Pushkin. Hey everyone, welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions. I'm Maria Kanikova and.
I'm Nate Silver. Today we have a lot to get into. We are literally hours away and across the street from the World Chairs of Poker.
We'll talk about that.
We'll also be talking about some huge news in the cryptosphere. The approval of the eth ETFs and crypto is something that is very firmly in the realm of Risky Business, even though we haven't talked about it yet on the show.
And finally, inspired by an unexpected detour, I took to Buffalo, New York on the way into Las Vegas. We'll talk about new rules by the Department of Presportation governing compensation ref your flight is late and how that might affect the risk taking behavior of both passengers and airlines.
Yes, I'm looking forward to that one night, because my flight was also very very late.
You did not end up in Buffalo.
I did not end up in Buffalo.
Name and Buffalo, Maria.
Okay, Okay, Buffalo.
You win this one, and I look forward to getting into it. At the end of the show. Let's begin, though, with the fact that we both got here So we are both in fabulous Las Vegas for the opening of the World Series of Poker, and we are taping this on Tuesday, May twenty eighth, which is literally the opening day of the World Series, and you and I will both be playing the first opening event, which is a five thousand dollars players Championship, which is exciting and I mean,
I'm excited. Are you excited?
Night, Yeah, I've never actually been here for the exact start of the World Series before. It's it's a lot better than the end, right we were there till the bitter end last year. The end is kind of depressing. They're like literally tearing the building down. The beginning, everyone's bank rolls are full, everybody he's in a good mood. This is a new event this year to start out with a five K. Usually it's something smaller. I'll be
curious to see what type of field it draws. Usually five K is like high enough that the amateur players are a little bit just waited by it. But it's the first time bank rolls, it's the first event. I think some of the pros from Europe are taking their time and getting here, so it might be a pretty good field.
We will see.
Yeah, So for anyone who wants to join us this summer, or anyone who is just thinking about doing the World Series or something that is kind of this sort of marathon experience where you have to keep making good, risky decisions over and over and over. It doesn't even have
to be poker. Nate and I have both come up with our top three tips for dealing with a situation like this, and we're going to be talking about it in the context of the World Series, but I do want to always keep in mind that it can be abstracted to other decision making situations. And we don't know
each other's top tips. So I'm going to start, and you know, we're going to go one at a time and throw out one tip and these are actually in our order of importance, and react and see whether we're thinking about this in the same way or in very different ways. It would be very fun either way. And like I said, we have no idea what the other person is going to say, although I have more idea than Nate, because Nate did have a list of his top twenty one tips for the World Series on his newsletter,
so there's that. But he's seen nothing from me, But actually I wrote a book about it, so maybe he has some idea too. All Right, my top tip would be number one, take care of yourself. People are here to play poker and they get super excited. I'm really excited, and they forget the basics like get exercise, get sleep, and eat good food and buy good food. I don't mean like food that you're going to be like, oh yeah,
this is delicious. I mean actually nourishing food that's good for your brain, good for you decision making, and there's a lot of science on this. All of these things matter when you're trying to make good decisions. If you haven't slept well, your decision making capacity is going to go downhill. If you've been inside all day, if you haven't been moving, if you haven't exercised, if you haven't gotten that blood flow going, your decision making capacity is
going to go downhill. If you're eating crap, your decision making capacity once again is going to go downhill. There's even a funny study, it's one of my kind of pet favorite psych studies because it's so ridiculous, that shows that your risk taking propensities become less than optimal when you have to go to the bathroom if you have to pee, you actually start evaluating risks incorrectly. Mind and body are intimately connected. Decision making ability is intimately related
to how we're physically feeling. And so I want to urge people to not forget about that. You just want to go out, you want to play everything, Like I will not be going out for drinks. I'm sorry, Please do not take this person after an event. I'm going to be going straight to bed because I think that these things are incredibly important. So, Nate, what do you think.
I am not promising that I won't get drinks after an event sometimes here and there. But look, I played some online events yesterday and what happened is because of this flight thing we'll talk about later on right, my schedule got very messed up over the weekend. Basically I haven't like eaten very much, and I was playing some online tournaments and was like fucking starving and like, and I'm like, hangar tilt.
