Have you ever thought of playing poker? This leisurely-looking card game helps you to develop skills that not only help you to succeed at the table but also out in the sporting arena. This post looks at some of the skills that sitting down to a game of poker regularly can help you perform better in other sports.

Patience and composure

Sooner or later, the cards are going to go your way, but until that time you’ve got to remain patient and keep your cool. If you don’t, you can make rash moves that can cost you the game. If you lose your rag at the other players, they’ll make the most of your heightened emotional state to tilt the odds further in their favor. Out in the sporting arena, it can translate into rash decisions. You may change your tactics prematurely. You could blow up at your competitors and put yourself on the end of a yellow card or, worse still, a red one.

Decision-making

Playing poker forces you to make decisions under constant pressure. Sometimes the cards will go against you for several hands in a row, and you’ll need to make a good decision every time or face defeat. There’s little respite, but you’ll learn to make decisions under pressure. In the heat of sporting competition, you’ll find yourself making decisions to stay in the game when your opponent(s) is getting the upper hand. They might be big decisions to make, but your experience at the poker table will help you to handle it better.

Dealing with unpredictable situations

In poker, you don’t know what the cards at 888 are going to throw at you. You could get a supremely lousy hand, and you’ve got to learn to deal with it; more than that, you’ve got to learn to adapt to it. If you don’t, your opponents are going to crush you at the table.

If you can roll with the punches, you can take charge of the situation and bend it to your favor. A sporting opponent could be bigger or faster than you expected, but you can recognize it and use other skills or attributes in your favor. You can take the game to them on other levels to win or, at the least, limit the damage.

Self-evaluation

At some time or other, all athletes find themselves on the wrong end of a defeat. When Sky sat down with Anthony Joshua after the shock defeat to Andy Ruiz Jr in New York, he pledged to learn Poker Skills from his mistakes. He went back over his performance countless times and relived the moments, which can psychologically hurt but it was necessary to improve himself. It’s either that or lose again. It’s no different for poker players, consult all their resources, and put that extra bit of effort in to find some secrets and tips to give themselves the edge next time they’re competing.

As with all sports, you’ve got to ask yourself difficult questions such as “What did I do wrong?” and “Is there anything I could have done to perform better?” You think back to other losses and see if there’s any sort of pattern. Then you work on your game.

Learning to read other people

The other people at the table may be displaying poker faces, which is an important part of the game, but you’ll still learn to read them and understand their motivation and reasoning. Their actions at the table will tell you how they’re feeling. It could be excitement, anger, fear or something else.

This is a valuable skill in sport because, just like in poker, opponents don’t like to give away how they’re feeling. If you can sense how your opponent is feeling, you can detect whether you’re gaining an edge on them, too, and turn up the pressure on them even more.

Discipline

Zenhabits highlights the importance of teaching yourself self-discipline. The more poker you play, the better you learn to control your impulses during the game and away from the table. You learn to focus on the results you want and overcome the obstacles.

Discipline is important for the sport. It’s a discipline that enables you to get out of bed for early morning training sessions each day, instead of switching the alarm clock and rolling over back to sleep. It’s a discipline that stops you from eating foods that are purposely not part of your sporting nutrition plan. And it’s a discipline that allows you to remain focused on winning when things get tough.

Changes your relationship with failure

When you start out playing poker, you’re going to lose. That’s inevitable and it’s a horrible feeling, but it’s the reality and could put a huge dent in your confidence. What you’ve got to understand is that this is just part of the game. Even the best players have lost session after session before things started to turn around for them in the longer run.

Ultimately, when you overcome a loss and the negative feelings that come with it, you return feeling stronger. TechkTimes has collected a variety of tips for motivation in life. A loss is a wake-up call, a chance to identify holes in your game and improve so that you face your next opponent, whether at the table or in another area of sporting competition, better prepared than last time.

Playing poker can teach you valuable skills such as managing your emotions and learning to cope with failure, which you can then transfer to your own sporting practice. When you practice any sport, you’re going to come up against adversity of some kind. The skills you’ve acquired from playing poker will carry you through it all.