Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
Speaker 1: better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2: And I'm Nate Silver. Today in the show, Marie's working
Speaker 2: on a TV show. She's been very coy about it,
Speaker 2: even with me, frankly, but now she has no more
Speaker 2: need to be. We're going to talk a little bit
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's going to be the lead in to the
Speaker 1: to the meat of the episode, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: poker and gambling are big topics in movies and shows,
Speaker 1: but Nate, honestly, there are not that many good poker movies.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of bad. Yeah, there are a
Speaker 2: lot of bad poker movies.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of really bad poker movies out there.
Speaker 2: So we're gonna talking about some of the tropes and
Speaker 2: cliches that annoy Maria and I as actually poker players.
Speaker 2: But like, tell us more about this very exciting First all,
Speaker 2: does it have a title? Can you share that?
Speaker 1: Or is that no, this does not have a titled.
Speaker 1: I am working on the most exciting untitled. Okay, it
Speaker 1: is called untitled.
Speaker 2: That could be a title. Yeah, absolutely, what's the show about, Maria,
Speaker 2: It's it's a gambling adjacent.
Speaker 1: Is it is, so we're going to be when we
Speaker 1: start talking about actually good poker movies. The names that
Speaker 1: are going to come up are Brian Koppleman and David Levine,
Speaker 1: who were the creators of Rounders, which, as we will
Speaker 1: tell you, is probably the best poker movie that has
Speaker 1: been made, and the two of them have teamed up
Speaker 1: with Martin Scorsese to a TV He's just a guy, yeah, cigure,
Speaker 1: he's new. He's he's kind of young, like newcomer to
Speaker 1: the you know, to the world of screen. It's okay
Speaker 1: that you haven't heard of him. You know, he might
Speaker 1: as well be untitled. They are teaming up to do
Speaker 1: a TV show about Vegas and about the world of
Speaker 1: casinos and gambling and you know, all of all of
Speaker 1: those fun, high stakes things. And we I'm one of
Speaker 1: the writers on the show, and we've been working on
Speaker 1: it since September, I guess is when the writer's room started.
Speaker 1: But yes, I've been very coy about it because you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's something that we really didn't want to talk
Speaker 1: about until the show was picked up. Nate, I don't
Speaker 1: know how much you know about the inner workings of Hollywood.
Speaker 2: But even when.
Speaker 1: Even if we have such no name people as exactly exactly,
Speaker 1: even if you have people whose name Martin Score score
Speaker 1: what Yeah, even if you have Scorsese and Koppleman and
Speaker 1: Levine and like all of these heavy hitters who have
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, not just sway, but proof
Speaker 1: that they can do things that people want to watch, right,
Speaker 1: which is what which is what Hollywood wants, which is
Speaker 1: what Netflix want. They want people who can bring eyeballs,
Speaker 1: and you have and you have this team who definitely
Speaker 1: has a really good track record and doing this. You know,
Speaker 1: these are these are people who can really make sure
Speaker 1: that viewers come and they they've they're known for making
Speaker 1: good television, good good films. And yet right even still
Speaker 1: that's not a guarantee that something's going to be made
Speaker 1: these days. It's a really, really tough market. So we
Speaker 1: were just waiting until you know, the green light, the
Speaker 1: official announcements, the go aheads and that's where we are
Speaker 1: right now. But it's something that's really exciting. It is
Speaker 1: such a rich world, as you know, you know, I
Speaker 1: spend at least half my year in Vegas and have
Speaker 1: been doing that for a number of years now, and
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to kind of have content that actually
Speaker 1: shows Vegas the way it is and that understands, you know,
Speaker 1: what this world actually entails, because I feel like so
Speaker 1: much out there is written and told by people who
Speaker 1: have no fucking clue to be perfectly honest, right, they're
Speaker 1: not of Vegas, they're not of the gambling world. They
Speaker 1: don't understand the dynamics here, and it shows. So I'm
Speaker 1: really excited. I think we have a great team in
Speaker 1: place of people who actually know what they're talking about.
Speaker 1: I have no idea how the show's going to come out,
Speaker 1: but I'm proud and happy.
Speaker 2: What's it like actually in the writer's room, You're like,
Speaker 2: are you actually in a room?
Speaker 1: Oh, we're actually in a room.
Speaker 2: Yes, we actually you have to have right in front
Speaker 2: of other people.
Speaker 1: No, you don't write in front of other people. The
Speaker 1: way a writers room works is you sit in a
Speaker 1: room with a bunch of people and you brainstorm, and
Speaker 1: you kind of you throw ideas back and forth and
Speaker 1: you develop things. You try to figure out you know,
Speaker 1: what's the shape of an episode going to look like.
Speaker 1: There are lots of whiteboards around and you know you're
Speaker 1: write on those, but it's Yeah, it's more of a
Speaker 1: you don't start saying like scene one, Nate Silver says, Maria,
Speaker 1: what are we talking today about today on Risky Business? Maria, Nate,
Speaker 1: are we going to do this again?
Speaker 2: Nate?
Speaker 1: What are you talking about?
Speaker 2: Maria?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's not how a writer's works. It is much
Speaker 1: more of a kind of back and forth collaborative, like
Speaker 1: let's get ideas going off each other.
Speaker 2: Who actually writes the actual script though, someone's like, I'm
Speaker 2: just gonna take all your inpoint into account and write
Speaker 2: the show.
Speaker 1: It depends. It depends on the show. It depends on
Speaker 1: It depends on how things are set up so far.
