Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions. I'm Maria Kanikova.
And I'm Nate Silver today on the program.
Since the last time you heard this show, one of the two hosts of Receive Business has won a world series of pook or Bracelet. We will soon disclose who that is in connect an interview with him or her.
I love the suspense building night and looking forward to the interview with him or her. After that, we're going to ship gears and talk about the Nobel Prizes, specifically the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded a last week, and pe Doom and the probability of nuclear destruction and what has happened with that over the years, and.
Then some politics. So exciting poker developments.
This weekend, I was down in uh New Orleans for a friend's birthday, play a little bit at the Haras there, which has a very aggressive policy of making sure there are lots of drink servers.
So the games are good and loose.
One three game and I won two hundred and one dollars, and even more excited found that it was a twenty five dollars ship by forgotten to cash in, so really really to twenty six. So I think it would be hard to top that for poker accomplishment since the last show, right.
Maria, I think it would be.
I think that's that's pretty impressive and congratulations. It always feels so good to find that extra chip.
It's like sound, it's like almost better than yeah, it's almost better than actually having the cash.
I feel like, yeah, for sure, for sure, because you forget you have it. I love the poker stories, by the way, as a tangent of djens, because they're always djens, like poker players who are not djens. These stores don't happen to them when they're like, oh, you know, I was emptying out an old sweatshirt and I found, you know, two five K chips or like a day or this or that, and they totally forget. They're like, oh, in this old backpack, like at a twenty five K chip,
like it's awesome. So so those stories always tend to crack me up, but they do happen. Then it happened more frequently than you would think.
Meanwhile, I woke up on Monday a little bit later than usual due to the New Orleans weekend, and I saw a note from you posted at what time?
Was this like three or four in the morning or something.
It was three in the morning Pacific time.
Yeah, okay, Maria, tell me what that note said.
I don't remember exactly what the wording was, but something along the lines of like, holy shit, I won my first World Series of Poker bracelet.
Oh my gosh, Maria, I'm so proud of you, and the audience of the show is proud of you too.
So tell me, tell me everything. Tell me. Did the tournament actually end at three am?
Yeah? The tournament ended at like at like two fifes day something something along those lines. So it was an incredibly long tournament. I mean, it was ten and a half hours. But those those hours tend to be much more difficult for players like me who are getting on in year's night, because we're playing so late into the night. So, you know, it's unlike in a live World Series of Poker event, where like you're playing over multiple days. Like here,
it's just concentrated. And you know, I happen to be in Las Vegas right now, which is where I was playing this event. But for the poor people on the East Coast, it's even worse. Right, they ended at six am, So tell me more.
About this is a bracelet event obviously, what is it eighty eight or something?
Yeah, it's the Crazy eight eight eight eight event and it was part of so as of last year, the World Series of Poker has done a fall series where they have I don't actually know how many events twenty something like that were they were they award online bracelets, which is you know, a different thing because some people think that online bracelets shouldn't count, but they do count for now. So I'm going to account mine because.
I want what did you do when you won?
Oh? My I was very, very tired, and everyone I know was asleep, so I oh, except for my parents. So my parents are currently on vacation in France. So I texted my parents and told them that I want a bracelet because they were the only people I knew who were awake plus sleep. Anyway, what your husband was asleep?
He was asleep, yes, but I did wake him up to tell him you should Yeah, yes, and uh I obviously I also texted Eric's sidell since you know he this is as I'm not going to say as much as victory, but like, I wouldn't be here if it weren't for his mentorship and coaching and training throughout the year and support. So he was asleep. But he by the time he texted me back, I was asleep because you know, I went to bed quite light.
Did you adopt an a particular strategy for this event? I mean, do you?
I mean know, the vibes are a little bit different than on Yeah, he's online. I haven't played that many. I've never even cashed one night online actually.
With the World So this is the first. Yeah, this is the first time I've played in an online bracelet series. Actually that's not true. I played during COVID. So do you remember during COVID when the World Series Live was canceled, they ended up doing a bracelet series that summer during the World Series instead, And we rented an airbnb in New Jersey and spent a few weeks in New Jersey and I played online there and did not do well.