Hangary is actually a thing and has been studied in psychology.
It wasn't even like irrational. It's like, I really need some fucking food. I want to double up or go home because I didn't really manage my eating schedule properly. Yeah, no, it's Look, it's a seven week event. If you're here for four days or a week or something, you maybe can like burn the candle at both ends a little bit more.
But remember the most.
High stakes decisions that you make are later on in an event. You can play a beautiful poker on day one, day two. If you make your goal, I'll make you to day three or something. And then you start to get hanger tilt or or exhaustion tilt or whatever else, then then it's really negative ev right, even if you're like plus if to make the money. If you if you blow it and I've seen so many guys blow it on day three, day four of events, then you're flushing.
Your money down the toilet. So yeah, look, I'm not judgmental.
If you're somebody who has a routine that involves different things, and that's fine. If you eat more calories or less, or you drink or you don't or whatever, I'm not here to I'm not here to judge. But it requires a lot of time and concentration, and that has cumulative effects with the course of the event. So every decision you make away from the table effects in some way, you're your decision.
At the table.
So it sounds n like you agree with my number one tip.
You have you since I have so many good tips for me, I have twenty one and I can't. They're like my babies, you can't, but have you read they're equally good. And one of the important things in poker is you have to sometimes randomize when you're indifferent between good options. So I'm going to have you randomly pick between one and twenty one. If it's like one of the worst tier of the twenty one, then I'll veto it, right, give me a number from one to twenty one.
Okay, Well, I actually have no idea what number any of your tips are because I read that when it came out, which was now a few weeks ago. All right, let's go with number six.
Six six is like that's a logistics thing for how you get your money to the world series.
Could be a different one, come.
On, all right, So sometimes, oh, this is actually a really really good point. When you truly randomize at the poker table, you have to do what your randomization tells you. So, by the way, randomization at the poker table means if there's a decision that you take X percent of the time, say twenty percent of the time, and one that you
take eighty percent of the time. You can actually randomize and say, okay, if I have a number, you know, from zero to one hundred, if it's below twenty, then I take the twenty percent decision, and if it's above twenty, I take the eighty percent decision. But if you roll fifteen, you have to do that. And sometimes you're like, you know, what, fuck you randomize are? I'm just going to do what I want to do. I call, or I raise, or
I do this. That's not why you randomize, So Nate, if we're truly randomizing, this is not why you randomize. If you truly think that every single one of your tips is equally valid, then your number one tip is going to be about how to register.
Furtherwise, I'm sorry, I told you that in advance. I was part of the strategy. This is my one veto.
PI.
Okay, fine, this is your one veto. I just I'm going on records saying that I objecked all right. Tip number thirteen.
This is a good one. Expect to come home with less money than you started with. I was talking with one of our mutual friends a couple of years ago. I won't name him because it was a dinner conversation. Maybe you were there, I forget, right, So is someone who'll be regarded as one of the probably top ten poker players, turn the poker players of all time, right, And he's like, yeah, I had a losing summer. And that's usually how it works if you run the math.
So this is for a player who's playing lots of events, almost all the events varius till the misk events too. But even if you're a player with a large edge, having say fifty entries over a six week tournament or seven week tournament, the mess says that, like, because so much of the money is constentrat in getting final tables in first place, you're probably going to lose money of the course of a series. And if you're coming in for three weeks like I am, over two stretches this
year even more likely. In fact, according to some simulations I've ran from my book, over a full year two hundred entries in live poker tournaments, a winning player is still almost fifty fifty to.
Have a losing year.
So coming in looking at the opportunity. If I may do great, it may go well, but like it's often going to be twelve bullets as a term poker players use slightly violent term for an entry new tournament, right, it might be twelve, fifteen, seventeen bullets no cashes. It might be twenty three bullets, two minimum cashes. That's how poker works. That's a lot of time, but most of the time.
