A New York Times bestseller - A New York Times Notable Book
"The tale of how Konnikova followed a story about poker players and
wound up becoming a story herself will have you riveted, first as you
learn about her big winnings, and then as she conveys the lessons she
learned both about human nature and herself." --The Washington Post
It's true that Maria Konnikova had never actually played poker before
and didn't even know the rules when she approached Erik Seidel, Poker
Hall of Fame inductee and winner of tens of millions of dollars in
earnings, and convinced him to be her mentor. But she knew her man: a
famously thoughtful and broad-minded player, he was intrigued by her
pitch that she wasn't interested in making money so much as learning
about life. She had faced a stretch of personal bad luck, and her
reflections on the role of chance had led her to a giant of game theory,
who pointed her to poker as the ultimate master class in learning to
distinguish between what can be controlled and what can't. And she
certainly brought something to the table, including a Ph.D. in
psychology and an acclaimed and growing body of work on human behavior
and how to hack it. So Seidel was in, and soon she was down the rabbit
hole with him, into the wild, fiercely competitive, overwhelmingly
masculine world of high-stakes Texas Hold'em, their initial end point
the following year's World Series of Poker.
But then something extraordinary happened. Under Seidel's guidance,
Konnikova did have many epiphanies about life that derived from her new
pursuit, including how to better read, not just her opponents but far
more importantly herself; how to identify what tilted her into an
emotional state that got in the way of good decisions; and how to get to
a place where she could accept luck for what it was, and what it wasn't.
But she also began to win. And win. In a little over a year, she began
making earnest money from tournaments, ultimately totaling hundreds of
thousands of dollars. She won a major title, got a sponsor, and got used
to being on television, and to headlines like How one writer's book deal
turned her into a professional poker player. She even learned to like
Las Vegas.
But in the end, Maria Konnikova is a writer and student of human
behavior, and ultimately the point was to render her incredible journey
into a container for its invaluable lessons. The biggest bluff of all,
she learned, is that skill is enough. Bad cards will come our way, but
keeping our focus on how we play them and not on the outcome will keep
us moving through many a dark patch, until the luck once again breaks
our way.
