The Press Box - Gambling on ‘Game of Thrones’ (Ep. 333)

Episode Date: July 22, 2017

The Ringer’s Ben Lindbergh sits down with Pat Morrow, head oddsmaker for Bovada, to talk about the phenomenon of betting on HBO’s 'Game of Thrones' (2:10), reading fan theories as part of research (7:00), and how having a professional stake in the show affects consumption (21:45). Lindbergh’s article on the subject—“Growing Strong: Inside the Burgeoning ‘Game of Thrones’ Gambling Business”—can be found on The Ringer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A betting man would put his money on Stannis. As it happens, I am a betting man. Hello and welcome to a very special episode of the Channel 33 podcast, part of the Ringer podcast network. My name is Ben Lindberg. I'm a writer for the ringer.com. That clip you just heard really requires no explanation. It comes from a pretty popular television program called Game of Thrones. And the reason it requires no explanation is that Game of Thrones is the most mainstream monoculture TV show left on our splintered entertainment landscape.

It's the closest TV comes to the Oscars or the Super Bowl. And speaking of which, like the Oscars, like the Super Bowl, you can now place bets on Game of Thrones. That's right, just as you might bet on the outcome of a sporting event, you can now bet on the outcome of Game of Thrones. As the show's popularity increases, more and more online sports books are getting into the Game of Thrones gambling game. You can go to these sites and bet on who will sit on the Iron Throne at the end of the season

or at the end of the series. You can enter pools to predict the next character to die. You can pick out prop bets about special occurrences on the show. show. And one of the most prominent sites where you can wager on Thrones is Bovada, an online gambling and casino games site for sports and entertainment. And Thrones is a little bit different from the database sports that Bovada does big business on. This is a scripted series. So we wanted to know how this works. How did they decide to take bets on Game of Thrones? Who sets the odds and how? How do they adjust them as the season goes on? How does the action on thrones betting compare

to the action and sports betting? We have many questions. And today we'll be joined by Pat Morrow, Bovada's head odds maker, to explain the whole process. Talk about how Pat came to do this job, his experience with the Game of Thrones series, what kind of research he has to do to make sure Bovada makes money on its Game of Thrones bets, and some of the benefits it brings to the site indirectly. A small disclaimer here, Pat and I do discuss some spoilers about Game of Thrones, as well as some speculation about future seasons of the show and some fan theories. We don't necessarily know how any of this is going to play out.

If we did, we could make a fortune betting on Game of Thrones, but just be warned if you're trying to avoid any outside knowledge of the show. All right, words are wind, so without any more setup, I'd like to bring in our guest, Pat Morrow. Hi, Pat. Thanks for joining me. Hey, how are you? I'm doing well.

Thank you. I am very curious and about just how the Game of Thrones odd setting compares to the rest of your job. So could you describe to me how hands-on a role you normally take as the head odds maker when it comes to sports or anything else that you're involved in? Sure. So the difference between something like Game of Thrones and day-to-day sports is, yeah, it's quite, difference. I'm not as hands-on with a lot of the other sports products that we put out there, although I will dictate or sign off on philosophies for different teams working under me. Game of Thrones is just something that I, you know, little entertainment stuff like that,

which is kind of fun for us to do. And something that breaks up the monotony of day-to-day sports that can see, especially when it's baseball season like that. So I do enjoy baseball, but sometimes it can be a bit much for it to be the same-old, same-all each day. So trying to put up something that everyone else on Twitter is talking about right now is a little bit more fun for me to do. So as a result of that, while I have teams to work under me to handle a lot of those main sports, and I keep an eye on that, I'll do a lot of stuff related to Game of Thrones, a lot of Donald Trump stuff that we posted lately. And that allows me to have a little bit more fun and let the guys under me have a little bit more responsibility

for some of the more higher-handle waging events leading the football season. So what is the origin story of getting Game of Thrones on the site? How long had you been considering this? When was the moment that you decided the time was right? Well, we've always liked to do, you know, entertainment props like Dancing with the Stars, reality shows are popular. And then I guess a little bit more and more of the last few years, I saw how popular Twitter was with sporting events.

and as someone who was a fan of the show myself, I'd see that Twitter would kind of be taken over by Game of Thrones chatting when the show would inevitably be on Sunday nights. So not just with Game of Thrones, but really with anything else out there. We try and do similar stuff with sporting events. If a pitcher's got like a perfect game going or something like that, we might try and post a live on.

