This is probably the dumbest article I've read in a long time. Rant with lots of poker terminology on the way:
Where to start:
> Both [poker and entrepreneurship] rely on acting strategically under conditions of extreme uncertainty
This is true in a sense, but only in the shallowest sense. In entrepreneurship there's real uncertainty, having no idea what you have to do, and knowing that there's no real way to determine if you're even on the right path. Often, you're just in the dark. With poker the uncertainty only applies on the scale of a single hand: "Does he have it?". Even then you know almost exactly what your equity will be against the range (possible holdings) of the other player. So when few chips are at risk you optimize for equity, and if almost all your chips are at risk you better have the nuts (best possible holding). The uncertainty that remains is of the "dice rolling kind", not of the "what is this guy up to" kind. Since the "dice rolling kind" of uncertainty is beyond your control there's not much to learn from it.
> Why are some terrible entrepreneurs so successful?
Is this even true? I can't think of any terrible and successful entrepreneurs.
> In the World Series of Poker, no professional has won the Main Event in seven years
Okay, so what are the characteristics of the World Series of Poker? Starts out with a reasonably deep stack (skill matters a lot), takes days (endurance is crucial), ends with short stacked play (lottery). You can get through the first stages with luck, and since the amateurs outnumber the professionals there are no surprises here: a lot of amateurs make it far into the tournament. You have to have endurance, which favours the young. And in the end very little skill is involved, because the mathematically correct play is to put all your chips in (to maximize fold equity) and often you're only a 2 to 1 favourite when you get called. So only if the final table consists mostly of professionals can we expect a professional to win. I argue that the middle phase (endurance) is the most important, and that therefore one of the 21-25 year old internet players will win most of the tournaments in the next few years. They have millions of hands of experience, which means they're far more likely to intuitively do the correct thing when tired and worn out because of days of play. They're almost as good as the TV pros, but younger. They also have as advantage that they can recognize the TV pros, but the TV pros don't immediately know which of the young players are the sharks and fish.
> Yet the Main Event has been won year in and year out by a complete unknown player.
Last year it was won by an unknown but incredibly skilled internet player. He probably played more hands in the last 5 years than almost all TV professionals.
> a given pro will play thousands of poker hands
Thousands? Haha.
> Similarly, given enough amateurs in the field, the law of large numbers means that at least some of them will get lucky enough times to outperform even the best pros.
Not neccessarily. In a deep stacked cash game an amateur will _never_ win over a pro. Not ever. Real amateurs have a chance only because of the lottery aspects of the world series. This is by design: it makes for better TV.
> and, if you find advice that seems to work, be ready to go all-in.
What does that even mean in the context of entrepreneurship? How do you go all in with a company? By signing a 10 year lease on office space (just stupid)? Is there ever a good reason to go all in with your company if you don't face certain doom?
> Take any advice (including mine), and think it through for yourself.
Why? Most advice is terrible, or simply not applicable to your situation. And it's almost impossible to distinguish between good advice and bad advice (by definition). And since two people always argue the opposite, how can you possibly agree with them both? I think a lot of interesting things can be said about how to best take advice, but the solution probably isn't to listen to everybody and then go all in.
To conclude:
Poker is zero sum. Entrepreneurship is not. Poker is about exploiting mistakes, entrepreneurship is about creating value for your customers. Poker has known optimal strategies, Entrepreneurship does not. You could just as easily compare entrepreneurship to chess or monopoly, and the comparison would be just as shallow and meaningless.
Yeah, that was pretty hilarious. I was trying to reach a milestone at the end of September and I put in over 5500 hands on 9/30 alone in about 11 hours of play.
The only correction I have to your post is: They're almost as good as the TV pros, but younger. Most of the cash game Internet pros (and many of the tournament Internet pros) are much better than the TV pros (other than a select few like Ivey and Antonious, who also play online anyways) because the Internet pros have played so many hands and tirelessly gone over areas where they are losing money to improve. When you're playing 400-500 hands/hr, a small improvement in your game can mean a difference of over $25/hr for mid-high stakes players. Many of these players aren't "TV pros" simply because they make a better hourly rate playing online where they can put in 8x the hands in the same time span, or because they don't (yet?) have the bankroll to risk losing $100K+ on a single hand.
I'm sure you (gizmo) know all this, but I thought some of these points would be useful information for the HN reader who is less knowledgeable about the poker world.
