Quote:
Originally Posted by Gin 'n Tonic
I wonder how closely the skills required to perform at the top levels of professional chess correlate with those needed for poker. Are there any chess skills that are contra-indicated for poker?
I am not a pro in either, but have played both at a fairly high level (national championship / major tournament). For some years, chess was my all-consuming hobby, and now poker is, so I have thought about this.
Good play in both requires strong reasoning ability, an ability to make sound judgements without allowing emotion to tilt your decisions. I think most good players in either will score very highly in IQ tests.
Both require high mental stamina - I think chess much more so, because it is relentless concentration. In poker, you can usually get away with "taking it easy" for a round or two, but a small lapse of concentration in chess can end the game.
Players of both games will benefit if they have an excellent memory of previous encounters with your current opponents and others, and can learn from those. This is probably much more important in poker. Experienced players will rarely encounter a truly novel combination of circumstances, and remembering how your current opponents, and opponents in general, tend to play those situations gives you important information. It is very rare to get two identical or almost identical chess games - the variety is surprisingly vast.
The skills in chess that are not needed so much for poker include very strong visualisation. Good players can imagine how the board will look after a lengthy series of moves, well enough to be able to see possible moves in those future positions, and to judge intuitively whether those lines are advantageous to them.
The huge area of poker skill that does not feature in chess is personal interaction. Some players have tremendous feel for the mood of their opponents, and excellence at that is much more important than any intellectual capabilities. Also some are excellent at using speech play in subtle ways to upset the balance of their opponents. When such skills are applied in complex multi-way hands, it is much more "feel" than reasoning.
Clearly poker is played in a world of uncertainty, while chess has almost no luck.
The financial risk element is clearly vital in poker - many situations arise where there is an inner battle beween greed and fear, and this can be exploited by skilful opponents.
Live poker, for me provides the perfect combination of interpersonal banter and intellectual challenge. I don't think I will ever return to chess as long as I am able to find good poker games.