So I guess it was probably in the last couple of years where we started to cater a lot of, of what we do, not just around the traditional wagering, but also what are people talking about right now? So that's where we got into how much can we get out of Game of Thrones, how much can we get out of stuff related to Walking Dead potentially, how much can we get out of Trump because people talk about them every day? And how can we let, you know, instead of us trying to figure out what the product is we put out there, let people online, let us know what they're doing, what they're interested in. And how can we put out something that adds a little bit more enjoyment to their viewer experience? So when you decided to go ahead with Thrones, do you remember exactly when that was and kind of what the lead-up time to it was and how you had to prepare? Right. I think we did it started two summers ago.

We started two summers ago, two falls ago. And we gave ourselves more than a couple months to really look at everything, really try and go through the fan theories, go through all the Reddit stuff. because I'm someone that's read all the books several times. So I thought at that point, like, oh, okay, I think I've got a good hold on that. And then you go through Reddit and you see these people with the plot points and the theories that they have. And they totally blow me away with some of the stuff they have out there. The latest Jamie Lanister one about potentially being Azora High is one of the best ones I've seen so far. And him actually being the Valancar instead of Tyrion, I mean, that's when you think that you've like, okay, like you've spotted everything.

And so we're constantly scouring the internet to try and think of stuff that we haven't seen. And now that we're at a point that the show, sorry, is not only deviated, but also surpassed what the book's storyline was or timeline was. Now we kind of have to throw out what we originally knew and just try and react to whatever we're reading on the internet because we never know if someone's going to crumb across, whether it's that same Reddit spread or one of those song and ice and fire message boards. and look to see whether we're seeing any kind of unbalanced action based on the latest theory that's out there. So it's fun for me because I like to read all the fan theories as well.

I can definitely get lost and do it for a couple hours sometimes. But it can be a bit maddening. And I mean, if some of these theories are true, I mean, it just speaks to the brilliance of how this could potentially all play out. Yeah. Do you feel as though the handicapping has gotten any easier since you started doing Thrones odds, just because the chess pieces are, you know, some of them have been wiped off the board and we're closer to the end game? Or do you feel like there's still as much uncertainty as ever? I think it's a bit easier because now you're having less and less fan theories come out just by nature

because there can only be so many, or less and less credible, I'm going to say. When all first started coming out, you're trying to balance all them. Holy crap, that's a lot of information out there and a lot of them are really good. And now with some of those either get clarified, whether it's, you know, John Snow's birth origin or whether some of them remain muddy. I think there's so much more information for us to deal with a lot more Ruito. I think what helps now is that because we have so much more wagering on it, looking at the lines in front of me right now, compared to the last two previous years,

when you have that much more money bet into something like that and it's spread out a bit more, it makes you feel a little bit more comfortable and that not only do you possibly have some uncertainty what you're putting out there, but there's also a lot of uncertainty in our player base right now. I mean, the only significant loss we have so far on who will sit on the Iron Throne at the end of season 7 is Dineris right now. But we still have Cersi as a one to two favorite. If we had maybe half or a third of that handle, but we still had that position on Dineris, but he might be more inclined to perhaps even make her a favor.

But we're comfortable with what we have right now as Cersie being an odds-on favor right now. We could be absolutely wrong. but the way our breakdown of liabilities is currently sorted, we're quite pleased with how our book currently looks on that. And as a result, we're actually brainstorming later today, some other stuff that we might want to put on, whether it's season-long stuff, whether it's week-to-week episode stuff.

So just trying to figure out what might work, what is a little too tricky. And we'll probably go into some of those fan theories as what it generate what we think will or won't happen for a lot of those. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. Is the, who will sit on the Iron Throne at the end of this season, is that the only active bet right now about Game of Thrones? Because in the past, you've had like weekly death bets and that sort of thing, right? Yeah, the old death pool. That was popular.

So just because we just reopened yesterday and the buddy who helps me out a little bit with these was off sick yesterday. I told them we'd get together later today and go through a few other stuff. So we might look at the death pool bringing that back again. But we also might look at some fan theories. We think those are probably the more interesting ones, which we've never really done before. But just so whether Gendry was actually Circe's firstborn, there's a theory about that as well. And there was allegedly some filming overseas that showed him knocking down some Lannister guards with a warhammer, which of course was Robert's old weapon. So it's crazy how far you can go down some of these theories that went out there.

