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The Biggest Bluff

By Robert Gable

We tend to think we are masters of our own fate, completely responsible for the good things that have happened to us. If we are truthful, though, we have to admit that luck or chance can play a part, too. Maria Konnikova wanted to explore just how much skill and chance played a part in her own life, and how she could take a more effective approach to important decisions. This remarkable journey is relayed in her latest book, The Biggest Bluff.

Konnikova has written two other books and is a frequent writer for The New Yorker magazine. She has academic credentials, having earned a Ph.D. in psychology, with an emphasis on decision-making. Even with that expertise, she had some strange family and personal health issues in her life leading up to 2016, which left her wondering, “What is going on here?” There is chance and there is planning. The first can make a mockery of the second. How much of life can we actually control, and what if anything can we do about chance?

These issues led her to read Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by John von Neumann. Along with inventing the computer and working on the hydrogen bomb, the brilliant scientist was fascinated by the study of skill, planning and chance, and how they played out in games. He found poker to be the best game to study. She figured the best way to learn more about decision-making and chance, using von Neumann’s lead, was to study the vagaries of poker. She explains, “This book is the result of that journey…. What I will offer throughout is insight into decision-making far removed from poker, a translation of what I’m learning in the casino to the decisions I make on a daily basis—and the crucial decisions that I make only rarely, but that carry particular import.”

Along we go for the ride as she learns from her mentor, Erik Seidel, considered by some as the greatest of all time in professional poker. Under his expert tutelage, in one year Konnikova goes from complete novice to being savvy enough to make it to final tables in international, high-stakes “No Limit Texas Hold’em” tournaments worth thousands of dollars a hand—among them the 2017 World Series of Poker.

Their method was well-conceived and comprehensive. She cuts her teeth at on-line poker sites, leading up to small tournaments in Las Vegas, all the while learning how to test her thought process. She’s brutally honest in her self-assessment. Her ongoing dealings with her mentor are interactive, focusing more on process than prescription, on exploration rather than destination. Seidel’s words ring in her head: “You will never have all the information you want, and you will have to act all the same. Leave your certainty at the door. Focus on the process, not the luck.”

She meets some unique characters on her journey. She bumps into poker legends Amarillo Slim, Dan Harrington, Andrew Lichtenberger, aka “Chewy,” and Phil Galfond. While in Las Vegas she sees magician Penn Jillette’s house get run over by a tank. There’s also foreign travel to Europe; in a Monte Carlo casino, she sees movie-star Kevin Hart, on a break from filming, laughing in disbelief as a fellow player simultaneously plays poker and does 105 pushups in under 22 minutes.

Konnikova has a very personal, understandable way of describing her thinking throughout the journey, as well as the emotional swings. Although she didn’t play her best at the World Series of Poker, in January 2018, she played well enough in the Bahamas to win the tournament.

This isn’t a how-to-play-poker book—her insights are about much more than poker. They’re about life in general, and living mindfully, making the best of what we have and where we are. She notes “some things are in our control and others not,” so the point is to control what we can—our thinking, our decision process, our reactions. After her unconventional rise from beginner to world-ranked professional, she realizes, “Most people think of poker as a way to get wealthy. And it is. Only not the way you think. I didn’t make millions. But the wealth of skill I acquired, the depth of decision-making ability, the emotional strength and self-knowledge—these will serve me long after my winnings have run dry.”

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

By Maria Konnikova 354 pages, Penguin Press / $28.00

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Robert Gable worked in book publishing for 18 years before going into the golf industry. He lived and worked in Pinehurst for five years and still misses it. He currently lives in Queens and works as an assistant golf pro at Metropolis Country Club in White Plains, New York.

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