Annie Duke

Decision Strategist & Consultant; Bestselling Author, "Quit" & "Thinking in Bets"; Former Professional Poker Player

Travels From Travels From:
Philadelphia, PA, USA
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Annie Duke Biography

Annie Duke is an author, speaker, and consultant in the decision-making space. Annie loves to dive deep into decision making under uncertainty. Her latest obsession is on the topic of quitting. In particular, she is on a mission to rehabilitate the term and get people to be proud of walking away from things.

Annie’s latest book, "Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away," was released in 2022 from Portfolio, a Penguin Random House imprint. Her previous book, "Thinking in Bets," is a national bestseller. As a former professional poker player, she has won more than $4 million in tournament poker. During her career, Annie won a World Series of Poker bracelet and is the only woman to have won the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions and the NBC National Poker Heads-Up Championship. She retired from the game in 2012. Prior to becoming a professional poker player, Annie was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship to study Cognitive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2023 Annie completed her PhD in Cognitive Psychology at UPenn.

Annie is the co-founder of The Alliance for Decision Education, a non-profit whose mission is to improve lives by empowering students through decision skills education. She is a member of the National Board of After-School All-Stars and the Board of Directors of the Franklin Institute.

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Speaker profile last updated by AAE Talent Team on 10/04/2024.

Annie Duke Speaking Topics

  • TAKING CARE OF YOUR FUTURE SELF: Temporal discounting and the sacrifices we make to feel good now

    One of the biggest challenges poker players face is how to maintain a long-term view that maximizes their results over their career when they are making moment-to-moment decisions in highly emotionally charged situations. One of the biggest obstacles to success as a player is not talent as most might suspect. It is the ability to balance the future against the present moment, to avoid making decisions that might feel good in the moment but will be costly to your future self. This, of course, is the same problem we all face in making decisions about just about anything: retirement savings, dieting, portfolio management, and procrastination, to name just a few. Annie Duke shows how temporal discounting, discounting the future in favor of feeling good in the present, hurts our overall productivity both in a corporate environment and as individuals. She discusses how this irrational weighting of the present interacts with other cognitive biases to prevent learning, to create emotionally charged decision making, to cost us wealth, and to prevent us from realizing our long-term goals. She offers concrete solutions in the form of both cultural and individual supports for making the kinds of decisions in the moment that more rationally take into account our future selves.

  • TILT: Managing your emotions

    Has anyone ever told you, “Why don’t you sleep on it?” or “Take ten deep breaths before you decide?” or even “Calm down.” If so, you (like everyone else) have been on tilt. Tilt is a state of distress that causes us to make emotionally-charged and irrational decisions. In poker, many talented players go broke because they play poker on tilt. Making decisions in this unproductive emotional state is not confined to the poker table. Tilt is common in corporate environments, in finance and sales, and, of course, in our personal lives as anyone with a teenager can attest. The best poker players in the world devote tremendous time and energy on how to reduce the effect of their emotions on their decision-making process. Annie Duke shares the secrets and strategies the top players employ to avoid emotionally• charged decision making.

  • HOW WINNING AND LOSING DRIVES IRRATIONAL CHOICES: Lessons from the poker table

    In poker and throughout our lives, we should try to maximize the time we spend in favorable situations and minimize our time in unfavorable ones. Poker players are too quick to quit when they are winning. They look for any excuse to put the session in the (non-existent) win column. The same players will refuse to quit a losing game. The same thing happens outside poker: sales professionals not giving up on a dead lead; investors unwilling to sell their losing investments. Even something as pedestrian as picking the slowest line at a grocery store and being unwilling to change lines stems from the same bias. Annie Duke examines how the interaction of many cognitive biases (including loss aversion and sunk-cost bias) drives this behavior. These tendencies cause us to miss good opportunities and continue playing when the odds are against us. She provides insight into avoiding this costly decision-making error with strategies that prevent us initially making these poor decisions and how to take a longer term view so we are not as caught up in the emotion of the moment. The strategies apply in the workplace, to parenting and to other personal decisions.

