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This article is adapted from The Biggest Bluff: How I
Learned to 💸 Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win by Maria Konnikova, published by
Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a 💸 division of Penguin Random
House, LLC. Copyright (c) 2024 by Maria Konnikova.
I’d like to introduce you to a game.
Not 💸 the game I’ve spent the past three years immersing myself in, poker, but another
game—one I came across as I 💸 sat at poker table after poker table around the world:
Lodden Thinks.
Lodden Thinks was created one day in the mid-2000s, 💸 when two poker pros
found themselves bored at a televised poker table. The Magician and the
Unabomber—Antonio Esfandiari and Phil 💸 Laak, the former nicknamed for his past
profession, the latter for his affinity for hoodies pulled low over his face 💸 and
sunglasses shielding his eyes—soon came up with a way to pass the time. At the table
was Johnny Lodden, 💸 a Norwegian pro and mutual friend. They would take turns asking him
a question—and then bet on what he thought 💸 the answer was. Lodden would then supply his
own response, and the person who’d been closest to Lodden’s answer would 💸 win the round.
The game took off, and soon, players around the world were betting anywhere from a
dollar or 💸 two to tens of thousands on a single
question.
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The beauty of Lodden Thinks is that the real,
factual answer to 💸 any given query doesn’t actually matter. The game is all about
perception and psychology: What does Lodden (or whoever is 💸 the target in this
particular iteration) think the answer is—and can you be the one to see the world from
💸 his perspective more closely than your opponents? In a sense, it’s the heart of not
only poker but many a 💸 social situation. How good are you at figuring out how others see
the world—and at gearing your own actions accordingly? 💸 Remember: Objective reality
doesn’t actually matter. Subjective perception, and your ability to tune into it
accurately, is key to the 💸 win.
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On a 2008 episode of Poker After Dark, a
popular television show of high-stakes cash games, two high-profile players, Phil 💸 Ivey
and Doyle Brunson, played a round of Lodden Thinks forR$10,000.
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“I want
to bet on Clint Eastwood’s age,” Brunson says 💸 to open this particular game. Daniel
Negreanu volunteers to guess. He’ll be the Lodden. Once he’s “locked it down”—that is,
💸 has thought of his response and locked it in—the guessing can
begin.
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“I’ll play this one,” comes Phil Ivey’s voice. He
💸 turns to Brunson. “Will you play this one with me? For 10,000?”
Brunson nods.
“Yeah.”
“OK.”
“OK.”
Brunson starts at 21. Ivey can now 💸 either accept the under or
propose a higher number. He counters with 40. Now Brunson can either accept the under
💸 or go higher. Immediately, he counters with 60. Now things start getting more serious.
Ivey stares him down a bit 💸 before offering, “62.” Sixty‐four, counters Brunson with a
smirk. Sixty-six. Sixty-eight.
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Phil reflects. “How dumb is Daniel … let’s
see.” He 💸 knows his edge is to read his Lodden. He doesn’t need to have a clue as to
Eastwood’s real age.
“You’re 💸 not signaling him, are you?” asks Brunson.
“In some way we
are,” Ivey responds. Because of course, part of the game 💸 is watching the Lodden’s
reactions and seeing what you can extract from his responses. Like so many things in
life, 💸 this is a game of people, not hard truths.
There’s a slight pause as Ivey shoves
all his chips into the 💸 middle of the table with pocket sevens—they are still playing a
high-stakes poker game, after all, and the pot is 💸 now more thanR$8,000—and then
counters with 69. Seventy-two, says Brunson, as Ivey sees that he is up against a
superior 💸 pair of eights. Ivey comes back with 73. Brunson ups it to 74. Ivey accepts
the under and they turn 💸 to Negreanu. “You lose,” Brunson says confidently to Ivey as
they wait for the answer.
Negreanu laughs. “I had 73.”
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Ivey
loses 💸 the pot in the middle but wins 10 grand all the same. Brunson shakes his head in
disbelief. “He’s 77.” 💸 It’s like he can’t believe that someone could possibly not know
that.
Lodden Thinks is a neat distillation of so much 💸 of what I’ve been trying to
articulate about the complexity of poker—and the complexity of the life decisions that
it 💸 models.
As Ivey departs—with that hand, he’s lost hisR$20,000 buy-in—Phil Hellmuth,
another elite player at the table, chimes in, reminding him 💸 that he owes him from their
Lodden Thinks bout earlier. One dime. Not slang—actually 10 cents.
