Episode 10: “Anybody Can Win, but Everybody’s Gonna Lose”

Summary

Against the Rules with Michael Lewis: Episode 10 – “Anybody Can Win, but Everybody’s Gonna Lose”

Release Date: January 21, 2025

In Episode 10 of “Against the Rules”, Michael Lewis delves deep into the burgeoning world of legalized sports betting in America. Titled “Anybody Can Win, but Everybody’s Gonna Lose,” this episode explores the pervasive influence of sports gambling on American youth, the ethical implications for families, and the systemic challenges that make sports betting both alluring and perilous.

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1. Introduction to the Sports Betting Boom

Michael Lewis sets the stage by highlighting the dramatic shift in the landscape of American sports gambling since its legalization in 2018. He observes that sports betting, once a fringe activity, has become deeply embedded in American culture, infiltrating colleges and high schools alike.

Michael Lewis [02:06]: “Sports gambling went from this slightly naughty activity you had to go out of your way to engage in to smack dab in the center of American culture.”

2. The Experiment: Entrusting His Son with $5,000

In a bold and unconventional approach, Michael Lewis decides to conduct an experiment by giving his 17-year-old son, Walker, $5,000 to engage in sports betting. The goal is to observe firsthand how such a substantial sum influences a teenager’s behavior, decision-making, and understanding of gambling's risks.

Michael Lewis [05:39]: “I'm going to hand him a sum of money that'll get his attention for him to use to bet on sports. He can keep the winnings, but there won't be any winnings, of course, just humiliation.”

3. Family Dynamics and Parental Concerns

Lewis candidly discusses the challenges of communicating with teenage sons about risky behaviors. Drawing parallels to past difficulties in discussing sex, he acknowledges the complexity of addressing sports gambling, a subject not typically covered in school curricula.

Michael Lewis [03:36]: “If you want your 17-year-old to listen to you, you have to say something that could be used against you in the court of law.”

His wife, Tabitha, voices concerns about the addictive nature of gambling and its comparison to the dopamine responses elicited by video games, emphasizing the potential for addiction.

Tabitha [09:44]: “So to me, that is not a good thing to encourage. I hope that he walks away from it feeling like it's not something he wants to partake in.”

4. Introducing External Influences: Rufus Peabody and Captain Jack

Recognizing his own limitations in guiding Walker, Michael introduces him to Rufus Peabody, a professional sports gambler. Rufus, despite his success, doesn't advocate for gambling, especially among minors, due to legal and ethical concerns. Subsequently, Walker and his friend Tom are connected to another gambler, Captain Jack, who offers strategies and insights into the industry.

Michael Lewis [12:55]: “Captain Jack tells them some stuff that listeners to this season already know. Why in order to make money gambling on sports, you need to make it even more miserable than an ordinary job.”

5. The Allure and Reality of Winning

Initially, Walker and Tom experience a winning streak, exhilarating them and reinforcing the illusion of mastery over sports betting. However, this success is juxtaposed with wary observations from experts like Joe Hardin, a statistics professor, who warns against the cognitive biases and misunderstandings that lead bettors to overestimate their skills.

Joe Hardin [33:55]: “5 out of 8 is your. Is your data value, is your sample value.”

6. The Downfall: Losses and Behavioral Insights

As the episode progresses, the reality of sports betting's volatility becomes starkly evident. Walker and Tom encounter significant losses, leading to familial tension and personal turmoil. The narrative underscores the psychological traps of gambling, including overconfidence, confirmation bias, and the allure of “lucky streaks.”

Walker [29:24]: “Yea, that's true. We can claim it's skill as well. Yeah. And then we can start our own, like, masterclass. People will come to us.”

7. The Systemic Exploitation of Vulnerabilities

Michael and Walker critically examine how the sports gambling industry manipulates consumer behavior through targeted advertising and algorithmic strategies designed to maximize player losses. They discuss the unethical practices of micro-targeting vulnerabilities, akin to treating gamblers as mere data points in an A/B testing framework.

Walker [48:25]: “They try out a bunch of things and see what works the best. Let's say, let's try to get people to bet on the Red Sox with green letters. And also let's try the same exact words, but let's try it with red letters and see which ones they're more likely to click on. And the answer is going to be red letters.”

8. Lessons Learned and Final Reflections

After experiencing both wins and losses, Walker realizes the inherent futility of sports betting, acknowledging that despite initial successes, the odds are stacked against bettors in the long run.

Walker [53:29]: “Everybody can win, but everybody's gonna lose.”

Michael reflects on the experiment's outcomes, emphasizing the importance of statistical literacy and critical thinking in combating the deceptive nature of sports gambling.

9. Conclusion: A Cautionary Tale

Episode 10 serves as a cautionary narrative, illustrating the seductive yet destructive nature of sports betting. Michael Lewis underscores the necessity for awareness, education, and systemic changes to protect vulnerable populations, especially impressionable youth, from falling prey to the industry's manipulative tactics.

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Notable Quotes and Attributions

• Michael Lewis [05:58]: “That's Walker, who, by the way, in his English class the other day, asked the 25 other kids for a show of hands. Who here is a sports gambler? All the boys except one, though zero of the girls, raise their hands.”

• Walker [16:17]: “I was like, wait, here I am again. What happened? Like, how did I get here? Like, I'm yet again, like, making the world worse.”

• Joe Hardin [34:25]: “Is five out of eight a good measure of the value that's going to be over your lifetime? So it doesn't really matter how good he is internally.”

• Walker [54:12]: “This is no hate to any gamblers out there, but I don't think you have enough gratifying things going on to sustain that, sustain your attention.”

Insights and Takeaways

1. The Allure of Immediate Wins: Initial successes in sports betting can create a false sense of competence, masking the underlying risks and statistical disadvantages.

2. Psychological Manipulation: The industry leverages sophisticated algorithms and targeted advertising to exploit individual vulnerabilities, making it increasingly difficult for bettors to recognize and resist addiction.

3. Educational Gaps: The absence of formal education on sports gambling leaves individuals, especially youth, ill-equipped to navigate its complexities and inherent risks.

4. Family Dynamics: Open and honest communication within families is crucial in addressing and mitigating the influence of risky behaviors like sports betting.

