In Thinking in Bets, former poker champion Annie Duke turns the uncertainty of the card table into a framework for better decision-making. Her central idea is simple but radical: judge decisions by the quality of your thinking, not by whether you got lucky. Most of us “result” — assuming a good outcome means a good choice — when what really matters is how we framed the bet in the first place.

Duke treats every decision as a wager under uncertainty. You’ll never know everything, but you can clarify odds, weigh trade-offs, and improve your judgment through feedback. She shows how to run pre-mortems, track your assumptions, and create truth-seeking groups that prize curiosity over ego. Thinking in Bets teaches a mental habit that separates confident thinkers from overconfident ones — a way to stay rational when life deals you incomplete information.