I have no profound mathematical or strategic revelation for you. I do have an epic tl;dr, though! Yay! Maybe you can print it out and read it on the crapper or something. But seriously... I hope it'll be helpful to you. You've all been very helpful to me.

Someone asked me, what's the most valuable thing you've learned from playing all that poker? (I haven't made much money from it, so learning experiences is the best value I get.) And I didn't even have to think about the answer--the answer is, I've learned that the skill sets that lead to success in poker and life are remarkably similar.

Not only that, but my own poker career--which is neither here nor there and uninteresting and unimpressive anyway, so I'll spare you the autobiography--tracks well my life in general, and the improvements I've made to my poker game have in some important ways translated to improvements in my life game... or vice versa. What's more, there are certain traits that, though it's difficult, time consuming and sometimes downright painful, can be learned or self-taught. They'll make you a better poker player, but they'll also make you a better person. ('Better' here not meaning morally superior, obviously, but more likely to experience success.) If I were a better poker player, I would write a book on the subject.

These are the top ten traits of winners at poker and life. They're roughly ordered by importance, but not inexorably so.

1. Aggressive. You can't put too fine a point on it: the world belongs to aggressive people. Whether in the military conquests of yore, the political conquests of all human history or the financial conquests of the modern business world, aggression wins. No one gets very far in life playing it safe and avoiding conflict and difficulty. Sure, if you started with $100 million in the bank you might die with $125 million in the bank by being a lifenit, but if like most of us you started with effectively nothing... if you're not aggressive about life in general, you'll die with effectively nothing.

And the vast majority of people are passive by nature. Like 90%. It's true at the poker tables (at least at the micro stakes, where recreational players hang out), and it's true in the real world. And like at the poker table, the aggressive person will take advantage of them and bend them to his will--and they'll be happy about it, relieved that someone else is taking charge, content to let the random order of the cards decide their fate.

You can't get that cute girl if you don't go talk to her. You can't get that good job if you don't go interview for it. You can't win money in poker if you don't put chips in the middle. Fortune favors the bold.

2. Intelligent. There's not much to say about this, as either your mind is sharp or it isn't. Intelligence is mostly inherent, though whatever level of it you have can--and MUST--be kept sharp through constant mental application. Intelligence is obviously necessary to know how to use aggression without self-destructing.

3. Disciplined. Discipline makes the difference between the dangerous, preferably avoided opponent and the easily exploited aggrodonk--at the poker table and in the real world. Aggression is key, but it won't help you if you don't have the discipline to use it properly. Indiscriminate aggression will just get you killed in short order (figuratively or literally), or at least broke.

I'm thinking about greg's highly amusing PUA thread... women are highly attracted not just to confident men (see below), but self-disciplined men--men who are always, 100 percent of the time, in control of themselves. And for that matter, men fear and respect men who are always under control (and, by extension, in control). (And men are highly attracted to the same thing in women, for the record. Everyone likes confident people.)

When the other guy loses his grip on his emotions and you do not, you win.

4. Confident. It's important to be honest enough with yourself to recognize your weaknesses, so as to minimize them (again, see below), but that's a different thing entirely from lacking confidence. Many, many aspiring poker players fail because they just don't believe in themselves. They try and try to get better, but they keep reverting to their old habits because they don't trust their reads and won't back them with their money. They're easily scared off by the first big mistake they make.

I'll give you a secret--everyone makes big mistakes. Successful people shrug them off, plug their leaks and come back with a vengeance, expecting to win big next time around. Always. Which leads us to...

5. Optimistic. This one is hugely, hugely underrated. You like positive people. You dislike negative people. It's that simple. Everyone does. I spent the first 24 years of my life as a relentlessly negative, pessimistic person, and also wondering why I had no friends. I switched to endless positivity and now have frankly more friends than I want. :P

More to the point, optimism and confidence go hand in hand. You show me a poker player that endlessly complains about his bad beats, and I'll show you a poker player who's not very good and extremely likely not going to make it anywhere. The nature of the game is such that winners shrug off the bad beats and focus on improving their game, confident that when they do, their results will eventually come around.

6. Patient. Successful people are both patient and aggressive. Far from being opposites, the two fit together like a hand in a glove. Impatience doesn't lead to aggressiveness; it leads to irrationality and mistakes. Aggression is never inherently a mistake or a great idea; it's a frame of mind.

Patience is so very, very, very important to everything. Patience without aggression is the slippery slope to apathy and laziness, of course, but blend the two together and you get a jungle predator, one who is capable of waiting all day for precisely the right spot to attack. His patience allows him to focus intensely on his goal, and he never misses his chance. When he sees opportunity, he attacks it.

If you're impatient, you miss opportunities routinely. You never see them, because you're too busy attacking the first thing that moves. In poker, this shows up most readily in people playing the wrong starting hands and getting pwned, then cursing their bad luck. In life, it shows up most readily in people constantly throwing themselves at the first thing that appears on their radars--jobs, girls, homes, etc.--and never trying to find the best of anything.

