The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

by Maria Konnikova

“That’s when I first started really thinking about the role of games in metabolizing luck,” he says. “They let you really get your arms all the way around this idea and say, Yeah, luck exists. And I think it’s really necessary to do that, both as individuals but also collectively.” He pauses for a second to reflect. “Denying luck individually is to suggest that we have much greater agency than we really have over outcomes in our lives.” Games give us a chance to confront luck in a manner that allows us to process it in life in a way we’re not always forced to do. And sometimes, it’s the games that incorporate luck most explicitly that push us to the limits of understanding just how far agency can take us—and where it inevitably breaks down.