Famous in her own right for being one of the top female poker pros in the world, sister of Howard Lederer, Annie Duke has found her celebrity status temporarily augmented due to her recent appearance on American reality TV show, ‘Celebrity Apprentice’. Hosted by Donald Trump, the show is designed to find the candidate with the most business acumen worthy of a top role in cutting edge commerce. Despite coming second to Joan Rivers and earning herself a bit of a reputation as a backstabber, Annie was noted for applying her poker playing skills to the boardroom in a calculated, strategic manner.
From bets to boardrooms
In her interview with USA TODAY, Duke made a number of parallels between the approach required to be successful at poker and that essential for business. It’s no surprise to find a lot of overlap.
Here are some key similarities:
1. Reading people. In the same way as it is essential to know your opponents at the felt, it is crucial to do the same thing in business if you want to succeed. Knowing their tells, how they perceive you and so on directly affects how you make your next bet or action in business. You can only effectively manipulate someone if you know how to push their buttons. The social skills required in forcing a raise out of a player are the same in getting someone to do something for you, control a situation or force a wrong move at the boardroom table.
2. Financial acumen. Poker players are very good at measuring risk and assessing return on investment. A key talent to possess when it comes to business.
3. Get a thick skin. The abuse that can occur at the poker table could reduce a man to tears, or at the very least induce tilt. Business gets pretty nasty too. When you have a lot of people out for themselves, it is fairly naive to think you’re all friends. Letting negative comments bounce off you and not beating yourself up if you are wrong is a positive trait that transcends any kind of table, whether that’s boardroom, poker or kitchen table.
4. Bluffing. While bluffing can work well in poker, Duke points out in her interview that it only works because you have to be right more often then you are wrong and not get found out in the latter in the business context. Constant bluffing will only expose you as being untrustworthy, unreliable or a fraud.
5. Use underestimations. People in jobs around the world moan at being underestimated. Duke relates this to her experience at the poker table saying that people often think she will not be a very skilled player because she is a woman. In fact, she reckons she’s earned a hell of a lot of money from this misjudgement. Duke flies the female flag saying women in business shouldn’t moan about being underestimated but use it to their advantage.
Poker and business do appear to have a lot of similarities. Following the poker boom, Duke’s stint as an apprentice has probably served to lend more credence to the genuine skill involved in the game. Poker players combine a classic mix of business strengths, they tend to be confident, strategic, empathic, perceptive, mathematical, calculated, manipulative, the list goes on. A very different description to the down and out casino bum a poker player was once made out to be. Perhaps having ‘poker player’ on your CV may not be such a bad thing after all.
Read the full USA TODAY interview with Annie Duke at http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/advice/2009-07-19-annie-duke-advice-from-the-top_N.htm