Ms. Konnikova has admitted that she had no understanding of how poker worked before she met with her teacher, a Hall of Fame professional, Erik Seidel. Mr. Seidel was polite and to-the-point saying that he will take her up as a student. Ms. Konnikova seemed thrilled.<\/p>\n

She quickly started picking up the game. Not only that, she\u2019d allocate 9 hours of her day just to poker. Unpicking odds, mastering the outcomes and introducing some order to the whole wild affair of luck. <\/p>\n

Mr. Seidel has been quite supportive of Ms. Konnikova\u2019s hobby. In fact, she had said that Ms. Konnikova has the right background to be playing. In her own words, she believes that her training as an experimental psychologist does in fact put her at an advantage over the majority of people. She simply has a better decision-making process when it comes to challenging situations.<\/p>\n

But it has not all been bad experience. Not in the slightest. The privilege to play with some of the world\u2019s best poker minds has been quite the privilege to Ms. Konnikova indeed. \u201cThey are not only skilled,\u201d she argued, they are also nice. <\/p>\n

Maybe not Mr. Helmuth, I\u2019d say. Ms. Konnikova has a brilliant mind and she\u2019s an outstanding researcher, and as it turns out \u2013 a poker pro of the highest order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Do you remember Maria Konnikova? The young researcher who has turned a love for science into a love for cards. Luck has always fascinated her. And so, she wanted to write about it. Luck, she argued, was pure randomness. She may have been right at the time, but as she started studying the cards, it […]","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":8194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[273,343,406],"class_list":["post-8193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headline","tag-konnikova","tag-new-york-times","tag-poker"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n