Thinking in Bets

Nowadays, I am using my commute/exercise time to listen to audiobooks. Thanks to the NLB Singapore. I just finish this book called Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts. The book is mostly about decision-making. The author’s background is in poker, so she mostly talks about things from her experience (poker). But, I can relate to what she means. There are quite a lot of things that she talks about in her book . The following list is things I can relate to and what I feel/learn about them.

  • In everyday life, you are betting

Every decision you made, you are betting.

  • Probabilistic thinking

When you need to decide in uncertainty aka the future. You should write down the probability of possible scenarios and add a percentage of that scenario. And made decisions from it and prepare for the other less likely scenario (risk management) as well. Read this article to understand more about this topic.

  • Truth-seeking

We always talk about how unlucky we are when we are lost. Most of the time we are not clear of luck. Luck is when we can not control it. Things that we can control are not luck. Most of the time, we are lying and blame our luck. We need to be honest and check the truth.

Even if you got unlucky, instead of complaining about how unlucky you are. You should discuss about this with your peers and learn from it.

  • Learning from your past mistake

Imagine…

You have 100$, you play poker with your friends. Think about the following scenarios…
1) You lost everything.
2) You won 100$ at first, and you lost your winning
3) You lost 90$ and left 10$. But come back and you reach back to your initial 100$
4) You won 100$ Game continues and you lost your winning 100$

If you are like me, in the above scenarios, each one has different emotions. You will make different decisions when you play next time. To improve, you have to review not only your past mistake but also your emotions. You can use like 10, 10, 10 rule.


The book is pretty good. I would recommend reading it especially if you are trading or investing. Can be useful for other cases especially if you have to make decisions.

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