The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win Paperback – June 8, 2021

In April, I read somewhere that Maria Konnikova had become a poker pro and won over $200k in prize money. Huh?! Same social psychology PhD Konnikova who wrote for The New Yorker? And 'The Confidence Game' and 'Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes'? This seemed so farfetched that I just had to find out more. Especially since I'm a social psych aficionado and once was a semipro player myself. How did she train up to play well enough to win a big tourney in less than a year? Who taught her? Could a psych PhD trained in cognitive biases by the great Walter Mischel of marshmallow-test fame apply her knowledge to the game, or will she be a fumbling mortal like the rest of us? And, of all the pain one could inflict upon oneself in the name of journalism, why poker?! Does she enjoy sitting at a table for days on end with guys who frankly smell funny? So many questions. I had no choice but to pre-order the book to find out more.When the ebook arrived last night, I consumed it one sitting. The tale of Konnikova going from 100% poker-naïve novice to sponsored pro in a year is crackingly compelling. No triumphalist tale here. She's candid about the painful process of improving via trial and error and error and error: impatience, misplaced pride, susceptibility to the biases she has written whole books about, and incomplete self-knowledge. But she also has the insight and humility to ask for help from a mindset coach, who apparently makes some difference (even though he quotes Freud, and it's not exactly clear *how* he changes mindset -- this here coach is curious to know). She endures enough crap -- crippling self-doubt, insomnia, sexism, vicious migraines, perfidious allies, crude propositions by creepy dudes -- that when she describes her first big tournament win, I threw my hands in the air and audibly woo-hooed. Her victory is every smart, hard-working underdog's victory.The heart of the book is her relationship with her poker coach, Erik Seidel, one of the game's all-time greats. A deeply wise and caring mentor, he dispenses advice that is not just timeless but omni-applicable: "Telling bad beat stories is like dumping trash on your neighbor's lawn: it just stinks. The goal of poker is not to win pots or chips but to make good decisions. Defeat teaches you more than victory. Don't play a tournament if you don't feel at your best." We all wish we could have a mentor this good.I also picked up on a lot of useful resources to improve my own game: the PioSOLVER software for game-theory optimized play; SnapShove; Phil Galfond's Run It Once coaching site; and live streaming of real hands played by pros. These alone were easily worth the cover price.What delighted me was Maria's interweaving of the scientific literature into her narrative of training and tournament play: The description-experience gap will make our gut feelings trump numerical rules. Only a third of tournament hands go to showdown, and the best hand only wins 12% of the time. Facial tells are worse than useless; look at hand motions instead. Her long digression into the science and lore of superstition was particularly fun. If you have a lucky shirt or necklace, Konnikova makes a persuasive case for getting rid of it.This is also a book about entrepreneurship: setting a goal, assembling a team, getting some funding, and executing on the plan. That funding part is pretty essential, because hey, world-class poker training don't come cheap. Poker coaches can charge hundreds of dollars an hour, well beyond the reach of mere mortals without a substantial bankroll or publisher's advance. This is a detail I wish the book shared more about.Finally, there's much dishy poker lore here. Konnikova has met some greats of the game - Paul Magriel, LuckyChewy, Ike Haxton, Patrik Antonius, and my personal hero "Action Dan" Harrington - and retells stories from legends like Doyle Brunson, Antonio Esfandiari and Phil Laak. Thanks to Maria, our home games will probably soon feature the silly but fun sides bets of the Lodden Game.Even though the bits of poker strategy Konnikova shares are incidental to the storytelling and not the book's main show, I learned more about the psychology of my own game from this book than dozens of pure strategy books I've read. Besides being a compelling tale, 'The Biggest Bluff' is about how seemingly unlikely results can come within reach through persistence, planning, systematic training, and mindset management. Konnikova has earned every bit of her results, one of them being this book. How about you? May the book serve as rocket fuel for your own farfetched daydreams, or that of your favorite budding entrepreneur.-- Ali Binazir, M.D., M.Phil., Happiness Engineer, poker therapist, executive coach and author of The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman's Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible, the most-highlighted book in Amazon Kindle Store, and Should I Go to Medical School?: An Irreverent Guide to the Pros and Cons of a Career in MedicinePS: Lest you think that this review is an endorsement of a career in poker, be forewarned: do not try this at home. First off, you can’t get someone like Erik Seidel to coach you in poker – they’re just not available. And if you did get him, to afford him you’d need be so rich that you wouldn’t need to play poker in the first place. You do not have a supremely supportive spouse who will totally understand your need to travel to tournaments for 9 months out of the year. And you probably aren’t as smart and hardworking as Maria.Most important, poker is no way to make a living. Spoiler alert: Maria did well in her first year, but went negative in her second year. Have you ever had a job where you worked 40 hrs a week, and made *negative* money? Well, in poker, that happens all the time. Even the best of the best go dead flat broke, regularly.But beyond the financial swings, it’s the emotional swings that crush. Every time you have a seemingly lock hand and get some chump to call you, only to see him hit two perfect cards to beat you: you will remember those forever. Your brain will become a Hall of Pain of micro-PTSD episodes of bad beats and cosmically unfair tournament eliminations. And after every tourney you lose, which is pretty much all of them, you’ll be no fun to be around for a day or two. I love the game, too, but poker is hard on the soul.Ultimately, here’s the reason why you should not become a poker pro: even if you do spectacularly well, you will have only done one thing -- won at poker. Sure, the money can be nice. But you will not have discovered a new drug to cure a child, composed a poem that people will recite 200 years hence, planted a forest, or led a movement of social progress. Getting really good at poker requires your complete devotion, to the exclusion of almost all else. So if you’re smart enough to be good at poker, perhaps you have other options to make a more meaningful contribution to humankind instead.

