Kids and cards

[ester11]

Is it okay for kids to play cards? What about if they want to gamble? What stops them from gambling online ? What would happen to the money if they won?

[winningedge]

my brother actually has a very interesting blog that he has written about this.. would be interested in hearing what others think. Also, below is an article in time magazine about the topic.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...538649,00.html

From the Blog:
ive maintained that poker is good for kids for quite a while now, and every time i say it, people give me that "i am SO glad you dont have kids" look... but now it appears both time magazine and many parents across the country actually agree with me...

and wow what a weird feeling that is.

anyhow, im going to lay out again why i think poker is good for kids, for those who havent heard it already.

Poker sharpens mathematical skills.
there are people who say poker is nothing but math. then there are people who say poker is all reads and situational play, and math doesnt matter at all. theyre both wrong. Math is a part of any winning player's game, even if they arent doing chisombop on the rail, and poker helps develop the ability to perform calculations quickly and while under stress.


Poker sharpens empathy, intuition, and emotional skills.
the other side of the poker coin, opposite math, is emotion... the "people" part of the game. like the zen archer who strives to "be" the target at which he aims, so too must the poker player strive to see a hand from the perspective of his opponents. how does this play look to my opponents? how does it make them feel? are they angry? do they respect me? are they desperate? are they just there for a good time? how would THEY answer these questions about ME? answering these questions requires the ability to connect with other people, to empathize with them. ok, sure, its an especially predatory form of empathy, and probably wouldnt rank really high on a therapists scale of emotional adjustment, but hey... its better than being a completely disconnected individual looking for an opportunity to pump a bunch of hot lead into their school or workplace.


Poker sharpens observation, memory, and situational awareness.
in poker, you must do more than look, you have to see. the players and their tendancies, the cards, the chips, the pot, the type of game, the structure, the stacks, and more... you have to take it all in, capturing even the most minute details. the successful player sees everything, constantly looking for opportunity. more than that, the player must RETAIN what theyve observed. short term memory is critical, especially in "open" games like stud, where being able to remember whether the ace of spades is already out and folded or not can make all the difference. then there is the long term memory, remembering the details of an opponent's play indefinitely so you are forewarned (and armed) should you ever find yourself sitting across the table from them in the future.


Poker sharpens logic and reasoning skills.
while most poker hands are fairly straightforward and boring (contrary to what the heavily-edited televised poker coverage would lead you to believe), the important hands in a session are often like complex puzzles. a successful player has to take everything mentioned above, the math, the players, and the observations, shuffle everything around, run it backwards and forwards, and put all the pieces together in a way that makes sense... then determine what the most correct action to take might be. this is the culmination of poker skill... its where the rubber meets the road, and where a player's deficiencies come to light.
But wait, theres more! poker is certainly a game of skill, and as such, it naturally leads to improving the relevant skills (assuming your kid doesnt want to suck at it forever, anyway). but it is also a game of character.
Poker develops courage.
it has been said that no-limit varieties of poker are long stretches of boredom interspersed with brief moments of utter terror. its true. these moments of terror will test your resolve, and your faith in the above-mentioned skills. eventually, this will lead to a sense of confidence in your abilities and the courage to see things through. this is so important, i put it at the top of the character list. why? because one of the biggest problems with modern western society is that its filled with a bunch of panty-waisted sissies who never seemed to get over the trauma of having their mother's teat popped out of their mouths. im serious. just look around you. pathetic pussies everywhere, whining and crying and carrying on about one damn thing or another, always the victims. theyve never been taught to stand up for themselves. theyre passive-aggressive mommas-boys (and girls) with too much heart and too little spine. poker will develop that vestigal spine in your simpering wuss of a child. that, or they will constantly lose their allowance to their less cowardly friends. then cry like the babies they are.


Poker encourages aggression.
successful poker play is aggressive poker play, period. passive play won't get you anywhere but broke. you've got to be more than assertive, you have to be ruthless. the successful player sniffs out weakness, then just leans on their opponent, never giving them a moment to recover, visiting utter defeat upon them. news flash, folks: there are times in life that REQUIRE the application of force, and the ability to do so when called for and without hesitation is a critical life skill. snap out of it, recognize the basic truth of this, and stop raising such a bunch of little pansies.


Poker requires discretion, discipline, self-control and patience.
some of you may have read the last point and thought "whatwhatwhat??? thats just what we need, aggressive children!" (and as a side note, if that sounds like you, youre probably a (current or future) parent of one of those pussies i mentioned when talking about "courage.") well, fear not. poker also develops discretion. indiscriminate, naked aggression often leads to broke even faster than passive play. the focused, disciplined application of force is the cornerstone of successful play. poker involves an endless succession of risk/reward evaluations, and the successful player learns when and where to apply that force, in the situations most conducive to victory. even more importantly, the successful player develops the discipline and patience to wait for these right moments to occur. it does no good to know you're in a bad situation if you go ahead and get involved anyway, because you're too bored or too angry or too sleepy or just too impatient to wait for a good situation.


