Former pro poker player and decision-making expert Annie Duke discusses tactical decision-making frameworks, Daniel Kahneman's lessons, the power of pre-mortems, money vs. happiness, mental time travel, and improving decision quality. She also shares insights on how First Round Capital enhances their decision-making process.

This episode is packed with wisdom from previous guests on the art of making better decisions.  We discuss the three types of decision-makers, how to control your emotions when making decisions, why it’s crucial to look at every decision differently, the processes for coming to the right decision, and how to learn from your mistakes when you get it wrong. The guests on this episode are author Ventakesh Rao (Episode 7), psychologist, author and professional poker player Maria Konnikova (Episode 89), Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison (Episode 32), cognitive-behavioral decision science author and professional poker player Annie Duke (Episode 37), and Shopify co-founder Tobi Lutke (Episode 41).   Transcript: https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast-transcripts/tkp-insights-decision-making/ -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday, our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Annie Duke, a former World Series of Poker champion and author, shares her expertise on decision-making. She discusses how poker serves as a model for navigating uncertainty and incomplete information. Annie emphasizes the importance of broadening our decision-making perspectives beyond negative outcomes, which fosters risk aversion. She introduces backcasting as a strategy to visualize future goals and reverse-engineer actions. The conversation also covers the comparison of decision-making in poker versus chess, offering insights into probabilistic thinking and learning frameworks.

I have wanted to do this interview for a long time. On this episode, I am thrilled to have Annie Duke, former professional poker player and author of the new book, Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts. Annie has a very interesting background that makes her uniquely qualified to speak about high-level decision making. As an author, speaker, world-class poker player, and academic in the fields of psychology and cognitive theory, Annie understands the intersection of luck, skill, and making decisions in uncertain, chaotic environments better than most people on the planet. This is a whirlwind of an episode, and we cover all kinds of fascinating topics, including: The strange circumstances that shifted Annie’s path from finishing a Ph.D. in linguistics to becoming a professional poker player What it was like to be a female poker player in a predominantly male sport (especially before poker had become socially acceptable) What drew Annie into such a high stakes, time-pressured environment and why she felt like poker was the perfect fit for her How her graduate work in psychology informed the way she approached the game of poker — and helped her rack up wins How she finds the signal in a very noisy stream of feedback The big mistakes Annie noticed other players making that were stalling their progress in the game but allowed her to make giant leaps forward The role that mental models played in her learning process (and which models Annie liked to lean on the most in a high stakes game) The power of surrounding yourself with people that can help you expand your circle of competence — and how that made all the difference in Annie’s development as a player Confirmatory and exploratory thought, and how one helps us to be “accurate” and one helps us to be “right.” The secret pact you should be making with the people who are closest to you And so much more. This episode is just under two hours long, but there’s no fat in it. Annie delivers a masterclass in making the smartest decisions we can, even when our hubris insists otherwise. Do some finger stretches before hitting play, because you’re going to be taking some serious notes. Please enjoy the interview! *** Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/   Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/   Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Annie Duke dropped out of a PhD program in cognitive psychology– and went on to win the World Series of Poker. At the Authors@Wharton Series, Adam and Annie discuss the evidence on when to pull the plug, delve into decision-making lessons from psychology and poker, and examine the difference between rethinking an idea and leaving it behind. Annie’s latest book “Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away” is out now. Transcripts for ReThinking are available at go.ted.com/RWAGscripts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Annie Duke discusses decision-making, base rates, improving investing processes, using kill criteria to quit investments, dissociating from ideas, and the importance of a quitting coach in making better decisions.

Annie Duke discusses decision-making in life, highlighting limitations of pro/con lists, importance of expected value calculations, influence of heuristics and biases, and impact of external factors on decisions. She also explores the Alliance for Decision Education's mission and contrasts stage hypnosis with individual hypnosis.

In this episode, former World Series of Poker champion and author, Annie Duke, explains how poker is a pertinent model system for decision making in the real world, a system which blends imperfect information with some unknown percentage of both luck and skill. We go through the decision-making matrix, and how we spend most of our energy focusing on just one of the four quadrants at the expense of the learning opportunities that come from the other 75% of situations. Annie also shares how this evaluation of only the bad outcomes (and our tendency to judge others more harshly than ourselves in the face of a non-status quo decision), leads individuals, leaders, and teams to avoid bad outcomes at all costs. This avoidance is at the cost of the types of decisions which lead to progress and innovation both personally, and societally, across many realms from poker to sports to business to medicine. We also dive deep into a framework for learning, and the levels of thought required to rise to the top of a given domain. Finally, we talk about something that resonated deeply with me in terms of how I think about extending healthspan, which is the concept of “backcasting”. We discuss: Annie’s background, favorite sports teams, and Peter’s affinity for Belichick [7:30]; Chess vs. poker: Which is a better metaphor for decision making in life (and medicine)? [12:30]; Thinking probabilistically: Why we aren’t wired that way, and how you can improve it for better decision making [18:15]; Variable reinforcement: The psychological draw of poker that keeps people playing [25:15]; The role of luck and skill in poker (and other sports), and the difference between looking at the short run vs. long run [38:00]; A brief explanation of Texas hold ‘em [47:00]; The added complexity of reading the behavior of others players in poker [53:15]; Why Annie likes to “quit fast”, and why poker is still popular despite the power of loss aversion [58:30]; Limit vs. no limit poker, and how the game has changed with growing popularity [1:01:00]; The advent of analytics to poker, and why Annie would get crushed against today’s professionals [1:10:30]; The decision matrix, and the ‘resulting’ heuristic: The simplifier we use to judge the quality of decisions —The Pete Carroll Superbowl play call example [1:16:30]; The personal and societal consequences of avoiding bad outcomes [1:27:00]; Poker as a model system for life [1:37:15]; How many leaders are making (and encouraging) status-quo decisions, and how Bill Belichick’s decision making changed after winning two Super Bowls [1:41:00]; What did we learn about decision making from the Y2K nothingburger? And how about the D-Day invasion? [1:46:30]; The first step to becoming a good decision maker [1:48:45]; The difference between elite poker players and the ones who make much slower progress [1:55:30]; Framework for learning a skill, the four levels of thought, and why we hate digging into our victories to see what happened [1:58:15]; The capacity for self-deception, and when it is MOST important to apply four-level thinking [2:06:15]; Soft landings: The challenge of high-level thinking where there is subtle feedback and wider skill gaps [2:16:45]; The benefits of ‘backcasting’ (and doing pre-mortems) [2:19:30]; Parting advice from Annie for those feeling overwhelmed (and two book recommendations) [2:28:30]; and More. Learn more at www.PeterAttiaMD.com Connect with Peter on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram.

Annie Duke, a World Series poker champion, discusses the power of knowing when to quit. She talks about why 'never give up!' is terrible advice, the sunk cost fallacy, and how to distinguish between a worthy pursuit and a lost cause.

Can you get better at decision-making with practice? Many founders, investors, and builders must make many critical decisions, big and small, every day, and improving the quality of your decision-making process can become a big competitive advantage. In this episode from October 2020, expert decision strategist, author and professional poker player, Annie Duke, joins a16z managing partner Jeff Jordan, to discuss some of the frameworks, strategies, and tactics for better decision-making by both individuals and organizations that she outlines in her second book, How to Decide. This was Annie’s second appearance on the podcast – she first joined a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen and host Sonal Chokshi to discuss her first book, Thinking in Bets, where they  went deep into how to frame taking risks and placing bets, especially in the context of innovation. You can read the full transcript of this episode here, and you can read the transcript of Annie's first episode on the a16z Podcast with Marc Andreessen here.