Risky Business Live! How To Read People In Poker And Beyond

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Speaker 1 Pushkin.

Speaker 1 Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova.

Speaker 4 And I'm Nate Silver.

Speaker 1 He is Nate Silver.

Speaker 4 We often like crack up during this intro petition.

Speaker 4 Like can, but like, yeah, we're not going to be that fun.

Speaker 1 Today we're going to be straight-faced.

Speaker 1 So today on the show, we have a really fun live show for you today. We're going to be talking about reading people, the art of tells, deception, bluffing, and all of that fun stuff.

Speaker 1 And after we kind of lay the groundwork, you guys better be paying really close attention because we'll be having people come up here to demonstrate how much you've learned about the art of raiding people.

Speaker 4 It's a $500 entry fee. It's on the back of your ticket.

Speaker 1 So, Nate, you and I have just come back from Las Vegas where we were both playing in the North American Poker Tour.

Speaker 4 Famous.

Speaker 1 Famous, famous NAPT.

Speaker 1 And, you know, poker and

Speaker 1 life are games where there's bluffing.

Speaker 1 Nate, how are you at bluffing? How are you at bluffing in poker? And how are you at bluffing in life, which might otherwise be known as lying?

Speaker 4 I think I'm a pretty good bluffer in poker, both kind of understanding like the game theory behind when to bluff and also like kind of have a few tricks to like pull things off, right?

Speaker 4 Ironically in like real life, I kind of

Speaker 4 am very bad at lying in real life. I think my partner's here tonight, so he can confirm or deny that potentially.

Speaker 4 But no, I get very uncomfortable with,

Speaker 4 you know, who is it? Like, a lie takes too much work, right? And I'm lazy. No, it's like even things like, like, so when I was hiring people at 538 when we were with it at Disney, right?

Speaker 4 Like, well, what's the kind of the long-term stability of this company at the ABC News, ESPN? I'd be like, I don't really know.

Speaker 4 You know, I'm under contract for a couple of years and we'll see what happens. And so like, but I'm very uncomfortable, like, in any type of negotiation or relationship,

Speaker 4 like, I don't think it serves people, serves anyone on purpose in the long run to kind of like form a relationship on false pretenses.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Because it gets discovered later on, right?

Speaker 4 No, so I'm an honest person mostly out of like laziness in real life. But in the context of poker,

Speaker 4 you know, poker would not exist without bluffing. That's what makes poker poker.
I don't consider bluffing in poker to be lying.

Speaker 4 Also, when people, you know, people ask you, oh, what did you have, right? So people are like, oh, if you actually ask a question, they won't like literally lie. i i will i will

Speaker 1 i will lie my ass off about like kind of what my ham was i think it's like part of the game but only a game how about you are you are you a bluffer maria well you know i when people ask me like oh you know you wrote a book about con artists and now you're a poker player so you're basically doing that and i want to say no absolutely not because as you say poker is a game and bluffing is part of it right it's actually part of the rules so everyone expects you to not tell the truth, to bluff.

Speaker 1 That is one of the strategic elements of the game. Con artists lie when they're supposed to be telling the truth, right? Part of the rules of life is that we can trust each other, right?

Speaker 1 You can trust me. I can trust you.
We're not going to lie to each other when we see each other.

Speaker 1 And in fact, there's actually a lot of psychology that shows that humans have evolved for truthful relationships, not for deception, and that kind of trust is the default option.

Speaker 1 So in lots of studies where you have people play all sorts of games, so we talk a lot about game theory on the show, and there are lots of games where you start off where you can either kind of cooperate or defect, right?

Speaker 1 You can play by the rules or you can cheat, you can lie.

Speaker 1 And it turns out that more often than not, like in the absence of any kind of incentive or pressure to the contrary, people start off cooperating and they start off in a very trusting stance.

Speaker 1 And that's actually, like, to me, that's really great, right? That's a very like hopeful thing for humanity.

Speaker 1 And societies with high levels of trust tend to do better. And, you know, the reason that humans are actually pretty bad at spotting deception is that most people don't lie every day, right?

Speaker 1 And it's evolutionarily beneficial to just assume people are telling the truth. If you always thought everyone was lying, like that, that ain't a good,

Speaker 1 that ain't a good place to be.

Speaker 4 No, in like in like small communities yeah then there's a reputational cost i'm not that you know gto about it there's like a reputational cost to lying or bad behavior right but it varies a lot by society i was with my partner and a friend in korea for new year's we were like shopping one day in some very busy area and the shopkeeper at this very nice busy shop went to get lunch, right?

Speaker 4 And he just kind of leaves, he leaves the door open. He's like, I'll be back in 10 minutes.
I'm grabbing some lunch, right?

Speaker 4 And like, you could totally shoplift like whatever you wanted, because it's such a high-trust society there. That, like, there might be CCTV or whatever else, but like, people.

Speaker 1 Nate, would you take Maria?

Speaker 4 I'm not, I'm not a, I stole,

Speaker 4 I will say, I stole

Speaker 1 confessions of risky business.

Speaker 4 I stole Taco Bell from the University of Chicago cafeteria one time, right?

Speaker 4 But the reason was because, like, the line to check out, it's like, it was like they had like a pizza hut and a Taco Bell and some other shitty Aramark concessions, right?

Speaker 4 And it was like a 15-minute line to check out. I'm like, I'm, I, you know, I'm not, it's worth running the risk of getting caught stealing tacos if you have to wait 15 minutes to check out.

Speaker 1 All right, University of Chicago, next time.

Speaker 1 They caught me. They caught you? Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, what happened? What were the repercussions?

Speaker 4 I had to like go into some disciplinary hearing. And I don't know.
It was the first offense, so they let me off, basically.

Speaker 1 I'm so glad they let you graduate.

Speaker 1 You know, we wouldn't be sitting here otherwise.

