What Poker Can Teach You About Life

I know a lot of people shun gambling and card playing, but there are some valuable lessons that can be learned from poker. I find that playing a few rounds can be rather educational. Of course, I’m not suggesting that people take their mortgage payments to Vegas in hopes of coming back rich. This is just a list of a few life lessons that poker (specifically No Limit Texas Hold’em) can teach to those who are paying attention.

Disaster By Design

Much research of human beings tends to focus on aggregates and averages. But humans come in various shapes and sizes; they have various skills and weaknesses; they do not all travel the same road at the same pace at the same age. One would not issue the same size of clothing to every first-grader; it could come up short on some, and sag on others. Why, then, must they read from the same page of the same primers? Why do the same single-digit addition, from the same page of the same textbook?

The Trouble With Politics

Politics is of its very nature is biased in favor of intervention and planning. Even in its “minarchist” or “night-watchman” version, politics is based at root on the idea that some decisions must be made coercively and imposed on unwilling minorities – or even majorities, as the case may be. This is contrary to the principle we observe in private life every day: the consent of both parties is necessary for a transaction to take place.

Learning: It’s Not About Education

For the very youngest children, learning is constant. Their wondrous progress from helpless newborn to sophisticated five-year-old happens without explicit teaching. They explore, challenge themselves, make mistakes, and try again with an insatiable eagerness to learn. Young children seem to recognize that knowledge is an essential shared resource, like air or water. They demand a fair share. They actively espouse the right to gain skills and understanding in a way that’s useful to them at the time.