Morrie the Toupee Salesman

I’ve been watching some poker on tv lately – it’s probably fueled by my addiction to ujogo.com. What I find really interesting is how bad the “professional” poker players are. They constantly make rookie mistakes, pay to see the flop with really bad hands, chase straights that they have little hope of getting. Add to that the bizarre phenomenom of the poker “commentator,” often faded celebrities, who comment fawningly over the great play. “Going all in with 6-4 unsuited. Wow, that’s not the kind of play your everyday Texas Hold’em player should ever do, but because it’s Joe Buffalo Bob, it’s just a stupendous play”. Because they were lucky enough to win some obscure or not so obscure competition, suddenly they’re on TV, and some of them are celebrities of a sort. And then we get to watch as they’re held up as exemplars of society, geniuses beyond compare, when in fact, if the cards had fallen another way, it would be Joe Coyote from the next state over, who would be spouting truisms to us all, instead of working behind the counter at 7-11.

Poker is probably 80% luck, 20% skill. No matter how good a player you really are, luck is going to determine whether you end up on the WSOP or listening to someone yell at you for losing your paycheck. After reading Jason Calacanis’s latest dissertation on entrepreneurship, the poker analogy just popped into my head. Now I’ve never actually met Jason, he was going to buy digg early on, when it was just me and Kevin (Update:… and Ron, of course), but it’s clear he’s kind of a pompous ass who thinks he’s a genius. And it kind of struck me that he’s a lot like the poker players on TV, largely he got there by luck, some amount of skill for sure, but really when compared to the average joe out there, there’s not much difference.

Except in what’s kind of an annoying paradox, this random ascension to a throne of either Poker or Entrepreneurship makes the person a better poker player or a better entrepreneur, basically for two reasons. First of all, confidence is a useful attribute to have in both fields – and a succesful poker player or entrepreneur is likely to have their ego constantly stroked. And secondly, probably the most important attribute in both fields is reputation – because of the intimidation it allows you to bring to bear on competitors, but also for connections – if you win a tournament in Poker, people invite you to other tournaments, private games, etc. The same goes for entrepreneurship – one successful exit and suddenly everyone is your friend. Except of course for those average joes (sometimes more than average) who have to listen to you pompously blovate on how and why you’re better than everyone else. It may be that you’ve managed (best case) to increase the skill percentage to 23 or 24%. It’s still mostly luck.