7. Driven/Perfectionist. Highly successful people possess a powerful natural urge to be the best at everything they do. They may or may not actually become the best--obviously, they usually do not--but in the end that's not important; what's important is that they invariably become the best they can be at everything they do. They maximize their skills. And when they try something and don't get good at it, they drop it and move on. They don't have time to waste on things they're not good at.

Poker is one of the most cutthroat businesses or hobbies anywhere, if you take it seriously (i.e., if you don't come into the game expecting to lose and feeling good about it.) If you're not driven to endlessly improve your game, you'll do okay for a while and then get eaten alive by those who are, and wonder what happened. (This is what happened to me. This is one of my personal weaknesses. Which brings us to...)

8. Honest with oneself. It's perfectly okay--even often advisable--to lie to other people. If someone asks you how your day's going and it's been the day from hell, for instance, it's acceptable and even encouraged to lie, and smile and say 'great! best day of my life!' This is called positivity, and if you tell this kind of lie often enough, you'll come to believe it yourself. And people will like you more. Some forms of self-delusion are a good thing in the long run.

But when it comes to your strengths and weaknesses, you had better be able to appraise yourself honestly--or find someone close to you who can, and trust their judgment. Smart people never acknowledge their weaknesses in public (they exude calm and confidence), but in their own minds they're constantly self-critical, always probing for ways to make themselves better than the next guy. And you can't improve at anything if you don't know what needs improvement. So sure, tell me you're the best poker player, or sax player or basketball player or women player, alive; but privately, don't dare assume you're perfect. Search for weaknesses ruthlessly, and exterminate them (or at least quarantine them).

9. Fearless. It's not just poker that inherently favors gamblers--life does, too. Only a small minority of successful people succeeded wildly at the first thing they tried, and many of them were just lucky. Most successful people failed over and over again, and kept on trying until something worked. And even after they're successful, they still keep trying things, usually failing, and trying more things.

Fear of failure is by far the #1 impediment to success, and the #1 thing that keeps the overwhelming majority of people passive. They're afraid someone will laugh at them, afraid the pretty girl will spurn them, afraid the guy will show over the nuts and make them look stupid, afraid they might get hurt and bleed, afraid, afraid, afraid. So they're passive, passive, passive.

Don't be like that. Go out and fail repeatedly until it loses its sting. Then you'll be ready to accomplish something.

10. Strategic/calculative. In poker, this is a simple concept--making the mathematically correct plays given ranges and pot odds. The successful poker player pretty much never makes a calculation mistake. That's bush league, the stuff 10NL is made of.

In life, it's the same thing. The successful person has, and constantly hones, the skill to correctly identify the thing to do that offers the highest long term +EV, and does it. Most people can't or won't see more than five minutes in front of their faces, and make choices accordingly (which is why most people are suffocating under mountains of debt as I type). The small subsection of people that win at life stay a step ahead of everyone else in their financial, political and interpersonal relations decisions. They consistently make good decisions because they consistently apply a logical process.

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Go back and look over the list; don't get bogged down in the explanations attached to each item, but just read each item on the list. These ten items are characteristics shared by most successful people in any walk of life--poker happens to have an especially strong correlation to life, and so also does its optimum skill set to life's. And that's the thing you can tell yourself and anyone else who asks with pride--as you become a more effective poker player, you're becoming a more effective person.

Furst.

Not really tl;dr imo. lol skewed opinionamments.

second! Reading now

Great post. Your strat posts have been some of the most helpful to me over the last couple of years. Keep thinking.

Good Post!

Excellent post.

Great post Zeth

Nice post. I would have to say I think #8 is the least thought about and one of the most important things you listed. I mean they're all important but in my experience people (and myself) have had the most trouble with that one. It can help in many other areas too.

I actually read this pooh bah because I like your strat posts and because it was easy to relate to, and I could follow along, excellently written and excellent topic.

what does pooh bah mean anyways?

read the FAQs at the top of the page..

Nice post. I would add Attentiveness.

It's all about listening and observing people, and how they react to different situations. This goes hand in hand with your point about being strategic. In business or poker, it's important.

Wow, this is awsome, and should applies just as well to SSNL and even MSNL. You should post it there too, I'm sure it will get lots of love

Really great post, one of the best comparisons of life/poker I've seen. The only thing I take issue with is #7. I think a lot of times people who are really driven perfectionists struggle a lot with life, no matter how great they are at their chosen profession. I think an extremely strong perfectionist drive and a lack of balance may lead to becoming a great poker player or athlete or businessman or whatever, but it usually also leads to a lot of problems with the other facets of life. I also think it's silly to say "And when they try something and don't get good at it, they drop it and move on." It's okay to have a hobby or two you're not great at. Just preferably not poker, because that could get expensive.

heh this is funny. i have been going around for a while telling all my friends that the key to life is confidence and aggresion with a tiny bit of luck mixed in. now you gave me some things to add; especially fearlessness.

great post btw.