China’s Best Moves, and How to React to a Dealer’s Mistake

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Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions.

I'm Maria Konakova.

And I'm Nate Selver.

Today on the show, I'll be talking a little bit of China, China, China.

How should the second biggest economy in the world respond as the U.S.

becomes increasingly geopolitically unstable?

And after that, we will be pivoting to poker and a controversy that happened last week about an incorrect hand winning a pot in a very, very big spot.

What should players' and others' responsibility be in a situation like that?

Speak up, players.

If the dealer fucks up.

Anyway, we'll get into that in the second second.

Somebody has opinions.

Let's talk about China.

We are taping this on Monday, March 10th.

China has just announced retaliatory tariffs on the United States, taking effect immediately, but they will not be affecting goods that arrive in the country before April 12th.

Nate, every single time we tape, there seems to be more and more news coming out, but all of it points to one reality, which is that the U.S.

is just trying to take a step back from its role in global politics, or rather in its role in building alliances and trying to be a diplomatic force for the good, creating somewhat of a power vacuum.

And China, as the world's second-largest economy,

there are some opportunities here.

There's a lot going on between the U.S.

and China.

I think it would be really interesting to try to flip the game theory.

Last week, I talked about game theory from the U.S.

perspective.

Let's talk about it from the Chinese perspective and see what this moment in time means for how China should be thinking about its future and constructing its economic and foreign policies.

What do we think about this?

China's a real country.

They're not this cute little puppy like Canada or something like that.

They are the second largest economy in the world,

the second largest, you know, effectively military power in the world.

They can do a lot of things to contradict United States interest if we're in a zero-sum game on AI and other stuff.

And like, it's a moment for Xi to think big and to think long term.

And,

you know, because these things that Trump is doing

will take a long time to undo, right?

If Trump quit tomorrow

and went back to Mar-a-Lago and J.D.

Vance takes over, then a Democrat wins, I don't know, fucking Gavin Newsom or some shit like that, right?

A Democrat wins in four years.

Even these six weeks, right?

These two months now almost still would damage America's credibility, I think.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And I think that's really important to remember.

It's much faster to break things than it is to build them back up.

They're also doing more.

China has a lot of levers that it can push.

It's not just tariffs.

They're also blocking 15 U.S.

companies from buying Chinese products.

And they're just saying, you know, you want to play with us?

We'll play with you.

And what you have to understand about China is it can actually like very strategically can do like,

you know, it can do whatever the fuck it wants, basically.

So what they're doing is

They're trying to mitigate the effects of some tariffs by saying, oh, okay, fine.

The U.S.

imposed tariffs on you.

Great.

We're going to reduce your taxes, right?

It can like just very surgically say, okay, this company that's now being, you know, subject to tariffs in the U.S.

has to pay fewer taxes than it did before so that they can keep their prices the same.

It can push all of these buttons because it really can have this very directed approach to the economy that even with the executive orders and even with Trump trying to act more autocratically and bypass Congress, we can't do that in the U.S., right?

We don't have that sort of centralized power.

And so that is actually something that when you're talking about game theory,

who has more muscle, who can push whom around, china can really do things that we cannot do in the united states yeah and again in terms of a share of the economy we went over this last time with um canada and mexico no one country is that large a share of the us economy because we make a lot of our own stuff and our imports are diversified so basically china mexico Canada and the EU are, between the EU as one country, are the four largest exporters to the U.S.

and they're all about equal, about $500 billion per year.

But China has a lot of geopolitical influence.

You know, the kind of smart foreign policy types I talk to have perpetually been worried about China potentially invading Taiwan.

They also have a lot of influence over

AI policy.

The U.S.

is concerned about a potential race with China on AI.

But yeah, one thing we're trying to do is prevent China in various ways from getting access to the most powerful semiconductor chips, right?

A lot of which are produced, ironically, in Taiwan.

And so there are profound geopolitical implications.

And China can create a lot more problems for the United States in terms of global alliances and things like that, too, especially with like if Europe is now like, like, who are our friends now, Maria?

Who still likes us?

Who likes us?

Oh, Russia, Russia.

Russia likes us.

I don't want Russia to like us.

I do not want.

There's a difference between what you want and what's happening.

So who are our friends right now?

Russia likes us.

I think North Korea is probably pretty happy with the way things are going.

Japan, we've left Japan alone, haven't we?

I mean, India.

India, we seem to leave.

For now.

For now.

