Pushkin.

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

I'm Maria Kanakova.

And I'm Nate Silver.

He is Nate Silver.

You often like crack up during can but like, yeah, we're not going to do that to time.

Today We're going to be straight faced.

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 tell's deception, bluffing, and all all of that fun stuff.

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 greeting people.

It's a five hundred dollar our entry fee.

It's on the back of your ticket.

So, Nate, you and I have just come back from Las Vegas, where we were both playing in the North American Poker Tour Famous Any Famous, Famous NAPT And you know poker and life are our games where there's bluffing.

Nate, how are you at bluffing?

How are you at bluffing and poker?

And how are you at bluffing in life which might otherwise be known as lying?

I think I'm a pretty good bluffer in poker, both kind of understanding like the game theory behind win to bluff and also like kind of have a few tricks to like pull things off right ironically in like real life, I kind of I kind of been very bad at lying in real life.

I think my partner's here tonight, so you can confirm or deny that potentially.

But no, I get very uncomfortable with you know, who is it like a lie takes too much work?

Right?

Kind lazy?

No, It's like even things like like so when I was hiring people at five thirty eight, were with at Disney, right, like, what's the kind of the long term stability of this company?

At the ABC News ESPN, I be like, I don't really know.

You know, I'm under contract for a couple of years and we'll see what happens and so like.

But I'm very comfortable, like in any type of negotiation or relationship, like I don't think it serves people certainly when purpose in the long run to kind of like form a relationship on false pretenses because it gets discovered later on.

Right.

No, So I'm an honest person mostly out of like laziness in real life, but in the context of poker.

You know, poker would not exist without bluffing.

That's what makes poker poker.

I don't consider bluffing in poker to be lying.

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 will, I will, I will lie my ass off, but like 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.

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, you can trust me, I can trust you.

We're not going to lie to each other when we see each other.

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.

So in lots of study 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, you can play by the rules, or you can cheat, you can lie.

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, and that's actually, like, to me, that's really great, right, that's a very like hopeful thing for humanity, 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, 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 That ain't a good place to do.

Like in like small communities.

Then there's a reputational cast.

I'm not that you know gto about it.

It's like a reputational cost to lying or bad behavior, right, but it varies 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, and he just kind of leaves, he leaves a door open.

He's like, I'll be back in ten minutes.

I'm grabbing some lunch, right, And like you could totally shoplift like whatever you want it because it's such a high trust society there that like there might be CCTV or whatever else.

But like you take Marian, I'm not a I stole.

I will say I.

Stole Confessions of Risky Business.

I stole taco Bell from the University of Chicago cafeteria one time, right.

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 era Mark concessions, right, and it was like a fifteen minute line to check out.

I'm like, I'm you know, it's worth running the risk of getting caught dealing tacos if you have to wait fifteen minutes to check out.

All right, University of Chicago.

Next time they bought, they caught you.

Yeah, so what happened?

What were the repercussions hearing?

And I don't know.

It was the first offense, so they let me off, basically, but I'm.

So glad they let you graduate.

And you know, we wouldn't be sitting here otherwise.

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

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.

Can you imagine what would happen if you were able to tell every single time someone said a white lie to you, Like, just just think about it, right, Like it's so good to see you.

Yeah, yeah, well I love it.

I love that you look great, but like, like, look.

You know, if you have loved that baseball cafe.

Yea, thank you, marry that.

If you have a friend who cancels plans because they're sick.

Maybe they're actually sick, right, Yeah, 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 be brutally honest, Like I'm not a big believer in like I think people are like, oh, radical transparency about everything.

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

Actually, one thing I think you learned from AI models arts language models is like how laden with density, like word choices are and terns of phrase are and the particular analogy or allegory that you might use, right, Because you're often trying to communicate with like multiple people at once.

Right, You're trying to say one you're dog whistling to some group of people, and you're saying you coming different things to different people.

It's often kind of less subtle than people think if you consider like political communication example, But like language is a very rich medium and a very like strategic medium.

