The Science of Winning Poker; Bluffing still matters, but the best players now depend on math theory

July 26, 2013, 6:56 p.m. ET

The Science of Winning Poker

Bluffing still matters, but the best players now depend on math theory

CHRISTOPHER CHABRIS

More than 6,300 players, each paying an entry fee of $10,000, gathered in Las Vegas early this month for the championship event of the 44th annual World Series of Poker. The tournament ran for 10 days, and just nine players now remain. They will reunite in November for a two-day live telecast to determine who wins the first prize: $8.3 million. Poker didn’t get this big overnight. In 2003, a then-record 839 players entered the championship for a shot at $2.5 million. The winner was an amateur with the improbable name of Chris Moneymaker. After ESPN devoted seven prime-time hours to his triumph, online poker took off and tournament participation ballooned, as did prize pools. The U.S. government’s ban on the major online poker sites in 2011 reined in enthusiasm, but the game has continued to grow in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Read more of this post

9 Easy-To-Steal Habits Of The Super Successful

9 EASY-TO-STEAL HABITS OF THE SUPER SUCCESSFUL

WE WISH THERE WAS A HANDBOOK FOR SUCCESS, BUT THERE ISN’T. HERE’S THE NEXT BEST THING: A LIST OF WAYS YOU CAN REALIZE YOUR DREAMS–AND BE A MORE PRODUCTIVE PERSON IN THE PROCESS.

BY: MILES KOHRMAN

Wouldn’t it be great if success was simple? But it isn’t. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer for success in work and life, but we will do our best to steer you in the right direction. Here’s a list of helpful habits of some highly successful–and wildly productive–people to get your started. On your mark, get set, and… Read more of this post

10 Recipes for Better Thinking; How action-focused business leaders can sharpen their thinking skills

10 Recipes for Better Thinking

Jul 24, 2013

How action-focused business leaders can sharpen their thinking skills

The fact is, when you teach business, you have to know business. So it’s no surprise that some of the best professors are those with significant experience from the world of business. Yet, I’ve found some significant distinctions between academia and practitioners. For example, while a professor relies heavily on concepts and theories and prefers to maintain neutrality, a businessperson favors taking action, relying on “what worked before,” and is unafraid to take a stance. Additionally, a professor focuses on a single discipline and appreciates diversity of thought, but a businessperson is required to respond to a variety of stimuli and is pressured to make quick decisions. In other words, a professor is required to think more than he or she acts, while a businessperson is expected to act far more than he or she thinks. Though the expectations and methods of reasoning may differ between these two worlds, their styles of thinking are not contrary to one another. In fact, combining elements of both styles of thinking actually prove quite beneficial for a businessperson. As such, I’ve discovered through my experience in both academics and business, ten strategies that can sharpen the thinking of business leaders, equipping them to make smarter, more informed decisions in their fast-paced environment.  Read more of this post

Change is the giant spotlight that can illuminate a corporation’s blemishes and betray its secrets, but the friction of which is also kinetic, its heat ready to ignite a magnificent oeuvre and to liberate talent

Departures, and what they mean

BY FRITZ NELSON 
ON JULY 25, 2013

I don’t believe much in soul mates, at least where corporations and executive leadership are concerned. I believe in calculated choices and fortuitous timing, in harmonious teams, in achievable but auspicious goals, articulated with inspirational verve and backed by unmitigated, obstinate will. New leaders emerge. Old ones leave to pursue the next dream, or get kicked out, sometimes for no good reason at all. Read more of this post

Would a family business by any other name be as profitable?

WOULD A FAMILY BUSINESS BY ANY OTHER NAME BE AS PROFITABLE?

ARTICLE | 25 JULY, 2013 03:42 PM | BY RHYMER RIGBY

Earlier this year the French luxury group Pinault-Printemps-Redoute changed its name to Kering. In doing so, it took big step – it shed the family name. The decision to do so was taken by the chairman and CEO, Francois-Henri Pinault, who is the son of the business’s founder (the Printemps and Redoute are from various takeovers). Pinault cited perfectly sound business reasons for the rebranding – chief among them that only 5% of the group’s sales now come from France. Nonetheless, this is a Rubicon many family businesses would struggle to cross. Read more of this post

