Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts

“Annie Duke…is an ex-professional poker player who got very interested in cognitive behavioural decision science. She tried to become an expert on how people make decisions and what her poker years could potentially teach her about it, and then she wrote this book, Thinking in Bets. In it, she compares poker to chess. She explains that chess is an information-complete game. The two players who look at the board know exactly what’s happening, they have all the information at their disposal, and they know the complete state of the world. Of course, they don’t know what the other player is thinking, but no information from the game is hidden. In poker, it’s the opposite. You know the cards you have in your hands, but most of the information is hidden. You don’t know what the other players around the table have in their hands and you don’t know the cards that are about to be revealed. It’s very much an information-incomplete game.” Read more...

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