Poker Face

Joshua Foer was a well-connected 20-something science journalist who went, almost for a jape, to cover the annual Mr Memory Competition. Being there and talking to the punters, he figured I could be a contender. His book Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything is the tale of his year of learning how memory could be trained sufficiently to win the competition the following year. I'm quite good at rote-learning: it's been key to such academic success as I've had. But I really couldn't be arsed to do memory well: to put in hundreds of hours training to be better the best in class (my ambition genes were shot off in the war).

My pal P sent me a book where Maria Konnikova appeared to go all me-too on "knock off some arcane skill in one year and write a book about the journey". The pic gives a clue as to the challenge documented in The Biggest Bluff her 2020 book about the world of million dollar poker. The subtitle How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win is a masterpiece in the made-for-the-chatterati trips-off-the-tongue triples genre: Eat Pray Love -- Heat Braise Shanks etc.). It is interesting to read because Konnikova is sufficiently self-aware to a) be good at poker b) be skeptical about what she experiences on her journey. But it is not a text-book about how to Win Big at Vegas. Not least because a rather large variety of types have mastered the craft; and you have to play to your strengths, not Konnikova's. Your strengths . . . and a little bit more!

One of her informants seems to have mastered a form [qigong + mindfulness] of non-attachment "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two impostors just the same" where winning and losing chunks of money on the turn of cards are seen as equal in the eyes of an implacable universe. Less woo-woo winners recognise the value of losing . . . as a learning experience. It's all about recognising that, although bad turns, bad luck, bad cards will do you in the eye sometimes; good players can turn crap cards into a Win because they are paying attention: it's not about card counting in poker; it's not even about 'tells'; it's paying attention to the way your opponents have behaved in the past (couple of hours often) and perking up at anomalous (in)actions.  NB: really top players have the ability and inclination to turn this attention scrutiny on themselves. 

Typical players, au contraire, get fixated about what has worked in the past, in similar circumstances. As current information blizzards down on them across the table and from the cards, only confirmation bias kicks in - making them more certain that what has worked will work. Bzzzt! wrong.

Konnikova didn't make the goal she set herself to achieve in one year from a "what's a full house?" start. But she did get in a lot of travel (Vegas, yes, but also Dublin, Barcelona, Monte Carlo and Macau) and win some $000 pots along the way. Wikipedia says she's a Poker Pro now. Good on her for facing down loadsa wannabe-alpha trash-talking males in the process . . . and cleaning them out. Still 97% of top level poker players are men: there's no physical reason why this should be.