Yeah, absolutely, And when you're communicating, And this is something that you really learn in poker, is that language is nonverbal too, right, when you kind of go from the real life arena to kind of the arena something like games.

I used to be absolutely horrible at bluffing as well, because I'm so uncomfortable lying right, and I felt really and I felt really anxious and nervous when when I bluffed, and if I got caught bluffing, I was like, oh, no, right, I got cop bluffing.

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 you're supposed to be cop bluffing.

Sometimes 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 successfully 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, right, It is one of my strategic choices, and in this particular moment, this is the proper strategy.

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 load, So it creates a lot of kind of tension and extra overhead kind of inside your brain.

And because you have to kind of try to think, does my story make sense?

Right?

Am I being consistent?

Is it logical?

And you have to try to think, oh, am I giving off anything?

Right?

Can people tell?

Like there's there's just a lot that starts happening.

So if you stop thinking of it as you know, as a lie, you can actually reduce the cognitive load and just say, Okay, this is how I should be playing right.

Now, I'm like sometimes more comfortable bluffing than I am with a strong man, right, which is a little Karen intuitive.

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

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

So the reason I have 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 Natel said he feels more comfortable bluffing than he does telling the truth.

Because I got a message.

Oh yeah.

So I have a substack called the Leap, 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 a nice meeting.

Again.

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, and he says, I only saw one big bluff that was caught by a pair on a missed flush draw board.

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

I'm sure Nate's a better player than man.

Doesn't need my advice, but I'm giving it to you anyway.

So do you remember this hand.

Apparently some you know, someone noticed that you were bluffing too much, Nate.

How did you do in that tournament?

Nate, Maria, So I write, So we're doing a little thing with with Sam Greenwood runs a blog called pen of the Day.

So I wrote down for this whole week of poker all my questionably played in hands.

There were quite a few, if we're being honest, right, but like probably the three hands that I believe were the worst plays or hands where I didn't bluff where I should have.

Right, it's like counterintuitive how often you actually are supposed to bluff?

Yeah, in poker, because it does feel like really bad when you bluffing at caught.

It doesn't feel that bad when you have you have a big value hand, When you have like a full house or a flush or a straight and you bet and you don't get called, right, then it's like, oh, okay, well you know you didn't have anything you didn't pay off.

But if you don't bluff enough then you won't get paid off as much.

And so no, I think I probably still I think I'm like, I bluff more than the stereotyped version of Nate you have might assume, But I probably still under bluff relative to game theory or how often in practice it could probably could probably get away with it.

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

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.

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 bet, then the representing like a you know, oactch have a me yocre ham, it's better than your hand, right, 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 then make like.

Small people who don't play poker.

These are all like second best hands.

So the second where like I think my hand is just like slightly better than you are.

I love making small, yep bluffs that are very cheap with hands I 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 a limit game, which is hard to do.

I was playing like some seven card stood eight or better, right, and like I had a great draw.

I could get a low or high or whatever.

And I and I missed everything right, and the guy bet and I'm I raise just like just raising, like he's getting like fifteen to one, right, he has to be right one out of fifteen times for his bluff to right, and he folds the whole pot.

Right.

I scooped the pot with a bluff, So that felt good, Maria.

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

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

I 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, because you always act first and the person you're playing with act second and in everything.

But also like when you're talking about tells and reading people, you want more information, right, The more information the better, and so getting to go second is a huge advantage.

And so I was out of position against a player who's a very good player this whole hand, and I had jack ten, you know, really nice hand was suited.

You know, I had a straight draw and I just then ended up having a flush draw.

Anyway, I bricked everything but there were two different flush draws on the board, and he bet, he raised, you know, pre flop, he bet flop, he bet turned and then the river comes, it completes the wrong flush, not mine, 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.

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

And this is also where nonverbal tells come into play a little bit, because, you know, something about his behavior made me think that he had been trying to bully me out of the hand for a long time, 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.