5. Statistical Literacy: Understanding probability and statistics is essential in making informed decisions and avoiding cognitive biases that can lead to significant financial and personal losses.

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Conclusion

Episode 10 of “Against the Rules” offers a compelling exploration of the dark underbelly of the sports betting industry. Through Michael Lewis’s personal experiment and the ensuing revelations, listeners gain a nuanced understanding of the psychological, social, and systemic factors that make sports gambling both enticing and dangerous. The episode serves as both a personal narrative and a broader commentary on the need for increased awareness, education, and regulation to safeguard individuals from the pervasive influence of modern gambling practices.

Transcript

[Michael Lewis]

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[Michael Lewis]

We'Re back bringing this thing in for a landing. I think we can now all agree it's not just the law. That changed when the US allowed states to legalize sports gambling back in 2018. An entire region of the American brain has been wiped clean and replaced with new software. Somehow, sports gambling went from this slightly naughty activity you had to go out of your way to engage in to smack dab in the center of American culture. It's very obviously overrun American colleges. It's less obviously overrun American high schools, too. What happened to one of my friends was that one of his friends tried to abandon this bookie and then he sent him his house address.

[Walker]

Oh my God.

[Michael Lewis]

Which he had never given to him. He just tracked his IP address from.

[Walker]

How he was placing bets.

[Michael Lewis]

That's Andrew Mitchell, now a college junior, but remembering his high school gambling ring and a bookie on Snapchat named Foco. He's talking to lj, my producer, who ran down so many similar stories from boys all over the country that she no longer asked them whether their high school has a sports gambling ring. Instead, she asked them who runs it. Andrew she found in upstate New York. So there's kind of this informal insurance that it's really just a threat to kids that I don't know how much you can do with the house address or what the stakes actually would have been. But it's a pretty scary thing when you're already doing something you know is illegal and then you get sent your.

[Walker]

Address after you try to pull a fast one on someone.

[Michael Lewis]

My high school is just like one part of it. I know in the public schools in our area there were huge betting rings where kids were losing so much money and betting so much money, it occurred to me that Andrew's old problem is my new one. I have a 17 year old son. His name is Walker. At some point I'd need to have the talk with him. Now, I say this as someone who's not a big fan of having the talk. I didn't really want to have the talk with him about sex back in the day, but that was all right because in middle school he had an entire class on the subject that went into such graphic detail I had to keep my eyes covered with a pillow. I did say something to him like, anything you want to know about sex, just ask me. Of course, he never did. He's way too smart. The gambling talk is different than the sex talk and maybe more necessary because his school doesn't have a class called Sports Gambling Education. Plus, there's no generally accepted body of knowledge on the subject. So I wasn't even clear in my own head what this talk should consist of. I mean, apart from telling him how dumb it is to hand your lunch money to DraftKings, that would only make him want to do it more. Even if somehow I knew exactly the right thing to say to inoculate my child against this new threat to his well being, or at least prevent him from being kneecapped by some bookie, he'd be unlikely to listen. In my experience, if you want your 17 year old to listen to you, you have to say something that could be used against you in the court of law. Then they hear every word you say and record it for future use by the prosecution. And so while I saw that I needed to have the talk, I also realized that the talk was pointless. Walker was already too old, too dismissive of me. I had to find some other way to Teach my son the tools he needs to navigate a world in which sophisticated corporations will try to lead him to his ruin. Anyway, that's my excuse for why I did what I did next.

[Walker]

Okay, let me give you guys the assignment formally, which is that Michael's gonna give you guys $5,000, and you can spend it however you want on sports betting. But you're supposed to win like you're supposed to make more. That's always the goal, right? Yes.

[Michael Lewis]

That's Walker, who, by the way, in his English class the other day, asked the 25 other kids for a show of hands. Who here is a sports gambler? All the boys except one, though zero of the girls, raise their hands, even though all of them were under the age of 18 and sports gambling is still illegal in California. Anyway, I love him even if he doesn't listen to me. His immune system is like the immune system of all teenage boys. What I want to create in him, I think of as a vaccine. I'm going to hand him a sum of money that'll get his attention for him to use to bet on sports. He can keep the winnings, but there won't be any winnings, of course, just humiliation. The humiliation will create the antibodies. I won't be directly involved. If I were, he wouldn't be as interested. My producers will supervise his education and record it.

[Walker]

When should you start? I'm ready to go right now. I think you're supposed to have, like, a learning period is, like, what Michael was envisioning. So there's actual skill to it. Are you asking that? I guess I was walking into this, hoping it was just like, I don't know. I'm walking into this hoping to learn, but I just. I doubt. I mean, you see people winning, but, like, I don't know. That's the wrong attitude.

[Michael Lewis]

That's Tom. Not his real name. We've also disguised his voice because, well, I don't want to get Tom into any trouble. He's a good kid, three years older than Walker, and now a student at a very fancy college. But he and Walker used to play basketball together, and Walker really likes him. I roped Tom into this experiment mainly because he'd been gambling on sports since he was in high school, and I thought whatever he's learned might rub off on Walker. But as it turns out, the main thing that Tom learned was how to evade the laws that forbid children from gambling on sports.

[Walker]

There's an app that I use called Flyff, and I don't know exactly what.

[Michael Lewis]

The rules are around It.

[Walker]

But I know that legally on that app, I can use it because I had to submit that I like my picture of my driver's license. And then, like I said, to say that I was from California.

[Michael Lewis]

Yes. If you're a teenager who wants to lay down five grand of your dad's money on sports, you don't even need an illegal bookie anymore. You might not be able to get an account with DraftKings or FanDuel, but you can get onto any one of a number of shady gray market apps. Fly turns your money into flyff Cash, and gambling with Flif Cash somehow makes it all legal. But since you can turn your Flif Cash back into dollars, it's hard to see why.

[Walker]

Cool. And I asked you this before, kind of like. Well, like how you thought you were going to do.

[Michael Lewis]

I don't know.

[Walker]

I hope to like, plus 5 to 10%. I guess I'll set my expectation at plus go big. Plus 200%.

[Michael Lewis]

Plus 200%.

[Walker]

Yeah. That's the move. Okay. That's my goal.

[Michael Lewis]

That's my goal. Their goal is to turn five grand into 15. My goal is for them to learn the insanity of their goal. I think my goal is admirable, but I do have a sense that not everyone in my house agrees. Confirmed when my producer, Kathryn Girardeau, investigates.

