The cutting edge of games playing

Don't disturb - surgeon in training!

Playing video games makes surgeons better at their jobs.

If you've spent at least 3 hours a week playing games in the past, and you're a laparoscopic or keyhole surgeon, recent research suggests that you'll make 37% fewer errors, are 27% faster, and you'll score 42% better overall than surgeons who've never played on a games console.

And even the research was a game - the study in Israel, which also found a correlation between gaming skills and surgical skills, was conducted under simulation conditions.

A royal flush of transferable skills

I read an article today saying that analysis shows that online poker is seen as the most "addictive" of online applications. A legal case this week has just ruled that poker is a game of chance, not skill.

So is poker just another way of "wasting time" - and your money? Perhaps - especially if you're rubbish and stay being rubbish.

However, a word you'll hear a lot in the world of skills, learning and earning is "transferable skills". So can you "spin" your poker talents to demonstrate more than just a dissolute lifestyle?

Here are a few of the transferable skills you can gain from playing poker. And who knows, learn them well enough and you might start to earn as well:

• emotional intelligence
  
• critical evaluative skills
• numerical skills
• pragmatism skills
• interpersonal skills
• problem-solving skills
• goal orientation skills
• learning skills
• higher order strategic and analytical skills
• flexibility skills
• face management/deception skills
• self-awareness skills
• self-control

So now you know. Perhaps I should call the monthly game our action learning and skills development group. If so, for a buy-in of £10, it's a win even when I lose.

By the way - I haven't just made this up. To read the research article by Adrian Parke, Mark Griffiths and Jonathan Parke of Nottingham Trent University, follow this link.