But I think people might be more interested in betting some of those as opposed to the death. pools. However, the weekly stuff is good in the sense that just like live betting or blackjack, you know very quickly whether you won or loss and then you can kind of shuffle up and deal again or you can take your money and go. So yeah, we're trying to figure out what else we can add because with the money that we get on this kind of stuff now, we'd be kind of silly not to. And can you recount any of your best and worst picks so far? Like, you know, the ones that you you feel in retrospect that you had the onset perfectly, or maybe you were kind of ahead of where the

consensus on the market at the time was, or another where you sort of got beat by the market? Right. If we're talking specifically Game of Thrones, I would say the Gendry stuff really came out of nowhere for me, and then it was the overseas image. So we have him 15 to 1 right now to be on the Iron Throne of Genes' season 7. And I still don't think that that character would be satisfying for a lot of people. And it's not necessarily about satisfying and the happy ending.

I mean, satisfying what you'd expect out of a George Aramart. So we had him as high as 50 to one prior to this overseas footage of him swinging a warhammer and killing Lannister guards. Outside of that, I think we've been pretty close in the sense that people like Deneres, John Snow, and Syrian have been close to the top for the majority of this. Thirsty doing what she did at the end of last season, definitely shot her up the ranks. We didn't have her close to the Iron Throne prior to that. But unfortunately, neither of our players did as well. So in that sense, we were psychologically right alongside them in terms of trying evaluating or quantifying or how she was going to be outside of that.

No, we've actually been pretty okay. Yeah, and again, our liabilities reflect that, that we haven't had too much to worry about. We took a little bit of a hit on Gendry, but again, I'm not too concerned about that. It is interesting to see what his role will be throughout the rest of the season now. Yeah. And since this whole series is kind of built on the idea of, you know, demolishing these fantasy archetypes and the prince valiant and the good queen and the happy ending and all of that, and, you know, at this point, the series has sort of taught us to expect the unexpected,

but then if you're in a position like you are, you must be thinking, yourself in circles about maybe now the expected is the unexpected because we haven't been conditioned to expect, you know, the happy ending or something like that. So I guess, you know, does that make this even more difficult for you that you're trying to think along with Martin or now the showrunners? And there's this history of the show being this story where, you know, people at the height of their power just get erased without any warning. And it's surprise after surprise, but now we're getting to the end, and you kind of have to think that there has to be some sort of light at the end of this tunnel, and maybe the good guys actually will win.

So I don't know, is it possible to, to overthink the Game of Thrones predictions at this stage of the game? I would very much agree. And again, a lot of that is trying to parse the information, the different fan theories, what Martin likes to do. I mean, he definitely likes to punish your typical good protagonist. I think with this expectation of, you know, whether it's John Snow, whether it's DeNaris, there's some interest in Tyrion potentially.

There's also that theory that Tyrion would be the third head of the dragon, John being the second. I think the more and more I look at it, though, I really like the idea of Jamie Lannister's ambiguous hero, either not just being Azora Hyde, but maybe, you know, going full circle and sitting on the Iron Throne. just like he did at the end of Roberts Rebellion, but maybe some kind of redemption story there. I think that would be satisfying for people and also satisfying in the sense that it would be believable if sold properly.

I would also embrace Martin's love for the ambiguous hero or even the anti-hero more so than the prototypical good, like a DeNaris or John Snow. Yeah, I was going to ask you. But that's just my guess. Yeah, right. I was going to ask you if you had any theories that you like.

a lot, even if you don't necessarily think they're the most likely, or, you know, if you're not really having them inform the odds that you're setting, but you would just personally like to see as a fan of the series. Yeah, I guess, yeah, I guess I probably teased into that one too much there and that's the Jamie one. And it might just be because it's my, you know, most recent, so as a result of the one that most recently interests me. But otherwise, I guess part of that theory is this idea that, you know, war with the others could potentially end with diplomacy outside of outright war. And that's something where George R. Martin in interviews in the past has suggested his kind of disgust for war in any form. And he tries to, I guess people think that he glamorizes it with some of the shots from the show. Maybe in his way he tries to think that it's, you know, quite foul. But yeah, I guess Jamie being both the Valancur, Azora High, and maybe the king at the end of the season would be something that would interest me the most in something, just because I'd never even thought of the possibility of it until this.