[Walker]

So I understand Michael has been encouraging Walker to engage in sports betting, and I wanted to talk to you about how you feel about that.

[Michael Lewis]

The idea is that Walker will be.

[Walker]

Exposed to sports betting and get guided through the process so he understands the wins as well as the losses, since that probably happens more often than not.

[Michael Lewis]

That's Walker's mother, my wife Tabitha.

[Walker]

And it's supposed to be a learning experience. That's the glasses half full version. And what's your perspective on that? I'm not an expert in all teenage boys, but from the anecdotal information I have from other mothers with teenage boys, I think that the attraction and the addiction to the dopamine response that you get from video games is a complete parallel to the addiction response to sports betting. So to me, that is not a good thing to encourage. I hope that he walks away from it feeling like it's not something he wants to partake in, but I can't control that. He's almost 18 and he doesn't listen.

[Michael Lewis]

To a word I say. When our son won't listen to my wife, she often turns to me and says, can you please talk to him? As if his unwillingness to listen to her somehow implies a Desire to listen to me. As I say it doesn't. My son won't listen to me either. But maybe you will, since I'm Micah Lewis and this is against the rules. So I've set my child loose in the sports gambling markets with $5,000. I've told him that I'm leaving him to figure it out for himself, but that if he wants help, I know some experts he can call. Because here's another funny thing about trying to teach your 17 year old son anything. He might not listen to a word you say, but so long as you are nowhere in sight, he will listen to your friends. I don't know why this is, but it's true. I gave Walker a phone number for Rufus Peabody. Rufus is the pro sports gambler who starred in some of our earlier episodes. What makes Rufus great as a teacher of child gamblers is that even though he's made millions gambling on sports, he doesn't think gambling on sports is a noble way to spend your life. What makes Rufus less great as a teacher of child gamblers is that he's worried about breaking the law. Sports betting is not legal in California.

[Walker]

How the fuck am I using Flip then?

[Michael Lewis]

Because Flyff isn't sports betting.

[Walker]

That's what they.

[Michael Lewis]

They claim it's a sweepstakes.

[Walker]

Oh my God.

[Michael Lewis]

I know, it's.

[Walker]

Yeah. And kids are allowed to do it or whatever. Why is there so much. Why. Why was I allowed to put my own money from my bank account in the app?

[Michael Lewis]

Because you don't have to be. What? You don't have to be 21. You only have to be 18.

[Walker]

I'm 17. That's right.

[Michael Lewis]

Wait, really?

[Walker]

Yeah.

[Michael Lewis]

That's fucked up.

[Walker]

Yeah, but didn't you need to put your Social Security in, Walker? Your Social Security number? I don't even know it. I don't know my Social Security number.

[Michael Lewis]

It was at that point. You can almost hear Rufus make one of his expected value calculations. He's working out that the expected value of taking a minor on a sports gambling journey in a state where sports gambling is illegal is negative. Lj, I'll connect to you with Captain Jack.

[Walker]

Have you talked to him in the past or.

[Michael Lewis]

No.

[Walker]

No, I don't know him.

[Michael Lewis]

I think this is right in his wheelhouse. And with that, Rufus pass Walker and Tom off to another sports gambler, someone called Captain Jack. So, I mean, off the bat, I'll. I'll let you guys know that like 98% of sports bettors don't make money in the long run. And that's Captain Jack. It's very easy to go on, like Twitter X and find somebody that says they are winning 80% of the time and you go, okay, I'll just follow this guy. Most of those people aren't. In fact, I would say all of those people aren't winning 80% of the time, because truth of the matter is, it's very tough to win 55% of the time. And 55% isn't sexy. So they're not trying to sell you 55%. They try to sell you some unattainable number. Captain Jack tells them some stuff that listeners to this season already know. Why in order to make money gambling on sports, you need to make it even more miserable than an ordinary job. How the professional gambler needs to constantly scour all the world's sportsbooks in search of odds that are out of whack. Captain Jack was inadvertently raising some obvious questions for the teenage sports gambler.

[Walker]

Is it possible to make money just off of one site like Flif with Flyff?

[Michael Lewis]

It's possible because Flyff isn't the sharpest sports book in the world. You can find edges at Flyff just for us.

[Walker]

Like, how do you recommend us trying to find these edges? How do you recommend us looking for these?

[Michael Lewis]

There are situations that's called arbitrage where you're guaranteed to win. Captain Jack explains that you can win systematically at sports gambling only by having either better information or better ways to analyze the information. But there is one exception. If you can find different prices for exactly the same bet at different sports bookies, then buy the low one and sell the high one. But you guys only have one out. You guys only have Flif. So you're not going to find a situation where you can bet both sides of the game at Flyff, do you? Maybe.

[Walker]

I feel like. Well, I feel like it'd be possible for us to, like, I don't know, use someone who is out of state or not even out of state, but just like says they're out of state and is above the age of 21 to like, get onto all these.

[Michael Lewis]

So most of these are regulated books in other states and they all use geolocation software that makes sure you are geographically in the state that you say you are. So it's tough to fool them.

[Walker]

Couldn't you just use a vpn?

[Michael Lewis]

No. These use basically like location services on.

[Walker]

Your phone, which actually knows where you are, really.

[Michael Lewis]

For a site like FanDuel or DraftKings or Caesars, BetMGM, ESPNBet, they definitely put A lot of attention into geolocation because they'd be violating the federal wire act to allow people to bet across state lines. So they take it pretty seriously.

[Walker]

Yeesh. I sense we're a little fucked.

[Michael Lewis]

I sense we're a little fucked. That's my child. Doing me proud. Seeing the world as it is rather than how he would like it to be. One word of advice is you probably do not want to create a audible record of you guys violating federal law.

[Walker]

Yeah, I still have to get into college.

