June 13, 2024 • 44 mins
This week on Risky Business, Nate and Maria discuss whether Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor should retire, the perils of sports betting among professional athletes, and what the return of Roaring Kitty means for traditional market analysis.
Further Reading:
“Sonia Sotomayor Should Retire Now” from The Atlantic
“Should Sonia Sotomayor Retire?” from Slate
“MLB bans Padres’ Tucupita Marcano permanently for betting on baseball” from the NYT
For more from Nate and Maria, subscribe to their newsletters:
“The Leap” from Maria Konnikova
“Silver Bulletin” from Nate Silver
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey, it's Jacob. This week, I want to play for
you an episode from another podcast that Pushkin just launched.
It's a show called Risky Business and it's hosted by
Nate Silver and Maria Konikova. It's a show about making
better decisions. Both Nate and Maria are journalists and they
are also high stakes poker players, so they're bringing their
(00:42):
perspective both from their work in journalism and from the
poker table to help you think about risk and decision making.
On the show, they talk about everything from poker to
politics to making better choices in your own life. The
show is called Risky Business with Nate Silver and Maria Kanakova.
You can find it wherever, and I hope you like
(01:02):
it here it.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Is Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova and I'm Nate Silver. Today
we'll be talking about a few different things, starting with
justice Sonya so Toe Mayor and whether or not she
should retire.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
And we'll talk about degenerate sports betting in the world
of professional athletes. A Major League Baseball player were suspended
for life last week for betting on his own team's games.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
And talking about a different area of degeneracy. We're going
to be giving you a little taste of the world
of memestocks with the return of Roaring Kitty aka Keith
gill get a little bit into what that means for
the world of trading more broadly. So so Nate, There's
(01:54):
been a lot of talk, and we've talked about the
Supreme Court right now and what's going on with it.
Something that we haven't talked about is the fact that
one of the only liberal justices, Sonya so Tamayor, is
reaching a point where she is getting older. She's seventy
years old. She is not in great health, she has diabetes.
(02:14):
She often travels with a physician. And we're nearing the
end of the Biden and administration, and as you and
I have discussed on previous episodes, we don't know if
Biden is going to get re elected. We don't know
if the Democrats are going to stay in power. So
what does this mean for the Supreme Court? What does
this mean for Justice? So to Mayor, should she be
(02:35):
considering retiring right now while Biden can still definitely replace her.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
So she is sixty nine, she turns seventy eight later
this month.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Sonya. I aged you and
I and I apologize.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
That's what we call a newspeg in the business. It's
almost her seventieth birthday. We're getting ahead of the news,
and therefore that's why we're partly why we're doing this now,
but also because we, as you said, Maria, maybe toward
the end of Biden's we are toward the end of
his first term in office, and maybe the end of
any terms in office. If the polls are right. Donald
Trump is a head right now, although it's close. If
(03:13):
Biden does prevail, Democrats could also lose the Senate. There
are Democratic held seats, for example, up in West Virginia
and Montana. In West Virginia, Joe Manchin has retired, so
that seat's like gone for sure. Montana, to a lesser extent,
Ohio are tough hoold for Democrats, So even if Biden
returns to the presidency, you might have an uncooperative Republican Senate.
(03:38):
So you asked, should she consider retiring, and the answer
she should not just consider. She should retire today. Go
take one of these university president jobs. Everybody is quitting
go be president of Yale or Harvard, or go, you know,
go make lots of money selling a book, go under
the World Series of Poker main event. I'm sure she's
a very candy poker player, but she should absolutely retire
(04:00):
if she actually cares about any of the values that
she purports to care about, these kind of liberal, progressive values.
Because she doesn't retire, then she very easily be replaced
by another conservative justice, leading to a seven to two
conservative majority.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
And that is that's going to be difficult to overcome.
I mean, if we have a seven to two conservative majority,
it could be. I mean, I don't know how many
presidents is will need before the Supreme Court is more balanced.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Could be.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
I mean, So it's it's not just that like the
Supreme Court would increase our conserns would increase their majority.
It's also that, like believe it or not, the Supreme
Court agrees on more issues than you might think. But
where that middle point falls is is important, right, the
fact that it does fall with the Barrett or a
(04:53):
Kavanaugh or on some issues, Justice Gorsic is a little
bit heterodox on some issues versus like an Alito or
something like that. Like that also has a material impact
as far as how far they.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Will go on certain issues.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
I completely agree with you. Yeah, And I think that,
and I think that we should really look at the
past to kind of guide Justice Sotomayor's decision right now,
because I'm gonna I'm just gonna go ahead and say this,
and fellow female liberals are going to get really really
mad at me, but I am so fucking mad at
RBG that, like, for me, her entire legacy is tainted,
(05:31):
like the sheer hubris of not retiring when she could
have been replaced and of being like, no, I'm going
to live forever. I'm fucking RBG like, look at my
legacy like I'm invincible, and she, like her legacy is
Roe v. Wade being overturned. That's her legacy because if
she had retired early, we would have had an entirely
(05:52):
different court. And like I used to be like such
a you know, such an avid RBG fan, and I'm
not anymore because like, I think that with that one decision,
she's single handedly set woman back much further than she
ever advanced them. I said it. People are going to
get mad at me, but I think that that is
the truth and I am so pissed at her, like
from beyond the grave that I just I can rant forever.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
No, I'm glad you said it. I mean, in the
Silver Bulletin post I wrote about sort of mayor said
that her retirement is a political IQ test, and that's
you know, that's a little bit of invective. She's I'm
sure a very smart woman. I'm not sure how smart.
Some of the kind of liberal political observers are frankly right,
because the excuses are dumb. Frankly just dumb. They'll say, well,
(06:39):
you can't force a Latina justice to retire, Well, sure
you can.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
There are lots of qualified.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
Latina associate justices and things like that could replace her.
If you believe that's an important thing to do, right
or if people say, oh, it's kind of like it's
ableless to worry about her diabetes, well I'm sorry. If
you write in the constitution that you have a lifetime
appointment to something, which, by the way, I think is
a bad idea.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
I think she'd be limited toward eighteen.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Years or something like that. But if it's a lifetime appointment,
absolutely it's a public's responsibility online to consider, like the
health of the justices. It plays out strategically, but historically
justices wait to time their retirements for partisan reasons, right
they want to be replaced by the same party that
appointed them in the first place. So that's not new.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
You know.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Justice Kennedy, for example, who was more moderate, did so
under Trump when he had some time to go. So look,
maybe some of Mayor is not a believer in the
polls that show Biden trailing, and.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Again that is close.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
The issue is just as much, if not more, about
the Senate in the long term, where in the Senate,
North Dakota has as many senators as California despite having
what it is, you know, one fortieth of the population
or things like that. Currently in the Trumpian coalition, the
GOP does better among rural voters, white rural voters in particular,
and they are overrepresented by quite a lot in the Senate.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
So look, if the.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
GOP gets attacked together, they would have potentially a relatively
durable advantage to the Senate. I do think I kind
of once you go out more than five or ten years,
it kind of becomes a fuzzy crystal ball. But the
basic math is that, like you don't know, what's going
to happen in terms of medium term political future. You're
about to turn seventy years old, you have diabetes, like,
(08:26):
and like, I don't know, Like, by the way, why
is the ego involved here? Like it just kind of weirdly,
it's weirdly stubborn. It makes me think less of people
who seek out power, I suppose.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Yeah, absolutely, I totally agree. And by the way, an
important point that you're making that you didn't make explicit
is that it matters not just who wins the presidency
but what the majority is in the Senate. Because let's
not forget the Garland disaster where Obama tried to appoint
him and the Senate just literally blocked the hearings and
(08:57):
Garland didn't even get a chance to be considered. And
that's something that can happen.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
I mean, it reminds me a little bit of like,
you know, sometimes the failure to make a change is
the biggest risk, right, It's like, well, why would I
disrupt the status quota when I have this job? You know,
seventy years old is not that old for a woman
who presumably has good health care, even if she has diabetes.
But like, sometimes the status quo is the riskier is
(09:24):
the riskier path?
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Right?
Speaker 4 (09:25):
You know right now that she can be replaced by
another liberal justice. Democrats in the Senate, even the Joe
Manchins of the world, have been very loyal to Biden
on judicial appointments. You don't know anything beyond what happens
in November. And by the way, in terms of like
pure political tactics to have a big fight of a
Supreme Court, this is an issue where Democrats now are
(09:46):
more charged up and talk about abortion rights and things
like that. I'm sure whoever is nominated it would be
subject to lots of abuse from Republican commentators. This would
also be I think a good way to rile up
democrats generate more enthusiasm, which is a bit flagging for
Biden right now.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
But I don't know.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
People are like, well, you shouldn't think of politics in
terms of expected value.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
It's should, yes, you should.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
By the way, everyone who says it's not a game,
like did you look up? Did you see what the
Senate tried to do? Right? They're trying to figure out
how do I how do I game it?
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Right?