Speaker 1: For I actually don't know if I'm allowed to have
Speaker 1: how much I'm allowed to say, but I believe I
Speaker 1: think that this is actually pretty public for this show
Speaker 1: so far. Brian and David, you know, we'll be taking
Speaker 1: the lead on writing all of the episodes because they're
Speaker 1: both really excited about this show.
Speaker 2: So can they just like passively aggressively say oh, I
Speaker 2: appreciate that feedback and then ignore it.
Speaker 1: Oh? Sure, absolutely, But they wouldn't. They wouldn't do that
Speaker 1: if they don't like very They would tell you that
Speaker 1: they don't like it.
Speaker 2: Yes, when's so, what's the timeline for, like when this
Speaker 2: would air?
Speaker 1: Ha ha okay, okay, okay, okay, that's not me, that's Hollywood.
Speaker 2: Okay, No, we yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: It's very early in the process, and so it's unclear.
Speaker 1: I mean, and I you know, I'm not Brian or David,
Speaker 1: so I am not kind of in the driver's seat
Speaker 1: of any of those decisions. So I just know what
Speaker 1: I'm told, and I have no idea when this is
Speaker 1: going to be on air. But yes, this is really fun.
Speaker 1: It's been a great experience. I love the I love
Speaker 1: the team, and I've loved working with them, and I'm
Speaker 1: excited for it too, you know, for it to be
Speaker 1: on everyone's TV screens and or computer screens or phone
Speaker 1: screens or however you consume your content. And on. On
Speaker 1: that note, let's talk a little bit more about, you know,
Speaker 1: poker and gambling movies more broadly, which ones we like,
Speaker 1: which ones we don't like, the good, the bad, the ugly.
Speaker 1: Because Nate, there are a lot of really bad poker
Speaker 1: movies out there.
Speaker 2: We're gonna have like an escalating pyramid of like sins
Speaker 2: against poker that are sometimes depicted in bad poker movies,
Speaker 2: movies that include poker scenes that aren't about poker, you
Speaker 2: know number one, some of whose don't even understand the
Speaker 2: notion of like table stakes, right, they have the notion
Speaker 2: that like, okay, yeah, somebody better it's not gonna call
Speaker 2: my investor, pause the hand, right, we call my investors
Speaker 2: because of a good hand getting million dollars. That's one trope, right.
Speaker 2: Another trope is like the you know, royal flush versus
Speaker 2: for a kind kind of thing where you're your cold.
Speaker 1: Decks, Nate, have you seen a casino royal?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is an example, right, but yeah, a weak
Speaker 2: flush against the busted draw kind of thing, right, And
Speaker 2: the vast majority of the time, like I've never liked,
Speaker 2: I ever lost with quads. Probably not in all the
Speaker 2: poker hands that I've played. I'm trying to think if
Speaker 2: they've sure lost with full houses to quads, right, but
Speaker 2: maybe not lost with quads let alone, you know, straight
Speaker 2: flush over straight flush or things like that, And that's
Speaker 2: that's not realistic. You know. Another big one that like,
Speaker 2: I get annoyed because I'll sometimes deal amateur backyard poker
Speaker 2: games with one group of friends, right, people picking their
Speaker 2: cards up way off the table to look at them
Speaker 2: like that's super Oh my god.
Speaker 1: But that no, Nate, that happens all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with bad players.
Speaker 2: I see.
Speaker 1: So I just played in a charity event last week,
Speaker 1: great great school charity, but there were tons of people
Speaker 1: who don't know how to play poker, and the first thing,
Speaker 1: or who play it but like not that well, the
Speaker 1: first thing they do is they take their cards up
Speaker 1: and they put them in our face. I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: put that shit down, right, like, that is not how
Speaker 1: you look at your cards. But I've had that happen
Speaker 1: in tournaments as well, Like there are players who just
Speaker 1: do that, and I'm like, you have no business playing
Speaker 1: a thousand dollar tournament or whatever, you know, five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars tournament if that's how you look at your cards,
Speaker 1: because people can see that. And I do try to
Speaker 1: warn people, you know, not to do it, but sometimes
Speaker 1: they just won't listen and they just keep keep putting
Speaker 1: them up. But in these movies, oftentimes that's how everyone
Speaker 1: looks at their cards, and I think that that it
Speaker 1: is very frustrating when you see that. You're like, no,
Speaker 1: no professional player would actually ever look at a hand
Speaker 1: that way, and yet you see all the time, hmm,
Speaker 1: let's see what do I have here, Let's show it
Speaker 1: to the cameras.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're trying to conceal information, right, that's the name
Speaker 2: of the game. And like, yeah, you know the people
Speaker 2: who unintentionally at their cards up too high, but like
Speaker 2: that's that's like bad antiquette. There's very little awareness in
Speaker 2: poker movies of like what the stack sizes are, right,
Speaker 2: you know, yes, what is the amount that you have
Speaker 2: behind you? Relatively amount in the pot, which can like
Speaker 2: radically change strategy. Right, if there's a hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 2: in the pot and you have a million dollars behind you,
Speaker 2: very different than if you have only quote unquote another
Speaker 2: fifty thousand dollars with In fact, early poker broadcasts you
Speaker 2: watch like early early World Series coverage or early WPT coverage, right,
Speaker 2: and they often don't list the stack sizes, which makes
Speaker 2: it like to a first approximation approximately useless to professional
Speaker 2: book a player. But and you don't have It's like
Speaker 2: it's like watching a mess we and you don't know
Speaker 2: what the score is. Right, There's a really exciting play
Speaker 2: and we're not sure which team won. So that's like
Speaker 2: another trope that needs to be needs to be killed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that a lot of times. By
Speaker 1: the way, Casino Royale is a fun movie. I like
Speaker 1: that movie. I think it's a great movie. Daniel Craig
Speaker 1: is wonderful. But one of the things that that movie, like,
Speaker 1: it really bugs me is if you think about kind
Speaker 1: of the sizes of those pots and those steaks, like
Speaker 1: no one has anything behind, right, Their buy ins are
Speaker 1: completely illogical when it comes to the stakes of the game, Like, wait,
Speaker 1: if we're playing that much a hand, then everyone, then
Speaker 1: you're not buying in for a million dollars. You have
Speaker 1: to buy in for a lot more, right, Like that
Speaker 1: stacked to pot ratio should not be happening at these intervals,
Speaker 1: and so people really do lose that sense of perspective
Speaker 1: because they're like, oh, a million sounds like a big number, right,
Speaker 1: And this sounds like a big number, but there is
Speaker 1: a lack of kind of knowledge about what the number
Speaker 1: should be. And let me then add on to that.