[Michael Lewis]

Don't. It's not worth it. They're not going to violate the federal wire Act. They'll just use flif and then do what the vast majority of other sports gamblers do. Which means that every bet they make will be less likely to win than to lose. For this reason, Captain Jack thinks they should just make one giant bet and be done with it. Put the entire wad of my $5,000 on a single game or even a single player and live with the results. Maybe they'll get lucky. But before he waves them goodbye, Captain Jack does offer one tiny glimmer of hope. Different types of sports betting are easier to beat than other types of sports betting. So if you were to go onto the flyff app and you were to pull up a baseball game for tonight, you could bet on which team will win. You could bet on how much they'll win by. You could bet on the total runs scored in the game. But then you can also bet on player performance in the game. How many strikeouts the pitcher will have, how many hits a certain player will have, Will this player hit a home run or not? Those are called prop bets, and those prop bets are far easier to beat than how many total runs are going to be scored or which team is going to win. So for you guys, I would focus on those prop bets. Player performance. It's also more fun.

[Walker]

Are there greater than prop bets? Like, like getting into an exact prop bet like. Like having, like, Caitlin Clark score like eight threes in a game seems pre. Exact. Is there. Is there like four or more?

[Michael Lewis]

Exactly.

[Walker]

They're.

[Michael Lewis]

They're usually Caitlin Clark over, under two and a half, three pointers in the game. Yeah.

[Walker]

Okay, it's over.

[Michael Lewis]

Unders. In fact, the exact ones are very hard to hit. That was a good, good example. Walker. The average sports bettor loves to see things happen. Okay, so they tend to bet overs. So there's usually a little more value in the under than the over. But in your brain, you're always going to be wired because you want to See things happen. Nobody likes to root for an under. They don't like to root for like, no, no, no, don't get a hit. No, no, no, don't get a strikeout. They tend to like to see things happen. So try to find value in some unders. Find value in the unders. That's it. That's all they got. That and we've all been there. You're sick and you're trying to schedule a doctor's appointment only to spend hours on hold. Then you find yourself crammed into a crowded waiting room with other sick people. And don't get me started about getting your prescriptions. That's a whole other story. Amazon understands. That's why they created Amazon One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy, designed to remove these pain points from healthcare. With Amazon One Medical, you get 24, 7 virtual care so you can see a provider within minutes and avoid those long annoying waits. And with Amazon Pharmacy, your prescriptions are delivered directly to you quickly and affordably. No more trips to the pharmacy and no more surprise costs at the cash register. Thanks to the ease and convenience of Amazon One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy, Healthcare just got less painful.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Learn [e-mail] this is Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History. So we are, we're sitting in what.

[Michael Lewis]

We'Re sitting in a 1988 BMW 325is.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

And describe the way in which it's been modified.

[Michael Lewis]

It has no interior. That's where it begins.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Not even a steering wheel as far as I can tell.

[Michael Lewis]

Yeah, right now there's no steering wheel, although I can fix that in a second.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

And what's the appeal of a late 80s BMW 325?

[Michael Lewis]

Well, it's almost like the perfection of a recipe that BMW began in the 60s, which is to take, you know, a really beautifully made inline six engine, rear wheel drive and just like an incredibly balanced and fun to drive car. Yeah, yeah. Let me give a little sneak peek. I need to connect the battery. The battery is disconnected.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Wait, the battery is in the back of it.

[Michael Lewis]

The battery is actually under the rear seat.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Oh, I see.

[Walker]

Just.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

That's it.

[Walker]

That's.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

So it has an absolutely perfect balance between front and rear way.

[Michael Lewis]

Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

So yes, Turn it on.

[Michael Lewis]

Let's hear it.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Oh yes.

[Michael Lewis]

And this is you.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

This is your first BMW.

[Michael Lewis]

My second.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Oh no, Lucas, you can't say that.

[Walker]

To say.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Wait, what was your second? What was your first?

[Michael Lewis]

It was a 1989 535i.

[Walker]

Oh yes, this is.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

But you own that with a bunch of other People.

[Walker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Michael Lewis]

So this is my first, my true, my first, you know, sole BMW. Solely on, solely on Mia D. Okay.

[Walker]

Wonderful.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

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[Walker]

I'm kind of annoyed that we're in California because now we really can't game the system. I don't know, I guess what I was thinking was like, well, when he said like the $5,000 and like one bet. Yeah, like going for it, like, put it all on red. But then he was also like, you can't do that with flip because you only bet like 200, 250 bucks at once. But then if we win, we're like, devil is cool, right? Yeah, that's true. We can claim its skill as well. Yeah. And then we can start our own, like, masterclass. People will come to us.

[Michael Lewis]

A masterclass for teenage sports gamblers. You don't have to have the talk. You can just plop your kid down in front of a master class. Now that's an idea. Your teenager might not listen to you any more than mine listens to me. But if they were to stumble online across a masterclass or a podcast very like this one, who knows? Maybe they learn something. Maybe it would Save them. But what would you want your child to know?

[Walker]

I think a lot of people look at sports betting as you're betting into a machine.

[Michael Lewis]

You're betting into the computer, the computers.

[Walker]

On the other, you know, the software.

[Michael Lewis]

The sports betting software is on the other side of the bet. Right. But the, any, any gamble, any bet.

[Walker]

Takes two sides and somebody's on one.

[Michael Lewis]

Side of the bet and somebody else.

[Walker]

Or some entities on the other, other.

[Michael Lewis]

Side of the bat. In my own master class on teenage sports gambling, this guy would be front and center. His name is Matt Davidow. He's a professional sports gambler who co wrote what amounts to the industry's founding text, the Logic of Sports Betting. Captain Jack actually recommended it to Walker and Tom, but I don't think they read it. They were too busy betting the unders. The reality is that somebody, whether it's a trader whose ego or job or.

[Walker]

Bonus is on the line or an actual person with their own money is, you know, that's who you're. You're playing against them. You need to be better than the other player. The same as poker, it's the same as the financial markets.

[Michael Lewis]

And these other players often know things that you don't know.

[Walker]

Correct.

[Michael Lewis]

That's Ed Miller, Matt's co author, who oddly went to the same high school I went to in New Orleans.

[Walker]

Here are the two things I think.

[Michael Lewis]

Are true about sports betting. One is that there are people who.

[Walker]

Are trying to win and they have.

[Michael Lewis]

Different ways of winning.

[Walker]

They have something going on when they.

[Michael Lewis]

Put a bet down there. Yeah. So there's a lot of information in the prices.

[Walker]

Yes.

