Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
Speaker 1: better decisions. I'm Maria Kanikova and I'm Nate Silver. So
Speaker 1: today on the show, Nate, we'll be talking about kind
Speaker 1: of core risky business topic, which is, you know, poker, sports, betting, gambling,
Speaker 1: all of these things. We'll be talking about the two
Speaker 1: indictments that came out a last week on Thursday, the
Speaker 1: twenty third, that involve NBA players other personalities who allegedly
Speaker 1: took part in some unsavory cheating behaviors.
Speaker 2: It's a little bit like two federal indictments, five mafia families,
Speaker 2: eight co conspirators, and a partridge. It's sorry, it's almost Please.
Speaker 1: Please continue, Nate, can you have you have some very
Speaker 1: Christmas y lights behind you? Because you are not in
Speaker 1: New York.
Speaker 2: I am in FBI. No, I'm just kidding. I am
Speaker 2: in Ciudad de Mexico. I'm in Mexico City. I'm not
Speaker 2: supposed to be in Mexico City right now. I am
Speaker 2: supposed to have flown down tonight. But you know, there
Speaker 2: was some at least good risky business airline strategy employed
Speaker 2: last night, which is why I'm getting out today and
Speaker 2: instead of staying even longer, and didn't bring my microphone. Right,
Speaker 2: That's why I had my phone dangling from my headphones
Speaker 2: and at the El Camino Reale hotel near Terminal ones
Speaker 2: of whatever it's called Benito a Quires Airport. Although I
Speaker 2: did make a good decision yesterday Maria talked about like
Speaker 2: decisions under pressure. So get in the flight, you know,
Speaker 2: little s flow on the tarmac after about Actually, I
Speaker 2: don't think we've even pushed off the tarmac, right, And
Speaker 2: the pilot is like, well, we're just taking care of
Speaker 2: some just paperwork right here, right, And I feel like
Speaker 2: I'm already being like gas lit a little bit, like
Speaker 2: you said, another forty minutes or so on, okay for work.
Speaker 2: And then he comes back on. And by the way,
Speaker 2: I can tell me.
Speaker 1: Forty minutes on the paperwork night, that's never I mean,
Speaker 1: taking care of some paperwork is not forty minutes.
Speaker 2: I'm an experienced flyer. I can tell within microseconds by
Speaker 2: the tone of the pilot's voice just how bad the
Speaker 2: news is. Right, So it's like another delay for like,
Speaker 2: so we're now like an hour and thirty forty minutes
Speaker 2: without having pushed back from the gate and now there's
Speaker 2: some clarity. That's an engine problem with an undetermined time
Speaker 2: of resolution. Right, I start using what little Wi Fi
Speaker 2: I have to ask, not that you can congress with
Speaker 2: your own comment sense of up being a prequent flyer, right,
Speaker 2: but like I asked chat GPT and Claude like, what
Speaker 2: are the chances that we're really going to get off
Speaker 2: on this flight tonight?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And Claude's like, Yo, they're gaslighting you bro.
Speaker 1: Claude tells it like it is, they're gaslighting you bro.
Speaker 2: You enough to know what are you talking about? Thirty
Speaker 2: percent chance? Right? And then we deplane and then Claude's like, immediately, no,
Speaker 2: readbook your ticket and so and so we did, and
Speaker 2: so we got I think one of the relatively few
Speaker 2: seats available on the same flight today, probably gonna be
Speaker 2: a middle seat. Not gonna lie Maria, Probably gonna be
Speaker 2: middle seed. But like I'd rather in Houston or something.
Speaker 2: But the important thing is you have to act quickly, yes,
Speaker 2: in these air trabal decision might mears. After my partner
Speaker 2: and I checked in, we went back up to the
Speaker 2: lobby to go get a uber to dinner, and like
Speaker 2: there's a line an hour and a half long. Everybody
Speaker 2: asked from our flight, who did not behave so proactively?
Speaker 2: Who will gaslet by like Delta, but Delta Airlines, you
Speaker 2: know you owe me one, you only one. You owe
Speaker 2: me a free flight somewhere probably, so act decisively. Sometimes
Speaker 2: equilibrium of like oh, let's kind of wait and see
Speaker 2: is like actually quite quite a bad equilibrium.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, that's really good advice. I'm gonna echo that
Speaker 1: act quickly, and when it seems like it's going wrong,
Speaker 1: it'll probably go wrong. But now let's uh, let's turn
Speaker 1: to uh the hot topic of the day, which is
Speaker 1: so in the risky business domain, it's not even funny
Speaker 1: core risky business. Nate, has anything been happening with the
Speaker 1: NBA and sports bedding and poker? I don't think there's
Speaker 1: anything in the news, do you.
Speaker 2: It's been an exciting start to the NBA season. Victor
Speaker 2: Womanyana it looks like it, and Women Yama looks like
Speaker 2: an MVP already. Steph Curry has already had big comebacks.
Speaker 2: I'm a big NBA fan. But which day was it?
Speaker 2: It was Thursday? I think early Morre? Yeah, is that right? Yep?
Speaker 1: So it was Thursday. The twenty third of October.
Speaker 2: So there are two funeral indictments which at first might
Speaker 2: appear unrelated but actually have a lot of co conspirators,
Speaker 2: as they are called. And remember, the things we're gonna
Speaker 2: be discussing here are allegations. Marie and I are not lawyers.