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Like they are, This is gamesmanship. This is exactly what
gamesmanship is to try to figure out how do I
gain an edge, how do I use the rules to
try to do what I want, even though the intention
is not that right. I understand what the spirit of
the Constitution is and I don't give a fuck. I'm
just going to do like what I can within the
rules so that we win. And I think that it's
(10:40):
absolutely a game in that respect, and it brings out
the types of people I've written before about kind of
the difference between sportsmanship and gamesmanship, and the Republicans are
definitely much more into gamesmanship, and the Democrats are trying
to take the higher sportsmanlike road, and that ain't working
out so well when the other people are are better gamesmen.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
The White House has also not said anything about this,
in part because they have a candidate who is eighty
one years old, an Aldea. People are being too old
for office is a big no no topic that they
don't want to get into. But also, like some of
it comes down to identity politics. I think it's fair
to say I personally think if you kind of take
progressive politics seriously, the notion that like having someone who
(11:28):
represents the group, I think that's substantively smaller impact than
like six three versus seven to two or down the line,
who knows seven two verses eight one, or five to
four versus six three or something like that. But this
is why I don't really find people who are into politics.
I don't really they're not by crowd, really right, because
(11:49):
this is a this is such a no brainer.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
This is not close.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
Whereas we talked about Biden the other week, like by
retiring it's kind of a really tough either way, that's
really close. This is not close.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Now, this is like absolute no brainer.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Totally agree with you. And by the way, I learned
the hard way, Like when you were saying I think
a really important point is that you know, seeking the
status quo kind of saying like, oh, like this is
the this is the safer way to do it is
oftentimes not safer.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
I learned this the hard way when I started playing poker.
That like, if you try to do nothing, that's also
very much in action, right, that is, that is very
much a choice, that is very much doing something, and
it's doing something that's not optimal and you're not doing
it for the right reasons. And that's what's happening right now.
So like, get your ass in gear, actually look at
the incentives, look at the future, and try to figure out.
(12:36):
I think this is also really important what risks are
worth it and what risks aren't because there is so
much uncertainty here. We don't know what the percentages are
because there is this uncertainty about you know, who's going
to win the presidency, who is going to win the Senate?
Is that risk worth it? And I think in this
particular case, it's just a slam dunk. No, it absolutely
is not.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Last week, Major League Baseball suspended San Diego Padres shortstop
Tikipeda Marcano permanently for allegedly having bet on baseball games
while a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates. It also suspended
four other players, of who are now in the minor
leagues for a year for betting on games not involving
their teams. So there's been a lot of gambling scandal
(13:35):
news coming out of baseball and other sports slightly of course,
earlier this year, maybe the best player in the world,
shohe Otane, his former interpreter and BFF.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
Potentially a potentially former BFF.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
TWA if I committed seventeen million dollars of wirefraud involving
your account, Maria, would we still be friends?
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Absolutely, Nate, I would forgive. You're in a heartbeat, because
that would mean that I somehow had seventeen million dollars.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
There you go, if you you know, what's seventeen million?
Speaker 4 (14:05):
If you signed a fifty.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Between friends, what's seventeen between? What's minus? Isn't it? But
as you were saying, Mizahara clued guilty, right, he.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
Pled guilty, and Major League Baseball closed the investigation, which
I know. I actually still a couple of questions about
Otani's involvement that will communiately never hear anything about ever again.
But yeah, So this is the first suspension for gambling
at related reasons since Pete Rose, who also was alleged
to have bet on his own team. Now, Marcano, from
(14:34):
what I read, has not planned to appeal, at least
not for right now. In fairness to him, there is
a somewhat mitigating circumstance, which is that when he was
making these bets, he was injured, not actively playing for
the Pirates. But still, the theory of the case is
that even if you're betting on your own team. You
still have inside information that's valuable. Right if you know
(14:56):
that a certain player is healthy and therefore likely to play,
Right if you know that the team was up all
night at the strip club, maybe you'd choose not to
bet that game, for example. So, and this is like
literally a rule posted in every Major League Baseball clubhouse.
You bet on games involving your own team, you are
suspended for life. It is one of the least ambuist
(15:18):
rules in all of Baseball's rule book.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Yeah, and I think that it's a rule that makes
complete sense, right, because if you're betting on your own
team or providing information, I mean that is like, that's
a different kind of inside baseball, right, that is not
the good kind. And I think that when we see
suspensions like this, I think it's really important. As the
ubiquity of sports betting goes up, as we have these
(15:44):
apps everywhere, as it's possible to do all these crazy
parlay bets, as it's possible to bet while events are
actually going on, all of these new capabilities that haven't
existed in the past, I think it's incredibly important to
be strict about this. By the way, I also think
it's kind of hilarious in a way. Hilarious might be
the wrong word. But how bad Marcano still was. I mean,
(16:05):
I think he won just over four percent.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Well that's a little So this is.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Something that there's spin involved here.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
I mean, so peason he's winning four percent of his
bets is because he's beending multi leg parlays, right, see,
but on the pirates to win, and you bet on
five other teams to win, and therefore, you know, take
like two to the fifth power if they're all fifty
to fifty bets, and so so he's doing multi team
parlays where you usually lose, but like when you win,
you win a lot. So the four percent is kind
(16:34):
of misleading. That might be the expected value in terms
of how often he's supposed to win. There is one irony, though,
which is that like he was apparently using one of
the legal sports books that like tipped off major League Baseball.
So yeah, these guys, will you know, squeal on you
if you're a Major League Baseball player you decide to
(16:56):
bet on games. They are they have incentives though, to
be concerned about about action that could compromise their deal
with the leagues. They have concerns about game integrity two.
In some ways, I've been surprised there hasn't been even
more of a backlash. But look, if you're a major
League Baseball player, my advice to you is do not
use like DraftKings or fan duel or a partner that's
(17:18):
in bed with Major League Baseball. Right use some offshore
illegal betting website. There's less likelihood of being detected.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Like Epei Mezuhara did for seventeen million dollars.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
Yeah, at least at least Epe gave himself a chance, right.
Epe was smart enough to know you're not going to
fucking bet on fan duel, then you're drawing dead.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
By the way it is, I think it's interesting to
note when I was saying that it's it's crucial that
people are being caught, that the four players who were
suspended for a year, they all bet just a few
hundred dollars, right like that was. They didn't make big bets,
they made tiny bets, and they were still suspended. So
I think that that's actually a really important hardline to
draw that it doesn't have to be in the millions,
(17:58):
it doesn't have to be in the hundreds of thousands.
This was like one hundred bucks, two hundred bucks, you know,
four hundred bucks.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
Yeah, and uh, you know, Marcano's bets were larger. The
total some low six figures. But you know, I doubt
that he is betting to make a profit, right. I mean,
you take a bunch of competitive young men in any industry,
there's a lot of DJM, as we would call it,
(18:24):
a lot of degeneracy and things like poker. High six
poker games are often played on the back of team
planes and things like that.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
These people are.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
Around a lot of money all the time. The rookies
are not making that much, but they're around people who
are making lots and lots and lots of money.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
You know.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
The one case where there really was some kind of
expected value for the person making the bets was the
NBA player John tay Porter, who was apparently had been
dealt in somehow to individual player parlays where why people
were betting on this obscure player named John tay Porter
is hard to know, but he basically intentionally tanked the game, right.
(19:05):
He would intentionally make up a fake injury, allegedly, he
would intentionally like not hustle after rebounds, allegedly so that
his betters would achieve the under on like how many
points that John tay Porter would receive, and that was
very suspicious. I mean, I think the NBA got lucky
that that scandal broke at about the same time as
the Otani scandal broke, because that actually affected directly affected
(19:28):
game integrity, and that's like a kind of deeper level
of hell, I think than what Marcano did.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
I totally agree with you, and I'm really glad I
was going to bring johntay Porter because I think that
what is going on there is actually the bigger issue,
because it's amazing that he was caught, and if you
think about the fact that I think the much bigger
issue isn't players like betting themselves because they'll get caught right,
like you'll figure it out, But players giving other betters
(19:56):
inside information and then actually affecting outcomes when they're in
the games. That's much more difficult to police, especially if
you're smart about it. Right, all of a sudden, if
you see millions on this obscure player who's then pulling
off some crazy shit that you know that you are
thinking of, like what in the world that's a red flag?
But imagine you're smarter about it, right, Imagine you're actually
(20:17):
someone who kind is a better cheater, who kind of
stays under the radar, who manages to do it a
little bit less blatantly, less often fakes you know, doesn't
fake injuries quite as much, doesn't throw games in quite
as obvious a way, but does it anyway. And that
to me is the much bigger and much scarier issue,
because that can really affect game integrity, It can affect
(20:39):
the entire kind of gaming community because it just goes
against the heart of why people play games, why people
watch games, you know, what this is all about. And
I think that that's the much bigger thing we should
be thinking about.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
Yeah, betting on individual accomplishments raises this risk a lot,
Like you should not be taking that much action on
anything involving John tay Porter, right, Like, who the fuck
is going to bet that unless they have some type
of inside angle. I mean, I wasn't like a Summer
League game in Las Vegas about a year ago. Now
(21:12):
Summer League coincides with the end of the World Series
of Poker and watching the game and see like some
team executive two rows in front of me and giant
font on his cell phone is typing about how the
New York Mexican a trade for og Ananobi which didn't
happen then but did actually happen several months later. If
(21:33):
I having not really it's not really inside information, I
mean a public area of a stadium, right, But like
information has a way of slipping out about injuries, about fatigue,
you know, about like I know, you know, some people
will hang around tennis tournaments, for example, and see which
player is having like a cheating scandal with his girlfriend
or or looks like they're coming in hungover and things
(21:55):
like that. You know, information has.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
A way of getting out.
