, and the tables agreed, said,
you know, I know you're in a tough spot, but
just so you know, I'm going to call the clock
in one minute, because you know, taking two minutes if
you think about it. I said, I was going to
(34:43):
call it at three minutes, right, so you're ten percent,
which is ten percent of the time. And I gave
him that warning and then he just like he you know,
puts in the call and it's the wrong call and
he loses the pot. And then he turns to me
and he says, well, it's only it's only a turbo.
If you're used to playing bullshit live events, this is
not a turbo structure. I was like, well, empirically it
(35:04):
is anyway, very next hand, I'm on the button and
he's in the small blind and I raise and he
just looks at me, and he goes, well, I'm all in,
and he just shoves and rips it, and then the
big blind folds and I have a six of spades,
which is a good hand, but not a great hand.
But given what just happened, I was like, I'm gonna call,
so I did. He had Queen five offsuit. Luckily he
(35:25):
didn't hit and I knocked him out. Don't be that guy.
It does not matter if you just made a bad decision.
Do not make another bad decision because of that. If
someone calls the clock on you. You know I didn't
even call the clock on him, right, Like, just do
not be that guy. Make rational decisions. Do not punt
with queen five offsuit, even though you still have a
(35:47):
ton of chips, just because you're pissed off and you
think that you know that someone's picking on you.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
I think the guy thing like not to be too
like woke here or anything. The guy thing is important though,
because like men with other men don't want to lose face,
and that can like manifest itself in different ways. But like,
I haven't been quite in that spot as often as
people seem to react to you that way, even though
(36:14):
I would have been probably more aggressive about just calling
the clock and not giving him like a warning. I
do think that, like, you know, men who feel like
they're embarrassed by women. I mean, this is not like
some deep breakthrough here, right, but like you know, men
who feel like they're embarrassed by women can kind of
go on tilts in different ways, and they might if
they're embarrassed by another guy.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yeah, no, I think that's very true. And I actually
wrote an entire piece about sexism and poker on my
substack this week, and some a guy also going on
tilt to a female gave me a ten ten thousand
dollars main events seat, so I'm very grateful for that.
So everyone, do not make this mistake unless you're a
bounty with ten thousand dollars on your head, in which case,
(36:57):
you know, please do emotionally tilt and give me your chips.
But Nate, I think that that is a you know,
great place to wrap it up, and to say again,
I trust that you will not make any of these
mistakes today. I hope you play well and may the
may the cards be with you, because that's you know,
that's the one thing that you can't control. So Nay
(37:31):
Risky business is still a young show. You know, we're
we're a month old, and I have already learned more
about basketball than I have learned during my entire life,
and here we are doing yet another basketball segment. Last week,
I when I told you that I was ready to
go to a next game, you informed me that unfortunately
they were already out, so you know, so that that
(37:54):
wasn't that wasn't great timing, So we'll have to go
next season. But you've also informed me, and I didn't
know that we're now starting the NBA Finals, which sounds really,
really exciting, and I'm gonna I'm gonna get some real
excitement going once I finally go to an NBA game.
I'm sure you will teach me to love it. But
for now, let me ask you who's playing in the
(38:16):
finals and why do we care?
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Mario? Are you? Are you anti sports and you want
to read The New Yorker? Are you one of those
call us at sports ball and things like that. I'm,
by the way, your hometown team, the Boston Celtics, is
one of the two teams involved in the NBA.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
That's exciting.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
I did. The other team is a Dallas Mavericks. Who
are I guess I was gonna say younger. They're not
that young, but they kind of overachieved expectations this year.
You know, I did a kind of preseason preview for
my newsletter subscribers at Silver Bulletin. Talked about every team.
Although I was very bullish in the Celtics. I was
(38:57):
kept on the Dallas Mavericks would even make the playoffs,
and here they are in the NBA finals. So what
the fuck do I know?
Speaker 1 (39:05):
I suppose so I didn't know who'd be in the finals,
and Nate, you don't know who would be in the
finals for either for.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Different reasons, I would say, But at the point is
the point is well taken?
Speaker 1 (39:16):
No, for the record, let the record show I am
not anti sport, and I'm very excited about getting excited
about sports once i know more about them.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Anti sport are you British? They call it like sport
singular instead of.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Playing anti sports sport. I just all right, fine, fine,
my fake English accent friend, I am not anti athletics
sports teams.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Okay, after you're not. You're not helping yourself here, I
don't think. Here's what I want to discuss though, and
we'll be short with this segment. There is a gap
here between kind of what the stats would say and
what the betting markets say. So, the Celtics in the
regular season went sixty four and eighteen, winning sixty four
(40:04):
games is a very very very good record. Dallas, by contrast,
went fifty five, zero and thirty two. They were a
number five seed. The Celtics were a number one seed.
The Celtics are twelve and two so far in the playoffs.
They have virtually swept every series. The Celtics have an
average victory margin of more than ten point eight points
(40:28):
per game or more than ten points per game, which
is one of the best in NBA history this year.
So if you look at this system like, I'm gonna
promote a system called EPM, which is by at the
site Dunks and Threes. It's a good, very good basketball
analysis site that rates individual players and has team projections.
Their projections have the Celtics with an eighty six percent chance.
(40:51):
Eighty six percent of the Celtics, who, by the way,
are have a home court in Boston's a good home
court advantage an eighty six percent chance of winning the finals.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Now, if I go down there, pretty high chance.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
It's a pretty high chance. But the NBA is a
game where a game of dominant compare, for example, a
basketball game to a football game. In the NBA, each
team has over one hundred posessions, maybe even one hundred
and ten or one hundred and twenty, given how fast
paced the game is nowadays. Right in the NFL, a
(41:25):
team might have what is it like, you know, twelve
or thirteen possessions in a game, so roughly one tenth
as much. If you roll a dice one hundred and
ten times versus twelve times, then you match the kind
of long run statistical distribution much more closely with a
larger sample size. So in the NBA, small edges shooting
(41:49):
thirty nine percent from three point range instead of thirty
six percent. That plays out when you're taking all these
shots per game, so that the better team usually wins
in the NBA, like almost no other sport, right Michael
Jordan's Bulls when he was on the team won six championships.
The Warriors won whatever it was three and four years.
