Pushkin.

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

I'm Maria Kanakova.

And I'm Nate Silver.

Now today in the show, it is the annual edition of the Riskies.

Use.

There are awards for the best and worst decisions of the year from kind of a gambling slash game, theory, lens, a little bit of poker, a little bit of sports, a little bit of politics, just the usual Nate Emeria tactics.

Marie, are you are you excited?

I am excited, Nate.

I love handing out awards, especially for bad decision making.

And there have been a lot of bad decisions this year.

A record number.

I mean, it's a world accelerates.

Were the more than bad decisions last year?

I don't know, I don't know.

We've we've had some pretty bad decision years.

But yeah, let's let's get into the risk case and we can we can maybe our listeners can compare to last year to see which year was worse.

Yeah, no, I mean, we have we have a new president.

It feels like Trump's the president forever, right, But like when the year began, Joseph Robinette Biden was president.

Then why is it so funny.

Speaking of humor, why is it so funny when you say his middle name?

I don't know, Robinette.

What the fuck is that you know?

Is that some Delaware?

Are we sure Delaware is real?

Have you ever been to Delaware?

Are you sure birds are real?

Name?

I'm birds more than Delaware, probably probably oh point three percent of our listeners are in Delaware.

We don't mean to insult you.

We know it's a beautiful I've been.

To Delaware on the train.

Usually, pass.

On a train doesn't count.

You have to like, uh, sleep, eat or pee somewhere birth to count.

That is having visited estate.

Wait wait, wait, wait, hold on.

Peeing in a state counts as visiting.

So like if I get off the highway and use the rest area, it counts as having visited.

Correct, fascinating.

Those are the rules.

Okay, okay, those are the rules.

Those are the rules.

Fine, excellent.

I don't know if I've ever been to Delaware.

I passed through on a train.

I've probably peed on the train in Delaware.

No, No, the train.

You have to leave the security perimeter, Maria, Like, it's a little bit if you go outside and like take like a stretch break or or a smoke break or a bathroom break at the station in Wilmington.

I think that counts, but like I don't.

You have to leave the actual train, all right.

So let's get on with the year in the rear view mirror and the Risky Awards.

So our first ward goes to the hero call of the Year, which is a decision that looked crazy at the time but turned out to be absolutely brilliant.

And I felt myself coming up short.

I was like, there were a lot of shit decisions and decisions that looked bad at the time and ended up being bad.

What's something that you think is something that looked crazy and turned out to be absolutely brilliant.

I guess Zoron Mumdanni choosing to run for mayor, and you, I mean, it didn't seem crazy.

It didn't seem crazy.

That's the thing.

I thought, what you going to do?

I had Mom Donnie with a question mark because like Mum Donnie fits into it.

We definitely need to give Zoron Mum Donnie an award for the risk case.

But maybe it is hero call of the year.

Maybe the people who supported Zoron very early on are the hero call of the year.

I mean, I guess all the people who sucked up to Trump and then got pardoned.

You gotta, you know, give credit whords to George Sentos for example.

I don't know, but I guess it didn't seem crazy.

It it does seem crazy.

So, yeah, hero call like something where you're you know, it's it's a hero call for poker players out there.

You know what a hero call is.

It's not you're holding aces and you end up calling top set.

It's you know, you're calling with ace high on a you know, on an incredibly wet board.

Seems crazy, but it turns out to be brilliant.

Or you're calling with jack hi or ten high because you think that the person has a busted straight draw and has five high and uh, yeah, that's the hero call of the year.

Well we'll put mom Donnie there kind of in yeah with a question mark, because I think that at the beginning of the campaign, when he did decide to run, like, the odds really did not look good for him.

Nate, do you happen to remember what the prediction markets and just what the polls were saying.

I'm sure you start.

I'm sure he was at one percent or whatever.

Yeah, right, he was like a incredible underdog right at the beginning.

Yeah, all right, well let's try number two.