Speaker 1 But, but, yeah, so to go back to your kind of original question,

Speaker 1 I don't really, you know, I don't think that I'm particularly good at lying in real life because I really don't.

Speaker 1 Now, I tell white lies, and I think we all tell white lies, which is one reason, another reason why we're so bad at spotting deception.

Speaker 1 Can you imagine what would happen if you were able to tell every single time someone said a white lie to you? Like, just think about it, right?

Speaker 1 It's so good to see you. Yeah, no, look,

Speaker 4 I love love that apple. You look great.

Speaker 1 No, but like,

Speaker 4 but like, look, you know,

Speaker 1 I love that baseball caf on you.

Speaker 4 Thank you, Mariette.

Speaker 4 If you have a friend who cancels plans because they're sick, maybe they're actually sick, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Maybe they're having a really bad day, right? Maybe the fling of their life unexpectedly came into town, right? Maybe who knows, right? But like, you don't need to like be brutally honest.

Speaker 4 Like, I'm not a big believer in like,

Speaker 1 I think people are like, oh, radical transparency about everything.

Speaker 4 It's like you don't understand like the subtlety and like the density of like human communication.

Speaker 4 Actually, one thing I think you learn from AI models, arts, language models, is like how laden with density like word choices are and turns of phrase are and the particular analogy or allegory that you might use, right?

Speaker 4 Because you're often trying to communicate with like multiple people at once, right?

Speaker 4 You're trying to say one, you're dog whistling to some group of people and you're saying you're conveying different things to different people. It's often kind of less subtle than people think.

Speaker 4 If you consider like political communication, for example, but like language is a very rich medium and a very like strategic medium.

Speaker 1 Yeah, absolutely. And when you're communicating, and this is something that you really learn in poker, is that language is nonverbal too, right?

Speaker 1 When you kind of go from the real life arena to kind of the arena of something like games, I used to be absolutely horrible at bluffing as well because I'm so uncomfortable lying, right?

Speaker 1 And I felt really, and I felt really anxious and nervous when I bluffed. And if I got caught bluffing, I was like, oh no, right.
I got caught bluffing.

Speaker 1 Where of course the kind of the common wisdom is that if you're never caught bluffing, you're not bluffing enough, right? It's part of the game. You're supposed to be caught bluffing sometimes.

Speaker 1 You're supposed to bluff a lot. And what ended up actually helping me and getting me kind of over the hump to where I could start bluffing more

Speaker 1 is when I stopped thinking of it as deception and started thinking of it as, oh, like I understand the game better now, and this is actually the correct move for me to make.

Speaker 1 It is one of my strategic choices, and in this particular moment, this is the proper strategy.

Speaker 1 And so, it, you know, you were talking before about how you tell the truth in real life because it's just you're lazy. Well, deception does create cognitive loads, so it creates a lot of kind of

Speaker 1 tension and extra overhead kind of inside your brain. And because you have to kind of try to think, does my story make sense?

Speaker 1 Am I being consistent? Is it logical?

Speaker 1 And you have to try to think, oh, am I giving off anything? Can people tell? Like there's just a lot that starts happening. So if you stop thinking of it as

Speaker 1 a lie, you can actually reduce the cognitive load and just say, okay, this is how I should be playing right now.

Speaker 4 I'm like sometimes more comfortable bluffing than I am with a strong hand, right? Which is a little counterintuitive.

Speaker 4 It might give you some reverse, but like the way I look at it, Maria, is when I bet, I'm saying I have a range of hands, right?

Speaker 4 I'm saying, Look, I'm betting, I might have some good hands, I might have some bad hands. I don't want you to know either way, right? I want to keep you guessing either way.

Speaker 4 That's an honest statement of like my range of hands.

Speaker 1 So, um, the reason I have my phone up here for several reasons, but one of them is because, so we just got back from the NAPT, and I love that Nate just said he feels more comfortable bluffing than he does telling the truth because I got a message.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. Yeah, so I have a sub stack called The Leap

Speaker 1 and one of my paid subscribers was at NAPT playing and he played with Nate. And so I come home to this message from him.
You know, hi, Maria, it was nice meeting again.

Speaker 1 I had a great time this trip despite not cashing. Please tell Nate that he still bluffs too much.
Oh, no. So then I go, I go, ha ha ha.
I'll make sure to tell him. And then he continues.

Speaker 1 And he says, I only saw one big bluff that was caught by a pair on a missed flush drawboard.

Speaker 1 But from his past interviews, I learned about his high bluff frequency, which someone else may have used at the table.

Speaker 1 I'm sure Nate's a better player than me and doesn't need my advice, but I'm giving it to you anyway.

Speaker 1 So do you remember this hand? Apparently, some, you know, someone noticed that you were bluffing bluffing too much, Nate.

Speaker 1 How did you do in that tournament, Nate?

Speaker 1 Maria, so I wrote, so we're doing a little thing with

Speaker 4 Sam Greenwood, runs a blog called Print of the Day. So I wrote down for this whole week of poker all my questionably played hands.
There were quite a few, if we're being honest, right?

Speaker 4 But like probably the three hands that I believe were the worst plays are hands where I didn't bluff. where I should have, right?

Speaker 4 It's like counterintuitive how often you actually are supposed to bluff in poker because it does feel like really bad when you bluff and get caught.

Speaker 4 It doesn't feel that bad when you have big value ham when you have like a full house or a flush or a straight

Speaker 4 and you bet and you don't get called right then. It's like, oh, okay, well, you know, it didn't have anything and didn't pay off.
But if you don't bluff enough, then you won't get paid off as much.

Speaker 4 And so, no, I think I probably still, I think I'm like,

Speaker 4 I bluff more than the stereotyped version of Nate you have might assume, but I probably still under bluff relative to

Speaker 4 game theory or how often in practice it could probably

Speaker 4 get away with it.

Speaker 1 Did you have any bluffs that you're very proud of?

