Maria Konnikova

New York

Contributing Writer at The New Yorker

Only @newyorker writer ever to go on leave to play pro poker. Wrote some bestsellers (https://t.co/38nIBwyPUj). Co-host Risky Business pod. @PokerStars Team Pro

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Articles

Many Happy Returns

3 weeks ago | mariakonnikova.substack.com | Maria Konnikova

“The Leap” started as an experiment one year ago (give or take a week!). Thank you all for coming along on the journey, for your support, and for making this an experiment I want to continue. Thanks to my incredible paid subscribers, “The Leap” joined the ranks of Substack bestsellers, and thanks to all of my wonderful readers, it has continued to grow to an audience of almost 20,000 (give or take a few thousand!). So: thank you all, truly.
Angle-shooting, cheating, and norms of behavior

1 month ago | mariakonnikova.substack.com | Maria Konnikova

I lied to you: I said I would write about sleep this week. And I promise, I was going to. But there was an element of my time in Monte Carlo that kept eating away at me, and even though I tried my best to resist the urge to add my voice to a chorus that had already spoken about it, I couldn’t quite do it. I’m working on a book about cheating, after all; and when I see cheating-adjacent behavior, it grabs me and won’t let go.
A victor mindset

1 month ago | mariakonnikova.substack.com | Maria Konnikova

Greetings from the air! I apologize for the long delay in posts: I’ve been at the PokerStars flagship EPT Monte Carlo series—which means days filled with little other than poker, sleep, and attempts at sanity-maintenance like morning yoga and sunshine. I did actually try to write something the day I arrived, off a red-eye flight from New York. Luckily for me, I did not publish it.
The luck of birth

2 months ago | mariakonnikova.substack.com | Maria Konnikova

This weekend, my family convened from various parts of New England to celebrate my birthday, with my parents battling heroically to drive through six and a half hours of Good Friday traffic just to spend a day with us. It was wonderful and happy—but it did make me reflect on the oddity of celebrating someone for the one thing that they had zero control over, the ultimate example of sheer, dumb luck: the accident of birth.
Solitary Eating

2 months ago | mariakonnikova.substack.com | Maria Konnikova

I love eating alone. There’s something beautifully freeing about the lack of obligation to anything (or anyone), beyond the momentary experience. Food is one of the most grounding sensory pleasures we have—smell, sight, sound, touch, taste all there for the taking—and when I eat by myself, I can focus on every single element of the meal, without distraction. It’s one of the most Zen rituals I can imagine, where being present and in-the-moment pays dividends.
Why do we celebrate April Fools'?

2 months ago | mariakonnikova.substack.com | Maria Konnikova

I hate April Fools’ Day. Always have. Why have a day when you spend the entire time worrying that someone is going to try to prank you—or triple-checking that the story or headline you just read is real? I’m all for jokes and pranks, but I like them to come about organically, not because some random calendar date says so. That said, the origin of the holiday is quite fascinating—and history, I do love.
A bit of March Madness

Mar 18, 2025 | mariakonnikova.substack.com | Maria Konnikova

March Madness it not something I’ve ever cared about. In fact, until two days ago, I had gone my entire life without ever filling out a bracket. That’s right. Not once. I probably couldn’t have even told you what team won the last few years. This year, that all changes: for the March Madness edition of the Risky Business podcast, Nate Silver and I are going head to head in bracket picks. The episode drops tonight, but I wanted to give you a little preview. The Leap is a reader-supported publication.
Can you change your personality for the better?

Mar 15, 2025 | mariakonnikova.substack.com | Maria Konnikova

This week, I’m going to do something a little different. Olga Khazan, a wonderful journalist for The Atlantic—and a fellow Substacker—has just released her second book, ME, BUT BETTER. The book is so good. It’s insightful, thought-provoking, and very funny. And it’s about a topic I’ve spent many, many years researching and thinking about: personality. You know my thoughts on personality psychology are…idiosyncratic, to say the least, influenced as they are by my graduate advisor, Walter Mischel.
Humans vs Bots, rock paper scissors edition

Mar 5, 2025 | mariakonnikova.substack.com | Maria Konnikova

Last week, Nate and I devoted a chunk of our weekly podcast to a discussion of an old childhood game: rock, paper, scissors, or RPS. RPS is a mixed-strategy equilibrium game, likely dating back to the Han Dynasty in 200 BC, where it was played to illustrate the principle of flow. A mixed-strategy equilibrium is an inherently unstable one: no one approach is dominant, and the best strategy is to randomly cycle through the options. The game is in a state of constant flux.
The skill edge

Feb 24, 2025 | mariakonnikova.substack.com | Maria Konnikova

Last week, I flew back to Vegas from the snowy East Coast, just in time for the start of the Wynn Millions series. I jumped into one of the opening events, a $600 buy-in with a cool half-million guarantee, and settled in for a day at the tables. The tournament area at the Encore is surrounded by slot machines, and it wasn’t long before a gentleman at my table made a joke about running over to one of them to try his luck in between hands.