The worst fold, the decision that left everyone wondering why walk away from such a sure thing?

I mean, quite obviously if you're a sports fan.

The Luca Dontch trade was this year, and it was still the most inexplicable trade in sports history.

Lucas averaging thirty five points a game, nine rebounds, nine assists this year, shooting forty seven percent on field goals, Dallas trade him for the perpetually injured Anthony Davis.

They did back into getting number one overall pick Cooper Fly due to a stroke of luck.

Nevertheless, general manager Nico Harrison was recently fired from the team.

Yeah, this was like the still the weirdest trade in sports history.

I was at this random little poker tournament in Maryland quite late.

My phone was dead.

When it scrolled across the ESPN bottom line, I like literally thought I was having like a stroke or hallucinating.

I'm like, why the fuck would you trade Luca for Anthony Davis?

But it was real.

I mean, it has to be like the winner here.

Yeah, that's I mean, I think that for sports fans, that's definitely the winner.

And I actually remember doing this podcast episode with you and reading about this, and as a non sports fan, I was like, wait, what in the world is going on?

This is very weird.

So I had a different one for worst fold.

I had the Democrats in the government shutdown folding and deciding to avoid that.

I had that as the worst fold of the year for the decision that left everyone wondering, what the fuck did you just do?

Why did we why were we even in this pot right?

Like?

Why did we play this hand to the river?

If you're going to fold, like, what were you thinking you do?

The next one is cooler of the year.

Cooler if you're not familiar, is when when you have a very good hand, your opponent has an even better hand and there's that much you can do to avoid it.

So you have packet kings.

I have King to Maria as pocket aces.

So for this one, and this one is a little bit controversial, but I would put Sam Altman and open Ai, who was leading up until very recently, kind of in all indicators, and then I've realized there's somewhat of our recency bias here, But you know, absolute great hand has been like all the best researchers market edge and seems to have somehow fallen behind by sticking to kind of their you know, their approach and potentially putting a little bit too much weight on how do we generate money right away with things like Sora et cetera, like basically creating slop as opposed to trying to refine models and seeing you know, Gemini Claude leapfrog over them in a lot of different metrics.

So I think that there was no reason that had to have happened, because I think that open Ai had the biggest resources out of any company.

So, like I said, maybe this is maybe you don't agree with that, but for me, like it seems like they had a great hand, but it's right now.

They'll probably not They're not going to lose in the long term, but right now it seems like they're on the back foot.

Yeah.

I mean this is a slightly different spirit of cooler in which it's kind of like maybe misplaying a very robust situation, right, Yeah, I know.

I think the smartest people who are observers of AI say that, like open Ai has probably lost its lead in the large language model category squandered.

It's lead.

Like the euation is also going up by three acts or five x or something over the course of the year.

I'm sure Sam Altman is still sleeping well at night.

But yeah, I mean, you know who well, I mean, if you want another sports one, Notre Dame missing the college football playoff because they think they're special and refuse to join a conference.

That's maybe a little esoteric Maria, but like, but they're they're privileged, a privileged bunch of kids who who you know, think they're special and couldn't get in line and join a conference and play a real schedule.

But that's that's you know, not a hearing nor there.

All right, Well, there we have it, so tilt of the year, so kind of what's the most emotional decision of the year.

I've got I've got lots for this one.

I mean, it feels like we have to mention Elon Muskets some point had a fantastic year and you know, kind of crashing and burning out of Doge even faster than I thought, and I thought it wouldn't last particularly long.

Yeah, I think I think, you know, I think Elon's got to be up there.

What do you think.

We're I was going to give it to RFK, who has emotionally, you know, been so I mean, he's doing quite well, He's accomplished everything.

But I think that he is one of the most emotional people that we have seen, and his crusade against vaccine, against science in general, against NIH funding, against all of that, seems to be very emotionally driven, someone who cannot be convinced by any data and just has this personal vendetta and feels like everything is personal about him, right, Like everything that he says he makes it feel like, oh, people are out to get me personally, and I am the scapegoat and I am going to prove them all wrong.