For now.

But we'll see what happens, right?

Seriously, though, we don't have many allies left.

Europe is really up in arms,

literally trying to be up in arms and rearm and, you know, trying to figure that out.

China is very not happy and is trying to show that, you know what, fuck you.

You cannot push us around.

And we really can't push China around, by the way.

Like this is an incredibly powerful economy.

It's an incredibly powerful diplomatic force.

You know, if you're thinking about not just the economic stuff, right, but the type of precedent that the U.S.

is setting by cozying up to Putin and saying, oh, potentially, like,

let's allow Putin to take parts of Ukraine.

Like, we don't know what's going to happen with that right now.

But that sort of precedent may actually embolden China to try something with Taiwan in a way that it hasn't in the past, because it's been, I think, restrained by some international norms.

Those norms might be eroding.

So we can potentially see kind of more aggression there.

And that's also not a happy place for us to be in, right?

When we see that potential.

I don't know, right?

I don't, there's a lot of uncertainty around this, but I think that if international norms of behavior are being eroded, then that can be frightening for a lot of countries in Asia, right?

If you think that, oh, okay, this balance of power is no longer going to be held in check,

then

if I, you know, if I were living anywhere there, I'd be a little nervous.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, foreign policy did not change that much

from Bush.

to Obama to Trump one to Biden, right?

And so the United States has lots of problems.

It starts stupid wars, right?

It has its own economic crises and it then spreads to the rest of the world.

But like, you know, there is more of a consensus on foreign policy

than on economic policy or social policy or whatever else.

Right.

And like, you know, it's not even like Trump necessarily has like a

coherent

foreign policy vision exactly.

It's kind of very zero-sum mentality.

We talked about that before, right?

It's, it,

it leans toward isolationism.

And look, you'll hear plenty of critiques of trump on this show i i would rather have trump err on the side of isolationism than warmongering if those are the two choices but like but you know when states don't play an active role in the world then you know there are power vacuums that could potentially can can get filled right and by the way i don't think biden was particularly effective on on china or really anything in foreign policy either frankly you know trump at least um

at least has a little bit of the kind of rogue state factor where you don't know what the United States would do necessarily.

But yeah, I mean, look, the stereotype of China is that they're

pretty good, I don't know, tacticians, like maybe the global strategy, but like, but

they are going to understand if

both to secure their own future,

you know, or to kind of

you know, punch at the United States in a way to

slow us down in the AI race, too, too, right?

I mean, that's, you know, maybe the most high-stakes question right now in the world.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, I think that they're very tactically savvy.

And it was interesting.

I was having a conversation the other week kind of about some of the downstream effects of the Trump policies.

And right now, you know, we're seeing absolute chaos.

You know, with the NIH and the science funding, a lot of institutions, including places like UPenn, are rescinding offers to grad students in the sciences because they're like, oh, we can't afford you anymore.

It's really bad, right?

And if you think about what that means for the future of kind of science, technology, scientific development, in the U.S., there's a potential for brain drain.

And people are like, well, where are people going to go?

Who's funding it?

Like, well, this is pretty funny because I think this is a great strategic opportunity for China to be like me, right?

We'll fund it.

You come here and you can have a lot of money and you can do your research here.

And I actually think that some people might take them up on it.

And that would be pretty terrifying, right?

If we have a brain drain from the U.S.

to China.

And that might happen if you cannot get your research funded, if you cannot do work here and someone else.

And I say that they might take them up on it because I know people who have gone, you know, to work in the UAE, who have gone to work in a lot of places that like.

you would think they would not want to work in because of their ideas about freedom, et cetera, et cetera.

But they do it because they're offered a lot of money, right?

And money speaks and incentives speak.

And I think that China is very tactically good on all levels of figuring out where the opportunities are, where the potential kind of, where the potential to get ahead is.

And so that, you know, I would not be surprised to see some people, you know, some brain drain potentially happening that way.

And

that's an interesting thing to consider when we look at, you know, 10 years out, 20 years out, technology and science.

If I were Xi,

I would make hong kong

which is controllable because hong kong is one city right um

i would make that the most welcoming front imaginable to the west right yep like as an image play that's very smart yeah and for like for right now china doesn't have the image of

luxury that other asian cultures sometimes do but this can change you know um yeah and it can change quickly korean goods have become

prestigious, right?

Obviously, Japanese is a very high-prestige country, but you know, but those are countries that are democracies and they have been democracies for a long time and like, you know, have like a flourishing artistic center, right?

