Maria Konnikova is a New York Times best-selling author, journalist, and professional poker player.
To see Maria speak about poker and decision making, view her recent keynote at the World Economic Forum at Davos, or see some additional speaking highlights here.
The official (short) version
Maria Konnikova is the author, most recently, of The Biggest Bluff, a New York Times bestseller, one of the Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2020, and a finalist for the Telegraph Best Sports Writing Awards for 2021. She is the co-host, along with Nate Silver, of Risky Business, a weekly podcast from Pushkin and iHeartRadio, and the author of The Leap, a new weekly Substack. Her previous books are the bestsellers The Confidence Game, winner of the 2016 Robert P. Balles Prize in Critical Thinking, and Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, an Anthony and Agatha Award finalist. Maria is a regularly contributing writer for The New Yorker whose writing has won numerous awards, including the 2019 Excellence in Science Journalism Award from the Society of Personality and Social Psychology. While researching The Biggest Bluff, Maria became an international poker champion and the winner of over $500,000 in tournament earnings—and inadvertently turned into a professional poker player. Maria’s writing has been featured in Best American Science and Nature Writing and has been translated into over twenty languages. Maria also hosts the podcast The Grift from Panoply Media, a show that explores con artists and the lives they ruin. Her podcasting work earned her a National Magazine Award nomination in 2019. She graduated from Harvard University and received her PhD in psychology from Columbia University. She is currently working on a book about cheating in games.
The unofficial (longer) version
Maria was born in Moscow, Russia and came to the United States when she was four years old. Her first ever book was written in Russian. It was five pages long and had something to do with trolls. When Maria was in fourth grade, she wrote a play. It took what felt like years to complete and all of fifteen minutes to perform. The audience (of proud parents and siblings) raved. Maria cried when she realized that the sounds she kept hearing were not tears but suppressed—and then not so suppressed—laughter at the dead king who couldn’t stop wriggling as he lay on top of the two chairs that were supposed to symbolize his tomb. You know how the story ends. The chairs slid apart. The deceased monarch crashed to the floor. The room erupted. It was not how Maria had envisioned her first theatrical production.
Maria is the author of two New York Times best-sellers, The Confidence Game (Viking/Penguin 2016) and Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes (Viking/Penguin, 2013). Her new book, The Biggest Bluff, about the balance of skill and chance in life, will be out from Penguin Press on June 23, 2020. She is a contributing writer for The New Yorker, where she writes a regular column with a focus on psychology and culture, and is the host of the longform storytelling podcast from Panoply, The Grift, about con artists and the lives they ruin. Her podcasting work earned her a National Magazine Award nomination in 2019. Her first book, Mastermind, has been translated into nineteen languages. It was nominated for the Agatha Award and the Anthony Award for Best Non-fiction and was a Goodreads People’s Choice Semifinalist for 2013. The Confidence Game was awarded the 2016 Robert P. Balles Prize in Critical Thinking by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. While researching her latest book, Maria became an international poker champion and the winner of over $300,000 in tournament earnings–and inadvertently turned into a professional poker player. She is currently a visiting fellow at NYU’s School of Journalism.
Maria’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Slate, California Sunday, Pacific Standard, The New Republic, The Paris Review, The Wall Street Journal, Salon, The Boston Globe, The Observer, Scientific American MIND, WIRED, and Scientific American, among numerous other publications. Her writing has also been included in the Best American Science and Nature Writing 2017 anthology and has won numerous awards, including the 2019 Excellence in Science Journalism Award from the Society of Personality and Social Psychology. Maria formerly wrote the “Literally Psyched” column for Scientific American and the popular psychology blog “Artful Choice” for Big Think. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, where she studied psychology, creative writing, and government, and received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University. She previously worked as a producer for the Charlie Rose show on PBS. She still, on occasion, writes in Russian. She no longer writes plays.
