How a complete amateur became a poker champion in less than one year

10-Jul-2018

I like this.

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One of the best stories in poker had a storybook ending … but it’s not over yet.

New Yorker writer Maria Konnikova announced she’d dive headfirst into the world of professional poker back in March of 2017, despite knowing nothing about the game, for an upcoming book.

Under a year later, she won a major tournament: The PCA National Championship, which also earned her a “platinum pass” that would enter her into the PokerStars Players Championship in 2019.

It’s the Hollywood ending, right? Not quite. She followed that performance up with a second-place finish at an Asia Pacific Tour Macau event. As Konnikova told For The Win last week, the book will hopefully be ready for summer or fall of 2019, mostly because the story is still being written.

As she prepares for the 2018 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, she spoke to us about how she’s gotten to this point despite learning the game just a year ago.

(This interview has been condensed and edited.)

Is your head spinning right now?

You’d have to be delusional to anticipate that something like this would happen when you embark on a project like this. I came in with no expectations and I didn’t know anything about poker and had zero background. I didn’t grasp what a complex game it was when I got into it. A few months in, I thought, “I got this, it’ll be good, it’ll be a fun book.” As you go further, you think, “This is difficult. What did I get myself into?” As hard as you work, I don’t think it was a reasonable expectation I would win a tournament, let alone a major title. It was a whirlwind journey, but a very gratifying one. I’m incredibly grateful.

How did the book come about?

This is my third book. I had no background in poker and my knowledge came from Rounders. A few years ago I finished The Confidence Game, about con artists. I was trying to think about what I wanted to do next. A lot of things went wrong after that book and I was contemplating the nature of luck. We don’t appreciate luck in life when things are going well. No matter how smart I am and how I prepare, there are things that catch you off guard. I really wanted to explore and ask the question about how much we actually control. I don’t think a lot of people pose that question to themselves and don’t consider how lucky they are. If you send that pitch to editors, they’d laugh. I was reading a lot and trying to figure out how to wrap my mind around luck versus chance.

A friend with a mathematical background said I should look into game theory, that talks about skill and chance in an interesting way. I started reading Theory of Games and Economic Behavior and realized I had no idea what it was, but it came up in poker. If (the authors) could solve poker, they’d have a phenomenal rubric on how to approach complex decisions in the world. There was this moment where I was like, this is good. I also have a background in psychology that I studied in grad school. I thought poker might be a perfect environment to start to learn probabilistic decision-making, and to live what it means to have skill versus chance and to see how that played out. I would dive in head first into the poker world.

Erik Seidel – one of the best players in the world – would coach me. I went on leave from the New Yorker and started working on full time and here we are a year later.

a woman posing for a picture: File Photo

What have you learned in that year?

I think my edge still will be my psychology background. I do understand what’s going on in a way and with a perspective that poker players don’t have. I am an outsider, which is a disadvantage because I don’t have as much experience but it’s an advantage because I have a different set of eyes and mindset, which I can use. I’ve figured out how to turn what’s different about me and limitations – I’m new to this world, I’m a woman, I don’t have a math background – and how I use that to my advantage. They’re what make me unique. In poker you learn very quickly, if you play like everyone else, you’ll be fine, but you’ll never be great. The truly great players go beyond that and find their own style and be more creative and realize how everyone else is playing and play with that.

I learned pretty early on I need the game theory if I want to be competitive at highest levels. I’ve been studying that the hardest because I don’t have that background.

What does Seidel teach you?

The thing Erik has done along the way that I find the single most important tool in my arsenal is he does hand reviews. He taught me to write down hands as I play. He’s a tough teacher, he has no problem telling me I’m doing something wrong. “You should have folded five times before this spot,” or “You’re looking at this hand wrong. How often has this player three-bet or opened?” At the beginning I was really overwhelmed and wondering I could pay attention to all this. But him hammering that over and over, it’s become second nature.

Erik Seidel et al. posing for the camera: File Photo© File Photo File Photo

How does psychology help at the table? It’s probably not finding “tells” at this level, right?

You can call it “tells” in a different way, it’s not, “His left eye twitches!” It’s more observing the dynamics of the players emotionally and mentally. Just being very aware of what happens at the table even when you’re not in a hand. Sometimes you’ll see two players, it seems like one is attacking the other and the other one is getting tilted.

When you see that, you wonder, “What does that mean for him?” People react differently in those situations. Some will shut down more and be protective, some will be more aggressive. So you have to figure out how that’s happening. It’s been useful to see how people react to me personally. When you sit down at a table and you look at players and make assumptions. The first thing anyone notices about me is I’m female. So you wonder, what are the stereotypes? How do you view women? Let’s see how you’re acting towards me. Do players change the way they play? A lot of them can’t get over that I’m a girl. In Monte Carlo, there was a guy who congratulated me on winning the national PCA and then tried to bluff me off every single hand. Not all of them are bullies but you have to figure out who they are.

There was a guy who didn’t want me to lose chips to him because he thought he should be respectful. He bet huge to tell me he had a good hand. Sometimes, guys will show me their hands. If you’re observing those dynamics, you have so much information.

Do you sit there as a journalist and say, I’d write about me?

I find the game fascinating and poker has unlocked parts of me emotionally. I’m enjoying the process but there are moments when I’m really down. It’s a ton of travel, it’s exhausting, physically and emotionally. It’s lonely.

Most players are pretty considerate but you sometimes get (expletives). I’m sometimes in spots where people are attacking me. I’m pretty depressed and then part of me, I will get outside of myself and say, “This is terrible but it’ll be great for the book.”

Was there a moment it all clicked for you?

I still don’t think I’m good. I still have this feeling I’m a total impostor. But at PCA, when I won the nationals and had a deep run after that, and then came in second in Macau, at the PCA it started coming together, I got lucky to win the tournament, you still need luck to win. It was really in Macau, when I came in second and I thought it wasn’t a fluke.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/more-sports/how-a-complete-amateur-became-a-poker-champion-in-less-than-one-year/ar-AAy78Ve?li=BBnba9I


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