Learning from Poker
Poker can teach you many life lessons, including about decision-making, patience, risk, controlling your emotions, and strategy.
To excel at poker, you must be able to make decisions based on incomplete information and continuously adjust your strategy based on new information and changing circumstances. What looked like a good starting hand can often change with the next card. You may have to throw away a hand like AA that a moment before seemed like a sure money maker. Poker can also teach you about managing risk and weighing potential outcomes, including the value of holding on to the chips you already have. Folding to re-raise means giving up your sunk costs, but keeping the chips you have not yet committed.
Importantly, poker requires patience and discipline. You must be selective about which hands to play and you must wait for the right opportunities. There is nothing worse than going card dead in a cash game or tournament. But without the patience to wait for the right opportunity the frustration of not getting good hands can lead to bad decisions and squandering a better opportunity later. Following a bad beat, a cooler hand, or just not getting hands at all, without emotional self-control tilting or impulsiveness can lead to avoidable losses.
Add probability calculations and strategic thinking about your opponent’s motivations, tendencies and positioning, and poker can teach you skills useful in negotiating a business deal or managing personal relationships.
While there are many strategy games, few combine game and people reading strategies in the way poker does. Poker can be a valuable tool for teaching important life skills and helping you develop a strategic and disciplined approach to decision-making.
