The Big Billionaire Gamblers (may be controversial)

There's a very interesting book called "How to be a billionaire." It analyzes the habits of several of America's billionaires.

One of the interesting observations of that book is that a lot of billionaires seem to enjoy gambling-style card games. Here's a snippet from the book.... Let me know what you think....

On the specific issue of risk, the billionaires' interest in card games, particularly poker, is striking. During the cotton-planting days, before entering the oil business, H. L. Hunt was compelled to support his family with his poker winnings after losing two consecutive crops to floods. As an undergraduate at Columbia University, John Kluge's obsession with the game attracted unwelcome attention from the administration. By graduation in 1937, Kluge had accumulated $7,000 in winnings, equivalent to $80,000 in 1999 purchasing power.

Bill Gates, too, devoted a great deal of his time at college to playing poker before dropping out of Harvard. Carl Icahn raised his first investment stake by clearing $4,000 playing poker during six months of active duty in the United States Army, a stint that followed his graduation from Princeton. Similarly, poker winnings helped to bankroll Kirk Kerkorian's launch of a charter airline that he ultimately parlayed into a billion-dollar fortune. Warren Buffett's fraternity brothers at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania remember him chiefly for playing bridge. He became proficient enough to play on the Corporate America team, a group of chief executive officers that took on such opponents as a team composed of members of the British Parliament.

(From How To Be A Billionaire by Martin S. Fridson, p. 21, published by John Wiley and Sons, 2000.)

I'm not saying that everyone should start throwing their money at the poker tables. But I found this observation quite interesting.

Calculating the odds of "winning" from a business deal may have some of the similar skills as calculating the odds of getting a winning hand. But it goes beyond that....

It's also not JUST a game of odds, but also of psychology. The world's best poker players are also masters at observing the mannerisms of their opponents, and interpreting that as to whether they have a good hand, or if they're bluffing.

I don't know too much about bridge, but I assume the same observations apply as for poker.

Any thoughts regarding this? Anyone for a game of bridge? :)

Cheers,

Dien