Poker and Life

Lessons from Poker for Life

Borrowed from the book: The Middle Zone: Mastering the Most Difficult Hands in Hold'em Poker by Annie Duke.

• Don’t dwell on your setbacks
• Take full responsibility for what’s happening
• Don’t get sunk by sunk costs
• Add curiosity and subtract certainty

Control

Less certainty. More inquiry.

That’s the thing about life:

While you can do what you do but in the end, some things remain stubbornly outside your control.

Poker is all about comfort with uncertainty, after all....It’s uncertainty about the “right” thing to do. The only certain thing is your thinking.

Things in our control are:

• opinion
• pursuit
• desire
• aversion
• whatever are our own actions

Things not in our control are:

• body
• property
• reputation
• command
• whatever are not our own actions

Perception

Do we see ourselves as victims or victors?

• A victim: The cards went against me. Things are being done to me, things are happening around me, and I am neither to blame nor in control.
• A victor: I made the correct decision. Sure, the outcome didn’t go my way, but I thought correctly under pressure. And that’s the skill I can control.

The best players don’t need pocket aces to win. Everything is in how you perceive it.

Learn from Disaster

When it comes to learning: Triumph is the real foe; it’s Disaster that’s your teacher.

• It’s Disaster that brings objectivity.
• It’s Disaster that’s the antidote to that greatest of delusions, overconfidence.

Always

Pay attention!

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