Speaker 1: Things that can frustrate me is that movies tend to
Speaker 1: conflate tournament and cash poker, right, like there's no clear
Speaker 1: they don't really understand that the two are very different games,
Speaker 1: and that you can play poker where chips have no
Speaker 1: monetary value. And so it really frustrates me when you
Speaker 1: see people playing a tournament and they're announcing their bets
Speaker 1: in terms of dollars and they're basically kind of carrying
Speaker 1: on as if it's a cash game. But I'm like, wait, no,
Speaker 1: you're in a tournament. That's not how this works, right,
Speaker 1: You're not betting ten dollars.
Speaker 2: Or you're not now my mom, my mom is a
Speaker 2: victim of So I was playing in some World Poker
Speaker 2: taur tournament two years ago, right, and like whatever, you
Speaker 2: start out with sixty thousan chips, a hundred thousand pips thing,
Speaker 2: maybe an impt and like I wound up with like
Speaker 2: four hundred and fifty thousand SCHIPs at the end of
Speaker 2: day one, was one of the chip leaders. It got
Speaker 2: circular on social media. My mom was like, you made
Speaker 2: four to few thousand dollars. I'm like, no, Mom, might
Speaker 2: have made I've made zero dollars so far. I think
Speaker 2: I eventually catched that hearing it for seven thousand dollars
Speaker 2: or something, right, which is probably your modal expectation. After
Speaker 2: day one, even with a big.
Speaker 1: Stack, And so, yeah, your mom can be forgiven, because
Speaker 1: a lot of times movies make it seem that way
Speaker 1: with like the dollar signs and all of that. But yes,
Speaker 1: I've had people be like, oh my god, why can't
Speaker 1: you just take it and leave at the end of
Speaker 1: the day. I'm like, because this isn't money, Like this
Speaker 1: is play money. These are play chips, and I can't know,
Speaker 1: of course, Like believe me, if I could not, if
Speaker 1: I could cash out a million right now, then then
Speaker 1: I'd be I'd be out of there. By the way.
Speaker 1: Great poker movie that I would put in my top
Speaker 1: three and eight, I'm wondering if you've seen this one
Speaker 1: is California Split, which is a classic by Robert Altman,
Speaker 1: and it's about two friends, one of whom's a degenerate gambler,
Speaker 1: one of whom becomes a degenerate gambler by association. But
Speaker 1: there's a there are some great poker scenes in there,
Speaker 1: and I think that that also one of the things
Speaker 1: that gets right is it really depicts kind of that
Speaker 1: the mentality of the gambler who is up and makes
Speaker 1: money and won't walk away right, who thinks that okay,
Speaker 1: you know, but then at the end, I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna spoiler this. This movie came out decades ago. If
Speaker 1: you haven't seen it, Like, just watch the movie. It's
Speaker 1: a good movie. But at the end, one of them
Speaker 1: does walk away, right, He does actually make that decision
Speaker 1: after winning in this huge game with Amarillo. Slim actually
Speaker 1: an amoralos. Slim has a part in the movie and
Speaker 1: ends up ends up walking away winner and then splitting
Speaker 1: the winnings and just saying I'm done. And I think
Speaker 1: that that's very cool, and that does happen as well,
Speaker 1: but it does depict to that kind of mental calculus
Speaker 1: also of is this a good spot? Is this a
Speaker 1: good game? Right? Can I make more money here? When
Speaker 1: should I walk away? When did I get lucky? Because
Speaker 1: I just beat players who were a lot better than
Speaker 1: I was a lot of people don't have that discipline
Speaker 1: and don't have that self awareness, and a lot of people,
Speaker 1: as we've talked about in the past, night end up
Speaker 1: having an overblown sense of their own edge and their
Speaker 1: own skill. And so it's such a good poker skill
Speaker 1: to know, Okay, you know what, I'm just going to
Speaker 1: take this money and I'm going to leave. You don't
Speaker 1: see that often depicted correctly in movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not quite a poker movie, but as a
Speaker 2: gambling movie. The movie twenty one, which is based on
Speaker 2: the book Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrick, that
Speaker 2: came out kind of right when it was getting into poker,
Speaker 2: and like that, I guess the book could come out
Speaker 2: the movie was maybe later, right, And I know Jeff
Speaker 2: ma one of the principles behind this Good Guy, you know,
Speaker 2: that depicted a very romantic idea of like you kind
Speaker 2: of fly into Vegas and you're literally bringing home suitcases
Speaker 2: of cash, right and kind of staying up all night.