Lo Hsing Han, heroin king and business tycoon, died on July 6th, aged about 80

Lo Hsing Han, heroin king and business tycoon, died on July 6th, aged about 80

Jul 27th 2013 |From the print edition

MEN in his line of work rarely reach old age. They die in a hail of bullets from police sharpshooters or a rival gang, and are buried fast in shallow jungle graves. Not Lo Hsing Han. At his funeral a cavalcade of cars, some carrying his portrait garlanded with flowers, processed through the streets of Yangon, Myanmar’s capital, to his high-walled villa, right by the 16th tee of the city golf club. Crowds of villagers attended from his native region, in the Golden Triangle of Myanmar’s north-east. They rubbed shoulders with former generals, two cabinet ministers and the cream of Yangon society. Read more of this post

Shanghai cake factory is using drones to deliver cakes in Shanghai

Local company takes delivery of cakes to new heights – literally

Created: 2013-7-24 2:14:51, Updated: 2013-7-24 14:10:37

Author:Yang Jian

Three women look up in amazement as a drone carries a cake along the Huangpu River.

HAVE the cake and eat it too. And get it delivered in style as well. In a crazy story that would make even spy master James Bond sit up and take notice, a local cake factory is using drones to deliver cakes in Shanghai! And China’s civil aviation authorities are not too happy about it. Read more of this post

Arctic Ice-Melt Cost Seen Equal to Year of World Economic Output

Arctic Ice-Melt Cost Seen Equal to Year of World Economic Output

The cost to the world from melting Arctic ice is equal to almost a year of global economic output as releasing methane trapped in the frozen continent leads to extreme weather, flooding and droughts, scientists said.

The methane emissions are an “economic time-bomb” that may cost $60 trillion from effects on the climate, according to research published today by the University of Cambridge and the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University. Extreme weather events would mainly affect developing nations. Read more of this post

5 Weird (But Effective) Ways You Can Conquer Chronic Procrastination

JULY 24, 2013 by ERIC BARKER

5 Weird (But Effective) Ways You Can Conquer Chronic Procrastination

How to beat chronic procrastination

I’ve posted a fair amount of research related to procrastination in the past, let’s round it up so we have a useful list to refer to when willpower gets low.

1) “Positive” Procrastination

Yes, that’s right, procrastination can be a good thing. Dr. John Perry, author of The Art of Procrastination, explains a good method for leveraging your laziness: The key to productivity, he argues in “The Art of Procrastination,” is to make more commitments — but to be methodical about it. At the top of your to-do list, put a couple of daunting, if not impossible, tasks that are vaguely important-sounding (but really aren’t) and seem to have deadlines (but really don’t). Then, farther down the list, include some doable tasks that really matter. “Doing these tasks becomes a way of not doing the things higher up on the list,” Dr. Perry writes. A similar tip is described by Piers Steel, author of The Procrastination Equation: “My best trick is to play my projects off against each other, procrastinating on one by working on another.” Dr. Steel says it’s based on sound principles of behavioral psychology: “We are willing to pursue any vile task as long as it allows us to avoid something worse.” Read more of this post

Family Business: How to Spot a Problem Patriarch; Sometimes it’s the most successful leaders who sow the seeds for the downfall of a family business

Family Business: How to Spot a Problem Patriarch

by Josh Baron and Rob Lachenauer  |  12:00 PM July 24, 2013

Sometimes it’s the most successful leaders who sow the seeds for the downfall of a family business. Carl was one of the most talented leaders of his generation. When he took over the family business, it was a struggling $10 million automotive parts distributor. Now after thirty years of being at the helm, Carl has developed a $2 billion company that is a leader in logistical services to hospitals in Europe, and also owns four other distribution businesses. At one point, Carl had 48 direct reports and had personally hired each one. At the same time, he cared deeply about his family and made sure that everyone was well taken care of. But there was a darker side to Carl’s success. Read more of this post

The Most Counterintuitive Advice From Famous Entrepreneurs

The Most Counterintuitive Advice From Famous Entrepreneurs

BELLE BETH COOPER, BUFFER JUL. 23, 2013, 5:11 PM 1,476 1

We all love to take advice from people who’ve previously been through the same situations as us or who are further along a similar path to us. For entrepreneurs this is particularly useful, since it’s such a difficult, unknown path to tread sometimes. Funnily enough, some of the advice I’ve come across through reading interviews and articles from famous entrepreneurs is often counterintuitive to what I would expect them to say. I thought it would be interesting to gather some of this advice into one place, so here are ten of the most counterintuitive pieces of advice I’ve come across from famous entrepreneur. Read more of this post