Like, I don't, you know, people thought that China would democratize as it became richer, and like it kind of has not exactly.

Yeah, I think that's a really interesting thing to think about.

What can China do to make itself look more appealing to Americans, right?

To people who want to flee.

And I think that that is something that they are potentially not thinking through as deeply as they should.

Because to me, like great game theoretic move, right, would be, okay, yes, you know, we're sorry, like free speech, all this great stuff.

Like, we will embrace it.

You know, Donald Trump says you can't say these words.

You can say anything here, right?

Come to Hong Kong.

We will give you money.

We will give you pretty things.

It will be nice.

And Hong Kong used to be a place that was incredibly welcoming before all of the, you know, before there were the crackdowns on free speech and everything that has happened in the last five or so years.

Hong Kong was a kind of a mecca for a lot of Western, a lot of Westerners, right?

They went there and they're like, oh, this isn't China.

This is different.

I think that doubling down on that would actually be huge.

and would potentially give China an edge in a lot of different things because you see that they actually can.

Like Australia, right, imports, I don't know how many Chinese EVs, right?

Like there are

markets where China is actually kind of flourishing in different countries because they have technology that they're able to kind of develop.

And I think that if they double down on a lot of these things,

we can see kind of a big change in their geopolitical standing and in the way they're perceived in the world,

which I think could be a a very tactically sound play for them.

And we see, and kind of the EV, the reason I mentioned the EVs is because with tariffs, et cetera, et cetera, like that's actually something that along with AI is a place where they can start developing a strategic edge right now, because there is kind of this opening that hasn't existed in the past.

Yeah.

But of course, you know,

every auto manufacturer, at least the American ones, have like global supply chains, right?

So, but, but yeah, I mean, look, I have have friends who are like literally

trying to figure out how to make bets on Chinese-made EVs gaining market share relative to Tesla.

Um,

you know, that's that's, you know, the stakes are pretty obvious with

China.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

You know, there's a way forward there where they can actually make their image much more positive for the Western mind than it is right now.

And I think that they should really try to be exploring that strategically because there is a vacuum.

And the U.S.

right now is not looking good, right?

The strongman politics are not looking good.

It's a great moment for Xi to be like, hey, we're not the strongman.

We're not the bad guys.

Look at us.

Like we can actually be much nicer than what's happening in the United States and we will not betray our allies or whatever it is.

So I think that there's a lot of moves that can happen right now that will not end well for the U.S.

No, the contrast to the Middle East is interesting is like the marketing strategy, right?

In the sense that like,

you know, the Middle East turned countries will like sponsor huge soccer teams and things like that, right?

And they'll, and they'll have this marketing campaign where, hey, come to Saudi Arabia.

And

in the pictures we show you in the ads, right?

It looks very progressive and

they'll bribe

allegedly, bribe FIFA to host World Cups, allegedly, and things like that, right?

But it's a marketing strategy to paint a friendlier face, right?

And it probably has probably has worked on some level.

I'm not looking at like what American perceptions are of the wealthier, you know, Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, et cetera.

I said Qatar in one of the ways that you're not supposed to say it.

There's like five ways you can say it, and I just kind of made up my own pronunciation there.

Qatar.

Qatar.

Anyway.

No, that's, I actually, I think that that's a really, that's a good analogy in the sense that

foreign image laundering is something that countries have done many times over the years and sometimes successfully.

And I think that, and it's always a huge, huge part of any diplomatic policy.

It's a huge part of what the CIA does, right?

To try to massage perceptions of the United States and different countries.

I think it happens all the time.

And when you see an opportunity like that, you should take it.

So I think the U.S.

should be worried.

It should try to be figuring out how to make it so that, you know, so that these moves are not going to happen, right?

How do you look ahead at the game theoretic board so that you can actually counter these moves before they happen?

And that's not something that's happening right now.

Nate, let's do a quick recap.

So

what are our key takeaways from the current situation between the U.S.

and China and kind of where the strategic choices lie?

Yeah, I guess

a little bit what we talked about before is like the U.S.

is abdicating its position in some ways as a global

hegemon.

I'm using all these terms I learned in debate team years ago.

The term that we'd use is soft power, right?

Where like the United States is seen as being the most stable economy in the world, a force for stability and international order.

Generally, of course, it fucks up and makes some mistakes, right?

But an anchor of safety.