Speaker 2: And when I talked to Jeff for my book about
Speaker 2: his experience the MIT black Jack Team, which is what
Speaker 2: it's about, it's like, yeah, no, right, we would kind
Speaker 2: of like you know, we would go and this is
Speaker 2: before you even had nightclubs in Las Vegas, right, we
Speaker 2: were when it was always going to Vegas. We're going
Speaker 2: to some fucking casino and like Dubuque, Iowa half the time.
Speaker 2: So we thought it was a sharper or a less sharp,
Speaker 2: you know, less detection of card counters, which is what
Speaker 2: they were doing. Right. So, like you know, real gambling
Speaker 2: is a grind most of the time, right, And like
Speaker 2: one thing you see too, like this is a problem
Speaker 2: with like movies in general, Like Maria, I would like
Speaker 2: for there be like a movie or this TV show
Speaker 2: right where like there are complications that unfold and then
Speaker 2: they kind of unravel themselves in a very non dramatic way.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh, that was just a misunderstanding. That was
Speaker 2: just a misunderstanding. Actually, right, let's just make up and
Speaker 2: you know, and nothing much happens to the anti clima.
Speaker 2: Actually know all that foreshadowing. Those are just weird coincidences.
Speaker 2: Nothing actually happened, just to keep people on their toes,
Speaker 2: just to have some like gto bluffing frequency when you're
Speaker 2: having the more predictable I guess outcome, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. But that probably won't happen. But yeah, Jeff's
Speaker 2: biggest complain about the book, particularly the movie. I mean
Speaker 2: the book itself and is a althor another person I
Speaker 2: met friendly guy, you know. Ben says, this is kind
Speaker 2: of a popular book and I wouldn't say inspire bat
Speaker 2: toy story, but it's trying to to make a little
Speaker 2: more cinematic and the movie goes further. Right, Jeff says, look,
Speaker 2: the movie didn't depict so Heet really mad. When a
Speaker 2: scene depicts him or his character on tilt, the character
Speaker 2: like loses every single hand he plays, Whereas conversely, when
Speaker 2: they're doing things the right way right, they win every
Speaker 2: single hand. They might literally not be a hand that
Speaker 2: they don't win. Right. Similarly, in like rain Man, it
Speaker 2: doesn't Hoffman character right, he goes and they win every hand.
Speaker 2: And like blackjack, even if you kind of know how
Speaker 2: many cards you're in the bet, yeah, you might have
Speaker 2: a fifty two, fifty three to fifty four percent edge,
Speaker 2: which is very big for gambling, right, but you're not.
Speaker 1: Going to be winning huge by the way, Yeah, yeah, but.
Speaker 2: You're not gonna be winning every bet.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It's very hard to depict like randomness, and it's hard
Speaker 2: in real life. It's hard to say I made a
Speaker 2: good forecast, I made a good bet. There was a
Speaker 2: fifty five to forty five bet, which is great. You're
Speaker 2: still going to lose that bet forty five percent of
Speaker 2: the time. Right. The notion of a sure thing, the
Speaker 2: notion of you know, variance, goes out the window, and
Speaker 2: randomness goes out the window. It's all the kind of
Speaker 2: a morality play, and like that's another unrealistic component of
Speaker 2: like of movies in general, but especially gambling adjacent movies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, absolutely, I mean I think that a lot
Speaker 1: of things have to change in service of storytelling and
Speaker 1: creating a story that's both visually compelling and also has
Speaker 1: a compelling kind of storyline and that seems plausible to people. So,
Speaker 1: you know the part of what you were talking about,
Speaker 1: how like the actual trips did not look at all
Speaker 1: like that, you know, not flying to Las Vegas for
Speaker 1: these glamorous weekends every time and you're obviously like in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere and like not very glamorous casinos,
Speaker 1: doing not very glamorous things. That's part of it. That's
Speaker 1: kind of part of the visual appeal and kind of
Speaker 1: the story. But the other part of it, the randomness.
Speaker 1: I think that that is something that you know, the
Speaker 1: human mind just completely struggles with. And poker. We've talked
Speaker 1: about this before, as I spoke about with Frank Lance,
Speaker 1: who who studies games. He's a game designer. He teaches
Speaker 1: games at NYU. You know, he loves poker because poker
Speaker 1: is a game that teaches you what true randomness looks
Speaker 1: like and he told me that you can't do that
Speaker 1: in a game that's designed, you know, like a computer game,
Speaker 1: because true randomness doesn't seem random to the players, right,
Speaker 1: So they actually have like random number generators that aren't random,
Speaker 1: where you have like, okay, like if this person has
Speaker 1: lost this many times, you know, then you need to
Speaker 1: have him win now because they're gonna think that the
Speaker 1: game is rigged. And so it's just disconnect where when
Speaker 1: the game isn't rigged, it feels rigged, and when it's rigged,
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel rigged because the actual way that randomness
Speaker 1: works can feel rigged right to the human mind. Just why,
Speaker 1: by the way, so many people are like, oh, Booker's rigged,
Speaker 1: like this is rigged. That's rigged, because they're like, how
Speaker 1: improbable is I'm like, no, it's not fucking rigged, Like
Speaker 1: this is just character like this is how probable it
Speaker 1: can be, yes, but yeah, this is how like this
Speaker 1: is how probabilities actually work. But now, like if you
Speaker 1: can't grasp that when you yourself are playing a game, now,
Speaker 1: imagine like the poor filmmaker trying to make something seem
Speaker 1: realistic and trying to make randomness and variants look real, like,
Speaker 1: oh man, that's a thankless task, right.
