Thinking in Bets

I can tell this book will stick with me for a long time. Most notably, I'll remember the idea that we should reject a world of “definitely will” and “definitely won't.” Probability is all around us and we should acknowledge that we're rarely 100% certain. For that matter, we're also rarely 0%, we often have a guess. Simply making a bet with yourself can be a good way to think about potential outcomes.

There are great lessons on ego and bias. And mistakes and learning and scenario planning. There are plenty of poker stories, but less than I'd have guessed. The writing leaned more academic than I thought it would. Some passages were dense and I found myself skimming.

But there were valuable insights the whole way through. I read a hard copy and kept a document open on my phone to take notes. That's not a habit for me with hard copy books, but there was enough interesting in here that I was compelled to commit it to memory.

This was a good summary of how to avoid ROT, self-serving bias, and the fundamental attribution error, not only when playing poker but in other situations as well. I'd like to think I already do that fairly well, but I recognize that the self-serving bias is probably causing me to think I'm better at it than I actually am.

I read this after liking her last book Quit. Gotta say, the writting improved a lot, because I much preferred the way Quit was written.

This is a good book, but it could be narrowed down to a couple of pages. The main point is simply that life is like poker, not like chess. This makes it unpredictable, and we should be thinking in probabilities certain events will happen and base our decisions on those numbers. They can still go the other way, but this way we'll be confident in ourselves that we looked at all the possibilities and decideded on the best outcome for us based on the information we had at the time.

She provides some practical strategies for separating outcome quality from decision quality, identifying and overcoming cognitive biases, and embracing a mindset of learning from our experiences. Ultimately, “Thinking in Bets” teaches readers how to become more rational and effective decision-makers in both personal and professional contexts.