The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

Our experiences trump everything else, but mostly, those experiences are incredibly skewed: they teach us, but they don’t teach us well.

I know all the places to go that will give us a more genuine Vegas experience. Here’s a cheat sheet. For sushi, Yui and Kabuto. For dinner close to the Rio, the Fat Greek, Peru Chicken, and Sazón. For when I’m feeling nostalgic for the jerk chicken of my local Crown Heights spots, Big Jerk. Lola’s for Cajun. Milos, but only for lunch. El Dorado for

PioSolver—would

helicopters crash at alarming rates: 3.19 accidents per every hundred thousand flight hours,

in any given tournament field, the percentage of women participants consistently hovers around three), but for the most part, it’s the bros in suits who are here to play. The evening gowns and décolletés are here to watch and socialize.

If you want to be a good player, you must acknowledge that you’re not “due”—for good cards, good karma, good health, money, love, or whatever else it is. Probability has amnesia:

Poker stands at the fulcrum that balances two oppositional forces in our lives—chance and control.

There’s never a default with anything. It’s always a matter of deliberation. Even seven-deuce—the worst hand, statistically speaking, that you can be dealt—can be playable in the right circumstances. The thing is, the circumstances are usually not right—and the hyper-aggressive player may run over everyone for a while and forget that at some point,

“But for its costliness and dangers, no better education for life among men could be devised than the gambling table—especially the poker table.” CLEMENS FRANCE, THE GAMBLING IMPULSE, 1902

Chewy would hardly stand out. (Indeed, he wrote a short poker book—fifty-five pages—called Yoga of Poker.)