Michael Konik’s Telling Lies and Getting Paid is two books in one: a collection of syndicated gambling columns and a longer narrative about Konik’s own attempt at the 2001 WSOP Main Event. It isn’t a strategy manual. It’s a love letter to gambling written by someone who can actually write.
If you’re looking for hand charts and GTO ranges, this isn’t it. This is a book for people who love the culture, the characters, and the stories that surround poker. Think of it as the literary side of the game.
The Review
Konik first caught attention as the poker analyst on FSN’s Poker Superstars, where his commentary showed genuine strategic understanding wrapped in entertaining, dramatic delivery. The book delivers the same combination — someone who knows poker writing about it with real literary skill.
Konik is one of the few poker authors who is actually a quality writer beyond just knowing the game. His style reads like a confident magazine journalist — dry humor about literature, art, and film mixed in casually without ever feeling pretentious.
What’s Inside
Part 1: The Gambling Columns
The first half is a collection of Konik’s syndicated gambling columns. The topics range widely: the life of a backgammon champion, the birth of online betting, strategy in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, tales of “line movers,” and a nun who accurately picks football games.
One standout column covers his apprehensive feelings about placing sports bets online — remember, this was 2001, when trusting a website with your money felt genuinely risky. It’s a fascinating time capsule of early online gambling.
Part 2: The 2001 WSOP Main Event
The real meat of the book is Konik’s account of playing the 2001 WSOP Main Event. Unlike James McManus (who wrote Positively Fifth Street about the same era), Konik actually knows poker. He’d love to throw away his writing career and play professionally — and this was one of several attempts at the Big One.
The WSOP narrative mixes poker action with colorful descriptions of the people, the atmosphere, and the emotional rollercoaster of tournament poker. You’ll recognize names of pros he encounters, adding another layer for poker fans.
The writing style
Konik has an artistic background that sets him apart. He casually references literature, art, and film in a way that enriches the gambling stories without derailing them. The result reads like high-quality magazine journalism — confident, entertaining, and surprisingly literary for a poker book.
The only downside: the gambling columns section is light on poker specifically, and the WSOP story takes place just before the poker boom exploded. You can’t help wondering what Konik would have written about the 2003 Moneymaker era. The timing was a near-miss.
About Michael Konik
Background
Born in Wisconsin, Konik was raised to be a “Renaissance Man.” He studied art history, drama, and law at NYU. During that time he started writing and discovered it was his true calling. He went on to write for the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and numerous other publications.
Other works
Konik’s first book was The Man With the $100,000 Breasts (1999) — another collection of gambling stories. He’s also written on topics beyond gambling and appeared on television as an expert poker commentator on multiple broadcasts and tournaments.
Telling Lies and Getting Paid is a fast, engaging read you’ll finish in a couple of sittings. Konik’s writing is a cut above almost every other poker author — genuinely enjoyable prose, not just serviceable strategy text. If you want to understand why people love gambling — the culture, the characters, the adrenaline — this book captures it better than almost anything else on the shelf.