Speaker 2: We have right right as journalists and citizens to engage
Speaker 2: in beaesy and priors about how likely some of these
Speaker 2: things are. But they are accusations, allegations. They are not
Speaker 2: approven yet they are disputed by their clients lawyers in
Speaker 2: at least some cases. But two big federal indictments, one
Speaker 2: of which concerns cheating essentially at sports betting. There are
Speaker 2: a couple of different forms of this. So one form
Speaker 2: involves one particular NBA player named Terriett Rogier, who is
Speaker 2: kind of a fortieth percentile mediocre NBA player but has
Speaker 2: still made over one hundred million dollars in his career,
Speaker 2: allegedly removing himself from games early to help his co
Speaker 2: conspirators win prop bets. Now, look, our audience probably will
Speaker 2: know more about prop bets than the average bear. But
Speaker 2: if you're not familiar, if you think about sports betting,
Speaker 2: you might think about. Okay, I can vote bet on
Speaker 2: quite spreads. I could been on money lines, which is
Speaker 2: just the percent the odds, the percentage chance that the
Speaker 2: team wins, or totals or over unders as they're sometimes called, right,
Speaker 2: and you can bet on the future, as has he
Speaker 2: won the Super Bowl, that kind of thing. However, recently,
Speaker 2: you can also bet on how individual players will do,
Speaker 2: and it almost doesn't seem to matter how obscure the
Speaker 2: player is. So Terry Rozier is a mediocre player. Jontay
Speaker 2: Porter is a player who is less than mediocre and
Speaker 2: was suspended for life by the NBA last year for
Speaker 2: a I guess proven to the NBA satisfaction allegation of
Speaker 2: a similar scheme. Right, you're like, hey, look, I bet
Speaker 2: the under bros on this. I'm going to ask out
Speaker 2: of the game after the first quarter, right, cite some injury,
Speaker 2: and then you'll cash in big on your underbets. Right,
Speaker 2: It's like allegation one A. Allegation one B concerns inside
Speaker 2: information leaking to the gamblers about the availability of key
Speaker 2: NBA players. So a person named co Conspirator eight, who
Speaker 2: is almost certainly because the clues are not very subtle.
Speaker 2: Currently suspended Portland Trailblazers coach Chauncy Billups, a former member
Speaker 2: of the Detroit Pistons other teams who has now been
Speaker 2: suspended by the league, but a Hall of Fame player
Speaker 2: who allegedly tip off his gambling buddies about when key
Speaker 2: personal that we're going to participate. Damian Jones is a
Speaker 2: Los Angeles Lakers former player. Actually, Damian Jones is like
Speaker 2: a confidant of Lebron James. Lebron James is not accused
Speaker 2: of anything whatsoever, but like he was a friend who
Speaker 2: had access to like is Lebron practicing house he feeling
Speaker 2: Knowing whether Lebron James will play in a game obviously
Speaker 2: very important if you're trying to bet on the Lakers
Speaker 2: or against the Lakers for that matter. Right, and there
Speaker 2: are several allegations of inside information leaking before it became
Speaker 2: publicly known according to the NBA's officially very diligent injury
Speaker 2: reporting protocols. Right and by the way, this most has
Speaker 2: happened in the twenty twenty two twenty three NBA season,
Speaker 2: which is a year where I bet the regular season
Speaker 2: every day. It was kind of an experiment side hustle
Speaker 2: for the book to see what the ins and outs
Speaker 2: like really were for a professional gambler, and so some
Speaker 2: of the stuff looked fishy in real time. The second
Speaker 2: indictment is.
Speaker 1: For the creation Royal Flush operation.
Speaker 2: Can you try a little harder?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Can you try? Like, I don't know Operation Flows or
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Operation Royal Flush Night. Yeah, this one is poker related
Speaker 1: about cheating in games from La Vegas, New York, even
Speaker 1: the Hamptons. I realized that's also New York, but games
Speaker 1: all over the country. And there's one person who's in
Speaker 1: both indictments, we assume because as you said, person of
Speaker 1: interest to you know, eight in indictment number one is
Speaker 1: probably Chauncey Billips. Chauncey Bilps is named in indictment number two.
Speaker 1: And these were illegal underground games where lots of famous
Speaker 1: faces they're known as the face cards in the indictment night.
Speaker 1: A lot of famous players and you know, famous personalities
Speaker 1: were in games. Some of them were apparently involved in this,
Speaker 1: allegedly involved in this. The games were correct, good, there
Speaker 1: were crooked car shufflers, there were X ray tables, there
Speaker 1: were sunglasses and contact onses and basically I don't even
Speaker 1: understand like it's like layer upon layer upon layer. If
Speaker 1: the technology of cheating exists, it seems like they used
Speaker 1: it at one point or another in these games. And
Speaker 1: the most striking thing Nate about all of these things is,
Speaker 1: it's the first time I've seen, you know, the famous
Speaker 1: New York crime families working together. You know, it's the
Speaker 1: five families, is what you traditionally think of. In this
Speaker 1: particular case, four of them are in the indictment, But
Speaker 1: in my mind, it's the five families uniting for a
Speaker 1: worthy cost, which is, there are so many suckers here,
Speaker 1: let's see how we can fleece them, because allegedly they
Speaker 1: were all involved in these games, in backing them and
Speaker 1: helping them take place, and in helping to collect outstanding
Speaker 1: debt when people lost over seven million dollars. I mean
Speaker 1: that's for poker. Like I understand that for a basketball
Speaker 1: player who makes hundreds of millions, million might not seem
Speaker 1: like a lot, but for a poker game, you know,
Speaker 1: seven point one million dollars, that's a lot of money.
Speaker 2: What I've never done is play in an underground game
Speaker 2: as opposed to a home game. To me, the big
Speaker 2: distinction is not as complicate as people are making it
Speaker 2: out to be. Is are they taking a rake exactly
Speaker 2: or a profit? Right?
Speaker 1: If they are, And by the way, let's just caveat
Speaker 1: this for one second, people who are our poker listeners.