(42:09):
So again, my favorite basketball stat site, dunksan threes dot
com gives Boston an eighty six point four percent chance
of winning. If I believe that number, I can go
down to the sportsbook here I'm staying at the Cosmo,
I guess, or anywhere in Vegas and make what, in
theory is a very very profitable bet. That bet implies
they only have to win seventy percent of the time.
(42:32):
Seven zero eighty six is a lot higher than seventy
to a gambler or a poker player. And yet, Maria,
I have not I have not made that bet yet,
despite having been in Vegas all week?
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Why haven't you made that bet? Nate?
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Partly because I should say, full disclosure, I probably will
by the time you listen to this. Have made some
amount of bets somewhere on the Celtics. But like, look,
one reason, a couple reasons why. Number one is that
I have repeatedly been low on the Mavericks throughout the season, right,
(43:10):
which may mean that there is just something that I
don't understand and I have to, like concede that the
public betting public, which is very sharp and the aggregate
knows something or not noticing that that I don't, but
like has a better read on the situation. Now, look,
the NBA Finals is such a big public event that
you have a lot of how should we say, a
(43:32):
lot of dumb money on the series. Sometimes one belief
of that I think maybe is not dumb is that
Luka Doncic is a Dallas Maverick superstar. I don't what
you want to call him. He's kind of like plays
point bar guard, but kind of like a small forward
slash unicorn bowling ball in his own way. He is
pretty clearly the best player in the series. I think
(43:54):
people are now calling him maybe the best player, at
least the best offensive player in the NBA, probably not
the best all around self.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
So what you're saying is he's the Caitlyn Clark of
the team.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Caitlyn Clark is off to a little bit of a
rocky start here, actually, Maria, Yeah, no, yeah, I don't
think he would be flattered by the Caitlin Clark comparison.
No he is. I'm not sure how you what's the
right compare. I mean, he's not super athletic, So I'm
not like, oh, he's the Michael Jordan or Lebron James,
because those guys are like much better athletes. We get
(44:26):
into like a little bit of like racial profiling. I mean,
Larry Bird is not the worst comparable for Luca necessarily
where he shoots, he rebounds. Larryberd was a better defensive
player than Luca most likely, but Luca's more dominant. He
can take over a game. We're talking about dominance here
and in general, when you have the best player in
(44:48):
the in the game, then your team wins, especially in
the finals where everyone's playing maximum minutes, maximum effort, so
it's a best player versus best team thing. I think
the kind of public believes heavily in the best player.
They kind of also think the Celtics are chokers. They've
been in the finals before, they've made deep playoff runs
(45:09):
ended badly. That's probably just like it's look, I think
you're bad. Is probably halfway between the stats and the public,
which means I should go and make some type of
bet on Boston. Maybe emotional because Boston has burned them before,
but you know, by the numbers they are a fantastic
basketball team, they're at home. They're very deep. They do
(45:33):
have very good players. I mean, Jason Tatum might be
the sixth best player in the league, Jalen Brown might
be the you know, thirtieth best player, Derek White might
be the twenty eighth best player or something. Right, they're
very deep, and I think you know, you hear people
at the poker tables being like, well, well, I don't know,
the Celtic are jokers, Like it's actually a reason to
bet on the Celtics when like generic poker players are like,
(45:56):
who don't know that much about basketball?
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Are?
Speaker 2 (45:58):
That's you know, they're the ones who are like helping
to set the market line. I think their rationales are
not that compelling. But at the same time, I'm not
sure I want to bet that much against against Luca.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Yeah, yeah, I think that that's a really that's a
really great point about how betting works in general. Right,
you do need to have some sort of idea about
where you are relative to the public, but also how
much you personally are willing to risk, right, Like, can
you risk ruin with with these odds or not? And
(46:32):
I think usually, especially from what I understand of sports betting,
the answer usually is no, Please don't right that there
is uncertainty and emotions do get into it on every
single line, and as accurate as a market might be,
as accurate as a line might be, there will be
kind of emotional betting and shit happens, right Like, this
(46:54):
is a game of individuals, And I think that that's
kind of the other point you're making. Someone might be
having a great day, somebody might be having an off day,
somebody might be a superstar, someone might choke you. Just
you can't account for all of those variables, and I
think that that's important in a game like that basketball.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
So I'm going back to the beautiful Paris Horseshow Casino
in just about two and a half hours. Maria, When
are you back in town?
Speaker 1 (47:23):
So it is now Tuesday. I will be doing a
multi country tour between now and then. So from New Haven,
I'm going back to New York and from there I
am going to Ireland and then on Saturday evening, so
late on Saturday, I will be back in Las Vegas
ready to play on Sunday. Now, this depends on how
(47:45):
well I've slept, how rested I am. But assuming everything
goes smoothly and I'm well rested. I'm actually going to
be playing my biggest buying event of the summer, the
twenty five thousand dollars eight handed event on Sunday, and.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Well I will be away. I'll be in California briefly
on Sunday and then back in New York. So we're
not doing a very good job of coordinating our schedules.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
Maria, you know we're not. But this just means that
you and I don't have to compete for bracelets. We
can both win bracelets in separate events. Perfect Risky Business
is hosted by me Maria Kanikova.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
And me Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
The show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer
is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
If you like the show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us more easily. And if
you want to listen to an AD free version, sener
for Pushkin Plus. For six D 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 Kanakova.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
And I'm Nate Silver. Today on the show, we'll talk
about former President Donald Trump, who was convicted last week
on thirty four at Filamy Charges.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
And we're also going to be talking about an update
from the first week of the World Series. I'm going
to go into some of the psychological mistakes I've seen
people make. But we're also going to give a big
shout out to Nate, who is deep in an event
of his own, fifteenth out of over twenty five hundred
players who started this event.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
And this week Thursday night, if you listen to this
on Thursday, the NBA Finals begin. The Boston Celtics are
at home against Dallas Mavericks. There's a big gap between
betting markets and Cisco models. We will discuss why.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
So, Nate, before we get into the Trump verdict, I
want to talk about I just want to nod to
the fact that you're even here this morning, so in
at like four thirty am, so I'm back on the
East coast right now taping this from New Haven. So
I get a text because as it turns out, I
forgot to turn off my phone, so that was good. Sorry,
(01:40):
it's okay, it's okay. Then I turned it off after
that from Nate saying, you know, just bagged for the
day in the fifteen hundred six Max. I am number
fifteen of like three hundred and something left in chips.