Speaker 4 (21:59):
And to limit your liability by focusing on more major
and more robust wagering categories would be prudent, but you know,
but look, it's a money grab. The long term sustainability
of any of this, I think is not as assumed
as some of the big sports betting companies would would
right in their stock market and their ten k's and
things like that. So but you know, at the very
(22:21):
least they are smart enough to partner with the leagues
when they detect activity that underminess gain and integrity, to
at least tip them off to snitch on their customers.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
No, absolutely, And I think we're not just talking about
US sports betting, US sportsbook. This is happening in sports
all over the world, and some of the worst are
actually in Europe and in places where there are lots
of athletes who are not paid very well. And a
lot of times they're young, right, they're teenagers. They're still
developing their sense of self, their sense of kind of
right and wrong and kind of gray areas and long
(22:55):
term consequences isn't fully developed. Because, by the way, if
you're like a seventeen year old guy, your prefrontal cortex
ain't fully developed yet. Your ability to kind of think
through long term decisions isn't fully developed. And if someone says,
do you want to make you know, a quick ten grand?
A quick you know quick this, You're like, okay, you know,
this might not be a bad idea. All I have
(23:15):
to do is, you know, if I'm a tennis player,
I just serve a little bit off right, just one time.
That's all it takes. I just lose one point. What's
one point? You know? I just do this a few times,
and all of a sudden I have money and you
don't think, wait, if I'm caught, there goes my career
and there goes kind of any chance I have of
all these future earnings. You just don't make that math.
(23:37):
You're thinking much more in the moment. You're thinking much
more immediate gratification as opposed to kind of long term
expected value. And I think that that is something that
people just need to be aware of, need to be
aware who the vulnerable players are. And I think that
teams need to guard against that, need to train against that,
need to kind of talk to them and explicitly say
(23:58):
what the long term consequences are and remind them of it.
I know you said in baseball, you know it can't
be more explicit, but still like have more reminders, constantly,
have these reminders of like this is what you don't
want to do or else it's going to be bad.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
But in an environment that like encourages gambling, where there's
like draft kings or fan duel or caesars ads on
the outfield wall and poker games in the team plane,
you're and never going to have some of this with
with rich young men and not fully formed pre prefrontal cortexes.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
What is it called yep prefrontal cortex. Okay, yeah, yeah, no,
I think that's I think that's exactly right. And if
we if we want to give kind of a nod
to the next layer, which is the Musuhara of it,
all right, that you have you have also these situations
where even if someone like Otani isn't cheating directly, isn't
isn't sports betting, there are incentives for people close to
(24:53):
these individuals to try to take advantage.
Speaker 4 (24:56):
Major League Baseball seem pretty excited about being able to
wrap up that investigation. I mean, there's still a question
about why didn't Otani notice seventeen million dollars missing from
his account?
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Like, that's a pretty fucking good question. I think it is.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
It is, and we don't know, right, and but I
think that it's important to just throw those questions out
there because it is. Even though as someone who has
seen a lot of victims of con artists, I'm very
sympathetic to Otani if we look at it as a
typical con situation that he was potentially conned my Musahara,
you know, charmed by him. That Musahara is the one
(25:35):
who had access to his bank accounts, got all the
alerts et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Like you can
make excuses up to a point, but as you say,
seventeen million dollars is a big number for anyone, and
so you have to then ask, like was he knowingly
looking the other way? Was he involved? Like what was
(25:55):
going on? And I think these are questions that should
be asked, but that won't be asked because the incentives
are completely misaligned here because nobody wants Otani to be
involved because he's the star, and we want the star
to keep being an untarnished star, and we want this
other guy to take the fall. And I do I
do agree with you though that there are still some
(26:15):
question marks, and unfortunately, I think that all we can
do is speculate. We're never going to know, But I
want to be careful and not to just say, oh,
like this is a problem of modern sports books, because like,
let's not forget you know, the Chicago Black Sox, like
shit like this has been going on in sports for
a very very long time before fan dual or DraftKings
(26:37):
or any of these things, and so these are kind
of these are problems and deep kind of issues of
humanity that I think are never going to quite go
away no matter what the regulations say.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
Yeah, look, there are two categories. One is there may
be cases where it is in your financial interest to
throw a game, right, one preventative measure is just paying
everybody really well, including the umpires by the way, where
it's kind of on the surface irrational for you to
gamble at that point, although sometimes people gamble for irrational reasons.
For me, one thing you always remind me of is
(27:08):
that like most con artists are not motivated strictly by money.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Yes, absolutely true. Something I also remind you of, Nate,
is that even though most con artists are not motivated
by money, most people are not con artists. And so
I think that that's a more hopeful way to end
this segment. That most athletes are also, you know, not
degenerate gamblers, not con artists, and going to be in
the sport for the right reason. They want to excel,
(27:34):
they want to do well, they don't want to throw
the game. We'll be back in a minute. So recently
(27:58):
we've seen a resurgence of a stock that we haven't
heard talked about for a few years now, game Stop
because Roaring Kitty aka Keith Gill is back. And for
those of you who followed the game Stop short squeeze
several years ago, Roaring Kitty was kind of the big
(28:19):
force that had game Stop just go on an unprecedented
run and put some very famous hedge funds out of
business and ended up, you know, having this just insane
impact on the markets. And then Keith Gill Roaring Kitty
went silent, and a few weeks ago, all of a sudden,
(28:39):
for the first time, this dormant account started posting memes
and what happened. Game Stop is back, Baby. The stock
just went through the roof once again, and Roaring Kitty
has since made more posts and shown his own holdings,
including over one hundred million in game Stop stock. And
(29:02):
the markets are reacting, and game Stop is reacting, the
SEC is reacting, lots of players are reacting to this
and trying to figure out what's going on. Is it legal?
Kind of what are the repercussions of this? Nate, is
this something that you've been following?
Speaker 4 (29:18):
I wrote about GameStop a little bit in my book
from the standpoint of game theory. Actually, so, Maria, maybe
we should actually talk about some of the game theory
behind shit coins and meme stocks.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Yeah, I think that's a great idea, Nate, because I
do think that that's central to this conversation.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
And the meming part of it me is actually very
central to how the game theory works, believe it or not.
Like to simplify a bit, typically, what you have is,
let's say you have like an overvalued asset. In principle,
people who own that asset could sort of literally conspire
(29:57):
or collude to keep the asset at an artificial value.
As long as nobody sells, right, then it maintains at
least nominally its value, or maybe it keeps going up
if everyone is being like total hold on for dear
life and wants to kind of boost the asset further.
So the problem with that is that like you have,
in game theory terms, a prisoner's dilemma where every party.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Has a strong incentive to defect.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
Right if game Stop is priced at fifty dollars when
the fundamentals price should be two dollars or something like that,
a share, you really have a strong incentive to get
out while you can and take your profits. That could
trigger a collapse in the share price. However, due to
(30:43):
the power of means a sort of coordination is possible
in the prisoner's dilemma. This is what happens when Maria,
let's say you and I commit a crime and we're
in separate jail, says, I don't know what's the most
likely crime we were to commit.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
I don't want to speculate on this night. You and
I are complete. Maybe we're not going any crimes ever,
So let's.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
Say we kidnapped Justice sonya sort of mayor okay, okay,
that would be a pretty serious crimes. But let's say
the government is having trouble proving it, and therefore we
are in separate prison cells, and the government says, well,
you can confess to the crime and get a lower sentence,
or you can remain silent, and we'll see what happens.
(31:27):
Right now, if neither of us were to confess the
way this works, we would kind of get like a
slap on the risk because the government can't really prove
its case. But the game theory is such that not
being able to coordinate on our strategy, we both wind
up stitching on one another and wind up getting a
worse sentence as a result. It's kind of the very simplified,
(31:47):
podcast friendly version of the prisoner's dilemma if we could
coordinate though. I went to a Prediction markets conference this
weekend in California where a guy had a T shirt
on saying I cooperate in the Prisoner's dilemma, meaning that
if we can single to one another, that we are
cooperating and this is great. Yeah, this is what happens
(32:07):
in situations like the internet. Right, if you're like, we're
all of this together against a stupid hedge fund, against
Wall Street and inherently a stock like AMC Theaters or
game Stop is like, it's kind of a joke, right,
These are like kind of Blockbuster video dinosaur companies.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
It's kind of funny.
Speaker 4 (32:23):
And the fact that like that through Matt Levine, the
economics writer for Bloomberg, calls it the meme theory of value.