Speaker 1: Rake means that out of every pot played. So say
Speaker 1: Nate and I are in a hand together. Nate, that's
Speaker 1: ten dollars, and I call the ten dollars. So there's
Speaker 1: twenty dollars in the middle, and the house will take,
Speaker 1: depending on the rake, let's say a dollar out of
Speaker 1: it or two dollars out of it, you know, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, and that will go towards the house. That's
Speaker 1: the rake. You take a cut out of every pot
Speaker 1: that's in the middle, just automatically, as like a fee,
Speaker 1: a courtesy fee for running the game. And that is
Speaker 1: not legal. So, even though home games are legal almost everywhere,
Speaker 1: if you don't take rake, as soon as you rake them,
Speaker 1: it becomes completely illegal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we should clarify a couple of things here, right.
Speaker 2: You know, all of the home games I play and
Speaker 2: include some collection for booze catering if you bring in
Speaker 2: an external dealer, So if there are shared expenses, I mean,
Speaker 2: if somebody is the host. Nothing says they have to
Speaker 2: like eat all the expenses themselves, right, But they're not
Speaker 2: trying to directly profit them game. Maybe they're trying to
Speaker 2: build a network, Maybe they're maybe they think they're a
Speaker 2: winning player in the game, but they're not. They don't
Speaker 2: make money per hand or per hour just by the
Speaker 2: mere act of running a poker game, right. That's that's
Speaker 2: the one clear distinction. By the way, if you want
Speaker 2: to be technical, you know, check the laws in your
Speaker 2: local state. As far as I am aware, where have
Speaker 2: I ever played private games, I guess New York, California,
Speaker 2: those states, poker is pretty clearly legal, I believe. If
Speaker 2: you're if you're not taking a rake, yep, it was
Speaker 2: gonna be careful. The Feds don't always interpret gambling law
Speaker 2: that sympathetically. If there's a lot of money changing hands,
Speaker 2: if there's you know, if there's a bunch of drug
Speaker 2: use or prostitution or things like that at your game,
Speaker 2: then you know, but typically poker gets kind of like
Speaker 2: caught up, you know. If I had to guess, well,
Speaker 2: I don't know. If I had to guess, I would
Speaker 2: think that the NBA investigation came first, and the poker
Speaker 2: kind of got dragged into it. Maybe that's wrong, but
Speaker 2: in terms of kind of like what things that fed
Speaker 2: typically prioritize more, maybe it's from the poker is actually
Speaker 2: more money allegedly, right and totally more than seven million
Speaker 2: at least quote unquote they say.
Speaker 1: But I would actually think that. I mean, from my perspective,
Speaker 1: it seems like the poker would probably not have been
Speaker 1: that would not have happened without the sports betting because
Speaker 1: in the sports betting there are just many more parties
Speaker 1: that are directly related to state institutions. Right, because now
Speaker 1: that sports betting is legal in over thirty states, states
Speaker 1: are actually reliant on tax revenue sports betting from the
Speaker 1: big companies from all of that legal stuff. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of Now it's been formalized in such a
Speaker 1: way that like it just draws a lot of attention.
Speaker 1: It's not just an internal NBA thing, right where the
Speaker 1: NBA can say like, oh, I've investigated my player and
Speaker 1: everything seems to be okay or not. But now you
Speaker 1: have all of these different organizations with different incentives. Because
Speaker 1: I think that on its own, like the NBA isn't
Speaker 1: necessarily incentivized to go over after everyone so ardently but together.
Speaker 1: Once you have the sports betting companies, once you have
Speaker 1: state involvement, once you have all of these things, then
Speaker 1: that's where like, that's where shit hits the fan.
Speaker 2: And we'll be right back after this break. I am
Speaker 2: not as sympathetic to the people who are defrauded. Let's
Speaker 2: say it's not a victimless crime, right, the victims entered
Speaker 2: into this den of iniquity.
Speaker 1: Kind of which fun we're talking about poker now, for poker.
Speaker 2: Right where they're playing games that if you're playing at
Speaker 2: high stakes, you ought to know that there are various
Speaker 2: kinds of risks, right. I mean, it's just like people
Speaker 2: don't realize the extent to which everything that a casino does,
Speaker 2: right from like what they do when you cash your
Speaker 2: cash in for chips, to like you know, burning a
Speaker 2: car before dealing the flop, right, even things people don't
Speaker 2: think about, like you know, why are there where it's
Speaker 2: a two color deck black and red instead of four
Speaker 2: colors which they use in our creatially games sometimes, Well
Speaker 2: it's because like it's hard to distinguish if you want
Speaker 2: to see two colors and black and red kind of
Speaker 2: both appear kind of dark kind of dark hued colors. Right,
Speaker 2: you know if a dealer, secondly you're unmistaken, flashes flush
Speaker 2: as a card, you can see the bottom of the deck, Right,
Speaker 2: it gives you less information if you don't know as
Speaker 2: much about the suit, right, and so like, all these
Speaker 2: procedures that have been put into place for many years
Speaker 2: have made poker and casino environments relatively safe enterprises. Which
Speaker 2: is not equilibrium otherwise, right. Equilibrium otherwise is that you
Speaker 2: know it's someone cheats. Whereas the NBA scandal, it's not
Speaker 2: just that, like the betting companies are defrauded and the
Speaker 2: league is defrauded. It also affects the interests of fans
Speaker 2: and affects the interest like the integrity of the NBA.
