I Could Not Fold Because I Already Had Too Much Money in the Pot

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The other thing amateurs do poorly is fold after they've already entered the pot. So your mom plays the hand because she wants to see the next cards to be guaranteed that they have no relationship with ever to her hand. She has no regrets about folding because she understands at that point it's a certainty that she could not have won. But long after the point that it's correct to walk away from things, you're already fallen into the crevasse.

Annie Duke is angry that quitting gets such a bad rap. Instead of our relentless focus on grit and "going for it," the former professional poker player, decision strategist, and author of Quit wants us to recognize the costs associated with sticking to a losing outcome. Listen as she explains to EconTalk host Russ Roberts how society's conflation of grit with character has made quitting unnecessarily hard, and why our desire for certainty harms our decision-making ability. Additional topics include the flawed mental accounting that makes us confuse wins for losses, what we can learn from ants, and the tragic story of how the refusal to quit cost 16 lives one terrible night at the top of Mt. Everest.