Pool Player vs. Golfer vs. Chess Player

[Equal]

Okay I am going to defend golf here because I am a regular semi-competitive golfer, and it actually helped me a lot with poker.

First of all, the better you get at golf, the more of a mental game it is. Anyone who's watched any of golf's majors and seen a leader miss a two-foot putt will understand this. The more of a mental game golf becomes, the more it is similar to poker, and specifically online poker.

Secondly, golf teaches you to play shot by shot. You hit a shot, and no matter what happens, you move onto the next one. Even if you hit a perfect shot, but the results happens to be poor, you evaluate your new position and make a best decision appropriately. This is exactly the same thinking in poker - but instead of shot-by-shot, it's hand after hand.

The key point is that you have to be able to be happy with your play, either in golf or poker, regardless of what the final outcome was. The golf equivalent of bad beat is "rub of the green". You need to be able to get past those bad beats/rubs and focus on the next hand/shot.

I could go on and on, but I don't have any more time. I'll try to post later.

[MonkeeMan]

[ QUOTE ]
There was a person who wrote a chess book that decided he would try to become a semi pro poker player, and he wrote a series of posts called "The Newbie Chronicles".

[/ QUOTE ]

I read the whole thread and was amused by two aspects:
1) The guy had a $1000 roll to tap into, but would do absolutely anything to avoid diving in the kiddie pool. He'd rather spend money on a sim and play it 100 hours than face off against real live people for micro-limits.
2) We live in the age of enlightenment. No longer do posters extoll the virtues of Lee Jones as they did throughout this thread. Now he is a bum writer who will lead you to ruin. Funny thing is, his book hasn't changed, its reviews have.

[eagle]

I agree. The pre-shot decisonmaking is completely analogous to poker, and so is the ability to deal with bad breaks and not go on tilt.

[nothumb]

BTW isn't that chess player less advanced (relatively) than his counterparts in the golf and pool world?

I go with chess, silly question.

NT

[valenzuela]

You forgot to mention which one is better at reading ppl. Hennigan is a hell of a poker player anyway. Anyway Ill put the example of my friends which I play poker with.
A: Good chess player, smart and discplined( on real life)...as a poker player:too weak, you can run over him.
B: Good at math, too loose preflop, way too easy to read postflop, ok ill say it sigh..he sucks at poker.
C: Lazy, underachiever: strong player, good at reading ppl..adapts well to table conditions..however he has trouble getting away from his good (not great)hands so thats his main weak spot.

[Shoe]

It's obviously the pool player.

Eddie Towne used to be a pool player, and now he is a world champion.