Other games that help your poker playing?

Brad1970 · #1 12-04-2006, 04:11 PM

This may sound stupid, but I got to thinking about this the other day? Do any of y'all play/have played in the past other non-gambling games that you think helps your poker playing? For example, I've heard that alot of pros used to play bridge, backgammon, chess, etc before turning to poker & contribute that, at least in part, to their poker playing abilities.

Many years ago when I was in college, my friends & I played spades all the time (poker too, of course). Little did I know at the time but that game with the hand bidding, memorization of the dead cards, strategy, etc would help me play/discuss stud with you fine folks.

Wahoo73 · #2 12-04-2006, 04:16 PM

I grew up playing hearts, spades, cribbage and a variety of other card games. By the time I was in college, I was playing bridge regularly, in addition to poker. I do believe that developing good "card sense" in all of these games helped establish a good foundation for me to play poker successfully.

Bartholow · #3 12-04-2006, 04:26 PM

I'm pretty sure there are some great threads in archives of like "Other Topics" forum about this stuff.

For my part, I've always played lots of games of all sorts, and most of them I could make a case that they helped in one way or another with learning poker. The most influential for me though was Magic: The Gathering. And there are a lot of other former competitive Magic players who are now poker-pros (again, see various archives).

HOWMANY · #4 12-04-2006, 06:07 PM

I played Pokémon and a lot of other crappy card games. The players from those games that introduced me to poker are now BUSTO, while I'm on the slow path to ROBUSTO. It turns out that having good thought processes and playing skills is more valuable than knowing people who work for the company that produces cards so that you can have a false sense of superior skill because you own better cards than everyone else.

Brad1970 · #5 12-04-2006, 06:54 PM

[ QUOTE ]
I'm pretty sure there are some great threads in archives of like "Other Topics" forum about this stuff.

For my part, I've always played lots of games of all sorts, and most of them I could make a case that they helped in one way or another with learning poker. The most influential for me though was <i>Magic: The Gathering</i>. And there are a lot of other former competitive <i>Magic</i> players who are now poker-pros (again, see various archives).

[/ QUOTE ]

It's funny that you mentioned Magic. I originally had it listed in my post but deleted it figuring most stud players had never played it.

Also, you're probably right that this is covered under another thread elsewhere, but I usually don't surf around the different boards too much...

rory · #6 12-04-2006, 07:04 PM

I played chess for years. I am not really sure what impact it has had on my poker game. One thing is that when you play chess tournaments you can play for four hours and if you do not have the will to continue playing your best up until the end you can blow four hours of work with one single stupid mistake. Also you can be in a bad position for four hours straight with no chance of winning, fighting to eek out a draw which is a lot like being stuck and trying not to tilt out. If you tilt out in chess and make a couple cheap shots and then resign you will do worse than if you play tough defense and hope your opponent gets tired and makes a mistake or can't realize he only has a draw now and overplays his position and loses. Chess was also helpful because when you lose in chess, it is not because of luck, it is because you played worse than the other player. So when you lose you walk away always feeling like you suck. At poker, you can lose for a whole month and it is just because of luck, not because you suck. It is nice to not have to take total responsibility for losing.

Frond · #7 12-04-2006, 07:09 PM

I would think that any "card" game that involves a bit thought process can never hurt your stud game. As for non-card games helping, I would think that gammon and others wouldn't hurt either.

getfunky · #8 12-04-2006, 07:33 PM

backgammon is a great game and the thinking is similar based on probabilites and betting - on the reverse, poker has improved my skills in other games. In billiards I now assess the style, patterns and and changing emotional state of my opponents. I look for tells against trivial pursuit players who know the answer. In basketball, I assess and try to take advantage of any weaknesses in my opponents.

TheSalche · #9 12-05-2006, 12:46 AM

Magic for sure ... silly card games like crazy 8s and 500 rummy helped too.

After playing those games recently I start lookin' for how many 'outs' I have.

Andy B · #10 12-05-2006, 01:16 AM

As you might be aware, hand reading isn't my strong suit, which is why I pay off so much. A few years ago, I got the bright notion that a book on reading hands in bridge might somehow translate to poker. I took the quizzes in this book, A Case for the Defence by Victor Mollo, and out of umpteen questions in the book, I was able to read the other guy's hand exactly once. I just couldn't make the leaps that are apparently necessary to be an expert bridge player. There are other reasons I suck at bridge, but we can set those aside for now.

I took Latin in ninth grade. People used to believe that if you learned Latin, you could learn modern languages that descended from Latin more easily. It turns out that the best way to learn French is to learn French. Go figure. Anyway, one can apply concepts from other games to poker. The horse race concept comes to mind. But I don't think that studying any other game is going to help your poker game nearly as much as studying poker.

On a certain level, I find chess to be somewhat similar to poker. Both are intellectually stimulating games in which you can beat the crap out of the other guy in a civilized manner.