Welcome to the favorites, the podcast from the Action action network I am Chad Millman today

poker has exploded during the Corona shutdown especially online poker for a lot of us

it takes us back to the full tilt days when becoming a

professional poker player was just something you did by logging on an

opening an account. Today's guest Maria Kanakova has written a

brilliant book not just about poker but about her

deep dive and how poker can teach all of us about observing better, negotiating

better, making better day-to-day decisions.

No joke, Maria, the biggest bluff, how I learned to pay attention,

master myself and win by Maria Konekova.

It's a freaking joy. It's smart. It's funny. It's taking complicated concepts

turning them into something entirely accessible. Nice work on the book, Maria. Thank you so much, Chad. that means a lot. How did you come to the idea? I initially came to the idea from a very different angle than I think most people come to poker. All the poker players I've encountered

over the last several years of playing full time,

they were games players when they were growing up.

You know, they played chess or Magic the Gathering or cards and they learned poker from their parents. I grew up in a household where games weren't a thing. You know, we read books.

That was about it. We didn't even have a deck of cards. I don't think my grandparents had a deck of cards. We didn't.

And so to me like poker was just this totally foreign thing. I had no idea what it was.

I never really gave it much thought, but I became really interested in the idea of luck and the role that luck plays in our lives.

And whether there was some way that I could learn to tell the difference between the things I controlled

and the things that I didn't control because it's so easy to conflate the two, right?

Especially if you're getting lucky. Like yeah, you know everything is great. I'm smart I'm doing

well, you know, life is good. And you just kind of forget you also got really, really lucky.

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