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Reviews
The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win by Maria Konnikova
wintrovia's review
4.0
An interesting combination of psychology and sports, where the author documents here path from being an academic to a professional poker player. I've read other books about poker before and found they often descend into lists of hands played and people met acros the table. This more cerebral approach was a more interesting way of framing a book about poker and it made it enjoyable to read about Konnikova's journey from complete novice to competing at the top end of international poker tournaments.
unluckycat13's review against another edition
I was told this would be interesting even if you don't like Poker but it wasn't. The book is very surface level observations. What people are wearing, what they're eating, what the weather is, what they do. It lacks the substantial insights inside of why they're doing things. That mixed with a lot of boring poker talk and a lot of very self absorbed rambling just kills my interest.
Poker is gambling by the way. It doesn't matter if there's still involved, it still uses the Element of chance as a major factor. It's not a slot machine but slot machines aren't the only form of gambling!!
Poker is gambling by the way. It doesn't matter if there's still involved, it still uses the Element of chance as a major factor. It's not a slot machine but slot machines aren't the only form of gambling!!
rsr143's review
3.0
A truly enjoyable book about one person's quest to rise from 0 to hero in a new field. The interleaving of the subject's experience with principles of Psychology, given her Ph.D. in the field, makes this a highly educational book without the dryness that often accompanies such non-fiction psych books. That said, I personally have little interest in poker, and found many of the details about the game and play-by-play commentary of specific hands and tournament results dry and boring.
Reading this book I came away with the feeling that learning rules to master a specific field/domain does matter, as does the seeking out of coaches and mentors to support the journey, but intuition plays a big part as well. How much of intuition is due to learning a domain vs just tapping into some sort of deeper invisible force? That's an open question.
Reading this book I came away with the feeling that learning rules to master a specific field/domain does matter, as does the seeking out of coaches and mentors to support the journey, but intuition plays a big part as well. How much of intuition is due to learning a domain vs just tapping into some sort of deeper invisible force? That's an open question.
christie_esau's review
3.0
Super interesting premise but I didn't feel like enough time was spent on any of the major components of the story (i.e. psychology of gaming, gender roles in professional sport, applying poker skills to regular life, etc.).
rongrong's review against another edition
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
Enjoyed the story, and some of the reflections. Maybe a reflection of the audiobook or my attention span, but I wish there’d been a recap at the end of top lessons.