INTRODUCTION Why This Isn’t a PokerBook
為什么這不是一本撲克書
When I was twenty-six, I thought I had my future mapped out. I had grown up on the grounds of a famous New Hampshireprep school, where my father chaired the English department. I had graduated from Columbia University with degrees in English and psychology. I had attended graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, where I won a fellowship from the National Science Foundation, earning a master’s and completing my doctoralcourse work in cognitivepsychology.
當(dāng)我26歲的時候，我以為我已經(jīng)規(guī)劃好了我的未來。我在一個著名的大學(xué)預(yù)科學(xué)校長大的，我父親在那里擔(dān)任英語系主任。我畢業(yè)于哥倫比亞大學(xué)，獲得了英語和心理學(xué)學(xué)位。之后我就讀于賓夕法尼亞大學(xué)的研究生學(xué)院，在那里我獲得了國家科學(xué)基金會的獎學(xué)金，獲得了碩士學(xué)位，并完成了認(rèn)知心理學(xué)博士課程。
But I got sick right before finishing my dissertation. I took a leave of absence, left Penn, got married, and moved to a small town in Montana. Not surprisingly, my NSF fellowship didn’t cover my cross- country experiment in adulting, so I needed money. My brother Howard, a professional poker player who had already made the final table of the World Series of Poker by this time, suggested I check out the legal poker games in Billings. This suggestion wasn’t as randomas it might sound. I grew up in a competitive, games-playing family, and Howard had brought me out to Las Vegas a few times for vacations I couldn’t otherwise afford on my stipend. I had watched him play, and played in a few low-stakes gamesmyself.
但是我在完成論文前生病了。我休了假，離開了賓夕法尼亞大學(xué)，后來結(jié)了婚，并搬到蒙大拿州的一個小鎮(zhèn)。我當(dāng)時需要錢。我的哥哥霍華德（Howard）是一名職業(yè)撲克玩家，當(dāng)時已經(jīng)進(jìn)入了世界撲克系列賽的決賽，他建議我去看看比林斯的合法撲克游戲。這個建議也是有一定原因的。我在一個競爭激烈、玩游戲的家庭中長大，霍華德曾帶我去過幾次拉斯維加斯度假，否則我是付不起費(fèi)用的。我看著他打牌，自己也參加了一些低賭注的比賽。
I fell in love with poker right away. It wasn’t the bright lights of Vegas that lured me in, but the thrill of playing and testing my skillsin the basement of a Billings bar named the Crystal Lounge. I had a lotto learn, but I was excited to learn it. My plan was to earn some money during this break from school, stay on the academic path, and continue playing poker as ahobby.
我立刻愛上了撲克。吸引我加入的不是拉斯維加斯的明亮燈光，而是一家名叫水晶酒廊的比林斯酒吧地下室里玩牌讓我很興奮。我有很多東西要學(xué)，但是我很愿意去學(xué)習(xí)它。我的計劃是在學(xué)校休假期間賺些錢，堅持學(xué)業(yè)，將撲克繼續(xù)作為一種愛好。
My temporary break turned into a twenty-year career as a professional poker player. When I retired from playing in 2012, I had won a World Series of Poker gold bracelet, the WSOP Tournament of Champions, and the NBC National Heads-Up Championship, and earned more than $4 million in poker tournaments. Howard, meanwhile, went on to win two World Series bracelets, a pair oftitles at the Hall of Fame Poker Classic, two World Poker Tour championships, and over $6.4 million in tournament prizemoney.
我的臨時休假變成了20年的職業(yè)撲克玩家生涯。當(dāng)我在2012年退出撲克游戲時，我贏得了世界撲克系列賽金手鐲、世界撲克錦標(biāo)賽和NBC全國撲克錦標(biāo)賽的冠軍，并在撲克錦標(biāo)賽中贏得了400多萬美元。與此同時，霍華德繼續(xù)贏得了兩個世界系列賽的金手鐲，撲克名人堂經(jīng)典賽的兩個冠軍，世界撲克巡回錦標(biāo)賽的兩個冠軍，以及超過640萬美元的錦標(biāo)賽獎金。
To say that I had strayed from the academic path might seem like an understatement. But I realized pretty quickly that I hadn’t really left academics so much as moved to a new kind of lab for studying how people learn and make decisions. A hand of poker takes about two minutes. Over the course of that hand, I could be involved in up to twenty decisions. And each hand ends with a concrete result: I win money or I lose money. The result of each hand provides immediate feedback on how your decisions are faring. But it’s a tricky kind of feedback because winning and losing are only loose signals of decision quality. You can win lucky hands and lose unlucky ones.Consequently, it’s hard to leverage all that feedback forlearning.
說我偏離了學(xué)術(shù)道路似乎是輕描淡寫。但是我很快意識到，我并沒有真正離開學(xué)術(shù)界，而是轉(zhuǎn)移到了一個新的實驗室，在此研究人們?nèi)绾螌W(xué)習(xí)和做出決策的。一局撲克牌游戲大約需要兩分鐘。在這一過程中，可能會涉及到多達(dá)20項決策。每一局牌都以一個具體的結(jié)果結(jié)束:我贏了錢，或者我輸了錢。每一局牌的結(jié)果都會提供即時反饋，說明你的決定如何進(jìn)行的。但是這是一種棘手的反饋，因為輸贏只是決策質(zhì)量的模糊信號。你可以贏得幸運(yùn)之牌，也可以輸?shù)舨恍抑啤Ｒ虼?，很難利用這些反饋來學(xué)習(xí)。
The prospect of some grizzled ranchers in Montanasystematically taking my money at a poker table forced me to find practical ways to either solve this learning puzzle or go broke. I was lucky, early in my career, to meet some exceptional poker players and learn from them how they handled not only luck and uncertainty but also the relationship between learning anddecision-making.
