This long-anticipated book had an unusual buzz surrounding
its publication because both the psychology and the poker world were
expectantly waiting for the publication. Maria Konnikova is a respected
journalist who has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and the New York
Times, amongst many other publications. She has a PhD in psychology, and she was
advised by Walter Mischel of the marshmallow experiment fame ˗ her pedigree is
impeccable. This is her third book, but the excitement around this book is
different than most other non-fiction books on psychology and her other books.
She has done media podcasts, YouTube videos, interviews with numerous
luminaries in the psychology and journalistic world before; this time there are
media podcasts, YouTube videos, interviews with numerous luminaries in the
poker world in addition. The heterogeneous interest level can be explained by
the subtitle of this book: How I
learned to pay attention, master myself, and win.
The book easily surpasses the initial hype through the
quality writing and honesty exhibited by the author. Konnikova’s story has been
told numerous times, but it bears repeating here. She had gone through some
devastating personal travails, as a result she wanted to investigate her own
decision-making process and how other people make decisions differently. This
has been her research area during her professional life as a psychologist and
as a journalist so it isn’t surprising; she did narrow her focus in this
investigation on how personal biases affects decision making and how those
biases subtly and unobtrusively change the decisions critically. She decided
after watching the film Rounders that the poker is the ideal experimental
ground for learning about good decision-making because the amount of
uncertainty that envelopes the game all the time. The speed of the decision-making necessary around the poker
table makes it necessary for the players to be brutally honest with themselves
if they are to be successful. Their mental calculations acknowledge the role
that emotions play in their minds; indeed, they diligently seek out their own
weaknesses in order to make their decision-making process better.
The book presents the events chronologically as we follow
her adventure in poker playing around the world. Remarkably, the author talks
about her complete lack of poker knowledge: she did not even know the number
of cards in a deck of cards when she
started. Her goal, which is to compete in the World Series of Poker, WSOP, seemed
to be impossible. When I first heard about the challenge, I thought it was a
very ambitious goal. It was not until
after I read the book that I realize just how ambitious it was. The book was a great
primer in the vagaries of the poker world, not just the game itself, but the
interactions amongst the players, the variety of the games and the tournaments
themselves. The sheer number of tournaments and variety of tournament rules
were astonishing for an outsider.
Fortunately, she found a mentor who was willing to take a
chance on her. Eric Seidel is well known as an extraordinarily successful poker
player, but he is not well known as a teacher of his craft, for him to take on
this task was a surprise. He has said in interviews that he was surprised that
he was asked, but he read some of her articles and he liked the way she
explored the topics that she wrote about, so he was in. He ended up being a perfect mentor as he was
gentle and yet also honest about what she was doing to herself on the poker
table. In her telling of the tale, he acted the roles of the teacher, the
confessor, the conscience, and the critic without making her feel like she did
not belong, nor did he destroy her confidence. She did more self-deflation on
her own. Seidel came off like such a Zen master that he seemed almost a
caricature of Yoda, except we all know
that he is not a caricature at all, in other words, Konnikova kept her writing
about him real.
She started out playing online poker games which taught her the
basics of the game of poker and taught her the strategies and tactics she
needed to survive, without having to deal with the real uncertainties: the
other players. She read poker books voraciously. Fortunately for her, and as a
bonus of the project, she had the opportunity to meet and interview many of
these authors as a journalist, so she was buttressing her poker knowledge
through their books while also exploring the authors philosophies.
Konnikova recounted many of the mistakes that she made during
the entire year of playing, all the
mental and technical miscalculation as well as her psychological observations of
herself, yet as she is describing her initial foray into online poker, she
appeared to be overwhelmed and the reader is feeling overwhelmed with her. I
had never known that as simple of a game as poker is, there are so much that goes
into the game. The game itself has many variations; in its simplest incarnation
can surprise, taunt, and torture the players if they are not adequately
prepared.