Speaker 1 Because I actually, so this was a very good series for me, and I had one bluff in particular that I'm very proud of that actually enabled me to do really well in the tournament that I did really well in.

Speaker 4 So some bluffs I like are where you make like, so empirically, certain lines are underutilized, right? So one bluff I like is like, often when people make like a small

Speaker 4 then they're representing like a, you know, oh, I should have a mediocre hand that's better than your hand, right?

Speaker 4 I have top pair with a bad kicker or a bad flesh or second pair, and you probably don't have top pair given the way the hand was played out. And they make like these.

Speaker 1 Right, and all people who don't play poker, these are all like second best hands.

Speaker 4 So they're second where like, I think my hand is just like slightly better than yours. I love making small

Speaker 4 bluffs that are very cheap with hands that can represent like second best hands trying to get a little value. And they're very cheap.
You know what I mean? I made a bluff in

Speaker 4 a limit game, which is hard to do. I was playing like some

Speaker 4 seven card stud, eight or better, right? And like, I had a great draw. I could get a low or a high or whatever.
And I, and I missed everything, right?

Speaker 4 And the guy bet, and I'm just, I'll raise, just like, just raise. And like, he's getting like 15 to one, right? He has to be right one out of 15 times for his bluff to be right.

Speaker 4 And he folds the whole pot, right? I scoop the pot with a bluff. So that, that felt good, Maria.

Speaker 1 Yeah, those are, those are actually very smart bluffs when you just bluff a little bit because it seems like you want people to call you, right?

Speaker 1 My bluff that ended up working, though, was the very opposite.

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 was out of position, so I was in the big blind. So for people who don't play poker, being out of position is not good, right?

Speaker 1 Because you always act first and the person you're playing with acts second. And in everything, but also like when you're talking about tells and reading people, you want more information, right?

Speaker 1 The more information, the better. And so getting to go second is a huge advantage.

Speaker 1 And so I was out of position against a player who's a very good player this whole hand. And I had

Speaker 1 Jack 10, you know,

Speaker 1 really nice hand, was suited. You know, I had a straight draw

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 I just then ended up having a flush draw anyway. I bricked everything.

Speaker 1 But there were two different flush draws on the board. And he bet,

Speaker 1 he raised, you know, pre-flop, he bet flop, he bet turned, and then the river comes, it completes the wrong flush, not mine.

Speaker 1 And I have nothing and the pot is huge. And I did something very unorthodox and I just shoved.
before he had a chance to act. So I took the momentum from him and he ended up folding.

Speaker 1 It was very funny because this is a spot that people don't bluff very often, right, when

Speaker 1 the board changes so much, because it's kind of suicidal to run that bluff but my suicidal bluff worked and it felt really good because i think that past me would not have been able to do something like that because once again bluffing and lying are two very different things

Speaker 1 and this is also where nonverbal tells come into play a little bit because

Speaker 1 you know something about his behavior made me think that he had been trying to bully me um out of the hand for for a long time.

Speaker 1 And so I was using that as well to kind of inform my kind of my thinking that maybe his hand was not so strong that he'd feel compelled to call.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I'm a big believer in nonverbal tells and kind of it often is, I mean, there are sometimes specific things.

Speaker 4 I'm not sure I want to give away too many secrets, but it's more often kind of like an overall vibe.

Speaker 4 Marie, I've kind of become a

Speaker 4 You haven't played with me like at the same table in a while, become like a little bit more of a speech play guy where I'll like, I'll like talk to people especially Europeans the Europeans play poker are like they're very quiet right I'm like where are you from you know which part of Belgium usually from Belgium like which part of Belgium are you from just kind of see if people are comfortable or not and like

Speaker 4 you know it's kind of if you're if you're considering like let's say it's a spot where like a player bets big on the river he might be bluffing I'm not planning on re-raising either because I'm all in anyway or or I'm not gonna raise right and like you kind of get free info just by talking to people, but it's an overall kind of aura or vibe.

Speaker 4 And like, it's not something mysterious, just like we are, we have like human interactions, right? Like in real life, you hopefully have intuition for when you're being deceived.

Speaker 4 For example, when it's like, when someone's not telling a full story and like, yeah, in poker, you've just kind of developed like this implicit database of like semantics and signals and you'd be like foolish like not to account for that, I don't think.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I always like to talk to people And I think the reason that it works, I don't do it for tells, but I do it, you know, because it actually does help me later on.

Speaker 1 And this is the journalist in me, right? Like I'm genuinely curious to find out why people are there. What are they doing? What are their motivations? You know, why are you playing this event?

Speaker 1 Did you come? You know, are you a professional? Are you here because your wife gave you a present because you've wanted to play this event forever? All of this is information, right?

Speaker 1 All of this tells you something about people.

Speaker 1 And something that poker has really made me good at, which, you know, it's funny because you think of it as kind of this cutthroat game, but it's actually made me a much better listener, right?

Speaker 1 It's made me someone who's much more attuned to the signals that other people give out.

Speaker 1 Because,

Speaker 1 I mean, at the poker table, it can help me take your money, but

Speaker 1 it also, like, it's rewarded, right? When you truly listen to other people

Speaker 1 you

Speaker 1 are

Speaker 1 able to understand

Speaker 1 where they're coming from take their perspective which humans are really bad at doing right normally when we think we're taking someone else's perspective What we're doing is taking our perspective and lumping it onto the other person

Speaker 1 and We're like, oh, I know exactly what you're thinking. It's what I would be thinking if I were in your shoes.
And that's usually completely wrong, right? We're so egocentric. And for sure.

Speaker 1 And to be able to kind of actually take a step back and figure out wait no this is what they would be thinking because they've told me more about themselves um it helps you strategically but then it helps you in real life just be a better person you know one of the best pieces of poker advice i've listened to recently i think is from hungry horse poker i think his name is mark goon a good youtuber right um he's like remember Thinking about the poker world from the opponent's point of view, right?