蒙大拿州一些頭發(fā)斑白的牧場主在撲克桌上不知不覺中贏走了我的錢，這迫使我找到解決這個學(xué)習(xí)難題的切實可行的方法，否則就破產(chǎn)了。在我職業(yè)生涯的早期，我很幸運(yùn)地遇到了一些杰出的撲克玩家，并向他們學(xué)習(xí)了他們?nèi)绾翁幚磉\(yùn)氣和不確定性，以及學(xué)習(xí)和決策之間的關(guān)系。
Over time, those world-class poker players taught me tounderstand what a bet really is: a decision about an uncertain future. The implications of treating decisions as bets made it possible forme to find learning opportunities in uncertain environments. Treating decisions as bets, I discovered, helped me avoid common decision traps, learn from results in a more rational way, and keep emotions out of the process as much aspossible.
隨著時間的推移，這些世界級的撲克玩家使我明白了下注含義的理解:一個關(guān)于不確定未來的決定。將決策視為下注使我有可能在不確定的環(huán)境中找到學(xué)習(xí)機(jī)會。我發(fā)現(xiàn)，將決策視為下注有助于我避免常見的決策陷阱，從而以更理性的方式從結(jié)果中學(xué)習(xí)，并盡可能將情緒排除在過程之外。
In 2002, thanks to my friend and super-successful pokerplayer Erik Seidel turning down a speaking engagement, a hedge-fund manager asked me to speak to a group of traders and share some poker tips that might apply to securities trading. Since then, Ihavespoken to professional groups across many industries, looking inward at the approach I learned in poker, continually refining it, andhelping others apply it to decisions in financial markets, strategic planning, human resources, law, andentrepreneurship.
2002年，一位對沖基金經(jīng)理讓我和一群交易員交流，分享一些可能適用于證券交易的撲克技巧。從那以后，我與許多行業(yè)的專業(yè)團(tuán)體進(jìn)行了交談，從內(nèi)部審視我在撲克中學(xué)到的方法，不斷完善它，并幫助其他人將它應(yīng)用于金融市場、戰(zhàn)略規(guī)劃、人力資源、法律和創(chuàng)業(yè)方面的決策。
The good news is that we can find practical work-arounds and strategies to keep us out of the traps that lie between the decisions we’d like to be making and the execution of those decisions. The promise of this book is that thinking in bets will improve decision- making throughout our lives. We can get better at separating outcome quality from decision quality, discover the power of saying, “I’m not sure,” learn strategies to map out the future, become less reactive decision-makers, build and sustain pods of fellow truthseekers to improve our decision process, and recruit our past and future selvesto make fewer emotionaldecisions.
好消息是，我們可以找到切實可行的解決辦法和策略，讓我們遠(yuǎn)離我們想做的決定和執(zhí)行這些決定之間的陷阱。這本書的承諾是，下注思考會改善我們一生中的決策。我們可以更好地區(qū)分結(jié)果質(zhì)量和決策質(zhì)量，發(fā)現(xiàn)說“我不確定”的力量，學(xué)會策略以規(guī)劃未來，成為不那么被動的決策者，建立和維持一個尋求真理的同伴群體來改進(jìn)我們的決策過程，并招募我們過去和未來的自我來做出更少的情緒決策。
I didn’t become an always-rational, emotion-freedecision-maker from thinking in bets. I still made (and make) plenty ofmistakes.
我在下注思考中并不總是一個理性的、無情緒的決策者。我仍然犯了很多錯誤。
Mistakes, emotions, losing—those things are all inevitable becausewe are human. The approach of thinking in bets moved me toward objectivity, accuracy, and open-mindedness. That movement compounds over time to create significant changes in ourlives.
錯誤、情緒、失敗——這些都是不可避免的，因為我們是人。下注思考方式使我傾向于客觀、準(zhǔn)確和開明的思維方式。隨著時間的推移，這種舉動會增強(qiáng)，從而使我們的生活發(fā)生重大變化。
So this is not a book about poker strategy or gambling. It is, however, about things poker taught me about learning and decision- making. The practical solutions I learned in those smoky pokerrooms turned out to be pretty good strategies for anyone trying to be a better decision-maker.
所以這不是一本關(guān)于撲克策略或賭博的書，而是關(guān)于撲克教會我學(xué)習(xí)和決策事情的書。我在那些煙霧繚繞的撲克室里學(xué)到的實用解決方案對任何試圖成為更好決策者的人來說都是非常好的策略。
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Thinking in bets starts with recognizing that there are exactly two things that determine how our lives turn out: the quality of our decisions and luck. Learning to recognize the difference betweenthe two is what thinking in bets is allabout.
下注思考首先要認(rèn)識到，決定我們生活結(jié)果的有兩件事:我們決策的質(zhì)量和運(yùn)氣。學(xué)習(xí)認(rèn)識兩者之間的區(qū)別是下注思考的意義所在。
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