LIFE LESSONS FROM THE POKER TABLE
ANDREA MILLER: In your new book, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win, you share lessons from high level poker about luck and decision making. Why don’t more people embrace the idea that our lives are greatly determined by luck—be it good or bad?
MARIA KONNIKOVA: More people don’t embrace it because it’s embracing uncertainty, the unknown. The fact that there’s randomness—people don’t like that.
They like to have agency. They like to feel they’re the authors of their own page.
Why is it helpful to understand the role that luck plays in life?
There are many things we do control, but you can’t have the attitude of, “It’s all me,” because that’s a limiting, ungenerous mindset. It says, “Everyone who’s not