You are kind of literally creating something out of nothing.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Yeah. So I think that we have some bigger questions
here though, that are like much bigger than Roaring Kitty
and is more about like the roaring kitties of the world. Right,
so this you know, what happened in twenty twenty one,
totally unprecedented. What's happening right now shows that this is
a thing that might actually not be so one off, right,
It might actually be repeating, and we might be in
(32:56):
a position where kind of meme stocks, shit coins, these
types of things really do have an impact on the
broader financial markets that we see these degrees of irrationality
or is it irrational that are playing out in the
broader stock market, where people in kind of the traditional
market analysis are going to have to look at this
(33:17):
differently and try to figure out has the world changed?
Do we need to change how we think about this?
You know, do we need to change where we think
the dumb money is or how it operates, or whether
it's actually dumb? And I think that these are really
important questions, especially as crypto becomes a much bigger world
and memes are the universal language. In some ways, these
(33:40):
are things that just did not exist in the stock
market or in the financial markets in the past.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
Yeah, look, it's a little bit of a blow to
kind of efficient market hypothesis. Clearly, stocks like AMC or
GameStop are unmorried from any notion of kind of the
fundamental values. Although with that said, like a lot of
things are kind of in the eye of a beholder.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
You know why.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
Everyone thinks that, like a Picasso or a or a
Keith Herring or whatever else. You know, why are those
works of our valuable? I mean, often I think they
do have esthetic value, but it's inherently kind of subjective.
It speaks to, I think the kind of maybe inherent
unpredictability of the modern world. It speaks a little bit
to like the way that these kind of faceless, leaderless
(34:25):
internet mobs, because royn Kitty is not like.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Using explicit instructions.
Speaker 4 (34:29):
He's just kind of communicating through through memes and vibes
and people kind of infer what he's saying, and it
kind of starts to chain a momentum that kind of
can sustain itself for some period of time. And can
you time it well enough that you kind.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Of get out before the bubble inevitably bursts?
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Yeah? And is this something that is going to be replicable? Right?
I think that I think that that's another question because
I think other people have tried to be Roaring Kitty
and have failed. But I do think that, you know,
there is irrationality in the stock markets in general, and
always has been one of my favorite quotes from Daniel Konneman,
(35:05):
who won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work
on kind of biases and irrationality. He consulted for a
bunch of hedge funds and he came to the conclusion
that basically traders were gambling. They were not playing poker.
And he said that poker players are you know, much more,
much more rational and can actually, you know, you can
(35:26):
figure out who the winning players are, where the edge is,
et cetera. Gambling. If you're just gambling in a casino,
you can't. And he said, what you guys are doing
is gambling. And no one listened to him, and they
thought that he was, you know, just full of it,
and so they didn't take any of his recommendations to heart.
And but I think that that's a really kind of
important insight that this is not necessarily counter to how
(35:49):
a lot of decision making in the stock markets has
worked in the past. It's just a new element, a
new world, and kind of putting some of the stuff
on steroids, right, blowing it up in a way that
it hasn't been blown up before, and potentially kind of
making that exponentially more powerful.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
Maria, I'm not I'm not one to like dispute too
much the late Daniel Conneman.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Right, Well, that's why that's why I consulted, right, Okay,
that's why I couched my views with Danny Connoman, right,
because I know that you can disagree with me, but
he's he's harder to disagree with. Please continue.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
I don't know, like I, when you have like the
practice of like actual traders betting millions of dollars versus academics,
even academics as smart as Daniel Conneman, I'm not sure
I take the academic side. I think it's really easy
to like come to some theoical conclusion when you don't
(36:46):
have skin in the game that might not be robust necessarily.
I talked to a guy named John Coates for my book,
who is a former trader turned neuroscientists, and he actually
thought when he was working on desks at Wall Street
that the traders didn't take enough risk. It's hard to
get people to be properly, properly risk adjusted until they
kind of had a winning streak. Then they got all
(37:07):
this testosteron anotherchemicals run around the brain and come like
feral animals and go kind of crazy, right, And that's
kind of what can cause bubbles. But yeah, look, I
mean because there's kind of two forms of efficient market hypothesis, right.
There's kind of like the hard form that, yes, stocks
actually do represent a probabilistic discounted projection of future corporate earnings,
(37:32):
Like that's clearly not true when it comes to something
like game stop. The softer form is just that, Okay,
you think you can beat the market, go ahead and try.
You might understand that like, yes, gamestopers over valued, but
good luck in trying to time exactly kind of win
that bubble bursts.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
Yeah, and I think that the bigger point here when
you said that anyone can try, And something that I
think Conoman was trying to get at is that, of
course there are traders and there are certain investors who
can beat the markets, right, there are people who are
very good at this, who kind of understand, who analyze well,
who have the right data, right approach, whatever it is.
(38:12):
But that's not true for the majority. But if you
talk to anyone individual, they always think that they're the
ones who are who are actually more rational and can
beat the markets and are making better decisions. And I
think that that's just an overall human flaw.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
Yeah, Look, if ten percent of people in the world
are the truly rational ones, there's no guarantee that you're
in the ten percent. The correlation, like self perception and
reality is probably probably fairly discordant sometimes.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
Yeah, and I think that that's just something that's very
important to remember, whether you're a roaring kitty, whether you're
one of the portfolio managers who is on the other
side and short game stop, or whether you're someone who's
just an outside observer thinking how do I get in
on this in the future and make a killing. You
(39:08):
and I have to totally switched positions this week, Knate,
because last week when we were recording, I was in
New Haven about to go to Ireland and you were
deep in the World Series. And now I am finally
back in Vegas and you are back in New York City,
so we have swapped. And unfortunately I'm not making a
(39:28):
deep run. I've played exactly one event since I've been
back and I busted. So that didn't that didn't go
according to plan, and I'll play again today. But you
managed to go deep in a second event that was
not the event that we were talking about, So congratulations.
Speaker 4 (39:44):
Thank you, although it ended in a very disappointing way.
This was that five thousand dollars in a limit hold
them event number sixteen.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
That's a big deal name.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
I finished in eighteenth place out of eight hundred and
something runners.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
However, congratulations, thank you, Maria.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
I still am mildly heartbroken about it because.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
You wont dolences congratulate.
Speaker 4 (40:04):
Adolence is like the most common poker emotion basically, so
I kind of lost on a bad beat, which I'm
not gonna dwell on. I saw your new substack post
Marie about like players complaining about bad beats. But basically
I had pocket fives against jack ten offsuit on a
board of jack ten five, So I had a set.
(40:26):
My opponent had the kind of next best time that
isn't a set, which is jack ten for two pair. Unfortunately,
a jacket on the turn, and so this dude, by
the way, won the fucking event. I think I deserved
like half his prize pool.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Basically, it was an.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Awesome Nate, by the way, if it worked that way,
that would be a great role.
Speaker 4 (40:44):
You like tag the chips that you have equity in.
I'm not complaining about this past.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
Year, Yes, you are just just acknowledged that you're complaining
about the bad beat and move on.
Speaker 4 (40:54):
We cover important news the worlds. There is a poker
and part of the news is that a player who
had a lot of chips was eliminated in eighteenth place,
you know, conveying the news, all right, hows my reporting
suggests player got very lucky at several earlier points in
this tournament. For example, this player had pocket queens all
(41:15):
against all against aces and and the queen's won. This
player had pocket tens almost all all in against pocket
kings and the tens one for example.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
So player mister Nathaniel Silver got got ridiculously lucky to
even get to the point where his set could be cracked.
All right, So so let's reframe that as god beats
are good now, but you did you did bust in
unfortunate circumstances.
Speaker 4 (41:45):
Uh, Maria, what about what about Europe? How's the series
gone for you?
Speaker 1 (41:49):
So far?
Speaker 3 (41:49):
My update sucks?
Speaker 4 (41:51):
Oh no? Are you are you over? I?
Speaker 3 (41:57):
Well no, my first event I won the ten k bounties,
so it's pretty good. Yeah, so together, but otherwise zero cashes.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
It's the line between successes and is soaked in in poker,
by the way, because like the first week into it,
I had like one mini cash out of and like, no,
it's like, oh, I'm having a really great world series.
You know, it's all pretty fucking arbitrary, and it all
it all. I mean, it doesn't necessarily even out. It's
like the Gambler's fallacy. But like over long rain.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Thanks for reading my substeck Natee.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
Read Maria subsec she needs revenue now to make up
for her poker losses.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
Folks, Yes, because the my update sucks is because the
one event I played was a twenty five thousand dollars
by an event and I did not cash in it.
So I went from being flat for the World Series
to being down twenty five thousand dollars.
Speaker 4 (42:47):
Maybe if you concentrated more on the poker or not
your newsletter, Maria, you wouldn't have busted out.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
But I feel like I own it, owe it to
my fans, and my newsletter is about all the things
I did wrong or other people did wrong, so that
I played better, And today is the day we change
all of that so that next week when we're recording,
we can talk about my deep run. How's that for optimism.
It's a deal, all right, let's do it. That's it
(43:21):
for today. We have already been getting some listener questions,
which is amazing. Please keep them coming. We want to
hear from you, and we will be addressing some of
the questions in segments on our podcast going forward. We
even have an email address for you to use. Now
it's just Risky Business one word at pushkin dot fm.
