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Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts

Annie Duke · 2 HN comments
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Amazon Summary
Wall Street Journal bestseller! Poker champion turned business consultant Annie Duke teaches you how to get comfortable with uncertainty and make better decisions as a result. In Super Bowl XLIX, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll made one of the most controversial calls in football history: With 26 seconds remaining, and trailing by four at the Patriots' one-yard line, he called for a pass instead of a hand off to his star running back. The pass was intercepted and the Seahawks lost. Critics called it the dumbest play in history. But was the call really that bad? Or did Carroll actually make a great move that was ruined by bad luck? Even the best decision doesn't yield the best outcome every time. There's always an element of luck that you can't control, and there is always information that is hidden from view. So the key to long-term success (and avoiding worrying yourself to death) is to think in bets: How sure am I? What are the possible ways things could turn out? What decision has the highest odds of success? Did I land in the unlucky 10% on the strategy that works 90% of the time? Or is my success attributable to dumb luck rather than great decision making? Annie Duke, a former World Series of Poker champion turned business consultant, draws on examples from business, sports, politics, and (of course) poker to share tools anyone can use to embrace uncertainty and make better decisions. For most people, it's difficult to say "I'm not sure" in a world that values and, even, rewards the appearance of certainty. But professional poker players are comfortable with the fact that great decisions don't always lead to great outcomes and bad decisions don't always lead to bad outcomes. By shifting your thinking from a need for certainty to a goal of accurately assessing what you know and what you don't, you'll be less vulnerable to reactive emotions, knee-jerk biases, and destructive habits in your decision making. You'll become more confident, calm, compassionate and successful in the long run.
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A similar line of thinking is Annie Duke's Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts. A good discussion on the book can be found here: https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/how-to-make-better-d...

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0735216355/ref=tmm_h...

HNLurker2
Reminds me of Little Bets by Peter Sims
agumonkey
reminds me of the dice man
personlurking
The idea of "Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts" reminds me of this TED Talk:

"If you ever struggle to make decisions, here's a talk for you. Cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths shows how we can apply the logic of computers to untangle tricky human problems, sharing three practical strategies for making better decisions -- on everything from finding a home to choosing which restaurant to go to tonight."

https://www.ted.com/talks/tom_griffiths_3_ways_to_make_bette...

A book I recently read on this topic

https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Bets-Making-Smarter-Decision...

Really insightful and highly recommended

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