Yeah, I'm a big believer in nonverbal tells and kind of it often.

I mean there are sometimes specific things I'm not sure when you have way too many secrets, but it's more often kind of like an overall vibe.

I've Maria, I've kind of become a you can play 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 Belli?

They're usually from Belgium?

Like which part of Belgium are you from?

Just kind of see if people are comfortable or not, and like, 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 rebraising either because I'm all in any way, or or I'm not going to 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 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.

For example, one is like when someone's not telling the full story, and like, yeah, and poker, you 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.

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.

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?

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, All of this tells you something about people 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, It's made me someone who's much more attuned to the signals that other people give out because I mean at the poker table, it can help me take your money, but it also like it's rewarded.

Right, When you truly listen to other people, you are able to understand 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.

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 ego centric 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.

It helps you strategically, but then it helps you in real life just be a better person.

No.

One of the best pieces of poker advice I've listened to you recently.

I think he's from Hungry Horse Poker.

I think his name is Mark Goon, a good YouTuber.

Right, he's like, remember thinking about the poker world from the opponent's point of view, right, like putting yourself in the other player's shoes and like what's bothering them?

Yeah, especially for for amateur players, right, one thing you see all the time and like big events like the main event or other big events.

The World Sairs of Poker is like some guy comes in.

He won his kind of like local home game tournament.

His friends bought him in for tank the World Series of Poker.

It's some prize from some series they have, right, And you can like kind of pinpoint the moment where something like I want to play tight, gonna play solid, Right, you can like pinpoint the moment when they kind of were like, shit, this isn't working, right, they panic a little bit.

Some of these are more obvious.

So I played a cash game at the BLA show last night.

I'm my way out of town.

This is true dgen behavior.

Guys would write football.

There was a guy and 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.

I'm like, this guy probably is not bluffing old punch right when like when it was like his girlfriend's they are like approving it is from them.

Is like play in every hair like i'd be.

You know, he's not bluffing like ever, right, don't think so, Nate.

The funny thing is it turns out that we humans are remarkably good at controlling our faces.

Right, We are really good at poker faces.

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.

Look.

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, 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.

But what you're not used to controlling is the rest of your body.

Right.

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, it's it's the hands.

It's the hands.

Yes, anyone who's read the biggest bluff, I have a whole chapter about the hands.

It's the pulse.

Often.

I mean, I find a guy in the main event that the World series where like like literally had like a real time heart rate monitor hook up to him, where like he just had this thing where like his heart was beating his neck.

If you have that happen, it can happen to people temporarily or permanently.

We're like we're a skyrif wear like a sweatshirt or something.

Right, But like it was very correlated, Like I knew because he made it.

We just you know, look, you pick up a whole vocabulary just based on having a lot of reps doing these things.

Right, he was already making mannerisms that I associate with having like a very strong hand.

In this case, he had aces and you saw his heartbeat and saw, Okay, here's a guy where his heartbeat beats faster when he has his strong hand, right, which is not true for everybody.

Some people are the opposite.

And so like now, like I basically know is like hand strength for the rest of the day, Like that's a huge advantage that explicit is rare, but like, yeah, it's often kind of like also watching people before you get into big moments in the hand, right, because once they're locked in, then they're self conscious.

Like what you're trying to figure out too, is like, okay, somebody makes an action.

Was that conscious?

Was it unconscious?

If it was unconscious to them, 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.

It's all.

It's like regular language, right, it's all.

It's all very contextual.

They said that might be strong and one context might be weak.

In other context.

You're trying to like paint a semantic portrait.

We'll be back right after this.

So there's kind of three bigger picture psych things here that I want to kind of draw out.

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, 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, you would have no way of knowing if this was a signal of strength or weakness, and the exact same thing might actually signal very different outcomes, very different.

You know, I'm being lied to or this person and 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.

Why, by the way, LIGHTE detector tests are absolute bullshit, all of them.

There's no good CIA FBI, Like nobody has a good and actually accurate LE detector because well, first of all, you can fake them.

