The Biggest Bluff Quotes

“You’re not lucky because more good things are actually happening; you’re lucky because you’re alert to them when they do.”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“Less certainty, more inquiry”:”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“Whatever I may think about God, I believe in randomness. In the noise of the universe that chugs along caring nothing about us, our plans, our desires, our motivations, our actions. The noise that will be there regardless of what we choose or don’t choose to do. Variance. Chance. That thing we can’t control no matter how we may try. But can you really blame us for trying?”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Take Control and Win

“The more they overestimated their own skill relative to luck, the less they learned from what the environment was trying to tell them, and the worse their decisions became: the participants grew increasingly less likely to switch to winning stocks, instead doubling down on losers or gravitating entirely toward bonds.”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“You become a big winner when you lose,” Dan says. “Everyone plays well when they’re winning. But can you control yourself and play well when you’re losing? And not by being too conservative, but trying to still be objective as to what your chances are in the hand. If you can do that, then you’ve conquered the game.” And it resonates. After all, losing is what brought me to the table in the first place. It makes sense that learning to lose in a game—to lose constructively and productively—would help me lose in life, lose and come back, lose and not see it as a personal failure. It resonates—but it’s a tough ask. Dan nods. “It’s still tough to do. Even for me, and I have a lifetime of experience, that’s not an easy thing.”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“Do we see ourselves as victims or victors? A victim: The cards went against me. Things are being done to me, things are happening around me, and I am neither to blame nor in control. A victor: I made the correct decision. Sure, the outcome didn’t go my way, but I thought correctly under”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“The benefit of failure is an objectivity that success simply can’t offer.”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“Mastery is always a struggle for balance. How much time do you devote to the craft, and how much to yourself? And can you really do one without the other?”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Take Control and Win

“The more you learn, that harder it gets; the better you get, the worse you are.”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“I haven’t quite thought of it that way, but as always, the man has a point. How we frame something affects not just our thinking but our emotional state. It may seem a small deal, but the words we select—the ones we filter out and the ones we eventually choose to put forward—are a mirror to our thinking. Clarity of language is clarity of thought—and the expression of a certain sentiment, no matter how innocuous it seems, can change your learning, your thinking, your mindset, your mood, your whole outlook”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“If you want to be a good player, you just acknowledge that you're not 'due' -- for good cards, good karma, good health, money, love, or whatever else it is.”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“We can’t control the variance. We can’t control what happens. But we can control our attention and how we choose to deploy it.”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“Edward Gibbon warned about as far back as 1794, that “the laws of probability, so true in general, [are] so fallacious in particular”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“Poker isn’t just about calibrating the strength of your beliefs. It’s also about becoming comfortable with the fact that there’s no such thing as a sure thing—ever. You will never have all the information you want, and you will have to act all the same. Leave your certainty at the door.”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“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.”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“You can’t control what will happen, so it makes no sense to try to guess at it. Chance is just chance: it is neither good nor bad nor personal. Without us to supply meaning, it’s simple noise. The most we can do is learn to control what we can—our thinking, our decision processes, our reactions.”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“You don’t have to have studied the description-experience gap to understand, if you’re truly expert at something, that you need experience to balance out the descriptions. Otherwise, you’re left with the illusion of knowledge—knowledge without substance. You’re an armchair philosopher who thinks that just because she read an article about something she is a sudden expert. (David Dunning, a psychologist at the University of Michigan most famous for being one half of the Dunning-Kruger effect—the more incompetent you are, the less you’re aware of your incompetence—has found that people go quickly from being circumspect beginners, who are perfectly aware of their limitations, to “unconscious incompetents,” people who no longer realize how much they don’t know and instead fancy themselves quite proficient.)”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“Focus on the process, not the luck. Did I play correctly? Everything else is just BS in our heads,” Erik tells me. “Thinking that way won’t get you anywhere. You know about the randomness of it but it doesn’t help to think about it. You want to make sure you’re not the person in the poker room saying, ‘Can you believe what happened?’ That’s the other people.”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“Language is the mother, not the handmaiden of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.” The language we use becomes our mental habits—and our mental habits determine how we learn, how we grow, what we become.”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“Through that journey, I hoped to learn how to make the best decisions I possibly could, not just at the card table but in the world. Through poker, I wanted to tame luck—to learn to make a difference even when the deck seemed stacked against me.”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Take Control and Win

“Our experiences trump everything else, but mostly, those experiences are incredibly skewed: they teach us, but they don’t teach us well. It’s why disentangling chance from skill is so difficult in everyday decisions: it’s a statistical undertaking, and one we are not normally equipped to deal with.”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“People failed to see what the world was telling them when that message wasn’t one they wanted to hear. They liked being the rulers of their environment. When the environment knew more than they did—well, that was no good at all. Here was the cruel truth: we humans too often think ourselves in firm control when we are really playing by the rules of chance.”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“If we consider games of chance immoral, then every pursuit of human industry is immoral; for there is not a single one that is not subject to chance, not one wherein you do not risk a loss for the chance of some gain.” THOMAS JEFFERSON, “THOUGHTS ON LOTTERIES,” 1826”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“Real life consists of bluffing, of little tactics of deception, of asking yourself what is the other man going to think I mean to do,” von Neumann wrote. “And that is what games are about in my theory.”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“How could you ever hope to separate the random from the intentional?”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“How we frame something affects not just our thinking but our emotional state. It may seem a small deal, but the words we select—the ones we filter out and the ones we eventually choose to put forward—are a mirror to our thinking. Clarity of language is clarity of thought—and the expression of a certain sentiment, no matter how innocuous it seems, can change your learning, your thinking, your mindset, your mood, your whole outlook.”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“thepsychchic chips clips ii