I'll still make the recording. And this is ten am
my time, so Eastern time at seven am, Vegas time,
(02:01):
and Nate is here and let the record show risky
business listeners. Nate is a much more devoted host than
I am, because damned if I would be recording after
bagging at two am, five hours later, I would have
sent a text to everyone being like, guys, we're really
really sorry, we can't record today. I am fifteenth in
(02:24):
chips and right now recording is negative ev for me.
So anyway, Nate, thank you for being here. Let's get
into Trump, so we'll.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Talk about that. But look, I mean it happens. We're
going to talk on this episode about kind of real
life intruding into best laid plans, because we'd be hypocrites
if we if we didn't. By the way, I don't
want to make this Trump thing about us and me also,
but It's another thing that, like, I did not plan
on Trump getting convicted of all these felony charges while
(02:53):
I was out at the World Series, and that also
kind of blew up a day. But you know, we'll
talk about Trump first on his own terms and then
in the polast I would get more into planning versus reality.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So let's do that. So, as our listeners probably know,
last week, former President Donald Trump was convicted guilty on
all thirty four charges that he was up on in
New York. So Nate, let's talk about that. Let's talk
about what that means. And actually let's start with the
(03:25):
fact that you said that you did not expect this
to happen while you were at the World Series. Is
that because you thought that the verdict would be later
or because you did not expect him to be convicted
on all of the thirty four charges.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Marie, I think you would probably have a better term
for this than I would. It's a cognitive load kind
of thing. Does some extent. I think people who are
able to navigate multiple tasks are able to kind of
shut things out and say I'm going to ignore this
for now. Right at some point I understand that like
Trump is before this jury, and if you've actually like
(03:58):
looked at prediction markets, I'll took about that on the
show from time to time. They had expected a verdict
last week, and in fact expected a guilty verdict more
likely than not. But no, this is not like two
kind of the smart sharp traders. This is not an
unexpected outcome. Trump had not been I didn't watch the trial,
I want to be clear about that, but by the
(04:18):
conventional wisdom people who watch it more closely, Trump had
had not offered very much compelling argumentation. He had fallen
asleep at various points during the trial. I think he's
a little bit defiant obviously about seeing it as an
opportunity for like a campaign exercise, spin exercise. And you know,
I assume he thinks he won't go to actual jail
(04:41):
at any point, although there's some chance in theory that
he could. We are not legal analysts. I don't know
if we're going not for much opinion about like is
this the right case quote unquote to bring against Trump.
I'm here to analyze public opinion a little bit more.
And our guess is about what effect this might have
on the polls most members of the public, if they
(05:01):
were aware of the trial at all, did not expect
a guilty verdict. I think because Trump has kind of
of skated by so often with with relatively few consequences
to become president after all for four years and may
become president again for another four years. Expected there not
to be consequences for his actions. So that's one reason
(05:25):
why you might expect it to affect the polls, is
because it comes as a surprise to to rank and
file voters.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
But isn't it true? And please correct me if I'm
wrong that New York is the only state where he
has actually faced consequences because he did have to pay
for you know, the hush many payments he did, and
the defamation earlier, which.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Is a separate case, right, and each Jan Carol sexual
assault case. So yeah, New York is kind of and
and you know, I don't know how much you want
to get into the I mean, this was considered of
the four criminal cases, which is separate, by the way
from the defamation case, which is a civil case, right.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
This one was considered the weakest. Is is kind of
the background that I had seen.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Correct, I mean, the way Republicans would convey it is
it's kind of like al Capone being convicted on income
tax fraud instead of all the other stuff that al Capone, the.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Guy was convicted, it didn't matter, that was on income
tax fraud.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Look, let me so let me you want to give
us a little bit. You know, I am worried a
little bit because the argument that worries me a bit
is that in authoritarian countries, oftentimes, if there is an
opposition leader who you want to disenfranchise, then you trump
(06:48):
up some legal charges that may range from technically correct
but exaggerated to entirely fabricated. You know, Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor,
had had talked about, I mean kind of campaigned on
being tougher on Trump. Right, it's in Manhattan, the place
where something like eighty five nine of the voters that
jurypool voted for Biden, although to be fair, there are
(07:09):
some of them consumed media from sites like truth Social
Trump's alternative to Twitter slash x. But look, the fact
that Trump has been prosecuted and criticized and persecuted that
may feed into his appeal for a certain strain of voter. However,
(07:29):
given that reality, which you cannot undo, for better or worse,
this point I think Biden is much better off with
a guilty verdict than an acquittal, right, because you can't
take back the fact that there are all these charges.
You can't take back the fact that, like you know,
to me, the election overturning January sixth stuff is a
(07:50):
couple of orders of magnitude, meaning literally hundreds of times
more serious than anything involving a former porna. But you know, again,
plans to always kind of match the deal reality. I
think the more buttoned up prosecutions in the January sixth
try have taken a long time. But anyway, Trump has
(08:12):
been convicted on this first set of charges. He will
almost for sure appeal. I would think the sentencing phase
will still occur in July, just before the Republican National Convention.
But that's where we stand.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Yeah, And obviously I'm not an expert in the polling
part of this, And so I'm curious because you know,
I've been reading the news like I'm a good news consumer.
I've been following the trial. I'm still a little bit
bummed that it wasn't televised, but it wasn't so I
was following from Afar and I have read kind of
takes on both sides that, as you said, you know,
(08:49):
given that this happened and that we can't control the timing,
it's great that at least the verdict was guilty. However,
I have also seen kind of the other side that
this just strengthens Trump's position among a huge, kind of
swath of Trump voters and that a lot of people
see this as kind of part of his brand.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
This is the guy who said I can stand in
the middle of fIF if I haven't even shoot someone
and still be elected. And here he is saying, like, see,
I don't follow your laws, like I'm you know, I'm
a renegade. I'm my own man. And they're like, yeah,
you know, And this this just shows that, you know,
the judicial system is corrupt. So I guess there are
two separate questions here. One, do you have a sense
(09:28):
now or is it a little bit too early to
figure out how this is going to go down kind
of in the polls in the Trump base? And two,
and this is a kind of a separate question, let's
talk a little bit afterwards about the judicial impact of
this and kind of the delegitimization of the judicial system
that Trump is trying to push as a story.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
So as gamblers or poker players, we think in terms
of the marginal effect on something. Right, if you beamed
to twenty twenty four from ten years ago, you'd be
shocked by a lot of things. You'd be shocked that
a a Town Trump had become president. You'd be be
(10:10):
that Trump had was running for president again and in
fact was tied her ahead in the polls, despite his
various criminal charges, and how kind of his first term
ended with January sixth, and with COVID, you'd be surprised
that the trial wasn't in some sense a bigger deal.