Speaker 2: It also affects like people like me who are trying
Speaker 2: to win money the right way at sports betting. Right,
Speaker 2: you can try to read the tea leaves of what
Speaker 2: kind of like a I don't know if you call
Speaker 2: the line rigged, but you know you can often detect
Speaker 2: the presence of frankly of inside information in the line. Right,
Speaker 2: It's hard to know when it's inside information versus like
Speaker 2: when is their sharp movement from a particularly skilled gambler
Speaker 2: or from a syndicate. Right, Billy Walters, the famous and
Speaker 2: I felt another sports better right. You know, he plays
Speaker 2: a lot of action, tends to come in late in
Speaker 2: the day. That's his philosophy, right, And if the book
Speaker 2: makers know which way he's betting, that might move to
Speaker 2: spread materially. Right. But like you, very often, if you've
Speaker 2: been in the NBA, have a sense that somebody knows
Speaker 2: something that I don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's it's really interesting in both of
Speaker 1: these things. I think something that came to my mind
Speaker 1: as someone who has spent a lot of time with
Speaker 1: con artists, right, and in that world, in both you know,
Speaker 1: the sports betting and in poker games, there's this real
Speaker 1: blind spot when it comes to yourself for most people,
Speaker 1: and being objective about kind of your own edge and
Speaker 1: like what you know, what is what is right versus
Speaker 1: not in the sense that like, if you know, the
Speaker 1: cliche is cliche for a reason. If it seems too
Speaker 1: good to be true, right, it probably is. And yet
Speaker 1: right when it comes to you, you think that, oh
Speaker 1: it's not actually too good to be true. I've just
Speaker 1: found a really great spot. I found a really great
Speaker 1: edge et cetera, et cetera. And with sports betting, Nate,
Speaker 1: it's that so unlike poker, which I do play, I've
Speaker 1: never bet on sports still, no, not even once. I've
Speaker 1: never placed to see those sports bet I promised Eric
Speaker 1: Sidell when I first started playing poker, and when he
Speaker 1: agreed to coach me and kind of meant to me,
Speaker 1: he made me promise that I wouldn't sports bet. So
Speaker 1: I have kept that promise. And yeah, he uh, he
Speaker 1: firmly believed that sports betting was the way to ruin
Speaker 1: for a lot of people. Not that I'd become a
Speaker 1: gambling addict, but that he has hardly ever met anyone
Speaker 1: who has a true edge, right, so unless you have information,
Speaker 1: and he, by the ways, bets on sports himself, but
Speaker 1: it's very hard to have an edge. So no, so
Speaker 1: I haven't personally ever bet on sports. However, what you
Speaker 1: were just talking about, I think that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of like, oh, like is this line right? Like you're
Speaker 1: trying to figure out is this too good to be
Speaker 1: true or not? And as you wrote in the Silver
Speaker 1: Bulletin earlier this week, like there were times when you
Speaker 1: took something and it ended up that it was too
Speaker 1: good to be true, right that like it just looked
Speaker 1: so good and you're like, I'm good a bet it anyway,
Speaker 1: and it was too good to be true, and so
Speaker 1: you are like when you are fucking with the integrity
Speaker 1: of it, like you actually are affecting a lot of
Speaker 1: people in very real ways. That's a huge problem. It's
Speaker 1: a problem for poker obviously, but you know, sports are
Speaker 1: kind of America's national pastime, and you have to believe
Speaker 1: that you're watching fair competitions, right, that players are trying
Speaker 1: their best, that everything, like that they want to win,
Speaker 1: like that they're playing their best game, that they're trying
Speaker 1: to kind of do whatever it takes. And if that
Speaker 1: faith is you know, fractured, right, if all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you're like, oh my god, you know that's not
Speaker 1: what's happening. I'm watching something that's rigged, but it's not
Speaker 1: supposed to be rigged, then you I mean, that's heartbreaking
Speaker 1: in some ways, right, It kind of shatters. It shatters
Speaker 1: a dream I think in a lot of licens.
Speaker 2: Let me hit on both the points serial. Let me
Speaker 2: first talk about like both poker players and sports betters
Speaker 2: are often naive about how thin their edges are right, yes,
Speaker 2: Now you know, live cash poker against fish fish or
Speaker 2: bad players, you can have objectively pretty large edges, yes there, right,
Speaker 2: So you know, sometimes you know, it might be rational
Speaker 2: in some sense to say, like, Okay, there's little few
Speaker 2: risks here, but this game is so good. Right, But yeah, no,
Speaker 2: I mean, like a lot of these things. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you're as much of an NBA
Speaker 2: geek as I am, probably not, a lot of things
Speaker 2: are things that like are already problems with the league anyway.
Speaker 2: So the fact that like teams will try to lose
Speaker 2: the old tank in order to get a better draft pick,
Speaker 2: occasionally for other reasons, to manipulate their playoff spot to
Speaker 2: get a more favorable match. Right, For what I understand,
Speaker 2: the league has not been very diligent about like the
Speaker 2: cause for why somebody isn't playing. Also, you know you
Speaker 2: might strongly suspect I mean again, when I when I
Speaker 2: were spending the NBA, you know, you usually had a
Speaker 2: pretty good idea about like certain guys aren't going to
Speaker 2: play in certain games if they're back to backs for
Speaker 2: a bunch of games in a row. Teams tend to
Speaker 2: like obfuscate that into last minute for like a competitive edge, right,
Speaker 2: and the league has depends that you talk to not
Speaker 2: enforced that as producedly as they could. No other sports
Speaker 2: league like the NBA. Again maybe my favorite sports league
Speaker 2: has this trouble with teams tanking games and trying to lose.
Speaker 1: So as listeners of the show, now, I'm working on
Speaker 1: a book about cheating and games, which is very germane.
Speaker 1: Here the other sport where you see like so much
Speaker 1: cheating taking place, but it's not. It's a very different
Speaker 1: levels tennis, right, because that's somewhere once again where it's
Speaker 1: individual and individuals like you can easily affect the the
Speaker 1: outcome because it's not a team sport, right. From what
Speaker 1: I can tell, basketball is the other one, just because
Speaker 1: of the way that the sport works. And so I
Speaker 1: think that a lot of organizations, including the NBA, nate,
Speaker 1: if we put this back in kind of a game
Speaker 1: theoretic lens, they often are not thinking kind of long term, right.