So whenever I see something like that, but always kind of lights a fire under me a little bit and then sends me to the message board for another couple hours of lost time. Yeah. And as soon as these odds go live, are you then looking in real time as the bets are coming in? often are you adjusting the lines based on the action that you're seeing in Game of Thrones specifically? Probably more than I should, but we obviously suspend everything once the episode goes live just because sometimes I just want to sit and enjoy the show to you for an hour instead of overreacting to every little thing I see on screen.

And then I'll usually rewatch the episode again a second time to try and pick up on stuff because that first time I just really try and just relax a little bit. But after that, then we'll usually reopen those lines either later that night or early the next day. And then it's reading some recaps, rereading more fan theories, and then going from there. And then after that, we don't do too much movement. I'd say the majority of the movement would probably come during the day on Monday when lines come back up. And then after that, it's smaller stuff throughout the week, setting up all your different columns and your tweet deck for keywords that. people might be talking about.

But it's fun. It's something that I can enjoy a little bit more again with a slower part of the sports seasons for us. So it's good that this isn't happening during the NFL where my attention needs to be a little bit more focused towards that. And rightly so. I mean, that is Game of Thrones is getting big, but it's still not quite NFL big for us.

Yeah, right. Are there people placing bets on even the most far-fetched candidates here? I mean, are there people placing bets on Gilly to sit on the iron throne at the end of the season? Is that happening? Oh, absolutely. Everyone loves a long shot. Thinking back to last year, we had Hodor at 5,000 to one to sit on the Iron Throne at the end of the series. And yeah, we took, I think, four different bets that totaled up to $70 in handle. So people were looking for their Lester City moment in the form of Hodor.

What are some of the toughest calls you've had as far as whether to pay out on something? because this is a show where people will appear to be dead and will be reanimated or not actually dead. You can never tell for sure if someone's dead until you see them bleeding. And even then, that's not definitive. So what challenges does that pose to you as far as ruling on whether to pay out or not? Specifically, that's a really good question, actually, because there is certainly a lot of ambiguity when it comes to who dies and who actually stays dead. So, no, yeah, we've actually been lucky that we haven't ruled something like that yet. So what we would do is I imagine we'd probably defer to our, maybe even something similar to like our boxing rules where the ringside decision is what counts.

So by that I mean if someone were to die and then come back like two months or something like that later, we would let people get their wins back. And then if people had lost on next person to die, we would probably give them their money back and put them kind of back into the betting. pool. So for something like that, when it becomes really ambiguous, it's certainly in our best interest to make sure that, well, okay, people who got paid out would leave them paid out. And if this now means someone technically hasn't died, we would put everyone's money back into the betting pool for something like that. Right. Were you doing the death pools when John died? And, I mean, technically, he did die, I suppose, and it came back. So it doesn't necessarily have to be final, I guess, if you're raised for the...

the dead, then you are, well, it depends if you're a white, maybe you're undead and not technically alive. But it's hard to say, right? Because I think George, or Martin will say that someone like Barrick, Dundarian, is undead. And yet in the show, I guess he's technically alive as far as we can tell. So you kind of get into parsing the technicalities of life and death here. Yeah, I think the closest that we had was shortly after the end of gosh, I think it was two or three seasons ago, forgive me, I don't have it in front

me right now, but when Mercilla was poisoned, leaving Dorn and heading back to King's Landing, right, yeah. We weren't quite sure if she had died that we just saw her bleeding and collapsing, but we weren't sure

if there was a possibility that could be saved. So we entertained the idea of opening up a who will die next and making her a significant favorite. And we left that open for a couple days. And then when the following season came back, everyone who bet on Mercilla, we paid them out. And we did let everyone else's bet stands for the next step.

So that's what we did in that scenario. But it was on a much smaller scale. We didn't keep that up that long just because we were concerned about that ambiguity. But again, when that kind of ambiguity presents itself, it's in our interest to kind of pay out people in the spirit of what they think they're betting into. Yeah, I guess these are the challenges that you do not face with traditional sports bets. Yeah, the result usually holds true in traditional sports betting. Yeah, right.

And I assume that if the scenario that people are betting about just never happens, like if no one is on the Iron Throne at the end of this season, if the Iron Throne is destroyed or vacant or something, then all the vets would be voided. That's correct, yeah. If no one sits on the throne at the end, then it would be void for wager and purposes. Just because we didn't include that as a wagering option. Right, yeah.