I mean, people have been pretty tuned out to this
until the verdict occurred, in to even people like me,
(10:32):
I guess, in the news business to some extent. However,
people in our world, Maria, the poker kind of gambling world,
think in terms of what's priced in quote unquote to
the stock. So if you look at betting markets a
week ago, which was just before when we're taking its
its Tuesday morning Vegas time, in prodiction markets, Trump had
(10:54):
a fifty three percent chance of winning the election before
the verdict. Now that is fifty one percent, So he
has follown by two percentage points relative to where he
was pre verdict. And by the way, because people assumed
before or that he was more likely than not to
be guilty. If this had come totally on the blue,
it might have been a bigger shift. But basically, like
(11:15):
people putting money on the line, follow the conventional wisdom
that outlined earlier, which is that you know, being a
convicted felon is probably bad, right, I mean, this is
kind of where we are probably in politics now. It's
certainly worse for Trump than being an acquitted, accused felon who,
even in New York could have been found guilty. I
(11:36):
mean imagine that, right, That would have been I think
a big feather in Trump's cap and a big disaster
for Biden. Now, with that said, for the most part,
now people are making educated guesses about the impact. There
is some kind of instant turnaround polling, some of that
shows Biden gaining a point or two. Net is actually
(11:58):
one poll from Morning Consult that has Biden actually losing
a point or so. But we don't have a high
quality traditional pollster going and doing a proper sample with
a proper amount of time, asking the right questions to
a demographically balanced sample, because that just takes a little
bit of time, and the Polsters apparently didn't necessarily plan
and advance with this verdict occurring either.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
They're probably at the World Series of Poker with you.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
You never you never know, Maria, I mean, you never
know who you'll see at the World Series. However, this
is important because Trip raised one hundred and forty one
million dollars in May, bolstered in part by this guilty verdict.
He had a massive amount of four eight hour fundraising.
I think money's a little bit overrated in presidential campaigns.
(12:42):
But the point is, yet his base is really enthused,
and by the way, Biden's base is really enthused too.
They're tweeting lots of memes about, you know, Donald Trump
in a prison jumpsuit and things like that. I wouldn't
have dared to even watch MSNBC. What would have happened
(13:04):
on Thursday and Friday and all of that right to me, though,
these are not the voter who matter because their votes
are already locked in. Instead, it's the kind of casual,
normy voter who says, no matter what else, Donald Trump
is a condicted felon, and even the New York Post,
for example, which I used. The New York Post is
(13:24):
like a benchmark of conservative but not totally red pilled
Fox News opinion. They're trying to in a competitive news market.
They're trying to, you know, they like the actual news.
And the New York Post had liked the banner headline
about Trump being guilty. They weren't trying to spin it
too much. So everybody saw this headline about Trump is
(13:44):
guilty of thirty six or thirty four. I mean, Trump
is guilty of thirty four.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Fallon each Inflation's rail. Inflation's rail.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Another problem for Bide. But look, but like part of
it is what are the basic, simple, stylized facts about
the election? You know, for Biden, the fact is that
prices are a lot higher than they were four years ago.
Now you can debate that and say, well, most that
happened in twenty twenty two, and inflation has slowed down now.
And by the way, you've had inflation all around the world,
(14:15):
and it's kind of maybe not entirely Biden's fault, and
and and the jobs market is good. But in politics,
when you're explaining you're losing, is the is the axiom,
It's simplar like when Biden is the fact that Biden
is eighty one years old, and I think often looks
an acts like it is a simple fact. By the way,
Trump is seventy seven, will turn seventy eight before too
(14:36):
much longer. You know, that fact is very hard for
Biden to overcome. You can spend and say, well, Trump
is almost as old and Biden Biden is, you know,
managing the toughest job in the world, and whatever else.
We have better healthcare, But like the more explaining you're doing,
you're losing it. In this case, it's Trump and his
team on their heels, right, They're the ones who are
(14:57):
saying this prostitution is unfair and how can you expect
a jury verdict in New York to be fair? And
blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Right, Yeah, and I'd actually I'd love to just pause
and just go deep, more deeply on to that point,
because I think that elections aside, right, since we don't
have the poll numbers yet, and we probably won't when
this podcast comes out in a few days, but what
we are already seeing is kind of what I'd alluded
to before. The arguments that Trump has been making for
(15:26):
quite some time about the fact that you can't trust
our judicial system, right, the judicial system is corrupt, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera. And he's been making this argument
at every single level of government. And I think that
that's kind of another a long term consequence that might
actually kind of last longer than this particular election, this
particular trial, because what he's doing is undermining one of
(15:49):
the pillars of democracy and the system that traditionally the
American public has had the most trust in. And now
we see that trust eroding because Trump keeps repeating over
and over and over these statements which are blatant lies.
