Business Owners Should Be Encouraging their Employees to Play Poker – Here’s Why

As a business owner, you may have tried a number of different techniques to get the best out of your employees and have them performing at their maximum level. In recent years, companies that have a heavy focus on client relations and building strong bonds have looked to Neuro-linguistic Programming techniques to learn ways to create a better rapport and secure those all-important deals. These methods have often proved fruitful, but not everyone will be willing to study in a new field of expertise. There could be a more enjoyable way of boosting your employees’ functionality in a number of different ways.

There have been a lot of studies on the benefits of playing poker, and the research has come up with some interesting findings. There is now absolutely no question that poker is predominantly a game of skill, and by practicing and playing more, people can improve. Researchers from the University of Chicago analyzed the World Series of Poker and found that highly skilled players had an average return on investment of over 30%, while novices had a negative ROI of 15%. But how exactly do the experts like Phil Helmuth, Daniel Negreanu, and Phil Ivey continue to dominate poker circuits?

Professionals like these have to draw upon a number of key skills to ensure continued success, and these are all attributes which would also be useful in a business environment. Players need to be able to read their opponents. They need to be able to suss out whether they are bluffing, and also work out whether they will fold to a bluff. To do this they have to be adept at reading body language, and often have to create rapport with players to make them feel at ease. They must also be able to control their own body language, and give away only the signals that they mean to. These skills are perfectly transferable to a sales pitch, or when meeting with new clients.

A lot of your employees probably already play poker online, and you may be thinking that they can’t develop these psychological skills in that setting. For that reason you could organise a monthly poker night which would also double up as a team-building event. Even so, online poker play should also be encouraged because this is where players can improve their strategy and math ability. In an online setting, players come up against hundreds of different opponents who all play in different ways. At 888poker, for instance, there are over 10 million users. Business owners can read more about the fastest growing poker site in the industry, and realize that playing in this kind of setting will help to improve employees’ money management and strategy attributes.

Above all, playing poker is fun. If, as a business owner, you were to suggest a monthly team-building event in the form of a poker night, your employees would enjoy it, and they would also be able to develop some key business skills. They would also probably think that you’re a pretty cool boss for suggesting it.