So it seems to me like he's the tiltiest person like I would actually, you know, I would bet that playing against him at the poker table would be an interesting experience.

I think he's someone who would let he would take everything personally and really let the losses go to go to his head.

Do you think that Trump would be good at poker?

Now?

I don't.

We've talked about this before.

I think that Trump's over confidence and overblown ego would keep him from being good at poker, right, he doesn't take negative feedback, he would think that he's a lot better than he actually is, which is actually idea, like, those are the best people to play poker against, the ones who have an overblown sense of their own skills, right, because they're not going to be taking negative criticism, negative feedback, and they're not going to be learning as much, and they're going to be the ones who are blaming the cards, blaming the deck, you know, blaming everything except their own play.

And you want that, right, you want someone who is incapable of learning from those types of things.

Now, he would be someone who I think would be very successful against knits in the short term because he'd be super aggressive, right, he'd be someone who would kind of fight for every pot, who would bet big, who would like have all this bluster and confidence.

And if you don't see through that, I think that aggression pays off in the immediate term, but in the long term, if you then don't adjust and keep that up and you're playing against good players who do adjust to you, you're going to go broke.

Yeah, and poker the better failure mode is aggression, you know what I mean?

Yeah, you induce mistakes and different types of mistakes from your opponents.

And you know, I think it'd be better than better than Biden.

Better than Biden.

Yeah, I mean that's not saying much, but yeah, he probably would be better than all right, So let's let's go to another good decision.

Ish, it doesn't have to be good.

Actually, it's the GTO call of the year, so game theory optimalist call.

So the most balanced sound decision of the year.

What do we got for balanced?

Well, especially in the NFL in general strategy on fourth downs for examples, becoming much more gt O.

But i'll do a politician when here give it to Gavin Newsome.

Oh yeah, yeah, that's a good one.

Not my favorite, not my favorite personality.

However, he did understand that if Republicans were willing to engage in mid decade redistricting in states like Texas, that California should reciprocate.

It's kind of straight out of like the Prisoner's Alemma.

And you think aggressive gerrymandering is bad, even think the GUP started, You know, you have to respond, and so Newsoen did that aggressively and effectively, and so he wins this award in my.

Opinion, Yeah, I think I think that that that's actually a very good, very good pick on your side, Nate.

And it's a breath of fresh air to see someone actually make a good political decision.

Right, We've had so many shitty political decisions this year, and on both sides of the aisle, right, like so many people just doing things where you're like, what in the world are you even thinking?

And he did.

He did see that opportunity and he executed it well.

He also was able to get the support he needed to pass the measures that he needed.

He was able to even people who don't like him, you know, had to smile at his social media kind of his social media team was good at mimicking Trump and kind of you know, making making him at least for a moment when that social media war.

So people I think.

Yeah, I'm not I'm not sure gonna gi him too much credit for that part.

But but but he has getting ground, and he has getting ground in like prediction markets for the nomination race and polls and so you know, look, I mean a lot of it is cringe.

Unfortunately, cringe sometimes works.

Cringe.

There's a big audience for and you know, especially for like older MSNBC watching Democrat.

They love the fucking Cringe.

They love Cringe, and Gavin Newsom is cringe.

His Twitter account is cringe, and Cringe is winning.

We'll be back right after this.

Uh okay.

Next, the Danny Kanaman Memorial Cognitive Bias of the Year Award, Cognitive Bias Best explains twenty twenty five.

I am going to say, uh a mix of I mean, these are very related of recency bias with historic amnesia and general like alliteracy about how things have played out in history, where all of the decisions seem to be focused on such short term thinking, right, just using like who who are we?

Like, who am I beating right now?

Who am I trying to get one over on?

Right now?

Who am I trying to beat today without kind of this consideration of weight, Like, there's a lot of history here and this is not just the present moment.