But as a psychologist, I can say that it doesn't
matter because the more someone repeats a lie, it starts
to feeling like the truth.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah. Look, trust in almost every major American institution to
some extent. The military is an exception, but almost every
major American institution has declined over the past ten twenty
thirty years. How much Trump is a cause of that
versus a symptom is a debate I'm sure that academics
(16:34):
and historians will have for a long time. I mean,
you know, Trump takes advantage of low trust voters. We're
in a downward trust spiral in the US. Trump is
a major kind of cog in that machine, but not
the only cog. I mean, I don't know, I Maria
(16:55):
on the show. I want to be able to express
ambiguous or ambivalent opinions. I have ambivalent feelings about the
prosecution by Alvin Bragg. If I spent one hundred more
hours looking at it, I might have stronger feelings one
way or the other. But you know, I do think
it's probably right. I think if you kind of surveyed
most nonpartisan legal experts, they would say that, like to
(17:18):
turn these into felony charges is not unheard of, but
is unusual. And in a cistical sense, you would infer
that Trump's status as a former president kind of as
part of that. But you know, it's not great for
the country that you have a active presidential candidate who's
(17:39):
fifty to fifty to become president again, and that it
took so long to bring these charges to trial, that
the ones that do go to trial are I think,
by anyone's definition, the weakest charges by in the more
kind of partisan jurisdiction. It's not it's not ideal.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
No, it's not so, Nate. If I'm going to go
back through this and try to metabolize all of it,
what are the key Let's say two things I should
take away from this analysis from our conversation.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Look, I say number one, pay more attention to the
marginal voter, not the cable news punted, but the marginal
voter who was not paying attention to every detail in
the white and the race for the White House, but
who sees big banner headlines Trump convicted, Trump guilty. Number two,
be patient as you wait for the polls, because these
(18:30):
marginal voters are hard to reach. The quick and dirty
polls may not reach them yet, so we're going on
limited information. And number three, I think separate out the
question of is this good or bad for the country
from is this good or bad for Joe Biden and
Donald Trump? Right, I mean, those are different questions. We've
tried to mainly focus on the electoral impact here and
(18:54):
not pretend that we're legal scholars.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Nate, I am so excited for you. Week one of
the World Series has wrapped. I unfortunately have left Las Vegas,
so I haven't been able to play after the first
two events because I have some other commitments. I'll be
back next week. But you, while I've been traveling the
world to glamorous New Haven, you've been running up quite
(19:33):
the trip stack in the fifteen hundred dollars six max event,
which is incredibly exciting. So you are in the money.
So for people who don't play poker, that means that
Nate has already cashed. So every single player eliminated from
this point on is going to be making money. You
are about to start day two of the tournament. So
you found your first bag of the series, which means
(19:55):
you've bagged up chips. There are over three hundred players left.
I don't remember how many. I looked this up before
we started taping, but I don't remember. It's like three
hundred and thirty something like that. Does that sound right
to you?
Speaker 2 (20:07):
And it's like, what those counts are? Delay? It's like,
all right, so twenty five hundred started, of which about
I think one to ninety remain, and I'm in fifteenth place.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Sound yeah, So Nate, you are in fifteenth place, and
we're going to talk about the three biggest mistakes I've
been seeing at the tables in the week that I played.
But it seems like before we get into that, it
seems like you have probably not been making these mistakes
because you are now fifteenth in chips. So just you know,
first of all, congratulations, so well say thank you. We
(20:40):
are say thank you, we are able to Okay, thank you, Maria. Okay,
now I won't Okay.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
This is fun because we can put this episode in
a little bit of a time capsule again in the
realities of the highly produced podcast world. We are taping
this on early Tuesday morning, Vegas time. It will come
out in your feeds on Thursday. By the time you
listen to this, the tournament that I'm playing right now
will be over. I could have won my first bracelet.
Much more likely suggests I will been knocked out at
(21:11):
some point, you know, just after lunch today, and then
be disappointed about that's about.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Just after lunch. You're lasting through lunch. That's great.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
I mean, look, I do have a lot of chips,
It's true, a lot of chips. I have a lot
of short stacks at my table. So but like one
thing I like to do if I make a Day
two or Day three is to situate myself in terms
of rational expectations, right, in this tournament. Last year, only
ten percent of the field who made Day two made
(21:43):
the final day Day three. Now I have a well
above average chip stack, but even knowing that, I know
that seventy five ish percent of the time, if I'm
being realistic, my day will end with busting out of
this tournament and deciding whether to enter a different tournament instead.
So I think always kind of situating yourself and understand
that you can have a great Day one and the
(22:03):
odds are still against you. Just it's a very very
hard marit to winning tournament or making a final table
when there are twenty five hundred people. You need to
kind of keep rolling the dice and having it coming
up six is like three times in a row, or
maybe more than that, more than that, right, like yeah,
four times in a row. Right, It's pretty it's pretty
hard for that to for that to happen. And having
(22:24):
the first six and the second six come up six
is is just kind of the first the first you know,
halfway through the marathon, so to speak.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Well, I think that that's a very healthy attitude. I
think too many people get very excited about having lots
of chips. That said, having lots of chips is better
than not having lots of chips. And from what I
know about your playing style, you're an aggressive player who
knows how to push that advantage, which I think is
really important. And I think you have a very good
(22:52):
attitude coming into this. So now let's you know, have
a positive mindset and say that this is going to
be your first bracelet or at least a final table.
And I say that completely selflessly because we have no
swap in this event, because I have not played it.
So so this is this is all you, and I
(23:14):
really I wish you the best, and let me give
you some advice for the three top things not to
do that I've seen.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Yeah, what have you been What have you been seeing that? Uh,
that players shouldn't be doing?
Speaker 1 (23:27):
All right, So I've been seeing a lot of things
that players shouldn't be doing. So I played, let's say,
I played two World Series events this past week, and
then I played a win event, so the Win eleven
hundred event as well. So I've seen a few different
player pools. And this is me generalizing from everything that
I've been seeing, what are the three most common mistakes?
(23:49):
By far? Number one that I have seen is what's
known in psychology as the sunk cost fallacy, and what
the sunk cost fallacy means is that you make a
decision and then when the decision environment changes, when the
information changes, when the data change, and your decision no
longer makes sense. Instead of walking away, instead of saying, Okay,
(24:13):
I made the right decision before it's no longer the
right decision, you stay. You stick with it. You put
good money after bad, you know, good time after bad.
You stay in that decision because you say, well, I've
already invested so much. In poker, there's a concept known
as pot committed, meaning I've already put so many chips
in the middle that I am committed to the pot.
(24:35):
And I think that that is actually one of the
stupidest concepts in poker. I mean, I just think it's asinine,
like so so dumb. I cannot I can't even begin
to say. Because decisions are not made in a vacuum.
It does not matter how many chips you put in
one move ago you know, pre flop or on the flop,
as long as you have chips left. If you now
(24:56):
know that your beat right, if you now know that
the decision environment has changed, fold walk away, keep the
chips that you have. It's a huge lesson for life,
by the way, being able to walk away, and I
still have something left, and I should, you know, I
should be able to use that. I think that's a
really important life skill. But one of the most important
(25:17):
that I've learned from poker is kind of that. And
let me tell you a specific hand where I saw
this play out that I think is kind of illustrative
of this idea. So in this hand, I think we're
playing eight handed, and I raise from under the gun,
so I'm first to act, and I have pocket kings,
(25:37):
so I raise, and then another player three bets me,
so he re raises from the button. So that's, you know,
very strong position. Obviously he'll always be lost to act.