Speaker 4 (43:42):
And don't forget to rate and review the show. We
will not tell you which day and the gift, but
you can probably infer which ones we like more.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova and me
Mate Silver. 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 4 (44:07):
And if you want to listen to an ad free version,
signed up for Pushkin Plus for six thirty nine a month.
You get access to ad free listening. Thanks for tuning in.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey, it's Jacob. This week, I want to play for
you an episode from another podcast that Pushkin just launched.
It's a show called Risky Business and it's hosted by
Nate Silver and Maria Konikova. It's a show about making
better decisions. Both Nate and Maria are journalists and they
are also high stakes poker players, so they're bringing their
(00:42):
perspective both from their work in journalism and from the
poker table to help you think about risk and decision making.
On the show, they talk about everything from poker to
politics to making better choices in your own life. The
show is called Risky Business with Nate Silver and Maria Kanakova.
You can find it wherever, and I hope you like
(01:02):
it here it.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Is Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova and I'm Nate Silver. Today
we'll be talking about a few different things, starting with
justice Sonya so Toe Mayor and whether or not she
should retire.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
And we'll talk about degenerate sports betting in the world
of professional athletes. A Major League Baseball player were suspended
for life last week for betting on his own team's games.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
And talking about a different area of degeneracy. We're going
to be giving you a little taste of the world
of memestocks with the return of Roaring Kitty aka Keith
gill get a little bit into what that means for
the world of trading more broadly. So so Nate, There's
(01:54):
been a lot of talk, and we've talked about the
Supreme Court right now and what's going on with it.
Something that we haven't talked about is the fact that
one of the only liberal justices, Sonya so Tamayor, is
reaching a point where she is getting older. She's seventy
years old. She is not in great health, she has diabetes.
(02:14):
She often travels with a physician. And we're nearing the
end of the Biden and administration, and as you and
I have discussed on previous episodes, we don't know if
Biden is going to get re elected. We don't know
if the Democrats are going to stay in power. So
what does this mean for the Supreme Court? What does
this mean for Justice? So to Mayor, should she be
(02:35):
considering retiring right now while Biden can still definitely replace her.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
So she is sixty nine, she turns seventy eight later
this month.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Sonya. I aged you and
I and I apologize.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
That's what we call a newspeg in the business. It's
almost her seventieth birthday. We're getting ahead of the news,
and therefore that's why we're partly why we're doing this now,
but also because we, as you said, Maria, maybe toward
the end of Biden's we are toward the end of
his first term in office, and maybe the end of
any terms in office. If the polls are right. Donald
Trump is a head right now, although it's close. If
(03:13):
Biden does prevail, Democrats could also lose the Senate. There
are Democratic held seats, for example, up in West Virginia
and Montana. In West Virginia, Joe Manchin has retired, so
that seat's like gone for sure. Montana, to a lesser extent,
Ohio are tough hoold for Democrats, So even if Biden
returns to the presidency, you might have an uncooperative Republican Senate.
(03:38):
So you asked, should she consider retiring, and the answer
she should not just consider. She should retire today. Go
take one of these university president jobs. Everybody is quitting
go be president of Yale or Harvard, or go, you know,
go make lots of money selling a book, go under
the World Series of Poker main event. I'm sure she's
a very candy poker player, but she should absolutely retire
(04:00):
if she actually cares about any of the values that
she purports to care about, these kind of liberal, progressive values.
Because she doesn't retire, then she very easily be replaced
by another conservative justice, leading to a seven to two
conservative majority.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
And that is that's going to be difficult to overcome.
I mean, if we have a seven to two conservative majority,
it could be. I mean, I don't know how many
presidents is will need before the Supreme Court is more balanced.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Could be.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
I mean, So it's it's not just that like the
Supreme Court would increase our conserns would increase their majority.
It's also that, like believe it or not, the Supreme
Court agrees on more issues than you might think. But
where that middle point falls is is important, right, the
fact that it does fall with the Barrett or a
(04:53):
Kavanaugh or on some issues, Justice Gorsic is a little
bit heterodox on some issues versus like an Alito or
something like that. Like that also has a material impact
as far as how far they.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Will go on certain issues.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
I completely agree with you. Yeah, And I think that,
and I think that we should really look at the
past to kind of guide Justice Sotomayor's decision right now,
because I'm gonna I'm just gonna go ahead and say this,
and fellow female liberals are going to get really really
mad at me, but I am so fucking mad at
RBG that, like, for me, her entire legacy is tainted,
(05:31):
like the sheer hubris of not retiring when she could
have been replaced and of being like, no, I'm going
to live forever. I'm fucking RBG like, look at my
legacy like I'm invincible, and she, like her legacy is
Roe v. Wade being overturned. That's her legacy because if
she had retired early, we would have had an entirely
(05:52):
different court. And like I used to be like such
a you know, such an avid RBG fan, and I'm
not anymore because like, I think that with that one decision,
she's single handedly set woman back much further than she
ever advanced them. I said it. People are going to
get mad at me, but I think that that is
the truth and I am so pissed at her, like
from beyond the grave that I just I can rant forever.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
No, I'm glad you said it. I mean, in the
Silver Bulletin post I wrote about sort of mayor said
that her retirement is a political IQ test, and that's
you know, that's a little bit of invective. She's I'm
sure a very smart woman. I'm not sure how smart.
Some of the kind of liberal political observers are frankly right,
because the excuses are dumb. Frankly just dumb. They'll say, well,
(06:39):
you can't force a Latina justice to retire, Well, sure
you can.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
There are lots of qualified.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
Latina associate justices and things like that could replace her.
If you believe that's an important thing to do, right
or if people say, oh, it's kind of like it's
ableless to worry about her diabetes, well I'm sorry. If
you write in the constitution that you have a lifetime
appointment to something, which, by the way, I think is
a bad idea.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
I think she'd be limited toward eighteen.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Years or something like that. But if it's a lifetime appointment,
absolutely it's a public's responsibility online to consider, like the
health of the justices. It plays out strategically, but historically
justices wait to time their retirements for partisan reasons, right
they want to be replaced by the same party that
appointed them in the first place. So that's not new.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
You know.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Justice Kennedy, for example, who was more moderate, did so
under Trump when he had some time to go. So look,
maybe some of Mayor is not a believer in the
polls that show Biden trailing, and.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Again that is close.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
The issue is just as much, if not more, about
the Senate in the long term, where in the Senate,
North Dakota has as many senators as California despite having
what it is, you know, one fortieth of the population
or things like that. Currently in the Trumpian coalition, the
GOP does better among rural voters, white rural voters in particular,
and they are overrepresented by quite a lot in the Senate.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
So look, if the.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
GOP gets attacked together, they would have potentially a relatively
durable advantage to the Senate. I do think I kind
of once you go out more than five or ten years,
it kind of becomes a fuzzy crystal ball. But the
basic math is that, like you don't know, what's going
to happen in terms of medium term political future. You're
about to turn seventy years old, you have diabetes, like,
(08:26):
and like, I don't know, Like, by the way, why
is the ego involved here? Like it just kind of weirdly,
it's weirdly stubborn. It makes me think less of people
who seek out power, I suppose.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Yeah, absolutely, I totally agree. And by the way, an
important point that you're making that you didn't make explicit
is that it matters not just who wins the presidency
but what the majority is in the Senate. Because let's
not forget the Garland disaster where Obama tried to appoint
him and the Senate just literally blocked the hearings and
(08:57):
Garland didn't even get a chance to be considered. And
that's something that can happen.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
I mean, it reminds me a little bit of like,
you know, sometimes the failure to make a change is
the biggest risk, right, It's like, well, why would I
disrupt the status quota when I have this job? You know,
seventy years old is not that old for a woman
who presumably has good health care, even if she has diabetes.
But like, sometimes the status quo is the riskier is
(09:24):
the riskier path?
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Right?
Speaker 4 (09:25):
You know right now that she can be replaced by
another liberal justice. Democrats in the Senate, even the Joe
Manchins of the world, have been very loyal to Biden
on judicial appointments. You don't know anything beyond what happens
in November. And by the way, in terms of like
pure political tactics to have a big fight of a
Supreme Court, this is an issue where Democrats now are
(09:46):
more charged up and talk about abortion rights and things
like that. I'm sure whoever is nominated it would be
subject to lots of abuse from Republican commentators. This would
also be I think a good way to rile up
democrats generate more enthusiasm, which is a bit flagging for
Biden right now.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
But I don't know.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
People are like, well, you shouldn't think of politics in
terms of expected value.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
It's should, yes, you should.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
By the way, everyone who says it's not a game,
like did you look up? Did you see what the
Senate tried to do? Right? They're trying to figure out
how do I how do I game it?
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Right?
