The Biggest Bluff

Maria Konnikova, a psychology PhD with no poker background, decides to learn the game as a way to understand the line between luck and skill. She convinces Hall of Fame player Erik Seidel to coach her, and the book tracks her journey from rank novice to tournament winner over a single year. Along the way she studies what poker reveals about decision-making under uncertainty, emotional control at the table, the way humans misread randomness, and the difference between a good decision and a good outcome. The result is part memoir, part reported science book, mapping the same probabilistic mindset Annie Duke teaches onto the lived experience of learning it hand by hand.