Maria Konnikova

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.

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Latest Videos
What Psychological Traits Does the Con Artist Look for in Victims?
The con artist is more of a psychologist than a thief, explains Maria Konnikova. If fact, con artists will never actually steal anything from you; they'll convince you to hand it over freely.
Maria Konnikova
The value of unplugging and doing one thing at a time
We all need to give ourselves mental breaks, but we also need to focus and not let email notifications, Twitter notifications, suck our attention.
Maria Konnikova
Attention Training: Learning Single-Minded Focus
We need to learn to train our attention because, as with anything, attention is like a muscle. 
Maria Konnikova
You Can Train Your Attention Like a Muscle
We need to learn to train our attention because, as with anything, attention is like a muscle. 
Maria Konnikova
You May Not Have Noticed But Habituation Just Happens
Your brain learns to block out the noises that it hears all the time.
Maria Konnikova
What we know — and don’t know — about creativity
Maria Konnikova: the good news is that you can become more creative and I think that everyone has a certain degree of creativity in them.
Maria Konnikova
Don’t Use Up All Your Energy Multitasking
Heavy multitaskers become worse at the very thing that they should be very good at. 
Maria Konnikova
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