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Like they are, This is gamesmanship. This is exactly what
gamesmanship is to try to figure out how do I
gain an edge, how do I use the rules to
try to do what I want, even though the intention
is not that right. I understand what the spirit of
the Constitution is and I don't give a fuck. I'm
just going to do like what I can within the
rules so that we win. And I think that it's
(10:40):
absolutely a game in that respect, and it brings out
the types of people I've written before about kind of
the difference between sportsmanship and gamesmanship, and the Republicans are
definitely much more into gamesmanship, and the Democrats are trying
to take the higher sportsmanlike road, and that ain't working
out so well when the other people are are better gamesmen.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
The White House has also not said anything about this,
in part because they have a candidate who is eighty
one years old, an Aldea. People are being too old
for office is a big no no topic that they
don't want to get into. But also, like some of
it comes down to identity politics. I think it's fair
to say I personally think if you kind of take
progressive politics seriously, the notion that like having someone who
(11:28):
represents the group, I think that's substantively smaller impact than
like six three versus seven to two or down the line,
who knows seven two verses eight one, or five to
four versus six three or something like that. But this
is why I don't really find people who are into politics.
I don't really they're not by crowd, really right, because
(11:49):
this is a this is such a no brainer.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
This is not close.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
Whereas we talked about Biden the other week, like by
retiring it's kind of a really tough either way, that's
really close. This is not close.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Now, this is like absolute no brainer.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Totally agree with you. And by the way, I learned
the hard way, Like when you were saying I think
a really important point is that you know, seeking the
status quo kind of saying like, oh, like this is
the this is the safer way to do it is
oftentimes not safer.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
I learned this the hard way when I started playing poker.
That like, if you try to do nothing, that's also
very much in action, right, that is, that is very
much a choice, that is very much doing something, and
it's doing something that's not optimal and you're not doing
it for the right reasons. And that's what's happening right now.
So like, get your ass in gear, actually look at
the incentives, look at the future, and try to figure out.
(12:36):
I think this is also really important what risks are
worth it and what risks aren't because there is so
much uncertainty here. We don't know what the percentages are
because there is this uncertainty about you know, who's going
to win the presidency, who is going to win the Senate?
Is that risk worth it? And I think in this
particular case, it's just a slam dunk. No, it absolutely
is not.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Last week, Major League Baseball suspended San Diego Padres shortstop
Tikipeda Marcano permanently for allegedly having bet on baseball games
while a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates. It also suspended
four other players, of who are now in the minor
leagues for a year for betting on games not involving
their teams. So there's been a lot of gambling scandal
(13:35):
news coming out of baseball and other sports slightly of course,
earlier this year, maybe the best player in the world,
shohe Otane, his former interpreter and BFF.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
Potentially a potentially former BFF.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
TWA if I committed seventeen million dollars of wirefraud involving
your account, Maria, would we still be friends?
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Absolutely, Nate, I would forgive. You're in a heartbeat, because
that would mean that I somehow had seventeen million dollars.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
There you go, if you you know, what's seventeen million?
Speaker 4 (14:05):
If you signed a fifty.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Between friends, what's seventeen between? What's minus? Isn't it? But
as you were saying, Mizahara clued guilty, right, he.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
Pled guilty, and Major League Baseball closed the investigation, which
I know. I actually still a couple of questions about
Otani's involvement that will communiately never hear anything about ever again.
But yeah, So this is the first suspension for gambling
at related reasons since Pete Rose, who also was alleged
to have bet on his own team. Now, Marcano, from
(14:34):
what I read, has not planned to appeal, at least
not for right now. In fairness to him, there is
a somewhat mitigating circumstance, which is that when he was
making these bets, he was injured, not actively playing for
the Pirates. But still, the theory of the case is
that even if you're betting on your own team. You
still have inside information that's valuable. Right if you know
(14:56):
that a certain player is healthy and therefore likely to play,
Right if you know that the team was up all
night at the strip club, maybe you'd choose not to
bet that game, for example. So, and this is like
literally a rule posted in every Major League Baseball clubhouse.
You bet on games involving your own team, you are
suspended for life. It is one of the least ambuist
(15:18):
rules in all of Baseball's rule book.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Yeah, and I think that it's a rule that makes
complete sense, right, because if you're betting on your own
team or providing information, I mean that is like, that's
a different kind of inside baseball, right, that is not
the good kind. And I think that when we see
suspensions like this, I think it's really important. As the
ubiquity of sports betting goes up, as we have these
(15:44):
apps everywhere, as it's possible to do all these crazy
parlay bets, as it's possible to bet while events are
actually going on, all of these new capabilities that haven't
existed in the past, I think it's incredibly important to
be strict about this. By the way, I also think
it's kind of hilarious in a way. Hilarious might be
the wrong word. But how bad Marcano still was. I mean,
(16:05):
I think he won just over four percent.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Well that's a little So this is.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Something that there's spin involved here.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
I mean, so peason he's winning four percent of his
bets is because he's beending multi leg parlays, right, see,
but on the pirates to win, and you bet on
five other teams to win, and therefore, you know, take
like two to the fifth power if they're all fifty
to fifty bets, and so so he's doing multi team
parlays where you usually lose, but like when you win,
you win a lot. So the four percent is kind
(16:34):
of misleading. That might be the expected value in terms
of how often he's supposed to win. There is one irony, though,
which is that like he was apparently using one of
the legal sports books that like tipped off major League Baseball.
So yeah, these guys, will you know, squeal on you
if you're a Major League Baseball player you decide to
(16:56):
bet on games. They are they have incentives though, to
be concerned about about action that could compromise their deal
with the leagues. They have concerns about game integrity two.
In some ways, I've been surprised there hasn't been even
more of a backlash. But look, if you're a major
League Baseball player, my advice to you is do not
use like DraftKings or fan duel or a partner that's
(17:18):
in bed with Major League Baseball. Right use some offshore
illegal betting website. There's less likelihood of being detected.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Like Epei Mezuhara did for seventeen million dollars.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
Yeah, at least at least Epe gave himself a chance, right.
Epe was smart enough to know you're not going to
fucking bet on fan duel, then you're drawing dead.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
By the way it is, I think it's interesting to
note when I was saying that it's it's crucial that
people are being caught, that the four players who were
suspended for a year, they all bet just a few
hundred dollars, right like that was. They didn't make big bets,
they made tiny bets, and they were still suspended. So
I think that that's actually a really important hardline to
draw that it doesn't have to be in the millions,
(17:58):
it doesn't have to be in the hundreds of thousands.
This was like one hundred bucks, two hundred bucks, you know,
four hundred bucks.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
Yeah, and uh, you know, Marcano's bets were larger. The
total some low six figures. But you know, I doubt
that he is betting to make a profit, right. I mean,
you take a bunch of competitive young men in any industry,
there's a lot of DJM, as we would call it,
(18:24):
a lot of degeneracy and things like poker. High six
poker games are often played on the back of team
planes and things like that.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
These people are.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
Around a lot of money all the time. The rookies
are not making that much, but they're around people who
are making lots and lots and lots of money.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
You know.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
The one case where there really was some kind of
expected value for the person making the bets was the
NBA player John tay Porter, who was apparently had been
dealt in somehow to individual player parlays where why people
were betting on this obscure player named John tay Porter
is hard to know, but he basically intentionally tanked the game, right.
(19:05):
He would intentionally make up a fake injury, allegedly, he
would intentionally like not hustle after rebounds, allegedly so that
his betters would achieve the under on like how many
points that John tay Porter would receive, and that was
very suspicious. I mean, I think the NBA got lucky
that that scandal broke at about the same time as
the Otani scandal broke, because that actually affected directly affected
(19:28):
game integrity, and that's like a kind of deeper level
of hell, I think than what Marcano did.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
I totally agree with you, and I'm really glad I
was going to bring johntay Porter because I think that
what is going on there is actually the bigger issue,
because it's amazing that he was caught, and if you
think about the fact that I think the much bigger
issue isn't players like betting themselves because they'll get caught right,
like you'll figure it out, But players giving other betters
(19:56):
inside information and then actually affecting outcomes when they're in
the games. That's much more difficult to police, especially if
you're smart about it. Right, all of a sudden, if
you see millions on this obscure player who's then pulling
off some crazy shit that you know that you are
thinking of, like what in the world that's a red flag?
But imagine you're smarter about it, right, Imagine you're actually
(20:17):
someone who kind is a better cheater, who kind of
stays under the radar, who manages to do it a
little bit less blatantly, less often fakes you know, doesn't
fake injuries quite as much, doesn't throw games in quite
as obvious a way, but does it anyway. And that
to me is the much bigger and much scarier issue,
because that can really affect game integrity, It can affect
(20:39):
the entire kind of gaming community because it just goes
against the heart of why people play games, why people
watch games, you know, what this is all about. And
I think that that's the much bigger thing we should
be thinking about.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
Yeah, betting on individual accomplishments raises this risk a lot,
Like you should not be taking that much action on
anything involving John tay Porter, right, Like, who the fuck
is going to bet that unless they have some type
of inside angle. I mean, I wasn't like a Summer
League game in Las Vegas about a year ago. Now
(21:12):
Summer League coincides with the end of the World Series
of Poker and watching the game and see like some
team executive two rows in front of me and giant
font on his cell phone is typing about how the
New York Mexican a trade for og Ananobi which didn't
happen then but did actually happen several months later. If
(21:33):
I having not really it's not really inside information, I
mean a public area of a stadium, right, But like
information has a way of slipping out about injuries, about fatigue,
you know, about like I know, you know, some people
will hang around tennis tournaments, for example, and see which
player is having like a cheating scandal with his girlfriend
or or looks like they're coming in hungover and things
(21:55):
like that. You know, information has.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
A way of getting out.