[Michael Lewis]

And the prices are dynamic. Correct. Here's the first masterclass tip, and it sounds deceptively simple. Anytime anyone offers you a bet or a trade or an item for sale or even a night of passion, they have some reason for offering it. And you may be wholly unaware of whatever they know that you do not. The fancy name for this is adverse selection. A market price, like the odds on a football game, isn't some random thing. It's the result of lots of people who know lots of stuff you don't know offering other people the chance to make a bet. You might think you know more than the market, but you better ask yourself what you know that the market doesn't, because the market knows a huge amount. But. And there is another but. The market is not an omniscient God. It never knows everything.

[Walker]

Nobody could ever really figure out the.

[Michael Lewis]

True odds because there's, at the end.

[Walker]

Of the day, an oblong ball bouncing around. There's many humans who are participating both physically and mentally.

[Michael Lewis]

It's as opposed to say, chess or go. Sports gambling is not like chess. The real world is never that predictable. In sports gambling, just like in life, you can never know the true odds. You're always just making your best guess. The difference with sports gambling is you have this thing called the house. The bookie who sees the best price, someone else will make him and then makes you an even worse one. So by far the most important skill. Yeah.

[Walker]

Is meticulous price shopping.

[Michael Lewis]

Okay, that is the most important sports betting skill, full stop. By price shopping, he means finding the sports bookie who takes the smallest cut. You'll always start with the odds stacked against you. But if the bookie is only taking 5%, you'll go broke more slowly than if the bookie is taking 15%. As FanDuel and DraftKings do on their three legged parlays. Ed and Matt offer up a bunch of practical tips for the young sports gambler. Gamble on less popular sports, for instance. With fewer fans following what's going on, it's easier to find useful information than no one else knows. But before you go off and investigate the Russian Rugball Championships, they offer a warning. Even the Russian Rugball Championships are, are gonna be very hard to beat. Whatever you think you know about some sport is highly unlikely to give you enough of an edge against the bookie. Yet people do not get this. That's maybe what Ed and Matt find most perplexing about this boom in online sports gambling. My son, he's 8. I have an 8 year old who can't watch a sporting event without becoming.

[Walker]

Convinced that everybody knows who's gonna win.

[Michael Lewis]

Or everybody can beat sports betting just by picking teams.

[Walker]

I've been teaching him actual gambling. I've been teaching him sports gambling. He was starting to think that all you learn what he's seeing on TV that he could pick the winner because.

[Michael Lewis]

Look, everybody else can.

[Walker]

Right?

[Michael Lewis]

The marketing of sports gambling is teaching bad mental habits. Every time my own son turns on his TV or computer, some celebrity spokesman is trying to make him even less aware of his own limitations than he naturally is. He's going to learn humility the hard way by losing. I was counting on this.

[Walker]

So now we're up $1,000 or more like 970 or something. But I think I want to bet everything I own now.

[Michael Lewis]

When my producers checked in on Tom and Walker a few days into our experiment, I expected them to find chaos and contrition. Instead they found an even bigger pile of money.

[Walker]

How does it feel to kind of start off on a win streak and your situation now? Like, what's going on? Oh, yeah. So every family dinner, it's the exact same time that the US Olympics are going on. So I'll be, like, betting at the dinner table or I'll put in a bet, and then I'll be watching it the entire time and refreshing my feed. I got, like, gambling fever at the dinner table, and my sister is visibly upset. And, yeah, no one likes it. And I think. I think they're jealous. They're like, oh, oh, he. He's up like, 1 5K. I can't do that, you know? And my dad is, like, kind of uneasy because he's like. He's like, oh, God, this is, like, my fault. I've got him into this. And he's. Every time I make a bet or every time I talk about making a bet, he talks about how I probably should have lost, basically. Or not that, but he's like. He's like. He argues back at it. He's like, well, this is. Blah, blah, blah, blah. This is wrong, because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, dude, the only time I've been wrong was today. I made a dumb bet and I lost us $100. But it's okay. The same thing happened at my house. My brother's getting mad at me, and my girlfriend was getting really mad at me because I'm always on my phone. She got mad at me because I was taking my phone. I was driving something. On the record. Y'all need to be saved. I'm sorry. They realize you need to stop feeling for all time.

[Michael Lewis]

In any masterclass, there should be this one breakout session. You discuss the effects of your sports gambling on your friends and family. If you gamble on sports, you can't do much about your odds against the bookies, but you can torpedo your odds of ever having a girlfriend. Walker and Tom already sort of know this. Every teenage boy has spent lots of his childhood on screens. While surrounded by people shouting at him to get off his screens. They're as prepared as two young men ever were to cope with the fallout from a life of sports gambling. Anyway, they started out on this freakish winning streak. Our whole family had gone to Paris for the Summer Olympics. Then Walker and I took a bus for three hours to Lille to catch the USA basketball team playing Serbia. It was the first Olympic basketball game I'd ever seen in person. And it was fascinating when you put a dozen superstars on one team, weird things tend to happen. But Walker barely noticed any of it because he was on his phone gambling.

[Walker]

I got the over and the under. If I. If it's under 184, I make 900.

[Michael Lewis]

Another three. Oh, my God.

[Walker]

If it's under 184, I make 950,000. Flip coins. If I. If it's. If it's. If it's over, I lose 83,000.

[Michael Lewis]

How come you just said, I hope they stop trying?

[Walker]

Well, there's three minutes left, and USA is obviously one. There's. I think, for the. Just to preserve the player's health, there's no need to continue trying.

[Michael Lewis]

How do you feel about your bets? Do you think they were smart bets?

[Walker]

I think they were perfect bets. I'm not even worried.

[Michael Lewis]

The algorithm seems smarter than you to.

[Walker]

No, that's not true. I knew what I was doing.

[Michael Lewis]

You could end up. You could. You could actually lose both bets.

[Walker]

I could lose if I. If it hits 185, I lose both. That's not gonna happen, though.

[Michael Lewis]

He's bet the over and the under. But as Captain Jack had told him, no one really likes to root for things not happening. And now Walker's stuck doing it.

[Walker]

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I swear to God, if anybody shoots the ball and they'll lose. My foot. Thank God, LeBron, you're old.

[Michael Lewis]

It appears his bets didn't work out. That's the sound of a sick man. That's a sound made by a sick, sick man. I'd already said too much. Anything more would only make it worse.