But so this is this is a second online series that I've played, and I got to Vegas a few days ago this weekend and have been able to play a few events, and it's definitely you know, it's definitely different because I'm a lot I'm someone who specializes in live tournaments, so it's hard for me. It's much harder for me to play online because I don't see faces, you know, I don't see a lot of the kind of physical things that I would normally use. That's it
I actually started. You know, I learned poker by playing online. I would go to New Jersey every single day and play on Poker Stars. I know that. Yeah, so because online poker is not legal in New York but is legal in New Jersey, I would. I would cross the river, i would take the Path train, and I would sit in a cafe and I'd play online on Poker Stars. And the reason I did that, even though I always knew that I had that I wanted to play live, was everyone I was working with, namely you know, Eric
Sidell and Phil Galfond. At the time, they were saying, you know, you need to get hands in, right, you need to get practice in. You need to you need to get repetition and figure out what these spots feel like. And the only way to do that is by playing online. So it's not like, you know, I start it live and I've never played online. That was where my initial
training came from. But I still actually think that for me, online poker is much tougher and my I mean, my strategy was just to try to play as as well as I possibly could, and I ended up in for the max number of rebuys, which obviously is not ideal. You could rebuy three times and I had, I had, I ran pocket Jacks into pocket Kings twice for my for two of the bust outs, and my final hand of the tournament, actually in Poetic Justice, was pocket Jack's.
But yeah, so you know, obviously I don't love max rebuying, but I was ready to do that, and I think sometimes you need to, you know, when you know, the rebuys are there for a reason, you know, you're playing a rebuy event, and so I just wanted to play my best game and uh, really make sure that I
was playing well and not punting. So a few days ago, the first online Bracelet event I played was the thirty two hundred six max and I came in eighth, and that was so close, and I was actually, you know, talking to someone afterwards, and I was like, oh man, that's probably the closest I'll ever come to winning a Bracelet seventh player. So I and then a few days later, I came even closer, so that felt very nice.
So this fourth bullet, was it relatively smooth that you wrack up a big stack early or uh no, so.
Some of it was smooth, but I actually so you can review all of your hands, which I did prior to this conversation. You know, I had gotten I got short a few times, and then there were actually a few pivotal hands that really helped propel me to the win. I was middle of the pack for most of the tournament, and I was actually quite low. In the last bullet.
I thought that I was going to bust because I got very unlucky in one hand and was down to some ten big blinds for a chunk of time, and then was able to work it back up, grind it back up, and build up a stack. And then there were a few hands that I thought were quite interesting. I think one of the most important hands in the
tournament was when we were down to two tables. So at this point we were already all in the money, and the pay jumps by the way, So because I was in for four bullets, I needed to get better than tenth to break even. Because it's a very it's a very flat payout structure, and we were I think there were fifteen of us left at the time, and I was kind of middle of the road, you know, I was I had twenty something big blinds. So I ended up we were eight handed at the table, and
I was in the hijack. For people who don't know poker, you know, that's kind of middle middleish position. And I was dealt King ten of Spades, which is which is a pretty good hand.
Yeah, you're pretty excited, pretty excited.
Pretty excited. So I raised men raised, you know, two big blinds, and then the player who was on the button, who was the biggest stack at the table, so almost twice what I had.
And don't don't know who this is.
No, his his name was Sabuku. So his screen name is Ritualistic Suicide by Disembelment. So so that's fun.
And you're in the hijack. A lot of violent terminology.
Here, absolutely, I'm in the hijack, and and he is on the button and he decides to three bet me and he makes it six bitlines. And you know, this is already an interesting spot, right because I'm short enough that I could fold, but I have a really playable hand right, a hand that does really well post flop, and and you know it's not it's not a huge three bet anyway. It could go either. It can actually go anyway. Right, I can if I think he's full of shit, I can just shove because I have a
nice reshove stack. I can fold, there's no shame in folding King ten. Or I can call. And I haven't run this hand through any sim yet, so I'm not sure if what I did was correct or not. But I called, and the flop. So at this point, right, what is our pot? At this point, our pot is fifteen yard blots, yeah, something like that. And the PLoP comes seven eight nine, one spade, two clubs, and we have King ten of spades yep. So we have an open ended straight draw right, seven eight nine ten, and
we have a back door flush straw. Right, So we're drawing. We're drawing to a lot of nutty or second nutty type hands, but we don't have anything. We still have King high. So I check, which I would do with basically all of my hands in this situation when I'm out of position, and he checks back, which is interesting, right, because it tells me something about the strength of his hand. Right. Also, if he has really strong hands, he doesn't want to
check back that board because it's an incredibly draw heavy board. Right. If you have pocket aces, you do not want me to see another card, right, You do not want me to hit my straight. You do not want me to hit my flush like they're you really do not want me to get a free card. Right, So he checks back and the turn is a queen of clubs. So
now jack ten has made us straight. And let's remember I have a ten in my hand, right, so I block the nuts or the second obviously, meaning for lunch has come in.
