This book was full, of excellent advice and strategies for rational thinking, and good decision making. The title might be slightly misleading, since its more about thinking in probabilities than gambling. But, the authors connection to poker makes her insights no less applicable to everyday situations.

I particularly like the term resulting. It relates to incorrectly emphasizing the value of the result, over the validity of the decision.

Business-y self-help book where the author uses her experience as top poker player to formulate a couple of tools to make better decisions. It's not uninteresting and quite fun to read. You don't have to know much about poker to understand most of the insights. (You do have to know something about American Football. One example about a particular play is used a couple of times and its meaning was completely lost on me, as a European, most times). Mostly it is just not the book I was expecting. Probably should have read the back cover with more attention but I was expecting to read about how to make better decisions by, well, thinking in terms of bets. Like a mathematical/statistical tool to express values and probabilities of different outcomes etc and using some sort of a 'what kind of bet would I be willing to make here'-strategy to figure out what is the best option. But I guess not.

Ισα με το 95% αυτού του βιβλίου είτε αναμασάει τα ίδια πράγματα, είτε προσθέτει άχρηστες πληροφορίες για να γεμίσει σελίδες, είτε είτε είναι εκτός θέματος.

This book was painful because of how verbose it was and lack of actual content was about decision making. Abandoned it at about 40% through the book.

An interesting premise that I inherently believe in: life is a series of bets, and by drawing from the lessons of poker, you can improve the probability of favorable outcomes. And having a stake in bets is the best way to test your conviction.

Duke writes in an engaging and relatable way, blending memorable real-life examples (Pete Carroll’s decision to throw on 1st and goal, a bettor who moved to Iowa for a month, a CEO who fired an employee and blamed himself when it didn’t work out) that she refers back to with well-explained social science theory.

Her general premise is that every decision leads to multiple possible outcomes and that you must assess the probabilities of these outcomes when making a decision. She provides multiple frameworks for doing this (inviting being wrong, premortems, backcasting, seeking contradictory information, using “and instead of but” in discussions, the CUDOS framework).

Duke furnishes a variety of relatable metaphors, including Odysseus’ sirens (making a Ulysses Contract to reduce tilt), and considering the stock market for emotions (trend over time rather than the ticker). The use of Ulysses contracts coupled with playing the tape forward through a premortem is especially helpful in bankroll management and sticking to rules.

While it was well-written, accessible, and mostly engaging, I was eager to finish as it began to feel a bit repetitive and tedious. Part of this may stem from the fact that I am already convinced of her argument and familiar with a lot of the concepts so I didn’t need a lot of explanation; if one is less familiar, her time spent outlining her premise and defining concepts would be better spent and more valuable. Probably 3.5 stars that I’ll round down to 3. There are a couple of takeaways, but a lot of it was just putting names and science to what I already do.

Finally finished this book after a year or more. Unfortunately it didn't engage me and I didn't get that much out of this, my biggest takeaway was that life is more like poker than chess. Would have loved to chat with someone else who read it to see what they got out of it.

It's pretty fluffy with about one good common-sense point per chapter. I went through 4 chapters or so before giving up.