Poker Businessmen
As I noted last week, Thomas L. Friedman's best seller "The World Is Flat" reveals how a convergence of Internet online casinos technology with economic and political developments has leveled the global business playing field. The book rightly emphasizes the role people from India play in this process. Even so, it never mentions Anurag Dikshit (pronounced DIX-it), the software whiz educated at the Indian Institute of Technology who in 2000 created the platform for PartyPoker. PartyPoker quickly became the world's busiest card-playing Web site, enabling tens of thousands of players around the world to compete in real time at virtual nine-handed tables. The site supercharged a vast industry, creating many thousands of jobs and an 11-figure stock valuation for its shareholders.
Friedman's book also mentions Bill Gates 17 times but poker not once, in spite of the game's huge influence on Gates during his two years at Harvard. In his 1995 memoir, "The Road Ahead," Gates recalled marathon dorm sessions that he found at least as productive and intellectually stimulating as his time spent in class. "In poker, a player collects different pieces of information," he wrote, "and then crunches all that data together to devise a plan for his own hand. I got pretty good at this kind of information processing." The planet's reigning e-businessman - and most copious philanthropist - he also won a significant portion of Microsoft's start-up costs in those games, but it wasn't just dollars being accumulated; it was "the poker strategizing experience."