Speaker 4 Like putting yourself in the other player's shoes and like, what's bothering them,

Speaker 4 especially for amateur players, right?

Speaker 4 One thing you see all the time in like big events, like the main event or other big events of the World Series of Poker is like some guy comes in, he won his kind of like local home game tournament.

Speaker 4 His friends bought him in for 10K to the World Series of Poker at some prize from some series they have, right?

Speaker 4 And you can like kind of pinpoint the moment where someone's like, I'm going to play tight, gonna play solid, right?

Speaker 4 You can like pinpoint the moment when they kind of are like, shit, this isn't working, right? They panic a little bit. Some things are more obvious.
So I played

Speaker 4 a cash game at the Bellagio last night on my way out of town.

Speaker 1 This is true D-Gen behavior, guys.

Speaker 1 I was watching football.

Speaker 4 There was a guy, now we get into gendered stereotypes, right? There was a guy who had his like, his girlfriend sitting directly behind him, making faces. about every hand.

Speaker 1 I'm like, this guy probably is not bluffing a whole bunch, right?

Speaker 4 When his girlfriend's there like approving and disapproving of of his like play in every hand. Like I'd be, you know, he's not bluffing like ever, I don't think.

Speaker 1 So Nate, the funny thing is, it turns out that we

Speaker 1 humans are remarkably good at controlling our faces, right? We are really good at poker faces.

Speaker 1 If you want to look at nonverbal behavior, if you want to look at tells, if you want to figure out, is this person bluffing in the case of poker or lying, deceiving me in the case of day-to-day interactions, looking at their face is the wrong place to look.

Speaker 1 There are lots of studies that show that basically our faces give almost nothing away because we're so incredibly used to controlling them, right?

Speaker 1 That's the one thing you're always thinking about, like poker face, right? Am I giving anything away? That's something that most people are actually really, really good at.

Speaker 1 But what you're not used to controlling is the rest of your body, right?

Speaker 1 You don't realize that you're leaking information through your posture, through your hands, through your feet, through all of these other things. That's where people should be staring.
No,

Speaker 4 it's the hands.

Speaker 1 It's the hands, yes. Anyone who's read The Biggest Bluff, I have a whole chapter about the hands.

Speaker 4 It's the Paul Soffin.

Speaker 4 I mean, I played a guy in the main event in the World Series where like, like literally had like a real-time heart rate monitor hooked up to him where like he just had this thing where like his heart was beating his neck.

Speaker 4 If you have that happen, it can happen to people temporarily or permanently. Wear like a wear scarf or wear like a sweatshirt or something, right? But like, and it was very correlated.

Speaker 4 Like I knew because he made, it was just, you know, look, you pick up a whole vocabulary just based on having a lot of reps doing these things, right?

Speaker 4 He was already making mannerisms that I associate with having like a very strong hand. In this case, he had aces.

Speaker 4 And you saw his heartbeat and saw, okay, here's a guy where his heartbeat beats faster when he has a strong hand, right?

Speaker 1 Which is not true for everybody.

Speaker 4 Some people are the opposite. And so like now I can basically know his like hand strength for the rest of the day.
Like that's a huge advantage that explicit is rare.

Speaker 4 But like, yeah, it's often kind of like also

Speaker 4 watching people before you get into big moments in the hand, right? Because once they're locked in, then they're self-conscious.

Speaker 4 Like what you're trying to figure out too is like, okay, somebody makes an action. Was that conscious?

Speaker 4 Was it unconscious? If it was unconscious, do they then become aware? Oh, I took a little bit a while to make that call that might look weak or it might look strong depending on context.

Speaker 4 It's all, it's like regular language, right? It's all, it's all very contextual.

Speaker 4 A signal might be strong in one context, might be weak in another context, and you're trying to like paint a semantic portrait.

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Speaker 1 So there are kind of three bigger,

Speaker 1 bigger picture-psych things here that I want to kind of draw out.

Speaker 1 So first, the reason that Nate was able to use some of this information is because he had immediate feedback, which we normally don't have in life, right?

Speaker 1 He saw that pulse and then he saw that there was a strong hand associated with it. And so he had that, you know, this means that.
Now imagine that you didn't get to see the cards.

Speaker 1 You would have no way of knowing if this was a signal of strength or weakness.

Speaker 1 And the exact same thing might actually signal very different outcomes, very different, you know, I'm being lied to or this person, you know, is telling the truth, depending, which kind of goes to point number two, which is why it's so incredibly difficult to spot deception in real life.

Speaker 1 Why, by the way, lie detector tests are absolute bullshit, all of them. There's no good CIA, FBI, like nobody has a good, an actually accurate lie detector because,

Speaker 1 well, first of all, you can fake them. But secondly, like...

Speaker 1 You can tell if someone's stressed or nervous, right? Or if there's, you know, something going on, if there's cognitive load, but you have no access to why, right? What is the why behind that?

Speaker 1 Am I stressed because I'm lying? Or am I stressed because I'm telling the truth and I'm afraid that you're not going to believe me?

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 Or am I stressed because like I haven't gotten enough sleep and this is a really stressful situation?

Speaker 4 If I am hangry,

Speaker 4 like my physical, yeah, if my physical, like I'll just like,

Speaker 4 So usually when you bet, you'll put out whatever, I'm betting 70 bucks, I'll put up seven, $10 chips or a $50 chip. But like, if I'm like hangry and I haven't eaten, then you can get like shaky hands.

Speaker 1 So you'd be like, I'm like,

Speaker 4 70 bucks, right? Because you don't want to like, although honestly, you know, you can have reverse tales.

Speaker 4 Maybe you're a little, a little hungry and, you know, and you're like, so you kind of have some tremble.

Speaker 1 I mean, look, I do, I do things.

Speaker 4 I'm a little spidy as a person. I'll do, I do a little things to mix it up.

