7 Things Poker Teaches You About Life
7 Things Poker Teaches You About Life
After playing poker professionally now for over 3 years, I have seen a lot of things happen. I've seen some very good times and some awful times. However, over these 3 years I have learnt a lot about life in general. Below are the 7 biggest things poker has taught me about myself.
#1 - You can do everything right, and still lose. In poker you try to make the correct play every time, however, due to the large amount of luck involved, you can play perfectly and still lose on any given day. Much like in life, you can try your best but you can sometimes come up short due to no fault of your own.
#2 - Poker teaches you how to look at everything in life in terms of expected value. To become a good poker player you need to look at every single decision independent of all the noise around it. Poker teaches you to just think about the decisions and get those right. You will see other people around you get swayed by short term luck/variance or other types of noise. Poker players make life decisions based on EV.
#3 - Poker has taught me that emotions cloud judgement. When you lose a big pot, it takes a lot of skill to be able to control your emotions, the majority of people tilt in some way after losing a series of big pots. Some playersdon't tilt in a big way, but any presence of emotion can effect the way you do something. Just like any crucial spot in life, if your focused on what your doing your gonna doa lot better than if you have emotions clouding your mind.
#4 - Poker has taught me its about the long run. There is so much luck in poker that you can loose for a very long time, even when your playing "perfect" poker. Many things in life require a large commitment to besuccessful. Poker has reaffirmed this to me. If your confident in your strategy, keep plugging away and things will work eventually.
#5 - Poker has taught me the importance of being humble. When people think about luck in poker they always thing about getting unlucky, the flip side can occur also. If you play for long enough, you will get long periods of hands where you feel like your unbeatable, or every single hand you play, you win. When these times happen you need to remain humble and realize that its good luck. If youdon't, when you fall back to earth things are gonna hurt a lot.
#6 - Poker has taught me the importance of never giving up. Things can go bad, you can get 2 outed on the river for 3/4 of your chips in a tournament. As long as you more than 1 chip left in the game, there is some small chance that you can come back and win. Its too easy to just give up, never give up, play until your last chip is gone!
#7 - Poker has taught me that people are inherently greedy. Poker, like many other things in business and life is a game that thrives on greed. You gotta know when the table gets bad, its time to get up. Leaving a tough table with your winnings is much better than losing it all and going home broke.
After playing poker professionally now for over 3 years, I have seen a lot of things happen. I've seen some very good times and some awful times. However, over these 3 years I have learnt a lot about life in general. Below are the 7 biggest things poker has taught me about myself.
#1 - You can do everything right, and still lose. In poker you try to make the correct play every time, however, due to the large amount of luck involved, you can play perfectly and still lose on any given day. Much like in life, you can try your best but you can sometimes come up short due to no fault of your own.
#2 - Poker teaches you how to look at everything in life in terms of expected value. To become a good poker player you need to look at every single decision independent of all the noise around it. Poker teaches you to just think about the decisions and get those right. You will see other people around you get swayed by short term luck/variance or other types of noise. Poker players make life decisions based on EV.
#3 - Poker has taught me that emotions cloud judgement. When you lose a big pot, it takes a lot of skill to be able to control your emotions, the majority of people tilt in some way after losing a series of big pots. Some playersdon't tilt in a big way, but any presence of emotion can effect the way you do something. Just like any crucial spot in life, if your focused on what your doing your gonna doa lot better than if you have emotions clouding your mind.
#4 - Poker has taught me its about the long run. There is so much luck in poker that you can loose for a very long time, even when your playing "perfect" poker. Many things in life require a large commitment to besuccessful. Poker has reaffirmed this to me. If your confident in your strategy, keep plugging away and things will work eventually.
#5 - Poker has taught me the importance of being humble. When people think about luck in poker they always thing about getting unlucky, the flip side can occur also. If you play for long enough, you will get long periods of hands where you feel like your unbeatable, or every single hand you play, you win. When these times happen you need to remain humble and realize that its good luck. If youdon't, when you fall back to earth things are gonna hurt a lot.
#6 - Poker has taught me the importance of never giving up. Things can go bad, you can get 2 outed on the river for 3/4 of your chips in a tournament. As long as you more than 1 chip left in the game, there is some small chance that you can come back and win. Its too easy to just give up, never give up, play until your last chip is gone!
#7 - Poker has taught me that people are inherently greedy. Poker, like many other things in business and life is a game that thrives on greed. You gotta know when the table gets bad, its time to get up. Leaving a tough table with your winnings is much better than losing it all and going home broke.
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