And if the U.S.

is no longer that, then, you know, can China play that role?

And I think that might actually entail having a friendlier face than China has sometimes, a friendlier face to the West in particular.

I mean, Europe is looking around for, hey, who can we trust here anymore, looking for trade partners potentially?

And so it's an interesting, interesting moment, right?

I think their response is not necessarily to like go, not to get drawn into Trump's zero-sum game, which isn't really a zero-sum game.

I mean, we want global cooperation on all these things ultimately, right?

You know, both China and the U.S.

weirdly have like an interest in like making sure that we're the only two AI superpowers, right?

And that, and that somebody else, the Middle East, whatever else doesn't kind of catch up.

But yeah, it's, it's a moment for Xi to think big.

You know, the U.S.

may be abdicating its role as kind of the leader of the free world, whether China counts as a free world or not is kind of an open question, obviously.

But like, you know, you counter sometimes the player who is being playing zero-sum

in the non-zero-sum game by being the bigger, better, more mature player yourself, right?

And so, maybe, you know, maybe open up Hong Kong more and don't invade Taiwan until you consolidate kind of more power and more authority.

I think playing the long game is always always almost always beneficial when others are short-sighted.

All right, let's uh let's take a break night and then talk some poker.

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Nate, have you been on poker Twitter this past week, where there has been a lot of controversy, shall we say, around one particular hand that happened at a circuit event?

Have you been privy to this, or have you been too busy at the side loan conference?

You know, Twitter follows me, although Twitter was down actually for parts of the day.

Yeah, why don't you introduce?

I have seen the hand in question.

Do you want to introduce this one though, Maria?

Yeah, sure.

Okay, so we are at a World Series of Poker circuit event,

which is not the main World Series, but this is kind of the circuit gives out rings.

It's a big deal.

And it's down to the final table.

It's down to the final three players.

One of those players is Maurice Hawkins,

who has at that point 17 rings, I want to say.

If he wins this ring, he will tie Ari Engel for the most rings

in history in the circuit at 18 rings.

By the way, Ari just won another ring.

Congratulations, Ari.

So Ari's now at 19, but last week he didn't have that ring.

And

there's a big hand where Maurice and another player are all in.

And the dealer fans out the board and mucks the other player's hand and says that Maurice has won with a straight.

Maurice is awarded the pot.

The other player is eliminated.

And Maurice goes on to win his ring,

ring number 18.

It turns out that the pot was awarded incorrectly.

The player who was eliminated had actually had a flush and was supposed to win the hand.

This was all captured on camera in the moment.

And so there's a lot of controversy around, you know, what went wrong.

And also kind of what is the role of the media, right?

Because someone was filming this hand.

What is the role of onlookers?

What role do people have to actually make sure that the pot is awarded to the correct hand?

Both hands were on their backs.

We can see all cards.

You can see what the winning hand is.

Somehow, the dealer, the other two players, the media, everyone on the rail, nobody speaks up.

And this poor kid is eliminated instead of doubling up, potentially changing the outcome.

And this is, this is a lot of money, right?

We're talking over, this is a difference in payout of over $100,000.

This is life-changing money.

This does not happen often, but how do we think about this?

And

what should be done?

And people are incredibly, incredibly split on this, which actually shocked me.

Yeah.

I mean, first of all, has the World Series done anything for him?

Like, I would give him...

No.

Okay.

Yeah.

Nothing has been done.

It was basically a tough shit, dude.

It's your responsibility to protect your hand

and you're done.

Well, first of all, the dealer, it's an all-in pot, right?

So both hands are face up for the entire table.

And

he mucks the sensible loser's hand really fast, right?

Which was just strange, right?

There's no reason to rush.

He dealt the whole thing.

So that was one thing.

Also, the guy said, oh, I thought I won, right?

Yeah.

So this is, this is crucial.

Yeah.

On the video, the person who loses actually says, oh, I thought I won.

And instead of acknowledging that, the dealer takes his hand, which is still perfectly identifiable, and pushes it into the muck, which is the big pile of cards, which is something that you should absolutely never do.

You know, they have cameras and casinos, so you can always, and you know, there are sometimes circumstances where if one player thinks a few chips are missing, they can pause the entire table, if not the entire tournament, for, you know, for long periods of time sometime.

I mean, so it was just, it was very weird.

And also, like, my experience has been that, like, especially in the four card games, um,

that players like actually go out of their way

to point out errors when it's not in their best interest to do so, right?