How Story Platforms Help Global Brands Go Local

How Story Platforms Help Global Brands Go Local

by Kirk Cheyfitz  |  11:00 AM July 23, 2013

While the current turmoil in Cairo may obscure the post-revolutionary optimism that pervaded the city last winter, that mood was powerful at the time. Despite the chaos in the virtual absence of government, the metropolitan region of some 14 million was taken over in January by an Arabic pop music video urging people to “go crazy” by committing acts of kindness to spread happiness. The film, produced by Coca Cola, features street scenes of people being kind and happy in well-known Cairo locations. Locals say it perfectly reflected the hopefulness and optimism of Egypt’s people as they embarked on the difficult path of building a new democracy. Read more of this post

Antiori sisters to lead wine empire Super Tuscans

Sisters to lead wine empire

by Rebecca Lynne Tan, The Straits Times|24 July 2013

For the first time since the Antinori family began making wines more than 600 years ago, the world-renowned Italian wine company will continue into the future with an all-women team at its helm. The 26th generation is made up of three sisters – Albiera, 47; Allegra, 42; and Alessia, 38, daughters of famed winemaker Marchese Piero Antinori, 74. He is widely known as one of the founders of Super Tuscans, a category of thoroughbred Chianti wines that are commonly made with a blend of local grape varietals such as sangiovese and foreign grape varietals such as cabernet. Eldest daughter Albiera, the company’s vice-president, says: “When Dad saw that the third child was also a girl, he must have been a bit disappointed. But he’s over it, he couldn’t do much about it.” Read more of this post

Maybe Silicon Valley companies succeed because their founders care more about what they do than where they do it

Maybe Silicon Valley companies succeed because their founders care more about what they do than where they do it

BY SARAH LACY 
ON JULY 22, 2013

Michael has a great story this morning on why big companies tend to come out of Silicon Valley. It’s in response to a story aboutwhy they don’t come out of Canada. Meanwhile there’s still handwringing going on over my post about why Waze shouldn’t be the exit Israelis’ are high-fiving about. (Still.) My guess is on any given day there are posts like these on blogs all over the world. I’m not aware of a city that doesn’t want to be “the next Silicon Valley.” And yet, New York may have come the closest — and it’s still a gulf away in terms of jobs, exits, and economic impact. Read more of this post

What Bill Gates is reading this summer

What Bill Gates is reading this summer

By Ritchie King @RitchieSKing July 20, 2013

If you’re in the market for a light, sunshine-friendly novel—something with an up tempo narrative and relatable characters—then Bill Gates’s summer reading list is not for you. But if you’re a non-fiction buff with a wide range of interests, then it might be the perfect place to look for a new book. The list, which the Microsoft chairman posted on his blog Gates Notes, is his own personal reading agenda for the season—not a collection of books that he’s already read and feels inspired to promote (with the exception of one of them). It includes eight titles in all, and seven are non-fiction. “I don’t generally read a lot of fiction,” Gates writes next to the entry for Robert Cook’s Patriot & Assassin, the sole novel in the list. Taken together, the lineup reveals Gates to be a total intellectual omnivore. Notably, there isn’t a single book about computing or technology. The non-fiction titles range from a psychologist’s exploration of stereotypes to a history of the shipping container and its impact on globalization. He’s already finished reading the first book on the list—Jared Diamond’s The World Until Yesterday—and hasposted his own review of it. Here’s the list in full: Read more of this post

Brazilian Billionaire Who Lost A Massive Fortune Wonders Where It All Went Wrong

Billionaire Who Lost A Massive Fortune Wonders Where It All Went Wrong

LINETTE LOPEZ JUL. 22, 2013, 12:51 PM 21,037 11

Things are worse for Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista than they have ever been before. Now he has written an open letter in the journal Valor International to express his intense regret to the public. Over the last year Batista’s gone from being the 7th richest man in the world, to hemorrhaging $2 million a day. His fortune comes from his holding company, EBX. Under its umbrella are six companies that all deal with Brazil’s natural resources and logistics. The Brazilian resource industry has gotten crushed as part of the overall emerging market slowdown. They’ve lost a combined $10 billion over the last year, says Bloomberg. What Batista wants is to be the country’s champion again, and to have investors believe in him. To regain their trust he wrote:

More than anyone, I wonder where I went wrong. What should I have done differently? A first question might be linked to the funding model I chose for the companies. Today, if I could go back in time, I would not have resorted to the stock market. I would have a structured private-equity firm that would allow me to create from scratch and develop over at least 10 years each company. And they would all remain private until I was sure that it was time to go public. In the projects that I conceived, time proved a vital stress factor for the reversal of expectations on companies bearing broadly satisfactory results and valuable assets. Read more of this post