Thinking in Bets

Written by: Annie Duke

Read by: October, 2022

Contents

Chapter 1: Life is poker, not chess

Chapter 2: Wanna bet?

Chapter 3: Bet to learn: Fielding the unfolding future

Chapter 4: The Buddy System

Chapter 5: Dissent to Win

Chapter 6: Adventures in Mental Time Travel

Summary

Books on probability are unfortunately dull most of the time. I love the topic, and its part of the reason I got into data analytics as I continue my path to becoming a data scientist, but my goodness it gets hard to slog through equation-heavy books on the topic.

Thankfully, Thinking in Bets popped up in my list one day and I decided to give it a go. Its written by a poker player who understands on a fundamental level how probability impacts our decisions, and what it actually means to play using probability. Similar to “thinking fast and slow”, this book explores the gymnastical leaps our brains must calculate in split moments to come up with rational thoughts - much like what we experience when handling board room meetings.

While this book is light on any probability theories, it does reinforce some teachings by other books I read, and gave me enough of a pause to consider split moment decisions and how to properly weigh those “in the moment gut-reactions” we have when talking about statistics and likely outcomes.