On this, the 250th birthday of our country, I want to wish a Happy Independence Day to all. The USA isn’t perfect … but to borrow the words of a Canadian (oh the irony), it’s the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be.
"In other words, tournaments feel a lot like life. When they start, you have all the time in the world; then suddenly you look up and the hour is late." Alex, you buried your best line at the end of your final footnote. ;)
I have been a corporate manager since the age of 22. That is nearly 45 years of experience working to get the right talent into the right positions. My simplified model of hum capability is this.
Genetic traits + developed skills + work ethic = capability assessment.
These three are all both in conflict with each other but also are potential strengths to leverage to overcome the weakness in the other two.
Some genetically short with lower ball handling skills can still play basketball if having a very strong work-ethic and finding a niche, like defending, where they can add value and produce.
With respect to this trifecta of contribution to capability, there are two domains. I call them soft skills and hard skills.
Soft skills are basically relationship and communication skills. They require high emotional intelligence and/or skills learned to compensate for being lower on the spectrum for understanding emotional behavior and emotional queues from others. At the extreme, autistic people are an example. They don't read the room, but they can be trained to say the right things to perform as they do. But soft skills are very difficult to develop because they run into the challenge of personality types... baked in cognitive and emotional tendencies that become the muscle-memory for people... and are very difficult to change.
Hard skills are more malleable and teachable up to a point. However, there will always be a hierarchy of people of higher capability (higher merit) and lessor of it.
Most people that are at the top mastery of some discipline, like poker, are strong in both soft skills and hard skills.
This hierarchy of capability that is contributed to by fate of genetics, but modifiable to some degree by practice and training, is something that Democrats resent and deny. They deny the genetic bit, which is fascinating given their propensity to categorize groups of people and spew bias and stereotypes at them. But they also dislike the hard skills mastery competition. They dislike it for two reasons. One is that they are generally people with lower innate talents to do accomplish many hard things. Or they focus on mastering one thing at the expense of being skilled at other things, and the thing they selected for their mastery does not provide them enough status and money to satisfy their ego. The other is that they are more lazy and risk-averse. I have started businesses from the ground up, never having done the thing before. My liberal friends save everything they can for their retirement and would never put their savings at risk that way. But they come to my place of business and I can tell that they seethe a bit with envy and make excuses for their own lack of trying with mythology that I am somehow privileged and lucky... ignoring all the 16 hour days I have worked for decades to make it happen.
Much of the left-vs-right political conflict is the looters and moochers against the producers.
Trust me, the average Democrat will find a reason to hate anyone that wins at a poker tournament, or that independently wins anything for that matter. They are malcontents of low capability, somewhat our retarded part of the population, but with giant egos that must be filled.
Thanks for the article Alex. It put a smile on my face. Glad you had a good 3 days. You deserve it. Thanks for all of your hard work and for the honesty of your opinions. I don’t always agree with you, but I always know I’m getting an honest take on whatever the issue might be. We need more like you in journalism. Happy Declaration Day!
Thanks for the poker commentary and update on this interesting pastime best used by those with extraordinary memory and mathematical and body language read skills.
God bless you, Alex. A man of many amazing talents.
I can relate to this one. I was a poor kid at Reed College, Portland, surrounded by others of more wealth, as a college freshman in 1960. There was a game in the rec room of the Foster-Scholz dorm.
Most of the others played for kicks. I needed the money. I stayed in the game until about February each year, when the weaker players had had enough. The guys who remained had the advantage over me - some combination of more endurance, patience, chutzpah and math skills. You might say, intelligence. In any case, I had to admire them as I gracefully appreciated my winnings and left the game.
I observe the same traits among investors. I do OK, but my hat is off to guys like Michael Burry and Warren Buffett. They have the smarts to figure it out and the patience and endurance to wait for the payoff. I spend my time elsewhere. Writing stupid comments on blogs.
Congrats on the deep run, Alex. I'm jealous. As a poker player, I've thought a lot about this and have decided that it's mostly luck but definitely some skill, which is why I keep playing. However, I believe your data may be biased. Many of the top players don't play tournaments under $3K buy-in. They prefer $10K and above all the way up to $1 million. I've been to a few $10K to $100K PokerGo tournaments at the Aria that aren't even publicized. They get about 50 entries. Only the top players play, so the winner is always a top player.
Our daughter played, by invitation, in the Women’s’ Poker Tournament also in Vegas last week. It was her first major tournament and outlasted 1,200 of the 1,500 other players. Great experience for her.
Alex, your report about poker tournaments is fascinating. I'm wondering if anyone could recommend a good highbrow literary treatment of the subject - something along the lines of William Hazlitt on bare-knuckles boxing, or Hemingway on bullfighting?
On this, the 250th birthday of our country, I want to wish a Happy Independence Day to all. The USA isn’t perfect … but to borrow the words of a Canadian (oh the irony), it’s the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be.
Happy Fourth, everyone!! I certainly agree with the Canadian!!
I look forward to hearing how you do next year in the Main, Alex!
We love a Bret Hart reference! 😍
Maybe Alex should have slapped a sharpshooter on Phil Ivey?
"In other words, tournaments feel a lot like life. When they start, you have all the time in the world; then suddenly you look up and the hour is late." Alex, you buried your best line at the end of your final footnote. ;)
I have been a corporate manager since the age of 22. That is nearly 45 years of experience working to get the right talent into the right positions. My simplified model of hum capability is this.
