Auditors Are No Match For Card Players!

By day, I am an IT Manager for an aluminum company. The company I work for takes technology security and compliance very seriously, and every so often, our head office sends internal auditors to my office in Atlanta to make sure we are on the up and up. Right now, we are in the middle of a two-week marathon audit, and I am so ready for it to be over.

One interesting realization I have come to during their visit, believe it or not, is that as I have begun to play cards more seriously these audits have become easier to endure. For anyone who has been involved in an audit, we know that some auditors use very interesting techniques to extract information. Some of them are your best buddies, some of them are stern and authoritative, and some of them are timid so that you feel sorry for them, oddly enough. The problem is, if you say too much to an auditor, they latch on to information that they find interesting and then they sink in their claws, asking for documentation of every detail about the subject. The bottom line is that they are in your office to find problems with your processes. If there are major problems with the way things are being done, they will find those things very quickly. Once you are 'out of the woods', an audit soon becomes an exercise in nit-picking and time wasting. Of course, anything they find, no matter how insignificant, can rarely be argued effectively enough to result in the finding's dismissal from the final audit report. To add insult to injury, the dirty laundry is then distributed after the audit to every IT executive across the company. What a drag.

Poker has helped me become more economical with my communication in these situations. While I firmly believe that audits are necessary to make sure things are being run the way they should, I believe with equal conviction that any auditor can walk into an office such as mine and determine within a day whether or not an IT environment is generally secure and compliant. So.. if they chose to spend two weeks chasing non-existent problems in my office, I pledge to not give any leads or information unless I am forced to turn over my cards!

My opponents on the felt are auditors of my poker game. They use every tactic under the sun to get information from me -- they talk, they stare, they boast, they stand up, they wave their arms, they ask if I have a king, they ask me if I will show my hand if they fold... you name it. Just like auditors in my office, they can forget it. I will show my cards when I have to, and only when I have to.

I think this will be a challenge at the World Series. It will be difficult not to make friendly conversation at the table, especially if I am seated with top pros. I am convinced, however, that if I can handle a two-week IT audit, I can keep my trap shut during a 3-day poker tournament. As painful as this couple of weeks has been, the bright side is that it has been unbelievably good practice!