But secondly, like 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?

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?

Right?

Or am I stressed because like I haven't gotten enough sleep and this is a really.

Stressful situation if I am angry?

Yeah?

Or what were you?

Exactly?

Yeah?

Exactly?

Like I was like, so you're something, you bet you'll put out whatever I'm betting seventy bucks, I put up seven ten dollars chips or a fifty dollars chip, But like if I'm like hungry and I have eaten, then you can get like shaky hands, you like absolutely seventy bucks, right y, because you don't want to like although honestly, you know you can have reverse tels.

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

I mean they're like, I do I do things.

I don't have a little stitching as a person.

I'll do I do a little things to mix it up.

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

Yeah, so that's so yeah.

Number two like you really don't know.

Number three is 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 it 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?

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 do you have feedback to know what that deviation means.

So there's so many steps that need to actually happen for you to be able to make an actual read, which is why when you see these meta analyzes and psychology of nonverbal behavior usually you find that, you know, it's kind of fifty to fifty right, that it's almost no better than chance.

And even if people can get better than chance, they improve from like fifty percent to fifty four percent, right, which sure four percents a lot, but it's still like still incredibly noisy if you're trying.

To know and also with a strategy, if you ignore the bluffs or the tells for a second, right in strategy in poker, I mean we all have some sense for like empirically how the population plays.

You're talking about this before backstage, like, oh, this spot is underbluffed by the player population overall.

Therefore, if I buffed this spot, people will fold a lot.

But it feels like in poker that can shift and adjust in different player populations, and like, you know, look, one thing about having like a capitalist, free market economy is like the market finds a way.

The market finds a way to exploit any loopholes, to exploit any inefficiencies for better or worse.

And the same is true in poker 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 under bluff on average, right, 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.

Yeah, it's really interesting.

One of the kind of first things that I learned from Eric is that 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, when people see me, they expect something, and when they see you, they expect something else because you know, people have biases, people have preconceptions about how different people play, 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.

I am not you know, a world class ten bracelet whenever you know, I'm a very different sort of player.

And so when I do something that, when I run a suicide bluff, I get a fold.

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.

Right, some of those huge bicep guys know exactly what they're doing and they're putting their their false exactly.

And if you have some and being aware of life is complicated and like I can get different.

I mean you've talked about written about because bluff.

How like some men want to beat the hell out of yeah women at the table.

Some want to be chivl risks 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.

He must be very tight and very straightforward.

The other is like, here's a guy who probably has what do you say amount of money he's in this is a hobby.

He probably doesn't have some fun he can afford the buyings he's splashing around, right, So, like people, I can get bifcaate between like 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, or like even what hat I wear, right, hat, it's like wolf hat I sometimes wear that my partner hates, right, but like that create some more aggressive image.

You have a Vegas Knight's hat that I sometimes wear, which is like if you're playing in Vegas, it's 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 deception.

Being able to read people is so incredibly difficult because our own baseline is incredibly biased.

Right when you see anyone, whether you know it or not, you are just constantly like making judgments, judgments, judgments, judgments, 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.

Do you ever meet someone and you're like, I don't like this person.

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, and you might even end up liking them later, but like, yeah, often you do, but like that initial reaction, like I definitely have that like ooof 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, 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.

But 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.

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, and that's why, you know, 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.

And we'll be right back after this break, so.

We'll see how well Nate controls some of his tells.

We are going to play a game called Lowden Thinks.

So what this game is is I, well, one person it's going to be me this time, is going to ask the Lawden 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, Now, the actual answers to this doesn't matter whatsoever.

All that matters is what Nate thinks it is.

So Nate is going to write his answer down.

Don't write your answer to this one, but for you have an estimate.

Okay.

So Nate has an estimate.

So he's going to write it down so that we know that it's locked in and that he's not lying, right.

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 answers.

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 ten, right, Nate thinks it's ten, and you would say ten's too low, right, So you pick a number that's you are allowed to say either under if you think it's under ten, or pick another number.