If you think of yourself instead as an almost-victor who thought correctly and did everything possible but was foiled by crap variance? No matter: you will have other opportunities, and if you keep thinking correctly, eventually it will even out. These are the seeds of resilience, of being able to overcome the bad beats that you can’t avoid and mentally position yourself to be prepared for the next time. People share things with you: if you’ve lost your job, your social network thinks of you when new jobs come up; if you’re recently divorced or separated or bereaved, and someone single who may be a good match pops up, you’re top of mind. This attitude is what I think of as a luck amplifier. … you will feel a whole lot happier … and your ready mindset will prepare you for the change in variance that will come … 134-135

W. H. Auden: “Choice of attention—to pay attention to this and ignore that—is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences.” Pay attention, or accept the consequences of your failure. 142


Attention is a powerful mitigator to overconfidence: it forces you to constantly reevaluate your knowledge and your game plan, lest you become too tied to a certain course of action. And if you lose? Well, it allows you to admit when it’s actually your fault and not a bad beat. 147

Following up on Phil Galfond’s suggestion to be both a detective and a storyteller and figure out “what your opponent’s actions mean, and sometimes what they don’t mean.” [Like the dog that didn’t bark in the Sherlock Holmes “Silver Blaze” story.] 159

You don’t have to have studied the description-experience gap to understand, if you’re truly expert at something, that you need experience to balance out the descriptions. Otherwise, you’re left with the illusion of knowledge—knowledge without substance. You’re an armchair philosopher who thinks that just because she read an article about something she is a sudden expert. (David Dunning, a psychologist at the University of Michigan most famous for being one half of the Dunning-Kruger effect—the more incompetent you are, the less you’re aware of your incompetence—has found that people go quickly from being circumspect beginners, who are perfectly aware of their limitations, to “unconscious incompetents,” people who no longer realize how much they don’t know and instead fancy themselves quite proficient.) 161-162

Erik: Generally, the people who cash the most are actually losing players (Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan strategy, jp). You can’t be a winning player by min cashing. 190

The more you learn, the harder it gets; the better you get, the worse you are—because the flaws that you wouldn’t even think of looking at before are now visible and need to be addressed. 191

An edge, even a tiny one, is an edge worth pursuing if you have the time and energy. 208

Blake Eastman: “Before each action, stop, think about what you want to do, and execute.” … Streamlined decisions, no immediate actions, or reactions. A standard process. 217

John Boyd’s OODA: Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. The way to outmaneuver your opponent is to get inside their OODA loop. 224

Here’s a free life lesson: seek out situations where you’re a favorite; avoid those where you’re an underdog. 237

[on folding] No matter how good your starting hand, you have to be willing to read the signs and let it go.

One thing Erik has stressed, over and over, is to never feel committed to playing an event, ever. “See how you feel in the morning.”

Tilt makes you revert to your worst self. 257

Jared Tindler, psychologist, “It all comes down to confidence, self-esteem, identity, what some people call ego.” 251

JT: “As far as hope in poker, f#¢k it. … You need to think in terms of preparation. Don’t worry about hoping. Just Do.” 252”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“Hay un proverbio budista. Un granjero pierde su valioso caballo. Su vecino va a visitarlo para compadecerse por su mala suerte, pero el granjero se encoge de hombros: quién sabe si perderlo ha sido mala suerte o no. Al día siguiente, el caballo regresa. Con él vienen doce caballos salvajes. El vecino le felicita por la excelente noticia, pero el granjero se encoge de hombros. Poco después, el hijo del granjero se cae de uno de esos caballos salvajes mientras lo está adiestrando. Se rompe una pierna. El vecino le transmite sus condolencias. El granjero se encoge de hombros. Quién sabe. El país se declara en guerra y el ejército acude al pueblo para reclutar a todos los jóvenes disponibles. El hijo del granjero queda exento debido a su pierna rota. Qué maravilla, dice el vecino. Y, de nuevo, el granjero se encoge de hombros. Quizá.”
― Maria Konnikova, El gran farol

“In the classic demonstration of the illusion of control, the Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer had students guess the outcome of a coin toss, heads or tails. They were then told whether they were correct or not in their guesses. In three separate setups, the outcomes were predetermined in a specific order: they could be distributed in an intuitively random pattern, there could be more correct guesses clustered near the beginning, or there could be more correct guesses clustered near the end. In each case, the absolute numbers were the same. The only difference was the order. But the results couldn’t have been more different. After the guesses concluded, Langer asked each participant a series of questions: Did they feel they could improve on this task? Did they feel they were particularly talented at it? Did they need more time to get better? Would they be better with limited distraction? And so on. In each case, the obvious answer is no: to answer otherwise is to classify something that is the outcome of chance (a coin toss) as being in the realm of skill. But the obvious answer is not the answer she got. When students had a random progression or one where the accuracy clustered near the end, they did indeed answer in the negative. But when the correct answers were clustered up front, they developed a sudden myopia. Why yes, they said, they are quite good at this, and yes, they would improve with time. Success led to an abject failure of objectivity: suddenly, they were in the throes of the illusion of control. They thought that they could actually predict the results of a coin toss. If we lose early, we have a shot at objectivity. But when we win at the start, that’s when we see the illusion of control playing out in full swing. As Langer titled her paper: “Tails, I Win. Heads, It’s Chance.”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“Never do anything, no matter how small it may seem, without asking why, precisely, you’re doing it.”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win