Everything I Know About Business I Learned From Poker

http://blogs.zappos.com/blogs/ceo-and-coo-blog/2008/12/27/everything-i-know-about-business-i-learned-from-poker

by lionheart • 18 years ago

34 27 18 years ago

blogs.zappos.com

jmtame• 18 years ago

Actually, I'm amazed at how certain games correlate with startups and business.

Has anyone ever played Natural Selection? You basically work with a team of 12 marines vs. 12 aliens. One marine is commander, and he must make sure resource towers are built and defended from aliens. On top of that, marines must defend their base and actively be out preventing the aliens from building new hives (as well as destroying existing hives).

The purpose of the game is to hold the most resource towers. But you also want to be with a really good team of marines, which means you don't have to micromanage "Player X, go build the resource tower in Location Y. NOW!" They naturally go to the locations and ask for you to drop a resource tower.

Aliens get special abilities based on how many kills they make. You find that highly specialized aliens are very destructive (so hire that dude who is REALLY good at Objective-C for doing iPhone development).

> Building and keeping resource towers == making sure you have enough funding at all times, cash flow is the name of the game

> Getting with the best team of aliens/marines == hire the best people that you can, it means zero micro-managing

> Your team could be terrible, your commander could be the best, but you'll still lose the game == even if Steve Jobs were in charge of a company with 100% bad employees, the company would fail

> Specializing when you can == you're a very difficult fire to put out, and when it comes to competing, you're unstoppable

> Keeping team morale high gets player cooperation == don't be a prick, your team doesn't like working for that type of person and won't follow orders when the time comes

> Allowing the enemy time to build up is dangerous, always be on the offense == always be pushing faster and sooner than your competitors

> One marine camper with a phase gate can take down your entire alien team == corporate espionage is a bitch, Steve Jobs isn't paranoid after all

> If you can't get your team to all jump through a phase gate and rush an alien hive at once, you're done for == team cooperation with focus is really good

I sometimes feel like I'm playing a game of natural selection while I'm working in a startup or on a project. It's weird, I know. Ok everyone downvote me now.

rms• 18 years ago

I remember that game! Wish they would port to the Source engine a little faster...

zasz• 18 years ago

In poker, it's great to have a lot of shitty competitors. What game has this guy been playing?

dablya• 18 years ago

I actually stopped reading at that point :)

hangten2• 18 years ago

The only way I can reason with it is, that he's talking about large tournaments where you will likely never see the long term (10K buyins for example). Even for good/great players there is a lot of volatility there and you're probably not going to see 100k+ of these in your lifetime (Which would arguably not even be close to the long term.) With that said, I'd much rather play any WSOP with 6000 and me of the biggest fish then 4000 fish and 2000 pros.

dcurtis• 18 years ago

Tony Hsieh is awesome. I can't wait to read this book. Zappos is a company to be looked up to.

If all companies were this fanatical about customer service, the world would be a much better place.

agentbleu• 18 years ago

best advice i have seen for a while

mattmaroon8• 18 years ago

"The guy who never loses a hand is not the guy who makes the most money in the long run."

If you never lost a hand then you would be the guy who makes the most money in the long run. Everyone else would lose.

hangten2• 18 years ago

Except almost all games is played with blinds or antes. If you're too tight even though you win all the hands you play you'd still be a loser overall.

mattmaroon8• 18 years ago

You "play" every time you're dealt a hand. Even if you fold before the flop, in Texas Hold'em for instance, you lost.

And to win every hand you play past the first street, if you want to ignore the semantics, would still make even the tightest player I know a humongous winner. The reason playing overly tight players lose (which is generally not by much) is that even the average hand that they play is an underdog to win. Make 100% of even the biggest nit's flop hands hold up and yeah, he's the best poker player in the world.

mattmaroon8• 18 years ago

It occurred to me also that many ante games have a forced bring in, and some only that. You'd be profitable in both of those games if you won only the hands you were forced to play. If there were 8 people, for instance, even with an ante and a bring in, you'd bring it in 1/8 times and win 7 antes plus whatever else was put in the pot.

If everyone else folded every time you were the forced bring-in, you'd be break even. You'd have some streaks dependent on your opening cards (sometimes you'd bring in more than your share, sometimes less) but long-run it'd be even. Otherwise you'd win.

known• 18 years ago

I think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_trading is same as gambling.

eru• 18 years ago

So is any insurance when you look at it from a certain angle.

MaskedFinancier• 18 years ago

Well that's done it!

I think that poker is definitely a good training for many things, but personally feel it is most relevant for investing. The possible universe of outcomes becomes massive when you get into the area of running a business compared with the set of poker outcomes.

I wrote an "ebook" two years ago about how to learn investing through the medium of online Texas Holdem poker. I didn't release it at the time because of all the controversy about online gambling and US laws. But now I think it's time has come. I might have saved some people some money if I had have released it back then before the boom started busting. The method is called Texas Holdem Investing. And seeing that this guy will release a book of a similar type I might as well join the party.

Wish me luck!

Everything I Know About Business I Learned From Poker

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