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Summary of Thinking in Bets 

4.4 . 3011 reviews

Short summary

In “Thinking in Bets”, poker champion turned business consultant Annie Duke teaches you how you can make better life decisions by getting comfortable with uncertainty. 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 by thinking in bets: Shifting your thinking from a need for certainty to a goal of accurately assessing what you know and what you don’t. When you think in bets you will be less vulnerable to reactive emotions, knee-jerk biases, and destructive habits in your decision-making. “When you’re connected to the power of intention, everywhere you go, and everyone you meet, is affected by you and the energy you radiate. As you become the power of intention, you’ll see your dreams being fulfilled almost magically, and you’ll see yourself creating huge ripples in the energy fields of others by your presence and nothing more.” ~Wayne W. Dyer

Table of content

  • Summary of Thinking in Bets
  • About the author
  • What is Thinking in Bets about?
  • Who should read Thinking in Bets
  • Topics in Thinking in Bets
first key point

Life is like a game of poker; to be a good decision – maker, you have to embrace uncertainty

Listen the first key point
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“It is often the case that our best choice doesn’t even have a particularly high likelihood of succeeding.” ~ Annie Duke
The vast majority of us like to downplay the role of luck in our lives. We want to believe that our outcomes stem directly from the quality of our choices and decisions. The truth, however, is that our outcomes in life result from both good decisions and some elements of luck.
Life is more like a poker game than a game of chess.
The decisions we make in life regarding our businesses, savings, health and lifestyle choices, styles of parenting, and relationships all involve uncertainty, risk, and occasional deception. All of which are prominent elements in poker.
The quality of our lives is the sum of decision quality plus luck.
Chess is mostly a computational game where all the facts are known and luck plays a very little role. If you lose at a game of chess, it’s often because there were better moves that you didn’t make or didn’t see.

In contrast, poker is a game of incomplete information. You are making decisions without knowing all the facts and luck plays a big role in your outcomes. You could make the best possible decision at every point and still lose the hand, because you don’t know what new cards will be dealt and revealed.

Essentially, it is much easier to get lucky and win, or get unlucky and lose in a game of poker. Same goes for our lives: You could make the smartest, most careful decision and still have it blow up in your face.
Nothing is certain in life; becoming a good decision-maker starts with embracing uncertainty.
Making better decisions starts with embracing uncertainty and accepting the role of luck in any outcome. In other words, we must learn to say “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure“ — we must make peace with not knowing.

This essentially involves recognizing that although we might know something about the chances of some event occurring, we are still not sure how things will turn out in any given instance. In the rest of this summary, we will take a closer look at the elements of a bet and how they closely relate to decision – making.
second key point

Everything we do in life is a bet; there is always something at stake

“Deciding not to invest or not to sell a stock is a bet.” ~ Annie Duke
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third key point

Just like in poker, we bet against ourselves with every decision we make

fourth key point

We base most of our beliefs solely on what we hear others talk about rather than on facts

fifth key point

Express your belief in levels of confidence instead of outright right or wrong

sixth key point

How our lives turn out is largely due to the influence of skill and luck

seventh key point

To learn from your experiences, you must first let go of your self-serving bias

eighth key point

Making good and effective decisions involves getting in touch with your future-self

ninth key point

You can also use the 10-10-10 method to overcome temporal discounting

tenth key point

Conclusion

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What is Thinking in Bets about?

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