Yeah, meaning it's hard now harder for him to have combinatorically the best possible hand because you have.
And that's actually not true because he could still have clubs, right, he could have one club in his hand. I don't think he checks back clubs on the on the flop, but he could have a hand with one club. That could be that could be drawing very live. But I don't think he has two clubs in his hand. And I am blocking the straight the not straight. But so the queen is actually like not not a great card for him when he checks when he checks back, the flop,
and so I decide to lead. So here I do decide to lead, which I would actually do with a lot of my flushes, because I have a lot of flushes here, right, and and I do have straights here, and I don't want and with the ten like I could very well have jack ten. Now you know, I don't want any more clubs to roll off. So I bet, and I bet pretty small. And the reason I bet small, by the way, was if you think of the stack sizes, I will have a pot size bet left if he
calls on the river. And so that's a really good ratio because I'll be able to shove for full pot and I can, by the way, still improve.
He has some hands that just are gonna give up pretty easily there, you know, ace jack without a flushtraw or something like that or I don't know if that.
Podcast For that small Yeah, for that small size, I can get a lot of hands that are doing better than me right to fold, which is great. And if he has a club, right, if he has the ace of clubs in his hands, if he has the King of club in his hands, he's never folding even to a huge bed, right. So so I think that I'm not accomplishing that much if I get bigger. And also
his hands that aren't very happy. I don't think he's ever raising me with red aces right or red kings because that board is just not a great board for him to do that. So he calls and the river comes a queen of spades, so pairs of boord So now.
Seven eight nine queen queen.
Yep, three clubs, two spades, and so at this point I have king high, right, Yeah, I don't have much, and the pot is huge, and there's no way if I check, he's going to be checking back all of his a's highs, like he's going to be so happy to check that thing down. But if I bet, you know, he might hero call with some pairs. You know, now that the queen has paired, he might hero call some hands. But if I shove, if I go all in for the pot, that's a huge you know, that's a huge
percentage of his stack too. And if he calls and is wrong, that's lights out for his stack. And he's the chip leader of the table. He's not the chip leader of the tournament, but he's the chip leader of the table, and that's a great position to be in.
So I shove.
Because you know, after kind of thinking through my options, I figured that I can, I can safely do that, and I can represent a lot of strong hands that he does not have. And by the way, when the Queen of Spades and the Queen of Clubs are both on the board, it's much less likely that he actually hasn't Ace Queen or kin queen because the suited varieties are are not there anymore for the ones that have backdoor draws.
If he asked kid Queen, he might even fold it.
Yeah, absolutely, So I shoved and the guy so in retrospect, shoving into a guy whose screen name is Japanese Ritualistics suicide by disemvelopment might not have been my finest people reading moment. But so he goes into the tank and he starts running down his time bank, and I'm like, oh fuck when they do that, right when they run down the time bank like they're calling.
And then finally we have experience.
I find like people people like to fold to me where they like to fold to you, though I feel like and.
Yeah, that's probably true. Yeah, but he didn't know who I was. So eventually he folds and with that hand, I actually get the chip leader of the table and that was huge for me. Right, I'm still not chip leader of the tournament because all the chips are on the other table, but but I now have the blade because this bluff was able to get through. And by the way, had he called, I would have been out right because all of his pairs, even if he had pocket deuces, they beat me.
His highs beat me.
Basically, I am losing to everything that we get there with. And a few hands later, so at this point I become the table chip. Later then I lose a few hands. So the person to my direct right, so he's the small blind when I'm the big blind now covers me by a little bit, and a few hands later it folds to us and he raises the small blind and
he raises big. He raises to four x, and I happened to have Queen's in the big blind, and I just and I at this point, I have thirty five big blind something like that, thirty six, and I just shove because you know, it puts max pressure on and I don't mind just taking down that pot. And he
calls and he has nine, and that's very unfortunate. For him blind versus blind, right, we both have legitimate hands, and I hold, and that puts me into i think third in chips in the in the tournament, and after that, I you know, I went back and forth, but I had a big stack and I did not have any major losses and was able to eventually, yeah, win the tournament. But I think that that was kind of that was a that bluff. The fact that bluff went through was crucial.
