Poker players must instinctively know about something money that we don’t – right? Well, this is not necessarily the case, but then again – it kind of is. The truth is that poker players are a motley bunch. Some are lawyers, others are C-level executives, other still are school dropouts or culinary fanatics.
It’s just that poker is a game that attracts diverse personalities. Yet, there is a point of convergence where poker players indeed tend to show a lot of similarity, and this is how they treat money. This is not to say that every poker player is good at managing their money in the real world or that they are gong to make smart investments all the time.
Still, they know the value of money – it’s the means to an end – usually the means to secure more money along the way. This does not answer the question if poker players are good at business affairs, though? Let’s take a closer look and see what the evidence suggests.
Good at One Thing Doesn’t Mean Good at Everything
This is surprisingly true. There have been many experiments to try and determine whether high-flying individuals who succeed in certain areas of life, and well-respected areas at that, such as neurosurgery, dentistry, law, or business would be immediately good at, say, another.
In fact, what empirical evidence there seems to be would suggest that your garbage man could as well be just as smart as your average neuroscience. The chief difference is one is good with a scalpel and operating on your spine and brain, the other knows how to dispose of garbage.
Although a bit of a tenuous argument to make, the truth is that no two individuals are automatically equally good at something. They could be put through rigorous training and commitment, but they won’t necessarily be better or advance. Still, if you can pick from the best sites involving online poker for money here, then you can learn how to improve incrementally. Whether you will be any good at business will depend on a number of factors.
In fact, the domain of human knowledge is so vast and so rapidly evolving, that thinking that you can be the “best” at anything really is not plausible. This argument ties directly into why poker players may be good at playing the game, but not necessarily as good or any smarter than the average person when it comes to business affairs.
Alright, But What about the Value of Money?
This one is true. Just like you can ick from the best sites involving online poker for money here, so can professional poker players choose from choose how to spend their money. In fact, most of them do, and although they may have a huge bankroll in some cases, you can still frequent them playing much lower tables than they are “able to afford.”
Why? Because money has a very significant value, and the bank that a poker player works towards creating for themselves is not as easily amassed. Therefore, poker players, by instinct, have a very serious appreciation of money. They are rarely extravagant in their spendings unless they have come into fortune by some sheer blind luck which does happen in poker even on the highest level but is not the likely formula of long-term success.
In other words, poker players do understand how money works and are interested in making it work for them. But just because you understand when your opponent is bluffing you or know the odds of anyone at the table having a better hand than you are pretty low, this doesn’t mean that you can successfully pinpoint trading, for example.
Yes, poker players sometimes make good traders, but this is not the norm. C-level executives do tend to play poker, but this has mostly to do with their own self-esteem and let’s face it – ego, rather profound understanding of the world of business affairs and poker at the same time – Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, the braggadocios they are, will hardly have much luck against Phil Ivey or Daniel Negreanu, right?
Is Business Success a Mindset, Then
Business success is indeed a mindset – the mindset of trying again, and again and that failure is not a permanent setting. In this regard, businesspeople and poker players are often correct and very much alike. Just because you have been dealt a bad hand doesn’t mean you won’t be walking away a winner with a World Series of Poker bracelet to your name several days later.
A bad year for a company doesn’t mean it would not send people to Mars or completely revolutionize our way of life here on Earth. However, the business and poker mindsets are the mindsets of success – the mindsets of growth. You will take your losses in stride and try to improve so that you can perform better next time.
You will be frugal about how you spend your money, but not stint over important expenses that you need to make in order to move forward. Looking at this for what it is, it’s safe to say that poker players and businesspeople have a very similar way of regarding life, but their actual success as one or the other is not clearly-determined.
The hard truth seems to be that being good at poker or business won’t automatically make you good at the other – you won’t really be able to carry over all of your knowledge or stature to the other field just like that, and you will have to learn.
It seems, though, that success in either poker or business boils down to the same things – rules that you need to follow in order to succeed. There seems to be little to suggest that personal traits will predetermine your success – that it may nudge it along.
So, are poker players better at business? It will really depend on what “hands” they have been dealt and how well they can use them.
