Nate Silver made a career out of parsing numbers and making educated predictions based on the odds of an outcome as part of his statistical analysis-based content platform, FiveThirtyEight.
It’s little surprise, then, that Silver has taken so well to the world of poker, where real-time data analysis and making the best decision with limited information are valuable skills.
Silver has results dating as far back as 2013, but his best results at the poker table have come in the last few years. He narrowly missed out on winning a World Series of Poker bracelet in 2021, finishing second in the $10,000 Limit Hold’em Championship for $151,842 to longtime pro John Monnette. Silver’s lifetime poker earnings entering this Main Event sit at $695,454.
This summer alone, Silver has five cashes and a pair of deep runs, in the $1,500 Monster Stack and $10,000 Secret Bounty. In what was, to be clear, a statistical anomaly, Silver finished exactly 32nd in both of those tournaments. He hopes to continue his run of success in the WSOP Main Event, as he joined the Day 1C field on Wednesday.
In breaking down his summer of poker thus far, Silver had a positive outlook despite falling just short of some serious money in both events.
“A lot of deep runs, a lot of cashes,” said Silver. “I’m still just breaking even on the Series, because you have to have really deep runs in bigger events, or very, very, very deep runs [in smaller ones].”
Silver’s performance in the Monster Stack was particularly impressive, as he cut his way through a field of 8,317 entries before running ace-king into pocket aces on Day 4 of the tournament. With the deep starting stack and a similar field composition to the Main Event, it was good prep work for the run Silver hopes to make on poker’s biggest stage.
“Mentality wise, to get a lot of reps in in tournaments like the Monster Stack, which is one of the more similar events to the Main Event, is helpful,” Silver said. “To go through the whole progression, to have experience against, let’s be honest, fields of more mixed quality, [is great]. It’s [certainly] a different strategy than what you’d do in high rollers, for example.”
Silver’s had some experience in some of those bigger buy-in fields, too. He finished fourth in a $10,000 U.S. Poker Open event at the PokerGO studios, and made a number of deep runs in WPT Main Tour events, with five top-100 WPT finishes since April 2021.
Part of Silver’s rationale for getting so involved in the world of tournament poker was for his second book, ‘On the Edge: How Successful Gamblers Think and What it Tells Us About Navigating Risk,’ which Silver has been working on over the last few years. Between his success and the positivity of his experiences in poker thus far, however, Silver seems like he’ll be part of the poker world well beyond the point his book gets released.
“The poker material for the book is mostly done, so I have less of an excuse than I used to for being out here,” said Silver. “But as part of the book, I had one foot dipped in the gambling world, and now half of my friends are poker players. I think poker is a great activity that teaches people a lot a lot of valuable skills and gives people a social community to hang out in. I think poker does a lot of good for the world.
“I like being in Vegas and checking out different hotels and parts of Vegas, and it’s just part of my life now. I can’t not be out for at least a couple weeks of the World Series.”
The WSOP Main Event is the culmination of this particular trip, and Silver has played this tournament at least seven times in his life. While success has been a part of the equation on other platforms, the biggest poker tournament of the year has been tougher for Silver, and he hopes to be able to solve it this time around.
“Look, I’ve never cashed in the Main Event,” said Silver. “So that’s one thing I hope to do at some point.”
With the number of entries trending towards an all-time high for the WSOP Main Event, Silver was all too happy to offer a prediction for where things will end up once registration closes on Day 2D Saturday evening.
“I’m thrilled that poker is breaking records,” said Silver. “I think I can confidently predict the Main Event is going to break a record. Any record-breaking event, I’m happy to be a part of.”