The button is yours, your best position. I don't love,
you know, playing huge pots out of positions. So I
four bet, which means I then reraise him. At this point,
the only hand I lose to is aces, and I'm
(25:59):
not particularly you know, you can't see monsters under the bed,
so I reraise and he calls and we go to
the flop, so it's just the two of us and
the flop comes Queen High and it's all hearts. I
think it's six or eight Queen, all hearts. I do
not have the King of Hearts. I check, and he bets,
(26:21):
and I call, even though you know, at this point
I could be drawing dead, right, he could have Ace
King of Hearts, right, he could have Ace Jack of Hearts.
He could already have flopped the nuts. And he beats
pretty big, but I can't fault to one bet and
then the turn is an off suit king. So at
this point I now have top set, and so I
(26:43):
check and he bets again, but he bets really small, right,
So he bets like a quarter pot, and I was like, okay,
you do not have a flush right at this point,
it really just looked like he just did not like
that king at all. And so I raise because you know,
that seems like the appropriate thing to do. And he
(27:05):
does not have that many chips left behind, and you
can just see him just completely pained, and then just
like shakes his head and like puts all his chips
in the middle and he turns over pocket queens and
he's like, I knew I was be And I was like, well,
you know, if you don't say that, right, if you
know your beat just fold. He still had a lot
of chips behind, but he just couldn't let it go.
(27:27):
He had flopped, you know, top set. He knew that
he was kind of ahead of me, and he even
though the world changed on the turn, he just couldn't
acknowledge it and he couldn't walk away. And I've seen
that so many times.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
I mean, look, in his defense, he could think that
you have a flush and he has some outs to
draw to a full house. But yeah, poker players stick
their chips in almost as a form of self punishment sometimes,
you know, I'm a fish. And by the one thing,
(27:59):
as you were speaking, Maria, you know, obviously if there's
new information, I think also people need to give themselves
permission to read things, things right, to say, maybe there's
not new information. But I've had time to think about
this more, and I just don't think it's plausible that
my opponent is bluffing very often. Here. I had time
while the dealer was dealing the cards to think about,
(28:21):
like what bluff would Maria have in her range? And
like in this spot, it's hard on these flushboards with
the king coming, you know, making a life choice belatedly,
that's a positive life choice is still better than saying
it's a sunk cost. I can't make any change at all. Okay, Maria,
let's go into your tip or mistake. Yeah, tips for
(28:45):
last week. This speaks about mistakes were in the messy
real world. Now, what's mistake number two you've been seeing
at the time.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Yes, the mistake number two is actually probably one of
the most famous biases in psychology. And so it's always
so fun to me as a psychologist to see the
things that you know that theoretically should be very strong,
see them actually in reality play out this way. And
that's risk aversion. So this is part of Danny Knnoman
and Amos Turiski's famous prospect theory right where losses and
(29:14):
gains are looked at differently, and depending on how you
frame losses, depending on how you frame gains, people will
be more or less risk averse. And so what I
have seen is that people have been too risk averse
at stages of the tournament where they should be taking
risks because they value kind of their tournament life too
much and they don't understand how tournament poker works. So,
(29:37):
as an example, I saw a hand I was not
in this hand where someone raised, you know, someone re raised,
and then this person ended up folding Ace King face up,
aas King suited, having like thirty big blinds left saying
you know it's too early, it's too early for me
to flip, and it was just such a bad mistake.
Right when I saw that, I was like, what do
(29:59):
you mean it's too early to flip? You have thirty
big lines. That's not that you know you should be flipping.
You have to take those spots. If you're valuing your
tournament life, valuing not busting so incredibly highly. That means
that either you're playing too high. You know you're in
the wrong spot, because that's not the rational decision to make.
(30:19):
The flip side of this. At EPT Paris back in February,
which was won by Barney Boatman, who's kind of an
old school legend, there was a really great televised hand
where they were at the final table, the final two tables,
and someone ran kind of a big bluff against him,
putting him to the test. Right, Barney had to call
(30:40):
off all of his chips and it was a really
hard call. Barney finally made it, and when his opponent
kind of turned over the cards saw what Barney had
called with he said, how could you call for your
tournament life here? Like, you can't do that? And Barney
looks at him and says, it's my tournament life, not
my actual life. It's just such a great line because
(31:00):
that's how you have to write. It's fine to be
too risk averse when it's your actual life. It's when
you're playing in a tournament. You have to make those
calculated risks, have to take those slips, you have to
take those spots, otherwise you ain't ever winning a tournament.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Ria, I got news for you now that we're into
the second week of the World Series of Poker that
like that virginal risk aversion bubble has popped a little bit.
In the fifteen hundred yesterday, all my chips, or ninety
five percent of them are from making hands and extracting value.
The bluss were not working. I lost money on my
bluff yesterday, and I'm so many people believe it or
(31:35):
not actually like to fold to Sometimes people were getting
a little bit rambunctious. I think you kind of get
into this point in the tournament where maybe you have
fired four or five or six entries. People are getting
though a little bit friskier, I think, with kind of
a lot of these smaller events. And the Mystery Millions
(31:56):
is a tournament where you can enter like literally eight
times if you want the first event after that. See
people who are a little bit on tilt from you know,
literally as we're playing, by the way, people are drawing
prizes from this bounty pool winning a million bucks where
two and fifty thousand bucks, right, and here you are
plotting along your fifteen hundred dollars tournament. That was encouraging
(32:16):
I think a lot more risk taking. So so this
is self corrects a little bit. But I agree in
CHERYLD that as a default, as a default, even in
the poker world, as default, people are usually too risk averse.
For the Barney Boatmen reason that it's just a fucking
poker tournament, right, I understand that you make day two,
day three, the money can be significant. It's just a
(32:36):
fucking poker tournament.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
That's that's very true.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
If you're putting your life on your line to enter
the tournament, then you've made a bad decision in the
first place. So I can't really guide you. But but
this is kind of a laboratory where you can repeat
the experiment and enter a different tournament, especially the World Series.
And so don't be a knit is one of our
favorite things to say, and it means a neurotic risk averse,
(33:00):
you know, turn in the punch bowl basically, Maria.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Absolutely, So that's you know, that's number two. But I'm
glad that you're saying that it's been self correcting because
that actually goes to mistake number three that I've been seeing,
which is people becoming too emotional and making decisions based
on how they're feeling and what just happened, as opposed
to based on data and based on kind of what
(33:25):
they should be using in their logical rational decision making.