And then having that Queen's hand after, you know, a few hands later, I think was really important. So one of those hands was skilled right the bluff, and the other hand was pure luck because you know, it's it was lucky for me that he had a legitimate hand and that that legitimate hand wasn't kings or races.
I like nines.
I like nice too. I like nines too.
Have you processed it yet? I haven't.
I was very tired yesterday and I haven't really had a chance to let it sink in. But you know, it feels really nice. I think it's a big accomplishment and I'm just going to be proud of it. God damn it.
Yeah, you can't prove anyway. We're really proud of you, Maria. The whole show is dunk in the audience. So congrats, thank.
You, thank you. I'm playing another event today, Oh jeez.
Okay, see that's kind of low key, Djen. I feel like to like be like people do that, to be like I just want a million dollars. I'm gonna jump in this eight hundred dollars tournament if I want to fuck embrace it.
Taking a few days off tell you.
That, Well, well, I'll be taking a few days off after this because I'm leaving the lovely state of Nevada and going to Miami. So so I'm not going to be able to play poker there.
There is poker Miami, I'll have you know.
There is poker in Miami. But I will not be playing poker in Miami.
Okay, well, congrets for me, and let's talk about nuclear war.
Yeah, after the break, nuclear war and other fun things.
Right.
So we are recording this on Tuesday, October fifteenth, and this is the week after all of the Nobel Prizes were awarded, and the one I want to talk about today, Nate, was, you know, one of the biggest Nobel prizes that is often could have awarded to make some sort of a statement. And this is the Nobel Peace Prize, and this year it went to an organization called Nihon Hidankyo, which is an organization that was found in nineteen fifty six by
survivors of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So these are the Hibakusha that's the Japanese word for survivors, and so ever since it's been founded, they've been working towards a world basically where nuclear deterns, a strong nuclear disarmament, and they've been trying to kind of enforce this nuclear taboo right that you cannot use nuclear weapons. And so it means something that after all this time, that they were awarded the Nobel Prize this year, And so I
want to first I'd love to hear your reaction. Then I wanted to talk about, you know, why now and why it's so important now that you know, these survivors are in their eighties and there aren't very many of them left, why it's so important that a group like this actually be honored and what they're fighting for kind of be brought to the public consciousness.
Yeah, it was an interesting set of Nobel Prizes in general. There were some ai related words too.
Look, I think you kind of.
Answered the question, which is that you're losing the generational memory the only time that nuclear weapons were used in combat, which is by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And you know.
People at the time van Neuman, who was one of the kind of founders of game theory and worked on a Manhattan project, they all kind of assume we're all going to die in like twenty or thirty years. You know, a nuclear attack would be very bad. The bombs have only gotten more powerful. You know, what was it where during the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union were,
you know, developing tens of thousands of these. In fact, some people like von Neumann kind of half seriously proposed a preemptive strike on the USSR to prevent them from having the bomb. You know, other people wanted to share the technology more widely, but it seemed like a very dangerous thing. And if you had asked somebody what are the odds this would be the last nuclear usage for the next seventy nine years, I'm not sure what odds
it would have given you. Right in the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy thought that we had between one and three and one and two, so thirty three to fifty percent chance of that conflict turning nuclear.
There have been accidents before. I mean, the whole concept is a little.
Bit screwy, right, well, because like, if you're unwilling to use weapons, then they don't create a current, right, But if you are willing to use them, then that's a real risk, and then the risk of accidents. You know, Thomas Shelling talked about the threat that leaves something to chance.
To chance yet and by the way, Thomas Shelling also won a Nobel Prize for that work. So since we're talking about Nobel prizes, let's let's call that out yep.
