Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is a summary of the episode:
In his second appearance, Nate Silver joins the show to cover the intersection of predictions, politics, and poker with Tyler. They discuss how coin flips solve status bias, the origins of gambling in fortune telling, what kind of bets Nate can block, why he is restricted to many New York sports betting sites, how game theory changed poker tournaments, and whether poker players are good. staff, running and leaving FiveThirtyEight, why ridiculous shooting situations have disappeared, the impact of AI on sports analysis, the NBA’s most underrated statistics, Sam Bankman-Fried’s place in “The River,” the quality that successful devotees need to develop, the stupid risks Tyler and Nate can take, predicting markets, how many major political decisions have been made under the influence of drugs, and more.
Here is one episode:
COWEN: Why shouldn’t people only gamble on a good sum game? Take the American stock market – that seems to be one of them – and generate all the skepticism you want. Read about companies, CEO. Find your happiness that way and don’t do any more gambling. Why is that not good for everyone?
Silver: Look, I’m not really a fan of gambling for gambling’s sake. Twice a year, I will be in the casinos and in Las Vegas a lot. A couple of times a year, I’ll have a friend who’s like, “Let’s just go play blackjack for an hour and have a few free drinks,” and stuff like that. But I like to bet when I think, at least in theory, I have an edge, or at least I can fool myself into thinking I have an edge.
Sometimes, with sports stuff, you probably know deep down that you’re about to break or something like that. You do smart things, like look at five different sites and find the best line, which clears but not the entire house edge. But no, I’m not a big fan of slot machines, really. I think they are very gnarly and addictive in various ways.
COWEN: They limit your sports betting, right?
Silver: Yes, I’m limited to six or seven of the nine New York sites.
COWEN: What opportunities might you have?
Silver: It is what it is. If you’re betting $2,000 on a Wizards-Hornets game when the line comes out on DraftKings, you’re clearly not a recreational bettor. Signs of trying to be a winning player, which means betting lines early because the line is still fast and you don’t have price discovery yet. The first lines are often hit hard. Betting on vague things like “Will this player get X number of rebounds?” or things like that. If you have the ability to – if DraftKings has a line of -3.5 and -4 somewhere, then it can be called a steam chase, where you bet before the line goes to other places. If you have information about injuries. . .
It’s a very strange game. One thing I hope people are more aware of is that many sites – and some are better than others – but they don’t really want winning players. Their marketing has really changed. It used to say, in Daily Fantasy Sports, its predecessor, “Hey, you are a smart guy” — the ads sneer — “You’re the smart guy in the cubicle. Why don’t you go do all your spreadsheet stuff and actually write this team and make a lot of money, and actually, you’ll be sleeping with top models in two months. You win a million dollar prize at DraftKings.”
Also:
COWEN: If we can enforce an outright ban, what is the cost-benefit analysis of banning all sports gambling?
Silver: I’m more of a libertarian than a strict utilitarian, I guess.
COWEN: Sure, but what is the utilitarian price of being a libertarian?
Recommended, interesting and engaging throughout. And yes, we are talking about Luke again. Here’s my first CWT of 2016 with Nate, full of predictions I might add, and here’s Nate’s excellent new book On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything.
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