Especially, I mean, the thing that I'm thinking about is like, kind of like, um,

you know, early in the world series where the dealers are very new and not used to dealing.

This is hold them, so I don't know what the dealers' problem is, right?

Used to deal, they're dealing all these types of different games.

Like, players are acting as like the eyes of the house, right?

And are go out of their way to like point stuff out.

I actually had something work in my favor one time, right?

Where like I was

playing Omaha

8, which is a high low game.

It's a limit game.

It's not an all-in game, not a pot limit game, I should say.

And like I called

with

hoping to win the low half of the pot.

I had a bad call.

I did bad hand, good pot odds, just a little cross country, tired, don't play Omaha that much, right?

And I don't have the best low.

And I'm about to muck my hand, right?

But someone says, oh, you can't beat,

you can't win the high, right?

You have any pair at all?

And I did win the high, a pair of aces and a bad kicker.

The other guy busted out in the high had only a low hand, right?

Because my hand had not was not retrievable in the muck yet, I was able to turn it over.

The dealer had not mucked quickly enough, right?

But the point is, even then, people are saying, okay, just make sure you didn't do something stupid

and give away like half the pot right and so it's very odd that like nobody else at the table said anything I have had one or two times where it's like did you miss that straight on the board right and no one else is saying anything and everyone kind of like tricks themselves into saying okay well if it sure looks like there's a straight on the board right

but no one else is saying anything so I won't say anything but it's it's it's very bizarre that like a bunch of things that don't usually happen the dealer has to make this mistake the player has to be like how are you not like

sweating this hand?

Right.

I mean, there are weird ways.

We need to get more detail about like under what circumstances you might be mentally checked out.

But like.

Yeah.

So I think kind of from a broader perspective, I think there are a few things going on here.

So first, like in terms of decision-making, right, this is, I think we should point out that this is a much higher emotion kind of and hotter situation than normal, right?

This isn't a normal poker hand.

This is the final three players in a huge tournament for a ring right so emotions are running high and people are kind of

people are much more kind of in the moment um this is much more consequential right than if this had been an all-in the day before right with 30 players left 300 players left however many so so that means two things for decision making first your decision making does get worse in those moments but secondly because the kind of the risk reward is so much higher and the consequences are so much higher and the payoffs matter so much more.

You should be,

it's in those moments where you need to kind of be paying the most attention.

And so, and so I think that we have kind of that sort of dynamic here where I think that the player who busted, he did say, I think I won, but then he didn't insist on it because I think that he's flustered, right?

He just busted this tournament in this big spot and he doesn't want to look dumb.

He doesn't want to be like, no, I think I won, and then realize that he didn't actually win.

And he, you know, I think that all of these things, all of these emotional things are clouding the moment.

But I think that the other, the other part of this, and the reason that I was really interested in this, because as you know, I'm writing a book about cheating is kind of what is the responsibility of different people in this hand.

And obviously, like, ultimately, the mistake is absolutely the dealers, right?

And the players, but the dealers, the speed of mucking was huge.

But is it, you know, people were very

were incredibly torn.

And to me, this is the interesting part on whether the media should have spoken up, right?

And I was shocked at how many people are like, no, they should absolutely not speak up.

They should not insert themselves into the story.

I'm like, are you kidding me?

Right.

As someone who is a member of the media, who's been trained to not be part of the story, that completely goes out the window when it becomes an ethical issue, right?

So we are trained.

You do not become part of the story.

But if you see that someone got stabbed, you call 911.

You don't say, oh, I'm just observing.

Yeah,

it's the prime directive of Star Trek.

Like, that's not a rule.

The prime directive, I don't know.

I'm not as much of a, but like, you're not allowed to interfere in a primitive alien culture, right?

There's no rule like that in the poker book.

In fact, the rule is that cards, is that cards speak, right?

Cards speak, yes.

Cards are face up in the sand.

It's not a case where somebody incorrectly mucked.

Then you can't do anything about it, right?

Yeah.

This is a case where both hands are tabled.

And so I think it's absolutely the ethical responsibility of someone who notices it to speak up.

Let me give a less extreme example.

Like imagine Nate, I'm set on a beat to cover life in Central Park, right, in New York.

So I'm there kind of observing and I'm writing about this, right?

I'm not going to interfere because I'm just watching people.

And then I see someone's wallet get swiped.

Do I not say anything, right?

Because they, because the person didn't notice and they're just standing having a conversation?

