What Pro Poker Can Teach You About Coping With Uncertainty
This year started out with such hope. But ever since then, it seems like we have all been on an epic streak of bad decisions and bad luck. America took a lot of gambles – with our health, with our economy – and nothing seems to be paying off.
If only there were some kind of guidebook for dealing with bad luck, overcoming bad decisions, coping with uncertainty, and regrouping for when things turn our way again.
Well, funny you should ask. Meet Maria Konnikova: A longtime writer for The New Yorker magazine with a background in psychology. Back in 2016, she figured she would try her hand at learning the fine art of poker.
So, starting from scratch — literally, never having played the game in her life — Konnikova put herself under the tutelage of famed poker champion Erik Seidel, to see how just far she could go.
Turns out, Konnikova went pretty darn far. In relatively short order, she ended up winning a major title, earnings hundreds of thousands in prize money, and going pro. Her account of this improbable rise to poker stardom has just been documented in her new book, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned To Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win.
Penguin Publishing Group
Riding along for Konnikova’s journey from total newbie to champion is engrossing enough. But, along the way she learned a whole lot of lessons about dealing with adversity, which the rest of us could use in this unique moment of history. In the hopes of helping you through these uncertain times, here are a few ways you can make advantages from any hand you are dealt.
Making the right decisions
You can’t control the cards that come your way. Your opponent might get dealt pocket aces, while you get an off-suit three and seven. But the best cards don’t always win the hand in poker, otherwise it wouldn’t be much of a game.
What you can control is making the right decision in any given moment — don’t get triggered, think about probabilities, and pay close attention to what’s happening at the table. If you do that, you can hone your instincts and improve your game even when you’re in a losing stretch.
“A lot of poker is about letting go, and realizing you only control so much,” Konnikova tells Shondaland. “And that’s okay, as long as you are making the best decisions you can. Act on things you can do something about, and have the mindset to look forward and take one step at a time.”
Keep your emotions in check
2020 is nothing if not emotional, pressing all our buttons multiple times a day. But being led by passions is a recipe for failure — poker players call it going “on tilt,” when you’re seeing red and making all the wrong choices.
As a real-life example, stressed-out investors might look at a plunging stock market, panic, and sell everything they have. One momentary lapse in decision-making like that can have far-reaching effects, so keep your cool even in high-stakes environments.
“Learn what sort of pressures are unique to you,” Konnikova advises. “What do you get worried about? What’s always on your mind? What are your potential triggers? Then physically write them down, and start figuring out strategies for dealing with them.”
Just think of how you are dealing with the current pandemic. A typical pressure point for most people is that we have been cooped up with our families for months on end, and fed a constant barrage of bad news. It’s no wonder our mental circuitry is frazzled. What Konnikova suggests: Make sure to schedule some time alone, get off social media, and unplug whenever you can. “The world won’t end if you stop paying attention to all the breaking news that’s getting people down," she says. "Unplugging will help you marshal the emotional resources to be more resilient.”
Get good at reading people
In poker, you’re not just playing the cards, you’re playing against opponents. So getting inside their heads, and figuring out exactly why they’re doing what they’re doing, is critical to minimizing your losses and maximizing your gains.
Konnikova put those newfound skills to work in her freelance career. When a publication offered her an assignment, she read the situation, calculated her leverage – and got more in compensation than she had thought possible.
“Poker teaches you to be very attentive to what people are telling you, in their words and their actions,” she says. “Most communication is nonverbal. Let that guide what you are doing or saying next, because if you don’t, you will miss crucially important cues – and leave a lot of money on the table.”
Take calculated risks
For people of a cautious temperament, who hate to put big amounts of money in jeopardy, this is a hard one. But like it or not, poker is a game of risk, and much of your success at the table will depend on knowing when to bet big.
Konnikova struggled mightily with that herself. She attributes her natural caution to her social conditioning — the fact that society tends to encourage women to sit down and be quiet, while discouraging those who stand up and speak out.
“You need to reframe how you look at risk,” she says. “Don’t think of it as a way to lose a lot of chips, but as an opportunity to play well, and go far in the tournament, and win a lot more. In some cases, playing it safe is actually very bad decision-making.”