Speaker 4 You know, I'm, I'm trying to be unreadable and like, because I'm like not like inherently a very like still person, then maybe I try to vary things a little bit. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So that, so yeah, number two like you you really don't know number three something that you alluded to which is I think really really important when you're trying to figure out you know how do I read this person whether it's at the poker table or not and that's you need a baseline of behavior to be able to compare to right you need to know what this person normally behaves like which requires a ton of data that frankly you often don't have right which is why I caution people a lot of the time not to put too much stock in tells whether it's at the poker table or in a conversation where like oh i think that guy's lying to me right do you know like Do you have a good baseline?

Speaker 1 Have you observed this person in enough situations, in enough interactions where you know what normal looks like so that you can tell what deviation from normal looks like? And then

Speaker 1 do you have feedback to know what that deviation means? So there are so many steps that need to actually

Speaker 1 happen for you to be able to make an actual read, which is why when you see these meta-analyses in psychology of nonverbal behavior, usually you find that it's kind of 50-50, right?

Speaker 1 That it's almost no better than chance. And even if people can get better than chance, they improve from like 50% to 54%,

Speaker 1 right? Which

Speaker 1 sure, 4% is a lot, but it's still like, still incredibly noisy if you're trying to get it.

Speaker 4 And also with the strategy, if you ignore the bluffs or the tells for a second, right? In strategy and poker, I mean, we all have some sense for like empirically how the population plays.

Speaker 4 You were talking about this before backstage. Like, oh, this spot is underbluffed by the player population overall.
Therefore, if I buff this spot, people will fold a lot.

Speaker 4 But it feels like in poker that can shift and adjust in different player populations.

Speaker 4 And like, you know, look, one thing about having like a capitalist free market economy is like the market finds a way.

Speaker 4 The market finds a way to exploit any loopholes, to exploit any inefficiencies, for better or worse. And the same is true in poker.

Speaker 4 That like, you know, look, right now I'm probably, you know, as a default, I'm probably folding in a lot of spots because people probably underbluff on average, right?

Speaker 4 Unless there's like some type of physical read or other read, right? But if you know that about me, then you can exploit the hell out of me, you know? And so you have to be constantly on your toes.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's really interesting. One of the kind of first things that I learned from Eric

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 he would never give me an answer to like, how do I play this hand in this situation? Because he said, you know, I can't tell you that because I'm not you, right?

Speaker 1 When people see me, they expect something.

Speaker 1 And when they see you, they expect something else because, you know, people have biases, people have preconceptions about how different people play.

Speaker 1 And you can probably get away with things that I can't get away with. He's like, you know, if you raise here, that looks so strong coming from you, right? And the implication is, you know, I'm female.

Speaker 1 I am not, you know, a world-class 10 bracelet winner.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm a very different sort of player. And so when I do something that kind of, when I run a suicide bluff, I get a fold.

Speaker 1 When somebody comes in, you know, with sleeve tattoos and, you know, a shaved head and huge biceps and tries the exact same bluff, they're probably going to get a call.

Speaker 4 But some of those huge bicep guys know exactly what they're doing and they're splitting their false image, right?

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 4 And if you have some, and being aware of.

Speaker 1 Life is complicated.

Speaker 4 And like, I can get different. I mean, you've talked about written about this bluff, how like some men want to beat the hell out of women at the table.

Speaker 4 Some want to be chivalrous and deferential, right? My version of that is like, I can have a couple different stereotypes. Like, one is like, okay, here is a statistics nerd.

Speaker 4 He must be very tight and very straightforward. The other is like, here's a guy who probably has a decent amount of money.
He's thinking this is a hobby. He's probably trying to have some fun.

Speaker 4 He can afford the buy-ins. He's splashing around, right?

Speaker 4 So people, I can get bifurcated between being seen as like overly tight and overly loose and being very aware of like your kind of microscopic like table image and things like that.

Speaker 1 or like even what hat I wear right I have this like wolf hat I sometimes wear that my partner hates right but like that creates a more aggressive image I have a Vegas Knights hat that I sometimes wear which is like if you're playing in Vegas like an old man coffee local playing the game right so like even like wardrobe and things like that can affect these perceptions yeah absolutely absolutely and I think we make judgments about people all the time that are based on zero data and that's another reason why you know spotting spotting deception, being able to read people is so incredibly difficult because our own baseline is incredibly biased, right?

Speaker 1 When you see anyone, whether you know it or not, you are just constantly like making judgments, judgments, judgments, judgments.

Speaker 1 And before they even do anything, in poker, you do it before they play a single hand. In real life, you do it before you have a single conversation.

Speaker 1 Do you ever meet someone and you're like, I don't like this person?

Speaker 1 And you haven't talked to them and you're like, oh my God, this person's just rubbing me the wrong way. Right.
And like, they might be perfectly nice and they haven't done anything.

Speaker 1 And you might even end up liking them later. But like,

Speaker 1 yeah, often you do. But like that initial reaction, like, I definitely have that, oof.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And then, and then you have the opposite where like, you're like, oh my God, I love you.
We're going to be best friends. Right.

Speaker 1 And then like, by the end of the night, you're like, go away, please, right? You are the most annoying human I've ever met.

Speaker 1 But it goes, it goes in both ways. Both times you make these subconscious judgments based on cues that you probably don't even realize you're using.

Speaker 1 And it's because we have years and years and years of experiences that we're drawing on, right, that make us who we are, that are our own biases, our own perspectives.

Speaker 1 And that's why reading people is hard in life and at the poker table. And we're bad at it unless we really, really try to be empirically and data-driven, which again is difficult.

Speaker 4 And we'll be right back after this break.

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Speaker 1 So we'll see how well Nate controls some of his tells. We are going to play a game called Lauden Thinks.

Speaker 1 So what this game is, is I,

Speaker 1 well, one person, it's going to be me this time,

Speaker 1 is going to ask the Lauden, who's going to be Nate, a question, which has a numerical answer. For instance, I could ask him, how many subway stops are there in New York City? Okay.

