Favorite Quotes

The thing is that chess has always been a bit of a hobby for me. Once it starts to feel like work, then it's harder for me. I would still spend a lot of time reading books, playing the things that I still do, but I would do them for fun. And that was the difference between me and the other kids, is that they would go to chess practice, they would maybe even do their homework, but they weren't living and breathing the game that in the way that I was. I think about it all the time. I'm thinking about the game while I'm sitting on this chair (during this podcast). I'm still analyzing a game that I played today. It never goes completely out of my mind.

— Magnus Carlsen

Given a 10 percent chance of a 100 times payoff, you should take that bet every time. But you're still going to be wrong nine times out of ten . . . We all know that if you swing for the fences, you're going to strike out a lot, but you're also going to hit some home runs. The difference between baseball and business, however, is that baseball has a truncated outcome distribution. When you swing, no matter how well you connect with the ball, the most runs you can get is four. In business, every once in a while, when you step up to the plate, you can score 1,000 runs. This long-tailed distribution of returns is why it's important to be bold. Big winners pay for so many experiments.

— Jeff Bezos