Month: May 2017

Poker. What does this game bring to your mind? Gambling, money, passion, addiction maybe? For me, poker is nothing of that. It is a fun game that has given me also important life lessons.

I am myself an amateur poker player. I play with friends, regularly. We organize male nights, full of whiskey, cigars, laughter and friendly competition. And through these nights, I did not only have a good time with my friends, but I also learned many new things about their character and about myself.

Poker has always been a character game. In Greece, the aristocrats of the past century, when they were considering accepting in the family a new son-in-law, would sit down with him and play poker. Every male in the family, father, brothers, uncles would sit at the table with the new man and put him through the ultimate character test. A Poker game.

Crazy? No. Let’s think a little bit about it. Through poker you can really “read” peoples character. You can understand if they are careless or aggressive. If they are fearful, if they bluff a lot, or not. Do they lose control when they drink, do they get nervous, can they hold their temper? But most importantly at the end of a poker game you will understand if your co-players know how to win with compassion or lose with grace…

All these character traits can become quite evident through any poker game even to the most inexperienced eye…But there is more.

When you are a player, do you expect to be dealt always a hand full of aces?

Would you whine when you are not,  saying “oh…I am so unlucky, why do I have a king, a Jack, 2 eights and a 5? I wish I had 4 aces….Oh, I don’t want to play anymore!!!!”

Of course not. It is not a realistic expectation.  In poker you get the hand you are dealt, you accept it and you try to do your best with it.

When you think of life, isn’t it the same? Aren’t we all been dealt a “hand of cards” in life? Where the strong cards represent our strengths, and where the weaker ones represent our shortcomings and misfortunes? Why do we get sometimes so caught up on our “life hand”? Why sometimes we waste our energy whining and getting depressed, complaining that we don’t have the “perfect hand”, the “perfect life” set-up… Isn’t it better that we accept the “hand” we are dealt with and we focus all our energy in playing this hand in the best possible way?

Poker taught me this. To get in the game and play my best. And that is what we should also do in life. Focus on “playing”, focus on living our lives with our strengths and our shortcomings. And live the best life we can, by playing well. The game does not stop at the hand we are dealt with. It is where it starts.

Because in life, just like in poker, it is not the strong hand that wins. It’s the best play.