[Walker]

I'm the best. I'm the best. I'm the best fucking gambler there is.

[Michael Lewis]

If what we're talking about is sports bets made by my son, okay? And he's made eight sports bets, right? And five of them have come out. He's come out successfully. He's won.

[Walker]

Right.

[Michael Lewis]

How confident should he be that he's a really good sports bettor? He should not be confident. Joe Hardin, statistics professor at Pomona College, a member of a growing movement in California to add stats to the high school curriculum. Because without a basic grasp of the subject, human beings are easy meat for. For many predators in modern life, including sports gambling companies, 5 out of 8 is your. Is your data value, is your sample value.

[Walker]

And we're trying to say, is five.

[Michael Lewis]

Out of eight a good measure of.

[Walker]

The value that's going to be over your lifetime?

[Michael Lewis]

So it doesn't really matter how good he is internally.

[Walker]

He's probably not going to end up Making much money.

[Michael Lewis]

So what is it in the young male mind? It causes it to say, I'm three for three. Yeah, this industry might be really hard for other people, but I'm good at it. I'm not like other people. What's going on there? I mean, we're all like that, right? Which is why statistics are so essential both in gambling and in life. Stats gives you the tools to reason from evidence instead of constantly spinning dubious stories to yourself. An education in statistics makes you aware that the world's probabilistic, the total certainty is idiotic, that the most any of us will ever be is less uncertain. One of the other big things that I think is really important is sometimes it's called confusion of the inverse, and.

[Walker]

It'S about conditional probability.

[Michael Lewis]

So if I ask you, what is the probability that, given that you play in the NBA, what is the probability that you're six feet tall? And I don't know, the actual.

[Walker]

It's like 95, 96%. Right?

[Michael Lewis]

95, 96% of the guys who play in the NBA are at least six feet tall. Yep. But then I turn that question around and I say, given that you are above 6ft tall, what is the probability.

[Walker]

That you play in the NBA?

[Michael Lewis]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Walker]

And it's basically zero.

[Michael Lewis]

Right? So that confusion paradox, and we see it in all sorts of fields, how do we apply this to sports gambling? Maybe like, given that you win, what's.

[Walker]

The probability you know what you're doing?

[Michael Lewis]

And given that you know what you're.

[Walker]

Doing, what's the probability that you win?

[Michael Lewis]

That's it. That's it. Right?

[Walker]

Because given that you win, there's gonna.

[Michael Lewis]

Be a lot of false positives.

[Walker]

There's gonna be a lot of people who just randomly win.

[Michael Lewis]

That was Walker and Tom. They're still up a bunch of money, riding high on false positives. I think they sort of knew it, but sort of knowing it's very different from feeling it. I wanted them to feel it, and soon enough they did. We've all been there. You're sick and you're trying to schedule a doctor's appointment only to spend hours on hold. Then you find yourself crammed into a crowded waiting room with other sick people. And don't get me started about getting your prescriptions. That's a whole other story. Amazon understands. That's why they created Amazon One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy, designed to remove these pain points from healthcare. With AmazonOne Medical, you get 24. 7 virtual care, so you can see a provider within minutes and Avoid those long, annoying waits. And with Amazon Pharmacy, your prescriptions are delivered directly to you quickly and affordably. No more trips to the pharmacy and no more surprise costs at the cash register. Thanks to the ease and convenience of Amazon One Medical. And Amazon Pharmacy Healthcare just got less painful.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Learn [e-mail] this is Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History. So we are, we're sitting in what.

[Michael Lewis]

We'Re sitting in a 1988 BMW 325IS.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

And describe the way in which it's been modified.

[Michael Lewis]

It has no interior. That's where it begins.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Not even a steering wheel is what I'm looking down.

[Michael Lewis]

Yeah, right now there's no steering wheel. Although I can fix that in a second.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

And what's the appeal of a late 80s BMW 325?

[Michael Lewis]

Well, it's almost like the perfection of a recipe that BMW began in the 60s, which is to take, you know, a really beautifully made inline six engine, rear wheel drive and just like an incredibly balanced and fun to drive car. Yeah, yeah. Let me give a little, little sneak peek. I need to connect the battery. The battery is disconnected.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Wait, the battery is in the back of the seat.

[Michael Lewis]

The battery is actually under the rear seat.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Oh, I see. Just. That's it.

[Michael Lewis]

That's.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

So it has an absolutely perfect balance between front and rear.

[Michael Lewis]

Rear.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Rear way.

[Michael Lewis]

Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

[Walker]

So.

[Michael Lewis]

Yes.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Turn it on, let's hear it. Oh yes.

[Michael Lewis]

And this is you.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

This is your first BMW.

[Michael Lewis]

My second.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Oh no, Lucas, you can't say that. You have to say it. Wait, what was your second? What was your first?

[Michael Lewis]

It was a 1989 535i.

[Walker]

Oh yes, this is.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

But you own that with a bunch of other people.

[Walker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Michael Lewis]

So this is my first. My true, my first, you know, sole BMW, solely owned, solely on M. Okay, wonderful.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Whether It's a vintage 3 Series or the all new 20253 Series, you'll never forget your first BMW. The new 3 Series combines mind blowing driving dynamics with modern style. Offering a striking sports sedan that thrills on every ride. With innovative technology, intelligent driver assistance systems and bold design inside and out, the 3 Series makes every journey unforgettable. Learn more at BMW USA.com listener A new year is finally here. And if you're anything like me, you've got a lot on your plate. Habits to build, travel plans to make, mocktail recipes to perfect. Good thing our sponsor NerdWallet is here to take one thing off your plate. Finding the best financial products, introducing NerdWallet's best of awards. List your shortcut to the best credit cards, savings accounts and more. The nerds have done the work for you researching and reviewing over 1100 financial products to bring you only the best of the best. Looking for a balance transfer credit card with a 0% APR? They've got a winner for that. Or a bank account with a top rate to hit your savings goals? They've got a winner for that too. Know you're getting the best products for you without doing all the research yourself. So let NerdWallet do the heavy lifting for your finances this year and head over to their 2025 Best of Awards at NerdWallet.com awards to find the best financial products today.

