Original Ideas Don't Exist
mikekarnj.com
mikekarnj.com
Something bigger to consider is what the barriers to entry are - even if you only have 1 competitor now, can 50 other companies do it comparably in five months if the idea blows up?
This just may be true. It's best to use this to your advantage. When you think you have an utterly original idea that will open up a new market that nobody is working on acquiring, you can become complacent. But when you know you have a competitor who is doing almost the exact same thing, it makes you work that much harder to beat them.
I recently had the experience of finding my first serious competitor in a market I didn't think existed yet. But this just pushes me to get out there ASAP with a better product.
If you have a startup, finding out about competition may be the best thing that could happen to you.
> In poker, there are simple rules you can follow to put yourself ahead of 90% of other poker players. One of my favorite rules revolves around removing any attachment to the value of poker chips. When playing poker, the chips in front of you have absolutely no value, they’re just a medium for you to win chips from other poker players. Most players don’t play their A-game because they’re trying to “make the money” and don’t want to risk losing all their chips (which they end up losing anyways).
This is a good strategy to get from being a beginner to get a more skilled place. You should be playing stakes that you have the bankroll and emotion to be able to play reasonably aggressively, make correct plays, and afford to lose at. So, this is decent advice going from being a new player who is afraid of losing his money to thinking of the chips more abstractly and playing correctly.
However, play is considerably different at higher levels, and you should take and process information accordingly. I haven't followed poker so much recently, but when I was playing David Skalansky was generally considered to have written the definitive guides on playing well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sklansky#Books
Hold'em Poker for Advanced Players was one of the most incredible books I've ever read in my life, and though I don't play more than a couple times a year, I should probably re-read it at some point because it teaches you how to think.
I read Hold'em Advanced before Small Stakes came out. Reading Small Stakes was even more eye-opening - Skalansky came right out and said something like, "You shouldn't be using advanced plays at lower levels, instead you should adjust to the quality of opponent."
It was huge - I'd been trying to make elaborate, tricky plays in low stakes games and getting killed off of it. Small stakes talked a lot about managing your own psychology against bad players, and then just play hands that make strong hands, and bet for value a lot. Adjusting my play downwards let me absolutely destroy low stakes games after that.
I've never played incredibly high stakes, but at mid/high stakes you've got to think about folding to a 3-bet on the turn even with a decent hand sometimes. Small stakes you should only be betting if you want to be called, and then probably should call down after that. Calling down in a mid/high stakes game is going to brutalize you, but you should generally only be putting yourself in a position where you want to call down in a low stakes game.
Anyway, I agree with the general sentiment of the post, just wanted to riff on cards a little bit after reading that. The main point is abstracting the money considerations away is good for becoming an intermediately skilled player, but considering the stakes is valuable again at the higher levels of play.
And definitely check out Skalansky if you like cards, poker, game theory, or math at all, they're really marvelous books.
Poker is kind of like rock, paper, scissors. At the beginning levels, you know the other person is probably going to throw rock on the first throw. So your best move is to throw paper (since scissors is thrown 30% of the time on average). This works well as a strategy against beginners.
If you're playing against a pro player, or something that is knowledgeable about the game, this is where being "several levels deep" will come to your advantage and this is the level that professional poker players will play in games. "Is he going to throw rock, or does he think I'm going to throw rock, or does that mean I should throw scissors, etc etc."
I think in beginner games, 3-betting on the turn is an easy fold, but you'll have to start second guessing yourself when playing in a higher-stakes game (as most people try to bluff you on the turn). This is why a lot of people lose a lot of money in high-stakes games. What worked in the lower stakes won't necessarily work in higher stake games, which is why you have to play in a comfortable bankroll. You'll make a lot of mistakes.