How Playing Poker Sharpens Other Life Skills
Do your friends and family think you are playing too much poker online? Perhaps you are if it interferes with work, school or personal relationships. On the other hand, if you are playing during your spare time, perhaps making some money or just playing for free, then your poker game is improving your life in several ways.
Next time someone questions why you like to play so much poker, give these reasons:
* Poker forces you to focus and concentrate your thinking. You have to observe what is going on in every hand and remember what has happened in previous betting rounds. It sharpens your short-term memory and powers of observation.
* Poker analysis relies on some basic math skills. When you play poker seriously, you have to calculate probability and pot odds using multiplication and subtraction. It will make you quicker with numbers in other aspects of your life too.
* Whenever you play poker, you sometimes have to gamble with risk. You learn how to weight risk vs. reward to make rational decisions on what actions to take. That is a useful skill for any life scenario.
* Poker is a game about people, so you have to be observant of others and what they do. It will help you get insight into other peoples’ thought processes and motivations.
* Serious poker players continually strive for improvement and that means examining your own shortcomings and weaknesses so you can play a better game. Enhanced self-awareness will help you be more positive in other areas of your life too including work and personal relationships.