So they're going on tilt and basically making just really
egregious errors. So once again, you know, I think it's
always good to have an example. I was playing this
was I think it might have even been during the
five thousand dollars event. No, it was a five hundred
(33:46):
dollars event, so the second event, slightly smaller event. It
was a freeze out, which is important, which means people
can't read buy this is not the mystery bounty. And
I had a gentleman to my left who'd been, you know,
playing fairly. Well I didn't know him, but I think
he played a lot of poker, and then he got
into a spot against someone else where he was you know,
(34:08):
on the river and facing a huge bet and he
needed to decide whether or not he was going to call,
and he just tanked. And it's a pretty turbo structure, right.
The levels are thirty minutes long.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Meaning that you're a chip count dwindles and real or
in absolute terms.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Yeah, so very quickly, so you need to act quickly.
So here's this guy and he's been thinking for two minutes,
so I very I think nicely, and the tables agreed, said,
you know, I know you're in a tough spot, but
just so you know, I'm going to call the clock
in one minute, because you know, taking two minutes if
you think about it. I said, I was going to
(34:43):
call it at three minutes, right, so you're ten percent,
which is ten percent of the time. And I gave
him that warning and then he just like he you know,
puts in the call and it's the wrong call and
he loses the pot. And then he turns to me
and he says, well, it's only it's only a turbo.
If you're used to playing bullshit live events, this is
not a turbo structure. I was like, well, empirically it
(35:04):
is anyway, very next hand, I'm on the button and
he's in the small blind and I raise and he
just looks at me, and he goes, well, I'm all in,
and he just shoves and rips it, and then the
big blind folds and I have a six of spades,
which is a good hand, but not a great hand.
But given what just happened, I was like, I'm gonna call,
so I did. He had Queen five offsuit. Luckily he
(35:25):
didn't hit and I knocked him out. Don't be that guy.
It does not matter if you just made a bad decision.
Do not make another bad decision because of that. If
someone calls the clock on you. You know I didn't
even call the clock on him, right, Like, just do
not be that guy. Make rational decisions. Do not punt
with queen five offsuit, even though you still have a
(35:47):
ton of chips, just because you're pissed off and you
think that you know that someone's picking on you.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
I think the guy thing like not to be too
like woke here or anything. The guy thing is important though,
because like men with other men don't want to lose face,
and that can like manifest itself in different ways. But like,
I haven't been quite in that spot as often as
people seem to react to you that way, even though
(36:14):
I would have been probably more aggressive about just calling
the clock and not giving him like a warning. I
do think that, like, you know, men who feel like
they're embarrassed by women. I mean, this is not like
some deep breakthrough here, right, but like you know, men
who feel like they're embarrassed by women can kind of
go on tilts in different ways, and they might if
they're embarrassed by another guy.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yeah, no, I think that's very true. And I actually
wrote an entire piece about sexism and poker on my
substack this week, and some a guy also going on
tilt to a female gave me a ten ten thousand
dollars main events seat, so I'm very grateful for that.
So everyone, do not make this mistake unless you're a
bounty with ten thousand dollars on your head, in which case,
(36:57):
you know, please do emotionally tilt and give me your chips.
But Nate, I think that that is a you know,
great place to wrap it up, and to say again,
I trust that you will not make any of these
mistakes today. I hope you play well and may the
may the cards be with you, because that's you know,
that's the one thing that you can't control. So Nay
(37:31):
Risky business is still a young show. You know, we're
we're a month old, and I have already learned more
about basketball than I have learned during my entire life,
and here we are doing yet another basketball segment. Last week,
I when I told you that I was ready to
go to a next game, you informed me that unfortunately
they were already out, so you know, so that that
(37:54):
wasn't that wasn't great timing, So we'll have to go
next season. But you've also informed me, and I didn't
know that we're now starting the NBA Finals, which sounds really,
really exciting, and I'm gonna I'm gonna get some real
excitement going once I finally go to an NBA game.
I'm sure you will teach me to love it. But
for now, let me ask you who's playing in the
(38:16):
finals and why do we care?
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Mario? Are you? Are you anti sports and you want
to read The New Yorker? Are you one of those
call us at sports ball and things like that. I'm,
by the way, your hometown team, the Boston Celtics, is
one of the two teams involved in the NBA.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
That's exciting.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
I did. The other team is a Dallas Mavericks. Who
are I guess I was gonna say younger. They're not
that young, but they kind of overachieved expectations this year.
You know, I did a kind of preseason preview for
my newsletter subscribers at Silver Bulletin. Talked about every team.
Although I was very bullish in the Celtics. I was
(38:57):
kept on the Dallas Mavericks would even make the playoffs,
and here they are in the NBA finals. So what
the fuck do I know?
Speaker 1 (39:05):
I suppose so I didn't know who'd be in the finals,
and Nate, you don't know who would be in the
finals for either for.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Different reasons, I would say, But at the point is
the point is well taken?
Speaker 1 (39:16):
No, for the record, let the record show I am
not anti sport, and I'm very excited about getting excited
about sports once i know more about them.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Anti sport are you British? They call it like sport
singular instead of.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Playing anti sports sport. I just all right, fine, fine,
my fake English accent friend, I am not anti athletics
sports teams.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Okay, after you're not. You're not helping yourself here, I
don't think. Here's what I want to discuss though, and
we'll be short with this segment. There is a gap
here between kind of what the stats would say and
what the betting markets say. So, the Celtics in the
regular season went sixty four and eighteen, winning sixty four
(40:04):
games is a very very very good record. Dallas, by contrast,
went fifty five, zero and thirty two. They were a
number five seed. The Celtics were a number one seed.
The Celtics are twelve and two so far in the playoffs.
They have virtually swept every series. The Celtics have an
average victory margin of more than ten point eight points
(40:28):
per game or more than ten points per game, which
is one of the best in NBA history this year.
So if you look at this system like, I'm gonna
promote a system called EPM, which is by at the
site Dunks and Threes. It's a good, very good basketball
analysis site that rates individual players and has team projections.
Their projections have the Celtics with an eighty six percent chance.
