Annie Duke Books

Decision-making is not a talent reserved for analysts or poker professionals—it is a learnable skill. In my work as a decision strategist, I’ve witnessed how structured thinking allows anyone to move from guessing to reasoning. The first step is acknowledging that every decision unfolds in a landsca...

From How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

If you’ve ever felt crushed by a bad result or smug after a lucky win, you’ve experienced outcome bias firsthand. The antidote lies in redefining success—not by what happens, but by how you decided. In poker, even the most skillful player loses hands due to chance. My goal was never to win every han...

From How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

We live in a culture that idolizes grit. From the stories we tell our children to the slogans that decorate office walls — “never quit,” “keep pushing,” “failure is not an option” — persistence has become sanctified. But this cultural lens hides a dangerous bias. The assumption that staying the cour...

From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away

Every time we say yes to staying, we implicitly say no to something else. Opportunity cost is one of the most overlooked concepts in decision-making — because the forgone alternatives remain invisible. You can see what you’ve invested, but you can’t easily see what you’ve missed by investing elsewhe...

From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away

One of the hardest lessons poker taught me was that winning or losing proves nothing by itself. A bad outcome doesn’t necessarily mean you made a bad decision, just as a good outcome doesn’t prove you were right. We humans are quick to judge decisions by their results—a classic case of outcome bias....

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

Uncertainty is the backdrop of existence. We crave clear stories and linear logic because they make us feel safe, but reality is more like a poker game: every choice is made with incomplete information. Understanding probability means accepting the world’s inherent fuzziness. As a professional playe...

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