The Importance of Intuition in Poker

There are many different poker strategies and methods, but the ability to recognise tells and changes in your opponents’ behaviour is a key skill. This helps you to make the right calls in order to maximise your winning hands and minimise losses when you have a losing one. This is essential to success at any level of poker and can be applied to many other situations in life too.

It teaches you to decide under uncertainty

Like it or not, poker is a game of uncertainty and you will often be making decisions in the dark. To do this you have to estimate the probabilities of different scenarios and outcomes. The most important thing is not to be scared of doing math and learning the numbers (although if you’re a bit nervous about this it might be worth reading this article on poker math to help). As you play more and more hands you will develop an intuition for things like frequencies and EV estimation, so these become second nature.

It teaches you how to be resilient

A good poker player will not chase their losses or throw a tantrum when they have a bad beat. They will simply learn from their mistakes and move on. This is a great life skill to have and can be transferred to other areas of your life.

Poker requires a high level of concentration. You must be able to pay attention to other players’ actions, including their body language and facial expressions. It is also important to be able to observe your own game and make adjustments as you go. This is why it’s a good idea to discuss the game with other players and read poker strategy books by authors that play at your level or higher.