Understanding variance is literally key for poker players - sometimes your aces crack, sometimes you get beat by literally everything during a session, and sometimes you call everything possible and impossible. Thanks to the luck factor, you can get everything right in poker and still lose, and the reverse is also true - you make a mistake, but the cards hold up. And it was this factor that led Maria Konnikova, a doctoral student in psychology at Columbia University, to poker.
"In college, I studied self-control, risk, and the human mindset, and poker was a perfect fit for my research." Outside of her studies, Maria also wrote for The New Yorker and had two books on mindset to her credit. But a great start in life was cut short in 2015 when she was dealt one blow after another - first she was diagnosed with an incurable immune disorder, her grandmother tragically died and her husband lost his job.
But even though everything looked bad-bad, suddenly her husband found a better job and Maria miraculously managed to scrape through the unpleasant diagnosis. "It was then that I realised that happiness is fickle, and that's what I wanted to dedicate my next book to." In her search for resources, she came across Neumann's The Theory of Games, in which the author discusses game theory using poker as a case study. She liked the game so much that she decided to try poker for a year for a living. But there was one catch - she knew absolutely nothing about poker.
"To tell you the truth, I didn't even know how many cards were in the deck. I knew I needed help, so I started looking." And lucky for her, her hometown was home to Erik Seidel, a poker legend who certainly needs no introduction (he's won over $46 million in his career). "If you're serious about getting into something new, you should immerse yourself as much as possible and find the best professionals. Erik was number one on the all-time money list at the time and had decades of playing with some of the best players in the world. I was also looking for someone nice, I don't want to spend a whole year with some asshole. And Erik hadn't had a scandal in 32 years of playing, he was just perfect!"
Maria soon managed to arrange a dinner with Erik, and the two shook hands that very day. "I had a coach, I had an idea, but I still needed to sell it." Eventually, she negotiated a contract with Penguin Press for a future work, and so came a halt to all her activities and a steep plunge into the poker waters.
Don't think that Erik generously subsidized her and let her play big tournaments. It wasn't until after a month of learning that he took her to her first live tournament, which was a daily $40 turbo at a lesser-known casino. "He wouldn't have let me into Aria or Bellagio for anything because he knew the competition would have crushed me. He drilled the importance of bankroll management into my head from the beginning, we put a few thousand dollars aside, and no way in hell was he going to let me play more expensive tournaments until I made the bank." The first few tournaments didn't produce any miracles, but in March 2017, Maria finished second in one of the daily tournaments in Aria for $2,215, and that's where it all officially kicked off.
A week later, she flew to Monte Carlo with Erik, where she cashed in three smaller tournaments for a total of $4,479. Despite her apparent success, however, Erik was well aware that there were still plenty of leaks in her game. The main problem was that Maria wanted to get into the ITM at all costs, and so she was more focused on surviving the bubble than winning. Erik gradually introduced Maria to his poker buddies and the budding player was introduced to greats like Dan Harrington, Jason Koon and Phil Galfond.
"These guys are brilliant, it's very inspiring to work with them. They make you realise what an amazing game poker can be." After returning from Monte Carlo, Konnikova made her first appearance at the WSOP, where the culmination of the whole endeavor was the Main Event (where Maria finished in Day 2). She scored a couple of four-figure cashouts in cheaper events, but nothing world-beating happened in the end. But that changed in early 2018, when Maria made her way to the Bahamas PCA. There, she won the $1,650 PCA National Championship, earning $84,600.
It was this win that sparked media interest and suddenly everyone knew her fantastic story. All the hype was made even more intense by PS, the gaming company that signed Maria to the PS Pro team. At the time, her year-long pilgrimage was just coming to an end, but Maria suspected that it was too early to wrap up this adventure and start writing a book. "Luckily, I came across the perfect publisher who listened to me, understood, and said, 'What you're telling me is literally unbelievable! Get back in the game, continue your story, and come back when you're ready."
After three years and $311,368 in 2020, The Biggest Bluff saw the light of day. Just days after its release, the book has already received positive reviews in media outlets such as The Guardian, Forbes, and BBC News, and many have promised a huge poker boom from the book. Acclaimed poker author Barry Carter even awarded the book the title of "The Most Important Poker Book of the Last 10 Years". Maria continues to play poker to this day and currently has $625,000 shining next to her name on HendonMob.
Source - PokerNews, HendonMob, CardPlayer Magazine, PokerStrategy