Poker enhances adaptability.
a successful player is a flexible player. the dynamics of poker change from session to session, hand to hand, and even card to card within a hand. you must be tuned into these variations, the ebb and flow of the game, and be able to change tactics at a moment's notice if a new piece of information or a shift in the dynamics of the game makes it necessary. this kind of adaptability carries over into day to day life.


Poker develops money management skills.
theres more to the game than the game itself. if you go broke, no more poker for you. your child will quickly learn how to manage their "bankroll" if they want to keep playing. and doing the things kids like to do, like go to movies. or whatever the fuck it is kids do these days.


Poker develops deception.
This is a good thing?? YES. isnt your primary job as a parent to prepare your kid to survive out in the world? face it, being an open book all the time only puts you at a disadvantage in life. just as there are times where the application of force is appropriate and required, so too are there times to deceive. when these moments in crop up, youd best be able to do it effectively, or youll be even worse off! poker will help develop the ability to dissemble convincingly in your child.


Poker develops honesty.
wtf? didnt i just say it develops deception? well, as odd as it may sound, honesty is actually the single most important thing on earth to a poker player if they ever want to become a better player. not honesty with your opponents, but honesty with YOURSELF. you MUST be able to see your flaws, and address them unflinchingly even as you seek to conceal them from your opponents. self-denial is the ruin of a poker player. if your child wants to improve as a player, they must be willing to improve as a person.

[kelkat]

That said, I think most of the card games (spades, rook, hearts) do the same thing minus the betting aspect. I actually think black jack is a better "casino" game to teach kids.

Betting and kids are just no a good mix!

[Velvet Umbrella]

I have to agree. I think poker is something kids should want to play, in fact I would encourage kids to play. Would you rather have your child playing poker, or playing a video game? Personally I would want my child playing poker. But I am not a parent.

[kelkat]

Personally, I would rather have my child playing chess or even spades. Poker is really not a kids game, but I think that it could be used to help teach.

Given the choice, though, poker would not be top of my list of kid's games.

[queenofthetables]

I think that poker is fine for kids to play as long as they are not gambling while playing the game. It has a lot of good teaching aspects. I think that the best thing for kids to play is blackjack though since it teaches them how to count(at least to 21) LOL!

[metalmaiden55]

credit cards stop them from gambling online. A little kid doesnt have a credit card and if they were to use their parents they would find out almost immediatly when the bill comes around. Its not too bad for kids to learn how to play ( I learned when I was pretty young) you just need to have a talk with them and let them understand that they need to be responsible.

[SmokeyFlush]

kids shouldnt play poker(by kids I mean 13 and under). when they are about 14 they can reason enough between good and bad and maybe (depending on the kid) they can take up the responsibility of learning how to responsibly play poker. As for the online gambling, I agree with metalmaiden on the Credit card thing. Kids will always do something bad at some point in their childhood. I'd rather have my kid gamble and I catch them and lecture than my kid using drugs and I dont catch them. Thats my 2 cents.

[jakejjp]

i think poker in kids is good and help them out.it gives them something to do other than drug or achol but poker in kids can get out of hand. they should not gamble much but i belive if it keeps them away from all dangers and bad descions let at it.i love poker im 13 it helps me with math and ways of looking at math conseps.it helps me socialy to in making freinds.I like to play for change and go to some poker tounments with adults i won the first game and since than ( 5-6 tournments) i have finished in the top 3 i am responibale and belive there is no problem with playing poker privatly. i would like to see some kid poker tournments i think one day it would as big as real poker.well if kids can play football and collage football and gamble with there life and body why can kids do some little change exchange.


im open to any thing tell me what you think.

[heavery]

I believe it's not good to introduce poker to kids. It is a great game, and that's the problem. Kids might enjoy it too much, and it becomes a hobby. This hobby can evolve to a very bad habit. Whenever gambling is involved, there's always the risk of losing. If these kids become good players at an early age, they may never learn the value of hard work until it's too late.

[xramboslice]

hey i am only 16 and i have been playing poker online since i was 12. i have never deposited money on a site i am primarilly a play chip and freeroll player. i have won some freerolls and have had luck in cash games with what i have won.

i think its wonderful for kids to start online young itgives them an excellent chance to get used to bad beats and other things that happen less in regular games. i am one of the best players to play in our poker group and i am the youngest by twleve years. online poker has helped me tons in advancing my skill as a poker player. i believe blackjack is a bad game for kids to play due to its more gmabling then poker. poker u can controll what happens in the end more than blackjack.

