An Ezra Klein interview with Nate Silver (NYT; archived) starts as follows:
Nate Silver came to fame in American politics for election forecasting. But before Silver was in politics, he was a poker player. And after getting into politics, he went back to being a poker player. He’s been running through poker championships and out there on tables — partly because he’s been writing a book about risk.
I was baffled by the phrase “out there on tables,” and it’s not just me — my wife couldn’t figure it out either. I figure there are two likely explanations: 1) it’s sloppily written, or 2) it’s some current usage that we old codgers are unfamiliar with. (“You’re really out there on tables, man!”) Anybody know?
Also, as a public service: I ran across the name Christopher Wlezien recently (he’s Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin) and naturally wanted to know how the surname is pronounced. (It’s from the Polish name Wlezień, but of course it’s not going to be pronounced à la polonaise by an American.) Happily, there’s a brief video clip where he introduces himself, and it sounds to me like he’s saying /ˈwlɛʒən/, though I’m not sure about the initial /w/, which is very brief if it’s there. (Note that Heidi Wlezien says /ləˈziːn/, so Wlezien is a land of contrasts.)
“Running through poker championships” is also a bit foggy for me. Like Messi through the defenders, a hungry family through groceries or running through how? I’m not sure whether he’s successful, in a hurry or just going to lots of them.
I’d guess “He’s been running through championships and he’s been out there playing on tables,” that is, he’s been playing poker, maybe publicly with high-level competition.
Edit: I think “Running through poker championships” means “analyzing the data from poker championships”.
I do think that’s a fourth reasonable interpretation. But given its presence in the lede without context, I don’t see how the meaning is extractable. I think it’s bad writing.
JF, I note that you’ve quoted the second phrase as “out there playing on tables”, which would be clumsy but easily understandable. But the actual quote is “out there on tables”, with all the clumsiness but without the certainty.
I’m glad I’m not alone in my puzzlement!
FWIW, if you google (within quotation marks) “out on tables” and separately add “poker” you will get some hits for insider-poker-jargon discussions where in some instances I (as a much much more casual player than Silver) can’t really understand what the phrase is intended to mean. I used to play on a semi-regular basis with some guys from the neighborhood of whom some were more serious than me and/or at least deployed more insider jargon than I did, and I can’t recall hearing it in that context.
The record at https://www.cardplayer.com/poker-players/259285-nate-silver/results/overall indicates that Silver has been playing in a lot of poker championship events, not placing at the top but consistently winning more than his stake. So whatever “running through poker championships” means, it’s consistent with that.
I would have guessed that ‘out there on tables’ meant playing poker in real life and not online, but I have no idea if anyone does still play that way.
Google hits seem to mostly produce ‘sit out on tables’, which I think is just ‘((sit out) on tables’ as in choose to miss a game.
Would “at the tables” make more sense?
A lot of things would make more sense.
For me, it’s the coordinating conjunction that makes it weird or hoary, as if “out there on tables” adds something different from “running through championships”, which in turn clearly means nothing more than being there, since a Messi-style “running through” definition would require dominance, not merely doing well. Poring over data would be a different activity, but it would be weird to say “poring over data and playing in tournaments” in context, rather than “playing in tournaments and poring over data”.
I vote hoary and unedited. That the whole thing just means he plays in a bunch of poker tournaments, says it poorly and confusingly, but nobody felt empowered to question Klein’s brain-spew.
It seems plausible that researching a book on poker would involve playing (a) both online and “on tables”, (b) both in championships and in… em… the other type? Pick up? Casual buy in? Are most Championships online these days?
In conclusion, I also vote for “sloppily written”.
The motion for “sloppily written” is carried!
Is it too late to second the motion?
I would have guessed that ‘out there on tables’ meant playing poker in real life and not online, but I have no idea if anyone does still play that way.
Yes, for instance at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.
Ryan, I’m not familiar with your sense of “hoary”, which to me means only “frosty” (probably obsolete) or “gray or white, especially of hair” or “ancient, antiquated”. What do you mean?
More on topic, since Silver’s known for poring over data, mentioning that first doesn’t seem weird to me. However, I’m getting less confident about my interpretation.
JF,
Mine may be a misuse, perhaps from being just old enough to remember hoarfrost as a commonplace of every winter morning, before double-pane windows. I think of hoary as meaning like hoarfrost, fuzzy, growing uncontrolled in all directions, obstructive of vision. It looks like my understanding has things backwards, and that hoarfrost is called that beacause it’s hoary like greyish white hair and beards.