Or do I say, hey, thief, right?

And actually point out that your wallet just got stolen.

Of course, I'm going to say something.

I'm not going to, even if you're not dying, I'm going to say, hey, someone just stole your wallet, right?

Like we need to.

I'm trying to think.

I mean, you know, if I were covering a political campaign and I

detected illegal activity, right?

I wouldn't tell the police about that.

I'd write about it or I'd choose not to.

I don't know.

I mean, it's like the analogy, but like, look, I don't.

But that's different.

So we're talking about something where you can immediately, right, where you see a crime being committed in the moment and you can immediately do something.

If you detected illegal illegal activity in a political campaign, you know, and you had to follow the money, et cetera, et cetera, you'd report out the story.

But if you actually observed something illegal happening that you could change in the moment, I think you would.

That's a very different way.

Let me ask you something.

Let's say we are at the World Series this summer, only a couple of months away now.

And

we have made plans to get dinner together.

You say I'm at table 612 or whatever.

Your table is taking a long time to finish its hand.

I come over.

I notice you fold, right?

I notice that then of the two remaining players, the pot is pushed to the wrong player.

And I say, nothing at your table, wait, that dude just made a flush.

Like that's okay, right?

So it's an immediate thing.

It's absolutely okay.

And I also want, I hate when people start immediately going out to the grander arguments.

Well, the media's job is to report.

It's not to kind of police the hand.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's exactly right.

The media's job is to report.

I'm not saying it's their responsibility to be paying attention to who's awarded the pot in every single hand.

That's not their responsibility, right?

Just like it's not my responsibility to walk around Central Park looking to see if there are crimes being committed that I can help.

We have police.

We have people who do that.

But if you happen to see in the moment, and if you happen to know that, then you should absolutely, I think it's your ethical obligation to speak up.

Yeah.

And as part of the poker, again, I go back to these events, you know, the ethic of the community is that like

we speak up to speak up to dealer errors or errors in terms of how the tournament is run, but especially dealer errors, right?

It's a community's responsibility

to speak up.

And by the way, if you want to talk about like the equilibrium, right?

Like if you didn't have people willing to help out

a confused dealer, then you'd have to like, you would have longer lines because you wouldn't have enough qualified dealers or maybe they pay dealers more, but then the rake is higher and things like that.

Right.

And so like, I think it's kind of like explicitly ethical

for a poker player to to speak up when when dealers make mistakes I mean the thing is too that's weird about it though like like didn't Maurice Hawkins know you know what I mean or I'm assuming like we don't know but I'm assuming he did given how he behaved

because he is someone who always celebrates and is very in your face when he wins and you see him on the turn on the turn like being like you know straight like blah blah blah like I got this and then on the river as opposed to celebrating, he just goes quiet.

He goes silent.

And that is, we don't know.

We don't know this.

But I think that,

you know, we have a duty to any kind of community that we are a part of, that we love to kind of keep.

to keep things above board, right?

To keep things,

to keep the community good and to actually like ensure that good behavior is rewarded and bad behavior is punished.

And let's just like, if you, if you zoom out even further to journalism, like some of the best

journalists have sometimes fucked up, right, and not intervened when they should have.

And they were punished for it because I think that just ethically we do have kind of this duty to speak up.

We'll be right back after this message.

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When something important is happening in the Bay Area, I want to know what it actually means for the people who live here.

In every episode of The Bay, we ask deeper questions, cut through the noise, and keep you connected to the community that you and I love.

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The bigger, the bigger point here is that like we all make poor decisions when we're tired, when emotions are running high, when you know, when you're in hot situations, and everyone, you know, you can just not see things that are right in front of your face.

You know, an attentional blindness is a real thing when you're not looking for certain cards, you're not looking for certain things, and you just completely miss it.

It can happen to anyone.

Just back in December, by the way, I missed a flush that I had.

And this was, and this was the 10K win main event.

This was day three or four.

I think it was day four.

Very deep.

And, you know, I had gone all in with a pair of queens against a pair of kings.

The kings hit a set on the flop.

So I was like, you know, I'm dead.

Right.

And then on the turn, I was drawing to a straight, but I also did not realize that it was another club and I had the queen of clubs and he did not have the king of clubs.

So when the straight didn't hit on the river, I left because I thought I busted.

And the player who lost the hand, who had the kings, was like, wait, you have a flush.

And the dealer was like, and called me back, right?

