Data King Nate Silver Makes World Series of Poker Final Table

Political analyst and writer Nate Silver was a sensory hair outside from winning a World Series of Poker bracelet on Sun night.

The statistician has won fame and plaudits for predicting election outcomes. But I outcome he failed to forecast was his opponent John Lackland Monnette’s striking comeback to clinch the Limit Hold’em Championship.

Still, Silver took nursing home $152,000 for arcsecond localize after holding the upper mitt against Palmdale, Calif. pro Monnette for much of heads-up play.

Monnette, a mixed-games specialist, won $245,680 and his fourth bangle for besting the 92-player field.

Poker to Politics

Silver has reinforced a media empire on his aptitude for statistics, so it’s minuscule marvel he can buoy track it at the stove poker table.

In fact, before he became a prominent deal in political polling, he briefly earned a living playing online salamander inward the early 2000s. He fifty-fifty featured inwards a 2004 Chicago Tribune article examining the young phenomenon of online stove poker players.

Still, the boodle indigen had his act weakened out o'er the weekend at a WSOP net tabular array that included teetotum pros ilk Jason Somerville, Saint John Racener and Publius Terentius Afer Chan.

Around the time Silver was abrasion online poker tables almost 20 years ago, he also was developing PECOTA (Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm). This was a statistical system, beloved of fantasy baseball game players, that calculate the time to come public presentation of baseball game hitters and pitchers.

Next, he turned his attention to the political arena. Writing under the pseudonym “Poblano,” he launched the FiveThirtyEight blog. Silver was frustrated by the limitations of established analysts and sought-after(a) to cast unexampled light source on politics past analyzing its quantitative aspects for a wider audience.

In 2008, Silver predicted 49 outcomes of 50 states inwards the US presidential election. In 2012, he predicted all 50.

Nailing the 2008 election changed his life. After that came the volume deals and TV appearances, and inward 2009, he was named one of the World’s Most Influential People by Time Magazine.

Silence and the Noise

His number 1 book, 2012’s The Silence and the Noise – Why So Many Predictions Fail but Some Don’t was a New York Times Charles Herbert Best Seller. It examined how information and probability are used – and misused – inward everything from forecasting climate exchange to an economical downturn.

The Silence and the Noise also devoted a chapter to poker, and it appears that Silver is revisiting the gritty inward a unexampled rule book he’s written material which deals with the mindset of a successful gambler.

Silver told Card Player on Sun his experiences at the WSOP hold proven to live valuable (and lucrative) research.

“I’ve met people the likes of Jason Somerville, who i talked to inwards my book, and at present I’ve played a clump of tournaments with him inward this last week,” he said. “You receive more ingrained inwards the biotic community if you’re not just an outsider, but actually a participant.”