Mentioning that Silver was poring over data doesn’t seem weird in itself. But when the contrast being emphasized is “he’s a political data guy, but he’s a poker player first and last”, emphasizing data-examination in that way, first, does seem like a weird way to write it up.
But something is weird about the sentence regardless, so your idea is plausible.
So far as I know, hoary means either “white with frost” or “white with age,” the latter meaning being older. How white may be reckoned relatively, of course, so pale gray hair could be “hoary” among a group of young, browne youths.
Nate Silver made his initial fame as a mathematical sports prediction guy, that being a natural outgrowth of his personal experiences with poker odds. He then moved into the more important analysis of political polling, applying Moneyball-like techniques to presidential elections. After correctly realizing that the real data gave Trump a sizable chance of winning in 2016, he became excessively full of himself. Now he bloviates as a pundit, based on his special personal intuition about elections, when that was exactly what he showed other pundits were doing wrong in 2016: ignoring what the data said in favor of their personal/conventional wisdom.
It’s even possible to be white with frost and with age. Old geezers in a snowstorm are hard to see, but they are there.
I agree that the sentence is ill-formed, but I didn’t hesitate to assign a meaning to “out there on tables”. I think “tables” felt parallel to “stadiums”, “ice rinks”, “ski slopes”, “his bike seat”, or whatever you can be out there frequenting for sports.
Maybe. It’s a bizarre anticlimax. “She’s flying down Olympic slalom courses and out there on the slopes.” “He’s entered in the Tour de France and out there on his bike seat.”
And it’s worth noting that the tables we know Silver has been out there on are the “championships”, another reason why defining “running through” as poring over data doesn’t really make sense in context.
Yeah, I can imagine that being what was meant, but it’s still lousy writing.
I feel like the only thing regularly described as hoary is jokes, so that although that might be the “ancient, antiquated” meaning, it’s coming to mean something more like corny or cliched. (The OED doesn’t seem to agree, though.)
It’s missing a “the”.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct30y7
Various search results:
. If you want to get on the tables & crush, join Upswing Poker. J
Catch me on the tables -Valeyn. c
When I play a tournament on GG ($1/$3) I suffer the most horrendous abuse from the players on the tables.
It’s missing a “the”.
Thanks, that does seem likely now that you point it out.
You would think there should be opportunities for unedifying wordplay arising from the homophony (okay in most but conceivably not all varieties of English) between “hoar” and “whore.” Although I guess the fact that the standard adjectival form of the latter is “whorish” could complicate things?
“On tables” means he’s playing live poker at a casino rather than online. Similar to how chess players talk about playing “over the board”. Think “he’s out there on the speaking circuit” or “he’s out there running restaurants”, but with the need to specify that he’s not sitting in front of his computer while playing.
John S. Salak’s Dictionary of Gambling might have information on “on tables.”
“On tables” means he’s playing live poker at a casino rather than online.
That’s what I thought, but how does it fit with “running through poker championships”?
Ryan: Seems I got “hoary” backwards too. I thought “frost” was the original meaning.
JF, I note that you’ve quoted the second phrase as “out there playing on tables”, which would be clumsy but easily understandable.
I didn’t quote it, I tried to explain it by adding two words. (I also added a “been” to get rid of the clumsy zeugma or syllepsis, take your pick, that I see in “He’s been running… and out there…”, if that’s the right reading.) I could have made that clearer, speaking of sloppy writing.
An old hare hoar,
And an old hare hoar,
Is very good meat in lent
But a hare that is hoar
Is too much for a score,
When it hoars ere it be spent.
It’s not slop. If it were of an activist: he’s running through old actions and is out there on the streets.
i can’t speak to poker-ese, but “out there on the streets” isn’t a phrase any movement person i’ve ever encountered would use. the activist synecdoche is “in the street” – invariably with that preposition and almost invariably with the singular noun. “on the street” isn’t a variation of that, it’s an entirely different stock phrase, about poverty and lack of housing; “on the streets” could be about the hobo version of that, but is far more likely to be about sex work in public spaces.
i don’t think what’s happening here is sloppy writing, though: it’s exactly the kind of almost-idiom that automated plagiarism software turns out. i suspect ezra klein, or his editor, has been cutting corners.