As I was learning about poker in all its complexities, I
kept thinking about the engineering approach to solving this complex problem, thinking algorithmically, in mathematical terms,
in probabilistic ways. The author
disabused me of that mode of thinking. She explained that I was not the first
one to think about creating probabilistic models, there is a crew of numerically
inclined poker players out there. The problem, according to Konnikova, is that
poker is not just a game with finite uncertainties that are strictly governed
by the laws of chance, it is a game that has the infinite uncertainties that
comes with combining the numerical uncertainties with the broad range of
varying psychologies associated with the players themselves. Her contention
that strictly algorithmic approach may be successful, but only to a point; a
good and perspicacious opponent will still do better than a strictly
mathematical player. Which brings us to Konnikova’s main proposition: despite the uncertainties involved with a
game like poker ˗ the
luck of the draw, where you sit at table, the different players, etc. ˗ winning at poker
demands the most skills from a player. Skills is defined as the player’s
ability to work with the hand that they are dealt, no matter how bad a hand it
is, no matter how far behind the player is in chips, and no matter what the
other extenuating circumstances can be.
In poker, the best hands do not necessarily win every time;
that is, many times it is the worst hands that win because the player with the
best hand end up folding. So why is that? Often, people are handcuffed by their own
biases and they will make the bad decision because they are driven by their
biases; more insidiously, they are rarely aware of their own biases. A major
part of the skill to winning at poker is to identify and recognize how your
mind is tilted. The word tilt came out of the book as it is used to describe
how a player let their psychological
tendencies tilt their decision-making. The other skill is for the player to
have the ability to read and recognize the psychological tendencies of all the
players sitting at the table, i.e. their tilt. The final skill is to have the wherewithal
to combine their knowledge of themselves and their opponents while also grappling
with the uncertainties from where the cards fall.
Throughout her narrative, the author was brutally honest and self-effacing as she describes
her moments of failure, her moment of paralyzing fear, her moments of weakness,
and her moments of realization, after the fact, that she just gave away money;
money she could not afford to give away, all due to her inability to undo her tilt
or diagnose the other players. It takes a certain courage to lay out her analytical
failure, something that is rare for anyone to admit, but especially so for
someone who has insight into psychology by virtue of her academic research and
training. She castigates herself for
always playing safely, which is what we all do sometimes, the difference is a matter of the extent one’s preference for
safety takes us. To her great credit, she faces up to her own demons quite
often. It makes the reader be on her side, the reader ends up rooting for her to
succeed.
In an ultimate courageous decision, the PhD from Columbia University in
psychology, someone who has researched and worked among some of the leading
luminaries in psychology, was brave
enough to hire and work with a mental coach to lead her through exploring her
weaknesses. She was intellectually honest enough to see that she cannot accomplish
what she wants to accomplish alone; she cannot spot enough of her weaknesses to
make a difference on her own. It takes an intellectual integrity and being
self-aware enough to admit to that ego crushing reality and do something about
it.
The author does an excellent job as the reader’s eyes, she describes
everything that she experiences in this journey very well: the tournaments, the
hands that she won and lost, and the ethos
and chaos of the casino. She was exceptionally
good at describing the vibes in the
casinos and the kind of character is that she ran into in those casinos.
In the end of course, Konnikova does win her WSOP tournament. The
video of her win is on YouTube so you could see it the moment she won it. She
is now recognized as a professional poker player; in fact, she still plays professionally.
Poker has gotten into her blood, and she firmly believes that poker is the best way to conquer your own
fears in addition to being the best training ground to prepare for making the
best decisions.
My only regret is that I lost track of some of the narrative
because I am not a poker cognoscenti, in
the moments where she is delving into the technicalities of the hands, I missed
some of the drama and failed to recognize the drama of the situation because I
didn't know what I didn’t know. Her precis of poker being the best training
ground for conquering yourself rang true with me because I ended up buying a copy
of the Poker for Dummies book. Baby steps.