Frankly, I think that's actually a really good tip, and I think that that's a really important tip for life that in when you do something where you take risks, you have to think and plan accordingly and realize that it might go not your way. And so I'm actually going to fast forward to my tip number three because it's very related to this, and then we can go back to tip number two, which is keeping your bank
roll management strict. So what I mean by that is when you come out here, or when you're making any sort of decision when you're going to be spending money, plan out ahead of time your entire bank roll and stick to it. So my first ever summer out here in Vegas for the World Series, I didn't do that because you know, I was bright eyed and bushy tailed. I was researching my book and I got caught up
in it. There's this event called the Colossus, or as I like to call it, not affectionately after that summer, the colass Hole, because it has a million possible re entries and it's a very low price point. I think it was like five hundred or six hundred dollars, which for the World Series that's kind of as about about as low as it gets. But you can enter it
ten times or twelve times, I don't even remember. And I remember playing and busting and playing and busting, and I think I only had two bullets budgeted for this event. And I kept going because everyone around me was like, Oh, this event is such great value. You really have to re enter.
It's amazing.
And I was like, yeah, you're right, it's great value. I have to re enter. And do you know what I was the great value. I didn't know what I was doing that summer. I did not play well like I had just kind of I was just learning the game.
I went way over my head. They correctly got me to re enter, and then they took my money again and again, and that was a really expensive and really important lesson for me that when you're emotional, when you're kind of in the heat of the moment, it's easy to get caught up and say, what's an extra five hundred bucks when I've already budgeted ten thousand. No, your budget has to be strict, your bankroll has to be strict.
And this is true of any risky decision that you take, whether you're a trader or whether you know it doesn't really matter. Otherwise you're going to go broke and that's not a fun feeling. I think this is actually quite related to your tip number one.
I mean, look, it does depend kind of whether you see yourself as a professional or an amateur, and we probably do have some people in that audience are here
as recreational players. It's a little bit different. I still don't like to play any event where I think I'm negative EV negative expected value, or if I do, I want to play the cheaper events, right, I will enter some mixed game event for ver, say fifteen hundred dollars, or maybe I'm negative ten percent ROI I'm not going to enter some ten thousand dollars tournament return on investment, right, And this is disputed kind of how much money an ROI is for a good or decent player, but plausibly,
if you enter, like say a one thousand dollars event with a very soft field, your expected value in that event might be a few hundred bucks. I think some people is optimistic, but I think for like, for like good tournament pros and even good amateurs, those fields are so soft where your ev expected value might be three hundred dollars for one thousand dollars entry. But if it's below zero, if if you play the tournament a million times,
I lose money on average. You know, even if I can afford to take that loss, I just psychologically something about that feels like it's burning money. Unless it's a game I'm trying to learn more, when it's an investment in the long term.
I think that's a I think that's a great point. So Nate, I'm gonna do play the lottery again. Write one to twenty one. Let's go with twenty one.
So your skill set is worth thinking about early in the main event, but don't get carried away in another setting. So this means, let's say you come in, and let's say we come in and we find the field of our dreams, right, it's all recreational players. Some of the pros aren't here yet. It's a very soft tournament. People can I think go too far sometimes in saying well,
I have a skill edge relter to the field. The fact is that if you have, for example, if you're able to get a fifty five forty five coin flip so called situation, so you win fifty five percent of your flips, that's actually very very very good. If you're a professional gambler, a sports better who won fifty five percent of his or her bets consistently would beat the books and be on their way to being a very
successful person at their craft. Now, if you're playing the main event, which will happen in seven weeks time, we'll have more segments on it. That's the one exception that's where you only at one entry. It's a ten thousand dollars entry. So it's like there's not like some alternative way to spend your time and your money that's equally good. And the field is so soft re alter to the buying level that I think you actually might want to be like a little bit more risk averse on day
one and day two. But generally speaking, gambling is about pushing small edges. Don't underestimate your opponents either, even though there are more weak opponents at the World Series in the most venues. So it's like, yeah, you have to take risks to win a poker tournament.