  • EVALUATION OF FEEDBACK: The Rough Road of Learning through Experience

    In Annie Duke’s twenty years playing poker, she noticed that most players quickly plateau in their learning despite an abundance of evidence about how they can improve. Players win or lose hands many times an hour and get feedback about the quality of their play almost immediately. Outcomes are closely tied in time to decisions. Poker provides a closed, tight feedback loop so it should provide an ideal environment for years of learning and improvement. Players also have the opportunity to watch others win or lose hands even more often than they play hands themselves. Yet most poker players repeat the same mistakes. Players have trouble incorporating both positive and negative feedback. When things go well, they give maximum credit to their skill. When things don’t go well, they blame luck. Wins, therefore, teach them to do exactly what they are already doing. They ignore losses, attributing them to factors outside their control. Of course, this occurs in every facet of our lives. Annie Duke examines this process with examples from poker, familiar personal and business decisions, and behavioral science research. She shares comprehensive strategies to mitigate these biases, embracing the feedback that our outcomes provide to become better long-term learners. These strategies can be adopted by individuals or at an organizational level.

  • BIG DATA: The good, the bad, and the ugly

    As we become a more data-driven society, we face new questions of how best to use all this new data to improve human decision making. Annie Duke explores the ways in which big data has the potential to overcome robust irrationalities in how we process information and solve for the problem of uncertainty. She also points out the pitfalls and dangers of big data and provides advice about how data is aggregated and collected and where the “human element” still needs to be in control of the analysis in order to interpret and model the data.

  • HEARING IS BELIEVING: Belief formation and motivated reasoning

    Once we form a belief, we have a robust tendency to reason around that belief, applying information that confirms our beliefs and ignoring evidence that disconfirms our beliefs. We will also actively work to discredit evidence that disagrees with us. This is a biased process, with different standards for evaluating evidence that agrees with our beliefs and evidence that disagrees with us. The process forms a vicious circle where we reason to support beliefs we already hold instead of updating and changing our beliefs as we gather new information. Annie Duke explains this robust cognitive error and how it impairs our decision making in business and throughout our personal lives. She traces the origins of this bias in memory and thinking and offers strategies to becoming better and more flexible thinkers.

Annie Duke Videos

  • What poker pro Annie Duke can teach you about quitting on time
    Ever been told to quit while you’re ahead, or that winners never quit? Poker player-turned decision strategist Annie Duke explains why this advice...
  • Annie Duke: "Thinking in Bets" | Talks at Google
    Annie Duke has leveraged her expertise in the science of smart decision making to excel at pursuits as varied as championship poker to public...
  • Risk Schmisk | Annie Duke | TEDxGeorgetown
    Poker is a game of decision making under conditions of uncertainty over time. Annie Duke, a World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner, has learned...

Annie Duke Books

  • Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts
    Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts
  • Decide to Play Great Poker: A Strategy Guide to No-limit Texas Hold Em
    Decide to Play Great Poker: A Strategy Guide to No-limit Texas Hold Em
  • Annie Duke: How I Raised, Folded, Bluffed, Flirted, Cursed, and Won Millions at the World Series of Poker
    Annie Duke: How I Raised, Folded, Bluffed, Flirted, Cursed, and Won Millions at the World Series of Poker

Speaker Lists Featuring Annie Duke

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Annie Duke is a keynote speaker and industry expert who speaks on a wide range of topics such as TAKING CARE OF YOUR FUTURE SELF: Temporal discounting and the sacrifices we make to feel good now, TILT: Managing your emotions, HOW WINNING AND LOSING DRIVES IRRATIONAL CHOICES: Lessons from the poker table, EVALUATION OF FEEDBACK: The Rough Road of Learning through Experience, BIG DATA: The good, the bad, and the ugly and HEARING IS BELIEVING: Belief formation and motivated reasoning. The estimated speaking fee range to book Annie Duke for your event is $50,000 - $100,000. Annie Duke generally travels from Philadelphia, PA, USA and can be booked for (private) corporate events, personal appearances, keynote speeches, or other performances. Similar motivational celebrity speakers are Daymond John, Erica Dhawan, Carey Lohrenz, Amy Jo Martin and Lisa Bodell. Contact All American Speakers for ratings, reviews, videos and information on scheduling Annie Duke for an upcoming live or virtual event.

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