What can you earn from playing on the best online poker sites? Aside from money, quite a lot. There are valuable life lessons in the card game. Whether it’s understanding the value of opportunities or strategic life lessons, your experiences at the poker table can help you even when you’re away from it.
Patience from the Poker
Nobody likes waiting excessively. However, sometimes a little bit of patience can go a long way. Poker teaches that rushing into a situation seldom leads to success. The best poker players bide their time and can accurately strike when needed. Whether you need to apply this to your business ventures and allow other stakeholders time to make their decisions the lessons from playing poker can. Or, it can just make your time waiting at the train station less frustrating when your connection is running late. The patience from poker will allow you to treat the situation a lot more calmly.
Calculated Risk-Taking
Nothing wagered, nothing earned, right? If you bet nothing when you have a royal flush, you’ll get nothing back. To succeed on the best online poker sites, you’ve got to take some risks. There’s a limit to when and how much you should risk but that’s where the calculations come into play. In the real world, we’ve also got to take such calculated risks when we think about applying for a new job, making a new recipe, having another child, etc. While a hand or two of poker won’t help you with your new career (unless you become a pro poker player) you will be able to use the risk-calculating and risk-taking methods to help you in the process.
Bluffing to Success
Bluffing might not be everyone’s game in poker but the best players will know how to do it now and then to get the desired result. Telling your opponent one thing but having another has a lot of real-world synergies. However, it is worth noting that you shouldn’t blatantly lie to people. It’s usually frowned upon is that. Yet there are some occasions where a bluff or two might help, i.e. casually telling your child that you’ll go to the toy shop on the way back but then never going, saying to your colleague that you’re far too busy with help with their workload. If bluffed correctly, you can get out of certain situations.
Statistical Know-How
There are a lot of numbers out there in the world of work these days. The chances are that most people work in front of a screen these days and will have numbers to crunch. Even manual labour jobs have elements of stats and figures with measurements, etc. Playing on the best online poker sites is a game of stats and chances, playing it might not make you mathematician of the year but you’ll certainly have exposure to numbers and how they work.
Being Prepared to Lose in Life
The chances are that poker is a pastime for you and not an income stream. Any sensible poker player will understand that there are ups and downs. Experiencing the downs is a great life lesson in that not everything will go your way all the time. Being prepared for knockbacks, whether it is missing your bus, being hit with a speeding fine or something untoward, you’ll be in a better place to deal with such aggravation if you deal with it at the poker table.
Emotional Intelligence
It’s another one of those hot potatoes in the world, emotional intelligence. Being able to control your feelings and being able to understand others. Think what you like of it but in 2023, it’s not leaving us soon. Poker players have been ahead of the curve on this one with tilt. Anyone who has played a decent amount of poker will understand what tilt is and why it matters. Tilt essentially stops you from playing as yourself as you are emotionally distressed from a prior play. The best poker players can either manage it or know when to leave the game when they’re in a bad tilt. This is a great tool for everyday life because let’s face it, there are moments when we could all navigate through emotional strife and/or exit a situation.
Financial Management
Ok, there is a caveat to this one. Poker can teach financial management but only in the cases where a player is sensible, so if you want to play on any from this select list of the best online poker sites, you need to have this part down pat. The top players segregate their funds from poker money to non-poker funds to ensure that they aren’t dipping into finances which are important to other aspects of their life. This if replicated in the real world, i.e. sorting out your money so that it is well preserved can help. What you don’t want to replicate is the guy who is doubling down on his next bet at 3 a.m. stinking of cheap wine at the dingy poker hall. You wouldn’t want to swap bank accounts with him.