There are you know there there are data points that are going to kind of be helpful to me that happened way in the past, and I have to be thinking into the future as well, you know, things like you know tariffs, right, It just seems to just have a certain historical amnesia where you know, how did this kind of thing play out in the past, but in general, just all the decisions seem to be very shortsighted and very in the moment focused, without without grounding in how does this actually look?

What are the implications?

What can I take from historical lessons so that this decision is actually good for the future and not just for the present moment.

Yeah, Look, it's pretty classic for new presidents to come in to the Oval Office and overread their men.

Date Trump being so insistent on tariffs, I mean, even if they haven't had quite as much of a negative impact as some economists might have predicted.

You know, consumers have been very gloomy about the economy for ever since Liberation Day quote unquote back in April.

You know, without this investment in AI, it's not clear the economy will be growing very much at all.

And Trump just won an election on inflation.

Now one calls it affordability.

You know what, call it fucking if I've already had this rant on the show before.

You know, affordability feels too fucking euphemistic to me.

Call it see a little too highbrow.

Call it fucking inflation.

You win an election on inflation, and then you pass a bunch of terror policies that cause higher inflation.

It seems like some type of some type of cognitive bias or deserves to be somewhere in the in the negative category of these awards.

Yeah.

Absolutely absolutely, So let's uh, let's go on to our Djen of the Year, which we as of last year renamed the Epei Masuhara Award for Djen of the Year.

We don't have anyone quite on that level, but there were a lot of contenders for this one.

I mean, what about Chauncey Billups, the former head coach of the Portland Trail Blazer.

Oh had Chauncey, I had Terry Rosier, I had all all the.

Yeah, we have.

I mean we had the indictments, the NBA indictments, So you can you can take any of those athletes, coaches, like people who were making lots of money and who made very very questionable decisions that have jeopardized their.

I think I'm gonna I'm gonna get with Chauncey.

He's the most prominent of these figures, right.

He is an NBA Hall of Famer, I believe, otherwise known as co Conspiratory Number eight.

I believe or I forget which number he was, I'm gonna give I'm gonna give Chauncey the award.

Okay, that's that makes sense.

So I initially gave it to Chauncey, and then I thought maybe Terry because Terry actually threw games as well, so as far as we know, allegedly allegedly through games by letting people bet on like different outcomes and then you know, sitting out and uh fading injury, et cetera, et cetera.

So depending on Yeah, but Chauncey Billups is obviously more prominent.

So yeah, does Michael ms Rahey is her consideration.

Here for Djen of the Year?

Yeah, sure, why not?

I mean, Michael Misrahi is quite a djen.

He won the World Series main Event, he won the Players Championship, so Djen of the Year could be a good thing.

There are rumors that he was like out quite late at various clubs and anyway, but I think I think Chauncey earned this.

But in a weaker year that we'd have to consider Michael ms Rahi.

That's that's that's fair.

We we had a very robust slate of nominees this year.

It's like the Oscars when you know, the best Picture nominees come out and you're like shit, like, how do I choose?

Right?

This year, the Dejen of the Year slate was really full.

We're sorry everyone who didn't get it better?

Like next year, how about the Knit of the Year?

Nate?

Who do you think was the nidias this year?

Who is a guy who falled as king at the final table?

Is that Kenny Hallard is supposed to be a great guy, right, but it you couldn't give it to You could give it to Chuck Schumer for folding on the shutdown.

Here's an obscure one, which I find kind of funny.

Right, So, Brad Lander was the New York City compatroller is by some measures, was the most broadly liked candy in the New York mayor race, and he he basically endorsed Zoran and helped clinch Zoran finishing in first place in the in the primary right because he thought he was going to get I mean, I'm sure he hates Cuomo, which understandable, but he thought he was going to get like the deputy mayor's job.

And Zora was like, nope, sorry, bro, you know I'll endorse your campaign for Congress.

