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“They’re hands you can lose a lot of money with.”
Doyle Brunson
I looked down at a king and a nine on my phone. In my headphones, Maria Konnikova was recounting her lessons from Erik Seidel in The Biggest Bluff.
Seidel warned her that king-nine is an expensive trap. Amateurs see a face card and stay in the hand.
He tends to fold it because a weak side card leaves you drawing to second-best.
The obviously terrible hands are easy. You throw them away in half a second and wait for the next deal.
Those hands don’t drain your stack because folding them takes no thought.
Holding a king looks playable. At a table with fewer opponents, it looks even better.
When the flop pairs your king, you think you’re ahead.
Someone else often holds a king with an ace beside it.
If an opponent is behind, they fold early, so you win a small pot. If they hold ace-king, they call each bet and take your whole stack.
Doyle Brunson called cards like king-nine trouble hands for a reason.
They keep you around long enough to lose your chips.
You see the same dynamic in business.
In 1962 Warren Buffett started buying Berkshire Hathaway stock, a declining textile mill that looked like a bargain at $7.50 a share. It was a classic borderline trade: a cigar butt with one free puff left.
Two years later the mill’s president agreed to buy Buffett’s shares back at $11.50 each. The written offer came in at $11.375. Buffett was angry enough over 12.5 cents that he bought up the rest of the stock, took control of the mill and fired him.
If you have ever doubled down on a mediocre hand instead of walking away, you know how that goes.
For the next 20 years, Buffett poured money into new looms and equipment, trying to turn around a business bleeding to foreign competition. Each improvement was matched by competitors.
By 1985 he closed the mills, calculating the distraction cost over $200 billion in compounding gains.
It was his worst trade: you can pour a fortune into new looms, but a dying business never becomes a winner.
Charlie Munger later explained the fix. On their desks sat a wooden box labeled “Too Hard.”
If you bring them an opportunity that is complicated, borderline or requires heroic effort, they toss it into the box and wait for an obvious pitch.
Derek Sivers framed the same filter as a choice between hell yeah or no. Unless you feel an immediate yes, the answer is no.
Terrible ideas are easy to reject. Nobody struggles to turn down an offer they hate.
The rule exists for the 7 out of 10.
The client who pays okay but drains your weekend. The project that works only if conditions stay perfect.
When an opportunity sits on the edge, we negotiate with ourselves. We look at the face card and ignore the weak kicker.
Passing on borderline ideas protects your time for the rare opportunities that are an obvious yes.
♠️
What borderline project should you fold today to protect your time?
