#60 - Annie Duke, decision strategist: Poker as a model system for life—how to improve decision making, use frameworks for learning, and apply ‘backcasting’ to boost your odds for future success
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In this episode, former World Series of Poker champion and author, Annie Duke, explains how poker is a pertinent model system for decision making in the real world, a system which blends imperfect information with some unknown percentage of both luck and skill. We go through the decision-making matrix, and how we spend most of our energy focusing on just one of the four quadrants at the expense of the learning opportunities that come from the other 75% of situations. Annie also shares how this evaluation of only the bad outcomes (and our tendency to judge others more harshly than ourselves in the face of a non-status quo decision), leads individuals, leaders, and teams to avoid bad outcomes at all costs. This avoidance is at the cost of the types of decisions which lead to progress and innovation both personally, and societally, across many realms from poker to sports to business to medicine. We also dive deep into a framework for learning, and the levels of thought required to rise to the top of a given domain. Finally, we talk about something that resonated deeply with me in terms of how I think about extending healthspan, which is the concept of “backcasting”.

We discuss:

• Annie’s background, favorite sports teams, and Peter’s affinity for Belichick [7:30];
• Chess vs. poker: Which is a better metaphor for decision making in life (and medicine)? [12:30];
• Thinking probabilistically: Why we aren’t wired that way, and how you can improve it for better decision making [18:15];
• Variable reinforcement: The psychological draw of poker that keeps people playing [25:15];
• The role of luck and skill in poker (and other sports), and the difference between looking at the short run vs. long run [38:00];
• A brief explanation of Texas hold ‘em [47:00];
• The added complexity of reading the behavior of others players in poker [53:15];
• Why Annie likes to “quit fast”, and why poker is still popular despite the power of loss aversion [58:30];
• Limit vs. no limit poker, and how the game has changed with growing popularity [1:01:00];
• The advent of analytics to poker, and why Annie would get crushed against today’s professionals [1:10:30];
• The decision matrix, and the ‘resulting’ heuristic: The simplifier we use to judge the quality of decisions —The Pete Carroll Superbowl play call example [1:16:30];
• The personal and societal consequences of avoiding bad outcomes [1:27:00];
• Poker as a model system for life [1:37:15];
• How many leaders are making (and encouraging) status-quo decisions, and how Bill Belichick’s decision making changed after winning two Super Bowls [1:41:00];
• What did we learn about decision making from the Y2K nothingburger? And how about the D-Day invasion? [1:46:30];
• The first step to becoming a good decision maker [1:48:45];
• The difference between elite poker players and the ones who make much slower progress [1:55:30];
• Framework for learning a skill, the four levels of thought, and why we hate digging into our victories to see what happened [1:58:15];
• The capacity for self-deception, and when it is MOST important to apply four-level thinking [2:06:15];
• Soft landings: The challenge of high-level thinking where there is subtle feedback and wider skill gaps [2:16:45];
• The benefits of ‘backcasting’ (and doing pre-mortems) [2:19:30];
• Parting advice from Annie for those feeling overwhelmed (and two book recommendations) [2:28:30]; and
• More.

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