Poker Can Make You a Better Businessman!

Poker is quite a popular strategy game that numerous people from various walks of life play and enjoy. The universal appeal of poker stems from the fact that the game is quite easy to learn. It is highly social recreation, provides great opportunities to earn some profits but also takes a lifetime of commitment. The parallels between success in poker and in business somewhat goes hand-in-hand. You can keep an eye on the tourneys that help you play poker online.

How is it so? That is because winning in poker is like winning in business. Both relies on identifying where you have a positive edge, trusting your instincts and measuring the odds. Learning to escape the ‘sunk cost trap’ and an ardent commitment to constantly learn and improve are few things related to Poker.

Learning to identify the positive edge:

Have you ever encountered a brilliant entrepreneur who has failed to succeed no matter how hard he tries? Or has it been the opposite? A seemingly inept entrepreneur who manages to succeed despite himself? Success in both business as well as poker depends on one common factor, being able to identify a situation in which you have a positive edge over your competitors. One refers pokers as “game selection”.

It is the art of finding a game in which you as the contender will have a great enough edge over your opponents to maximize the odds of winning at it. This is the same when it comes to business, it is your competitive advantage as a corporate entity that gives you an edge over your competitors and increases your chances making profits and being a success. This is where the similarity between a poker player and an entrepreneur exists as both of them must recognize that their competitive balance will change over time and what was a positive edge at some point in time, could now be a negative expected value situation.

Manage your measurements:

There is an old adage in business that says that one cannot manage what you do not measure. This rings true in both poker as well as business. It is critically important to calculate the odds and expectations in both the situations.

However, it is not always the case that the best poker players in the world are all math Olympiad champions! They succeed by learning from past experiences of the millions of hands they have played previously. They combine these experienced learning, with non-verbal cues they have observed and the understanding of odds into a situational analysis. This gives them an instinctual ability to make decisions.

In a similar way successful entrepreneurs often rely on their gut instinct which is driven by their intuitive thinking and the market knowledge when making important decisions in business. Simply pulling the gun on instinct is definitely a scary proposition, especially when high stakes are on the line. However, by doing so and learning from your mistakes you will be able to position yourself to leverage your industry expertise into masterful decisions.

Poker and business both offer unparalleled opportunities for making profits, for people who are positioned to capitalize on them. By applying these teachings of the poker table into your boardroom decision making, you as an entrepreneur can manage to navigate the trying economic times in business and position yourself for long-term success while you play poker online.