Poker is a powerful learning tool - interview with Maria Konnikova

We catch up with the PokerStars Pro and author about the mental game, using poker to learn about life and encouraging more women to play.

In your previous interviews and in your public speeches, you have repeatedly suggested that poker should be used in schools as a useful learning tool (as poker teaches you about probability and your emotions). In your opinion what are the other skills which can be developed by playing poker?

Maria Konnikova: Those two are two big ones, but it's just not thinking probabilistic. It can also can be learning to be comfortable with uncertainty and unknowing and with not having complete information, because of a lot of people before they make a decision they want to know this is the right decision.

And you have to realize, that you will never know. You never have complete information, and that's OK. This is very hard for a human mind, to be comfortable in this certain area, and I think that poker can help you there.

I think that poker also helps a lot with dealing with human actions, dealing with other people and understanding how much perception matters. How much you handle yourself matters and how much other people handle themselves matters.

A very important lesson for life is, that basically any life situation is a poker situation, where people have hole cards that you can't see, and you just kind of think that they're stronger, based on their reactions. If they react confident, you think that they must be very strong, and in reality they can be very weak.

Most poker players will agree with this, that poker is a game of skill. But for some people who know the game only from pop-culture (James Bond movies) it is a game of luck. How would you convince them, using plain English, without explaining any complicated theories, that it is a game of skill and should be learnt in schools?

Maria Konnikova: You can do it with one sentence: you can win with the worst hand and you can lose with the best hand. That's the definition of skill.

Because if it's luck, if it's gambling, the only way to win is if you have the best hand. So if you are playing blackjack, you can't win without the best hand. But in poker, if you have the worst hand, you still can win, and if you have the best hand you can still lose because someone is better and outplays you and convince you to fold your hand.

At what age do you think we should introduce students to poker?

Maria Konnikova: Definitely before teenagers. I think elementary school. It depends on the kid obviously, because people develop differently. But I think, that age 6 or 7 is not too early, because you don't have to start with complex strategy, you can start introducing some of the concepts.

That's when you can start to learn some basic math in schools, and I think that tool will make a lot of things more attentive. That is, from the psychological standpoint, when kids start to develop higher reasoning abilities. Before it's pointless. I think that 6-7 years old is a sweet spot. Of course for some kids, that would be too early, and that's OK.

What methods should we use to teach poker?

Maria Konnikova: A lot of people just think "oh, that's just the game", especially when you're older and there's money - "Oh, let's gamble, let's make money". What I mean is to break it down, to understand this as a strategic skill enterprise, where the money is secondary. It's just a way of showing how you are doing.

To divorce from this aspect, and to realise that the goal isn't to make the most money, the goal is to make the best decision. So that you learn to dissociate yourself from the outcome, because otherwise, you're gonna make those decisions. A lot of people are outcome-oriented and it's interfering their decision process, because even if they make the right decision and then the wrong things happen, they make a different decision next time.

You have to make this good decision over and over and over because in the longterm it's the correct decision. And I think, that's incredibly important to focus on a process, on a decision, on a strategy, and to make it very clear that the outcome, the money part, is just complete secondary. Obviously, for kids I'm not suggesting using the real money, we can use tokens or whatever it is.

"I made a huge mistake at the beginning of the PCA event, shortstacked, but thanks to Erik Seidel's support I pulled it together and won"

Speaking of breaking away from emotion, let's move on to how you did it at your first final table? How did you dissociate from the money? How did you cope with your own emotions?

Maria Konnikova: I was playing for three days, I didn't sleep well, and it was my first major final table. I was very lucky because Erik Seidel was my coach. He, and his wife Ruah (and they're like second parents to me), they were both there. And before they told me "go to sleep, try to relax, don't think about it". They brought me food, they checked if everything is OK. I still didn't sleep well, because I was so nervous obviously, but they told me "you got this".

At the beginning he was my secret weapon, I had him on the phone. I made a really big mistake at the beginning. I came to the table as one of the chip leaders and within the first 20 minutes, I lost a huge, huge hand and became a short stack. I made a huge mistake, I overplayed pocket Aces.

Erik was watching, obviously, so he texted me after he sees this hand and he says "Forget it, you messed up, we will talk about it later. Forget it, move on. You know how to play short stack, you are very good at short stack. Change your mindset. We've studied this, just focus on playing well."

And I did. I thought, "This is how many chips I have. I'm gonna play my 25bb game, rather than my 80bb game." That was one of these things, when he said, which is very true, nerves go away when we focus on the next thing. Don't worry what just happened, don't worry about what is going to happen and just play your best, and that's what I did.

