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Comment by badman_ting | Hacker News Reader

> Occasionally, you’ll have to show those cards and win a hand to prove that you can. But the rest of the time you call and fold, as you await the monster to take the entire pot.

Wait, just which game are we talking about here? I thought it was chess and checkers but now we're on to cards. I'm only sort of kidding -- Bezos certainly does seem like a genius to me, no argument there. But this is just the author going "No, you don't get it, he's so smart!"

(Also, as it happens, the above would tend to be a terrible poker strategy.)

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No, man. You just don't get it! He's a master of the game. He's thinking 12 cards ahead and is going to uno your bishop with his Washington Post before you can even bingo your king of spades! It's so crazy it might just work!

I don't like the article. Full of sensationalist filler with little real content. What's his point? That stock price reflects the perceived expected value of the company now and in the future? He never really connects Amazon's investment into its infrastructure with Bezos' purchase of a newspaper. He talks about corporate profits as if they are a bad thing (and uses Apple as his sole example) - what about the second largest company in the world? Exxon Mobil hasn't had the same pattern as Apple at all. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples as well. So how does one data point prove his point that withholding profits is a good idea (and I'm not saying it isn't, I'm just confused by his argument)?

Anyways, yes Bezos is trying a strategy of targeting long-term growth. He makes that abundantly clear. Will it work out? Is he really a genius? Honestly, it's too early to really say definitively, isn't it? But that's boring, so no one would write an article saying that.

<\rant>

Theres a lot in the article about playing the long game with Amazon, but when it comes to WP, is just like, "trust me, he's doing the same with the Post" without any attempt to evaluate what the long game is with regards to a news entity.

Exactly. The Amazon backstory is interesting, but it does nothing to support his claim that WP is part of a strategy, or even say what the strategy might be.

If we hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes should fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.

In fact if we go by this article isn't Apple doing the same thing. He says Bezos/Amazon didn't show their cards for long and will eventually surprise people and win over. How does that not apply to Apple who is hoarding cash and not giving a hint of their future plans ?

Absurd writing.

But this is just the author going "No, you don't get it, he's so smart!"

I'm a little curious what TC thinks the purpose of insulting their readers in the title of their piece is. The hopelessly mixed metaphor is just icing on the cake, but you do have to break a few eggs to throw the baby out before it's hatched.

TC's purpose was probably to hide that once again they didn't scoop a big story so they put the call out for some me-two-three-four-five-six articles to cover it up.

Maybe I'm taking it personally, and the charitable read on the title is "While We (the editors, here at TC HQ) Are Trying To Follow His Game Of Checkers..."

>>but you do have to break a few eggs to throw the baby out before it's hatched

This is great

but you do have to break a few eggs to throw the baby out before it's hatched.

"If we hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate!"

- Zapp Brannigan

Still laughing! Thank you :)

Bezos must have still been playing checkers when he bought into Living Social. :)

What did you expect from TechCrunch? I'm not even sure you can call the garbage on that site journalism.

"The goal is actually to not make a huge profit too early, and Bezos manages it perfectly. You want to avoid showing your cards too early as you continue to lay the groundwork for an ever-larger business"

That just doesn't sound right. 10 years in market is not too early. And because it is working for Bezos and Amazon, it doesn't mean that this strategy will work for others.

He might be a genius but not all genius can make a profitable business. I doubt that will be the case for Amazon eventually (I may well be one of the suckers heh) but let's remember that they just LOST money on the last quarter and consistently earn little to no profits.

That's part of the plan. Amazon make a loss in Q1-3 and turn a profit in Q4, this results in a slight profit over the year, a boatload of investment in infrastructure and it being almost impossible for competition to keep up.

/facepalm. He's not playing poker though, he's playing chess!

As one German football player famously stated: "this game is just like the game of chess but just without dices."

If we can hit that bullseye the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate!

Well, it depends on which poker game you're playing and the table texture of your game.

It does, which is why I wrote "tends to". But I knew someone would get pedantic about it anyway -- this is HN.

Fair enough.

What I thought was telling was they said "most of the time you're just calling and folding.

You're right, that's terrible, didn't read closely enough.

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