So you might be like ten, that's crazy, fifty and you might be like, oh, fifty, that's crazy, that's too high.

Under.

Basically, you keep going until one person says under, and whoever gets closest to not the real answer, but what Nate thinks the answer is is the person who wins.

So you know, let's say that you had said two hundred and you had said under.

Okay, and Nate, what was your answer?

All right?

So you I think that's it doesn't matter.

Doesn't that's the point, right, it doesn't matter, So you would have won because you said two hundred and you had the under on two hundred.

We don't care about the actual answer, So 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.

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 hundred, he'd probably give you a look like you're crazy.

Or maybe he's going to uh, you know, maybe he's going to protect him his uh, 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 a lotten question?

We've got one hand back there, Yeah, come on up, Yeah, you back there, and we need a second.

All right, up, you come all right.

So here's my question.

How many podcasts are there in the world right now?

Can I ask for clarifying questions or no?

How many podcasts?

How many podcasts in the world?

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

All right?

What's your name?

My name is Rob, and what's your name Roger?

All right, Rob, We're gonna start off the game with you, Rob.

Why don't you throw out a number?

All right?

Big m I'll say ten.

Thousand, all right, Roger, are you gonna go over?

Are you gonna take the under?

Over?

All right?

So what's your number?

Twenty five?

All right?

Twenty five thousand, Rob, it's back to you, hess twenty five.

I will I will match that.

No, you can't match that.

We're not sorry.

You have to.

You have to either take a number that's higher or say under.

I'm gonna say thirty k.

Okay, And remember, guys, you need to be looking at Nate, not at me.

All right, So thirty k Roger?

Are you?

What are you?

What are you gonna do?

Do you like thirty?

Are you under?

Are you over?

Oh?

Look at Nate.

He's Nate's losing it over here, melting under pressure, a swearty guy.

I have a better poker face, And.

Alright, thirty five thousand, Rob, back to you.

I'll go under it, all right, Nate?

What's your number?

Three point six million?

At right?

All right, Roger, you win because you're closer, but you are everyone is off by well, the two of you are off by an order of magnitude from Nate's real guest.

Do we know the real number?

We do have the real number.

I happen to look it up because I wanted to know.

Four point five million?

Holy shit, pretty good might be an assasination thing.

Guys, does everyone here have a podcast?

Because it seems like, uh, all right, we're gonna do We're gonna do.

Do you guys want one more shot?

Can idem myself?

Yes, yes, we're gonna do a re We're gonna do a rematch because yeah, Rob wants a shot at redemption.

All right, let's take a shot.

All right, So so this one we'll do, uh, we'll do slightly non podcasting.

We'll pay uh respects to our venue.

How many live events does ludlow House host in a year.

Of any kind?

Many?

Kind?

No more clarifying questions leading the witness.

You got your number.

I'm like, I'm like doing some deceptive shit, right, I want people like you know, having reach side down.

So I'm trying to mix up.

All right, we've got some We've got some deceptive tells.

All right, Rob, this one you start us off seven and fifty All right, Roger under you're taking the under.

Oh well that was a short round of laden.

Five fifty five.

But what's the answer.

This doesn't matter.

The answer doesn't matter.

This is what.

I don't have the answer too because it is not public.

But as far as I can tell, ludlow House does five to six live events a week, so multiply that by okay, maybe a little high, yeah, by fifty weeks.

My justification was that as I was reading him, I was like, I feel like he usually would aim high.

He did that with the how many podcasts were out in the whole world.

I like this, 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 I'm getting I'm getting booed.

Apparently the audio the audience does not like that.

So Roger, congratulations, An I don't mean that you are our London.

Thanks champion, Thank you both so much.

Thank you for volunteering.

Thank you.

All right, we have time for a few questions.

Yeah, 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.

Thank you.

I'm curious for you, guys.

This is both a poker question while so out of 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, And do you feel like intuition comes into play for you, like having cards, sunds like, et cetera, or there's a big differentiation.

