Do You Need to Be Smart to Be Good at Poker?

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Poker Pro Phil Galfond explains whether being smart is necessary for new and beginning poker players and why a high IQ can sometimes be a problem!

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In today’s world there are plenty of poker training sites, poker coaches, and other poker learning resources available, so having a high IQ and being able to reason your way through tough mathematical concepts or positions is not as necessary as it might once have been to be successful.
Phil explains in today’s video, anecdotally, how high IQ people can even be challenged and struggle playing poker (and it’s not because they are playing live poker vs online poker!) Having an above average intelligence can potentially correlate with doing well at poker, but there are plenty of reasons why a reasonably smart player may struggle.

Have you ever played HU PLO? Have you experienced the degenerate poker variance of 5 Card pot limit Omaha? How about double board PLO bomb pots? The swings in poker can destroy even the strongest mental game when unprepared.

Are you a new poker player or a poker beginner? Do you just need the best poker strategy or do you have a high stakes poker related question you’d like a poker professional’s advice on? Leave a comment and your question might end up in the next one of these quick poker tips videos!

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Source: YouTube

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Do You Need to Be Smart to Be Good at Poker?

8 thoughts on “Do You Need to Be Smart to Be Good at Poker?

  1. Is there any correlation between being one of the best and most famous poker pro's in the world and not being vaccinated?
    I would be willing to bet so much money Ivey isn't vaccinated.
    Would shock me if Dwan was either.
    More unsure about you.
    God i would love a list about which famous players took the shot and who didn't.

  2. It definitely requires a high IQ. No moron is going to be a winning poker player.

  3. Also, there are risk elements. I would say propensity to risk doesn't necessarily correlate with IQ. People who are successful with poker are willing to make big bluffs and big calls, but some people just are not comfortable taking that risk, no matter how much money they have.

    To put it in simpler terms, people who are successful in poker are ballsy. They lay out the decision process and follow through it.

  4. Of course there’s a correlation. Just because people bring up exceptions on both end of the spectrum doesn’t mean that the correlation doesn’t exist.

  5. Every statement in this video is a contradiction of the statement that came before it.

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