I got, I got nothing to add to that night. I think you have to take risk because a really really good UH is a good summation of a something that's super important and something that I need to learn from because I am someone who has consistently struggled with
taking enough risks. That's counter to my personality. I'm more of a risk averse person, and I've really really worked hard to kind of work on that side, because you do have to take the correct risks based on the situation, based on the odds, based on the math and the percentages, not based on how you're feeling, which actually goes to my tip two. You know, going back in time since we al recovered tip three, this is my final tip, which is mental game and working on your mental game.
So what I mean by that is that when you're playing poker, when you're in a decision making environment that's extremely high stress and high pressure, and where you're going to get tired because even if you've gotten beautiful rest and all of this, you're playing twelve thirteen hour days. This is a really long time to be thinking hard and making good decisions. You're going to get cognitively depleted. You're going to get emotional. There will be moments where
you get angry because someone pissed you off. There will be moments when you are upset because you lost a big hand. There's moments when you're going to be elated because you won a big hand. And all of those things are going to mean that you are tilting. Tilting means putting emotion into your game instead of just doing the logical rational decision. And my advice to you is to sit down and figure out, okay, what makes you tilt, how do you tilt, and then to respond accordingly in
the moment. I always say it's better to take a break, to actually physically get up from the table, take a lap. You might miss a hand, but you're not going to misplay that hand right, and it will help you cool off. It will help you actually physically remove yourself from that situation. Whatever you need to do to detilt, be aware of it and do it, and there's no shame in it.
Everyone tilts. And this is something that distinguishes the truly great players from the ones who are just mathematically very good is their mental game, their ability to thrive under pressure. So that's my final tip, and I think it's a very important one.
Maria, we're in the lightning around here. I need one more number. Roll at Roulett Wheel. Let's let's hope for a good one.
All right, let's do number five.
It's okay, I'll spin this into something better than it is. I'm bluffing a little bit here. It's poker after five is as we are both doing, stay within walking distance of the World Series of Poker. The broader lesson here is that you really want to minimize distractions.
You do not want to have the worry.
About fighting through traffic or finding a parking space. The hotels are actually quite nice here, as is Maria's apartment by the way. But like once you get in deep in an event, right, you were on the clock for twelve hours a day. Let's say that you want to sleep seven hours. Let's say you want to eat something in the morning. Let's say you want to work out. Let's say you want to have a little bit of
study time right. You know, let's say you need an hour to wind round and have a drink at you in the evening, which you often do if if you've had a long day, right all the sudden, you have committed like twenty four twenty five hours already, so the last thing you want to do is have to worry about like a long commute to the cute air and b you bought forty minutes out of town where you can't find any grocery store it's open later, or anything
like that. I've even had things where if I made like day three of an event, I got a different hotel room closer to that venue, because at that point, even like an extra hour of sleep is worth an awful lot.
Great.
Well, Nate, I hope that you are staying close to the hotel this time, and I am so excited to see you in a few hours and play our first event together during this world series.
I'm already registered, Maria, so I did so much.
Okay, let's do it, so.
Maria.
Last Thursday, the twenty third, the SEC approved an ETF application for Ethereum. We have a variety of listeners who are ranged from I'm sure very crypto knowledgeable to thinking this is all Greek to them. Can you kind of explain down the middle pathway or our media and listener what happened and why this is significant.
Yeah.
Absolutely, So. First of all, an ETF is an exchange traded fund, so that means that it's a fund where you pool securities and then you can trade that pool of securities like stocks, and so what this means is that you know, people can participate in that broad pool of stocks without actually having to pick every single one themselves. So it's a huge it's a big deal in the
financial markets. Last year there started to be rumblings that Bitcoin and Ether, which are kind of the two biggest cryptocurrencies, we're going to get ETFs of their own, and that ended up happening this past January with Bitcoin, So that was the first ETF that was actually approved in the crypto space, which was absolutely just huge, huge news because suddenly, you know, mom and pop, Joe next door, people who don't really know much about crypto might have been a
little too risk averse to kind of trade bitcoin or buy bitcoin directly. Now in their retirement accounts and all of these different things in their investments, they can actually just get the ETF and they can feel like they're participating in this cryptocurrency, in this movement by buying it. And so then everyone was really excited and was like, oh, wow,
are you going to approve ETH? And it seemed like the answer was going to be no. And it seemed like the answer was going to be no for a number of reasons, not least of all because the Democrats, especially after what happened with Sam Bank, Womin Freed, and that whole fiasco, have been very kind of crypto skeptical and have really shied away from entering that world. In the SEC has not been very friendly to the crypto space.
