What is the most important asset that a
poker business has? This is a question that many companies have had to think
about as the industry of which we are part continues to streamline and
consolidate. But I think that some businesses are missing the point and getting
the answer to this fundamental question totally wrong.
You might say that the most important asset
a poker business has is the customers. After all, customers are the source of
the business’ revenue and keeping them happy is paramount. If a business loses
all of its customers, then there is no business left.
In reality a poker business’ customer base
is in constant flux as new players sign up and existing players lose their
money or get bored and leave. While there are of course customers who play regular
long sessions for years on end, such players are the exception rather than the
norm and represent only a small portion of the overall player pool.
The fact is, while you should obviously try
your best to keep your customers happy, if the business makes an unfortunate
mistake which upsets a lot of players, those players aren’t necessarily gone
forever. It's possible to win them back, or to gain new customers to replace
them. Customers are a very important, but ultimately replaceable asset.
Good staff, however, are not so easy to
replace, because good ‘poker guys’ are hard to find. Many of the people who are
genuine poker experts don’t want to turn an enjoyable hobby into a full-time
job, or perhaps they are making a good living from the game already and don’t
like the idea of a ‘nine to five life’. Maybe they don’t want to move to one of
the industry’s awkward locations, and would prefer to stay close to their
family and friends. The poker lifestyle is an intoxicating one and it’s not
easy to convince people to leave it.
But without poker expertise, a poker
business cannot possibly reach its full potential. It’s difficult to make the
right strategic decisions for the future of the business if you don’t have
anyone on the board that understands the game, and can anticipate the kind of
things that players will be looking for in the future. It’s impossible to make
good poker room management decisions, such as what kind of ring games to
spread, or what a tournament’s pay-out structure should be, or even what new
promotions to offer, without a strong understanding of basic poker principles.
Consequently, it never fails to distress me
when I hear that there are some companies in our industry that discourage their
employees from playing poker. I’ve heard of casinos that don’t allow their
dealers to play, and online poker providers that don’t allow any of their
employees to gamble at all, perhaps because of concerns that this may result in
problem gambling or other issues in their workforce.
This is utter madness. If you were a wine
producer, you wouldn’t expect your employees to be teetotal, despite the
obvious risks to productivity that come with alcohol. How on earth can you
actively encourage your staff to be ignorant of your product? If you make
decisions without poker expertise, then you will make decisions that are not
properly thought out because you don’t have all the information that you need. How
can you possibly know how your poker room compares to your competitors’ poker
room if your staff are not allowed to actually play poker? The truth is you
can’t, and this will show in a shoddy product with weak promotions and
sub-standard support, and cause your customers to become upset and lose respect
for the business. The end result for a company’s reputation and success will be
disastrous. Businesses that discourage their employees from playing poker will
never be at the top of the poker industry, it’s that simple.
In 2010, there have been some key instances
where having poker expertise has helped businesses to innovate or respond to a
problem quickly. Take the issue of short stacking, for example. Towards the end
of 2009 it became clear that this practice, once barely known but now
widespread, had changed the way No Limit Hold’em ring games were played online.
The resulting dissatisfaction among both professional and recreational players
was obvious and acute. The companies with the most poker expertise were able to
respond quickly by changing the buy-in structures of the games they offered,
and by choosing a new structure that addressed the issue effectively. Companies
with less knowledge and expertise took longer to react, chose a new structure
that didn’t satisfy players, or worse still, didn’t recognise that changes
needed to be made.
There is a tendency for poker businesses to
undervalue poker experts. It’s easy to see why, as many poker businesses were
founded by a small group of enthusiasts who found themselves short on business knowledge
as the company grew, and had to hire people with that knowledge in order to
keep themselves afloat. However, good businesspeople are much easier to find
than poker experts.
A good businessperson can come from any
other company. If you’re looking to hire a new head of accounting for example, you
simply advertise the position, knowing that the person you recruit doesn’t have
to have worked in the poker industry in order to do a good job. You might actively
choose somebody who had worked at one of the big accounting firms over somebody
who had worked for a poker company. There are lots of people out there that
have years of experience in business in general and can do a very good job as
long as their role is completely isolated from the poker side of the business.
Poker experts however come from a very
small segment of the population. They are geographically disparate and
difficult to recruit. A poker expert is like a diamond – rare and difficult to
obtain, but extremely valuable. While many poker experts have little to no
experience working in a formal corporate environment, they do have a big upside
in that you can take a poker expert and teach them to become a businessperson.
The typical poker expert is smart enough to learn the skills they need to
succeed, either through formal education or on-the-job learning, and might
really thrive with a little encouragement and support. It’s much more difficult
to do things the other way around and turn a businessperson into a poker expert
– you just can’t expect to be able to instil the kind of passion for poker that
is needed to become an expert into somebody with no experience of the game.
As a poker business, you should recognise
the poker experts within your company, value them as much as they deserve, and
provide them with opportunities to develop their career and to grow as
businesspeople. After all, it’s easy to turn a bracelet winner into an MBA
graduate, but not so easy the other way round. If you don’t provide these
opportunities, then you risk losing your expertise, which is the lifeblood of
any poker business. A business without that lifeblood has no hope of survival
in these times of tough competition. Undervalue your experts at your peril!
This article was published in InsidePokerBusiness, Jan-Feb 2011
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