Speaker 4 (21:59):
And to limit your liability by focusing on more major
and more robust wagering categories would be prudent, but you know,
but look, it's a money grab. The long term sustainability
of any of this, I think is not as assumed
as some of the big sports betting companies would would
right in their stock market and their ten k's and
things like that. So but you know, at the very
(22:21):
least they are smart enough to partner with the leagues
when they detect activity that underminess gain and integrity, to
at least tip them off to snitch on their customers.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
No, absolutely, And I think we're not just talking about
US sports betting, US sportsbook. This is happening in sports
all over the world, and some of the worst are
actually in Europe and in places where there are lots
of athletes who are not paid very well. And a
lot of times they're young, right, they're teenagers. They're still
developing their sense of self, their sense of kind of
right and wrong and kind of gray areas and long
(22:55):
term consequences isn't fully developed. Because, by the way, if
you're like a seventeen year old guy, your prefrontal cortex
ain't fully developed yet. Your ability to kind of think
through long term decisions isn't fully developed. And if someone says,
do you want to make you know, a quick ten grand?
A quick you know quick this, You're like, okay, you know,
this might not be a bad idea. All I have
(23:15):
to do is, you know, if I'm a tennis player,
I just serve a little bit off right, just one time.
That's all it takes. I just lose one point. What's
one point? You know? I just do this a few times,
and all of a sudden I have money and you
don't think, wait, if I'm caught, there goes my career
and there goes kind of any chance I have of
all these future earnings. You just don't make that math.
(23:37):
You're thinking much more in the moment. You're thinking much
more immediate gratification as opposed to kind of long term
expected value. And I think that that is something that
people just need to be aware of, need to be
aware who the vulnerable players are. And I think that
teams need to guard against that, need to train against that,
need to kind of talk to them and explicitly say
(23:58):
what the long term consequences are and remind them of it.
I know you said in baseball, you know it can't
be more explicit, but still like have more reminders, constantly,
have these reminders of like this is what you don't
want to do or else it's going to be bad.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
But in an environment that like encourages gambling, where there's
like draft kings or fan duel or caesars ads on
the outfield wall and poker games in the team plane,
you're and never going to have some of this with
with rich young men and not fully formed pre prefrontal cortexes.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
What is it called yep prefrontal cortex. Okay, yeah, yeah, no,
I think that's I think that's exactly right. And if
we if we want to give kind of a nod
to the next layer, which is the Musuhara of it,
all right, that you have you have also these situations
where even if someone like Otani isn't cheating directly, isn't
isn't sports betting, there are incentives for people close to
(24:53):
these individuals to try to take advantage.
Speaker 4 (24:56):
Major League Baseball seem pretty excited about being able to
wrap up that investigation. I mean, there's still a question
about why didn't Otani notice seventeen million dollars missing from
his account?
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Like, that's a pretty fucking good question. I think it is.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
It is, and we don't know, right, and but I
think that it's important to just throw those questions out
there because it is. Even though as someone who has
seen a lot of victims of con artists, I'm very
sympathetic to Otani if we look at it as a
typical con situation that he was potentially conned my Musahara,
you know, charmed by him. That Musahara is the one
(25:35):
who had access to his bank accounts, got all the
alerts et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Like you can
make excuses up to a point, but as you say,
seventeen million dollars is a big number for anyone, and
so you have to then ask, like was he knowingly
looking the other way? Was he involved? Like what was
(25:55):
going on? And I think these are questions that should
be asked, but that won't be asked because the incentives
are completely misaligned here because nobody wants Otani to be
involved because he's the star, and we want the star
to keep being an untarnished star, and we want this
other guy to take the fall. And I do I
do agree with you though that there are still some
(26:15):
question marks, and unfortunately, I think that all we can
do is speculate. We're never going to know, But I
want to be careful and not to just say, oh,
like this is a problem of modern sports books, because like,
let's not forget you know, the Chicago Black Sox, like
shit like this has been going on in sports for
a very very long time before fan dual or DraftKings
(26:37):
or any of these things, and so these are kind
of these are problems and deep kind of issues of
humanity that I think are never going to quite go
away no matter what the regulations say.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
Yeah, look, there are two categories. One is there may
be cases where it is in your financial interest to
throw a game, right, one preventative measure is just paying
everybody really well, including the umpires by the way, where
it's kind of on the surface irrational for you to
gamble at that point, although sometimes people gamble for irrational reasons.
For me, one thing you always remind me of is
(27:08):
that like most con artists are not motivated strictly by money.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Yes, absolutely true. Something I also remind you of, Nate,
is that even though most con artists are not motivated
by money, most people are not con artists. And so
I think that that's a more hopeful way to end
this segment. That most athletes are also, you know, not
degenerate gamblers, not con artists, and going to be in
the sport for the right reason. They want to excel,
(27:34):
they want to do well, they don't want to throw
the game. We'll be back in a minute. So recently
(27:58):
we've seen a resurgence of a stock that we haven't
heard talked about for a few years now, game Stop
because Roaring Kitty aka Keith Gill is back. And for
those of you who followed the game Stop short squeeze
several years ago, Roaring Kitty was kind of the big
(28:19):
force that had game Stop just go on an unprecedented
run and put some very famous hedge funds out of
business and ended up, you know, having this just insane
impact on the markets. And then Keith Gill Roaring Kitty
went silent, and a few weeks ago, all of a sudden,
(28:39):
for the first time, this dormant account started posting memes
and what happened. Game Stop is back, Baby. The stock
just went through the roof once again, and Roaring Kitty
has since made more posts and shown his own holdings,
including over one hundred million in game Stop stock. And
(29:02):
the markets are reacting, and game Stop is reacting, the
SEC is reacting, lots of players are reacting to this
and trying to figure out what's going on. Is it legal?
Kind of what are the repercussions of this? Nate, is
this something that you've been following?
Speaker 4 (29:18):
I wrote about GameStop a little bit in my book
from the standpoint of game theory. Actually, so, Maria, maybe
we should actually talk about some of the game theory
behind shit coins and meme stocks.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Yeah, I think that's a great idea, Nate, because I
do think that that's central to this conversation.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
And the meming part of it me is actually very
central to how the game theory works, believe it or not.
Like to simplify a bit, typically, what you have is,
let's say you have like an overvalued asset. In principle,
people who own that asset could sort of literally conspire
(29:57):
or collude to keep the asset at an artificial value.
As long as nobody sells, right, then it maintains at
least nominally its value, or maybe it keeps going up
if everyone is being like total hold on for dear
life and wants to kind of boost the asset further.
So the problem with that is that like you have,
in game theory terms, a prisoner's dilemma where every party.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Has a strong incentive to defect.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
Right if game Stop is priced at fifty dollars when
the fundamentals price should be two dollars or something like that,
a share, you really have a strong incentive to get
out while you can and take your profits. That could
trigger a collapse in the share price. However, due to
(30:43):
the power of means a sort of coordination is possible
in the prisoner's dilemma. This is what happens when Maria,
let's say you and I commit a crime and we're
in separate jail, says, I don't know what's the most
likely crime we were to commit.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
I don't want to speculate on this night. You and
I are complete. Maybe we're not going any crimes ever,
So let's.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
Say we kidnapped Justice sonya sort of mayor okay, okay,
that would be a pretty serious crimes. But let's say
the government is having trouble proving it, and therefore we
are in separate prison cells, and the government says, well,
you can confess to the crime and get a lower sentence,
or you can remain silent, and we'll see what happens.
(31:27):
Right now, if neither of us were to confess the
way this works, we would kind of get like a
slap on the risk because the government can't really prove
its case. But the game theory is such that not
being able to coordinate on our strategy, we both wind
up stitching on one another and wind up getting a
worse sentence as a result. It's kind of the very simplified,
(31:47):
podcast friendly version of the prisoner's dilemma if we could
coordinate though. I went to a Prediction markets conference this
weekend in California where a guy had a T shirt
on saying I cooperate in the Prisoner's dilemma, meaning that
if we can single to one another, that we are
cooperating and this is great. Yeah, this is what happens
(32:07):
in situations like the internet. Right, if you're like, we're
all of this together against a stupid hedge fund, against
Wall Street and inherently a stock like AMC Theaters or
game Stop is like, it's kind of a joke, right,
These are like kind of Blockbuster video dinosaur companies.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
It's kind of funny.
Speaker 4 (32:23):
And the fact that like that through Matt Levine, the
economics writer for Bloomberg, calls it the meme theory of value.
You are kind of literally creating something out of nothing.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Yeah. So I think that we have some bigger questions
here though, that are like much bigger than Roaring Kitty
and is more about like the roaring kitties of the world. Right,
so this you know, what happened in twenty twenty one,
totally unprecedented. What's happening right now shows that this is
a thing that might actually not be so one off, right,
It might actually be repeating, and we might be in
(32:56):
a position where kind of meme stocks, shit coins, these
types of things really do have an impact on the
broader financial markets that we see these degrees of irrationality
or is it irrational that are playing out in the
broader stock market, where people in kind of the traditional
market analysis are going to have to look at this
(33:17):
differently and try to figure out has the world changed?
