Date: 2025-09-05 A collection of things Charlie Munger has said on bridge (a man I admire; a game I admire): “Similarly, I’ve told you to think forward and backward. Well, great declarers in bridge think, “How can I take the necessary winners?” But they think it through backward, too: “What could possibly go wrong that could cause me to have too many losers?” Both methods of thinking are useful. So in the game of life, get the needed models into your head and think it through forward and backward. What works in bridge will work in life.” “Suppose you want to be good at declarer play in contract bridge. Well, you know the contract—you know what you have to achieve. And you can count up the sure winners you have by laying down your high cards and your invincible trumps. But if you’re a trick or two short, how are you going to get the other needed tricks? Well, there are only six or so different standard methods. You’ve got long suit establishment. You’ve got finesses. You’ve got throw-in plays. You’ve got crossruffs. You’ve got squeezes. And you’ve got various ways of misleading the defense into making errors. So it’s a very limited number of models. **But if you only know one or two of those models, then you’re going to be a horse’s patoot in declarer play. Further­more, these things interact. Therefore, you have to know how the models interact.** Otherwise, you can’t play the hand right." **My personal favourite:** “That contract bridge is so out of vogue in your generation is a tragedy. China is way smarter than we are about bridge. They’re teaching bridge in grade school now. And God knows the Chinese do well enough when introduced to capitalist civilization. If we compete with a bunch of people who really know how to play bridge when our people don’t, it’ll be just one more disadvantage we don’t need.” “Your brain doesn’t naturally know how to think the way Zeckhauser knows how to play bridge. For example, people do not react symmetrically to loss and gain. Well maybe a great bridge player like Zeckhauser does, but that’s a trained response.” “...using a unidisciplinary attack on [broadscale] problems is like playing a bridge hand by counting trumps while ignoring all else. This is bonkers, sort of like the Mad Hatter’s tea party.” “no bridge player who needs two extra tricks plays a hand without going down his checklist and figuring out how to do it. But these psychology professors think they’re so smart that they don’t need a checklist. But they aren’t that smart. Almost nobody is. Or maybe nobody is... without this system of getting the main models and using them together in a multi-modular way, you’ll screw up time after time after time, too.” (in response to the question: “Do you ever gamble Las Vegas–­style?) "I won’t bet $100 against house odds between now and the grave. I don’t do that. Why should I? I will gamble recreationally with my pals. And I’ll occasionally play a much better bridge player, like Bob Hamman, who might be the best card player in the world. But I know I’m paying for the fun of playing with him. That’s recreational. As for gambling with simple mechanical house odds against me, why in the world would I ever want to do that?”