Everyone should learn to play poker. Playing poker teaches life skills. Playing poker gives a player immediate feedback for important life areas such as decision making, focus, and life management. On a lower level poker can teach anyone basic logic and math skills.
I have found and other poker players have also confirmed that the game of poker has changed or improved major areas of the rest of their lives too. What you learn at the poker table, or in some cases are forced to unlearn carries over into other parts of life that seem to be unrelated.
Decision making and poker go hand in hand. When you play poker, you have to make constant decisions about your hand. A poker hand is a good hand for one round of play, and the next time you are dealt the same hand you throw it away and are glad you did. During the play of the hand, other players actions cause you to evaluate your hand and go through the decision making process again. After some time the decision making and constant evaluation of your next action becomes second nature.
As this process is ongoing, decision making and constant hand evaluation carries over to personal life. One day you realize you are making life decisions based on different criteria than in the past. You find you are using a new toolset, different criteria, and thinking about the consequence of action or non action before you make it.
For a good poker player focus becomes an important poker playing skill. A good player will focus on the game in general and the other players in particular. Just as in life, everyone at the table goes through mood changes which changes their decision making, and focus. A player with good focus picks up on these subtle changes and turns them into an advantage. Over time focus spills over into personal life. You start noticing situations that may be important that before poker you never payed attention to. Your work life will become more interesting and satisfying as you are more attuned to opportunity and challenge which used pass by unnoticed.
Playing poker is also great for life management skills. Poker provides immediate feedback on many areas of every day life. Playing poker teaches money management by default. Play every hand, and within minutes you will find yourself out of money and leaving the game. Play too few hands, and you still lose your money, only slower. Play the hands you should play and play them correctly, and as time goes by you realize you have extra money.
Where I think poker really makes valuable life changes in life management is in anger management. At a poker table emotions are something every returning poker player quickly learns to manage. One learns quickly that letting your temper take control of your chips, leaves you angry and broke. The feedback is immediate and apparent when you play angry poker.
Being too emotional also receives immediate feedback. After winning a pot or two in quick succession many new players forget that it was a turn of events that made them successful and not superior poker skills. When players forget this they often turn a good win into a devastating loss. Often an inexperienced player starts playing on emotion, loses all their chips, and digs into their wallet or purse for more money with the idea of recouping their losses.
Recouping losses that resulted from emotional play leads to more loss, and eventually they run out of money, and emotionally crash and burn. Some players realize a day or too later what happened, others never do. Those that realize what happened to them start working on their emotional play. Changing emotional play at the poker table also changes life management skills from making emotion based decisions.
For a few people, poker has negative connotations. For many players, poker has improved their lives in ways they never would have had the opportunity to have exposed to so quickly and clearly. Where else can one immediately see the results of incorrect decision making, lack of focus, and life management skills and not derail their whole life?
