Growing up, I used to watch as my parents’ friends gathered in the living room and played the occasional poker round. I observed the different cards flipped on the table by a dealer, the players’ laser-focus on the game. Every once in a while, a victor would emerge, stand up, and protrude an energetic-sounding shout. Although I didn’t understand the game at the time, I found the atmosphere of seriousness and tension fascinating. From time to time, I would peep into the room, captivated by what was happening. Yet poker, for me, was off limits. When my mom would catch me standing in the doorframe, she would shoo me away, telling me this was “for adults only”.
In high school, when I started to get into poker anyway, I soon realized why it demanded such an intense focus from players: there was a ton of math involved, the way odds on top of luck influence the game. I wanted to share what I was learning with classmates, but I knew my school wouldn’t let me set up a straight-up poker club, even if we weren’t going to play for money. Poker was “for adults only.” Rather than launching a poker club, I opted for setting up a broader game probability club instead.
But now, I’ve realized that I should have at least given it a try. For a long time, the game has been stigmatized as an addictive compulsion that sucks away your money and should be discouraged, especially among young people. But poker is not like slot machines or roulette–it can teach you valuable life skills like patience and risk management, as well as train you in statistics and data analytics. In my own club, we’ve hosted sessions on the probability of certain hands by playing out various scenarios, as well as on bluffing and reading your opponents. What we’re missing is dedicated time to practice these things by actually playing. That’s why it’s time we start treating poker like chess, debate or Model UN–a serious extracurricular practice where kids my age can actually learn something.
To be clear: I’m not talking about playing poker for money. Though it’s true that most casino games need to be played for money (because their only incentive is the thrill of randomly winning money), poker players have much more control in a game. Every round, they can decide whether they want to fold, check, or raise, depending on what they think their odds of winning are.
Analyzing those odds is no simple feat. There are 2,598,960 possible hands with a standard 52-card poker set. The probability of a certain hand coming into play, therefore, is incredibly difficult to calculate, especially since players can also significantly influence the outcomes with different betting patterns and bluffing. Still, if you look at the cards on your hand and those revealed publicly by the dealer, you can make basic statistical calculations of how likely certain game outcomes are for you and act based on that. Calculating what’s called pot odds–the potential reward compared to the cost of calling–are another way to help determine your move.
Statistics and data analytics are highly sought after skills in some of the most promising fields for young people to go into today, such as computer science and data analytics, and they go hand in hand with poker. But poker also teaches us life skills such as making decisions under pressure, discipline, emotional control, the art of patience and persistence. At the table–as in life–you have no say over the card you’re dealt. To learn that sometimes a loss is a loss, and not to fall for sunken-cost fallacy, is a critical lesson. All the better to develop this skill in a fake-currency game with classmates–without losing actual money.
Lastly, poker is also a highly social game: it’s a way to bond with others, in person. While my friend group plays online poker games from time to time, the most fun we have happens when we meet up during summer break and play together in person. It’s different from playing video games together online or talking via Snapchat; it’s off-screen. Especially after years of Zoom school, in an era where much of our schoolwork still happens on screens, sitting around a table together and playing poker can allow us to actually develop those people skills again while bonding with friends face-to-face.
Setting poker up as a legit club, where kids from different high schools could compete and eventually perhaps even go on to nationals, would create an extracurricular activity that kids my age stand to vastly benefit from. We’d become better at understanding the math and probability behind the game, better at paying attention to others, and better at bonding with strangers–traits I’m already noticing in the members of my game probability club from the few poker games we’ve squeezed into our schedule.
And who knows, if we end up with high school poker nationals, we might even get the opportunity to win big after all: chess tournaments regularly award prizes in the thousands, and the Scripps National Spelling Bee champion got a $50,000 cash prize last year. That won’t cover one year’s college tuition these days, but poker players should be allowed to try.