(40:51):
Eighty six percent of the Celtics, who, by the way,
are have a home court in Boston's a good home
court advantage an eighty six percent chance of winning the finals.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Now, if I go down there, pretty high chance.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
It's a pretty high chance. But the NBA is a
game where a game of dominant compare, for example, a
basketball game to a football game. In the NBA, each
team has over one hundred posessions, maybe even one hundred
and ten or one hundred and twenty, given how fast
paced the game is nowadays. Right in the NFL, a
(41:25):
team might have what is it like, you know, twelve
or thirteen possessions in a game, so roughly one tenth
as much. If you roll a dice one hundred and
ten times versus twelve times, then you match the kind
of long run statistical distribution much more closely with a
larger sample size. So in the NBA, small edges shooting
(41:49):
thirty nine percent from three point range instead of thirty
six percent. That plays out when you're taking all these
shots per game, so that the better team usually wins
in the NBA, like almost no other sport, right Michael
Jordan's Bulls when he was on the team won six championships.
The Warriors won whatever it was three and four years.
(42:09):
So again, my favorite basketball stat site, dunksan threes dot
com gives Boston an eighty six point four percent chance
of winning. If I believe that number, I can go
down to the sportsbook here I'm staying at the Cosmo,
I guess, or anywhere in Vegas and make what, in
theory is a very very profitable bet. That bet implies
they only have to win seventy percent of the time.
(42:32):
Seven zero eighty six is a lot higher than seventy
to a gambler or a poker player. And yet, Maria,
I have not I have not made that bet yet,
despite having been in Vegas all week?
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Why haven't you made that bet? Nate?
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Partly because I should say, full disclosure, I probably will
by the time you listen to this. Have made some
amount of bets somewhere on the Celtics. But like, look,
one reason, a couple reasons why. Number one is that
I have repeatedly been low on the Mavericks throughout the season, right,
(43:10):
which may mean that there is just something that I
don't understand and I have to, like concede that the
public betting public, which is very sharp and the aggregate
knows something or not noticing that that I don't, but
like has a better read on the situation. Now, look,
the NBA Finals is such a big public event that
you have a lot of how should we say, a
(43:32):
lot of dumb money on the series. Sometimes one belief
of that I think maybe is not dumb is that
Luka Doncic is a Dallas Maverick superstar. I don't what
you want to call him. He's kind of like plays
point bar guard, but kind of like a small forward
slash unicorn bowling ball in his own way. He is
pretty clearly the best player in the series. I think
(43:54):
people are now calling him maybe the best player, at
least the best offensive player in the NBA, probably not
the best all around self.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
So what you're saying is he's the Caitlyn Clark of
the team.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Caitlyn Clark is off to a little bit of a
rocky start here, actually, Maria, Yeah, no, yeah, I don't
think he would be flattered by the Caitlin Clark comparison.
No he is. I'm not sure how you what's the
right compare. I mean, he's not super athletic, So I'm
not like, oh, he's the Michael Jordan or Lebron James,
because those guys are like much better athletes. We get
(44:26):
into like a little bit of like racial profiling. I mean,
Larry Bird is not the worst comparable for Luca necessarily
where he shoots, he rebounds. Larryberd was a better defensive
player than Luca most likely, but Luca's more dominant. He
can take over a game. We're talking about dominance here
and in general, when you have the best player in
(44:48):
the in the game, then your team wins, especially in
the finals where everyone's playing maximum minutes, maximum effort, so
it's a best player versus best team thing. I think
the kind of public believes heavily in the best player.
They kind of also think the Celtics are chokers. They've
been in the finals before, they've made deep playoff runs
(45:09):
ended badly. That's probably just like it's look, I think
you're bad. Is probably halfway between the stats and the public,
which means I should go and make some type of
bet on Boston. Maybe emotional because Boston has burned them before,
but you know, by the numbers they are a fantastic
basketball team, they're at home. They're very deep. They do
(45:33):
have very good players. I mean, Jason Tatum might be
the sixth best player in the league, Jalen Brown might
be the you know, thirtieth best player, Derek White might
be the twenty eighth best player or something. Right, they're
very deep, and I think you know, you hear people
at the poker tables being like, well, well, I don't know,
the Celtic are jokers, Like it's actually a reason to
bet on the Celtics when like generic poker players are like,
(45:56):
who don't know that much about basketball?
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Are?
Speaker 2 (45:58):
That's you know, they're the ones who are like helping
to set the market line. I think their rationales are
not that compelling. But at the same time, I'm not
sure I want to bet that much against against Luca.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Yeah, yeah, I think that that's a really that's a
really great point about how betting works in general. Right,
you do need to have some sort of idea about
where you are relative to the public, but also how
much you personally are willing to risk, right, Like, can
you risk ruin with with these odds or not? And
(46:32):
I think usually, especially from what I understand of sports betting,
the answer usually is no, Please don't right that there
is uncertainty and emotions do get into it on every
single line, and as accurate as a market might be,
as accurate as a line might be, there will be
kind of emotional betting and shit happens, right Like, this
(46:54):
is a game of individuals, And I think that that's
kind of the other point you're making. Someone might be
having a great day, somebody might be having an off day,
somebody might be a superstar, someone might choke you. Just
you can't account for all of those variables, and I
think that that's important in a game like that basketball.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
So I'm going back to the beautiful Paris Horseshow Casino
in just about two and a half hours. Maria, When
are you back in town?
Speaker 1 (47:23):
So it is now Tuesday. I will be doing a
multi country tour between now and then. So from New Haven,
I'm going back to New York and from there I
am going to Ireland and then on Saturday evening, so
late on Saturday, I will be back in Las Vegas
ready to play on Sunday. Now, this depends on how
(47:45):
well I've slept, how rested I am. But assuming everything
goes smoothly and I'm well rested. I'm actually going to
be playing my biggest buying event of the summer, the
twenty five thousand dollars eight handed event on Sunday, and.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Well I will be away. I'll be in California briefly
on Sunday and then back in New York. So we're
not doing a very good job of coordinating our schedules.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
Maria, you know we're not. But this just means that
you and I don't have to compete for bracelets. We
can both win bracelets in separate events. Perfect Risky Business
is hosted by me Maria Kanikova.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
And me Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
The show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer
is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
If you like the show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us more easily. And if
you want to listen to an AD free version, sener
for Pushkin Plus. For six D nine a month you
get access to ad free listening. Thanks for tuning in.
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