Poker players show up in the strangest places

I just finished reading The Big Short by Michael Lewis. If you have any interest in understanding how the financial meltdown of 2007-2008 occurred, you must read this book. It is far more readable and engaging than material about complicated financial transactions has any right to be.

I wasn't planning to do a blog post about it because, even with my penchant for finding poker parallels and lessons in just about everything, this one would have been a stretch. I'm posting now because I was surprised at a name that popped up in the "Acknowledgments" section at the end of the text: "Brandon Adams generously offered his help digging out strange facts and figures and proved to be so smart about the subject that I half-wondered if perhaps he, instead of I, should be writing the book."

This is surely the same Brandon Adams that we know as a professional poker player. His Wikipedia entry says, "Adams teaches a course at Harvard University called 'The US in the World Economy' and has recently finished a book titled 'Setting Sun: The End of Economic Dominance.'"

So now you know that he also apparently understands a thing or two about the workings of Wall Street.