“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 [listener question]:  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?

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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 

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Links:

Submit a question for Rich to the League of Strategic Minds: https://www.strategyskills.com/strategic-minds-podcast/ 

Darren Elias on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darren-elias-3a1432114/

BetMGM: https://www.linkedin.com/company/betmgm/

Rich Horwath on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richhorwath/

Rich Horwath on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RichHorwath

Rich Horwath on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/richhorwathceo/

Strategic Thinking Institute Website: https://www.strategyskills.com/

Inc. Magazine’s Top 4 book for 2024: STRATEGIC  Book: https://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Direction-Advantage-Executive-Excellence/dp/1394215339

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