How to Make Your Own Luck (Update)
Before she decided to become a poker pro, Maria Konnikova didn’t know how many cards are in a deck. But she did have a Ph.D. in psychology, a brilliant coach, and a burning desire to know whether life is driven more by skill or chance. She found some answers in poker — and she’s willing to tell us everything she learned.
SOURCES:Maria Konnikova, author of The Biggest Bluff.RESOURCES:“Gender Differences in Performance Predictions: Evidence from the Cognitive Reflection Test,” by Patrick Ring, Levent Neyse, Tamas David-Barett, and Ulrich Schmidt (Frontiers in Psychology, 2016).“The headwinds/tailwinds Asymmetry: An Availability Bias in Assessments of Barriers and Blessings,” by Shai Davidai and Thomas Gilovich (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2016).“The Two Settings of Kind and Wicked Learning Environments,” by Robin M. Hogarth, Tomás Lejarraga, and Emre Soyer (Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2015)."The Limits of Self-Control: Self-Control, Illusory Control, and Risky Financial Decision Making,” by Maria Konnikova (Columbia University, 2013).“Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement” by J.B. Rotter (Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 1966).EXTRAS:The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win, by Maria Konnikova.Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, by Maria Konnikova.The Confidence Game, by Maria Konnikova.Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, by John Von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern."This Year’s World Series Of Poker Is Different," by Risky Business with Nate Silver and Maria Konnikova (2025).
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