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What We Can All Learn from the Games of Skill
At Everygame Online Casino, gamers can play several games of skill. The two most prominent are blackjack and video poker. They are joined by the three versions of Caribbean Poker, Baccarat, and Fish Catch, among others.
In the world of games, there are many other games of skill such as GO, chess, and checkers.
It is interesting that we can learn a lot about everyday skills that we can improve and master by heeding some of the methods and practices of people who excel at games of skill.
Let’s take a look at some of the best life hacks that players of games of skill know so well.
Think Long Term
Now, there are some times when thinking short term is called for. Any medical emergency fits this approach. A mechanical failure on the highway is a short-term event par excellence. Which restaurant to take a first date to is also a short-term decision.
But in any game of skill, thinking long term means applying strategy to a situation where the strategy may take hours to years to reach its final conclusion. Drafting professional athletes is a perfect long-term matter as is founding and running a business startup from scratch. Many long-term challenges involve many short-term decisions to be made along the way.
Here is a very short list of start-ups that their founders had no idea how far their growth would reach:
- FedEx started out as a delivery service delivering letters masquerading as packages in downtown Memphis.
- Walmart started out as a single discount store in northwestern Arkansas.
- Amazon started out as an online bookstore with books but not so much as a table.
- Mars Candy Company started out in the immigrant Mars family’s kitchen.
- And who can forget that Apple started out in Steve Jobs’ imagination and Steve Wozniak’s garage?
A Poker Face is a Main Attribute of Successful Negotiators
Bluffing is at the core of poker and a believable poker face is at the core of bluffing. The opposite of a good poker face is called a tell in poker. In negotiations, a tell indicates that the person is bluffing and that the other party to the transaction would be well served to call his or her bluff.
Professional poker players may need years to perfect their best poker face. That’s because reacting to either good or bad news is natural. Outbursts of laughter are what all standup comedians seek. Outbursts of anger are also common in many cultures.
In many real-life situations, then, keeping a calm demeanor is not only a great asset but it flies in the face of human nature.
Keeping One’s Cool is a Corollary of Maintaining a Convincing Poker Face
We spoke a little about anger control above. In poker, anger is usually referred to as “tilt”. A poker player might tilt at his or her poor play, bad luck, or an opponent’s bad play that nevertheless ended up as a win for the weaker player at the expense of the better player.
There are many real-life situations in which keeping one’s cool can prevent escalating a tense situation and can even result in avoiding going to jail. We can only imagine how many people have been arrested because they tilted in a real-life situation.
Tilt can strike at any time! We know about road rage and airline rage. Most people have experienced some kind of Thanksgiving rage! Many women have to deal with toilet seat rage on a daily basis.
Clearly, staying cool when others are hot is a great advantage in many everyday situations!
Be Wary of Too Much Risk and Too Little Risk
There is a famous scene in the uproarious movie “The Twelve Chairs” in which one of the main characters, a member of royalty in pre-revolution Russia is told by his wife to “hurry home but don’t gallop”. This instruction is so confusing to him that he puts its resolution on his horse!
In poker, players try to walk the fine line between too much risk and too little risk. The great proliferation of poker math is largely based on determining if the risk warrants staying in the hand or warrants folding.
In poker, players use the term “pot odds” which is roughly the same as return on investment. A small expected return on investment usually means too little risk while a very high expected return on investment might indicate too much risk.
Then it is up to the investor to decide on his or her comfort level of risk for that specific investment. The same applies to the price of buying a house, a car, or engaging a professional to do work around the house.
Finally, we also have to determine risk based on the commonplace idea that….
Some Things Really are Too Good to be True
There is a great Texas Hold’em hand featuring Daniel Negreanu and an amateur that Negreanu didn’t know. As the hand proceeded, Negreanu got confused as to why the amateur was staying in the hand.
Among the community cards were one four and one six. After the river card came out and the amateur stayed in the hand, Negreanu realized that the amateur had either “pocket fours or pocket sixes”. The amateur indeed had pocket fours which gave him three fours.
As a person who wouldn’t believe that even an inexperienced amateur would put a lot of money in the pot with a hopeless hand, Negreanu came to the only conclusion he deemed possible.
In real life, if something seems too good to be true, it likely is not true. It might be misleading marketing or it might be a bluff.
Learn How to Bluff
There is a bluff on most hands in poker. In Texas Hold’em, for example, any player who calls or raises the big blind from an early position either has a powerful hand or is bluffing.
Part of the art of bluffing is making opponents think that you are bluffing when you aren’t and that you are not bluffing when you are.
This is a skill learned over thousands of hands! It is why we say that poker players have to pay close attention on every hand, perhaps especially on the 70% of hands that a player will fold before the flop.
Finally, Be Careful Who or Which Cards you Fall in Love With
Mona Charen is an American political commentator. She wrote perhaps 20 years ago that a marriage is a union between a man who is learning to like the woman he loves so much and a woman who is learning to love the man she likes so much.
This clever insight can be applied to cards in poker. There will always be another hand. So, are you in love with your cards because they are winners or are you in love with them because you feel that you should fall in love with pocket aces even if the flop seems to help other players and not you.
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