So people thought that the chances of approval for ETH we're going to be incredibly low, and then last week that changed. On Thursday, the approval actually went through. We went from basically, this ain't happening to holy shit, it
just happened in four days. And so maybe we just jump ahead and talk a little bit about the significance of the approval in broader political context, because obviously, you know, I'll just kind of nod to the fact that there's obviously financial it's very important for the financial markets, and we've talked about that, but now I think the crucial question is why now, right, why did we go from twenty five percent to seventy five percent to boom where
people who really know this area were like, it's never happening, it ain't happening. Then we're like, holy shit, you know it happened. And I think that a lot of that does boil down to politics and nate to the points that you were making. Who is the audience of crypto, who are they voting for? And how do they see you if you oppose crypto currencies because a lot of people in crypto are what's called single issue voters. Right, if you're pro crypto, they're going to vote for you.
If you're seen as anti crypto, they ain't going to vote for you. And this is true of the president, it's true of senators, it's true of Republicans.
Yeah, we look, Another factor is timing. We're now a year and a half removed from FTX blowing up. Whether you blame crypto per se for Sam Mekmin free, it's a longer discussion I think we have time for right now. But look, if Silicon Valley thinks they can make money off this and Wall Street things, they could make money off this, and the people who care more about crypto might be swing voters, gettable votes war and the people
who are moralistic about it or whatnot. Then you know, look, in the end, we actually are a pretty risk taking country, the United States, And it's hard to bottle that up, especially if both parties kind of sense that this is some emerging group of voters. I mean, it's still relatively small, right, I don't want to exaggerate. I mean, if you made a list of the twenty most important issues in the election, crypto might be somewhere between seventeen and like not on
the list, Right, let's not exaggerate too much. But as you're fighting for scarce real estate, these disaffected younger voters who are not super into like watching cable news or things like that, are actually voters who may be gettable for either campaign. And so so I can see why they're trying to think about that square on the chessboard a little bit.
So, Nate, we were talking earlier today about poker and about the importance of small edges and that you you know, if you're a gambler, if you're a risk taker, if you're any sort of decision maker. If you have an edge, even if it's, you know, a two percent edge, you need to take that edge right because over time that's
actually going to be important. I think that that's a really crucial point when we're talking about something like crypto here, because as we've already talked about, I think every single week of the Risky Business podcast, this is going to be a close election no matter what. Right, the two candidates right now, Trump and Biden are neck and neck, and these small percentages might end up mattering, especially in
swing states. And so if we look at the crypto voting block and we say, okay, you know, there are a lot of people who are voting for whom this is very important, and it seems like if we're anti crypto, we might lose some votes but not gain any votes. But if we're pro crypto, we're probably not going to lose any votes because you know, people don't care enough,
but we might gain votes from that. You know, younger swath of the population that does that does actually care about that, And that's a that's an important calculus one you're a politician.
Yeah, look, Trump also has demonstrated a willingness to go and ask for anybody's vote. He was in the Bronx the other day New York is not a swing state, but trying to signal his support for young African American men, which his group. He has gained among in the polls, way behind, but better than he had been in previous years.