So yeah, look, you know there is a lot of discussion now, including on the show in a couple of segments on P doom, probability of doom, really bad shit happening, everyone blowing up because of runaway misalign artificial intelligence. You know, nuclear war risk was the original P doom in the sense that it was the first technology that had the potential to wipe out all of civilization potentially a threshold
moment that the world kind of can't undo anymore. And I wonder I people have gotten a little bit complacent about the risk. The number of nuclear states is proliferating. You know, North Korea, you know, I know who officially says they have what, but you know, North Korea has the bomb. Now, maybe not the best bombs, but you know, probably got a couple of bombs, but he bomb. Iran has been trying to develop nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
That's a hot bit obviously of problems right now. And Israel has this practice of strategic ambiguity, so if you ask them, they'll say, ah, nuclear weapons, we never heard of them. But clearly part of their deterrence is based
on the ultimate threat that they might have. And Ukraine, right, I mean, you know, one fortunate thing about the theater of conflict in Ukraine is that if you were to have a nuclear weapon detonated, their dirty bomb or whatever, it would potentially blow if trailing winds are east into Russia, it would create fallout contamination over Russia. So it's a little bit suicidal to do that potentially. Yeah, I mean, look, this shit's serious.
It is serious. And by the way, kind of the fallowout risk to Russia, we saw that happen during Chernobyl, right, like it depends on what the wind conditions are. But that was not a nuclear bomb. That was just a that was just an accident, and that is absolutely a very real thing. Yeah, this shit is really really serious.
And you know, I think that one of the really important things that the Noble Committee tried to do was kind of try to re up this historic memory that's dying out, because people who are survivors of World War Two in general, you know, are dying, right. We're living with kind of the the end of that generation. And you see, and I think that this is you know, this is a trend all over the world. It's not
just kind of nuclear threat. But you see people who are like, oh, well, maybe the Holocaust never even happened, right, like the Holocaust denihilism. People are like, oh, prove it, right, prove that this happened. Oh it wasn't so bad. Like people forgetting like what an absolute horror this was. And now you have Vladimir Putin the threatening saying, oh, you know,
like I want to make this nuclear threat real. And what people don't, you know, tend to like gloss over and Thomas Shelling's work is that, you know, in his very famous example of the game of chicken, right, where you have two cars going head to head right, and you have to be the second. You have to not swerve right, you want the other guy to swerve. That's the only way that you win. He says that, you know, the way that you win is you rip out your
steering wheel and you throw it out the window. Because that's a credible commitment. Now they know, right, you can't swerve like there's not so they have to. But what happens if both people do that at the exact same time and throw their steering wheels out the window? They die?
Right, And it's a lot of Doctor Strangelove too, yeah, which is, according to some experts, a parody of Vnoyman.
But so yeah.
What they wanted was a machine that would automatically retaliate if it detected an attack. Because even if you therefore incapacitate the state, this is the one out to mutual assured destruction.
Right.
If you can destroy all their facilities before they have answer retally, before they can decide, then.
You can do a first strike.
Right. This is partly why there are so many different nuclear triad, air, sea, space, et cetera. You want to make it impossible to do it incapacitation strike. So yeah, the doomsday machine would have launched back automatically, and so you know, look, I mean the one thing I'll say is like it's another example of where game theory kind of has worked pretty well in the real world. I think there's also a lot of there's also a lot
of back channeling. I think with this stuff, it's a very coordinated dance about like what exactly are you saying, which maybe it should make you feel better, is that, like, you know, there are the red.
Phone, so to speak.
I don't know if there's literally a red phone anymore, right, but like all these things exist for a reason.
Yeah, but I do want to you know, there was something else that you said, which I think is important, and I'll so kind of the other element of the Doctor strangel Of thing is that accidents happen, right, and if you don't have a human on the other side. And this actually this is where also that p doomes of nuclear war and AI kind of are dovetailing, right, and one feeds into the other as you kind of
seed control automation decisions, et cetera. I want to just shout out Stanislav Petrov, who was a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defense and he basically single handedly prevented nuclear war in nineteen eighty three when there was a false signal that the US was attacking the Soviet Union and his decision, he decided, you know, he couldn't reach anyone, so like, it's plausible that there could have been some sort of retaliatory strike, and he decided that this was
a mistake, that this was there was not actually a strike, and he made the decision to cancel the launch and to not launch nuclear weapons. Now he was right, right, it was actually a glitch. There was no nuclear attack
against the Soviet Union. But now imagine that it was someone else, right, and imagine that there was someone who didn't kind of have the guts to make that sort of decision, or imagine that it was an AI And we, you know, we we're living in a very different world, or not living in any world, because then Soviet Union
actually physically launches nuclear weapons. Obviously, then the United States retaliate's and you know, I don't think even uh yeah, cluster fuck scenes a little bit two week of a phrase for that, But we're not living in a very happy place, and I think that it's really important to remember moments like that as well, as we think about p doom, as we think about nuclear determs, as we
think about the taboo on using nuclear weapons. These are all really important questions, and the world is forgetting and not just forgetting, but saying, oh fuck it. You know, there are lots of things going on right now that make it a pretty dangerous moment. So so I think that it's really crucial to have these conversations and to try to employ game theory so that we don't all you kill kill each other.