Speaker 1: They're not thinking about incentives for like long term health.
Speaker 1: They're thinking immediately like oh shit, I need to cover
Speaker 1: my ass, right, Like it's better for me if I
Speaker 1: don't look too closely, it's better for me, if I
Speaker 1: clear this player, it's better. You know, people think everything's fine,
Speaker 1: and yet over the long term, if you don't pay
Speaker 1: attention to these sorts of things, that's when trust in
Speaker 1: the integrity of the game is going to flounder. And
Speaker 1: that's what actually matters. And so I think that you
Speaker 1: know this is true. You know this is true in
Speaker 1: poker and punishing cheaters, but people are very shortsighted and
Speaker 1: they think, oh, immediately like I don't want the bad press.
Speaker 1: And yet if you actually pay attention, if you actually punish,
Speaker 1: if the punishments are harsh, that's how you disincentivize the
Speaker 1: behavior and create a game that people believe in moving forward.
Speaker 1: And so you know, I would love obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: these indictments right now, allegations, we don't know what's going
Speaker 1: to happen, but I would really love for there to be,
Speaker 1: if there's the evidence, very harsh punishments, right, punishments that
Speaker 1: would deter anyone from towing even close to the line
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, because that's what you know, You're I'm
Speaker 1: starting to get into basketball night because of you. I'm
Speaker 1: only starting to see how fun this game is. And
Speaker 1: I don't want to I don't want to get into
Speaker 1: it just to be disappointed, because I think that players
Speaker 1: are trying to you know, tank games or something like that,
Speaker 1: and so I think that it's just so incredibly shortsighted
Speaker 1: to be lean or to say, oh, you know, it's
Speaker 1: okay and harsh is better. You want the fear of
Speaker 1: repercussions to be real, and I think in the past
Speaker 1: that hasn't been the case.
Speaker 2: I think the NBA, I mean it's a little bit
Speaker 2: a little bit trumpy in the sense that like, hey, look,
Speaker 2: deny it and then when people are paying attention on
Speaker 2: a Friday, put out some press release so it's been solved,
Speaker 2: or suspend somebody again. Like you know, if you've ever
Speaker 2: been like a PR situation or PR crisis of any kind,
Speaker 2: Like people have short memories. The new cycle is busy.
Speaker 2: There's lots of exciting things that are happening at any
Speaker 2: given time in the NBA or in the world. Right,
Speaker 2: but it kind of has like a cumulative effect. Right,
Speaker 2: we'll be.
Speaker 1: Back right after this.
Speaker 2: You know you mentioned tennis. You know the reason why
Speaker 2: best holds vulnerable Number one. These bookmakers are turning a
Speaker 2: team sport into an individual sport. So it's not just
Speaker 2: the fact that like, so, like you know, Jalen Brunson,
Speaker 2: the Near Knicks Blinkard, one of my favorite players, is
Speaker 2: spoken about how like people will be chripping at him
Speaker 2: from the sidelines. But like, Jalen, you're supposed to score
Speaker 2: twenty two points and you have twenty one. You know,
Speaker 2: what the fuck's going on? Right, and that kind of thing,
Speaker 2: you know, get like death threats and nasty messages and
Speaker 2: so like, Yeah, one of the protections in a team
Speaker 2: sport is that if one conspirator or a couple are cheating,
Speaker 2: it certainly shifts the odds and that that you have
Speaker 2: a very profitable bet. But like famously, sometimes these things
Speaker 2: don't work. Right. There was a Boston College college cheating
Speaker 2: scandal which did involve the Mafia in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: but like you know, only like one and a half
Speaker 2: players were doing it, and they, like, I think the
Speaker 2: Mafia didn't actually win the majority of its bets, right,
Speaker 2: So the fact that you're kind of turning a team
Speaker 2: sport into an individual sport with prop bets is problematic too.
Speaker 2: But I want to go at like, why do you
Speaker 2: think Terryer made one hundred and fifteen more than that
Speaker 2: made over one hundred million dollars in his career. Right, yeah,
Speaker 2: Chauncey Billups probably similar current head coach. I'm Terry gets
Speaker 2: paid pretty well a lot, so we can do speaking
Speaker 2: gigs and advertisements whatever else. Why do you think, Maria,
Speaker 2: people like that are participating in these in these schemes?
Speaker 2: So yeah, well you wouldn't think they were desperate. Frank come,
Speaker 2: you never know when somebody has a gambling problem or
Speaker 2: another type of problem. But why do you think they're
Speaker 2: doing this?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I think it depends on the
Speaker 1: exact situation, but I think oftentimes it's not for the money, right,
Speaker 1: So for someone like Terry, maybe it's to feel important
Speaker 1: and feel like he has influenced and like be a
Speaker 1: cool dude for his friends, right, because a lot of
Speaker 1: his stuff when I was reading the indictments, it was
Speaker 1: giving tips to like childhood friends or you know, homeboys
Speaker 1: and trying to try to help them out, which is
Speaker 1: why it wasn't huge amounts of money, right, This is
Speaker 1: why we're not We're not talking millions or it was
Speaker 1: smaller bets. And I think that I think that that
Speaker 1: kind of image creation, like I'm the chill dude who can, like,
Speaker 1: you know, be cool. I think that that's actually a
Speaker 1: huge incentive for people. And I don't know much about
Speaker 1: his career or anything like that, but it seems and
Speaker 1: please correct me if I'm wrong, that it's not like
Speaker 1: he's a top tier player who is always you know,
Speaker 1: who people are talking about and they're like, yeah, look
Speaker 1: at him. Go. So it's a way of, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of propping up your ego in those situations. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of people who were top tier players. And
Speaker 1: by the way, this talk this is not just sports.
