Jo Living explains why thinking like a poker player can help you navigate your working day: negotiating like a pro, reframing risk, and playing the long game
A High-Stakes Moment
Picture this. It’s Morocco, 2016. Sun-drenched beaches and a good book were all I wanted. A last relaxing holiday with my boyfriend before our baby arrived. Adrenaline-fueled gambling in a smokey casino was absolutely the last thing on my pregnant mind, but my boyfriend had other ideas. He wanted to enter a large poker tournament in Agadir, and he wasn’t letting up. Having only been learning for six months, I took my book along, fully expecting an early exit. But sometimes, life deals you a hand you never see coming.
Eight hours later, just as the sun was coming up, I had just beaten 200 men to win my first international poker tournament.
Thanks to scenes in popular culture, poker conjures up images of groups of gangsters in basements. In nearly all the major movie scenes (Lock Stock, Ocean’s Eleven, etc.) they’re playing 5-card draw – a game of bluff with 5 private cards. Skip forward to Casino Royale, though, and the game has evolved to playing Texas Hold ‘Em – a game with only 2 private cards and up to 5 face-up ‘community cards’ – which makes it much less a game of bluff and more a game of strategy and statistics. Poker is a game played by men but absolutely made for women. Poker is about emotional intelligence, reading the room, knowing your value, and timing your contribution. The poker table, it turns out, is the perfect training ground for corporate decision-making at the boardroom table.
Player after player had raised the bet, trying to bully me to fold my hand. But I realised that if I could keep my cool and pick my moments, I could use their aggression to my advantage. The first few hours were a blur of shaky calls and some lucky turns. The last hour was a masterclass in how to use your opponent’s force against them. In work and in poker, if you’re not going out on a branch, you’re never going to get the best fruit.
Bringing Women to the Table
As a woman working first in investment banking and more recently in tech and startups, I’ve often found myself navigating spaces that can feel similarly unwelcoming at first glance. But what I’ve learned – both from poker and my career – is that there’s space at the table for anyone willing to lean in.
Like traditional stereotypes of leadership, the poker table needs a rebrand and more diversity: 9% of FTSE CEOs are women, also only 5% of professional poker players. So, predictably, I was disappointed to find that my own home games lacked diversity. Keen to bring more women in, I started teaching friends poker and inviting them along. I saw them rapidly grow in confidence at the table and in their everyday lives – closing client deals and landing promotions at work and asserting boundaries in their home lives too.
My friend Caroline, after a particularly successful client negotiation, proudly told me, “I realised I had aces, and there was no way I was folding.”
And that’s how my business was born. I created an immersive team-building experience that isn’t so much about poker, but about teasing out essential business skills such as negotiation, navigating risk and reward, and performing under pressure, using the poker table as a proxy for the boardroom table.
Negotiation: Creating Win-Win Outcomes
Everyone thinks poker is about bluff, bravado, and bullying, but it’s actually about deep listening, reading the room, and knowing your value. Similarly, I used to think negotiation was about winning, but I’ve learned it’s about understanding people’s position, letting the small hands go, and playing the long game.
As an Assistant, no doubt you negotiate all day long. Diplomacy, balancing competing needs, diary juggles, and choosing suppliers – you might not think of it as negotiation, but it is.
Within a company setting, negotiation is rarely “I win and you lose.” More commonly it’s about teams coming together, wanting the best possible outcome for the company, but they all have incomplete information. Everyone’s playing with a different hand.
Your executive may want that business class flight, but the budget holder limits it to premium economy. Two senior stakeholders want the same time slot with your executive – who gets priority, and how do you reposition the other without damaging the relationship? You’re booking a venue – do you opt for the best rate or the flexible cancellation policy? In business, everything is a negotiation.
In the workplace and in life, you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.
Negotiation Tips
1. Watch every move
In poker, we notice people’s patterns and read their ‘tells’. This will help you know which hand to play. If something really matters to your executive, you can pick up on the signals and know that this is the hand you need to go all-in on.
