Gotta love one poster calling her ugly and another saying all her success is due to her good looks.

I am also mystified at the hostility. It is a work of literary nonfiction. It is meant for entertainment; it isn’t even targeted at poker player or meant to encourage people to play poker.

With respect to the publishing world being brutal, I wouldn’t worry to much about her. It’s published by Penguin/Random House, which I believe is the #1 worldwide publishing house, and the author already has multiple bestselling books under her belt.

People obsessed with a niche hobby are always the first bitter attackers when mainstream media takes an interest in their stupid little hobby.
I am sure everyone trashed Molly's Game. If Rounders came out today, every poker nerd would trash it. People are idiots, is the bottom line.

This gave me a good laugh. Thanks, mate!

Misogyny is behind most of the hostility towards the author. It bothers some men to read about a successful woman, so they feel the need to disparage or belittle her. It's petty, pathetic loser behavior.

Bingo. This tends to couple nicely with a, "this is MY thing" attitude for niche hobbies.

Wasn't interested in book but seeing all this positive chatter I am now

Hi Nick:

One quick comment. Unless she's considered special, her royalty rate will probably be very low (especially compared to what we pay at 2+2). Of course, I have no idea what it is, but I suspect, and I haven't read a word of the book, is that this was more of a labor of love than one that was designed to generate a lot of income for the author.

Best wishes,
Mason

that's a ridiculous mischaracterization of what's been said.

maybe she was a family friend or there was some other reason, but obvious reason is obvious.

if people want to feel smug about defending her honor that's lovely, but most of what i see isn't a criticism of her as much as it is the article and it wouldn't be any different if it was about a guy. and yet i'm still interested to hear what she has to say about her experience, and i don't think she deserves flak for it because i highly doubt she chose the title of the article. this is just a matter of the editors sensationalizing a piece to appeal to more people.

that said, if you can't see why an article titled "how i became a poker champion in one year" about someone who almost certainly lost large sums of money while being coached by one of the best players in the world (who would under most circumstances charge large sums of money for his time) might be irritating to people who've put in a lot of work in an extremely competitive space to succeed, i don't know what to say.

if you posted an article that declared someone to be an expert at (insert academic discipline) despite it being obvious to anyone with a clue that the person was a rank amateur, it would ridiculed even more vigorously. and of course, if said person was a female or a minority, you'd have a train of people who know absolutely nothing about the field marching in to dismiss the critics as "haters" or racist or misogynists'.


the point i think that's really worth ridiculing, though, is the people who're effectively saying "who cares, keep your mouth shut, don't point out how stupid it is - this is good for poker!"....

coming from the guy who's been posting in poker strategy forums for 5 years and is to this day complaining about getting crushed at 1c/2c, and that the games are too tough.

who's stupid little hobby is this? the people who've already made large sums of money at poker who're saying this is misleading to the general public, who don't really care if pointing out the obvious deters would-be degenerates from pissing away their paycheque?

or is it the people who failed miserably at poker that are hoping the article will attract more dead money to the game so that they won't be stuck grinding it out at sub cheeseburger stakes?

gl at the tables!

Considering that what you actually said was:

I would agree it that it's a mischaracterization as it was much too forgiving. Why does her success make you so angry?

lol, Abba must be exhausted from lugging around all that baggage.

i didn't say her success is solely hinged on her looks. i suggested eric choosing to coach here was in part attributable to him thinking she's attractive. do you not think that's likely?

do you think it's at all likely based on her results that she's up money at poker? do you know anything about poker, or are you just here for the gossip?

i'm not at all angry about her success and would be interested to read about her experiences. i just think it's ridiculous to venerate her as a poker champion and that the people who're rushing to deflect any criticism of the article are pathetic.

Yea, people said the same thing when i ragged on outlets celebrating dan blizerian as being a self made poker prodigy. am i hater for taking a few minutes to point out the obvious? i guess so. i'm just a hater who can't help but hate. now bring on the hater-haters so they can hate on me for hating.

