Sublime

Theory of Games is his foundational text, and here’s what I learned within its pages: the entire theory was inspired by a single game—poker. “Real life consists of bluffing, of little tactics of deception, of asking yourself what is the other man going to think I mean to do,” von Neumann wrote. “And that is what games are about in my theory.”

The trick to this type of market competition (and the key to Dan’s game) is either never to play in the first place or, if we play, to learn quickly when things are not going our way and cut our losses.

Thinking in bets starts with recognizing that there are exactly two things that determine how our lives turn out: the quality of our decisions and luck. Learning to recognize the difference between the two is what thinking in bets is all about.

How do you play heads up? It’s a different beast from a full-ring game. It requires different qualities. Patience is no longer the virtue it was. You can’t afford it. You have to be ready to play quickly, play well, play confidently. There’s no time to sit anything out.

They write, “The observed differences in ROIs are highly statistically significant and far larger in magnitude than those observed in financial markets where fees charged by the money managers viewed as being most talented can run as high as three percent of assets under management and thirty percent of annual returns.” Success in poker, in other w

Choose your habits well.

Open-minded people genuinely believe they could be wrong; the questions that they ask are genuine.