[2025–2026] Week 20: The Mental Game of Poker by Jared Tendler
Reading assignment and questions for week 20 of the Value Investing Seminar
(Note: If you are just joining the seminar, please start by reading the Introduction)
Forecasting is hard. Yet no matter whether you invest in statistically cheap stocks or Fisher-style high growth companies, you still need to make a forecast for the company’s future that disagrees with the expectations implied in the price of the stock.
Superforecasting gives you a sense of what it takes to be good. Some of it is within your control to improve. In other areas the super forecasters are just born stronger, just as a professional athlete might have better innate athletic ability than an average person.
We have come to the end of the 2025-2026 Value Investing Seminar with this week’s assignment below. I will aim to do this again, starting in the Fall, for the 2026-2027 cohort.
If you want to continue to improve as an investor in a rigorous and systematic way that can still easily fit into your busy schedule, the case-study method is an excellent next step. Check out the fully free case study from earlier this week to see if it’s something that can help you to improve as an investor.
Week 20 final assignment is to read The Mental Game of Poker by Jared Tendler and answer the following questions:
Question 1: What is the author's idea of "The A Game vs. the C Game"?
Question 2: How can you tell if you have deviated from your A-game?
Question 3: What has caused you to deviate from your A-game in the past?
Question 4: What can you do to minimize the frequency and magnitude of deviation from your A-game in the future?
Now it’s your turn:
Submit your answers in the comments below this article with all your answers in a single comment. I will engage with some of the answers each week and highlight some of the ones I find most insightful in next week’s seminar assignment article.
Engage with the answers of some of your fellow seminar members in the comments below. Remember – the goal is to learn together. Be kind, be respectful and try to add to our learning as a community.
Feel free to ask any questions about the reading in your comment.
Wishing your successful investing,
Gary
About the author
Gary Mishuris, CFA is the Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Silver Ring Value Partners, an investment firm that seeks to apply its intrinsic value approach to safely compound capital over the long-term. He also teaches the Value Investing Seminar at the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business.
Dear Gary,
Many thanks for sharing your time and process through this course. I have learned a huge amount from it. It has ranged far further than I would have expected when I began, but made a coherent intellectual whole.
In the next few weeks I need to go back and look at some of the more dense works like the investment checklist, which I need to reread and properly integrate into my process, so I feel I'm not quite finished yet. I also want to put a few more investors in the dimensions chart.
I wish you the very best of luck in your growing Silver Ring, and may you never get tarnished.
James
Dear Professor Gary,
I want to sincerely thank you for being so generous with your time and for curating the 2025-2026 Value Investing Seminar. This has truly been one of the best things that happened to me over the past year. Your guidance and the structure of the seminar have been invaluable.
I plan to go back to the books I haven’t been able to finish, revisit my notes, and continue firming up the dimensions most suited to me. The seminar has given me both direction and motivation to deepen my learning.
Thanks again for everything. I’m already looking forward to the Fall version for the 2026-2027 cohort .
Warm regards,
Navin