Workplace Poker: Are You Playing the Game, or Just Getting Played?

In this career guide, Dan Rust teaches readers how to understand workplace dynamics and navigate career challenges strategically. The book uses poker as a metaphor for professional success, arguing that the most successful people don't rely on luck but instead prepare for inevitable setbacks and use smart strategies to manage them. Rust explains how to "play the game under the game"—recognizing unspoken rules, tells, and blind spots that affect career progression. He addresses how to succeed even when facing disadvantages like lacking prestigious credentials or connections. The book covers practical skills including identifying your own blind spots, strategic self-promotion, building likability, maintaining high energy, understanding workplace culture and human dynamics, managing difficult colleagues, and learning from career failures. Rust illustrates these concepts through real-world stories and provides focused exercises for self-reflection. Designed for talented, ambitious, and hardworking professionals who feel their careers are stalled, the book offers insight and strategies to turn adversity into advantage and transform struggle into strength.