But like, so that was a case where like you make a sacrifice and wind up getting getting nothing for it, right, I mean, he got lots of kudos on Twitter from Democrats who don't like Cuomo, but like that comes to mind a little bit.

Yeah, that's that's an interesting one.

Yeah, I was I was going to go with someone like Schumer in line with my Democratic shutdown as the worst fold of the year, because nance you know, that's the thing.

If you're in it, you're gonna end up making nitty folds that you should not be making.

Right, Like, those two things go hand in hand.

One of the worst things about being in it is that you fold hands that you really should be calling and you don't put yourself Sure, you can protect your chips, but you also don't put yourself in a position to win.

Right.

That kind of strategy ends up putting you on the back foot repeatedly.

And I think that that's kind of what happened here.

Did you make any bad folds this here, Maria, I don't know.

I well, no, no, in the sense that I wasn't shown.

I think I'm sure that I made some very bad folds.

But in order to know whether you made a bad fold.

The person has to then show you what they had right, And if you aren't sure if they were bluffing or not, then you don't know if it was a bad fold.

I'm guessing that I made some really bad folds this year, Like if I were betting on it, I would say, like over ninety percent certain that I've made some really bad folds.

But I can't.

I didn't have any of those situations where someone then showed me in their hand.

I had situations where they then told me what they had, but I don't trust that because I don't trust poker players to actually tell me the truth about what they had.

In a lot of situations poker players life.

I had one in a home tournament where like this woman was quite bad at poker, and I had like it was a board with like three of a kind on the board.

It was like, you know, seven seven seven, nine king or something right, And I had like a pair of nine full house right, and she battle a lot with a pair of sixes right, so underpair to the board a weaker full house and I had and I just thought, well, okay, is a really tight player.

But like she didn't actually know, she didn't realize that like having a full house was not actually a great hand on that board because there's so many better full houses or quads.

So I folded because I gave her too much credit.

Basically, that's funny.

There's a you know, the one of the pivotal poker scenes in Molly's Game.

You've seen the movie, yes, So there's there's a scene where a good player makes a huge fold because he doesn't realize that he's playing against a bad player.

He didn't realize I think that Brad was bad and then it ends up and then he'd buy mistake flashes one of the cards and he realizes that he made a bad fold and it puts him on megatilt and he hands up losing tons and tons of money.

That is sometimes one of the worst things that you can do, which is actually an interesting consideration for this award.

When you aren't capable, when you give other people too much credit, sometimes you can you can be nittier than you should be.

And so that's why you know, for good decision making, you really need to be accurate in your evaluations, not only of yourself but of other people.

And that can be really difficult.

In the absence of data, right, Like, if you don't have enough data points, how do you make those determinations?

And obviously some of it comes from experience, but then you fill in the blanks with biases, with you know what you're kind of you try to fill in the blanks as best you can.

Sometimes you write, and sometimes you're just absolutely wrong.

And sometimes Nate, have you, I mean, I'm sure you've been in this situation, both in poker and non in poker, I've had situations where I have folded huge hands, both literal and metaphorical, because I've read the other person as being incredibly strong, and I was right in that they thought they were incredibly strong, but they actually weren't, so the read was correct, but they didn't realize where they were relative to me in that situation.

And so that's something.

To where just a narrow piece of actual booker advice for listeners, right, because Marie and I both have this experience of playing an extremely wide range of game textures, from the toughest opponents in the world and high rollers to the worship you've ever seen play poker and like charity events, right, And when you get in that really bad section of the pool.

Then you have to give some consideration to your absolute hand strength, right like that, Yeah I have a flush.

There may be better flushes and full houses on the board.

But like, but the fact is, disapponent might think top pair is good hand.

They don't know how to read the relative strength of hands and so you know, so yeah, don't don't fold good hands for cheap against bad opponents who you don't have that firm a read on.

Yeah right, we really and we really stereotype bad players based on you know, one or two pieces of information.