Ivey rummages in his
pocket 💸 and throws a dime over the table. This round of Lodden Thinks is at an end.
Brunson knew the answer, 💸 but Ivey knew his man.
Sometimes, though, knowing your man may
not be enough if you’re not careful to observe the 💸 specifics of the interaction—and too
much personal knowledge can actually get in the way of winning. Erik Seidel—my guide
through 💸 the world of poker and one of the most respected and successful players in the
game—recalls one of his own 💸 most painful Lodden moments, against the Lodden master
himself, Antonio Esfandiari. It was 2014, and Seidel had come to South 💸 Africa for
aR$100,000 tournament. He hadn’t particularly cared to play in it, but Dan Harrington,
another famed stalwart of the 💸 poker world, had been trying to complete his quest of
traveling to 50 countries, and they had already traveled to 💸 Australia for the Aussie
Millions, so the timing seemed opportune. And so they made their way to Johannesburg.
The tournament 💸 was a bust—only nine players, all pros—but the trip was proving to be
eventful. A safari planned, a stay in 💸 Cape Town, some tours of local sites, a little
time spent away from it all.
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That morning,
Seidel, Harrington, Jungleman (the 💸 nickname of poker pro Dan Cates; he happened to have
captured theR$100K a few days earlier), and Esfandiari found themselves 💸 on a bus on
their way to a lion park. It’s not surprising that they were soon playing Lodden
Thinks; 💸 at the time, it seemed Esfandiari would take any opportunity to engage in the
game he’d helped create.
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The Lodden on 💸 this particular round was Dan
Harrington, and Seidel and Esfandiari were doing the betting. The question: How much
money would 💸 it take for Harrington to forgo wearing socks ever again? Soon, the guesses
were flying, with Seidel quickly arriving at 💸 the half-million mark. Seidel was
confident: He and Harrington were old friends, after all; he knew his man. The stakes
💸 were high.
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“I’m pretty sure it was overR$5,000 for the question,” Seidel
tells me. “And it wouldn’t surprise me if it 💸 was 11 or 12 grand.”
Esfandiari quickly
agreed to the under, and they looked expectantly at their target. The winner: Antonio
💸 Esfandiari. Harrington had put his number at aroundR$160,000.
“That’s crazy!” Seidel
remembers telling him. “To never wear socks again?”
Even now he 💸 shakes his head. “It
was so tilting. I mean, he goes to the gym, he exercises. No socks, ever?
Really?”
Seidel 💸 had done what he was supposed to do: He’d used his knowledge of
Harrington, their yearslong friendship, to decide that 💸 something so uncomfortable would
command a hefty price tag.
Harrington certainly didn’t need the cash.
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But
knowing your man in the abstract 💸 isn’t enough. “I wasn’t watching him closely enough to
see his reaction,” Seidel recalls. “Antonio was.”
The abstract doesn’t matter, no
💸 matter how honed your portrait may be. What matters is the moment. His current state.
His current frame of mind.
As 💸 it turns out, Seidel knew Harrington better than
Harrington knew himself. After giving it some thought, Harrington admitted that his
💸 stated number was likely far too low. But Seidel had already lost. “I have to admit I
was really tempted 💸 to just pay him theR$160,000 and make him suffer through never
wearing socks again,” he says.
Seidel laughs. “Antonio has probably 💸 made millions on
Lodden Thinks.”
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For weeks after I first encounter the game,
I keep playing through the layers of Lodden 💸 Thinks in my mind. It’s a neat distillation
of so much of what I’ve been trying to articulate about the 💸 complexity of poker—and the
complexity of the life decisions that it models. It’s a constant circle. There’s the
math, the 💸 calculations, the strategy derived from hundreds of thousands of Monte Carlo
simulations for the game-theoretical solutions. But there’s so much 💸 more. As John von
Neumann, the father of game theory, knew, the human always gets in the way of the
💸 mathematical model. That’s why he couldn’t even build the perfect model: He wanted
humanity, and humanity could always surprise you. 💸 You need to know the base strategy.
You need to adjust based on the specific individuals. And then you need 💸 to adjust
further based on how those specific individuals are feeling in that exact moment, in
that exact situation. And 💸 what if they don’t fully analyze everything themselves and,
like Harrington, confidently state the wrong guess about their own preferences,
💸 forgetting for a moment what such a guess would actually mean? You have to account for
that, too. Otherwise you’ll 💸 lose the bout of Lodden, the hand of poker, the tactical
negotiation. Someone can always be confidently wrong, even about 💸 their own mind.
