Maybe Opportunism Is an Underrated Success Factor

some rank speculation

Recently I was speaking to a former poker player about her career. Ten years ago, she quit a normal full-time job, suspecting that she could be good enough to make a lot of money at the card table. And she was correct: she retired after a period of being a highly profitable pro.

Interestingly, were she born a few years later, she couldn’t have done this. Since the end of her career, poker theory has advanced considerably. Players now have access to study materials of an unprecedented level of quality, and the amount of practice required to be an elite player has ballooned. If she returned to the sport currently, she couldn’t catch up.

This reminded me of the insufficiency of many simplistic models of what makes people successful.