Liv Boeree’s Three Pieces of Advice For You

Liv Boeree appeared on the stage of TED Talks twice already this year. In her second lecture, she gave the audience three important lessons on decision making.

The 34-year-old British poker pro seems to have an affinity for “educating the masses”. She was a guest with the Oxford Union Debate Society discussing the science of poker, she had a science web show hosted on her YouTube channel that she seems to have given up on, and she appeared multiple times on two of the biggest platforms for educational content online, Big Think and TED Talks.

Here, you can watch the second time she took the TED stage.

This time, she broke her speech down to three parts, each devoted to one lesson in decision making that she learnt from professional poker and can be applied to everyday life.

The first lesson was about avoiding overestimating your skill when things are going your way - she cited her own example after winning the EPT Main Event back in 2010 for €1.25 million. Her profit graph quickly took a hit as a result of her cocky attitude to the game.

Second, try to give the likelihood of an event in numbers. “He is ‘probably’ bluffing” is not good enough.

And lastly - something that can be related back to the first one - don’t have too much confidence in your gut. Just because have some intuitions, it doesn’t mean they’re right. Analyze your options.

Boeree ended her informative speech with this piece of wisdom: 

“The future is unknown, but you can damn well try to estimate it.”