And yeah, it's just a matter of hedging a little bit more.

Absolutely absolutely staying on the poker.

Uh.

Note Risky Business bracelet, which host was the better poker player this year?

I have no idea in Nate, I don't actually.

Well, you won a tournament.

Yeah, I think it has to be you, right right, I had been, i'd have been a World series.

You had a better World Series than I did.

I think winning a tournament that Maria.

Well, I appreciate that night.

But but risky business listeners, the year is not yet over.

We still have a few weeks to go.

I am in Vegas playing the World Poker Tour.

Win Championships, and Nate is heading to the Bahamas to play in the double Tomorrow.

I'll be in the Bahamas playing, uh, playing this twenty five K, sixty million guaranteed tournament.

And it sure is gonna be nice, Maria.

When I win that tournament, it's gonna and that will and that will.

Actually I'm gonna have to give my Risky Business bracelet to you, Nate.

I'm gonna have to give it back unless unless I win the ten thousand dollars made event here at the win, in which case we can just agree just to let the bracelet.

No, I think, I think I think the paradise would still it would still away there.

It's a sixty million guaranteed price.

Bool.

I understand, Nate.

But I've already won a tournament this year, so I'm just I'm just saying.

Okay, okay, okay, Marie, that will be.

That will be putting me into two wins.

But well, just but but when you win.

Forward to that problem where we've both won these I know, amazing.

Bracelets, it's gonna be it's gonna be a great problem to have.

We're going to have to cut the Risky Business bracelet in half.

I think in that situation and share it.

I'm not gonna I'm not gonna take it for myself because you you will be worthy of having the bracelet as well.

Or maybe we get a second one.

Maybe we uh, you know, go all out on the budget and get two bracelets.

I'm look, I'm looking.

I'm looking forward to my new vacation home and asking them and to buy with this with.

This's been interesting.

Are you Are you a skier?

No skiing seems like a terrible idea.

I'm not.

I'm not a knit It just seems like don't people get injured all the time when they're skiing.

They do?

Yes, Yeah, that seems crazy, Like it's just like and when you talk to you, he's like, oh, yeah, I broke my broke my colorone one.

You know, It's like it just seems like a very very very very high rate of injury.

Yes, my family is a family of skiers.

And I started skiing when I was I think, oh, five years old, And I don't really ski much anymore because you know, I don't live near a mountain, and at some point, like after college, I just kind of stopped skiing.

Everyone else in my family continues skiing.

I am the only person in my family who has not gotten the serious injury from skiing.

Yeah, because I stopped everyone else broken bones, torn acls, concussions, and other traumatic head injuries.

Like, you don't have to be a knit to be afraid of injuring yourself.

And we'll be right back after this break.

All right.

We've got two awards from the podcast The Town About Hollywood that we awarded last year as well.

So those two are the Mia Coolpa I Was Wrong Award and the second Haters I Was Right Award.

So what do you have for those?

Is there anything that you think you were wrong about or you were right about?

Well, you know, I keep track of my sports bets.

There's lots of individual things that I was wrong about, certainly on the sports side.

You know.

I'm thinking back on columns.

I mean, I read a column earlier in the year about like how the market, like the stock market, wouldn't tame Trump or curb his excesses.

I think that is more wrong than right, because it seems to he seems to be upset when like the arrows go down in the stock market quite a bit.

I don't know, I mean, there weren't very many elections this year, which produces and oppeticially me to be obnoxiously wrong about things.

I was almost wrong on the shut town.

I thought that like this kind of pretense of like shutting the government down for for healthcare was not a very good plan, right and then and but then lo and behold, after a couple of weeks, Trump was threatening people's food stamps, said he was becoming much less popular.

I'm like, oh boy, I'm I have to eat some curl on this one.

And that's fucking cave.

So I guess I was.

I guess I was right, you know, I you know, for the other second haters category, Like there were two or three books about what a shitty condition that Biden was him, which was a point of emphasis for me last year.