[frob23]

By the powers of the underworld, I call this thread up from the dead!!! Arise and live again!


That said, it's an interesting question and one that I have come to admit I am completely unable to answer without bias. I was raised playing poker from a very young age. How young? Think of the youngest age you believe a child could learn poker at. Younger than that! lol

I had learned poker and was playing for real money (albeit pennies and nickels) before I started attending grade school. I am certain I had memorized the hand rankings before 1st grade and was playing long before that. My grandmother started us playing Razz (7 stud lowball) because we didn't need to remember anything. We played frequently growing up.

Did I learn some of those skills mentioned in the second post? Oh yeah. And I learned the hard way that the money I lost had real value. Even to this day I play very small stakes because my upbringing caused me to respect the value of money and the pain that losing could bring. My family also played with some "ugly" home rules... including open-stakes. And open-stakes develops courage like you've never seen but will experience in the real world. With open-stakes, you are never sure exactly what is at stake... you might have $20 on the table... and your opponent might only have a dollar... but he can reach into his pocket and pull out as much as he wants, whenever he wants. And that's like real life, where you're often not sure how much risk there actually is but you have to make decisions and act on them anyway.

I always had great math skills growing up... but more than "calculation" skills... we (all the children and cousins) developed a profoundly keen "math sense" along with card sense. That is to say, we developed an intuition and a feeling about how numbers most likely related to each other. This is a skill that's very useful in and out of school. With a keen math sense, a student can look at the answer they arrive at (for a multi-step problem) and have a good feeling for whether it's close or not. There were many times in school where I missed a step or miscalculated on a step... and when I arrived at the answer... I could look at it and tell that it wasn't right because it didn't make sense. I can't tell you how many students will do multistep addition and multiplication problems (with whole numbers) and end up with a result that's obviously too small but they have no math sense and can't see it immediately. It's a skill teachers spend a long time teaching but one that develops through experience playing poker.

And, for all the people who worry about kids gambling, and this is where my upbringing probably gives me a skewed worldview but maybe not, you would be shocked at how much gambling kids really do. They "rock-paper-scissor" for snacks at lunch, the flip a coin for the right to pick something first, or any of a number of other things. When two boys flip a coin to see who gets the window seat on the bus... many adults don't see gambling there. But any time something of value is risked on an unknown outcome, you're gambling. The problem is that things of value to children aren't often monetary. Gambling is a natural part of childhood and being human. Keeping children away from poker isn't going to stop them from gambling... it's just going to leave them unprepared and unskilled when it comes to gambling later in life.

As one last note: growing up my cousins and I brought many an unsuspecting friend into the world of poker. Very few resisted... most were eager to play and quickly fell in love... despite being easy prey and horrible at the game. The few children I knew that were not eager to sit in a strange game and play... were all my relatives who had been brought up playing. We'd been instructed our entire lives about the skill aspect of the game, about cheating, about being wary of unknown people, and being willing to lose everything we put into play. Those lessons made us less likely to end up in a game we did not personally control because we were warned (probably too much but that's another point) about the dangers of playing. It was less than a year ago where I had to talk to my step-brother (not raised playing) and pull him aside and convince him to NOT go to a private game. He was eager as a beaver to play a private game with a couple of guys he just met and a $1,000+ buy-in. So much of it rang warning bells in my head but he wasn't thinking twice about it. When I explained my concerns, bankroll and robbery wise, he did wise up and passed on that game until he could find someone to vouch for the guys and the level of the game.

All those parents NOT teaching their children poker and/or at least the skills to recognize a bad situation and bad gamble... are sending them out defenseless to meet up with kids like I was. And the kids like myself are out there... they're arranging spread-limit stud games before church youth group meetings... they're convincing friends to bring Halloween candy over to play cards with... they're eager to "teach" them how to play and will even find a card with all the hand rankings so they know what beats what. They're out there and they're more common than you might think. Growing up, I was in my late teens before I had a peer who didn't end up playing cards with us and wouldn't be talked into it -- and he was Southern Baptist and believed all cards were the Devil's device... so that might have had more to do with it. The kids will play... maybe not as early as I did... but sooner than you might think... and almost always for something of value.. aka, they will be gambling.

[powrdragn]

Interestingly, using "Powker encourages aggression" as a "benefit" tot he game is not such a good idea.

[gorden71]

I have 2 daughters (11=13) who I play poker with quite often. I have also let them play a couple freerolls under my account, with me looking over their shoulder. I do not have any reservations about teaching them the game. I do however turn off chat when they play online due to some players behavior. if nothing else it's another activity to keep us close and for me that is the key to keeping a child on the right path. Nothing else compares to being an active and supportive parent.