Annie Duke is an author, and consultant specialising in decision-making, and a Special Partner focused on Decision Science at First Round Capital Partners, a seed-stage venture capital firm. She is the author of Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices, and the national bestseller Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts. In Thinking in Bets, Duke distills the lessons she shares with corporate and leadership audiences, drawing on her academic training in cognitive psychology and her experience making high-stakes decisions as a professional poker player.
A former professional poker player, Duke earned more than $4 million in tournament winnings over her career. She won a World Series of Poker bracelet and is the only woman to have won both the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions and the NBC National Poker Heads-Up Championship. She retired from professional poker in 2012.
Before turning professional, Duke was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship to study cognitive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2023, she completed her PhD in Cognitive Psychology at UPenn. She regularly shares insights on decision-making and critical thinking through her Substack newsletter – Thinking in Bets, where she explores practical frameworks for better choices, and has authored several best-selling poker instruction and theory books, including Decide to Play Great Poker and The Middle Zone: Mastering the Most Difficult Hands in Hold’em Poker (both co-authored with John Vorhaus).
Duke is the co-founder of the Alliance for Decision Education, a nonprofit dedicated to improving lives by empowering students with decision-making skills. She also serves on the National Board of After-School All-Stars and the Board of Directors of the Franklin Institute.