[Walker]

All right, so last night I made a two leg parlay against Walker's suggestions and against everything I've read online saying the parlays are bad, but I felt like I had to do it to make up for the lost money. So we'll see if it pays out. Hello, I'm at dinner again and I just placed a the dumbest bet of my life. I bet the over 30 or the USA wins by over 30 point spread. The minus 30 on the point spread for USA and I put $100 on it. The daily limit on my debit card.

[Michael Lewis]

The losses follow the gains as surely as winter follows fall. When they won, they thought they were sharp. Best gamblers in the world. When they lost, they didn't know what to think. So instead they just felt and turned whatever they were feeling about themselves onto others.

[Walker]

How do you pitch? How do you strike out seven and then decide not to strike out six? You're at two. God. Pull em. Honestly. Okay, let's, let's talk strategy for like the next bet because we need to make this back. We need to be on the come up now. Do you think it. We could probably, we could probably make $600 in one bed. We could. I bet you we could. We could be slightly less. No, no, no, no. We can't. No, no, no, never mind. Let's not try to do it in one bet. That's a dumb idea. This is how people start losing money. I agree.

[Michael Lewis]

Like most people, these two weren't constrained by some process because like most people they didn't really have a process as LJ found during one of her regular check ins.

[Walker]

Oh my God. They can only score 10 points now in four minutes. Yeah. No, LJ have actually lost. They have to score 10 points or they can only score 10 points. They're not going to score 10 points in four minutes. Yeah. They will. Literally. How? These guys are running up and down the court on my own. I've scored 10 points in four minutes. Like, it's not hard. Two teams who are at a professional level, swear to God, if they don't play the best fucking defense of their life, I'm gonna lose my. We do, like, a one month later thing. Like, you know in movies where it's like, where are they now? Yeah. Yeah. It's like Walker lost all of his money and just don't know where he is because he's, like, currently homeless. No. Somewhere in the SF area. Like, I live in the sewers now. I think you might win this. I think you could win this, Walker. L.J. i think you're really, really wrong. I actually have 100% lost this. It's interesting that you're just watching the score like you're not even watching the game. Like, you're so beyond that. No. God damn it. How did I let that happen? What is wrong with me? Well, good luck. I'm gonna go have breakfast free of shame and guilt. You didn't just lose $1,000. Yeah, that's true.

[Michael Lewis]

People pay way too much attention to winners. Winners get books written about them. Winners are constantly being asked to explain how they won. Winners get really good at making other people feel they know something. But losers have more to teach us. Losers have suffered. Only when you have lost have you experienced the deep reality of sports gambling.

[Walker]

I can't believe that just happened. Oh, my God. I lost, like, $100 because I pressed the wrong button. Or maybe I lost $500 like an idiot. Oh, that was so dumb.

[Michael Lewis]

That's the reality of this new industry. It's not good for you. But it's easy to ignore that fact because we've accepted a wider frame and gotten too used to saying okay to industries that are a lot like it.

[Walker]

I was working in a pretty benign, like, ad tech job, deciding which ads people saw on Expedia or what have you, some kind of travel website.

[Michael Lewis]

That's Kathy O'Neill. My son was chasing his losses, but I was still hunting for the final piece of my masterclass.

[Walker]

But I realized quickly that the kinds of predictions I was making, which were not that different from predicting markets, were really. They were really profiling people by wealth, by gender, and by race, and sort of making lucky people luckier and unlucky people unluckier.

[Michael Lewis]

Back in 2007, Kathy had gone from being a math professor at Barnard to working on Wall street, where she saw the way math was used to Hide the risks. That led to the financial crisis. The traders bonuses were based on the profit they made, divided by the risk they were taking. By hiding the risk, they raised their bonuses. They also orchestrated a disaster for ordinary people. Kathy became disillusioned. She quit her job and went to work at an online advertising firm.

[Walker]

And I was like, wait, here I am again. What happened? Like, how did I get here? Like, I'm yet again, like, making the world worse. So this time I was like, I'm not doing this again. I'm gonna tell the public, like, what's happening.

[Michael Lewis]

She wrote a book called Weapons of Math Destruction, about the ways people who are good at math use it to disguise the exploitation of people who aren't.

[Walker]

When I wrote it, the reception was mixed. You know, some people were like, holy crap. Like, this really makes me understand my work in insurance much more, and I'm much more worried about it, you know, so there are a lot of people who. Who were, I think, rightly concerned, but there were a lot of people who are like, I can't believe, you know, you're. You've betrayed us. You know, there's a kind of notion that we nerds are supposed to sort of keep the secrets of other nerds.

[Michael Lewis]

Those secrets described in Kathy's book are hidden in code that the companies on the other side of your business don't want you to think too much about. It isn't just how Google serves you ads. It's how your credit is scored, your insurance is priced, and your job application is handled. Now it's also how your new sports gambling habit is managed. The ads lead you to the apps, and the apps coax you to behave in certain ways without making it clear what they're doing or why. How would you think about the algorithms, about designing algorithms to take advantage of these people? What kind of things would you build into the Algos?

[Walker]

Well, it depends on how you're trying to take advantage of them, right? If you're trying to take advantage of people who are addicted to gambling, then you get. Somehow you get money back if you've lost. But it's not really money. It's just many more opportunities to bet. And that's exactly the kind of thing you would do if you just wanted to make sure you hook somebody. And you might even lose a little bit of money as a business. But if you hook a statistically large proportion of people that way, then in the long term, you're making a lot more money off of people's addictions.

[Michael Lewis]

And the beauty of it is how impersonal it is. No individual ever needs to acknowledge what they're doing. The sports gambling industrial complex is just another a B testing machine with a mind of its own.

[Walker]

They try out a bunch of things and see what works the best. Let's say, let's try to get people to bet on the Red Sox with green letters. And also let's try the same exact words, but let's try it with red letters and see which ones they're more likely to click on. And the answer is going to be red letters. Now we know what letters. What about the font? What about the background? What about the pictures? What about exactly what words we use? And you're just constantly. You're pummeling the audience with that. But moreover, you're pummeling different audiences with different things because you've profiled different audiences to be vulnerable to different messages. So not just the who's the home team, but like, how addicted are you and how much money do you have and what is your favorite type of betting? So they'll keep track of all those things and they will micro target your vulnerabilities.

[Michael Lewis]

So it's taking your past behavior and your response to past stimuli to try to manage.