2. Know your value
Time your contribution and assert your value to make every move count. Poker isn’t actually about bluffing. When you have a strong hand to play, make sure you are assertive and get yourself heard. This could be in supplier negotiation or asking for that pay rise!
3. You don’t need to be in every hand
Professional poker players only play about 20% of their starting hands. There’s no shame in folding when you have bad cards. Know when to walk away. Then pick your moment when the odds are in your favour, and make it count.
4. Step out of egocentric thinking
In poker, you don’t just play your own cards, you imagine what card your opponent has. By following people’s patterns and behaviours, you can figure out what hand they have to a surprising degree of accuracy. Likewise, in business, take a moment to figure out what matters to people and how much they’re willing to give.
Reframing Risk
Risk is often thought of as something to reduce, manage, transfer, or eliminate. In a business sense, people talk about risk reduction. But in life, if you’re not going out on a limb, you’re not getting the best fruit.
In life and in poker, it’s important to reframe risk as an opportunity.
This isn’t to say that you go ‘all-in’ on every hand. But equally, if you fold every single hand, you’ll never build your chipstack. You’ve got to be in it to win it, right?
This is where a poker player would look at statistics, strategy, and expected returns. In a poker hand, you’re rarely guaranteed to win, but you do need to be in the hands where you have a strong likelihood of winning.
For example, think about a job advertisement where you possess 4 out of 10 of the ‘essential criteria’. Probably not worth the effort of applying, right? Good. Protect your chips (save your time). But what if you have 8 out of 10? Now you need to be seeing that as risk-weighted returns. What is the return on investment? The expected return? It doesn’t mean a guaranteed win, but you need to know when to play your cards.
Fight, Flight, or Freeze
There’s nothing quite like the adrenaline of a poker table to trigger your stress response. And your default response of flight, flight, or freeze directly relates to raise, fold, or call.
I once saw a beginner fold a pair of Aces (‘pocket rockets’), the single best starting hand in poker. Why? Because someone raised the bet before her. She knew she had a killer hand, but panicked, and was so overwhelmed by her stress response that she preferred to walk away from victory than fight for it.
When has this happened to you? Maybe not at the poker table, but the familiar prickly heat in your cheeks, the sweaty palms, the knotted stomach. Poker players commonly go ‘on tilt’. This is where after losing a hand, they continue to play badly because they can’t stop thinking about the previous loss. Knowing your default stress response is the first step to mastering it, and you don’t need to be a poker pro to do it.
Poker teaches you that success rarely comes from playing every hand perfectly. It comes from reading the room, managing pressure, and understanding people. Assistants do this every day. And just like at the poker table, your success will come from playing the hand you have with confidence, strategy, and composure.
| Identify your poker personality below or visit www.aceshighlondon.com to take their quiz! What’s your poker personality? The Jackal (Fight) A natural hunter – decisive, proactive, and comfortable taking the lead. The jackal gets the action going, raises the stakes, and isn’t afraid to challenge when needed. When backed into a corner, it comes out fighting. Under pressure, this can become overly aggressive, escalating conflict or pushing too fast. At its best, the jackal drives action and progress; the skill is knowing when to temper force with patience and collaboration. The Mouse (Flight) Alert, adaptable, and emotionally intelligent, the mouse reads the room quickly and avoids unnecessary risk. It can de-escalate tension and maintain harmony where others might inflame it. Under stress, though, they can become timid – darting for cover at the first sign of trouble, struggling to assert value, and folding too quickly in conflict. At its best, the mouse protects relationships and spots danger early; the growth is in stepping forward when it matters. The Elephant (Freeze) Calm, thoughtful, and highly observant, the elephant values depth and accuracy. It gathers information carefully and sees what others miss. Under pressure, however, they can be unwilling to take decisive action – requiring more and more information before making their move. They delay decisions, increase the cost of every negotiation, and can miss out on golden opportunities. At its best, the elephant brings considered strategic thinking; the challenge is knowing when you have enough to make your move. |