Do you think Trump would increase or decrease a chance of a nuclear conflict.
I think that's a I'm not sure. I think that he would probably. It's funny because I think back to Khrushchev, right, We've talked about the Cuban missile crisis, and I think one of the reasons that Kennedy thought that the risk of nuclear war was so high was because Khrushchev was fucking insane, like people he could he didn't you know, people didn't know what might happen, and that was but that was always kind of part of it. Wasn't just him,
right all of the Soviet leaders. They tried to cultivate that insanity on purpose, because if I'm crazy and you don't know what I'm capable of, then you have to tread carefully. And I think Trump is crazy in that sense, right, you don't know what he's capable of. I think he's much more capable of using nuclear weapons than Kamala Harris would be, or basically than anyone else. But I don't know if having him in power would deter other countries
because they're scared of him. So I think on the margin it would probably my pedom would probably go up. So do you have a do you have a point of view?
I think he might lower it slightly, interesting because I think he he does create a little bit more of a deterrent potentially. I don't think he's I don't think he's warmongering, actually, right, I think he's crazy in lots of ways. I don't think that's the way in which she used crazy, And yeah, I don't know.
Yeah, I just don't know that we know the ways in which he is crazy. And he's you know, and he's getting on in years, and I think that there is you know, and he's ranting. I think there is some kind of threat to personality change that comes with dimension and age and all of these things. So I
just don't know. Right This is not something where I can give you a clear cut answer, as I've said, but I think it's interesting to consider, and I think that in general, the threat of nuclear war has probably gone up in much more in the last few years that it has in a very long time.
Speaking of Trump, you want to talk a little bit of politics.
Yeah, let's do that after the break. Name all right, last time we spoke last week, Nate, you said that there really hadn't been many quality polls that had come out. This was kind of the first. That was the first week after the vice presidential debate, which you know what vice presidential debate. I think at this point everyone forgot that that even happened. But there have been some more higher quality polls that have come out in the intrum.
So so let's let's talk through it, and let's talk through kind of the current state of the election.
Yeah, so we're taping this FI on Tuesday, October fifteenth. I have not run the model update for the day. I'm going to do that as soon as we get a break Harris as a last night's model run. Yes, the afternoons fifty chance of winning Trump at forty eight point seven up to one hundred, because there's an zero point three percent chance of a tie. I wonder with every update if Harris is going to dip under fifty percent, Like, not that it really matter. It's not that forty nine
versus fifty one or magically that different. But you know, you've seen you've had a slightly good week of polling for for Trump, right where this two point lead that Harris had and kind of Michigan, pennsylvani Wisconsin's kind of turned into like a one point lead or a five tenths of a point lead, and that's just not a
very safe position. But like all seven of the closest states remain within a point, and you know, and sub level, I'm not sure what more there is to be sad apart from like it seems like we're locked into like a very close election where you won't know, we won't know much in the morning, we may not know much in the evening. I mean, look, there is a chance that the polls are all off in the same direction, so uncertain is not quite the same thing as guaranteeing a close election.
But it you know, I mean, keep listening to podcast folks and.
Reading the newsletter, but like, like, how much more are you learning from the polls at this point?
All they're really saying is.
Just it's just the average of the past two elections anyway, right, So I'm not sure we're learning all that much.
I have a question for you know, so relatively good week of calling for Trump, Harris still ahead in your model, why does polymarket currently have Trump at fifty eight percent to Harris's forty one percent. That's a huge Like, that's a huge difference. What's going on?