He was at the Libertarian nominating convention over the weekend, where he was booed, but did pledge to nominate a Libertarian to his cabinet, which is kind of an actual and actual thing, right, if you'd like a libertarian Treasury Secretary of something that's like actually pretty significant. But Trump, as a real estate developer, has always understood that an underdeveloped parcel of real estate is worth taking. That's often
a plus ROI plus EV investment. Right, Here's this like blended piece of real estate where actually the fundamentals aren't so bad and maybe you can fix it up and
make a profit on it. And I'm not going to comment on domin Donald Trump's like real estate portfolio management skills necessarily, but that instinct, I think is actually one of the things I think I would give the most compliments on as a politician that Trump like understood the landscape was changing in twenty sixteen, the traditional GOP coalition
was losing. He would build a new coalition. And you know why isn't Biden also speaking at the Libertarian conference and saying because none of these candidates, including by the way, RFK Junior, who at some point had a flirtation with libertarians, none of these candids are good for libertarians, like whatsoever? Right, but like, but Biden should say, look, we're better on reproductive rights. Right, We're better on freedom of the press,
and make some people about free speech. And Biden seems a little bit risk averse to try to reach out to new groups. Maybe he's afraid of getting booed. And I'm not sure if Trump one of the news clips from the weekend, but he is trying to go after that one in one hundred or one and even one thousand voter that could make a difference if the elections have been as close as they were in the past two cycles.
Yeah, and I think that this is a very positive development actually for the for the Biden campaign because it does even even though he is more risk averse, I think that this does signal that they are paying attention and they are starting to do kind of what needs to be done to get those votes that they need to get. And so, Nate, you know, we were talking earlier, this earlier about what we were going to talk about today, and you said, you know, let's not do a politics segment.
So I said, let's do a cryptocurrency segment. And it turns out that in an election year, you know, everything becomes a politics segment to a certain extent, because I
do not think we would be talking about this. I do not think the e ETF would have been approved if we were not in an election year, and if that didn't kind of light the fire under politicians under Biden to actually do things that might be distasteful to them on some level, might be more of a risk than they would otherwise want to take, but that they are now willing to take because it's an election. So Nate,
everything is about the election. So Nate, as as we mentioned earlier, we're both in Las Vegas, and I think we both feel incredibly lucky to be here because our flight experiences this Memorial Day weekend were anything but smooth. So I, for one, found myself sitting in LaGuardia Airport and getting an alert that my flight was going to be you know, delayed first by an hour, then two hours, then two and a half hours, and finally two hours
and fifty five minutes. And at that point we started, you know, we started boarding, and it ended up being delayed by three and a half hours, but by that point everyone was on the plane and it was just it was just a nightmare and not something that I was very happy with. So I'm happy to have made it here, but I know that you have had a
less than stellar flight experience as well. And I think also you know, the fact that our final official delay was two hours and fifty five minutes before it was pushed while everyone was on the plane also has some significance.
Yeah, I was flying from Westchester County Airport HPN. I think it is the call sign, and you can't fly direct to Vegas from there, but you can connect either choice of Atlanta or Detroit. Thing from Michigan. I chose Detroit had a much longer connection time. I don't trust thirty nine minutes in Atlanta, and I got that American Express car where you get sky lounge. Jackson, I'm like, you know, so we're circling in and like it's starting to take a while I'm like, weren't we supposed to
have landed half an hour ago? Maybe I'm just like kind of misremembering things. Right, We keep circling, and then we get the pilot comes on right and he's like, well, folks, I mean, like you know from the tona's voice, it's going to be a really bad well folks.
Right, He's like, we're running.
We're running out a few we have to land in fucking He didn't say fucking, we have to land in Buffalo. So we're going back where we thought we were in Detroit, and this is really bad.
I had things where I had to be.
Like on the ground somewhere business calls, online poker, stupid crap.
I had to be like on the ground on Monday. I couldn't be flying on Monday.
Basically, I could have really scrambled the whole trip, maybe including this podcast potentially on the ground.
There's kind of like you know, Lord of the Fly or not really.
It's actually the pilot basically came and said we can be plane ba if we be playing. There's a lot more paperwork, and so let's take a vote basically, and people are like, yeah, let's stay on, except for one guy.
They had to warner them. They have to tell them.
We want you to know, sir, you may have to be in Buffalo, New York for up to twenty four hours. You know, here's a liability waiver in case something happens to you. We do make it back to Detroit, and then, because the whole rest of the flights have also been scrambled by this midwestern thunderstorm, my original flight is also three hours late.
