To many players, the game of poker can prove self-destructive. You can develop an unhealthy addiction to poker playing and gambling in general, losing far more than you are gaining. However, for those that play poker in moderation and are financially secure, poker may actually have positive impacts on your brain and social life, helping you far more than you may have imagined. The addicting game that we've all grown accustomed to have a love-hate relationship with, is tremendously beneficial to your health regardless of how kind it is to your pockets.

According to research at McGill University in Canada, poker can relieve stress. In this study, the cortisol levels, or stress hormones, of online poker players dropped significantly during a game of poker. These levels decreased by up to 17% as the players progressed and became increasingly engaged in the game. The reason for this is due to the intense focus given during a poker game, which helps to eliminate many negative thoughts and worries.

Poker can improve the cognitive functioning of the brain. This is because players are constantly thinking, learning, and adapting strategies during the game. This can provide excellent exercise for the brain.

Harvard law professor Charles R. Nesson confirms this belief. Nesson, famous for defending Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers, believes poker can teach people very valuable skills. The professor uses poker in his classes to teach students about decision making and risk, describing poker as a game of two skills. He deems the first skill as making good bets, or good investments. The second skill is being able to recognize your opponent's strategy and story without revealing your own. "You put those two together and you have a dynamite poker player, or a dynamite lawyer, or a dynamite businessman," Nesson says. "You have dynamite."

Although it may be hard to believe, playing poker may have benefited some of the most influential figures on this planet today. In an article written by Professor James McManus, who has been teaching a course on the literature of poker at the School of Art Institute of Chicago, poker could have primed the minds and careers of some of history’s most influential figures.

President Obama originally had trouble being accepted as a community organizer and then politician in Chicago during the late 1990’s. McManus stated that Obama said, “When it turned out that I could sit down at [a bar] and have a beer and watch a game or go out for a round of golf or get a poker game going, I probably confounded some of their expectations.” McManus believed Obama was “referring to the regular Wednesday night game, called the Committee Meeting, that he and another freshman Democrat started,” in which this poker game helped Obama “break the ice with people he needed to work with in the legislature.”

Besides President Obama, Bill Gates may have had his career sparked by the game of poker during his four semesters at Harvard in the mid 1970’s. According to McManus, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer once claimed that Microsoft's early business plan was "basically an extension of the all-night poker games Bill and I used to play back at Harvard." In addition, Bill Gates once said that "In poker, a player collects different pieces of information—who's betting boldly, what cards are showing, what this guy's pattern of betting and bluffing is—and then crunches all that data together to devise a plan for his own hand. I got pretty good at this kind of information processing." Gates also stated, "the poker strategizing experience would prove helpful when I got into business." You could even come to some sort of conclusion that Gates won a fair portion of Microsoft's start-up costs from those poker games alone.

Remember, poker can boost your mental wellbeing and social skills. So the next time you’re in a poker game or playing some cards, share these poker benefits with your competitors. You may help them feel better about themselves after you take some of their chips. So with that being said, take the load off, enhance your cognitive thinking while having some fun and visit Poker Junkie- the best site for poker players. Poker Junkie provides your daily poker fix. Find the best online poker sites, largest bonus deals and best-value tournaments. If you want to study poker strategy, read blogs or discuss the game with fellow junkies, this is the place.

Sources

http://chronicle.com/article/What-Poker-Can-Teach-Us/48641/

http://www.777.com/articles/studies-show-online-gaming-reduces-stress-2