In this story driven book author, New Yorker journalist and psychologist Maria Konnikova writes how and why she dedicates over a year of her life to becoming a poker player. She entered the scene as a psychologist on a philosophical inquiry — how often are we actually in control when we think we are, how do we navigate uncertain situations with incomplete information, and how can we ever separate achievements or misses from strokes of random luck or misfortune ? The luck <> skill balance …She uses poker as a way to explore her own psychological reactions to good luck and bad, delving into the uncertain realm of decision-making, and exploring life.She applies the lessons she learns in poker to real-life. The chapters on superstitions surrounding good and bad luck are illuminating as is her writing on the “poker face”. Fascinating to read how little faces actually tell us and how much more important body language especially early reactions are.The book is inspiring. It reveals the power of grit and determination, the joy of learning something completely new, and is full of insight about human nature and folly.

The author steps cold into the poker world, documents her journey, provides other insights from psychology etc, and wrote an easily readable book about it. Well done.

This book is deceiving. It's not so much a manual on playing poker than it is a book about how to succeed in most aspects of life. This book is about the power of observation. Ms. Konnikova circles around this concept throughout the book. Practice is good, having talent is good, but neither is enough to power you to the top without unrelenting discipline given to observation.Ms. Konnikova gives an honest account of her quest to become a successful poker player under the mentorship of Erik Seidel. It's a nice dynamic, one that would make for a fine movie in the right director's hands. You have the young (and highly intelligent Konnikova) presenting herself to the accomplished, sel-effacing (but no less dangerous and serious about his craft) Seidel. Seidel is portrayed largely as incredibly easy-going and not unlike the stereotypical sensei master who maintains calm while dispensing cryptic messages to his young student. Some of the best moments come when Konnikova shares small bumps in the relationship, such as when she wants to explain to him a bad bit of luck she had with one hand of play and Erik shuts her down rather gruffly. It's not in character for him or their relationship but eventually Erik divulges why he ripped her one.You do not need to know much about poker to read this book as Konnikova explains well her process of learning the activity. You'll learn as she learns. It's a good account of how we learn and how we learn best. You have to be intelligent. I mean this partly in the IQ sense of it but more so in the I'm-willing-to-really-listen-look-and-learn from mistakes sense of intelligence. Konnikova under Seidel learns to become ruthless about avoiding the excuse trap. You make a decision, some things happen from that decision (good, bad or neutral) and you accept the consequences and move to the next decision. For those of us who're old enough it's the nirvana Spoke and his Vulcan ancestors lived for: pure logic.Honestly, the book is (as the title suggests) more about being rationale and understanding the world and yourself than poker. Poker is more the vehicle for getting to this life-truths. I've played poker for decades and love it. I don't play for serious money as it runs counter to my hyper-vigilant conservative ways with money. But there's no doubt that the activity has taught me a lot about people and how to make decisions. Konnakova's book helped me to understand why that is.A worthy read.