This is a guest post by Gabriel Cabot.
For decades, Florida has been home to some of the best sports figures in the world.
Players like Tim Tebow, Corey Brewer and Patric Young come to mind. And the list of former Gators that made Olympic teams or made it to professionals is impressive.
In the last few years, however, new names, like Ebony Kenny, Jonathan Little and Jason Mercier have been added in a different type of sport: poker.
Jason Mercier – via: Cardplayer
Poker is by no means new to the state. Since the changes in the betting limits a couple of years ago, Florida has become an important poker stop for both recreational and professional players. BestBet Jacksonville and the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood are the biggest drivers in the state’s exploding poker scene.
UF has also played an active role in the state’s poker culture. Games can be found in the dorms, bars and frat houses, and UF students are frequent players at nearby BestBet.
Though not every player will go on to achieve the success of a Jason Mercier or Johnathan Westra, mastering the game of poker has tangible benefits.
The business world — from hedge funds to investment banks and tech companies — is filled with executives who are regular poker players. All say that the skills they learned and honed at the poker table are invaluable at their jobs.
Charles Nesson, a Harvard Law School professor known for a number of high-profile cases, including Daniel Ellsberg’s in the “Pentagon Papers” trail, founded the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society. Strategic poker-thinking courses are part of Nesson’s curriculum in business courses.
“Poker teaches people to think for themselves, it is a key component of individuality and a prime aspect of managing resources…” Nesson said. “As far as I’m concerned, it would be a better world if we all played poker.”
Via: Harvard
Author Greg Dinkin is another who touts the benefits of poker in not only in business but in life.
His book, “The Poker MBA,” deals with many of the traits common to the boardroom, as well as the poker table. Dinkin says that poker “builds the muscles of strategic thinking and emotional intelligence. Because emotion, fatigue and human nature play a role, it creates an environment that tests you and develops your skills faster and more efficiently than anything else.”
Poker Improves Your Cognitive Skills
When you boil most of our day-to-day interactions with others down to their essence, you will see that most of them are a negotiation.
Whether you are presenting your thesis, interviewing for a job or deciding where to go for a night out, you are in a negotiation.
Knowing what approach to take with the person sitting across from you is a fundament skill to be successful. Poker is not a card game; it is a people game that is played with cards. Playing poker quickly teaches you how to read your opponent in terms of personality type, aversion to risk and, yes, whether he has a strong or weak hand. It also teaches you the necessity of changing your strategy based on the mood and personality type of the person you are dealing with.
Poker Improves Your Math Skills
Via: Examined Existence
Though this may seem to be somewhat of a contradiction to the assertion that poker is a people game, the fundamentals of the game are mathematical.
You cannot win by making “good reads” alone — sometimes you have to showdown the winning hand. Many poker players will readily state that they are terrible at math. Yet if you listen to them talk about the game long enough you will notice that the conversation is filled with odds, probabilities, and statistics. The math of poker is essentially a by-product of playing the game and becomes almost second nature.
Embracing Your Poker Face
Others are constantly studying your verbal and non-verbal cues.
The concept of the “poker face” is somewhat exaggerated but does have a degree of validity. Poker players learn to control subconscious expressions and movements. They also learn to deal with what can sometimes be a roller coaster of emotions. Even when a poker player has a very strong hand, she will sometimes lose. Some players react so negatively to a “bad beat” that their judgment is impaired and they make bad decisions. In the poker world, this is called being on “tilt,” and other players will immediately take advantage of that player.
Things will not always go as they should at the poker table, the workplace or in social gatherings. How you react to negative events is more important than how you react to positive developments and impacts your decision making ability and how others view you.
Poker Improves Patience and Ability to Focus
Via: Animal-pics
Patience and keeping focused go hand-in-hand.
More than with any previous generation, we have become used to a steady stream of stimuli. According to some, this constant input has turned us into a generation stricken by attention deficit syndrome. While this is a bit overblown, the amount of distractions coupled with the normal stress of everyday life can be a hindrance. Good poker players learn to focus on what is happening at the table. They then use this information to help with later decisions.
Our inherent need for stimulus often leads to impatience.
A poker fact that many players fail to grasp is that most hands are simply unplayable. However they came to play and in their mind folding is not playing. Patience is a key skill in most aspects of life, especially in the business world.
Poker Encourages Relaxation and Improves Interaction with Others
When the various elements of poker are examined in isolation, it is easy to get the impression that the game can only be played if you are deadly serious the entire time.
Nothing can be further from the truth.
Not only is poker fun, but with most of the table talk being in a light-hearted vein, the poker table is a great way to meet and interact with people with incredibly diverse backgrounds and interests. Talk to any long time poker player and they can instantly name several lifelong friends they met at the poker table.
Featured photo courtesy of World Poker Fund