And at the end when we got down to four-handed, and especially three-handed I switched because I had studied heads-up play. That was the thing I focused on for two months exclusively, so I was very ready for short-handed poker, so I was very, very aggressive.

As many poker players know from practice, there is a difference between knowing and doing. Does someone with a psychology background like yourself need support in the mindset aspect of poker?

Maria Konnikova: You need coaches, absolutely. So now I don't work only with Erik, but also with Phil (Galfond) and Jared Tendler. So Jared just helps me with my mental game. Jared and I have sessions, where he helps me. And people say, "why do you need a mental game coach, this is what you studied, you are a psychologist."

And I think, that everyone needs it. You need help with everything. It's always good to have someone to talk things through. He's obviously very busy, but his policy is, if you are ever deep, and you really need something quick, he will always find the time. So I think it's really important to have all of that.

I know that I have a lot of shortcomings, I think it's important to have to get out your ego out of the way and to let people help you because you can't do it by yourself. It's tough, I mean every psychologist knows that knowing that you have a bias doesn't mean that bias goes away, the bias stays. You need someone to help you, some external reminder.

"Playing poker has helped me become much stronger and much more aware of a lot of my issues and weaknesses."

There are five women for every ninety-five male participants. Women are in a significant minority, regardless of which festival we are talking about. There have been many attempts to encourage women to play poker, and none of them have had the desired effect. Do you have any idea how we could change that?

Maria Konnikova: It's one of the reasons, why I'm writing the book. That's one of the things I hope to do with my publication. I think it's one of those things, in all professions which are male-dominated, we all need a few really prominent women for start the things changing because you can't aspire to something if you don't see a role model.

Most of the girls weren't thinking about being a woman astronaut before there was a first woman astronaut. Poker is a little bit harder than that because there's a stigma, which I hope, once again, my book will change. Because, you know, I went to Harvard, I have a Ph.D., I write for the The New Yorker and I think poker is amazing.

I think that this book can be extremely helpful, so I'm doing everything I can. I think that also the image of poker must be changed, which is hard. It must be a much more welcoming environment, because a lot of times a woman's first experience while playing poker isn't good, she's not going apply.

I think it's really important to start at this level, make sure that the culture starts changing a little bit, and I think that we are at the point right now, when with #metoo movement, and all of this, I think that's the higher awareness, which will come to the poker world.

And women will feel more comfortable. Showing an experience and having a really successful woman, like Kristen Bicknell, who is in the top 10 in the world. I love her, she is one of my good friends, but I also think, that she is one of our best hopes. She's much better than I am, and I know that. I'm different also, we are attracting different audiences, but maybe with a combination people like me (from the outside world) and her, we can really show to women, "hey, you can be really a badass".

I actually want to see poker to be used not only in schools but also as a tool for women for empowerment. Playing poker has helped me become much stronger and much more aware of a lot of my issues and weaknesses. Because we live in a males world, poker is just a mirror of the world we are living in. Teaching women to play well can be such a powerful tool that can really empower them and helped them to be leaders in different areas, not just poker.

In fact, role models work perfectly in other areas of life. But we've already had a few successful women in poker, like Vanessa Selbst.

Maria Konnikova: Vanessa is amazing, but she never made a point of going outside of the poker world, she didn't care. And no one knew her, outside of the world of poker. She is brilliant, she went to Yale, for her poker was just a point in a career. I came in the way I did, for me, it's more a mission, I want to play but also I want to people more appreciate the game.

Our conversation takes place during the EPT Barcelona. At previous EPT festivals, we have often seen tournaments for women only (ladies events). There is no such tournament this year. Would you like to see such a tournament again?

Maria Konnikova: I understand why Ladies Events exist. But I think that women should compete on the bigger stage, we don't need to be segregated. It's almost looking down on us, to say you need your own little special category because you can't hold your own with the big boys, so here you go, here's the Ladies Event. I understand why they exist, and I think that for some it's a good experience, but I actually have heard a lot about bad experiences, because sometimes it can get nasty as well. Just because it's a Ladies Event, it doesn't mean that will be a good experience.

I think that it will be much better to get more competitive and create a community that supports women in poker and make all events comfortable for all players, then everyone's experience would be a good one. And it's gonna be better and more representative and it will ensure that people will be playing for longer.

Mentally it's very bad too, you start to think about yourself differently. That's my attitude to everything - I don't want to be the best female journalist in the world, it's bullshit, I want to be the best journalist.