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

by Maria Konnikova

“In the game of poker, you’re a detective and a storyteller,” he tells me. “You must figure out what your opponent’s actions mean, and sometimes more importantly, what they don’t mean.” What exactly does he mean by that, I wonder? Is it like the dog that didn’t bark in “Silver Blaze”—the absence of information that conveys crucial evidence? In that particular story, the fact that a dog didn’t bark meant that the intruder was someone the dog knew; had it been a stranger, there would have been noise. In a phenomenon known as omission neglect, we often pay attention to the barks but not to the moments when they are absent: we ignore what is omitted. That’s not quite Phil’s point. Instead, he’s looking at the overall narrative fabric. “You have to poke holes in the story he’s trying to tell, and from that, deduce what he’s trying to hide.”

“That’s my challenge to you,” Phil says. Never do anything, no matter how small it may seem, without asking why, precisely, you’re doing it.

And never judge anything others do without asking the same question. “Every action your opponent takes has a reason behind it, whether conscious or unconscious,” he says. One

It’s powerful advice. How often do we go off on someone for making a decision that we, personally, wouldn’t have made, calling them an idiot, fuming, getting angry? How much time and emotional energy we’d save if we simply learned to ask ourselves why they acted as they did, rather than judge, make presumptions, and react. And how much money we’d save on bills for our shrink if we paused to ask the same about our own actions and motivations.

“You know, you take much less shit from people than you used to,” he says thoughtfully, with something I take for admiration. “That’s really good.” I smile. I may be a big swinging dick yet.

Do I do that often? I find myself asking. Do I go for the min cash in my life decisions, holding on for the safer sure thing rather than taking more risk for the more uncertain but ultimately more attractive option? Do I lack gamble in my life? Do I let myself be taken advantage of by people who recognize the fright behind my eyes? I’m not sure I’m prepared to know the answer.

Poker is a CAPS theorist’s wet dream: it’s all about dynamics.

In a sense, it’s like John Boyd’s OODA loop playing out at the table instead of in the air. Boyd was a fighter pilot in the air force, and he invented OODA to describe a dynamic that he’d learned through his years in combat: to succeed, you need to constantly observe, orient, decide, and act. OODA.

In what’s known as the planning fallacy, we tend to be overly optimistic when we map out timelines, goals, targets, and other horizons. We look at the best-case scenario instead of using the past to determine what a more realistic scenario would look like.

Schwarz and Clore’s findings have been replicated in multiple settings. Stock market returns have been found to be lower on days with greater cloud cover—and higher when a favorite sports team wins. Over and over, incidental events affect decisions they shouldn’t actually influence, simply because they affect how we’re feeling. Tell people what’s going on, though, and they can often overcome it.

One recent study showed that elite chess players can burn up to six thousand calories a day during tournaments, exhibiting metabolic patterns reminiscent of elite athletes. Professional poker players, I suspect, would exhibit many of the same effects. (On this particular trip, I’ll somehow manage to lose eight pounds in a week without any effort. “I should rethink this book and call it The Poker Diet,” I tell Erik. “Instant bestseller,” he replies.)

We sit and wait. It seems to drag on forever. And finally, she gets the signal. The river is dealt. It’s the king of hearts. I can’t believe it. Alexander is getting up and walking over to shake my hand, and I still haven’t quite registered it. I’ve just won. $84,600 is mine. I’m the 2018 PCA National champion.