The Qualities of A Poker Player
“What qualities are important to become a good poker player? “What player profiles are the most successful?” “Do you have to be a good bluffer?”: These questions I regularly hear during interviews. And from those people who do not know the game at all, ask me.
The answers to these questions that you can read in magazines are very often superficial. And do not do much for the reader. An amateur player curious about what can make the difference between him and the “pro.”
We can make a distinction between the intrinsic qualities of a good poker player on the one hand and the conditions that we develop as we progress and our career.
Many poker players who are thinking of converting to another field complain of not knowing how to do anything other than playing situs poker online, after having spent several years full time.The objective of this blog is to identify the skills sought in the business world that we develop with the intensive practice of situs poker online.
If you want to look for a way to sell your qualities for retraining, or if you want to reassure yourself about your choice to spend as much time playing situs poker online, you have come to the right place!
Patience
It may seem obvious to you, but you have to be patient in poker. As you know, winning a poker tournament needs a prolonged duration.
And you have to know how to wait for the right moments to commit your chips, take risks, find a favorable match. In some situations, you sometimes need to be able to lay your hands for hours and hours.
Patience is undeniably a high quality that will serve you in society, whether you are required to give lessons, in debates that you may have with friends or colleagues, or in your daily interactions with other people.
Audacity
To some extent, being bold in poker is a strong point. Know how to take risks, make “moves,” “bluffs,” that your opponents do not expect, play hands in a creative way to confuse your rivals, even when the stakes are very high. These are all elements that will help you to win at situs poker online!
If we can associate audacity with taking the initiative, I think it is a top-rated quality if you decide one day to return to the world of business. If you are also capable of “think outside the box” (a term I often heard studying when some teachers accused us of being too academic), then you are a gem!
Discipline
Although some people are more disciplined than others by nature (mainly by their education, I imagine), it is a quality that one can develop by working on oneself.
Discipline in situs poker online is knowing how to pass big hands, not going “seminar” or looking for a draw when you don’t have the odds to do it, or even leaving your ego aside.
If you have a minimum of experience as a poker player, you know how important it is. Think back to all the money you could have lost when you have no discipline!
To a lesser extent, knowing how to be disciplined and respecting your hierarchy will avoid many problems in the professional world.
Concentration / Mind
Poker is a game where concentration is a crucial factor for success. A few seconds of inattention can cause you to make bad decisions that cost you dearly.
Especially when you reach the end of a tournament where your chips are worth a lot of money, the cash game shows: if you play for too long and neglect fatigue, your hourly gain will take a hit.
Having the right mind, having confidence in yourself, and your decisions are essential at a high level in situs poker online.
I will not dwell on the similarities with the high-level sport, but to be successful in poker, you have to have a winning mentality and never lose sight of your goals.
Now imagine yourself in the context of the business. You are presenting a business plan to investors or are selling an expensive project to one of your clients.
Your interlocutors will question you on a whole lot of details, interviewing some of your forecasts and your statements. And it is where your steel mind will allow you to keep your capacity and support your ideas.
Adaptability
Poker and adaptation are integral. When you play poker, you continuously encounter different situations, with new variables, new parameters to analyze to make your decisions.
In the tournament, you will meet opponents with atypical playing styles, but also be required to play regularly with the same players.
You must then know how to adapt, play a little different. If you feel it is necessary, be able to “change speed.” Know how to adapt quickly to new situations, a new project, or new work colleagues.
Analytical Capacity
This ability is essential in poker since you spend your time making decisions based on the analysis of opposing players, their playing style, their emotional state, fatigue, or “tilt,” as they can give you.
In live situs poker online, there are more elements to analyze, which makes the game more luxurious, especially when you play with strong or atypical personalities who have a good tongue.
It depends on you to know how to analyze them and detect non-verbal language. In this perspective, I think that having excellent knowledge in the field of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) can help you, and I encourage you to take a closer interest if it is not already the case.
Beyond the simple framework of poker, NLP is a vibrant field that will help you communicate better, set goals, and achieve them. Managers, managers, and negotiators have appropriately trained.
Empathy
It is an outstanding quality that complements the analytical capacity. If you want to guess the cards of the competitor, try one thing. You can put yourself in the place of the competitor.
Then you can analyze their emotions, and you will capture their reasoning mind. In the corporate world, empathy is undoubtedly useful when you need to understand the needs of a client, or the problems of one of your colleagues who you need to help.
Competitive Spirit
Whether you are a tournament player or a cash game player, the thirst for winning is the key to success. It pushes you to surpass yourself, to achieve excellence.
If you are a competitor at heart, you know how to question yourself, accept defeats, to improve better, and to move forward even more. The competitive spirit has highly appreciated in many professional profiles where you have goals to achieve.
Sociability, Courtesy
If more and more players live from their passion, it is still good to remember that poker remains a game and that many enthusiasts who come to sit at a poker table (real or virtual) do it above all to have fun and have a good time.
As such, Phil Galfond recently wrote an article entitled Speaking for the new school, where he describes the criticisms of old generation gamblers against those of the new generation from the Internet.
Thus, they criticize us (I logically include myself in this second category) for not having the right attitude at the table, for not talking enough with other players, in particular with “recreational” players, or even making robotic gestures that displease them.
Whether in poker or the professional world, sociability and courtesy remain fundamental qualities.
The Ability To Question Oneself
Situs Poker Online is a complex game that has evolved a lot in recent years. Many pro players have lost everything and disappeared from the community because they could no longer win.
Those who retired by choice (retraining, weariness) must have been struggling to question themselves. It is clear that to be competitive today, and it is no longer possible to rely on your skills: You must continuously work on your game and analyze your mistakes.
Risk-Taking
The vast majority of people have a high-risk aversion. Why? The risk is generally wrongly perceived because the ego is afraid of failure, which it considers too hard to accept.
A good poker player knows how to analyze a situation according to the different parameters he knows, and make the decision he considers best to maximize his expectation of gain in the long term, without being hampered by the risk of loss in the present time.
Today there are jobs whose titles are “risk analyst,” and if you are interested in trading, you can well imagine the usefulness of knowing how to measure and take risks. There are many similarities to decision making in poker.
Conclusion
The qualities and skills required to become an outstanding poker player are numerous. You can fish in certain areas and yet succeed in this game. However, if you aim for excellence, then all that I have quoted above is essential.
