Maria KonnikovaThe Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

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 Medicine PS: 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.

I really enjoyed the entire premise of this book and the exploration of luck and skill, and I couldn't agree more that poker is a great game for such a study. The author does a wonderful job explaining in detail the various bad beats, lucky draws, and skillful decisions that lead to critical lows and brilliant highs in her poker journey. Some critical reviewers seemed to have either wanted a deeply academic book or a pure poker book. Don't count on either reading this work. Instead, expect a story of an individual's endeavor into a true scientific question via an old boys game of high stakes. My only critique was the ending. Perhaps it was the authors intention to not have a neat and tidy completion. She does say as much in the chapter on her first major tournament win in the Bahamas. But something about the ending didn't quite encapsulate the grand adventure and experience I read about. It seemed hasty, and the philosophical bits quoting Dawkins, I could have done without. Either way, I would highly recommend this book for anyone looking for a thrilling adventure and interested in how the human mind deals with the unknown.

I'm a older women that has played over 40 years. I learned a few new things from this book, but most of all enjoyed the story. Believe me I've had men threaten me a few times at the table. I've even been invited to the parking lot. Ugh, the male ego. Take them out of the house and they forget how to act civilized. But: the book is interesting and informative, contains a lot of helpful points to use in playing poker. I highly recommend the book for anyone interested in stepping there game up.

This is a brilliant book for both poker players, and non-players, alike.To a fun concept (learning to be a pro poker play in a short time frame), the author fluidly and accessibly weaves in ample findings research from psychology, quotes from philosophers, the importance and limits of probability theory, and personal observations about herself and her own decision-making psychology into a narrative that is deeply insightful and even, at times, exciting.Along the way, she shows a true love for no limit Texas hold’em tournament play. She put words to my own vague feeling that it is truly the perfect game.But again, you don’t have to be a poker play to appreciate her use of it as a metaphor for the benefits of mindfulness, confidence, clear-eyed thinking, the prevalence of sexism and how that can affect strategic options, the benefits of understanding the psychology of those with whom you interacted, the downsides of superstition and self delusion, and the benefits of analyzing the basis of your own thinking at all times.Her writing is absolutely first-rate, with quite complex concepts and ideas described in entirely clear and accessible form.I do hope she leverages her knowledge to write a more specific poker tips book. There needs to be more female perspective on poker - and tips about leveraging female assumptions - out there on the shelves. This is an important start to that. But I would buy a book of describing her more precise learning (about hands, odds, etc - esp. one that did a better job of separating out what is indisputable fact vs. what players tend to differ on in terms of strategy - in a heartbeat. And of course, with more social psych research, etc thrown in along the way to explain the logic.

This is a wonderful book. It's that great blend of educational and entertaining. A compelling tale full of insights gleaned through the journey. It's the kind of book that makes me grateful for having the chance to read it like Man's Search For Meaning

Great book, offering a framework for learning about life, uncertainty, embracing challenges outside of your comfort zone --> particularly enjoyed the attention payed to non-logical modes of thought and operation i.e Lucky Chewey and intuition or emotional bombs waiting to go off impacting performance.

Bueno en general, la historia y lo que plantea. Sobre todo si te gusta el póker. Muy recomendable para entender la mente de los jugadores y darle un visto nuevo a este juego. Al menos para mi. Le pongo 4estrellas porque se enrolla mucho, y sin tediosas las explicaciones una vez que ya entendiste el punto.

Excellent narrative on life uncertainties, decision making , anxieties and learning and patience.I was completely riveted from page to one the last.Beautifully articulated life lessons which we all know but sometimes when told from different perspective , make more impact in our minds and gets etched in our memory more deeply. The kind of lessons which would really help improving our odds.Few of my favourite quotes from the book are :- Do we see ourselves as victims or victors? A victim: The cards went against me. Things are being done to me, things are happening around me, and I am neither to blame nor in control. A victor: I made the correct decision. Sure, the outcome didn’t go my way, but I thought correctly under pressure. And that’s the skill I can control- People failed to see what the world was telling them when that message wasn’t one they wanted to hear.- And while probabilities do even out in the long term, in the short term, who the hell knows. Anything is possible- If you don’t have an objective evaluation of what’s going on, you’re a loser.- The benefit of failure is an objectivity that success simply can’t offer.

Maria Konnikova es una crack.