Speaker 1: This is true of poker, This is true of a
Speaker 1: lot of things. If they feel like either they're losing
Speaker 1: their edge or like they're they're about to or they're
Speaker 1: not quite sure, cheating is a way to make certain
Speaker 1: that you at least make some money, right, to make
Speaker 1: certain you win, to kind of solidify that like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I will for sure.
Speaker 2: Everybody else is doing it, right, you know, you feel
Speaker 2: like everybody else is doing it, I have to do,
Speaker 2: you know, the number one.
Speaker 1: So that's yeah, absolutely, that's that's kind of the ants Armstrong, right, Like,
Speaker 1: why why is someone like Land's armstrong.
Speaker 2: Barry Bonds and baseball was one of the best players
Speaker 2: in the league before steroids, and and like, well fuck
Speaker 2: these yeah, fuck these guys like Mark maguire for.
Speaker 1: Sure, Yeah, for sure. And then some people just get
Speaker 1: off on it like should be perfectly honest, Like some
Speaker 1: people like the idea that like I'm pulling one over
Speaker 1: on people, like I'm in charge. Maybe someone like Terry
Speaker 1: like feels slight or even Chauncey feels slighted by the league,
Speaker 1: like they didn't appreciate me enough, like they didn't value
Speaker 1: me enough, Like they didn't pay me quite enough for
Speaker 1: whatever they did this bad thing to me. I don't
Speaker 1: like what they do with X or why. So a
Speaker 1: lot of times there's a lot of work on this.
Speaker 1: When people can find an excuse in their head, you know,
Speaker 1: why they're not adequately valued, why they're you know, why
Speaker 1: they're being overlooked, something like that, then they want to
Speaker 1: say fuck you to whoever is doing that, whether it's
Speaker 1: the league, whether it's the company they work for. So
Speaker 1: a lot of people justify you know, stealing everything from
Speaker 1: like taking office supplies home to actually you know stealing.
Speaker 1: Once you get that rationalization in your head, like some
Speaker 1: people would just easily cross that line. And then so
Speaker 1: it's like kind of sticking it to the man in
Speaker 1: certain ways. And you also think, like you rationalize it
Speaker 1: away to say that it is kind of a victimist crime,
Speaker 1: like I'm helping out like myself and I'm helping out
Speaker 1: you know, my boys or whatever it is, and like
Speaker 1: they're a big corporation they can take it. Or in
Speaker 1: the case of poker, like come on, like they get
Speaker 1: the honor of playing with me, they get the celebrity
Speaker 1: status by being in this game, and I'm giving them
Speaker 1: something back, so I'll take their money. They're paying for
Speaker 1: the experience. Right, You get all of these rationalizations in
Speaker 1: your head that make you do it. And I think
Speaker 1: that people when they say, oh, but like they're not stupid,
Speaker 1: like they wouldn't risk it all for this, Actually yes
Speaker 1: they would because they don't think they would be caught. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: all of these things went on for over a year,
Speaker 1: it sounds like multiple years. And if the more you
Speaker 1: can get away with it, right, if you're not caught
Speaker 1: the first time, if you're not caught the second time,
Speaker 1: you start thinking that you're invincible, and you start getting
Speaker 1: this thing like you know I won't be caught, Like
Speaker 1: everything is fine and I can keep doing this, So
Speaker 1: you actually think your risk is much lower than it is.
Speaker 1: And even if I'm caught, there's going to be a
Speaker 1: slap on the wrist. They'll say they investigated me and
Speaker 1: it was fine. They didn't find anything suspicious, like my
Speaker 1: leg really was injured or whatever it is. So the
Speaker 1: repercussions are not really going to be serious enough, and
Speaker 1: I'll continue doing what I'm doing. So I think all
Speaker 1: of these things are just layered one on top of
Speaker 1: the other and are play in both of these situations,
Speaker 1: both of these indictments.
Speaker 2: But yeah, look, one one way you can defend the
Speaker 2: big draft Kings, Fanduels, Caesars and GM's of the world, right,
Speaker 2: is by saying that like, they are much better equipped
Speaker 2: to detect this and then either incentivized or required to
Speaker 2: report it when they do in suspicious activity. Right. And
Speaker 2: so first of all, you know they are not doing
Speaker 2: bookmaking in the traditional robust way because you have these
Speaker 2: sharp bookmakers, and you have bookmakers. I'll mention Draft Kings,
Speaker 2: which is a book markets regarded as being at least
Speaker 2: when I was spending the NBA a couple years ago. Now,
Speaker 2: all that's sharp.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: They're a retail sports book, and their business model is
Speaker 2: customer discrimination and differentiation, where if you're a VIP at
Speaker 2: a place like Draft Kings, you know, at a friend
Speaker 2: who literally get cases of his favorite Cabernet mail to
Speaker 2: his house, and like you know and like front row
Speaker 2: seats for New York Rangers games and and things like that, right,
Speaker 2: and you know, at some level of access you get
Speaker 2: private jets to the Super Bowl or whatever, right, and
Speaker 2: they can make infinity dollars basically, whereas I am limited
Speaker 2: by most of the sports books. And I'm not I'm
Speaker 2: not that good. I mean I've won a little bit
Speaker 2: of money at sports betting, right, but like not a pro.
