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It’s one of the reasons why the allure of poker and other table and card games brings people of all walks of life to the felt on a regular basis. Even if you might only know someone as your ‘table enemy’ for the hours they’re seated together to play, treating them in a respectful and emotionally intelligent manner can help form friendships that extend far beyond a simple back-and-forth of chips on the table.
The social elements of the game are also important to strategy. The ability to read your opponent’s body language and emotions will give you better insight into their potential moves, which will, in turn, give you longer winning streaks.
Developing Friendships
A belief in poker’s democratising force helps to overcome multiple divides in society; from truck drivers and day labourers to IT specialists and young knowledge workers, players find themselves all joining around a common set of experiences and skill development.
Ready for players of any age or gender, it leaves the door open for anyone with the right funds to play the game, of any age or gender, and when coupled with the potential to be lucrative, this social dynamite builds communities that jump across borders to form an unstoppable gaming meritocracy.
Poker players in particular get to know one another well. Ribbing and swapping absurd stories are ways to get to know new people, and, if you’re learning your opponent’s tells (small physical movements such as making eye contact or picking at your chips), that might help you forge stronger relationships at the table. Of course, all interactions must stem from a sportsmanlike code of conduct and win-loss reports should use language that promotes respect so players are unlikely to leave the table with hurt feelings or bad blood between them.
Creating Shared Experiences
Poker is a social game, and friendly competition forges bonds. When you sit down with a group of people in an atmosphere of lightness and banter and chip and railbird chatter, trading in stories of past tables or a funny hand, weighing up whether to make a call, or debating a new play, or talk of an intimate personal issue that will now affect game strategy in some deeply invisible way, that’s a microcosm of a common identity. Taken together, it creates an entire society of kindred spirits.
The social nature of the game encourages bonds to be formed that go way beyond the game, friendships that start at the table but often last long out of it. Friendships formed at the table often last a lifetime, and transcend industries and national boundaries.
Second, poker is decidedly social, providing practice in the sort of interpersonal skills that translate well into a professional setting. Several top professionals credit poker with contributing to who they are today, both professionally and personally.
Developing a Strong Sense of Community
Often, poker builds philosophical types of solidarity: large contingents of players meet through local leagues, home games and tournament events, and can build networks and friendships outside the game. Through networking, poker players also learn how to expand their game beyond luck.
Poker offers such a diverse hodgepodge of communities, spread and brought together into one another if only at a virtual felt, that it means that players from practically every culture and ethnic background can sit together at one table irrespective of geographical location or handicap-based limitations. The poker community is perhaps uniquely able to bring different communities together, making it one of the few online gaming activities in which human players appear to transcend the barriers of race, ethnicity and geographical localisation.
Because poker is inherently social, it is one of the most life-transformative and potentially helpful influences for girls. Some girls credit poker with helping them expose gender stereotypes: what else would make a woman go against her supposed-character to bluff, bet, raise, put the sucker on tilt or mix and mingle? Still other girls gain confidence when they master advanced strategies in a safe-to-fail environment. Poker, furthermore, offers women means to acquire some of the most valuable modern life-skills. These include effective conflict resolution, time-management and managing multiple stimuli on the fly – skills that improve work, family and life outcomes.
