Less Certainty, More Enquiry

Lessons from Maria Konnikova’s The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself and Win

Maria Konnikova is a journalist, writer, and professional poker player. I came across her an interview with her on the excellent Knowledge Project podcast. She intrigued me enough to want to know more about her journey, so I picked up her book, “The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself and Win.”

The Biggest Bluff is Ms. Konnikova’s account of going from being a complete poker novice to a tournament-winning pro. The book is not a “how-to” guide to making millions in Vegas. It is instead a meditation on learning, paying attention, and making decisions.

I enjoyed following Ms. Konnikova on her journey. Here are some things I took away from the book.

Paying Attention to the Present

Poker is a game of simple rules but complex behaviors. Success relies on luck and the ability to understand and predict what other players on the table might do. Ms. Konnikova had to pay attention to the cards on the table and how the other players had played throughout the day and tried and figured out what their tells were.

She also had to learn to pay attention to herself and identify when she was fatigued, and take appropriate action when going off course.

John Von Neumann describes poker as the perfect game of incomplete information. But, by paying attention, it is possible to identify when emotions get in the way of sound decision-making and to try and predict your competitors’ actions and consequences.

In life, just like in poker, paying attention to the present is table stakes.

Intuition vs. Process

Ms. Konnikova is dismissive of intuition or “gut feeling.” She says we have intuitions all the time, but we are terrible at telling the right ones from wrong. She suggests that we trust our intuition only if we are an expert in the area.

As a novice poker player, she had to work hard to identify and suppress false confidence. She did this by learning to distinguish the action and the outcome from the thought process. In the short term, it didn’t matter if she won or lost a hand provided she was thinking through things correctly. In the long run, this focus on process meant that she would have better inputs and eventually the right conclusion with more experience.

I agree with the author that we are terrible at linking outcome to process. Luck, both good and bad, always adds noise. But by having a thought-through strategy, we can avoid false confidence and learn to avoid the pitfalls of relying on unreliable intuitions.

Avoiding going Full Tilt

In poker parlance, “tilting” is when a player lets irrelevant emotion cloud their thinking. You start tilting when another player or an aggravating circumstance gets under your skin and makes you emotional.

As one of very few professional female poker players, Ms. Konnikova dealt with misogynistic behavior from her fellow players. From being called “little girl” to being propositioned on the poker table — these unpleasant experiences did end up getting under her skin and affected her game.

She came up with techniques to become mindful of her emotions. She wanted to experience them but be self-reflective and not let them affect her thought process.

Humans are emotional. We experience life through emotions and can never be purely rational. Ms. Konnikova says the key is to identify irrelevant feelings and develop strategies to ignore them — avoiding going full tilt.

Making Good Decisions

Poker forces a player to place a monetary value on the opinions driving decisions at the table. Having a flawed decision-making process makes going broke a likely outcome.

As she became a better poker player, Ms. Konnikova became less confident in her opinions. This may seem counter-intuitive — surely becoming more experienced means becoming more confident in your opinions! But Ms. Konnikova made better decisions when she forced herself to question her assumptions. Her decision-making process relied on paying attention, not relying on flawed intuition, and having a well-practiced process.

Judging the success or otherwise of a decision-making process is more straightforward in poker than in real life. If you lose money consistently, you might want to either stop playing or take a close look at how you are playing. Judging success in other domains may not be easy, but having a clear decision-making process remains crucial.

Conclusion: Less Certainty, More Inquiry

We often end up making decisions on auto-pilot. We take received wisdom and our intuitions for granted. When bad things happen, we attribute them to bad luck, crappy circumstances, or other external factors.

But, as Ms. Konnikova’s mentor advises her, it is better to be less certain about things and always inquire, ask questions, and to think through things for yourself.

To have any chance of success in complex domains, it is essential to be aware of blind spots, pay attention to what is happening, and have a deliberate and well-understood decision-making process.

The Biggest Bluff is an entertaining, well-written, and thought-provoking book. Ms. Konnikova’s journey pushed me to take a closer look at how I make decisions and to ponder where my blind spots lay.