So I get into Vegas at like one point thirty in the morning.
So all, well, that ends well, I suppose, But apropos of this, there are some new government regulations that would have covered I think, both of our situations.
So this is was released last week by.
The federal By Mayor Pete, our Department of Transportation issued a whole new set of rules last week governing compensation for passengers under a variety of circumstances. For example, a domestic flight delayed by three plus hours or an international flight six plus hours, if there's an extra connection like my flight to Buffalo, or you land a different airport because of a diversion, if your bags aren't delivered in
twelve hours. Discovers the guarantees you can get compensation in a transparent way and with cash, not just some mileage credit that you may or not be able to use later on. So it's an effort to kind of streamline and standardize punishments to airlines compensation to passengers when you have a.
Really annoying flight delay.
So let me be a first first reaction to that, by the way, is like part of a Biden administration series of on junk fees or non transparent fees.
Yeah no, I mean part of me says, you know, hallelujah, good, like we need to hold airlines accountable. But some of these things, like I can see the argument that, Okay, you know it might not be great for like smaller airlines blah blah blah, but honestly, airlines haven't given a fuck about us for so long and have tried to kind of push their edges. You know, you have fees for all your checked bags, you have no lug room, like they try to just cram you on the plane.
They have terrible customer service most of the time. So I say, like, yay, yay these rules, and like I don't check baggage because it gets lost all the time. Like yes, please compensate me if if I have to check it and you lose it. Like this seems like something on an emotional level. And I know here we're all about rational and logical risk taking and decision making, but this is something airline travel is something that people react to emotionally. I'm emotional about it, and good, I'm happy.
I want the airlines to have to pay for when they actually do this, because you know, as a as a consumer, when big corporations try to take advantage of me, that doesn't feel good. And so I do think that I'm acknowledging that I'm coming from this from an incorrect decision making framework, but the hedonic value is actually a big part of my expected value here.
So I'm going to come in it from like an economist standpoint where in some ways to have regulations can actually be beneficial to the industry from a game theory standpoint, So let me get it. Kind of give you an example, which is if you got to like an online dating profile, right, and you look at different men who are trying to maybe exaggerate favorably their height or their age or other
things other features about them. Right, I love that other features you want to with what's kind of a prisoner's dilemma, believe it or not, where let's say everyone exaggerates their height by two inches and you have the same incentive to do it, unless you're may be so tall that like six or four versus six six doesn't matter all that much. By the way NBA players do this, maybe an inch or so as well. But the point is that you know, passengers know that when they book an
airline ticket or even more. It's worse with hotels, by the way, with the resort fees where the hell they call them. They know there are a lot of like extra add on fees, and therefore, if you want to like let's say we're a hotel that has like all in pricing, there's no hidden fees, well it's still going
to appear more expensive on Expedia or whatnot. So to have like standards that regulate what fees are included or kind of what compensation you get if you're late might actually be okay and lead to more transparency for consumers in general and have less dead weight loss is the economics term. With that said, this will be kind of priced into the cost of a ticket if every time you fly there's a one percent chance of a circumstance that would cause the airline to have to pay out
a thousand dollars fine or something. Then adds ten dollars in expected value, and therefore it's kind of like a piece of insurance.
Bundled with the ticket.
But I look, the only critique I have other than that's not free money, right, it will get priced in, is could this create perverse incentives toward the airlines doing things that are unsafe in an effort to avoid these these large fees.
Potentially, Yeah, that's actually something that I hadn't thought about, and that would be really problematic. I would hope that that doesn't happen, because the first time that a plane crashes where something goes terribly wrong because they cut a corner, the cost of that is so incredibly high to the airline, to the image, to the perception that I hoped that
they wouldn't do that. That said, you know, we hoped that Boeing wouldn't do some of the things they did, So sometimes that decision making calculus is also a little bit different. But I'm glad that kind of the games theory of this also aligns with my own emotional desire to have these things not happen. One interesting thing, I thought you were actually going to go somewhere with the perverse incentives, you know, the two hours and fifty five minutes.
