Although most parents would love for their children to learn a game like chess, poker is not often associated with being kid-friendly. Tony G, full name Antanas Guoga, has never been shy about speaking his mind out loud, and many will disagree with him on this, but think about it. Ultimately, many good life lessons can come from playing chess or poker.
Garry Kasparov, one of the greatest chess players of all time, wrote a book called "How Life Imitates Chess." The book is full of examples of how learning chess can improve general life skills, especially in children. But these ideas could also be applied in an exemplary way to poker. The most obvious example is learning to take responsibility for your own actions: you and only you in poker/chess are responsible for any decision you make.
Taking responsibility for your decisions, performing under pressure or learning from your mistakes
Although unlike chess, there is an aspect of luck in poker, we all know that once a large enough sample is played, it becomes a minimal factor. Tony G says in this regard that it is important that poker be seen as a game of skill and not as a game of chance. For this reason, there should be no objection to children learning the game and playing it instead of wasting time with various video games and social media on their phones.
Another key life skill is the ability to make difficult decisions when we are under pressure and have limited information. This leads to adaptability and flexibility, which again are excellent life skills best learned at a young age.
Poker is great for teaching us how to learn from our mistakes. The number of decisions made during a session makes it clear that there are very few activities that can match poker in this regard. This point alone should be enough to encourage hesitant players who are feeling terrible to continue playing. Every mistake is a learning opportunity and, believe us, mistakes will always happen, no matter how good a player you become. This brings us to resilience, a common trait of almost all successful people that can be learned in poker. It is not a mistake to teach a child how to be more resilient, especially in this high-stress modern world we live in.