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to trying to be good. Nobody should
Speaker 2: be taking one hundred thousand dollars worth of action on
Speaker 2: Terry Rogier under rebounds or whatever. Right. The only reason
Speaker 2: someone would bet that is because they have inside knowledge,
Speaker 2: or maybe maybe if they have a very particular model. Right,
Speaker 2: But like you don't want to. You don't want some
Speaker 2: super sharp mi I T kid with a model to
Speaker 2: exploit this obscure part of your menu, right, And you
Speaker 2: don't want people inside information betting, but they figure that, Okay,
Speaker 2: well we know who our good and bad customers are,
Speaker 2: and we don't want to fuck with our with our
Speaker 2: vps as they're so called, right, they can do what
Speaker 2: they want, and yeah, I mean now then they might
Speaker 2: get a tip, but like so they're not. It's not
Speaker 2: a robust form of bookmaking, right, It's a form of
Speaker 2: book maanking that relies on on customer identification and like so,
Speaker 2: like that's part of why I'm less sympathetic, and because
Speaker 2: like when the gambling companies, you know, in general, when
Speaker 2: you pass legislation, then you kind of pass the skeleton
Speaker 2: of the legislation, and then the lobbyists and the indus,
Speaker 2: if you interest do their work to interpret that legislation
Speaker 2: in ways that like is shockingly favorable to those vested interests. Right.
Speaker 2: You do have some states Massachusetts now and New York
Speaker 2: has looked into like, okay, should really be able to
Speaker 2: let some people, but literally ten dollars on a game
Speaker 2: a million dollars in the same game, probably not right.
Speaker 2: But like, if you're drafting regulations, like I think the
Speaker 2: average sports better doesn't realize that if you are if
Speaker 2: they think you're good, they will limit you. If they
Speaker 2: think you're good, they will not take meaningful amounts of
Speaker 2: money from you in terms of action. Right. By the way,
Speaker 2: when you look at the ads for sports betting, if
Speaker 2: you come back to the ads for daily fantasy sports,
Speaker 2: they were marketed as a game of skill. Right, you are.
Speaker 2: Daily fantasy sports is where you draft a team, and
Speaker 2: you draft a team a real player that you compete
Speaker 2: against other people, and the house takes a cut or
Speaker 2: a rake like poker or something. Right, they have no
Speaker 2: interest in particular and who wins that outcome, And they'd
Speaker 2: say it's a game of skill. The ads would like
Speaker 2: literally just say you are Joe Schmoe sitting in your office,
Speaker 2: drone job. Right, go to DraftKings or FanDuel. Right, you
Speaker 2: can win millions, have and sleep a Supermodels. It was
Speaker 2: like it was like not that subtle because you're smart
Speaker 2: and they're dumb. It was like very unsettled, appealing to
Speaker 2: the male ego. And now they don't do that, right,
Speaker 2: They don't want to advertize that as a game of
Speaker 2: skill because if they think they're skilled, then they won't
Speaker 2: let you bet very much. Right, And so like I
Speaker 2: mean that's you know, that whole thing is is is
Speaker 2: kind of bullshit. It's not a unique innovation, I guess
Speaker 2: of like American sports betting lines, but like, you know,
Speaker 2: British companies were notorious for doing this too, but like,
Speaker 2: but still it's moved a long way from the traditional
Speaker 2: form of bookmaking. And the other thing to people don't
Speaker 2: realize is like sports betting was for many years in
Speaker 2: Vegas what was called an amenity AMEI and it y right,
Speaker 2: you're in the middle of the deserts, you have lots
Speaker 2: of physical space. You know. Sometimes people want to be
Speaker 2: in a casino and actually you know, so if you're
Speaker 2: in a casino and you want to lose not that
Speaker 2: much money, right, actually, one of the better things to
Speaker 2: do might be to bet a thousand dollars on an
Speaker 2: NFL game. If you're bet naively that you know that
Speaker 2: that has a negative expected value of forty six bucks,
Speaker 2: right typical point spread, hold margins right for forty six bucks,
Speaker 2: you know, three and a half hours of entertainment watching
Speaker 2: the game in the sportsbook and like getting three drinks
Speaker 2: and sweating with your friends or whatever. Rate Like, it's
Speaker 2: actually not that bad, but it was kind of seen
Speaker 2: as an amenity, right, and there's kind of this fastikas
Speaker 2: some guys can beat the lines, right and like, but
Speaker 2: it's moved away from that model. And by the way,
Speaker 2: but it was one percent of one percent of revenues
Speaker 2: is from the sports book, right, it was almost a
Speaker 2: lost leader. And the notion that like you can have
Speaker 2: this market where like sports betting is huge and yet
Speaker 2: you limit sharp betters is is I don't know, it's
Speaker 2: kind of at best, at best unproven.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, No, I mean I think that one of
Speaker 1: the things that these indictments have shown us is that,
Speaker 1: you know, we need a more centralized, rigorous approach to
Speaker 1: how do we, you know, how do we regulate this, right,
Speaker 1: how do we what kinds of supports bets for which amount?
Speaker 1: Like can we standardize something that actually upholds the integrity
Speaker 1: of the games, that will avoid situations that you know,
Speaker 1: turn team sports into individual sports, that kind of change
Speaker 1: those incentive structures around It's it's a tough ask, right because,
Speaker 1: as you say, Nate, like, there are you know, various
Speaker 1: forces pulling you in various directions. But I think it's doable,
Speaker 1: and I think that, you know, it's something that people
Speaker 1: need to sit down and think about. But it's not
Speaker 1: like an easy band aid fix like oh, you know
Speaker 1: we need to just like limit all bets to X
Speaker 1: or or do thing. Why. I think it does require
Speaker 1: a nuanced understanding of sports betting, which frankly, I don't
Speaker 1: think a lot of legislators have. Like no, I.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't think so either, and you know, and frankly the
Speaker 2: media doesn't either. I mean the media has default toward
Speaker 2: like scoldiness about this, and like exactly if you don't
Speaker 2: have those legal sites, a lot of it goes underground.
Speaker 2: On one hundred percent, I mean that's absolutely thing, right.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm actually betting in the NFL this year.
