When I started playing poker several years ago, I never would have thought that the game I loved to play would help me in by business career. Yet, I believe the skills that bring you success at the poker table can also bring you success in the board room!

The top 7 things I learned about business from poker are:

1. Table selection is key!
2. Bluffing
3. Bankroll management
4. Game strategy
5. Continual learning
6. Have fun
7. People skills

1. Table selection is key: Table selection is extremely important to a poker player and can make the difference between a winning and losing session. Similarly, in business plunging head first into the first opportunity you see can lead to wasted time, effort and money. Select your opportunities wisely.

2. Bluffing: Bluffing is absolutely required in order to be successful in poker. However, it can be one of the most difficult skills to master. In order to bluff, you must “act” strong when you have a weak hand and vice versa. This is usually accomplished through betting chips and managing your “tells”. In business, there are also times when you want to act strong when you are weak and act weak when you are strong.

3. Bankroll management: If you don’t manage your bankroll properly a bad run of cards could wipe you out. Thus, in poker, you must choose to play at limits that minimize your risk of going bankrupt. Similarly, businesses must manage their cash flow if they are to survive. You’ve all heard the saying: “Cash is king”.

4. Game strategy: All successful poker players are adept at applying important strategical concepts in their poker games. Knowing which hands to play and which to fold, stealing the blinds, slow-playing, bluffing – these are strategies poker players use to win money. Businesses must decide which markets to pursue, which products to sell, how to effectively market their services, etc.

5. Continual learning: The best of the best work hard on their poker games. They study thousands of hand histories (in the case of online players) to see where they went wrong. They keep up to date on the latest poker strategy books and the latest software such as SNG Wizard. Continual learning is also essential in business in order to respond to changing market conditions, implement the latest business strategies and products.

6. Have fun! I find poker to be relaxing and fun. There’s nothing like the thrill of taking down a huge pot in an all-in confrontation or making a huge semi-bluff on the turn. One of the main rewards of entrepreneurship is that it’s enjoyable – even if it’s a lot of work. In both business and poker, it’s a lot easier to be successful when you have fun and enjoy the game.

7. People skills: Reading your opponent’s “tells” isn’t the be all, end all of poker, but it should not be discounted either. Reading your opponents and projecting an image during a hand can make the difference between winning and losing. Likewise, people skills are extremely important to business people and entrepreneurs. The most successful business people are effective at managing, understanding and relating to their coworkers and employees.

Sit n Go tournaments (SNGs) have become very popular over the years and are somewhat different than cash games. The field of players is small and the payouts are fixed. The blinds become large (relative to the players stack sizes) very quickly.

Believe it or not, the decision making is much more simple than in other forms of poker. Particularly in the end game of a SNG where the decision on whether or not to play a hand boils down to: “Should I push all-in or should I fold?”Many of these decisions can be expressed acurately with mathematics… Sounds easy right? I know all of you are mathematical geniuses! Yeah right!

Well that is where software like SNGWiz comes into play. SNGWiz can help teach you when to push and when to fold. It will teach you about the factors that should influence your play like: the stack sizes, the number of opponents and the opponents calling ranges.

In my opinion, a program like SNGWiz is an absolute necessity for anyone who plays SNGs on a regular basis. The decisions you will face as a SNG player are complex and not always obvious or intuitive. SNGWiz can quantify each decision you make mathematically to determine whether or not it was the right one. I just want to repeat that this tool is absolutely invaluable to the SNG player.

Here’s how it works:

You can provide hand examples that are entered manually or you can feed in an entire SNG hand history. Then you assign opponent hand ranges and SNGWiz will determine the correct decision (push / fold) based on your inputs. This feature is valuable for reviewing your hand histories to see where you went wrong after the fact.

You can also operate SNGWiz in a quiz mode. You can specify stack sizes and blind ranges and the program will generate many scenarios for you to evaluate. You make a decision to push or fold in each situation and the program tells you immediately whether you were right or wrong. This kind of instantaneous feed back is incredibly valuable and really helps to shorten the learning curve.

Although the software is not free, it comes with a free 30 day trial so you can try it out to see if you like it. Although the program isn’t a “magic bullet”, it can really help improve your play around the bubble (when you’re getting close to being in the money), which is absolutely the most important aspect of SNG play.

You  can pick up a FREE trial copy of SNG Wiz here.