Business Theory

Rick: I've been to Hamunaptra.
Evelyn: You swear?
Rick: Every damn day.

"The Mummy"

I was ready the Business 2.0 website, as I have been known to do from time to time, and they had an article where they asked 49 business visionaries what their “Golden Rule” was, their general business philosophy. It’s a pretty decent list of people too, from Sir Richard Branson to Craig Newark to Dick Parsons to George Steinbrenner. But, nestled some where in the middle was this surprising little gem.

Phil Hellmuth
Poker world champion
“You can’t cheat an honest man”

What we do as poker players is read people. People lie to us; they try to bluff us constantly. So we get used to trying to sort out all the bullsh**. When I get pitched by people who are really good, like con men, they are not as good as the poker players.

You can't cheat an honest man. I don't know exactly why that is, but it's true for me. My honor is unquestioned in poker, and if you have perfect honor in poker, it's better than having it anywhere else in life because everyone remembers everything from 15 or 20 years ago. If you cheated then, they'll remember.

Now that's not bad advice and all, and was just more shcoked that Phil Hellmuth was incldued in this bunch. Also, Penn from Penn & Teller was also amongst them. Worth a quick read if you feel like it.

I have also spent the last few hours mucking around with frvade.com. There are a number of similar puzzles out there, some better some worse, but they always seem to piss me off. Not because they are too hard, (but that can come into it where the answer to the puzzle could only be summed up as an absolute guess as to the little green dot in the corner means "Trans Atlantic Boat Ride" where the pet dog on the boat had worms and the answer is "Slimy" because that was Oscar the Grouch's pet worm) but because they seem to take themselves far too seriously. Things like claiming to be the biggest enigma on the internet, the hardest puzzle ever to solve - what crap.

I'm going to make one of these one day, and all it will be about is a bit of fun trying to get to the next level, and then when you reach a pre determined end level - BAM, it's all over. Get it done and get out. Don't try to pretend it is a great discovery of manking, it's nothing more than a cryptic crossword through a different medium.

What the hell am I talking about?