Poker is the new golf

Sarah Rice

Sitting in a client office’s last week I heard one of the sales-droids seduce a prospective customer into a game of poker.

There was a discussion about whether it was for money (deep masculine laugher), whether any women were playing – turns out this was a (chortle, chortle) night-with-boys game and (much hilarity) what kind of whisky would be on offer.

“What the hell…?” I was thinking. “What is this? A bromance?” And it suddenly dawned on me. Poker is the new golf.

And y’know, It makes sense. Its perfect for those who want to ‘build relationships’ with people they work with, but aren’t high enough up the corporate hierarchy to take a Friday off to ‘network’. 

Poker has a lot going for it.  You don’t need daylight, you don’t need to buy any expensive kit, you don’t need to know that much to play and have fun and you aren’t limited to a foursome. Add a bit of competition, some Patron (the new Jagermeister) and I think we have the makings of the credit-crunch networking dream.

Poker has an edgy-glam feel. You get the feeling there are passwords, smoky-eyed girls, endless shots of hard liquor (yes – when playing poker everyone uses the word liquor), sweaty losers and calm collected winners.

For not much money/ matchsticks you can make friends and influence people. All the while discussing that big job…

I guess this all means one thing - its time to trade up to a better set of clubs.

• 2009/09/03
• permalink
• comments (4)
• trackbacks (0)

  Bookmark this on ... BlinkBits BlinkList Blogmarks Buddymarks CiteUlike Connotea del.icio.us Digg it FeedMarker feedmelinks Furl Give a Link Gravee igooi Lilisto Linkagogo Linkroll ma.gnolia Maple.nu Netvouz Onlywire RawSugar reddit Scuttle Shadows Simpy Spurl tagtooga TalkDigger Wink Yahoo MyWeb