All In: How learnings from the Poker Table have helped me in business (and life)

I love the “sport” of poker, and my favorite game is Texas Hold'em . I’ve found that poker can be a good metaphor for many things in life. Success at poker is based on a mix of math, logic, strategy, intuition, observation, and a variety of people-related skills. Plus, admittedly, some luck. As such, the skills I’ve developed playing poker have actually been relevant in other aspects of my professional and personal life.

Skeptical? Well, here are some things I’ve learned from a few decades of playing poker:

Choosing your Game: There’s a famous saying in poker, “If you can’t spot the sucker at the table, then it’s probably you.” What that means is that you should be selective about the games you play in. Avoid tables in which you’re going to be at a competitive disadvantage or in over your head. And if you aren’t able to figure this out after observing the table for a while, it probably means that you’re not going to do well if you sit down. It’s better to find a different game in which you think you’ll have an edge based on your skills and experience. Same goes in business when deciding what type of career to pursue, which markets to enter, etc.

Knowing The Odds and The Outs : Because the cards are sorted in a random order for each hand, poker is a game of statistics and probabilities. There are the knowns (i.e. the cards that you have in your hand or you’ve seen on the board) and the unknowns (i.e., the next cards to be dealt from the deck and the cards your opponents are holding). Success at poker is largely about understanding the probability of how strong your hand is at any given time relative to the other players, and the likelihood that your hand will become relatively stronger/weaker as more cards are dealt. From that, you can estimate your chances of winning the hand, and how many chips you’d win if you do (ie your ROI). These skills are also essential in business, as we decide where to invest and how the probability of success changes over time as we learn new facts.?

Assessing Decision Quality rather than Outcomes: There is a lot of randomness in poker. Sometimes you read the situation perfectly, make a smart play and lose because a card gets dealt that helps your opponent. And sometimes you make a dumb play, but get lucky and win. Over time, your winning percentage is a good indicator of your skill, but if you judge every decision based on outcome, you’ll often draw the wrong conclusion since outcomes are impacted by randomness and exogenous factors. So you should evaluate your decisions on the basis of if they were logical given what was knowable at the time, and if you played the hand the smartest way possible. The same logic generally applies when assessing business decisions and team performance.?

Know’in when to Hold’em and Know’in when to Fold’em: This is a line for Kenny Rogers’ most famous song - yes, I’m a country music fan also. It means that you have to know when to fold a strong hand, even after you’ve put lots of chips in the pot, when you sense that the situation has changed and you’re likely going to lose and don’t want to compound the loss. And also when you need to stand firm, even when you know there’s risk. We’ve had to make some big decisions at Uber over time -- exiting businesses and markets when we realized they weren’t going to work out, and continuing to invest into some very attractive opportunities, even when it was challenging to do so. The key is to assess each situation, and make the highest ROI decision.?

Looking for Patterns: If you’re paying attention, you’ll start to find that your opponents often play in predictable ways, and a key to success is to figure out those patterns and capitalize on them. Some players play loose and bluff a lot, and you need to counter that with patience and opportunistic moves. Other opponents play timidly, and the key is to keep applying pressure to win pots. Just like in most competitive business markets, it’s important to truly know your competition’s strengths and weaknesses, and thus how to compete most effectively.?

Going All In: Sometimes you get dealt a hand that you know is likely to be the strongest at the table, even if there is still some uncertainty or risk. When that happens, you want to win as many chips as you can, and the smart play is often to push all your chips in. Poker players call it going-all-in. It’s risky, but has a lot of upside when you’re right, so it is a strategy to use sparingly. At Uber, there’s been times when we’ve seen massive untapped opportunities, and made very big investments, even before all the variables were fully known, yielding some huge successes.?

Dealing with Ambiguity: In every hand of poker, there are unknowns, risks, red-herrings, bluffs and diversions. That’s what keeps the came interesting, but also what can make it maddening. Good players seek to use math and pattern recognition to reduce the uncertainty, but also realize that a certain amount of ambiguity is part of the game and needs to be embraced. It can even be turned to your advantage. The same goes for most of the challenging and complex situations you’ll encounter in your professional life.?

Maintaining Poise Under Pressure: Poker can be a nerve wracking game, with dramatic swings of fortune, unpredictable cards, eccentric opponents and brutal beats. The best players are those that can stay calm and focused on calculating the odds, analyzing opponents, and making good decisions under pressure. That’s true of many things in life, including work, career and even family. There will be times of anxiety and stress, and knowing how to manage this is important to both your success and your health. There’s no secret formula to how best to do this, and different approaches work for different people.

Playing Ethically: You’ve probably seen enough movies to know that cheating, hustling and other assorted transgressions are not uncommon in poker -- at least back in the Wild West days. Cheaters can sometimes appear very outwardly successful. But over time, they usually get caught, barred from future games and go broke -- or if they cheat the wrong people, suffer even worse consequences! Success in the long term is about building a reputation as a tough but honest player, with a reputation for integrity.

There’s a famous saying about Texas Hold’em: It takes five minutes to learn and a lifetime to master. That’s one of the things I like most about the game. I feel like I’m always learning something new and developing my skills. And I think that’s true in most areas of professional development and career success. So shuffle-em-up!