Annie Duke, professional poker player on the business lessons of Texas Hold’em
✓ In poker and in business look for patterns. How do opponents behave in comfortable and uncomfortable situations. Gather data so you can predict.
✓ Understand how opponents perceive you.
“If people are perceiving me to be too conservative, then I’ll play in an incautious manner until they readjust their perception.”
✓ Bluff sometimes in adversarial roles, but never in a partnership. People will suspect you’re untrustworthy.
✓ Most decisions are mathematical. Take more risk when the return is huge. Take less risk when it’s small. Know the pot size.
✓ You can’t always be right. It’s about being right often enough.
“Great poker players free themselves from the worry of being wrong.”
✓ Business is not always fair. The person who does the best job doesn’t always get promoted. It’s more like poker. You can put your money in with aces and your opponent has fives. You win that pot 82% of the time, but the 18% happens.
✓ There are things you have control over and things that you don’t. When you have a bad outcome, analyze the decision and try to figure out if you did something wrong.
“If it’s out of your control, don’t get tilted, which means emotionally upset. That’s when we make poor decisions.”
✓ Make decisions in your self interest, but self interest is not being overly greedy in the short run. Those on a good streak say, “I’m the best player in the world. Look at me, I’m so wonderful.” Those on a bad streak shift blame to luck or a scapegoat. Neither attitude is helpful.
✓ Take time off when an extended bad streak affects decisions.
✓ Advice for women in business: If men think you’re dumb, let them think so. Use it to your advantage.
“Women spend too much time trying to prove themselves instead of saying, ‘I hope everybody underestimates me.’”
✓ Advice for men: If you see a woman at the table, assume she’s not that skilled. But the minute she puts her first chip in the pot, start updating your opinion.
✓ Smart, successful executives who try something new have to set their egos aside and say, “I’m obviously a very talented individual. I could become good at this, but I have to be willing to learn. I have to open my mind to the possibility that I’m wrong and to listen to other people.” That’s hard for someone who’s gotten to the top.
Did you know?
• Annie Duke was one month from defending her Ph.D. in psychology when she proposed marriage. While living in “romantic poverty” she began playing poker to pay the mortgage. Won $70,000 in her first month.
• Has won more than $4 million in tournament poker. Only woman to have won the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions, and the NBC National Poker Heads-Up Championship. Once won a televised championship in rock-paper-scissors.
• Advanced to the finals of Celebrity Apprentice, where Donald Trump fired her rather than comedian Joan Rivers.
• Does corporate speaking and consulting on the behavior of decision making. Authored Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t have the Facts.
• She’s 53, married and the mother of four.
Del Jones has edited Advice from the Top: 1001 Bits of Business Wisdom, which includes a chapter on Annie Duke. Jones has also written the historical novel, The Cremation of Sam McGee set in the 1898 heyday of yellow journalism. The narrator is a fabricating reporter working for William Randolph Hearst during the Spanish-American War and Klondike gold rush. Read the first chapter of The Cremation of Sam McGee here.
Anyone who purchases The Cremation of Sam McGee and posts a customer comment on Amazon will be sent a free autographed copy of Advice from the Top. To claim the free book, send your mailing address via the contact section of Jones’ website.
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