The problem
You're about to make a decision under pressure. A bet at the poker table. A trade. A pricing call on a contract. A response in a difficult conversation. The system 1 (fast, intuitive) brain has already produced an answer. The system 2 (slow, deliberative) brain hasn't shown up yet. Most decisions made under pressure are made by system 1 alone — which means they're made on pattern-match, not on math.
The 5-Question Pre-Bet Audit forces system 2 online for 30 seconds before commitment. It's the decision-quality equivalent of a pilot's pre-flight checklist: not because pilots are bad, but because the cost of a missed item is asymmetric. Wired to Win Chapter 14 frames it as the highest-yield decision tool in the catalog. The page below extracts the framework so it works for any high-stakes choice, not just poker.
The mechanism
Three things make the 5 questions outperform improvisation.
System 2 needs an external prompt. Under pressure, the deliberative brain has to be summoned deliberately. It does not show up on its own. A written list of five questions — printed, memorized, tattooed on a wallet card — is the prompt that pulls system 2 online. The questions are not optional even when the answer feels obvious.
Each question targets a known cognitive failure mode. Q1 (what's my range vs. theirs) targets the failure to think probabilistically. Q2 (what's the EV) targets the failure to compute expected value. Q3 (am I tilted) targets the failure to notice your own emotional state. Q4 (what's my BATNA / fold equity) targets the failure to consider alternatives. Q5 (what's the worst case I can live with) targets the failure to size the bet to actual stakes. Each question is a checkpoint against a specific bias.
Process discipline beats intuition over time. Even great players make decisions that look identical to a losing player's in any single hand. The difference is process discipline — running the questions every hand, every time, regardless of how obvious the answer feels. Over thousands of decisions, the disciplined process compounds. Over single decisions, it looks like overhead. The compounding is the point.
The protocol
Five steps, one per question. Adapted from poker to any high-stakes decision. The shapes hold; only the inputs change.
Q1: What's the range — mine and the other side's?
In poker: what hands could my opponent realistically have, and what hands could I have given the action so far? In any decision: what are the realistic possibilities — for what I'm trying to achieve and for what the other side is doing? "They have a strong hand" is a guess. "They could have any of these 12 hand combinations, and 8 of them beat mine" is a range.
Q2: What's the expected value (EV)?
What does this decision pay off, weighted by the probability it pays off? In poker: pot size × probability I win, minus call size × probability I lose. In business: upside × probability of upside, minus cost × probability of failure. EV thinking forces you to multiply, not just add. "There's a chance this works" doesn't pencil. "There's a 30% chance this returns 4x and a 70% chance it returns 0" pencils.
Q3: Am I tilted?
Tilt is any emotional state that's distorting my decision-making. In poker, tilt has seven types (covered on the Tilt Taxonomy page). In life, tilt looks like: I'm angry, I'm scared, I'm desperate to recover a loss, I'm proving something to someone, I just won and feel invincible. If I am tilted, my pre-bet answers in Q1 and Q2 are unreliable. The honest answer to Q3 may be: pause until tilted state passes. That's a complete decision.
Q4: What's my BATNA?
What is my best alternative to making this commitment right now? In poker: I can fold and play the next hand. In business: I can wait, negotiate further, walk away to another offer, or do nothing. Most pressured decisions feel binary ("do this or lose everything") and are actually multi-option. Naming the BATNA explicitly — even for 10 seconds — is what shifts the decision from "do it" to "is this better than my alternative."
Q5: What's the worst case I can live with?
If this decision goes badly, what's the loss? Can I survive it financially, professionally, relationally? Sizing the bet to your actual stakes is the difference between healthy risk-taking and ruin. "This will work out" is not a sizing rule. "If this returns 0, I can absorb it" is. The Tendler stop-loss principle applies here: pre-commit the worst case before pressure arrives.
The printable: a wallet card
Print this. Keep it visible during high-stakes decisions. The 30 seconds it takes to run is the highest-yield time in the entire decision.