That's that's a really great question.

And I am someone who people get mad at because I'm like, do not follow your gut feeling.

It's bullshit.

So here's here's my rationale.

It's not always true.

So humans have very strong gut feelings, right, really strong intuitions, and our intuitions can be either true or false.

Right, they can be either correct or not.

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

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

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, 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.

Your brain might be noticing patterns right there.

I mean pattern recognition going on that your conscious brain isn't aware of because it's at a deeper level.

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 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?

And if the answer is yes, then go for it, trust it.

If the answer is no, then rely on other things.

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's idell says, I think this person's bluffing, but I'm not sure why.

Trust Eric's intuition, don't trust mine.

Eric's been doing this shit since the eighties.

Right, he's a true expert.

I'm not.

And the funny thing is when it comes to reading people, the theme of you know this show, 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, 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, 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.

Feels like expertise, but it's not.

In terms of kind of like capital be biased.

I'm like not trying to be overly woke or anything, but like making assumptions based on like race or gender doesn't work for a one poker because people can like actually take advantage of your expectation of them and therefore exploit you.

Right, Absolutely, age tells you a little bit more amateur versus professional tells you a little bit more.

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, it's like in your face because like and it probably you know, these kind of older guys will probably hire coaches or watch videos like I can get away with impunity with like bluffing a lot, and so yeah, I you know, any data you have when someone has someone actually played a hand, right, it can be like an old guy who's eighty five years old who looks like he's senile.

Right, 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 about his style.

Of 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.

Hi, my name is Julian.

Great to mean you guys.

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

It's a good question, and there's no 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 tales.

It's a very very risky proposition.

And normally fake tales give away way more than you you know, than you're trying to.

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

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.

Now, 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 all on the flop, right 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 from like the next step upward, then that might be deceiving you into betting again, right and then beyond that, it's probably more random someone's liberately randomizing or or whatever, but like knowing kind of what level somebody is on and if they if they become aware of something weird that occurs, right, you know, if you become aware like so, like let's say that, like you know, I have a hand where because it's I haven't eaten in fifteen hours, right, my hand troubles a little bit when I'm like making a bet.

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, you know, sometimes stuck 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.

But it's all very context driven, which is just like human interaction.

Right, 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 and wording and language and things like that and facial expressions.

Hi, We've spoke at 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 versus going on to that deep end where 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.

Yeah, I mean, I just try not to lie, to be perfectly honest.

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 just gives me such awareness of how costly it is and of how costly it is for society that I've become 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, you know, taking taking the rules of the game and breaking them and bending them and being unsportsmenlike in their behavior.

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, all bluff, it's a game, and then 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, 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 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 I think it's made me less tolerant of all borderline behaviors.

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 king.

And it's also by the way, we often experience the most like abusive behavior.

Do you speak up if are you a see something, say something?

Yeah, I always because I have been abused myself at the poker table 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, 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, and as I've kind of grown in the game and 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.

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

There are a few poker players who hate me because I've like I've called the floor on them and have told them that what they were doing was not funny.

Yeah, that's one thing you learned 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, And the same is true and reverse, especially if you are like kind of like a public figure who's known both for poker and for non poker things.

But beware, the people are being very observant about what you're doing too, and this s park people probably aren't saying anything about it.

There's some tactical advantage from remaining quiet about it yep right.

Well, thank you all so much for joining this live taping of Risky Business.

It was an absolute pleasure of having you all here.

I hope that you feel more comfortable about reading tells and especially about reading Nate Silver.

And when it comes to a lot of thanks, thank you all.

Thank you so much.

Let us know what you think of the show.

Reach out to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot FM.

Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova.

And by me Nate Silver.

The show was a whole production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia.

This episode was produced by Isaa Carter.

Our associate producer is Sonya gerwit Lydia, Jean Kott and Daphne Chen are our our editors, and our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.

Mixing by Sarah Bruger.

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.

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Thanks for tuning in.