Notes about Poker and Decision Making

Selected notes from Maria Konnikova's published articles and interviews about her learnings about life and decision making
  1. The most important thing is that we have to make the best decision we can even though we don't know anything and we're never going to know everything.
  2. Be comfortable with uncertainty. Be comfortable with not knowing everything. Be comfortable that you can't control everything.
  3. While playing poker, you have two cards and you can control whether
    • you play them or not
    • you're going to be passive or you're going to be aggressive
    • whether you'll raise or you'll call
  4. There are 5 cards that are going to come out when the dealer deals them and you cannot control what they are.
    • You can only make guesses based on how people are reacting about whether they like those cards or not
    • You can guess whether its likely that you're going to get a good card or a bad card (based on your intuition or/and experience)
  5. Learning to be okay with saying that "I made the best decision at the time that didn't work out, but that's okay because I couldn't control the outcome. All I could control was was what I thought beforehand"
  6. You need to separate the thought process from the outcome, so that you can make the best decision you can
  7. Tilt: a term used in poker which means you start letting emotions get in the way of your decisions.
    1. Many players start making terrible decisions and playing poorly when they go on tilt because they lose a big hand.
    2. Rather than saying "I played it well; let's move on", they say "stupid deck!" and start blaming everyone and everything.
    3. Consequently, they cannot think clearly and lose the rest of their chips

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