My Review of Maria Konnikova's "The Biggest Bluff....."

 When to Hold’em, When to Fold’em*

Maria Konnikova arrived in the United States in 1988 at age four, the daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants. She succeeds academically graduating from Harvard and earns a Ph.D. in social psychology from Columbia. However, academic life was not for her, and she worked as a TV producer and a writer.

Along the way she encountered John von Neumann’s and Oscar Morgenstern’s classic “The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior.” John McDonald’s later popularized that book with his “Strategy in Poker, Business & War.” Immediately she became hooked by poker where she can apply her background in social psychology at the game table. She enlisted poker star Erik Seidel to be her mentor in 2016 with the goal of becoming a professional poker player within a year. For a complete novice at the game, this is an act of extreme chutzpah.

Poker involves luck, strategy, probability theory, skill, and the ability to deceive and read other players while maintaining, as they say a “poker face.” It means having the ability to pick up psychological clues about the behavior of competing players.

Her game is No Limit, Texas Hold’em. She leaves her Brooklyn apartment most weekdays to play online in Hoboken, New Jersey where online gambling is legal. As the saying goes. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? The answer is “practice, practice, practice.” Instead of Carnegie Hall her goal is to get to the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. That she does and she goes on to Monte Carlo and Macau.

She succeeds and within two years she became a very successful poker player. It was not easy, especially for a woman, where 97% of the players are men. She puts up with all kinds of harassment on her way to reaching her goal. She also learned how applicable the skill set needed for playing poker has all kinds of applications in her daily life. For example, when and how to ask for a raise.

Maria Konnikova is a remarkable woman, and I highly recommend her book. Nevertheless, I would have liked to know who staked her for the necessary entry fees and antes, and the travel expenses associated with attending the events. It also would have been helpful to have illustrations of the poker hands she discusses in the book. These are mere quibbles.

*-Apologies to Kenny Rogers