Speaker 1 Now, the actual answer to this doesn't matter whatsoever.

Speaker 1 All that matters is what Nate thinks it is. So Nate is going to write his answer down.

Speaker 1 Don't write your answer to this one, but for...

Speaker 4 I have an estimate.

Speaker 1 You have an estimate. Okay, so Nate has an estimate.
So

Speaker 1 he's going to write it down so that we know that it's locked in and that he's not lying. Right.

Speaker 1 And then I'm going to ask two people from the audience to come up and they are going to start kind of a bidding war to try to figure out Nate's answer.

Speaker 1 So for instance, let's say it's the two of you ladies who are coming up. And so you could say, you could say 10, right? Nate thinks it's 10.
And you would say 10's too low, right?

Speaker 1 So you'd pick a number that's, you are allowed to say either under if you think it's under 10 or pick another number. So you might be like 10, that's crazy.
50.

Speaker 1 And you might be like, oh, 50, that's crazy, that's too high. Under.
Basically, you keep going until one person says under.

Speaker 1 And whoever gets closest to not the real answer, but what Nate thinks the answer is is the person who wins. So,

Speaker 1 you know, let's say that you had said 200 and you had said under.

Speaker 1 Okay. And Nate, what was your answer?

Speaker 1 380. All right.
So you had to.

Speaker 1 I think that's pretty good. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 That's the point, right? It doesn't matter. So you would have won because you said 200 and you had the under on 200.
We don't care about the actual answer. So

Speaker 1 your goal is not to immediately start thinking about what is the answer to this. Your goal is to think, what does Nate think the answer is? So you have to do everything we've talked about tonight.

Speaker 1 You have to look at the world from Nate's perspective and you have to observe him, you know, observe his tells because, you know, if you had said like 100, he'd probably give you a look like you're crazy.

Speaker 1 Or maybe he's going to,

Speaker 1 you know. Maybe he's going to protect

Speaker 1 his poker face. Yeah, his range a little bit better than that.
All right. So can we have two volunteers from the audience to guess our first allotted question?

Speaker 1 We've got one hand back there. Yeah, come on up.
Yeah, you back there. And

Speaker 1 we need a second.

Speaker 1 All right, up you come. Of course I would.

Speaker 1 All right. So here's my question.

Speaker 1 How many podcasts are there in the world right now?

Speaker 4 Can I ask for clarifying questions or?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 4 How many podcasts?

Speaker 1 How many podcasts? In the world.

Speaker 1 So, Nate, let me know when you've written down your answer and make sure. Okay, you got it? You're locked in.

Speaker 1 All right. What's your name?

Speaker 4 My name is Rob.

Speaker 1 And what's your name? Roger. All right.

Speaker 1 Rob, we're going to start off the game with you. Rob, why don't you throw out a number? All right.
I'm big.

Speaker 7 I will say

Speaker 1 10,000. All right, Roger, are you going to go over or are you going to take the under?

Speaker 1 Over. Alright, so what's your number?

Speaker 1 25.

Speaker 1 Alright, 25,000, Rob. It's back to you.

Speaker 1 He says 25.

Speaker 4 I will match that.

Speaker 1 No, you can't match that.

Speaker 1 We're not sorry,

Speaker 1 you have to either take a number that's higher or say under.

Speaker 7 I'm going to say, oof.

Speaker 4 30K.

Speaker 1 Okay. And remember, guys, you need to be looking at Nate, not at me.
All right.

Speaker 1 So 30K, Roger, are you, what are you,

Speaker 1 what are you going to do?

Speaker 1 Do you like 30? Are you under? Are you over?

Speaker 1 Oh, look at Nate.

Speaker 1 Nate's losing it over here.

Speaker 1 Melting under pressure.

Speaker 4 I swear to God, I have a better poker face.

Speaker 1 35.

Speaker 1 All right, 35,000, Rob, back to you.

Speaker 1 I'll go under it. All right.

Speaker 1 Nate, what's your number?

Speaker 4 3.6 million.

Speaker 1 There are a lot of podcasts. All right.
Roger, you win because you're closer. But you are,

Speaker 1 everyone is off by, well, the two of you are off by an order of magnitude from Nate's Real Guest.

Speaker 4 Do we know the real number?

Speaker 1 We do have the real number. I happened to look it up because I wanted to know.
4.5 million. Holy shit, pretty good.

Speaker 4 Might be good as estimation thing.

Speaker 1 Guys, does everyone here have a podcast? Because

Speaker 1 it seems like...

Speaker 1 All right, we're going to do, we're going to do, you guys want one more shot?

Speaker 7 Can I redeem myself?

Speaker 1 Yes, yes.

Speaker 1 We're going to do a rematch

Speaker 1 because,

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 Rob wants a shot at redemption. All right.
Let's take a shot at it.

Speaker 1 All right. So

Speaker 1 this one

Speaker 1 we'll do slightly non-podcasty.

Speaker 1 We'll pay

Speaker 1 respects to our venue.

Speaker 1 How many live events does Ludlow House host in a year?

Speaker 4 Of any kind?

Speaker 1 Of any kind.

Speaker 1 No more clarifying questions.

Speaker 1 Leading the witness.

Speaker 1 You got your number?

Speaker 4 I'm like doing some deceptive shit, right? I want people to know how many bits I wrote down. So I'm trying to mix up.

Speaker 1 All right,

Speaker 1 we've got some deceptive tells.

Speaker 1 All right, Rob, this one, you start us off.

Speaker 7 750.

Speaker 1 Ooh, all right.

Speaker 1 Roger. Under.
You're taking the under. Oh, well, that was a short round of Lauden.

Speaker 4 555.

Speaker 4 But what's the answer?

Speaker 1 This is one of the. It doesn't matter.
The answer doesn't matter. This is one I don't have the answer to because it is not public.