Speaker 2: Believe me, Maria. I know how, and I have at
Speaker 2: some points in the past like made bets set in
Speaker 2: the grey market using crypto and things like that. I
Speaker 2: know how to do that. It's just not worth the trouble, right,
Speaker 2: you know, whereas if it's it's it's Draft Kings or FanDuel, right.
Speaker 2: I mean literally, even like the uspit in the NBA,
Speaker 2: I was like staying at the Wind. I guess it's
Speaker 2: for the Wind December poker tournament, right, And there's like
Speaker 2: here's an NBA bet. I'm want to bet eleven hundred
Speaker 2: dollars and as an expected value of like one percent,
Speaker 2: probably right, so the infected value is like twelve bucks, right?
Speaker 2: Do I want to go down to the fucking sports
Speaker 2: book window and like place this bet right and feel
Speaker 2: like a d gen? No, it's only worth twelve dollars.
Speaker 2: I'll stay in my room. And yeah, So there's like
Speaker 2: shit like that where like even that friction of like
Speaker 2: the ease of online betting. So, yeah, there are few categories,
Speaker 2: you know. One one has to do with like you
Speaker 2: have to limit the menu of bets, right, if you
Speaker 2: want to bread on Lebron James or Nikola Yoki, just
Speaker 2: gonna do fine.
Speaker 1: Right, But like that, Yeah, that sounds like low hanging fruit.
Speaker 1: I think that that's low hanging fruit. That that's something
Speaker 1: that could immediately be done. Right, Yes, the menus should
Speaker 1: be limited.
Speaker 2: I think you need some constraints on this, limiting your
Speaker 2: price discrimination. Right, I'd go radically, I guess I'm self interested.
Speaker 2: I'd go radically and say everywhere gets the same price. Right,
Speaker 2: you post sublimits, you know, if you want to say, okay,
Speaker 2: we can have a spread of two x or four
Speaker 2: X or five x or something. Okay, that's fine, right,
Speaker 2: but like it lets you lets you put irresponsible lines
Speaker 2: up that are subject to cheating or manipulation, right if
Speaker 2: you only take bets from people who you think are
Speaker 2: going to lose on them, right, It's like it's it's
Speaker 2: like one of these carnival games where where let's ease
Speaker 2: you to like, you know, throw the ball at the
Speaker 2: bullseye and get the free stuffed animal. But like it's
Speaker 2: actually pretty difficult, and number three is probably like, you know,
Speaker 2: creating more friction. If you had a twenty four hour
Speaker 2: winning carry between you deposits and money and when you bet, right,
Speaker 2: that would create meaningful friction if you required you say, okay,
Speaker 2: you know in the UK, don't its is still true?
Speaker 2: I guess it must still be true, right you don't.
Speaker 2: It's like a Ladbrokes shop, right, you're chippy and then
Speaker 2: you get your go to the betting window and whatever,
Speaker 2: right you know saying okay, you know you want to bet,
Speaker 2: you just have to go to a physical location and
Speaker 2: then add some additional protection. You can know your customer laws.
Speaker 2: You know, if somebody seems like they're got crative line
Speaker 2: or abusive, right, you can deny their action that kind
Speaker 2: of thing, right, and so like you know, so yeah
Speaker 2: you want I bet okay, And there's gonna be a
Speaker 2: little DraftKings office and then throughout New York and maybe
Speaker 2: it's a nice little barther if you want to watch
Speaker 2: your games, right, but you have to physically mean a
Speaker 2: location to bet. You know, I wouldn't go that far.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't advocate for all of this, but like, but
Speaker 2: you know, public opinions turning against this, right, people are
Speaker 2: for both getting that reasons. People are prudish, but like
Speaker 2: the industry I think has been short sighted. It was
Speaker 2: that it was a power grab and or a money grab, right,
Speaker 2: and now they're paying the price for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I think that are three major recommendations, because
Speaker 1: I do agree with the framework. Is one limiting menu
Speaker 1: of bets, so basically actually taking a look at what
Speaker 1: makes sense, what doesn't make sense, what's kind of in
Speaker 1: the spirit of the game versus not to transparency and standardization.
Speaker 1: And three adding some friction in for for the ability
Speaker 1: to place bets so that people aren't kind of in
Speaker 1: the spiral where like you know, they they get into
Speaker 1: they get into situations that they can't then get out of.
Speaker 1: I think that these those are kind of three buckets
Speaker 1: that are probably really good places to start so that
Speaker 1: sports betting can regain its good reputation, because kind I
Speaker 1: had a good reputation right, but can can get can
Speaker 1: get public sentiment more on its side. I think that
Speaker 1: that that would be helpful. And I think that if
Speaker 1: those types of improvements come out of this scandal, that
Speaker 1: will be something. On that note night, I wish you
Speaker 1: the best of luck getting out of Mexico.
Speaker 2: I actually can't draft Kings on their runway. If I
Speaker 2: would have fucking gotten like plus behine, your flight will
Speaker 2: not take off tonight right now.
Speaker 1: That'd be great. That'd be great you had some inside information.
Speaker 2: Saying it real. I'll tell you that much.
Speaker 1: For Ria Well, I hope that you this is your
Speaker 1: last night at El Kaminoreal, or that last night was
Speaker 1: your last night, and that tonight you will safely be
Speaker 1: in your New York City apartment. Let us know what
Speaker 1: you think of the show. Reach out to us at
Speaker 1: Risky Business at pushkin dot fm. Risky Business is hosted
Speaker 1: by me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2: And by me Nate Silver. The show was a cool
Speaker 2: production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
Speaker 2: by Isaac Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya gerwit Lydia,
Speaker 2: Jean Kott and Daphne Chen are our editors, and our
Speaker 2: executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 1: If you like the show, please rate and review us
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