Life is poker, not chess Four years ago I walked away from a guaranteed promotion at McKinsey and a $300K PE offer to work in gaming for a third of the salary. Many thought I was insane. They were playing chess: calculating the optimal move with perfect information. https://t.co/g5VHm1a12b

The betting elements of decisions—choice, probability, risk, etc.—are more obvious in some situations than others. Investments are clearly bets. A decision about a stock (buy, don’t buy, sell, hold, not to mention esoteric investment options) involves a choice about the best use of financial resources. Incomplete information and factors outside of

... See more

If making the same decision again would predictably result in the same outcome, or if changing the decision would predictably result in a different outcome, then the outcome following that decision was due to skill. The quality of our decision-making was the main influence over how things turned out. If, however, an outcome occurs because of things

... See more

By treating decisions as bets, poker players explicitly recognize that they are deciding on alternative futures, each with benefits and risks. They also recognize there are no simple answers. Some things are unknown or unknowable. The promise of this book is that if we follow the example of poker players by making explicit that our decisions are

... See more