Welcome to the favorites, the podcast from the volume podcast Network It's Thursday.

That means it's time to enter the Thursday Thunderdome on today's show.

Our special guests will compete alongside my co-host, my companion.

Professional sports better Simon Hunter in an epic test of wagers and wits that's made

of this show, the only back-to-back Oscar-nominated sports betting trivia podcast in history.

Simon, if you were to thank me in the Oscar speech when we win for something, what would you say?

I actually wrote my Oscar speech when I was like 12 years old and I think still to this day is

genius. It goes like, I want to thank my legs for holding me up, my arms for always being by my

side, but it was genius for a 12 year old. I want to thank Chad for putting me in a position

to succeed, loving me unconditionally, accepting me. Yeah, I would let you write it apparently.

Well, that's probably a good idea. Simon, speaking of writing, your first

challenger is an expert in the art and science of human decision making, a return guest here on

the favorites. My favorite guest from last summer, she's a psychology PhD, a poker champion,

the author of two bestselling books, including the biggest bluff. Welcome back to the show,

Maria Kanakova. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you so much for having me back. It's a pleasure

to be here. Tell me how life has been since you revealed yourself to be one of the best poker

players on earth. Can't stop the challenges from the other best poker players in the world who are

like, you know, I'm the best in the universe. And then obviously I have to say no, I am.

And then we get into it and it gets messy. It does get ugly, especially during COVID, I've heard that.

Yeah, for sure. I've heard on the street in the poker chat rooms that you are getting nasty

on a lot of people because they're all coming after you. That's absolutely. I mean, that's my day

to day these days. You know, no time for writing, no time for anything. Basically, all I do is

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