That's that's what you do.

Um, that's the only ethical way of handling that situation.

I had a spot where

I had a lot of, at one point, I had a lot of chips in one of these poker go tournaments and then lost a big flip and they didn't have many chips.

And then, like, you know, another hand shoved like 15 big blinds from the small blind open shove with like a decent queen, you know, queen seven,

queen six suited,

queen eight off, something in that vicinity, middling strength hand, right?

And

made trips, I mean, three of a kind queens, but the guy backed into like

Broadway straight.

So I was kind of pissed and like,

I just lost this flip and then lost this other thing that wasn't technically a flip, but whatever, right?

And, you know, I get up to leave and he's like, no, dude, that guy only had two bling buttons left, right?

He had almost busted in the previous hand and kind of being like tired and like, you know, a little, I don't know if it's tilted, but like, but yeah, your attention span can

wane in situations like this.

This is why it's a bad idea to play four card games when you just flew across the country, by the way.

I mean, I think that's one of the bigger issues here.

Like we all make mistakes in emotional situations.

And so everyone else should, like.

people should try to rectify those mistakes.

You should try to be helpful.

And that is, I think, something of

an ethical obligation.

And also, if you, you, you know,

don't be afraid to do things that are mildly embarrassing, but that, like, are, you know, so for example, let's say that I didn't eat breakfast and waited for the dinner break and I should be a little shaky or something, right?

Like, I'll just verbally start declaring my bets, you know, 5,000 or something, right?

Because I don't want any tales having to do with like my hand shaking or things like that.

Or like, you know, sometimes you'll see where a player is confused about how to read the board, right?

Usually not in hold them, but sometimes in hold them too.

And they'll look at their hand and stare at their hand and try to figure out whether they made something, especially in Omaha games, right?

Just table your hand, right?

Everybody misreads boards in Omaha, right?

You never know when you are missing, like, especially like some bomb pot or something, right?

Or a Split Pot game.

Like, you probably made some two pair that you forgot about, you know, if you're playing Big O five cards, right?

So just table your fucking hand.

It's not that embarrassing.

Everyone plays all kind of crap in the big O games anyway, right?

You know, because you're going to feel a lot worse if you go to bed like, oh shit, I think I actually rivered a backdoor straight kind of thing.

Yeah.

No, of course.

So I think the big takeaway from this is everyone makes mistakes.

It's hard to make decisions when you're tired.

Give yourself some slack.

Give other people some slack.

Don't be afraid of.

looking dumb and do speak up, right?

Because as you get more and more people who say nothing, I think that's the other part of this, there is this tendency to say, oh, I must be wrong.

Don't, don't, don't succumb to that and be the one person who says, wait, can we just look at this one more time?

And I think that everyone will be better off, whether you're playing poker or in some other situation.

And by the way, this helps the less experienced players that we all want in our game, right?

I make far fewer misclicks, meaning when you actually bet.

the wrong amount, right, or misfree people's stacks, despite the previous example, you know, you just do a lot less of that.

Whereas those things are like super fucking stressful to players if they only play live poker like once every now and then, right?

and so like being again don't give players strategy but at least protect errors that the that the dealer makes some things too like if dealers are um

are pitching cards too high right so you can see maybe the um color of the card right like you should say something

about that always like don't always don't be like oh i'm being rude to this dealer you know it's like no that's going to create an advantage for players in certain seats and maybe including you right and like so you should you should say something you should yep you should always speak up.

If you see something, say something.

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Risky Business is hosted by me, Maria Konakova.

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This show is a co-production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.

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This is Justin Richmond, host of Broken Record.

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Hi, I'm Erica Cruz-Guevara, host of KQED's podcast, The Bay.

When something important is happening in the Bay Area, I want to know what it actually means for the people who live here.

In every episode of The Bay, we ask deeper questions, cut through the noise, and keep you connected to the community that you and I love.

Find new episodes of KQED's The Bay every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, wherever you get your podcasts.

You've probably heard me say this.

Connection is one of the biggest keys to happiness.

And one of my favorite ways to build that, scruffy hospitality.

Inviting people over even when things aren't perfect.

Because just being together, laughing, chatting, cooking, makes you feel good.

That's why I love Bosch.

Bosch fridges with VitaFresh technology keep ingredients fresher longer, so you're always ready to whip up a meal and share a special moment.

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Learn more, visit BoschHomeUS.com.

This is an iHeart podcast.