Of course, you know, I don't think Kamala Harris comes across very well on her memoir of the campaign trial either.

So like the fact these people were fucking idiots, uh you know, I don't mean Harris, but like I mean the people surrounding Biden and Harris like that that felt very validated this year.

I guess.

Yeah.

So for I'm going to say for the Mia Colpa, I was wrong Award.

I think at the beginning of the year, I was under selling some of the promises of AI in a lot of areas, and I think that it has gotten so much better this past year.

Like, sure, it's still hallucinates and like that that's funny.

I'm kind of.

Well, it's because of right, But you and I started the year on very different Like you were so much more bullish and I was so much more bearish.

So I think we've probably like we're probably at the same point now, Nate.

But for me it's an I was wrong and for you it was you know, it's one of these things where we've both recalibrated with the new data and I was like, Okay, you know in some of these areas there's a lot of promise that I didn't really realize.

And you, on the other hand, were so optimistic that now you're like, oh, there's You've had to calibrate it down, which is kind of funny.

So I think I think we've met in the middle.

The second haters I was right, Award.

I'm going to say that the attack on higher education that was orchestrated by you know, Trump and his cronies, a lot of people were like, yeah, you know, fuck Harvard, blah blah blah.

But I think that I were already seeing with the cuts and funding and the kind of drain in students and all of this, that this is going to really really hurt the United States for many, many years to come.

So I think I was right, what have it.

You might have to use down?

Yeah, they are using it good.

Good, No, like it is bad.

But like all the things Trump has done, I think higher education, elite higher education.

I'm a big fan of state schools.

Right, there's some schools like my I'm a minor university to set up more for a free speech.

Yeah, I'm I agree, it's objectively bad.

I'm not very sympathetic.

Yeah, but I think that you know, curbing cancer research and all the things that these schools spread do it is really bad.

By the way, we have not because this did happen in twenty twenty five, right, all these Republicans who confirmed RFK Junior and Pete Hegseth, right, like, I mean.

You know, yeah, talk about some fucking have some fucking spine, right, Like, those are very very powerful positions that will have you know, impacts for years to come.

And so they deserve maybe Need of the Year.

Right, if I had brad Lander in there for an obscure endorsement, I rescind that award brad Lander, and I give it to congressional or Senate Republicans who confirmed.

And it's fine.

You're going to have some partisan, very conservative nominees, right, but p exth that r FFK Junior, maybe Tulsa Gabbard, you know those three man up show some spine and voting.

A guess these people that are are are not qualified for.

Their yes, absolutely absolutely all right.

So now we've got two awards that only one of us gives.

So we're going to have the Nate Silver Award for Riverian of the Year.

So, Nate, who are you going to award the Riverian of the Year.

I think since we haven't fitted in elsewhere here, we should probably give it to Michael ms Rahi, Right, winning both the main event and the Poker Players Championship in the same year.

You know, it is this kind of once in a century type of accomplishment.

You know, he probably tilts more toward the Djon side of things than maybe the pure Riverian side, but like it's a big ac contiument in the Poker World, and we often talk negatively about poker on the show.

It makes a lot of negative headlines, right, but that that was a positive for the game.

He's a very popular player.

Congratulations mister Msrachi, Congratulations mister Grinder.

And the Maria kind of Cove Award for the biggest bluff of the year.

I am going to go ahead and hand that to the subject of one of our recent Risky Business episodes, Olivia NUTSI for convincing people over and over that she's a really good writer and a good journalist and getting hired over and over despite ethical lapses and frankly, really bad writing when she doesn't have a good editor, as we discovered in American Canto, and I, you know, she It's one of these things where I wanted to give her a lot of the awards because like you would think that, like if she could actually write well or took the time to write well, like then you know, it would be a totally different thing.

But I think that she has bluffed her way, using a lot of different attributes to a point where people assumed she was a brilliant writer, and the evidence points to the contrary.

