In This Week's Episode:

Maria Konnikova is a contributing writer to The New Yorker, and author of the best selling books The Confidence Game and Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes.

Maria gained notoriety in the poker community when she won the 2018 PCA National Championship for $84,000, plus a $30,000 PSPC Platinum Pass.

What makes Maria’s story so fascinating is that a year before her victory, she had no clue how to play poker, and admittedly didn’t even know how many cards were in the deck.

Maria’s books focus on psychology, and it’s application in the real world. She chose poker as the subject of her next book, The Biggest Bluff, to try to understand the nature of luck vs. skill and figure out if we can learn how to tell the difference.

To research the book she chose to fully immerse herself in the game and attempt to make it on the live tournament circuit. With the help of Erik Seidel, her story has been one of outstanding success, and she’s going to continue with the journey at least until next year when she’ll play the $25,000 PSPC at the 2010 PokerStars PCA.

In This Episode You'll Learn:

10:52 - How Maria landed Erik Seidel as a coach before she ever read a poker book (and why she targeted him as her ideal coach).
26:36 - The high leverage skill that Maria learned through poker which she now applies to her most important decisions.
28:11 - The 3 reasons why Maria achieved rapid success even though Erik Seidel labeled her as "not naturally suited to poker."

Resources:

Maria Konnikova:

Adrienne "Talonchick" Rowsome:

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