6 Poker Skills You Can Use in Everyday Life

It’s often said that poker is a game of skill rather than luck, and it’s easy to see why. Good poker players and professionals develop a combination of skills that help them win and minimize losses that amateur or casual players have no idea about.

Whilst some of these skills can only be applied to poker, there are plenty that can cross over into everyday life. Let’s take a look at what they are and how they can make a difference in your day-to-day.

Focus

In poker, the entire game can change on a single card. Often, this can happen in just a split second, meaning you need to be eagle-eyed from the start of the game to the very end.

By focusing and paying attention to what’s going on around them, the best poker players can sometimes work out or deduce the hands that other players have, or are trying to build, and can change their strategy accordingly so that they can win the hand.

Learning to focus at the poker table will help you when it comes to your professional life. Being able to find and hone ways to drown out all the noise we’re all surrounded with 24 hours a day, seven days a week will give you an edge over your colleagues and competitors alike.

Patience

A large part of poker is simply sitting and waiting for just the right moment. Poker players often find that they spend 80% of the game folding, just waiting patiently for the right cards to be played so they can make their move.

Patience is key when it comes to playing poker.

Practicing the art of patience, professionally and personally, helps you achieve your long-term goals by trusting that things simply take time. You understand that becoming CEO of your company won’t happen overnight, but if you put in the effort consistently for years, it will eventually pay dividends in the future.

Money Management

Even if your hand is strong, in poker there’s always a possibility that you will lose to a slightly stronger hand.

This is where bankroll management comes in. A good poker player knows exactly when to make a shot, and for how much, to avoid overextending themselves and walking away with nothing.

Poker players can easily use this skill when it comes to managing their own finances. Knowing how much you earn each month relative to how much you spend is vital to being able to budget and save.

Reading People

Regardless of whether you’re a newbie to poker or an experienced player, other players will always try to bait you into making a move that’s not in your best interest, usually by manipulating your emotions.

An experienced poker player, however, is able to see through these manipulations, and not only not fall for them, but even potentially use it against the other player(s).

There’s a skill to recognizing classic poker emotions — fear, excitement, anger, frustration, doubt, determination, elation (among many others) — and this crosses over into real life too. Once you recognize those telltale signs, you’ll get better at reading people in general, and have the ability to alter your actions accordingly.

Making the Most of Everything

When faced with losing anything, most people react the same way: “Why is this happening to me?” or “This is their fault, not mine”.

Poker players, however, understand that not every hand they’re dealt with is going to be a winning one. In fact, they’re probably going to lose many of them.

But what poker players frequently do, if only subconsciously, is try to turn a bad hand into at least a mediocre one. They might not win the pot, but they can at least make it so they can win next time.

Having this sort of outlook on life is applicable to every aspect of your life, from how you handle a disagreement with a work colleague, a breakup, or even a loss in the family. Every bad situation can be turned into a more or somewhat positive one, even if it's at a stretch.

Decision Making

Much like life, a game of poker is a series of choices. In poker, however, decisions often need to be made fast, with everybody pressuring you to make your decision as quickly as possible to keep the game rolling, especially when playing online poker games on social poker sites like Global Poker.

The best poker players have mastered the art of making split-second decisions in high-pressure environments that are both cold and calculating. In other words, they can very quickly make the decision that maximizes their odds of winning.

This is often second nature to poker players, and many even feel at home making these kinds of decisions.

Much like poker, life is full of high stakes, high-pressure decisions that need to be made quickly, whether that’s a person on the train for their number, or when buying something you may or may not need.

By mastering the art of decision making, poker players can improve their own lives as well as those around them.

Poker is one of those games loved by gentlemen all across the world. Poker players, whether amateur or professional, see the world in a different light.

By playing poker, players gain a number of skills which can help them in all aspects of their lives.

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