Strategy in Poker, Business & War
Author: John McDonald
List Price: $11.95
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ISBN: 039331457X
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company (September, 1996)
Sales Rank: 58,075
Average Customer Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 4 out of 5
Excellent Strategy Primer
This book is really a study of games - specifically strategical games such as poker. Strategical games are those where information is imperfect. The author uses poker as a model for describing strategy in business, war, and politics - Three of life's other strategical games.He correctly deduces that the optimal strategy in poker is not to have one - that is, to vary unpredictably. Poker playing requires deception, and to do that, the poker hand "must be concealed behind a mask of inconsistency," as he puts it. This is critical poker knowledge, but you don't have to buy the book for that.
He makes the important observation that the winning strategy in general is to have better information than one's opponent. Thus, poker players bluff representations of strength and weakness, in order to deny information about their hands to their opponents. People involved in capital markets try to get better, faster information (e.g. "real time quotes") because that is the only way to win.
Don't buy any poker books besides this one. It has everything you need. Don't buy any other gambling books - no sense wasting more money on games you can't win. As for business, war, and politics, this book describes a good "mindset" for thinking about these fields.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Information is key to strategy
This book is really a study of games - specifically strategical games such as poker. Strategical games are those where information is imperfect. The author uses poker as a model for describing strategy in business, war, and politics - Three of life's other strategical games.He correctly deduces that the optimal strategy in poker is not to have one - that is, to vary unpredictably. Poker playing requires deception, and to do that, the poker hand "must be concealed behind a mask of inconsistency," as he puts it. This is critical poker knowledge, but you don't have to buy the book for that.
He makes the important observation that the winning strategy in general is to have better information than one's opponent. Thus, poker players bluff representations of strength and weakness, in order to deny information about their hands to their opponents. People involved in capital markets try to get better, faster information (e.g. "real time quotes") because that is the only way to win.
Don't buy any poker books besides this one. It has everything you need. Don't buy any other gambling books - no sense wasting more money on games you can't win. As for business, war, and politics, this book describes a good "mindset" for thinking about these fields.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Interesting topic but doesn't add value
The article McDonald wrote was well written in Fortune magazine but unfortunately is not much more informative in the 100+ page book that follows. McDonald attempts to connect phenomena (games, economics, business, & war) to concepts in which he feels cross between disciplines. However, the writing style of his book swtiches back and forth between making assertions and stating examples that are so broad that at some point becomes unrelated to the whole point of the book. One example even tries to describe the chemistry of ideal gases and how it's related to pure competition! I was expecting that the book would dive into deeper aspects of how poker was related to investing as he described in the article but mainly talks about concepts already written in standard college textbooks. I suspect that McDonald tried to rush his writing of the book and grabbed straws to fill out the pages. My recommendation is to read the article and not the book! Similar Products
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