And is there anyone you work with who helps sanity check the odds that you come up with? Because you're the expert. You're the one who's delving deepest here. But is there a support team that you have that can kind of check you on these things? Make sure you're not in too deep on a fan theory or something? Just one other guy who watches it. He kind of does the nighttime takeover for stuff like this and other entertainment stuff. So, you know, before I sign off, if I see something that I don't like, I might ask him to look into it to a little bit more.

Or I'll even bounce some stuff often as well. But he just, he does the website stuff more than the fan stuff. He's never really watched much of the show or read any of the books. So I get him to do a lot of the background stuff. I think I'd miss something if I've overlooked something. And he'll be really helpful with the player profiling stuff as well just because some of that stuff is valuable regardless of knowledge of the show or not. Yeah. And I guess this is the case where being a big super fan of something really is helpful to you, because I would imagine that in betting and probably in odds making, often it's best to be kind of dispassionate and impartial and, you know, not follow, either follow the team closer or not have a rooting interest or anything.

And you must because you were a fan of the series before you started making it part of your job. But I guess the enthusiasm that you have for the show and for the series enables you to spend the time that you do digging deep into this and mining for all the information. So in that sense, maybe it is ultimately helpful. Very much so. And that's part of the reason why we started to do this. Otherwise, I would have had someone else do all this and probably not have been too concerned about how it played out aside from all the obvious acquisition stuff. Because at the end of the day, we may make money off it, but it certainly doesn't drive them. boat so I don't need to be someone that's doing this myself. But yeah, since the start of reading

this, I've gone from being, you know, that snobby book guy who's teasing people who watch the show to then, you know, cautiously getting a little bit nervous about how much it's catching up. Right. And that anger moment where you realize it's caught up and getting past it. So the point now where I don't even know if I would read the rest of the books, if and when they ever do come out. That's how that emotion has happened to me and all this time I've spent reading these books. I don't know if I want to read a second version of the story if everything's going to deviate like this. Yeah, right. Yeah, so now I'm in okay. I think I found my piece and a message boards keep me equipped with enough content to not miss the books as much as I did when I was

certainly much more frustrated about it. Yeah, and I know that many fans want to avoid spoilers and leaks and that sort of thing, but I guess you don't have that option, right? If there's any information at all out there, you have to know about it. Yeah. And that's okay. I don't mind. I'm actually really excited when I see a really good new fan theory that holds up to scrutiny. Because it also reinforces that just, I guess I just do like a terrible job of watching the show. I mean, I guess there's a reason why only a certain amount of credible ones come out as often as they do.

I guess a lot of people are missing them. It's not that obvious. But yeah, no, I think that's fascinating when someone else sees that. And yeah, it doesn't bother me at all in terms of potential spoilers. It's just a theory. It's something that information was out there for everyone else to see. They didn't see that anywhere else. They either read the books or watched the show outside of that.

Martin doesn't tease too much in interviews. That could be useful unless you're trying to read into much into what he's saying. So, no, I love that stuff. And I know. I end up getting distracted from a lot of other stuff I should be doing when I go down that tunnel, so to speak. but, you know, every now and again I can get away with it. Yeah. And I mean, what percentile would you consider yourself to be in now among Thrones cognoscenti?

Like, after spending as much time as you must be spending and rereading the book several times and the show and the fan theories, I mean, there can't be too many people who are as well-versed in Thrones as you are, although there are some extremely well-versed people, some of them, colleagues at the ringer? Well, yes, you guys have podcasts around it. You guys, I know you write about it as well. So, no, and I think you guys do a good job of, I would have said probably a couple of years ago. I would have comfortably said I'm in the 1% of people who knows what's going on or thinks he knows what's going on at least. But you guys do such a good job of keeping everyone up to date with the latest fan theories, what's going on. Ask the Maister column as well. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, ask the Mister and binge mode and all of that. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I read all that stuff as well. And, you know, you guys are linking people to a lot of the stuff as well. So I don't know. I'd say maybe I'm in the top 5% still. And that's probably just because I probably spend more time on those message boards than a lot of other people. But, no, I think you guys have done a really good job of probably make it tougher for us to take any kind of cheeky odds postings on some of our stuff trying to do anything a little bit psychological with what we put out there.