Speaker 2: You can't.
Speaker 1: You can't, like, for the sake of storytelling, you need
Speaker 1: to actually play around with it so that it seems
Speaker 1: random even though it's not actually random, and that's not
Speaker 1: how randomness works. And so you do have this constant
Speaker 1: tension where like you understand what it should be like
Speaker 1: in reality, but you can't do it right. You're making
Speaker 1: a movie. You have to keep the audience engauge, and
Speaker 1: even when you're a game designer, you can't do it,
Speaker 1: which is once again why Frank Lance likes the purity
Speaker 1: of poker, because you know the game is what it is,
Speaker 1: and you can't fuck with it by by being a
Speaker 1: game designer who you know, decides, Oh, you know this person,
Speaker 1: this person has lost a flip Nate ten times in
Speaker 1: a row. They've got to win it this time around.
Speaker 1: Oh man, this person has gotten their aces cracked three times,
Speaker 1: you know, and they're supposed to win seventy five percent
Speaker 1: of the time. We're gonna we're gonna have to make
Speaker 1: sure that the next time that he's dealt a says
Speaker 1: he's going to win. That ain't how it works. It
Speaker 1: would be nice if it were, but it's not. And
Speaker 1: we'll be back right after this. What's the first movie
Speaker 1: that you remember seeing that's kind of a poker movie?
Speaker 1: And I don't think it has to be like a
Speaker 1: movie where poker is the plot, because there aren't very
Speaker 1: many of those, but a movie where poker plays like
Speaker 1: a pivotal role.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, I'm trying to think more broadly about
Speaker 2: like what my image of poker was like before I
Speaker 2: started playing, and then before I started playing kind of seriously.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I did see Rounders, which is a movie
Speaker 2: by of course, Brian Koppleman and David Levine, who you're
Speaker 2: working with on this new show.
Speaker 1: Yes, Brian and David are wonderful, and Rounders is the
Speaker 1: first poker movie I ever saw.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean Rounders is so Brian is a real
Speaker 2: poker player I've played. He is. It's Brian. I don't
Speaker 2: think Brian would describe himself as like an expert poker player,
Speaker 2: but he loves the game, right, you know. He talked
Speaker 2: to me about like the exhilarating sense that you get
Speaker 2: when you're kind of like doing this thing that's kind
Speaker 2: of in this liminal space poker right where you're playing
Speaker 2: late at night in an underground room somewhere where it's
Speaker 2: literally underground or not depends. Sometimes it's on a high
Speaker 2: rise or something, right, and having the shared experience of
Speaker 2: like taking risks and so like in general, like his
Speaker 2: poker scenes get things. I mean, if you wanted to
Speaker 2: get them fully right, I'm sure he would, right, but
Speaker 2: they get things most of the way right, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean look, Rounders famously exaggerates the importance of tells.
Speaker 2: There there's a tell involving an Oreo cookie, for example,
Speaker 2: right that the John Mackowich character exhibits. Let's play some CODs.
Speaker 3: The rule is this, you spottom to tell, you don't
Speaker 3: say a fucking word. I finally spotted KGB's and usually
Speaker 3: I'd have let him go on chewing those oreos till
Speaker 3: he was dead broke. But I don't have that kind
Speaker 3: of time.
Speaker 2: It's usually not quite it's a movie. It's a movie.
Speaker 2: It's a movie, right, you know, I kind of came
Speaker 2: of age and like the Rounder's mini boom for poker,
Speaker 2: where like you know, geeky twenty something meant but like
Speaker 2: this seems really cool, right, This is a way to
Speaker 2: like have this experience where is a nerd you can
Speaker 2: kind of make good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that Rounders definitely captivated me. Now, I
Speaker 1: did not start playing poker after I was pretty young,
Speaker 1: so I couldn't play poker when Rounders came out, But
Speaker 1: I do remember seeing it and just loving the movie.
Speaker 1: I think my favorite thing about the movie was probably
Speaker 1: Matt Damon back then it's just me perfectly honest and yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I know, and you know, John Malkovich like
Speaker 1: the since you know, since I'm Russian and like his
Speaker 1: should act. It was just hilarious, like it was just
Speaker 1: a fun movie. But it definitely stayed with me because
Speaker 1: you can tell that Brian and David both play poker,
Speaker 1: both love the game. By the way, Brian has a
Speaker 1: cameo in the movie which is a lot of fun
Speaker 1: at Borgata. He's at the poker table, so that's you know,
Speaker 1: I think that's a fun little moment in there. And
Speaker 1: ask any poker player, and I think you're going to
Speaker 1: get Rounders as one of the top ones.
Speaker 2: So I mean, obviously every kind of poker player's same.
Speaker 2: As quote is from Rounders.
Speaker 1: Well play a clip for our audience.
Speaker 3: Listen here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker
Speaker 3: in your first half hour at the table, and you
Speaker 3: are the.
Speaker 2: Sucker by the way, do you leave it to be true?
Speaker 2: Is that?
Speaker 1: No, I don't think. I don't think that's true. I
Speaker 1: think that, but I do think that there's truth in it.