Basically like that point when you see that delay, like, as a consumer, I should now be like, Okay, there's no way it's two hours and fifty five minutes. This is actually going to be delayed by more than three hours. And they're trying to like they're trying to keep me here so that I don't cancel and don't claim my refund.
And then it's like it's like two hours two fifty eight, right, and they're like everyone's got to get seated now or else we're gonna hit the three hours. Oh shit, I have in a bathroom emergency. I have to go right now, right, and everyone, you make everyone I play in one thousand bucks. Right, we go into a local casino in Buffalo or whatever, and you know, have a great time.
That's a good that's a good that's a good outcome. Is there a local casino in Buffalo night?
I was looking this up. There was, uh, there was casino Niagara. I was not sure whether I bought my passport or not right, but potentially I could have wound up in Niagara Falls, Canada playing some one two I don't know, you know, one two limit nine.
Or the fuck they have in Niagara Falls.
So that makes me so happy. I'm so glad that as you were being diverted to Buffalo in this horrible situation, where your mind goes is is there a casino nearby? We haven't really talked about this, but I think that I affectionately think of Nate as you know, my one of my most djeny friends, and djen is short for a degenerate gambler, and it's a term of great affection
in this particular case. And you know, people have more or less degen in them, which also I think has to do with appetite for risk, and Nate you as as the dgen that I know in love. I'm so glad that you were looking up casinos. I would have been looking up if I had been stuck there, I would have been like, eater hit list, Buffalo, Is there anywhere good to eat? Or am I going to be just.
Completely one famous Buffalo anchor bar I think it's called And having not been to Buffalo maybe since I was like eight or whatever, Right, anchor bar Cassino, Niagara, get the six am earliest possible delta flight to Detroit, and from there we have options. Once you're in Detroit, it's you know, it's a real airport, and then the world's your oyster. But we had a whole game plan in case, in case the flight never left Buffalo again.
So so Nate, let's just kind of sum this up. Obviously, nobody likes to be delayed, right, nobody. Nobody likes this, this kind of stuff to happen. And it seems that we agree for for even though we're coming from different angles. I'm coming from a very emotional tilted angle and you're coming from the correct risk taking game theoretic framework angle that there are a lot of good things that can come from these regulations. What does this mean just for us as decision makers on a on a broader.
Level, Maybe it means you can be like a little bit more risk taking with your travel plans because you do get compensated in some way. You may get made partially whole if if you're if you're late or at the margin. I mean, look, I still think people are actually much too willing to to make connecting flights.
I think paying a premium.
For direct flight is worth it now because it says you time, but because like it's just like literally two x less likely will have a problem getting to your destination if you have one flight instead of two. Right, So, but at the margin, now you can take riskier options, I suppose if you don't mind the cash compensation in terms of flying out of an airport that has more
delays or making a connection when you wouldn't otherwise. So at the margin, if you're a real ev maximizer for flight stuff, than it affects your plans a little bit.
Well. I appreciate that, Nate. But as for me personally, if there's any chance of me ending up in Buffalo, I think I'm going to play it safe.
I hope we have some Buffalonian listeners will who will understand that I am pro Buffalo and Marie's anti Buffalo. I would have enjoyed Anchor Bar, would have Enjoyedino Niagar. If there were a Sabers game, I would have gone, I'm sure, so I'm you know, Bill's game would be thrilled.
So I'm pro Buffalo, all right.
But we don't have to be in Buffalo. Right now, we're in Las Vegas and we we have to end this podcast here because we are both running out to play our first event for which we're both registered, and we're so excited.
In fact, we're going to Paris.
But the Paris Las Vegas Awesome Hotel is just you know, to play.
In the at number one of the two thousand and twenty four Worlds. Heis at poker, absolutely night, Let's do it.
I will see you there and I will see you at dinner where we will both have heaps and heaps and heaps of chips.
Talk to you, s Maria.
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kannakova and me Nate Silver. The show is a co production of Pushkin Industries in iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
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