Book Review: “Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts” 4/5
“The world is a pretty random place. The influence of luck makes it impossible to predict exactly how things will turn out, and all the hidden information makes it even worse.” - Annie Duke
The book is written by Annie Duke, a world class poker player. She practises what she preaches which immediately makes this book a credible source of advice. The decision making process in poker is a great simulation of life, where we make decisions but we don’t have all the information. In addition, we rely heavily on luck and randomness, exactly as in life.
We learn about the decision making process, cognition biases, and how to deal with regret in case of bad outcomes. It puts emphasis on separating decisions from their outcomes. It’s a collection of tools that help us operate when we don’t have all the data. Waging our decisions like making bets helps us understand that we might be wrong.
It presents tools like backcasting and premortems as interesting thought experiments. Backcasting imagines a positive future; a premortem imagines a negative future. The book also goes into the 10-10-10 rule, where whilst evaluating possible options we ask ourselves what are the consequences of each of my options: in ten minutes? In ten months? In ten years?
Luck and randomness play a significant role in our lives and every book that increases our awareness of it is a good read. I value all the insights and lessons, and it was enjoyable to get through. However, for me it wasn’t a perfect book, it was a refresher, because it covers topics I have read before. Only a few of the concepts were new to me.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4508484685
Similar Books:
When it comes to decision making the following book complements this one well:
Here is another book based on poker, which is more of an autobiography and looks at the game from a different point of view:
