I’ve just read this new release by Maria Konnikova. She’s a Russian-American author who specialises in accessible writing about cognitive psychology. Her last book, The Confidence Game, was about cons and scams; what makes us susceptible and how our cognitive biases can be used against us.
In her new book, Ms. Konnikova dissects the nature of chance and the role of skill using the game of poker as the crucible. After a run of misfortune in her personal life, she decided to study poker to find out exactly what she could control and what she could not.
This book has received a good deal of media attention because the author went from complete novice to tournament pro in a year, winning thousands of dollars to date.
Maria Konnikova has an appealing, confiding prose style and she weaves in complicated ideas so they become rooted in the real world. As she describes her journey, she discusses life traps like overconfidence, social conditioning, magical thinking and, most of all, the failure to pay attention. She introduces many ideas about how we perceive and process the world – the Gambler’s Fallacy, the Dunning-Kruger Effect, the locus of control – and describes the studies that back them up.
This book illustrates how one person found a way out of the narrow oubliette of her own automatic thinking. The intention is to help others do the same. This is a useful read if your imaginings about fate, or risk, or your worries about the future hold you back from making effective decisions in your everyday life.
You can find it on Amazon here.