Speaker 1 But as far as I can tell, Ludlow House does five to six live events a week. So multiply that by

Speaker 1 50 weeks.

Speaker 7 My justification was that as I was reading him, I was like, I feel like he usually would aim high. He did that with how many podcasts were out in the whole world.

Speaker 1 I like this. So I figured it would go high.
Look, you're extrapolating. You're using available information.
You know what? I'm giving you an extra point for using data in a good way. And so, oh,

Speaker 1 I'm getting booed. Apparently,

Speaker 1 the audience does not like that. So, Roger, congratulations.

Speaker 1 Can we do another round?

Speaker 4 Have you been in?

Speaker 1 You are our Lauden Thanks champion. Thank you both so much.
Thank you for volunteering.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 1 All right, we have time for a few questions.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're ready. Hi.

Speaker 1 I just want to say, Maria, your book was the first book I read when I started playing poker, and so really excited to meet you.

Speaker 1 Thank you. I'm curious for you guys, this is both a poker question, but also

Speaker 1 outside of poker, what do you think is the difference between bias, because you guys were talking about bias when you're playing and like the reputation, reading the reputation of someone at the table, versus intuition?

Speaker 1 And do you feel like intuition comes into play for you, like having card sense, like et cetera, or there's a big differentiation?

Speaker 1 That's a really great question.

Speaker 1 And I am someone who

Speaker 1 people get mad at because I'm like, do not follow your gut feeling. It's bullshit.
So here's my rationale. It's not always true.
So humans have very strong gut feelings, right?

Speaker 1 Really strong intuitions. And our intuitions can be either true or false, right? They can be either correct or not.

Speaker 1 When you study this and you actually kind of do do the do the psych experiments, it turns out that we are about 50-50 at identifying correct from incorrect intuitions.

Speaker 1 So we feel like they're equally valid either way, right? We're really, really bad. Sometimes we think a correct one's wrong and sometimes we think a wrong one's correct at chance levels.
And so

Speaker 1 what I like to say is that The data show that the intuitions that you can actually trust are intuitions that aren't intuitions.

Speaker 1 They are deep expertise that you don't necessarily have conscious access to how you know it. So, if you are an expert in this, right?

Speaker 1 If you are someone who has, you know, thousands and thousands of hours of experience in this, and like this is really your area, then you might know something.

Speaker 1 Your brain might be noticing patterns, right? There may be pattern recognition going on that your conscious brain isn't aware of because it's at a deeper level.

Speaker 1 So, it feels like intuition to you, but it's not. It's actually expertise that you've worked really, really hard for.
So the question you should ask is,

Speaker 1 is there a reason why I should know this, right? Like, am I an expert in this field? Is this my domain? Have I experienced this many, many times before?

Speaker 1 And if the answer is yes, then go for it, trust it. If the answer is no, then rely on other things.

Speaker 1 So what I would, you know, like in poker, I would say like, if at the table I think, you know, I think this person's bluffing, but I'm not sure why, versus if Eric Seidel says, I think this person's bluffing, but I'm not sure why, trust Eric's intuition, don't trust mine.

Speaker 1 Eric's been doing this shit since the 80s, right? He's a true expert. I'm not.

Speaker 1 And the funny thing is, when it comes to reading people, the theme of

Speaker 1 this show,

Speaker 1 We all think we're experts because we read people all the time. We make judgments all the time.
The problem is we don't know if we're right or not.

Speaker 1 So it feels like expertise when it's not because you don't get feedback. You're like, I think this person's lying, right? I think this person's telling the truth, but you have no idea.

Speaker 1 Like, you are constantly, everyone thinks they're an expert at reading people, but we don't, you know, unless you're a poker player or unless you're someone who constantly gets feedback about whether your reads were correct or not, you're a fake expert.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like in terms of feels like expertise, but it's not.

Speaker 4 In terms of kind of like capital B bias, I'm like not trying to be overly woke or anything, but like making assumptions based based on like race or gender doesn't work very well in Poker because people can like actually take advantage of your expectation of them and therefore exploit you, right?

Speaker 4 Absolutely. Age tells you a little bit more.

Speaker 4 Amateur versus professional tells you a little bit more.

Speaker 1 Biggest bluffers I've ever encountered have been the like little old men who you're like, oh, like he's so sweet. He's not bluffing me.
Yeah. He's like in your face.

Speaker 4 No, because like, and they probably, you know, these kind of older guys, they'll they'll probably hire coaches or watch videos. They're like, I can get away with impunity with like bluffing a lot.

Speaker 4 And so, yeah, I, you know,

Speaker 4 any data you have on someone has someone actually played a hand, right? It can be like an old guy who's 85 years old, who looks like he's senile, right?

Speaker 4 If you catch him making some huge bluff in the first hand, he plays, and like, that totally outweighs any priors that you had about his style of worker.

Speaker 1 So always, when in doubt, use objective, observable data and be very, very skeptical of your gut unless you're a true expert in it.

Speaker 8 Hi, my name is Julian. Great to meet you guys.

Speaker 8 My question is somewhat related, but it's essentially: how do you discern between making a read or observing a tell that gives you an advantage versus falling for somebody trying to deceive you with like a fake tell?

Speaker 1 It's a good question. And

Speaker 1 there's no clear-cut answer, but I would say two things. One, despite what Nate says, I would urge you all not to try to throw fake tells.

Speaker 1 It's a very, very risky proposition. And normally fake tells give away way more than

Speaker 1 you're trying to.

Speaker 1 I think that the most you can try to do is just standardize your behavior as much as possible.

Speaker 1 That's the advice that I got from kind of a behavioral expert who coaches poker players is try to have a routine and follow that same routine because otherwise you're going to give off information.

Speaker 4 No, it's true. Because like some tells can have the reverse meaning based on very subtle distinctions, right? Like you bet someone takes a long time to make a call on the flap, right?

