Las Vegas, NV – Big news from the
World Series of Poker on Sunday night: statistician and writer
Nate Silver, best known as editor-in-chief of political analysis website
FiveThirtyEight, finished 2nd to poker pro
John Monnette in Event #16 – the $10,000 buy-in Limit Hold'em Championship.
Silver pocketed
$151K for his 2nd-place performance, and Monnette took home $245K and his 4th gold bracelet.
At one point during heads-up play, Silver held a 2-to-1 chip lead over Monnette – roughly a 66% chance to win – but Monnette battled back for the victory.
FiveThirtyEight followers react
After the event, followers of Silver's popular website immediately began
questioning Nate's abilities and the
validity of the outcome.
“Listen, all I'm saying is that
the math doesn't add up,” claimed one man at the
Rio, oddly angrily. “You don't need to have a goddamn degree in statistics to know that
66% is bigger than 34%. It doesn't make any sense that he lost, and I frankly think it really reflects poorly on his math skills.”
A different man, also very angry, added “It makes me question if the whole thing
was even real to begin with! How do we know the cards weren't rigged? Were the chips even counted properly?
I WANT A RECOUNT!”
A third angry man overheard the second man and began a chant of “
RECOUNT! RECOUNT! RECOUNT!” before we informed him we were talking about a poker tournament and he settled down and left.
The original angry man continued, “Poker is all about playing the percentages, and
the percentages don't lie. You saw it. I saw it. Nate Silver had a 66% chance to win and John Monnette had a 34% chance to win.
Therefore, because 66% is bigger than 34%,
Nate was guaranteed to win the bracelet. I'm not saying whether any cheating went on or not, but I am saying something's up and
needs to be investigated. Because I know for damn sure, like I said –
66 is a bigger number than 34. You gonna dispute that?”
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