“All In” on Strategy: Insights from a World Poker Champion
What strategic thinking techniques can leaders apply from a world poker champion to better position themselves for success?
In this episode, Rich sits down with Darren Elias, a four time World Poker Tour Champion. Darren is ranked number one all time in victories, final tables and cashes on the World Poker Tour and has amassed over $12.5 million in live tournament poker winnings.
In this conversation, Darren gives us insight into preparation and execution, how to adapt on the fly, assessing and reading competition, and maintaining emotional control to make good decisions.
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Key Quotes
“You really can’t think about the money that much. You have to execute the strategy and you shouldn’t be thinking in dollars or anything like that. You should be thinking in numbers and players and the relationships between our strategies. I think a lot of mistakes I’ve seen at big final tables come from players that get a little overwhelmed by the moment or the thinking about the money. That stuff you really shouldn’t be thinking about until after the tournament.”
“ The biggest thing for me is objective self evaluation, where I’m looking at how I played, I’m looking at the decisions from a distance and saying, was this hand played well? Was this the right play against this player in that situation? And really remaining confident that even though you’re losing, and in poker tournaments, you actually lose 80 percent of the time.”
“ Know who you’re playing against….because everybody has different strategies. You have loose players, tight players. You have ones that don’t want to play big pots. You have ones that maybe don’t play as many hands preflop….So really, try to understand your opponent. Uh, what they’re trying to do with the table, what their general strategy is.”
Practice Makes Profit
Reducing mental fatigue and burnout by batching your work.
League of Strategic Minds
What’s the best way to align strategies between different functional areas?
Winsights: Ideas for Advantage
Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, said, “Our company is 30 days from going out of business. You’re always on the way to going out of business. If you don’t internalize that sensibility, you will go out of business.” Ask yourself this, are you and your team meeting to discuss your business model and how it needs to evolve?
References
Time stamps:
(00:41) Deep Dive Interview with Darren Elias
(37:48) Practice Makes Profit
(39:43) League of Strategic Minds
(41:08) Winsights, Ideas for Advantage
Links
Submit a question for Rich to the League of Strategic Minds
Darren Elias on LinkedIn
Rich Horwath on LinkedIn
Rich Horwath on YouTube
Rich Horwath on Instagram
Strategic Thinking Institute Website
Inc. Magazine’s Top 4 book for 2024: STRATEGIC Book
New executive development platform: Strategic Fitness System
Sign up for Rich’s free Strategic Thinker Newsletter
About the Guest
Darren Elias
4x World Poker Tour Champion
About the Host
Rich Horwath, Founder & CEO
Strategic Thinking Institute
Rich is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of eight books on strategic thinking, including his most recent work, STRATEGIC, which was named a “top 4 must-read business book for 2024” by Inc. Magazine, and a national bestseller by USA TODAY. He has been the top rated keynote speaker on strategic thinking at national conferences for nearly 20 years.
This Episode Brought to You by the Strategic Thinking Institute
Sharpen your strategic thinking for long-term success.
The Strategic Thinking Institute has developed hundreds of resources to help leaders at all levels think, plan, and act strategically. In addition to facilitating workshops and strategic coaching with executive leadership teams, STI has assessments and products for functional groups such as sales, marketing, finance, human resources, operations, information technology, account management, business development, accounting, clinical, medical, and other technical specialties. STI’s experience in a wide range of industries brings your team the best-of-breed practices and resources to enable your team to outthink and outperform the competition. Remember, be strategic … or be gone.