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lauralauralaura 's review for:
The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win
by Maria Konnikova
I am developing a pet theory that a book about anything can in fact be a book about philosophy. This is a book about poker, kind of. The author, who presumably leveraged the credibility granted her as a regularly contributing writer to the New Yorker to gain access to the mentorship of many poker greats (I am taking her word/Penguin Press's fact checking for it) as she set out to learn how to play poker, but in fact, learned so much more than she ever expected about herself. Because poker provides thousands of opportunities to apply and learn from in a very practical way concepts that the author picked up getting her PhD in psychology.
This sounds kind of cynical, and it is, but I also really enjoyed this book and will carry some things forward with me. The idea that letting go can be a truly strong act. The idea that the more you learn, the harder it gets, because as you learn more, you see flaws you weren't even aware of that now you need to fix. There's this idea of an inchworm, where you slowly push your best work, your average work, and your worst work forward. The mantra "less certainty, more inquiry."
This sounds kind of cynical, and it is, but I also really enjoyed this book and will carry some things forward with me. The idea that letting go can be a truly strong act. The idea that the more you learn, the harder it gets, because as you learn more, you see flaws you weren't even aware of that now you need to fix. There's this idea of an inchworm, where you slowly push your best work, your average work, and your worst work forward. The mantra "less certainty, more inquiry."