I am currently looking for a new game(s) to learn but at the same time I would like whatever I am studying to have a positive impact on my poker game.
I am Canadian so growing up was nothing but hockey. I literally only knew 2 card games before I learned poker; black jack and war.
I was thinking about taking chess seriously since I hear its a good thinking game with a lot of patience involved. Again I have never played the game so if there are any other suggestions I would be grateful.
Please, if you have a suggestion an explanation as to why you think it would be beneficial would be great.
I was thinking about taking chess seriously since I hear its a good thinking game with a lot of patience involved.
There's a chess forum here on 2+2. I haven't posted there in forever, but it at least used to be very good. I'd recommend asking about this there. They can also help you in how to learn the game properly and help you along the way.
I definitely agree with chess, there are plenty of places online where you can learn and play for free. You can either play correspondence (some number of days per move) or live (some number of minutes per player per game) depending on what piques your interest more. The analytical side of chess transfers well to poker IMO, there is a lot of similarity between range construction and analysing a chess position several moves deep in your head. Plus I guess learning openings is somewhat similar to learning push/fold charts or similar.
I've recently been playing Go which is a very old Chinese board game, mostly played in Asia but you can play online, it's perhaps simpler than chess with a more pure logic focus. It will probably have a pretty similar crossover to poker than chess does.
Depending on what you mean by "my poker game", you could definitely learn other poker variants if you're not already an experienced mixed game player, pretty much every variants has some kind of crossover to NLHE, if that's what you want to work on.
