Annie Duke

Annie Duke was studying cognitive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania on a National Science Foundation fellowship when illness interrupted her academic path. She then began playing poker professionally. That detour became a practical laboratory: every hand produced rapid feedback, yet a single result could not reveal whether the underlying decision was good or merely lucky. The separation between process and outcome later became central to her work.^1,3

Beginning in 2002, she started speaking to organizations about strategy and decision-making. She published Thinking in Bets in 2018, followed by How to Decide and Quit, and co-founded the Alliance for Decision Education to advance explicit decision-skills education for young people. Retired from poker since 2012, she completed a PhD in cognitive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in 2023, reconnecting her field experience with her original academic training.^1,2