A prime example of such a real-life, all-in bet was the very act of Konnikova writing this book. Dropping everything, turning down other assignments, and focusing on becoming a world-class expert in something she had never even attempted before — which, according to odds and logic, would probably not turn out how she hoped — represented a monumental career risk for her, which nonetheless paid off.
Find the right mentor
As much as The Biggest Bluff is the story of Maria Konnikova, it is also the story of Erik Seidel. It’s highly unlikely she would have been able to achieve what she did in poker, without the guidance of someone who had already reached greatness in the field, and who had the time and willingness to put her on the right path.
In your own career, try to find someone who has already been where you are hoping to go, and who has insider knowledge of how to bring that about. Seidel introduced Konnikova to the right people to expand her knowledge, suggested the right tournaments to test her newfound skills, and helped her take the right lessons from her early losses.
“I got so much from Erik Seidel,” she says. “How to pay attention, to be present, to have the mindset to always look forward and take one step at a time. Act on things you can do something about.”
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Constantly reevaluate your environment
When you sit down at a poker table, your job is basically to observe what is going on – what "tells" the players are revealing, who is aggressive and who isn’t, how they are reacting to big wins or bad beats.
Then comes the hard part: things change. So instead of coming to any fixed conclusions, incorporate any new information that comes your way, and adjust accordingly. Same goes with your life and career, since the 2020 playing field is constantly shifting under our feet.
“The Achilles heel of many great players is that they get set in their ways, and think they know it all,” Konnikova says. “They stop taking feedback, because they have it all figured out. But the status quo never stays that way — things change, and if you don’t keep learning you will very quickly become obsolete.”
Avoid the victim mentality
Some poker players are obsessed with “bad beat” stories — where an opponent pulls a lucky card at the end, and they lost a hand they really should have won. It’s easy to get stuck in that victim mentality, and just blame everything on the cards.
Instead, plant the seeds of your own resilience, Konnikova advises. Unfortunate cards will certainly come, but if you made the best decisions you could at the time, then accept the outcome and move onto the next hand.
“Instead of saying, ‘Poor me, I’m the victim,’ think of yourself as almost the victor,” she says. “Bad stuff happens, but you got through it and did everything you could. If you keep putting yourself in a great position over and over, everything will work out.”
Think of this in terms of your own career. If you are constantly complaining about everyone and everything around you, that creates a “field of negativity” — people will be less likely to want to interact with you, or recommend you to other employers, or bring you on for team projects. It’s essentially a luck-dampening effect, with negativity becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. On the flip side, being a positive presence is luck-amplifying – “your network will be bigger, people will be thinking of you, and you will be top-of-mind for new opportunities. It puts you in a position to win.”
Be okay with uncertainty
Especially in the game Konnikova learned — known as No Limit Hold ‘Em — there is plenty of uncertainty at any given moment. You know the two cards you are dealt initially, but you don’t know what the others are holding, and you don’t know the additional cards that are still to come.
In the same way, in daily life, people must be comfortable with a whole lot of uncertainty right now. We just don’t know when or how the Covid-19 situation is going to play out, but we have to play the game nonetheless and keep making moves even when the picture is not clear.
“We live in a probabilistic world, and nothing is 100 percent certain,” she says. “The human mind doesn’t like that kind of ambiguity. But not having complete certainty is okay, and you shouldn’t let it paralyze you.”
In short, poker may not be exactly like life, but it’s pretty darn close. Some skill, some luck. You can win with a bad hand, or lose with a great hand. A surprising amount of success depends on attitude, and how you are able to cope with losing. Pay as much attention to the people around you, as you do to the cards you’re holding. And when the time is right, bet big.
As Konnikova writes: “This book isn’t about how to play poker. It’s about how to play the world.”
Chris Taylor is senior correspondent for Reuters, covering personal finance and investing. He is also a frequent contributor to Money Magazine and Fortune. The Canadian native lives in New Jersey and currently shares office space with his beagle. Find Chris on Twitter @christaylor_nyc .
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