I think the fan of the show is definitely much more knowledgeable than they were even a season ago and certainly more than a few seasons ago. Yeah. I'm sorry if we're costing you any profits. No, but you're driving more interest to it as well. A knowledgeable fan is someone who's more likely to throw some money into it. And the more money that we see it, if we think we have knowledgeable people betting into that, that we can respect that bet a little bit more in Shade Line. So I think ultimately you're just driving, whether it's you guys writing, whether it's fans betting into stuff,

That's leading us into more information. If I see a massive bet on Gendry or Tyrion or the Night King for whatever reason, I'll start scouring the web for more stuff. So I think all we're doing in a roundabout kind of way is trying to find out ultimately what's going to happen in this show, whether it's from a financial standpoint or a fan standpoint. Yeah. And you mentioned possibly doing this for The Walking Dead. There aren't many kind of consensus monoculture shows like this left anymore just because the audience is so splintered and there are so many options out there. So it's Thrones and maybe it's Walking Dead. And I don't know if anything else really is up at that level, maybe Bachelor, Bachelorette.

But have you considered extending this to any other shows in the near future and having similar prop bets? We've done Bachelor and Bachelorette before Dancing with the Stars and stuff like that. And it's fine, but it doesn't get the same kind of traction that this does when you have, I don't want to say once in generation show because Walking Dead's right up there with it. When you have a show that is HBO appointment viewing like Game of Thrones is like that. My Twitter feed just blows up. I mean, when the opening scene and, you know, Lady Mormont is throwing a little bit of shade to one of the other Northerners, everyone just like, oh shit, Lady Mormont. Right. She is stuck right now, and I apologize for cursing, but I was just, that was pretty much my whole feed was when she puts the other Northern Lord in this place like that.

And, I mean, there's not too many other shows outside of live sports. really that gets that kind of your whole Twitter shuts down or people who know that they can't be watching like I have to shut my Twitter down right now. Right. So again, if we can look to something like something else similar to this that has that kind of engagement, then yeah, we'll definitely do more with that. And of course, part of it has to be if I enjoy the show too. Yeah.

Although it looks like you have a telenovela bet up right now. In addition to the Michael Phelps versus the Great White Shark, you've got Entierras Salbaes on your page with Game of Thrones as well and OJ Simpson's parole hearing so there's still a jumble of things there on the entertainment page yeah and we saw all of our Donald Trump stuff still out there we already have

2020 election odds out there and I mean gosh we were at a point where we were trying to do one or two new Trump's prop a week but it was getting difficult just because there's so much news out there and I mean tweets at all hours of the day sometimes whatever he tweets like screws up something that we want to post.

Yeah. So I'd take a little break from that just because sometimes we need vacation too. Vacation from Donald Trump. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for your time. This has been fun. Very much, Ben.

Reach out whenever you like. All right. Bye. All right. Take care. Bye. All right. So thanks again to Pat for coming on and being pretty transparent about his process.

I actually asked him after we talked whether blending his fandom with his work has made him enjoy Game of Thrones more or less. And he said more. He says he finds himself watching episodes more intently, rewatching to pick up things he might have missed as well as all the online research he does. So he's just more invested in the series literally and figuratively than he was before it became part of his job, so it hasn't seemed to sap any of the fun for him. He also told me that he enjoys casually mentioning to friends and family what kind of payout they could have received on something

they just saw happen. So if you're sitting next to Pat when a beloved character gets killed, he will just compound your grief with an awareness of the potential profit you just missed that on. And since we spoke, Bovada has actually added a second throne's wager, which is who will kill Searcy, Jamie, Tyrion, or someone or something else. So Pat just couldn't resist putting his Jamie theory to the test. When you gamble on Game of Thrones, you either win or you wish you hadn't placed the bet. And as we know, the house always wins, unless it's house fray. So thank you for listening to this special episode of Channel 33, part of the Ringer podcast

network. You can catch me elsewhere on that network every week on the Ringer MLB show and on Achievement oriented, our video game podcast. And please check out all of our other Game of Thrones. content on The Ringer, including our weekly written recaps by Alison Herman, the episode-by-episode Game of Thrones, Jason Concepcion's Ask the Maester column, and our live reaction show, Talk the Thrones, which you can find on Twitter at Ringer after the East Coast airing of Game of Thrones every week. And please remember that if you bet on the wrong contender for the throne,

be like a Lannister and pay your debts. And to paraphrase a couple warriors already removed from the death pool, I wish you good fortune in the wagers to come.