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Compete, Play, Win
Finding Your Best Competitive Self
David Apostolico


“Combining insights from cutting-edge scientific research with lessons learned as a top corporate lawyer and poker player, David Apostolico shows exactly how to hone your competitive instincts into a powerful force to achieve your goals in all areas of life, and to have fun along the way.”
—Aaron Brown, author of The Poker Face of Wall Street and A World of Chance


Whether it’s winning at poker, conquering an eating competition, or moving up the corporate ladder, everyone competes. Healthy competition is good. However, our innate competitive drive hasn’t changed in thousands of years even though what it takes to succeed in today’s strategic world has changed dramatically. By harnessing your competitive instincts productively rather than letting them get the best of you, you can maximize your potential and succeed in everything you do. Drawing from his own experiences, David Apostolico, a self-described competition junkie, provides innovative advice designed to maximize your competitive drive in Compete, Play, Win: Finding Your Best Competitive Self.

Starting with the most basic of competitions—the sperm’s race to the egg—Apostolico identifies three competitive natures (the Belligerent, the Emulator, and the Striver) within each of us. He writes how to recognize and use each of these types to win. Looking into the biological and psychological nature of competition, the social and personal ramifications of a win-at-all-costs mentality, and the ethics of winning, Apostolico shows how best to use his advice in all aspects of your personal and professional life. Learn how to:

• Make better business decisions
• Place a winning bet on the racetrack
• Ace your next interview
• Win at your neighborhood poker game
• Successfully audition for a game show
• Compete as part of a team
• Recognize the signs that you have taken a competition too far

Full of practical advice and real-life anecdotes on how to use competition to make the most of your personal and professional lives, Compete, Play, Win is an original book that aims to nurture and channel your competitive drive for maximum effectiveness in the modern world.

About the Author
David Apostolico is the author of several poker and business strategy books, including Tournament Poker and the Art of War and Poker Strategies for a Winning Edge in Business. He has been an effective competitor on Wall Street and on the Professional Poker Tour and lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

To schedule an interview with David Apostolico, please contact:
Thomas Semosh / 212 643 6816 x 224 / tsemosh@skyhorsepublishing.com

Compete, Play, Win
Finding Your Best Competitive Self
By David Apostolico
Skyhorse Publishing Hardcover Original
On Sale: October 20, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-60239-718-7
Price: $22.95
Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
555 Eighth Avenue, Suite 903
New York, NY 10018
212 643 6816 / www.skyhorsepublishing.com

Let me start by stating that I am a fan of Serena Williams. She is an intense competitor and has done so much for women's tennis. Having said that, there is no excuse for her outburst at the U.S. Open. If you're going to compete successfully, you have to be in control of your emotions. Instead of taking what she perceived to be a poor call and using it to fuel her competitive desire, she self destructed. She became obsessed with winning an argument and showing up the poor line judge and lost track of the task at hand. She acted like a Belligerent. A Belligerent is a term I coined in my new book Compete, Play, Win to describe the most primitive competitor that exists in all of us. It's that part of us that wants to fight regardless of the consequences. The Belligerent may have served us well thousands of years ago but can be destructive in today's strategic world. If you recognize that it exists, then you can channel that Belligerent to reach your goals.

I found a remarkable contrast in Michael Jordan's Hall of Fame acceptance speech this weekend. Jordan is that rare athlete with not only a ton of talent but an incredible work ethic fueled by an unquenchable competitive desire. In Jordan's speech, he outlines in detail every imagined slight he would use to motivate himself -- from being cut from his high school basketball team to being passed over for the Sports Illustrated cover as a freshman at UNC. Instead of letting his inner Belligerent come out and lash out at his offender, Jordan would take those feelings and internalize them to propel him to his maximum competitive self. We don't need to suppress those Belligerent feelings. Rather, recognize them and channel them in a productive rather than destructive way. Serena could have used that perceived bad call to get her blood going and increase her intensity and focus.

Arguably, Jordan could have been more graceful if he did not share some of his motivating forces in his acceptance speech but the speech is very revealing to what made him tick and how driven he was. Here's a link to Jordan's speech:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu9DQi...