Genetic traits + developed skills + work ethic = capability assessment.
These three are all both in conflict with each other but also are potential strengths to leverage to overcome the weakness in the other two.
Some genetically short with lower ball handling skills can still play basketball if having a very strong work-ethic and finding a niche, like defending, where they can add value and produce.
With respect to this trifecta of contribution to capability, there are two domains. I call them soft skills and hard skills.
Soft skills are basically relationship and communication skills. They require high emotional intelligence and/or skills learned to compensate for being lower on the spectrum for understanding emotional behavior and emotional queues from others. At the extreme, autistic people are an example. They don't read the room, but they can be trained to say the right things to perform as they do. But soft skills are very difficult to develop because they run into the challenge of personality types... baked in cognitive and emotional tendencies that become the muscle-memory for people... and are very difficult to change.
Hard skills are more malleable and teachable up to a point. However, there will always be a hierarchy of people of higher capability (higher merit) and lessor of it.
Most people that are at the top mastery of some discipline, like poker, are strong in both soft skills and hard skills.
This hierarchy of capability that is contributed to by fate of genetics, but modifiable to some degree by practice and training, is something that Democrats resent and deny. They deny the genetic bit, which is fascinating given their propensity to categorize groups of people and spew bias and stereotypes at them. But they also dislike the hard skills mastery competition. They dislike it for two reasons. One is that they are generally people with lower innate talents to do accomplish many hard things. Or they focus on mastering one thing at the expense of being skilled at other things, and the thing they selected for their mastery does not provide them enough status and money to satisfy their ego. The other is that they are more lazy and risk-averse. I have started businesses from the ground up, never having done the thing before. My liberal friends save everything they can for their retirement and would never put their savings at risk that way. But they come to my place of business and I can tell that they seethe a bit with envy and make excuses for their own lack of trying with mythology that I am somehow privileged and lucky... ignoring all the 16 hour days I have worked for decades to make it happen.
Much of the left-vs-right political conflict is the looters and moochers against the producers.
Trust me, the average Democrat will find a reason to hate anyone that wins at a poker tournament, or that independently wins anything for that matter. They are malcontents of low capability, somewhat our retarded part of the population, but with giant egos that must be filled.
Need a photo of you at the table with your t-shirt and chips!!!
Ha, Ha,
sounds like a great time in the greatest country in the world!!
We are all so blessed!!
The odds of you winning the main event (Phil Ivey has never won, only one final table I think) are longer than pharma creating a safe MRNA product.
God bless this remarkable country of ours! We won the lottery when we were born here. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
POKER is a calling lol. Have to be drawn to it! Happy Semiquincentennial America!
Believe in God
Believe in Country
Believe in Family
Believe in Yourself
Thanks for the article Alex. It put a smile on my face. Glad you had a good 3 days. You deserve it. Thanks for all of your hard work and for the honesty of your opinions. I don’t always agree with you, but I always know I’m getting an honest take on whatever the issue might be. We need more like you in journalism. Happy Declaration Day!
It was barely worth wading thru all that verbiage to learn that China's best player lost but that did help.
Alex: In addition to: poker is not gambling ... abortion is NOT murder, it is health care!
Jefferson was an avid gambler at cards although poker didn't exist yet in his day.
Thanks for the poker commentary and update on this interesting pastime best used by those with extraordinary memory and mathematical and body language read skills.
God bless you, Alex. A man of many amazing talents.
I can relate to this one. I was a poor kid at Reed College, Portland, surrounded by others of more wealth, as a college freshman in 1960. There was a game in the rec room of the Foster-Scholz dorm.
Most of the others played for kicks. I needed the money. I stayed in the game until about February each year, when the weaker players had had enough. The guys who remained had the advantage over me - some combination of more endurance, patience, chutzpah and math skills. You might say, intelligence. In any case, I had to admire them as I gracefully appreciated my winnings and left the game.
I observe the same traits among investors. I do OK, but my hat is off to guys like Michael Burry and Warren Buffett. They have the smarts to figure it out and the patience and endurance to wait for the payoff. I spend my time elsewhere. Writing stupid comments on blogs.
Congrats on the deep run, Alex. I'm jealous. As a poker player, I've thought a lot about this and have decided that it's mostly luck but definitely some skill, which is why I keep playing. However, I believe your data may be biased. Many of the top players don't play tournaments under $3K buy-in. They prefer $10K and above all the way up to $1 million. I've been to a few $10K to $100K PokerGo tournaments at the Aria that aren't even publicized. They get about 50 entries. Only the top players play, so the winner is always a top player.
Our daughter played, by invitation, in the Women’s’ Poker Tournament also in Vegas last week. It was her first major tournament and outlasted 1,200 of the 1,500 other players. Great experience for her.
Alex, your report about poker tournaments is fascinating. I'm wondering if anyone could recommend a good highbrow literary treatment of the subject - something along the lines of William Hazlitt on bare-knuckles boxing, or Hemingway on bullfighting?
Not exactly highbrow, but you can check out my poker escapades at https://goodbeatpoker.substack.com.
OK - who/what? Hazlitt on bare knuckle fighting? That’s a hot tip love it thank you