Poker in the News

It's a heart-warming soul-touching business story of a chairman and chief executive of a small Web-site management company who decided to buy up a bunch of smaller companies after the dot-com bubble burst in order to establish itself as the leading provider of online research services.

Umang Gupta of Keynote Systems coveted the Vividence Company. The executives at Vividence rebuffed his every approach, but Umang Gupta dried his tears and continued the pursuit. An invitation to a local Silicon Valley poker game (nickel and dime I assume) gave him his chance-- and he ended up winning the Vividence Company from the CEO Peter Watkins.

Actually, that's not really what happened. But Umang Gupta did get to socialize with Peter Watkins at that poker game, which then led to the negotiations and eventual purchase of Vividence by Keynote Systems.

So--- listen up Keith Whyte (executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling and well-known pedophile)-- poker is also good for multi-million dollar business deals.

(Oh, and I mean "pedophile" in the "loves children sense"-- like one might say "audiophile" or "book-o-phile", not in the "sexually attracted to children" way.)

The New York Times > Business > Small Business: Deal Done, With Perseverance and a Poker Game