Speaker 1: Like with so many sayings, right that the moment I
Speaker 1: always caution people against overconfidence, right, and the moment that
Speaker 1: you think that you kind of have the edge over everyone,
Speaker 1: you should be very careful. And I would also say
Speaker 1: that it's not true for me because I play in
Speaker 1: tournaments right where your seat draw is random. Matt Damon
Speaker 1: Rounders is about cash games, and there you actually I
Speaker 1: think there's much more truth there because you have to say, like,
Speaker 1: especially if it's a cash game where like there's some
Speaker 1: good spots, or like you know, or you were invited
Speaker 1: for some reason and it's a game that is hard
Speaker 1: to get into, you have to wonder, like you have
Speaker 1: to ask the question why was I allowed to play? Right?
Speaker 1: Is it because of my charming personality and my witty
Speaker 1: banter and table conversation. Maybe, but maybe they just think
Speaker 1: that you're the spot, right, Maybe they actually think that
Speaker 1: you are someone who's good to play with. I had
Speaker 1: a really funny experience a few years ago where I
Speaker 1: someone reached out to me a game runner from one
Speaker 1: of the high stakes games in Las Vegas that is,
Speaker 1: at one of the casinos. I'm not going to mention
Speaker 1: who the runner was or what the game was, and
Speaker 1: it was like, you know, hey, like we'd love for
Speaker 1: you to join us anytime, like when we're when we're
Speaker 1: playing this game, Like we're happy to like pay for
Speaker 1: your airfare to Vegas. And I was like, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to go ahead and say no. And it turned
Speaker 1: out that another friend of mine who's a female poker player,
Speaker 1: got the same invitation, and we were like, huh, like
Speaker 1: do they just really want a girl at the table
Speaker 1: or what does it say about their impression of how
Speaker 1: we play poker at those higher stakes. But the moment,
Speaker 1: you know, you get that invitation and I asked a
Speaker 1: few people about it, They're like, it's a good game,
Speaker 1: and I was like, yeah, you know, I'm still still
Speaker 1: not going to do it. Like so that's kind of
Speaker 1: one of the I think that that's some of the
Speaker 1: truth in that Matt Damon quote.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if it's a TV game, it might be that
Speaker 2: might be one of the weird exceptions where like, maybe
Speaker 2: we believe this was not a team again, Okay, that's
Speaker 2: more believe it or not. Relative to the poker world,
Speaker 2: we are normies believe it or not. Right, But yeah,
Speaker 2: you should always be asking like, why have I invited
Speaker 2: to be played in this game that inevitably will be
Speaker 2: portrayed to me? Is very good. The other thing you
Speaker 2: have to watch for, which is not necessarily bad but
Speaker 2: something to be aware of, right, is that if you
Speaker 2: exhibit any reluctance about how high the stakes are, assume
Speaker 2: the de facto steaks are at least two acts higher
Speaker 2: than then the person in body of the game is projecting.
Speaker 2: I think it's a good heuristic to look at. In
Speaker 2: it is a tournament, to say, like to look around
Speaker 2: the table and say where am I making my my
Speaker 2: money from? Right? Or am I making money? If you're
Speaker 2: not making money, then a cash game. If you're having fun,
Speaker 2: stay right. Otherwise leave it a tournament that might affect
Speaker 2: your strategy. It might actually depends on if it's late
Speaker 2: at night. If it's late at night and get a
Speaker 2: new table the next day, you might say, you know what,
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna kind of be a little bit of
Speaker 2: a knit here. I need to. I can wait for
Speaker 2: a better table tomorrow. Right, But in general, actually it's
Speaker 2: the opposite. In general, if you're like, Okay, I'm at
Speaker 2: a tough table. It's ten in the morning, I'm playing
Speaker 2: until ten at night, right, you actually have to take
Speaker 2: more more risk and look for dinner edges because you
Speaker 2: won't find these stick, robust fish that give you big
Speaker 2: free money basically, But I think it's kind of worth
Speaker 2: looking around and saying, where am I making my money
Speaker 2: from in this game? Right, And if you're making a
Speaker 2: lot of money, you might actually pick yours fustle more carefully,
Speaker 2: like in the main event for example, sometimes was obvious.
Speaker 2: So you make a lot of money in poker from
Speaker 2: players who are too passive and sometimes too tight. Right,
Speaker 2: if somebody only folds unless they have a really good hand,
Speaker 2: and then we have a really good hand, then make
Speaker 2: huge opus bets. Right, it's not as fun as picking
Speaker 2: off a bluff or something. You make a lot of
Speaker 2: money from that from that player.
Speaker 1: You do, you do, absolutely absolutely, But yeah, so I
Speaker 1: do think that there there's definite truth to that and
Speaker 1: kind of it's good strategy advice to always look around.
Speaker 1: And by the way, if you can't spot the sucker
Speaker 1: at the table, right, if you can't spot the spot,
Speaker 1: then you probably are the spot. And you want to
Speaker 1: avoid getting into big pots because you will get outplayed.
Speaker 2: And we'll be right back after this break.
Speaker 1: They we've talked about a lot of things that you
Speaker 1: know are bad about poker movies, because most poker movies
Speaker 1: are kind of bad. Do you have any poker movies
Speaker 1: that you'd put on like your bad list where you're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, like this is just just no, or
Speaker 1: or do we just want to stick to our good
Speaker 1: list here?
Speaker 2: I haven't seen that many. I mean we haven't. You know.
