Poker vs cooking

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I had an interesting chat with a chef in a live cash game last night, and it got me thinking about a concept that unites both of these two fields well, and one that it is essential to understand if you want to take your game to a very high level. In the world of cooking, you have a very clear line between a good chef and a good cook. A good cook will be able to produce a masterful meal for a few people, will often have an excellent television manner, and generally can make a small amount of food very well. 

This is a very, very different skill to what a good chef does. A good chef may not have the best people skills or appear that well on television, but when an order comes in for some ridiculous quantity of food just before closing time, they get down to work and produce every one to a high quality standard and on time despite the hour and the pressure. The restaurant business is a graveyard for people who assume that because they are good cooks they will be good chefs, and this is very similar to a phenomenon we see all too often in poker.

You can easily be a winning player and not have anywhere near the skills necessary to succeed as a pro. You may dominate your local game, win a decent rate at low stake online MTTs or cash, or place well in the odd decent stake tournament. Just like the good cook, you can do what needs to be done in an easy and comfortable environment, without the pressures of speed and quality meaning the difference between survival and destruction in your life.

This is a very different skill from having to face the brutal emotional swings and general cruelty of poker when whether you eat or not depends on it. The skill of the professional player is often not even so much in the card play, but in keeping it all together and running everything correctly in order to maintain quality and survival. Just like the good chef, they understand that the food has to taste good and come out well, but they know how to produce this consistently over a very large sample under a great deal of pressure - a skill that is much, much harder than just making one thing well, and a point critical to understanding if you are thinking of taking your game above a hobby. 

The skill of the professional player is often not even so much in the card play, but in keeping it all together and running everything correctly in order to maintain quality and survival.

(Artigo de estratégia de Marcus Bateman publicado no site da betfair)