Chess and Poker playing require massive amounts of thinking and strategizing for every move and decision that is being made at the board. In this article I will go into detail over the tactics and thinking patterns that go into both games and I will try to extrapolate those ideas and explain how they can be useful even outside the board or table.
In this ten part blogpost I seek to explain what is going on through the players heads at the moment of thinking and try to explain the processes and vision over their entire game.
First, I would like to familiarize my readers with the history of both games and how they were invented. According to the internet, both games have long histories that are hard to trace. Chess has originated from India around 1500 years ago and then has spread across Asia. Poker, on the other hand has even fuzzier origins and some similarities can be seen in an Egyptian game called As-Nas. Both games have had numerous changes across the history and have become clearer, more of what they are today, somewhere in the 19th century.
Next on, I will briefly go over some of the principles and basics of each game to make sure that everyones is customised with the basic principles and rules of both Chess and Poker. Chess is a game that is played on a 8×8 board with the squares made of two colours (most often black and white). Each player has 16 pieces which can move in different way and have different values with the goal of checkmating the opponent. Poker, on the other hand, is played at a table using a pack of cards. During the course of the blog I will only talk about Hold’em variation of poker which is played with two cards that are dealt to each player and a flop that is followed by two more cards dealt separately so that the players have the options of passing a turn (also known as “check”), calling a turn or raising the amount that has been betted. Unlike Chess, which can only be played as 1 vs. 1, Poker can be played against multiple opponents at the same time and it requires a dealer who’s responsibility is to deal the cards and take the bets. Both games are played individually and require high amounts of focus, concentration, ability to analyse and evaluate different situations and scenarios.
This is going to be a 10 part blogpost that will additionally have three podcasts and three videos which are going to cover the subject of Chess and Poker thought processes. Over the course of the next posts, I plan on going more in-depth over the principles and the soft-skills that both games require and how playing the games helps to develop them. I will try to cover the aspects that go into planning each and every single move in the game and then talk about how the same sort of planning and thinking patterns can be used outside the board or table.