[Walker]

Right. It doesn't have to be you. People like you. So it's going to divide you into like a little granular pot and then say, okay, everyone we've seen like you responds to ads like this. And this is how we make the most money from people like you.

[Michael Lewis]

And in the case of sports betting, it's to manage my behavior so that I maximize my losses.

[Walker]

And it's fair to say they're not just trying to predict your future, they're trying to condition you into a future. Right? It's like you should think of yourself as a dog that's being trained with treats. Because that's how they think about it. They will give you a little treat in order to keep you interested. It's like, yeah, you're a dog at a dog park. I'm just throwing that in to make it as humiliating as possible because it really is actually humiliating. It's intentionally so.

[Michael Lewis]

All right, how do I train my son to be a bad dog?

[Walker]

Right?

[Michael Lewis]

How do I train my. And really, how do I train him to be a bad dog?

[Walker]

The best way to avoid conditioning is to walk away from like to say, that treat doesn't work on me.

[Michael Lewis]

That's when it hit me. That's what I hoped. Walker would learn to be untrainable to leap over the fence and run away from the dog park. That would be the big takeaway of my masterclass. Not something sharp about sports betting. More of a feeling about how to live your life so other people aren't leading you to live it for them. My experiment, such as it was, blew up just a couple of weeks after it started. Not in the way I'd expected, though. I'd assumed that Walker and Tom would eventually just set fire to my $5,000, and then we'd all stand around and stare at the flames and figure out how dumb that was. Instead, they started out winning right off the bat. They then hit a cold streak and panicked. And then Tom made this crazy flurry of bets, winning bets in a flash, without anyone knowing why. They went from losing money to winning $3,500, all in secret, until LJ got Tom to confess his source.

[Walker]

So your brother found a guy on Discord who works at Taco Bell who was giving you advice on bets that you made that you won all those bets that you place? Yeah, basically, yeah. And that's why you think you're. You were winning. I mean, that's why it doesn't make any sense to me. I think that there. I mean, there's a great amount of luck in it.

[Michael Lewis]

There has to be.

[Walker]

So, like, what do you think you learned? I mean, I learned that it's possible to beat in the short term, but I don't know how much it's luck or skill.

[Michael Lewis]

LJ put the same question to Walker, who knew that they had broken Captain Jack's first rule of sports betting. Don't listen to some random dude who works at Taco Bell on a Discord chat.

[Walker]

Why do you think you guys won? Have you already said this?

[Michael Lewis]

The Discord.

[Walker]

The guy. The Taco Bell guy. Yep. I didn't know if we were sharing that or not. Yeah. So, yeah, we just, I guess, outsourced our problems.

[Michael Lewis]

Not a straight answer to LJ's question. But a few days later, Walker and I were driving someplace. I asked him all casual, like, so, what's your next bet? And he said, I am done with sports gambling. What do you mean you're done with sports gambling? I asked. And he said, I pulled all the money out of the account so Tom can't bet either. He'd split the winnings with Tom and send me back my five grand. He jumped the fence and left the dog park. I want to know why you decided to stop betting at all.

[Walker]

I noticed that as much as I won, I also managed to lose just as much, just slightly less. I guess. But something I realized, if you'd like, in a really short form way of saying this is everybody. Anybody can win, but everybody's gonna lose.

[Michael Lewis]

Anybody can win, but everybody's gonna lose. That's about as perfect a summary of our entire season as I can think of. So why do you think. I mean, everybody should be able to see this. It's set up to lose, but people do it anyway. Why do you think people do get sucked in and why you think you didn't?

[Walker]

I think this is no hate to any gamblers out there, but I don't think you have enough gratifying things going on to sustain that, sustain your attention. Like, I have a few hobbies that I just, like, can't get enough of when I. I make music. So when I'd finish a song that would. That would remain in. In my like downloads folder that I could go and return to. But, like, all you're doing is losing.

[Michael Lewis]

What'd you do with the money you won?

[Walker]

I. I bought a surfboard. I bought a wetsuit. I got a. I'm a little bit ashamed, but I bought a gaming PC and I bought. Oh, what else did I buy? I bought a bunch of plugins for music, which is just like synthesizers online.

[Michael Lewis]

Did you think I was a bad dad for having you do it?

[Walker]

No. Yeah, that was stupid. It was stupid of you to do, but I'm glad you did it. It's not good or evil. It's just, like, wasn't a good idea. It worked out. We got lucky.

[Michael Lewis]

Against the Rules is written and hosted by me, Michael Lewis and produced by Lydia Jean Cott, Kathryn Girardeau, and Ariella Markowitz. Our editor is Julia Barton. Our engineer is Jake Gorski. Our music was composed by Matthias Bossi and John Evans of Stellwagen Symphonet. Our fact checker is Lauren Vespoha. Against the Rules is a production of Pushkin Industries. Special thanks to a few more folks who made this season of against the Rules possible. Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohn, Sarah Nix, Christina Sullivan, Kerry Brody, Eric Sandler, Kira Posey, Jordan McMillan, Jake Flanagan, Owen Miller, Sarah Bruguerre, Jacob Goldstein, and Sophie Crane. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you'd like to listen ad free and learn about other exclusive offerings, don't forget to sign up for a Pushkin plus subscription at Pushkin FM plus or on our Apple show page.

[Walker]

Did you learn anything about yourselves that surprised you? Well, like in the back of my head there's a bit of a tug. It's like being pulled toward bedding basically. And I now know that I can kind of control that, which is surprising. You learned that you have like a self control that you didn't know that you had, which is pretty cool. Yeah, that's nice. I feel a little bit more confident in myself to make good decisions, which is nice.

[Michael Lewis]

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[Malcolm Gladwell]

Hello there. This is Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History. In a world full of ordinary as a brand that dares to be different, picture this. A sleek design that makes every driveway feel like a Runway. Feel the rush of precision engineering as power meets sophistication with every turn. It's not just a drive, it's an experience, a symphony of performance and refinement harmonizing on the open road. When you're behind the wheel, the question isn't where you're going, but how incredible the journey can be. So buckle up and embrace the extraordinary. Because when the road calls, only one answer will do. BMW the Ultimate Driving Machine Learn more@BMW.

[Michael Lewis]

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[Walker]

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[Walker]

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[Walker]

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[Michael Lewis]

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