Any advantage in poker if you're skilled at bridge?

Is there any advantage you can get at the poker table if you're skilled at bridge?

Many top poker players are skilled at bridge also, so i just wonder: what do they benefit from their bridge skill?

Are we handicaped if we don't know a thing about bridge?

thx

I doubt that you become better at poker by learning bridge. I think poker players tend to be skilled at bridge because of general intelligence, problem solving ability and understanding the play of the cards. For instance many poker players are skilled at other games as well. Dan harrington was a skilled chess and backgammon player before he played poker. Paul Magriel, Eric Seidel, and Gus Hansen were also world class backgammon players. Stu Ungar is regarded as the best Gin rummy player the world will ever see. I think the underlying skills that make one a skilled poker player also result in being skilled at other games.

[WhiteWolf]

Just off the top of my head, bridge skills that can be useful in poker include dealing with incomplete information, intuiting your opponent's holdings based on their actions, deception, and understanding the probablity distribution of cards.

Towards your other question, I don't think not knowing bridge hurts your poker game. While some of the skills in bridge do translate, if your goal is to get better at poker, spend your time studying poker, not brigde.

[AaronBrown]

Bridge requires much more skill at cardplay including things like memory, combinations, probability and thinking ahead. These are valuable in games like 7-card stud and Omaha, much less so in games like five-card draw and hold'em.

A champion bridge player who was also a successful Poker and chess professional once told me that the bridge players in high school had no friends, flunked all their classes, got top scores on their SATs, then flunked out of top colleges. The chess players in high school had no friends, did great in their classes, did well on their SATs and graduated from good colleges. The Poker players in high school had lots of friends, flunked all their classes, didn't show up for their SATs and skipped college.

Absolutely. So much about adapting to other players in poker is memory based. So much of poker is memory.