And it seems like as other people have pointed out the real heroes of the story are her editors at New York Magazine, who made her writing seem very very good.

So I'm giving her the biggest bluff.

Of the year.

Her ex fiancee Ryan Liza isn't looking much.

No, he is a no no, but you.

Know it's part five of his opus, right, and he's like, I came to New York for twenty four hours trying resolve situation, and I wound up in this hotel with her for five days.

It's like brow that you did she forcibly forcibly abduct you?

Right?

And like ill anyway, that whole thing, that whole nexus of events.

I you know, yeah, And of course RFK isn't messed up in this.

I don't know.

I don't know, Maria, yep, I.

Totally agree with you.

I don't know is the correct answer.

Anyway, Congratulations Olivia, You're getting biggest bluff of the year.

So I don't I don't know because I don't really make bets myself.

What do you think do you have most plus ev bet and most negative ev bet of the year where you just couldn't help yourself.

Uh, I'm trying to think, you know, in terms of again, it's not an election year, so you're kind of not making as many bets.

I think, uh, you know, look, my Nvidio stock has done well.

I mean actually, okay, so one thing I did is that, like I don't know that man angel stocks by my own some when I was booking my reservations for Vegas for the Worldsare's Poker and realize kind of how much cheaper the hotel rooms were.

I sold some gaming company stocks.

As a result of that, I'm like this super viarius for the industry, and that's trade's gone well.

So I'm going to give myself credit for that, and like worst bet of the year.

I mean, my NFL model really hates the Chicago Bears, who are now nine and four, right, so the Bears of have I think they're bad, but the Bears have cost me a lot of money.

You're still bearish on the Bears, but you have lost a life.

If I'm like just exhausted at the end of a booker tournament, you know, I'll kind of like kind of do a little mini punt like I was playing.

It was randomly in Florida to give a conference and like played this five K tournament the last day of their WT festival, right was waiting for cashame table opening them after I busted out of the five k and played a three hundred dollars tournament, right like a bounty tournament.

I'm like, I really do not feel like like being here knitting it up with five big lines when the first place is only a couple thousand bucks, right, and I'm not gonna win any bounties.

And so I know I overcalled with ten or jack nine of diamonds versus three other players, so I could have gotten a bounty from one of them, and I'm like, I have four big one.

Actually, it's probably fine, It's probably all fine, Yeah, but I just want to get out of here.

I want to go.

I haven't eaten been there.

Yeah, We've all been there.

When you get tired at the end of a long day, like, decision making quality definitely deteriorates, and it takes real mental discipline to like stay focused and stay you know, stay with it up until the end, and self knowledge to understand when you're making suboptimal decisions because of that, because of that kind of end of day, Like, I've definitely had situations where I've been like, you know what, I just want to go to dinner, Like I don't have that many chips, and like dinner break is in an hour, but like I just want to either spin it or bust so that I have a longer dinner.

Right, Like I've definitely, I've definitely done stuff like that, And I know it's not good.

Right, That's a horrible, horrible decision.

That is not how you're supposed to be making decisions.

That is not how you play poker.

But that happens in real life too, when sometimes you just like do a fuck it decision because you're tired.

Hang, grey is really bad.

I figured it out, right, don't try to agree.

This very bad.

Well, that concludes our riskies for the year.

Congratulations to all of our winners, and our condolences to some of our winners, and we will we will maintain that even though for now, for now I have the Risky Business Poker bracelet, we still have several weeks to go, several poker tournaments to play.

And you know, it would be wonderful, Nate, if we both had really strong ends to the year and had to kind of had to reconsider how that bracelet is divided.

That would be a wonderful way to end the year, wouldn't.

Ever, it really would, it really would.

Best of luck to both of us.

Let's let's go crush at the poker tables.

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 cool production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia.

This episode was produced by Isaac Carter.

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

Mixing by Sarah Bruger.

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