Maria Konnikova - The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Take Control and Master the Odds

Contents

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk

This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2020

Copyright Maria Konnikova 2020

Cover design by Luke Bird. Card suit symbols by artskill2k17 (image #17744687 at VectorStock.com)

Illustrations Geo Images/Alamy; Anton Shaparenko/Alamy

Epigraph copyright 1941 by W.H. Auden, renewed. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.

Maria Konnikova asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Information on previously published material appears .

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780008270872

Ebook Edition June 2020 ISBN: 9780008270841

Version: 2021-06-05

In memory of Walter Mischel.

I still havent published my dissertation,

as I promised you I would, but at least there is this.

May we always have the clarity to know

what we can control

and what we cant.

And to my family,

for being there

no matter what.

.

Lifes single lesson: that there is more accident to it than a man can ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane.

FAUSTO MAIJSTRAL, IN THOMAS PYNCHONS V.

I wish you luck, because what lies ahead is no picnic for the prepared and the unprepared alike, and youll need luck. Still, I believe youll manage.

JOSEPH BRODSKY, SPEECH AT THE STADIUM

But once in a while the odd thing happens,

Once in a while the dream comes true,

And the whole pattern of life is altered,

Once in a while the Moon turns Blue.

W. H. AUDEN, LIBRETTO FOR PAUL BUNYAN

T he room is a sea of people. Bent heads, pensive faces, many obscured by sunglasses, hats, hoodies, massive headphones. Its difficult to discern where the bodies end and the green of the card tables begins. Thousands of bodies sit in seeming disarray on chairs straight out of a seventies dining room catalogueorange-and-mustard patterned upholstery, gold legs, vaguely square frame. Garish neon lights suspended on makeshift beams make the place look like the inside of a hospital thats trying a bit too hard to appear festive. Everything is a bit worn, a bit outofdate, a bit frayed. The only hints of deeper purpose are the color-coded numbers hanging on strings from the ceiling. Theres the orange group, the yellow group, the white group. Each placard has a number and, beneath it, a picture of a single poker chip. The smell of stale casino air fills the roomold carpet; powder; a sweet, faintly sickly perfume; cold fried food and flat beer; and the unmistakable metallic tang of several thousand exhausted bodies that have been sharing the same space since morning.

Amid the sensory assault, its hard at first to pinpoint why something seems off. And then it comes to you: it is eerily quiet. If this was a real party, you would expect the din of countless voices, shifting chairs, echoing footsteps. But all there is is nervous energy. You can smell, hear, taste, the tension. And you can certainly feel it making a nest in your stomach. Theres just one sound left in the room, reminiscent of a full-throated courting ritual of summer cicadas. Its the sound of poker chips.

Its the first day of the biggest poker tournament of the year, the Main Event of the World Series of Poker. This is the World Cup, the Masters, the Super Bowlexcept you dont need to be a superhero athlete to compete. This championship is open to the everyman. For a neat ten grand, anyone in the world can enter and take their shot at poker glory: the title of world champion and a prize that has been known to top $9 million. If you happen to be British or Australian, you even get it tax-free. For professional poker players and amateurs alike, this is the career pinnacle. If you can win the Main Event, you have guaranteed yourself a place in poker history. Sit down with the best and have a chance at the most prestigious, richest prize in the poker world. Some people in the room have been saving for years to take their one shot.

Its near the end of the day. Of the several thousand people whove entered todays starting flightso many want to play that starting days have to be staggered into flights to accommodate everyone; the dream is expensive, but its awfully alluringmany are now out, having gone bust, in poker speak. The ones who remain are concentrated on making it through to the second day. You dont want to play the whole day only to find yourself walking out with minutes until the end and nothing to show for it. Everyone is gunning for the magic bag, a clear plastic glorified ziplock into which those lucky enough to have made the next day of a multiday tournament can place their chips. You write your name, country of origin, and chip count in excited capitals on the outside before tugging on the dubiously functioning adhesive strip to seal the damn thing up. You then take the requisite photograph for social media with the requisite chip count and add the #WSOP hashtag. And then you collapse, exhausted, into some anonymous hotel bed.

But were not yet at the bagging and tagging stage of the day. There are still two more hours to go. Two whole hours. A lot can happen in two hours. Which is why one table stands out from the rest. Eight players are sitting as players should, receiving their cards and doing whatever it is poker players do with them. But one lone chair in the middle of the table, seat six, remains empty. That wouldnt be remarkable in the least under normal circumstancesempty chairs are what happens when a player busts out and no new player has yet arrived to take their place. Except in this case, there has been no bust-out. On the green felt in front of the empty chair sit several neat piles of chips, arranged from highest to lowest denomination, color-coded from left to right. And with each hand dealt, the dealer reaches over to take a precious antethe forced amount that everyone at the table must pay each hand to see the cardsbefore depositing two cards that are then unceremoniously placed into the muck, or discard pile, seeing as theres no one there to play them. With each round, the neat piles of chips grow slightly smaller. And still the chair remains empty. What kind of an idiot pays $10,000 to enter the most prestigious poker event in the world and then fails to show up to play? What kind of a dunce do you have to be to let yourself blind down (the term for letting your chips dwindle by not playing any hands) in the middle of the Main Event?