So what you had last week was some whale activity? You know, what makes a gambling world work? Are whales? Whales are rich people who are degenerates, often bad at their chosen craft, don't. I mean the term whales a little bit ambiguous, Like in crypto at refers to someone who who was potentially a smart, very wealthy trader, but generally the connotation is that you're a degenerate gambler who makes a lot of money for the casinos or for
the house. So Elon Musk last week began tweeting about Polymarket, where I should run people that I paid advisor and that moved the numbers without any real underlying justification from the polling data that day. And you can tell because there are a couple of things that were unusual. One was that you didn't actually see any shift in the popular vote contract. It was just the electoral college, the
higher profile one. But a smart trader would be looking if there's a shift toward Trump, that would manifest itself in all the markets, and not just the electoral College overall market. But it's a lot of activity from a relatively small number of traders. Now, since then, our model and other models, more actually our model than others, have shifted a bit toward Trump. Right, So it's like fifty one percent. I mean it had been as high as
fifty eight percent for Harris in September twenty seventh. So Trump has gained a little bit. But there's also this like disproportionate amount of nervous panic among Democrats. They kind of feel like Kamala Harris has lost the plot, and Democrats are perpetually worried anyway, although maybe they should be, right.
I mean, like you know, look, if it's fifty to fifty, then you know, a coin flip for very high stakes is more than non degenerate gamblers usually want to undertake risk wise, and there's.
No safe path for either candidate anymore.
There's not going to be any security unless there's some really surprising development, and we're running out of time for that to happen.
Yeah, and you know, it's clear that the Democrats are really taking this seriously. You have former President Barack Obama campaigning for Kamalla Harrison Pennsylvania. Maybe they're now maybe maybe they're no regretting the decision to not have Shiro on the ticket because because they're Yeah, we've already we've we've
talked about this ad nauseum. But you know, they're trying, they're trying to do everything they can, like Obama is one of their big guns, and we can you know, this is another segment, but we can talk a little bit about like whether you know his messaging is effective, like what's happening. But I think there is some panic there. There's some panic that she's losing the black vote, and like.
All of these things, losing doing less well. So the New York Times pool, Trump is yes, fifteen percent of the Black vote, fairly undecided's among black voters, but doing less well the Democrat typically does.
Yes, that was that was very poorly stated on my on my side, yes, not losing the black vote, but doing relatively less well. And in states like Pennsylvania, every single point matters, right, Like we have talked about this over and over, like this is a close election. Everything matters, Undecided voters matter, and yeah, people are clearly taking it seriously. And you know, on the one hand, you have Elon Musk jumping up and down on stage. On the other hand, you have Barack Obama.
Good, I know, man, I know, he's got a little high off of fumes.
Their good old Eelane.
Yeah, like don't you understand that politics kind of cringe, you know anyway, But like I think people tend to read these things like, oh, Kamala Harris is going on, Joe Rogan, she must be desperate. It's like, well, she probably should have been doing more of this all a long right kind of yeah.
Yeah, and and the All In podcast right after Trump went on, like she should have absolutely gone on, Like there are big media appearances that like she should have absolutely done earlier.
Yeah, look, people read this as only must be desperate. It's like, well, I don't know. I mean, you're supposed to do campaigning, right, Uh, that's a normal thing that you do. I think they had a period where they just thought they'd ride the Charlie XCX rat summer Magic vibes carpet ride straight to the White House.
And that's not how it usually it works.
I mean, she's at an electoral college disadvantage and and you know, Trump throws a lot of shit out there. You know, you've had much more outspoken support for Trump among certain groups of voters. The vibes are different. I think if you read kind of some of the backstory of the part of Silicon Valley, it's not all Silicon Valley.
It's probably isn't most right, but you know, part of what people have been trying to do in Silicon Valley is to say it's okay to openly support Trump and that will create a permission structure for others to support him too. And so, you know, Twitter is a very different platform than it was four years ago.
The mood is different.
I think, ironically, the fact that people seem like a little bit less pissed off as they were in twenty twenty, maybe democrats like actually want apocalyptic thinking where people are like, okay, but yeah, I you know, look, I think one feminal problem democrats have is it's hard to say that every election is the most important election of all time without voters starting to wonder if you just always say that.
Yep. And on that note, let's see, let's see what happens next week, because this is one of the most important elections of all time, as we've talked about you know, we've talked about pe Doo, and we've talked about you know, this is going to matter for a lot of different things. And yeah, let's just see what the updates show next week. And Elon Musk, please please stop making us watch you jump up and down on stages. Thank you very much.
That's a personal plea from one of the co hosts of Risky Business.
Risky Business is hosted by me Nate Silver and.
Me Maria Kanakova.
The show was a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by Isabel Carter. Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Cheen. Our engineer is Sarah Bruger. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
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