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