Life Lessons from Poker

An interesting occasion occured tonight at poker.  I was at a 2-3-5 $5-$200 spread limit game, max $200 buy in, I’d bought in for $200 and squandered $110 (leaving me with $90 for those who went to public schools).  I was in seat 2.

The button was in seat 3, and pre-flop, seat 6 made it $100 to go.  Seat 7 called leaving me to ponder my Ah5h.  I decided to call, thinking I had a little more than 30% and fooling myself into thinking I had pot odds.

The likeable Japanese guy to my left shows me privately pocket 7s and folds.  The dealer grabs his hand and turns it over, reporting “Show One, Show All”.

I said – hey, that was in error — I am all in, that information you revealed now benefits the two players left.  She says doesn’t matter, all are entitled to the same information.  I said – yes, they are but after the hand is over.

She said no, and I asked her to call the floor person.

The floor person, I’ll call him Fez (like the hat) said the rule is that any hand shown to one must be shown to all.

I fumed and that was that.  I ended up getting a 5, the other two were on AK/AJ and I ended up tripling up.

Later I got aces and slow played to triple up again.  Good fun.

I went over to my favorite shift manager, I’ll call him Montana Grizzly Adams, and asked him about it.  He said the floor person made the right call based on the rule.

I asked him to change the rule, so that if I am all in, the hand is shown after all play.

Montana looked at me straight on and said “Son, you manage people at your tech company – and maybe they are smart enough to get complex rules like that, but here, we’re lucky if they deal each player 2 cards!”.

And I thought about that.  Because Montana was right.  I constantly expect others to think like me, and be able to handle the things that I handle.  I expect them to do the high intellect, the mundane, the reporting, etc.  And too often, we ask folks to do things that they just aren’t equipped to do.

They say that great managers get ordinary people to do extraordinary things.  I need to figure out how to balance these things.  On the one hand, if you ask people to comply with high expectations – many will blow fuses.  I guess the trick is to set high goals but be satisifed with mediocre to good performance.

But whatever you do – don’t ask a poker dealer to think.