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“Planning a thing lies with man. Accomplishing it lies with Heaven.”
Zhuge Liang
A few days ago I wrote about companies that lose money to win a market.
Those companies were playing poker.
Matt Affleck made the right bet at the 2010 World Series of Poker. He held two aces. He pushed all his chips in against Jonathan Duhamel’s two jacks.
With one card left to come, Affleck was a 77% favorite.
The last card was an eight. It gave Duhamel a straight.
Affleck went out in 15th place.
Affleck’s chips gave Duhamel the chip lead. Duhamel went on to win the title.
At the poker table I can make the best decision and lose when the dealer turns over the final card.
Fred Smith took a bet the casino was likely to win to keep FedEx alive. FedEx was down to $5,000 when General Dynamics turned down his pitch for more money. On the way home he played blackjack in Las Vegas and won $27,000.
The odds favored the casino.
Smith won anyway, then went on to raise $11 million from investors.
Annie Duke played poker for a living before she wrote books about decisions. In How to Decide, she calls judging a decision by how it turned out “resulting.”
Affleck’s bet was right and it lost. Smith’s was wrong and it won.
When you make a good decision and get a bad outcome, you’ll be tempted to call it a bad decision.
Chess is a game of perfect information. Poker (and life) are games of odds.
🃏
What could you do to raise your odds of success?