Do we need to change how we think about this?
You know, do we need to change where we think
the dumb money is or how it operates, or whether
it's actually dumb? And I think that these are really
important questions, especially as crypto becomes a much bigger world
and memes are the universal language. In some ways, these
(33:40):
are things that just did not exist in the stock
market or in the financial markets in the past.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
Yeah, look, it's a little bit of a blow to
kind of efficient market hypothesis. Clearly, stocks like AMC or
GameStop are unmorried from any notion of kind of the
fundamental values. Although with that said, like a lot of
things are kind of in the eye of a beholder.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
You know why.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
Everyone thinks that, like a Picasso or a or a
Keith Herring or whatever else. You know, why are those
works of our valuable? I mean, often I think they
do have esthetic value, but it's inherently kind of subjective.
It speaks to, I think the kind of maybe inherent
unpredictability of the modern world. It speaks a little bit
to like the way that these kind of faceless, leaderless
(34:25):
internet mobs, because royn Kitty is not like.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Using explicit instructions.
Speaker 4 (34:29):
He's just kind of communicating through through memes and vibes
and people kind of infer what he's saying, and it
kind of starts to chain a momentum that kind of
can sustain itself for some period of time. And can
you time it well enough that you kind.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Of get out before the bubble inevitably bursts?
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Yeah? And is this something that is going to be replicable? Right?
I think that I think that that's another question because
I think other people have tried to be Roaring Kitty
and have failed. But I do think that, you know,
there is irrationality in the stock markets in general, and
always has been one of my favorite quotes from Daniel Konneman,
(35:05):
who won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work
on kind of biases and irrationality. He consulted for a
bunch of hedge funds and he came to the conclusion
that basically traders were gambling. They were not playing poker.
And he said that poker players are you know, much more,
much more rational and can actually, you know, you can
(35:26):
figure out who the winning players are, where the edge is,
et cetera. Gambling. If you're just gambling in a casino,
you can't. And he said, what you guys are doing
is gambling. And no one listened to him, and they
thought that he was, you know, just full of it,
and so they didn't take any of his recommendations to heart.
And but I think that that's a really kind of
important insight that this is not necessarily counter to how
(35:49):
a lot of decision making in the stock markets has
worked in the past. It's just a new element, a
new world, and kind of putting some of the stuff
on steroids, right, blowing it up in a way that
it hasn't been blown up before, and potentially kind of
making that exponentially more powerful.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
Maria, I'm not I'm not one to like dispute too
much the late Daniel Conneman.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Right, Well, that's why that's why I consulted, right, Okay,
that's why I couched my views with Danny Connoman, right,
because I know that you can disagree with me, but
he's he's harder to disagree with. Please continue.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
I don't know, like I, when you have like the
practice of like actual traders betting millions of dollars versus academics,
even academics as smart as Daniel Conneman, I'm not sure
I take the academic side. I think it's really easy
to like come to some theoical conclusion when you don't
(36:46):
have skin in the game that might not be robust necessarily.
I talked to a guy named John Coates for my book,
who is a former trader turned neuroscientists, and he actually
thought when he was working on desks at Wall Street
that the traders didn't take enough risk. It's hard to
get people to be properly, properly risk adjusted until they
kind of had a winning streak. Then they got all
(37:07):
this testosteron anotherchemicals run around the brain and come like
feral animals and go kind of crazy, right, And that's
kind of what can cause bubbles. But yeah, look, I
mean because there's kind of two forms of efficient market hypothesis, right.
There's kind of like the hard form that, yes, stocks
actually do represent a probabilistic discounted projection of future corporate earnings,
(37:32):
Like that's clearly not true when it comes to something
like game stop. The softer form is just that, Okay,
you think you can beat the market, go ahead and try.
You might understand that like, yes, gamestopers over valued, but
good luck in trying to time exactly kind of win
that bubble bursts.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
Yeah, and I think that the bigger point here when
you said that anyone can try, And something that I
think Conoman was trying to get at is that, of
course there are traders and there are certain investors who
can beat the markets, right, there are people who are
very good at this, who kind of understand, who analyze well,
who have the right data, right approach, whatever it is.
(38:12):
But that's not true for the majority. But if you
talk to anyone individual, they always think that they're the
ones who are who are actually more rational and can
beat the markets and are making better decisions. And I
think that that's just an overall human flaw.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
Yeah, Look, if ten percent of people in the world
are the truly rational ones, there's no guarantee that you're
in the ten percent. The correlation, like self perception and
reality is probably probably fairly discordant sometimes.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
Yeah, and I think that that's just something that's very
important to remember, whether you're a roaring kitty, whether you're
one of the portfolio managers who is on the other
side and short game stop, or whether you're someone who's
just an outside observer thinking how do I get in
on this in the future and make a killing. You
(39:08):
and I have to totally switched positions this week, Knate,
because last week when we were recording, I was in
New Haven about to go to Ireland and you were
deep in the World Series. And now I am finally
back in Vegas and you are back in New York City,
so we have swapped. And unfortunately I'm not making a
(39:28):
deep run. I've played exactly one event since I've been
back and I busted. So that didn't that didn't go
according to plan, and I'll play again today. But you
managed to go deep in a second event that was
not the event that we were talking about, So congratulations.
Speaker 4 (39:44):
Thank you, although it ended in a very disappointing way.
This was that five thousand dollars in a limit hold
them event number sixteen.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
That's a big deal name.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
I finished in eighteenth place out of eight hundred and
something runners.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
However, congratulations, thank you, Maria.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
I still am mildly heartbroken about it because.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
You wont dolences congratulate.
Speaker 4 (40:04):
Adolence is like the most common poker emotion basically, so
I kind of lost on a bad beat, which I'm
not gonna dwell on. I saw your new substack post
Marie about like players complaining about bad beats. But basically
I had pocket fives against jack ten offsuit on a
board of jack ten five, So I had a set.
(40:26):
My opponent had the kind of next best time that
isn't a set, which is jack ten for two pair. Unfortunately,
a jacket on the turn, and so this dude, by
the way, won the fucking event. I think I deserved
like half his prize pool.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Basically, it was an.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Awesome Nate, by the way, if it worked that way,
that would be a great role.
Speaker 4 (40:44):
You like tag the chips that you have equity in.
I'm not complaining about this past.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
Year, Yes, you are just just acknowledged that you're complaining
about the bad beat and move on.
Speaker 4 (40:54):
We cover important news the worlds. There is a poker
and part of the news is that a player who
had a lot of chips was eliminated in eighteenth place,
you know, conveying the news, all right, hows my reporting
suggests player got very lucky at several earlier points in
this tournament. For example, this player had pocket queens all
(41:15):
against all against aces and and the queen's won. This
player had pocket tens almost all all in against pocket
kings and the tens one for example.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
So player mister Nathaniel Silver got got ridiculously lucky to
even get to the point where his set could be cracked.
All right, So so let's reframe that as god beats
are good now, but you did you did bust in
unfortunate circumstances.
Speaker 4 (41:45):
Uh, Maria, what about what about Europe? How's the series
gone for you?
Speaker 1 (41:49):
So far?
Speaker 3 (41:49):
My update sucks?
Speaker 4 (41:51):
Oh no? Are you are you over? I?
Speaker 3 (41:57):
Well no, my first event I won the ten k bounties,
so it's pretty good. Yeah, so together, but otherwise zero cashes.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
It's the line between successes and is soaked in in poker,
by the way, because like the first week into it,
I had like one mini cash out of and like, no,
it's like, oh, I'm having a really great world series.
You know, it's all pretty fucking arbitrary, and it all
it all. I mean, it doesn't necessarily even out. It's
like the Gambler's fallacy. But like over long rain.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Thanks for reading my substeck Natee.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
Read Maria subsec she needs revenue now to make up
for her poker losses.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
Folks, Yes, because the my update sucks is because the
one event I played was a twenty five thousand dollars
by an event and I did not cash in it.
So I went from being flat for the World Series
to being down twenty five thousand dollars.
Speaker 4 (42:47):
Maybe if you concentrated more on the poker or not
your newsletter, Maria, you wouldn't have busted out.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
But I feel like I own it, owe it to
my fans, and my newsletter is about all the things
I did wrong or other people did wrong, so that
I played better, And today is the day we change
all of that so that next week when we're recording,
we can talk about my deep run. How's that for optimism.
It's a deal, all right, let's do it. That's it
(43:21):
for today. We have already been getting some listener questions,
which is amazing. Please keep them coming. We want to
hear from you, and we will be addressing some of
the questions in segments on our podcast going forward. We
even have an email address for you to use. Now
it's just Risky Business one word at pushkin dot fm.
Speaker 4 (43:42):
And don't forget to rate and review the show. We
will not tell you which day and the gift, but
you can probably infer which ones we like more.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova and me
Mate Silver. 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 4 (44:07):
And if you want to listen to an ad free version,
signed up for Pushkin Plus for six thirty nine a month.
You get access to ad free listening. Thanks for tuning in.
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