She has a very different resume than other poker players. A year previously, she hadn\u2019t played at all and didn\u2019t even know how many cards were in a deck. She was a Columbia psychology Ph.D. who was a journalist for The New Yorker<\/em> <\/strong>magazine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She had studied the works of John von Neumann on game theory. I know from personal experience that von Neumann\u2019s works are tough going. Von Neumann used his mathematical theories in actual practice on gambling games, including roulette, unsuccessfully. With kind of a \u201cif it\u2019s good enough for von Neumann it\u2019s good enough for me\u201d attitude, she set out to study whether a raw beginner could get up to speed at poker — which happens to be a pretty difficult game to play well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She wanted to learn if she could use her background, including her study of von Neumann, to compete on the biggest stages in poker in a year or less. She asked poker pro Erik Seidel to help her. The fact that Seidel said yes is pretty amazing. He doesn\u2019t take students, he rarely gives interviews, and he\u2019s been at the top of the game for more than 30 years, so he gets lots of requests. It was partly her theoretical approach that intrigued Seidel. He\u2019s a curious guy about a whole lot of things and this struck him as an interesting project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One example was when Erik was recounting a lecture by Mike Caro, known as the Mad Genius of Poker. Caro asked the audience what the object of poker was. Most people guessed \u201cwinning,\u201d but Caro said the object of poker was to make correct decisions.\u00a0Seidel agreed with that, as do I. I\u2019ve been writing about that subject for decades and have not previously found a more succinct or accurate way to phrase the object of intelligent gambling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Although the process took a bit more than a year, she succeeded, albeit with many ups and downs. Her book, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win<\/em> <\/em><\/strong>is about that journey. It’s not a how-to-play-poker book. It\u2019s a book about the lessons from poker that you can apply to the rest of your life: dealing with losses; money management; focusing on what is important; deciphering stories that other people are presenting, wittingly or not, and spinning such stories of her own; explaining successful gambling to others. Many of these are topics I\u2019ve addressed dozens of times. But Konnikova has her own take on them. She presents her answers differently than I would. And I can learn from her answers. So we\u2019ve invited her back to GWAE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She played online to get up to speed quickly. Why? Because her mentors said to do so. Seidel put her in touch with many of his friends and they all offered advice. Video poker players can do that by practicing on software that corrects you. It\u2019s not the same as playing in a casino, but it increases your skill level much faster. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Erik insisted she be a profitable\nplayer online before competing in casinos. Once in casinos, she had to master\nthe lower-buy-in\ntournaments before he allowed her to enter the bigger ones. Why? Because this\nis a process and you must learn things along the way. Taking short cuts is not\nthe key to success. In video poker, you don\u2019t have anybody telling you what you\ncan and can\u2019t do. But the same idea applies. Anyone who wants to make money\nshould be able to make money at the lower denominations before moving up. The edges\nyou have in $5 and higher games are significantly less than what you have for\nquarters and dollars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Playing in a real casino introduced her to some sleazy characters. As a woman, she gets belittled, hit on, and treated as some sort of second-class citizen at the poker table. Sometimes, people were friendly to her and used that friendship to learn things about her without revealing things about themselves. She found out the hard way that this is an expensive habit at the poker table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She observed more than one player shooting angles. An earlier book she wrote, The Confidence Game<\/em>, describes con men of various sorts. Here she was observing them right across the table. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She recorded her hands and regularly took them back to Seidel. Seidel\u2019s conversations with her were somewhat Zen-like. They were not \u201cdo this, don\u2019t do that,\u201d but rather, \u201cLet\u2019s discuss if this was the right approach.\u201d Learning how to play individual hands wasn\u2019t important to Seidel. Learning how to think appropriately was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She learned to apply some of these lessons to her real life as well. It made her a better negotiator. Indeed, some of the lessons rubbed off on her husband with positive results for his life as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have recommended this book to a friend of mine who competed in a speech contest, didn\u2019t win, and was having a hard time dealing with the loss. My friend isn\u2019t a gambler of any sort, but can certainly benefit from the lessons learned by Konnikova and presented so elegantly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Maria will be joining Richard and me again on Thursday, June 25, talking about this book.<\/p>\n One of the good news\/bad news parts of my job as a podcast co-host is that I\u2019m regularly offered manuscripts to read by authors hoping to land an invitation to the show. In the case of Maria Konnikova, it\u2019s all good news. She\u2019s an excellent writer and the first time we had her on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Facebook\"](\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/wp-content\/plugins\/social-media-feather\/synved-social\/image\/social\/regular\/96x96\/facebook.png\" "\\"Follow")
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