From limit hold’em to shoe sales, Tony Hsieh has been a big success.
Mainstream voices that promote poker aren’t nearly as difficult to find today as they were just a few years ago, thanks to the game’s continued popularity on television. As for finding a voice that both enjoys the game and fully understands it – well, that’s not always as easy. But now there’s another articulate supporter of the game speaking up on the benefits of poker – the CEO of online shoe store Zappos.com, Tony Hsieh.
Hsieh’s new book, “Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose”, contains a lengthy story about the lessons that he learned from poker that he has been able to apply to the business world. He started with the mathematics of the game, which helped him learn proper risk management. “Understanding the mathematics behind hold ‘em and playing against players who didn’t,” writes Hsieh, “was like owning a coin that would land on heads one-third of the time and tails the other two-thirds of the time, and always being allowed to bet on tails.”
But beyond the simple math concepts behind the game, he says he also learned other important truisms that translate well from poker to business; among them are adjusting to the game, learning through experience, doing the opposite of what other players are doing, and, most importantly, learning the importance of table selection, which translated into learning when to enter a market.
