Poker: A Path to Financial and Personal Growth
On the surface, poker is a just card game. Most people are not aware of the game’s depth and complexity. Unlike many games, poker’s structure makes it possible for a seasoned player to earn consistent money for playing. In addition to financial benefits, poker offers psychological challenges that often lead to personal growth. As a hobby, it can be an exciting source of extra income. As a career, it offers autonomy, flexibility, mental challenge, and abundance.
Several years ago, playing poker for a living meant having to go to a casino (People tend to stop inviting professionals to their home games pretty quickly.) Casinos surround poker rooms with sports-betting, craps, keno, slot machines and other games designed to empty our pockets. The air is dry and full of smoke. The poker games move slowly, dealers shuffle cards and people grapple with their chips. The other players aren’t necessarily people you wanted to spend your day with–some are loud, drunk, grumpy, or desperately in need of a mint.
The internet brought the game home, leaving the stale air and strange company behind. Online poker games also eliminate the need for shuffling cards and chips. The players are dealt three times as many hands per hour, and have the option of playing multiple tables simultaneously. (Many professionals play 16 games at once!) Opponents are all over the world, and cannot hear, see, or smell one another. The major online sites are safe and secure–some are even publicly traded companies on the UK stock exchange. Poker sites also offer incentives for playing, including cash bonuses and points that can be redeemed for all sorts of things, such as tournament entries or iPods.
You can now play poker at any hour of the day, and in the comfort of your own home, where it is easier to relax and focus. You can play your favorite music and sip a cup of tea. You can even wear your pajamas. But are you just gambling?
Poker grew up in casinos, along side games like blackjack and roulette, so it’s no surprise that it is often perceived as a game of chance rather than game of skill. But if poker was only a game of chance, then playing poker would be no different than betting money on a spin of roulette or buying a lottery ticket, which are clearly not sources of income. So how is it possible for professional poker players to earn a living year after year?
Professional players have studied the game and they know how it works. They understand poker theory, strategy, and tactics. Expert players know the probability of specific outcomes, and they bet accordingly. They know to pass up losing bets and put more money on winning bets. They are also able to deduce their opponent’s hand strength based on certain information, which helps them decide where to invest their money. Throughout this process, luck affects only short-term variance. The player who makes the correct decisions will always win in the long run. The expert poker player is like the casino—they have the edge.
Poker is a competitive sport–someone must lose in order for someone to win. Success requires continuous study, as the game is always changing and the expert player must adapt and evolve. The self-mastery that poker demands is as difficult to achieve as the physical prowess cultivated by athletes. Like many competitive games, only the best succeed in the long run. (Fewer than 10% of poker players show a profit, and only a fraction of them are consistent enough to earn a living.)
Poker is profitable for professional players because their opponents do not make an effort to learn the game. Poker is a game of skill. It is similar to chess in the sense that knowing how the pieces move, or knowing what hand beats what, does not mean that you know how to play the game. There is a world of difference between knowing the hand rankings and being an expert player. However, this gap is well hidden to the novice player. Most people know there is skill involved in poker, yet they fancy their luck and they truly believe they have a fair chance at winning. This myth is what keeps the recreational players at the tables.
Inexperienced players do not know that the game has “correct” decisions, so they make costly mistakes. Everyone who plays has access to the books, but recreational players seldom take the time to acquire this knowledge. It takes effort to learn how to play poker profitably, and winning players make this effort. They read many technical books, study advanced concepts, and practice to gain experience.
Poker is a mental competition that tests capacities of problem solving, concentration, and intuition. One of the hidden yet powerful benefits of mastering poker is that the journey also entails mastering your own mind. The game requires a tremendous amount of patience, focus, discipline, and emotional balance. Many professional players work on improving these abilities through the regular practice of meditation, yoga, and other techniques. The benefits of such habits spread beyond the poker table. Training the mind increases overall well-being and improves interactions with others. Imagine if every job required one to show up calm, focused, and ego-free.
Like many hobbies and sports, poker requires some money in order to play. But poker has the ability to turn your money into even more money. If you play golf, how often does the clubhouse refund your money and write you an extra check the times you play well?
It doesn’t cost a lot of money to learn poker. Online games offer penny stakes for beginning players, and the best poker books are inexpensive paperbacks. The financial investment is minimal as long as it is done properly. (New players sometimes try to move up in stakes too soon or mismanage their poker bankroll, which results in loses that could have been avoided.)
It does take time to learn poker. There are some fairy-tale cases of young lads making a small deposit and turning it into over $1M after their first year, but these poker stars are rare. It takes a while to develop the psychological skills required to succeed in the game.
Making money playing poker is not an easy venture, but the rewards are substantial. Do your hobbies make you money? Do your hobbies nurture personal growth? If you’ve never thought about making money playing poker, you may want to consider the option.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Leave a Reply