| Title | The Biggest Bluff |
| Author | Maria Konnikova |
| Year | 2020 |
| Skill Level | any |
| Pros | Guided by one of the best players of all-time, Konnikova takes a surprisingly quick journey from poker novice to the World Series of Poker and beyond. Side trips show how she applies lessons from poker to her real life. |
| Cons | Not much actual poker. Not much of the WSOP beyond hands the author is involved in. |
| Rating | 4.0 |
| Page | Title | Chapter |
|---|---|---|
| xii | A prelude -- Las Vegas, July 2017 | |
| 6 | Ante up -- New York, late summer 2016 | 1 |
| 32 | The birth of a gambler -- Boston, fall 2016 | 2 |
| 46 | The art of losing -- New York, fall 2017 | 3 |
| 66 | The mind of a strategist -- New York, late fall 2016 | 4 |
| 94 | A man's world -- New York, winter 2016 | 5 |
| 116 | No bad beats -- Las Vegas, winter 2017 | 6 |
| 136 | Texting your way out of millions -- Las Vegas, winter 2017 | 7 |
| 154 | A storytelling business -- Las Vegas, March 2017 | 8 |
| 170 | The gambler and the nerd -- Monte Carlo, April 2019 | 9 |
| 194 | The art of the tell -- New York, May-June 2017 | 10 |
| 210 | Full tilt -- Las Vegas, June-July 2017 | 11 |
| 226 | Glory days -- The Bahamas, January 2018 | 12 |
| 266 | The heart of the gambling beast -- Macau, March 2018 | 13 |
| 318 | The ludic fallacy -- Las Vegas, June 2019 | 14 |
| 327 | Glossary of Poker Terms | |
| 333 | Acknowledgments | |
| 336 | Index |
Note: The books chapters aren't actually numbered.
A huge part of her success is that she is able to convince her New York neighbor, who happens to be all-time great Erik Seidel, to mentor her. While this is not a role he usually plays, he performs it well. In less than a year, Konnikova goes from not knowing how many cards are in a deck to holding her own at the 2017 World Series of Poker.
The book, however does not end there, although that was the original plan. Konnikova is playing well enough and profitably enough to extend the experiment another year. The publication delay pays off when, against all odds, she wins a major tournament and becomes a professional poker player.
Throughout her adventures, Konnikova also successfully applies lessons she learns from poker to improve her real life. Her goal had been to better understand how humans handle chance, but she eventually enriches not only her bank account but also her non-poker life, which is more than you can expect from most poker books.