Here's one more tangent point you might find interesting about deep stacks (http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/issue56/Savage-Deep-Stack...). Here a well-known tournament director points out that deep stacked tournaments typically hinder the pro. Of course this doesn't apply to cash games (which you were obviously referring to), but because of tournaments' increasing blind levels and the need to end after a period of time, deeper stacks at the beginning actually mean a more-pronounced lottery period later on.
You're absolutely right, I should have qualified that statement. I meant "almost as good as the TV pros in WSOP-style tournaments". In cash games they effortlessly crush most TV pros, but most have (afaik) only very little live and marathon-tournament experience.
Thanks for the link about deep stacked tournaments. Interesting read.
I don't really post very much on 2+2; I just lurk a bit. I'm a member of FlopTurnRiver and the training site GrinderSchool. Thanks to an affiliate signup with RakeBackNation (and paying upwards of $1300/mo in rake), my GS membership is basically free at this point.
Where to start:
> Both [poker and entrepreneurship] rely on acting strategically under conditions of extreme uncertainty
This is true in a sense, but only in the shallowest sense. In entrepreneurship there's real uncertainty, having no idea what you have to do, and knowing that there's no real way to determine if you're even on the right path. Often, you're just in the dark. With poker the uncertainty only applies on the scale of a single hand: "Does he have it?". Even then you know almost exactly what your equity will be against the range (possible holdings) of the other player. So when few chips are at risk you optimize for equity, and if almost all your chips are at risk you better have the nuts (best possible holding). The uncertainty that remains is of the "dice rolling kind", not of the "what is this guy up to" kind. Since the "dice rolling kind" of uncertainty is beyond your control there's not much to learn from it.
> Why are some terrible entrepreneurs so successful?
Is this even true? I can't think of any terrible and successful entrepreneurs.
> In the World Series of Poker, no professional has won the Main Event in seven years
Okay, so what are the characteristics of the World Series of Poker? Starts out with a reasonably deep stack (skill matters a lot), takes days (endurance is crucial), ends with short stacked play (lottery). You can get through the first stages with luck, and since the amateurs outnumber the professionals there are no surprises here: a lot of amateurs make it far into the tournament. You have to have endurance, which favours the young. And in the end very little skill is involved, because the mathematically correct play is to put all your chips in (to maximize fold equity) and often you're only a 2 to 1 favourite when you get called. So only if the final table consists mostly of professionals can we expect a professional to win. I argue that the middle phase (endurance) is the most important, and that therefore one of the 21-25 year old internet players will win most of the tournaments in the next few years. They have millions of hands of experience, which means they're far more likely to intuitively do the correct thing when tired and worn out because of days of play. They're almost as good as the TV pros, but younger. They also have as advantage that they can recognize the TV pros, but the TV pros don't immediately know which of the young players are the sharks and fish.
> Yet the Main Event has been won year in and year out by a complete unknown player.
Last year it was won by an unknown but incredibly skilled internet player. He probably played more hands in the last 5 years than almost all TV professionals.
> a given pro will play thousands of poker hands
Thousands? Haha.
> Similarly, given enough amateurs in the field, the law of large numbers means that at least some of them will get lucky enough times to outperform even the best pros.
Not neccessarily. In a deep stacked cash game an amateur will _never_ win over a pro. Not ever. Real amateurs have a chance only because of the lottery aspects of the world series. This is by design: it makes for better TV.
> and, if you find advice that seems to work, be ready to go all-in.
What does that even mean in the context of entrepreneurship? How do you go all in with a company? By signing a 10 year lease on office space (just stupid)? Is there ever a good reason to go all in with your company if you don't face certain doom?
> Take any advice (including mine), and think it through for yourself.
Why? Most advice is terrible, or simply not applicable to your situation. And it's almost impossible to distinguish between good advice and bad advice (by definition). And since two people always argue the opposite, how can you possibly agree with them both? I think a lot of interesting things can be said about how to best take advice, but the solution probably isn't to listen to everybody and then go all in.
To conclude:
Poker is zero sum. Entrepreneurship is not. Poker is about exploiting mistakes, entrepreneurship is about creating value for your customers. Poker has known optimal strategies, Entrepreneurship does not. You could just as easily compare entrepreneurship to chess or monopoly, and the comparison would be just as shallow and meaningless.