Poker has not only received a pop culture shot in the arm with the release of the new movie Dead Money, but is also making headlines in the world or literature.
Nate Silver’s new book On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything is a bestseller and details a group of leaders and entrepreneurs who have put everything on the line. That includes a look at these scenarios through the lens of poker as they raise the stakes in their success or failures.
“These professional risk-takers – poker players and hedge fund managers, crypto true believers and blue-chip art collectors – can teach us much about navigating the uncertainty of the twenty-first century,” Penguin Random House notes of the poker-related book.
“By immersing himself in the worlds of Doyle Brunson, Peter Thiel, Sam Bankman-Fried, Sam Altman, and many others, Silver offers insight into a range of issues that affect us all, from the frontiers of finance to the future of AI.”
Poker, Politics, & More
Silver, who founded the election and polling analysis website FiveThirtyEight, is no
In the new book, Silver offers views on how elements of risk can play a role in one’s life. He relates the risk-takers in the game to the world of politics and society in general.
“I found more and more that the same weird nerds that I saw in poker, people who are both very analytical and very competitive, they were also the same personality types that worked on AI (artificial intelligence), for example,” he told KQED’s Forum podcast.
“Or the same as the rationalists or the effective altruist community, certainly similar to the sports betting types and things like that. I also found that people in venture capital and Silicon Valley were more interested in talking to me than I’d assumed going on.”
Those looking to hear even more poker-tinged conversation with Silver can also check out the new Risky Business podcast he co-hosts with fellow author and poker player Maria Konnikova. Poker is certainly getting plenty of mainstream media attention right now.