Holy schnikeys... I haven't talked to Dana Jacobson in almost 20 years, and haven't even seen her on camera since around the time she had that whole dustup at ESPN. Would not have recognized her from that clip. (Shows you how rarely I watch CBS News.)

I don't know why you would assume that. Konnikova isn't some random person asking for coaching. Konnikova is arguably more famous than Seidel among a general audience, and certainly is among the New York literary scene that Seidel also seems to be interested in. He may have reasonable saw the chance to be written about in her book as opening up a lot of other opportunities in his social life and career outside of poker.

Who in this thread is "venerating her as a poker champion"? She doesn't even describe herself as a "poker champion" in the article. People are giving her rightly deserved credit as a writer. But the only people attempting to comment on her poker skill are just trolls assuming she's bad for no apparent real reason.

This is absolutely misogyny and disgusting.

No doubt!

But seriously f*** Notre Dame.

it most definitely is misogyny but not sure I can call a BJ "disgusting"

I read most of that article a few days ago - it reminded me of a write-up in another book where Annie Duke is featured as a great player with way too much weight given to winning a poker tournament. It might be interesting for a non-poker player to read, but anyone with basic poker knowledge will be rolling their eyes reading that article.

Check out Annie Duke on Tyler Cowan's podcast. I lasted halfway through the first question.

Hbob said this book is good so even though I'm not gonna read it if someone brings it up I'll be like yeah I heard she's great.

She's a professional and award-winning writer. She's written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, The Paris Review and The New Republic. Her first book was a New York Times best seller and was translated into 17 languages. Her second book was again a New York Times best seller. Her first two books are published by Viking Press. This is her third book, and it's published by Penguin Press.

Your reads in this case are bad.

In addition to the accomplishments namisgr11 mentioned, Maria Konnikova has a PhD in psychology from Columbia University and has published over 90 articles in the New Yorker since 2013. In the New York literary world, she is as successful as a writer of serious nonfiction could hope to be. This is how she makes her living, Mason: by writing and speaking. The suggestion that she wrote this book "as a labor of love" is condescending and probably misogynistic. Would you say the same thing about James McManus and Positively Fifth Street? I don't think so.

Hi agamblerthen:

Sometimes it can be both. Just because she might be making a bunch of money doesn't mean that she didn't enjoy the work. And when that's the case, it's likely that she would have done the exact same amount of work even if she didn't expect to get much in return.

I know the above is true with me. I've continued to do most of the same 2+2 work that I did years ago even though the poker boom is long gone and the monetary return is not what it use to be. But I enjoy the work and since I enjoy it, the work doesn't seem like work to me.

It seems to me that you are the one being misogynistic. Being able to enjoy what you do, even if a lot of work is involved, seems like an idea that you're not familiar with.

Mason

The amount of hostility toward Konnikova in this thread is astounding. I read the Atlantic article, another in Wired, and bought the book. I'm about half way through it and find it a great read, and the way she got into this is fascinating.

She and her family had experienced a number of seemingly random setbacks in their lives, and she set out to find how to deal with unpredictability in life. Among the many things she read was von Neumann's Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. The father of game theory loved poker and viewed it as a mirror of life and dealing with other person's intentions and deceptions. This is what led her to learn to play poker - as a way to learn to deal with life.

This is a terrific story of a woman who had never played any card games in her life, not bridge, not hearts, certainly not poker. That totally blank slate motivated Seidel to become her mentor. She certainly encountered hostility and contempt just because she's female, but she's really smart, very hard working, a Ph.D. in psychology helps, and became a very good player.

her success doesnt make anyone angry , shes media so its only good for poker i have family members who read this article and started asking me about poker so its def. good. but if anyone is jaded with the title its because its ANOTHER story of a chick getting befriended by highstakes pros , staked , and luckbox a tourney( im assuming) and is now claming to be profitable when in reality she would be destroyed by any online low stakes reg( when shes not being ghosted). when i started this was the stuff that got me into poker so im not mad.

I guarantee you that she's not pretending to be a world class player. Only dunning Kruger fools would think that. Smart people know better than that. She's not lying. She won a real tournament. No more no less.