Speaker 2: I liked Rounders. I liked like Molly's Game, right, I
Speaker 2: think that does a better job than than most.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, Molly's Game had some really good consultants. I
Speaker 1: actually know one of the people, David Peretti's, who is
Speaker 1: a poker player, who consulted on some of those poker scenes.
Speaker 1: So they actually asked real players to help them out
Speaker 1: with the choreography of the poker and I think that
Speaker 1: that shows for sure. I think that those those hands
Speaker 1: in Molly's game are both dramatic but also believable, like
Speaker 1: it could happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does it, you know, as a poker player
Speaker 2: to movie makers, right, I'm not asking for a ton, right,
Speaker 2: like just just things that are like that are plausible ish,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean? There are things that kind
Speaker 2: of like and that's like couplemen. Is it like he's
Speaker 2: doing things that are kind of like not literal, but
Speaker 2: like at least kind of in the in the spirit no,
Speaker 2: a nod to real poker basically, yep.
Speaker 1: I think I think that that is the important thing.
Speaker 1: If we were making a movie about you, who'd play you?
Speaker 1: Or if you were if you were in a Parker
Speaker 1: story and you were there.
Speaker 2: I will let the audience speculate.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be It doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: someone who looks like you, just someone you know, who
Speaker 1: do you think should play you?
Speaker 2: Who do you think should play me? Maria? I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's I'm weirdly I feel like the hems about who
Speaker 2: would you have played me?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I need to think about it.
Speaker 2: Are there good like sports betting movies?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Not really? Right? No?
Speaker 1: I don't think so, I mean not that well no,
Speaker 1: oh wait, no, uncut jumps like absolutely one of the
Speaker 1: most one of the most brilliant movies, Like such a
Speaker 1: good movie, such a stressful movie, like movie at the
Speaker 1: edge of your seat, and like, holy shit, Adam Sandler
Speaker 1: was great. And by the way, Adam Sandler could totally
Speaker 1: play you unate, I would.
Speaker 2: Approve of that. Yeah, no, look, I yeah, I should
Speaker 2: have brought that up earlier, because that, like that captures
Speaker 2: the degeneracy of this character is like a little bit addled,
Speaker 2: kind of that rang true to me, right, and like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not saying it's the average gambler, but
Speaker 2: like that's a really you know, that might be the
Speaker 2: best gambling adjacent No he's not.
Speaker 1: I don't think. Yeah, I don't think he's the average
Speaker 1: gambler by far. Like he is at the very very
Speaker 1: dejense like end of the spectrum. But he just like
Speaker 1: he kept that movie Sandler himself, and just the movie
Speaker 1: captures that energy and kind of that mindset so incredibly well.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you haven't seen it, we won't
Speaker 1: spoiler here, you should watch it, but it's such a
Speaker 1: stressful movie. Don't watch it as like a way to
Speaker 1: relax before bed, Like it's one of those movies where
Speaker 1: you're just like stressed the entire time, even when nothing
Speaker 1: particularly stressful is happening. Anyway, that movie, I think is
Speaker 1: one of the best gambling movies I've ever seen. It's
Speaker 1: just absolutely brilliant in terms of capturing the spirit of
Speaker 1: the thing. It also made me understand Parlay's nate and
Speaker 1: how hard it is to hit your parlay. But I
Speaker 1: actually like that movie explains it so well because it
Speaker 1: shows it right. It shows like how it accumulates, how
Speaker 1: you have to hit different points, like what has to happen,
Speaker 1: and how many things have to go right, which is
Speaker 1: why parlays are stupid bets, as you've told me multiple times,
Speaker 1: and I think as lots of people have told me.
Speaker 1: But you can make a ton of money.
Speaker 2: I mean, they just they aren't inherently they just high risk, right,
Speaker 2: you're basically taking the windows. They're very high risk, right, right,
Speaker 2: automatically betting on the next game, right, And so yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: But you know, there's there's a reason why there's a
Speaker 2: reason why they're popular, you know, I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, some people think blackjack is boring because you
Speaker 2: basically win or lose one x your bet. You can
Speaker 2: double down and stuff like that and split. But you know,
Speaker 2: all right, Maria, we talked about this TV show you're
Speaker 2: working on, But if you are making a proper poker movie,
Speaker 2: what would it be about.
Speaker 1: You'd make it about the biggest bluff. Okay, it would
Speaker 1: make my book into a poker movie. Duh, that's the
Speaker 1: poker movie that absolutely needs to be made. So people
Speaker 1: making movies listening to this do it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think gamblers in general, I mean, first
Speaker 2: of all, you have like the degenerate gambler versus a
Speaker 2: creational gambler's kind of like a still gambler. They all
Speaker 2: kind of co mingle. But like, I don't know, if
Speaker 2: we're determined to make a good a good movie about
Speaker 2: the kind of poker gambling lifetime, we could, we could.
Speaker 2: We'd ham it up a little bit, Maria, the purists
Speaker 2: we critique some things. We could do a good job, though.
Speaker 2: I believe we would.
Speaker 1: I think so. I think so. And in terms of
Speaker 1: you know, who'd play me, it depends on when the
Speaker 1: movie gets made, because you know, I keep getting older,
Speaker 1: but fictional me does not. But someone who is already
Speaker 1: a little bit older than I am, but you know,
Speaker 1: is a is a movie star, so that doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: But who has a similar background and so I would
Speaker 1: love for her to play me would be Natalie Portman.
Speaker 1: She's also one of the good thing, one of the few. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we went to Harvard together. She was older,
Speaker 1: she was ahead of me. She studied psychology us like me.