Speaker 4 From like a truly novice player, we both play like charity tournaments sometimes. Probably sincere.
They probably are having trouble even reading the board, telling how strong their hand is, right?

Speaker 4 From like the next step upward, then that might be deceiving you into betting again, right?

Speaker 4 And then beyond that, it's probably more random. Someone's deliberately randomizing

Speaker 4 or whatever, but like knowing kind of what level somebody is on. And if they become aware of something weird that occurs, right? You know, if you become aware, like, so like, let's say that like,

Speaker 4 you know, I have a hand where

Speaker 4 because it's, I haven't eaten in 15 hours, right? My hand trebles a little bit when I'm like making a bet.

Speaker 4 If I'm aware of that, that will affect my play for the rest of the hand. Like, usually that's read as strength.
There are some players for which that's not true, right?

Speaker 4 You know, sometimes you talk about reverse tells, like, can I make myself kind of like fake tremble on command? I'm not saying I've never tried that, you know what I mean?

Speaker 4 But like, it's all very context-driven, which is just like human interaction, right?

Speaker 4 The same statement can be ambiguous and can mean five different things coming from five different people or from the same person, depending on the context who they're speaking to, very precise changes in wording and language and things like that, and facial expressions.

Speaker 1 Hi.

Speaker 9 We spoke in the beginning about what you're comfortable with, and I'm curious to know if you worry about the slippery slope and how to keep a healthy boundary between the things that you would consider to be acceptable, like the bluffing being strategy and white lies with the pleasantries going on to the versus going on to that deep end where,

Speaker 9 you know, where is the line between that and then suddenly in your day-to-day carrying it over too much and losing track of what is a good lie, so to speak, versus a bad lie, where the con people are.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, I

Speaker 1 just try not to lie, to be perfectly honest.

Speaker 1 You know, my next book that I'm working on right now is about cheating in games. And, you know, being around kind of that sort of deceptive behavior

Speaker 1 just

Speaker 1 gives me such awareness of how costly it is and of how costly it is for society that I've become like more truthful as I've delved into that research because I just want to like distinguish myself as much as possible from the people that I'm researching because you see what the social cost is right of people taking cheating

Speaker 1 you know taking

Speaker 1 taking the rules of the game and breaking them and bending them and

Speaker 1 being unsportsmanlike in their behavior.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, I think that there's really no slippery slope, like in the sense that if I'm playing a game like poker, you know, I'll bluff. It's a game and then

Speaker 1 I'm done playing the game. And I have zero tolerance for angle shooting, which is something that's technically not cheating, but is bending the rules, right?

Speaker 1 So it's doing something that's like a little underhanded, right? To the, to the edge of actually like being caught out for cheating. Like, I hate that.

Speaker 1 There are some players who say that it's acceptable strategy, right? If it's within the rules and it helps me win, I'm going to do it. And I think that's gross.
So like I

Speaker 1 think it's made me less tolerant of all borderline behaviors.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think ironically, I mean, like often the saddest things you see at a poker table where there's someone who just shouldn't be playing, often comes at the at the lower stakes games.

Speaker 4 And it's also, by the way, we often experience the most like abusive behavior. Do you speak up? Are you a see something, say something casual?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I always, because I have been abused myself at the poker table.

Speaker 1 As a female, you know, I'm usually a very easy target. And especially when I just started out playing, you know, and nobody knew who I was.

Speaker 1 And I was playing kind of lower stakes at kind of these really kind of low-end casinos, like I experienced a lot of abuse.

Speaker 1 And as I've kind of grown in the game and

Speaker 1 kind of made my way in it so that I'm a recognizable face and I feel more comfortable there, I want to make sure to use my voice to protect people.

Speaker 1 So if there's bad behavior against other players, against dealers, against floor staff, I will absolutely say something and call it out.

Speaker 1 There are a few poker players who hate me because

Speaker 1 I've called the floor on them and have told them that what they were doing was not funny.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's one thing you learn too, is like, because people can be quiet and low-key, right? But like, I know lots of shit about people I'm not saying anything about, right?

Speaker 4 And the same is true in reverse, especially if you are like kind of like a public figure who's known both for poker and for non-poker things.

Speaker 4 But be aware that people are being very observant about like what you're doing too. And the smart people probably aren't saying anything about it.
There's some tactical advantage from

Speaker 4 remaining quiet about it. Yep.

Speaker 1 Great. Well, thank you all so much for joining this live taping of Risky Business.
It was an absolute pleasure having you all here.

Speaker 1 I hope that you feel more comfortable about reading Tells and especially about reading Nate Silver when it comes to a lot of things.

Speaker 4 Thank you all. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 Let us know what you think of the show. Reach out to us at riskybusiness at pushkin.fm.

Speaker 1 Risky Business is hosted by me, Maria Kanakova.

Speaker 4 And by me, Nate Silver. The show is a co-production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
This episode was produced by Isaac Carter. Our associate producer is Sonia Gerwit.

Speaker 4 Lydia, Jean Kott, and Daphne Chen are our editors. And our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Mixing by Sarah Bruguer.

Speaker 1 If you like the show, please rate and review us so other people can find us too. But once again, only if you like us.
We don't want those bad reviews out there. Thanks for tuning in.

Speaker 3 And now, Superhuman Shaq.

Speaker 5 I keep telling them not to say that. I'm no superhuman.
Believe it or not, I struggle with moderate obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA.

Speaker 5 In adults with obesity, moderate to severe OSA is a condition where breathing is interrupted during sleep with loud snoring, choking, gasping for air, and even daytime fatigue.

Speaker 5 Let's just say it can sound a lot like this.

Speaker 5 Sound familiar? Learn more at don't sleep on OSA.com.

Speaker 3 This information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company.

Speaker 2 This is Malcolm Glaubel from Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage. This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union.

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Speaker 1 Honestly. Honestly.
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