I'm doing some research for an idea I've got. I'm wondering what poker players, of all levels, have learned personally from playing the game.

How have your lessons in poker influenced your decision making in your personal lives and professional dealings? What poker principles have benefitted you as an individual? Things like bluffing, pot control, working out odds, going all-in at strategic times, reading tells etc. Are you a smarter person away from the table, because of what you've learned while playing the game?

Are there any examples you can think of which demonstrate how your poker ability helped you in a ‘real life’ situation? When buying a house, striking a deal for a car, resolving an argument or dispute, making a difficult personal or business decision?

I'm looking for people to interview, should they have enough of a view on this. Anyone got any thoughts?

#1 life lesson - dealing with misery and disappointment.

Patience, pot size (evaluating value) and position (leverage in any business situation)

Learn to control my anger issues

There are many, but I got 2 for you.

1: Well played poker is based on making +EV decisions, therefore any leak, as small as they could be, will cost you money. This translates easily to real life, since whether it is in a personal ( money management issues ), or in a professional setting, you adquire the ability to optimize your spending, since you can CLEARLY see the big picture.


2: This has prolly been the most important one for me. Bankroll management is the single most important thing if you wanna make money playing poker, im sure most of us have painfully burned through several bankrolls b/c of bad management. Eventually, if you make it, you learn that success ( money in this case ) comes from putting in the hours, and not from the ''PUT ALL YOUR MONEY IN 1 HUGE TOURNEY/CASH YOU FELT YOU WERE GONNA SHIP'' ( this applies big time in business/entrepreneurship ).
You also learn to stay strong ( or try atleast ) during the downswings, knowing that in the long run, you will win.


Hope this helped

I've learned a lot and wrote a bunch about this specific topic on here few yrs back

To quote Irieguy: "At some point you will run worse than you could ever have imagined."

Ego control

My GF once said I should use my poker skills in the courtroom, but that's before my buddy got out of jail and screwed up my life by catching a hanger.

If you're too Carefull? Your whole life can become a f----- grind.

Time is more valuable than money.

This. Being able to control your mindset and emotions while things are **** is invaluable in both poker and life

Sample size with regards to basically everything in life

The concepts of sample size and interpreting probabilistic results get beaten into you very quickly.

Most people tend to be very results oriented and quick to identify patterns or arrive at conclusions based on flimsy evidence. Poker players are trained to ignore those sort of fallacies.

And this!

Poker teaches you so many lessons and gives you so many skills, it's hard to know where to begin listing them.

Unfortunately, employers don't view it the same way.

-The life you start with is the hand you are dealt
-It's one long session
-Life is a game of incomplete information and you are trying to gain as much knowledge/insight as you can
-There are times where you should balance your range and times where you should be explotative
-GTO can be important a lot of the time
-It's important to meet other players in life to improve your own game
-There are heaters, downswings, and breakeven stretches
-Know when to bluff and valuebet
-Suckouts will happen
-Never underestimate the power of luck
-The game is constantly evolving
-You are ultimately in control of how you play your hand

Therein always light at the end of a dark tunnel if you keep your head Down and never give up.

I no longer vote. The time spent voting and the value of that time vs the chance I will ever be the vote to make a difference in the remaining elections I have in my lifetime is -EV. I could spend the hour convincing 5 people to vote the way I wanted and it would have a greater impact.

Everyone should not follow this. If you do I may have to vote.

Pretty good. Another i would mention though would be money management.

I'd say the biggest things are things like patience, not being so results oriented and looking at the long term picture, variance happens, delayed gratification, focus, emotional discipline. It's kind of endless and then spills over to other disciplines in life that all kind of end up in this entire momentum for bettering the self.

I've learnt that there's more to life than poker.

At least that's what I should have learnt

It really does. Through poker, i completely turned my life around and grew up. Even my parents look at the time of my life when i was eating, breathing, sleeping poker 24/7 as a time of huge improvement for myself. I wouldn't be where i'm at today if it wasn't for poker and the poker community i was involved in.

That said, all of the positive that can come from poker is completely dependent upon how you approach it. If you actually study the game and the disciplines behind it, yes for sure, but if you're just somebody with a gambling problem, or never take the time to go below the surface with the game, you won't achieve this nor even understand or relate to what some of us are saying.

Dan Harrington said it best about Poker and applies to life as well - It is about "balance, observation and flexibility".

this is a really good topic and I've talked to a lot of people about this over the years. there are a lot more I've thought of over the years but off the top of my head:

- self-learning and resourcefulness... poker is this big open-ended problem. the information out there is never enough. it's always a challenge to stay ahead of the curve, and research on your own and push boundaries. it's not like in school where you're being taught to solve problems that have often already been solved.

- thinking strategically... my mind is trained not to think about my perspective but look at things from my opponent's perspective. if I do/say something, how will the other person respond? what situation is the other person in, and what kind of leverage do I have in this?

- I've learned a lot about myself. I know that I need a schedule and I need an office (or in the case of school, a library) to go to. I need structure in my life. I was a really bad poker pro because I failed to manage my own time properly and push myself to play enough. I think I've made improvements because of my failures.

- learning to accept failure... you can't always win at poker, obviously. far from it. it's all about focusing on the process and not the results. there's a lot of randomness in life. we have to accept that we can only control so much and work to be the best we can at what we can control, and not stress over the rest.

- most people just have no conception of what randomness is. when you live variance through poker, you learn to not overreact to or make decisions based on small sample sizes.

- I've learned to communicate my thoughts and my ideas. I've had the opportunity to make videos for DC for over 7 years, and also posted probably about 17k strategy posts on here in the mid-2000s. I've always been a mathy/techy type but 10 years ago I was very bad at communicating my thoughts and ideas. it's one thing to be able to crunch numbers, but it's much harder to then explain the results or findings in a way that makes sense to people who don't understand or care about the numbers themselves.

I set my career back several years playing poker, but I think if I had taken the traditional route of getting a job after college, I wouldn't have the understanding of myself and the mental maturity that I have as a result of poker.