Maria Konnikova

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Maria Konnikova

New York Times Best-Selling Author, Journalist and Professional Poker Player

A woman with long brown hair, wearing a black top and a necklace, looks at the camera and smiles against a plain light background.

Maria Konnikova is the author 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. 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.

Konnikova 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 for The Biggest Bluff, Konnikova became an international poker champion and the winner of over $300,000 in tournament earnings — and inadvertently turned into a professional poker player. Konnikova’s writing has been featured in Best American Science and Nature Writing and has been translated into over twenty languages.

Konnikova 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 Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia University.

Everything Videos Articles
Guest Thinkers
How to Improve Self-Control: Freedom from Your Hot Triggers
Self-control: we could all use more of it. Even those of us who are best at exercising self-control on a daily basis have so-called hot triggers, the special circumstances that would make us, too, lose our cool and start to behave less than rationally.
Maria Konnikova
Guest Thinkers
Memory, Preferences, and Choices: How Our Noses Impact Our Decisions
Our memories affect our choices. It makes a whole lot of sense: we decide based on what we know.  And if we don’t have any experience with a particular decision, […]
Maria Konnikova
Guest Thinkers
Sit Up Straighter, Decide Better
Friday’s New York Times touts the health benefits of good posture: it helps avoid the pain (both physical and financial) of back and neck problems, improves muscle tone and breathing, […]
Maria Konnikova
Guest Thinkers
The Power of Negative Gossip: Coloring How We See the World, One Rumor at a Time
Gossip: you can’t avoid it. And maybe, you shouldn’t want to. Scientists have argued that gossip is an important tool for social cohesion and information transmission, allowing us to function […]
Maria Konnikova
Guest Thinkers
The Female Investor: What Every Successful Investor, Regardless of Sex, Should Know
Yesterday, we celebrated Father’s Day. Today, let’s celebrate the wisdom of the female investor – or more specifically, what it is that generally makes her more financially successful over the […]
Maria Konnikova
Guest Thinkers
Monkey See, Monkey Do? Risk-taking, Aggression, and Media Exposure
The perennial question: how does media affect action? Or, to put it in more specific terms, does watching violent things on TV, reading about risk-taking on the internet, or playing […]
Maria Konnikova
Guest Thinkers
When a Pipe Is Not a Pipe: How Shifting Perspective Creates Insight, Creativity, and Mindfulness
A change in scale forces us to take note. Objects that we would never notice acquire significance, become worthy of examination and attention. In other words, they force mindfulness.
Maria Konnikova
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