Speaker 1: You know, she's Jewish. I'm Jewish. There are not that
Speaker 1: many Jewish leading ladies in Hollywood. I would definitely want
Speaker 1: her to be me if possible.
Speaker 2: Hey, Natalie, there are actors who played poker. Matt Damon,
Speaker 2: there are does, Till McGuire does I'm not sure there
Speaker 2: are any who were regarded as being particularly nor McDonald
Speaker 2: the comedian like poker.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, there are a ton. I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of overlap. Leonardo DiCaprio plays poker, Matt Damon in
Speaker 1: real life loves poker, Ben Affleck, Wahlberg, like that whole
Speaker 1: crew from Boston plays poker. I don't know about Casey Affleck,
Speaker 1: but I would assume he plays as well. You know,
Speaker 1: there are lots of star power poker players. In terms
Speaker 1: of who's actually considered good, Nate, Let's not go there.
Speaker 1: We're sure that they're all excellent players, and we would
Speaker 1: love to sit at a game with them and be
Speaker 1: able to compliment them on their level and on how
Speaker 1: brilliantly they play.
Speaker 2: Right, if you're at the World Stories of Poker, would
Speaker 2: you rather it's against an actor or a professional athlete
Speaker 2: rather acting?
Speaker 1: Yeah, me too, actor immediately, I mean, I have just
Speaker 1: an immediate answer. Professional athletes are often very good poker
Speaker 1: players because they just, like you know, they compete for
Speaker 1: a living, and they have that they have that sense
Speaker 1: of competition, they have that hunger to win, they have
Speaker 1: the aggressiveness like a lot of them make, you know,
Speaker 1: like Richard Seymour, who's an excellent poker player. Like a
Speaker 1: lot of them make really good poker players because they
Speaker 1: understand it right, and they're smart like athletes are. And
Speaker 1: I'm not saying actors aren't smart, but acting is a
Speaker 1: different You can be very smart, but you're in a
Speaker 1: different profession, right, Like and you might say, oh, actors
Speaker 1: have better poker faces, that doesn't really matter. Most people
Speaker 1: have good poker faces. Like that's actually not that important.
Speaker 1: But the like the competitive spirit and like understanding aggression,
Speaker 1: knowing how to gauge that reading your opponents. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're a thinking like imagine being a quarterback, right,
Speaker 1: you have to be reading people all the time. Like
Speaker 1: if you're a thinking athlete like man, you're going to
Speaker 1: be formidable at the pokering table.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Game theory comes up a lot absolutely in sports,
Speaker 2: right for tennis it comes up a lot, right. Uh yeah,
Speaker 2: A starting picture Greg Maddox, great Atlanta Braves picture literally
Speaker 2: would randomize his calls allegedly based on the stadium whites
Speaker 2: and things like that. And he's a Las Vegas guy
Speaker 2: who I believe plays poker pretty well. Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 2: the athlete and they're competitive, right yeah, actor actors is
Speaker 2: probably maybe like a plastic surgeon, if you yeah, like
Speaker 2: the plastic surgeon, like a real estate I guess I
Speaker 2: have some real estate people in one of my home games,
Speaker 2: so maybe I should. They're great at poker, of course,
Speaker 2: real estates. Well we'll quit while we're ahead.
Speaker 1: Well quit, well we're ahead. What's your So what's your
Speaker 1: if you're gonna be if we're sitting down for you know,
Speaker 1: a night of rounders rewatching or whatever it is, what
Speaker 1: are we gonna be serving. What's your favorite movie snack?
Speaker 2: Uh? Nice class of peanut? NOI yeah, I'm not a
Speaker 2: thing snacker? Do you know that, Maria, I'm I'm totally
Speaker 2: with you.
Speaker 1: Nate. Let's let's let's let's get a bottle of wine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and do a poker movie night. That would be my
Speaker 1: favorite snack.
Speaker 2: I have enough other sins where like snacking is like
Speaker 2: the one I don't have.
Speaker 1: Basically now, I don't snack, and I actually, fellow listeners,
Speaker 1: if you ever watch a movie with me, please do
Speaker 1: not be eating. I hate like the sound of like
Speaker 1: someone eating popcorn next to me. Like, please know, it's
Speaker 1: a me thing. It's it's not.
Speaker 2: You, it's me.
Speaker 1: But like, come on, let's let's watch the movie and
Speaker 1: enjoy the movie. You don't have to be snacking literally
Speaker 1: all the time. Let's have a nice dinner before or
Speaker 1: after and then enjoy the movie. So Nate, well, we'll
Speaker 1: have a nice bottle of wine if we're watching the
Speaker 1: movie and then having dinner. If we've already had dinner,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe we have some whiskey or you know,
Speaker 1: a nice some after dinner, some after dinner libations. I
Speaker 1: think that's my ideal movie night, comfortable couch, nice alcohol
Speaker 1: and nice screen. You know, let's uh, let's do it
Speaker 1: and and poker that as you say, nay, you don't
Speaker 1: have to be perfect, but like, let's get it semi
Speaker 1: believable so that we can get invested. And the end
Speaker 1: to my ideal movie night, it's you know, Natalie Portman
Speaker 1: playing me on the screen. So let's make it happen.
Speaker 1: Let us know what you think of the show. Reach
Speaker 1: out to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot FM.
Speaker 1: Risky Business is hosted 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
Speaker 1: so other people can find us too, But once again,
Speaker 1: only if you like us. We don't want those bad
Speaker 1: reviews out there. Thanks for tuning in.