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Some non-flying skills can make our flying better. This topic has been in the air on this blog over the last days, and here is a new development: common points between weather and poker.

The first similarity is the partial lack of information. You know what’s in your hand, what your plane can do, what are the limits. You also have some hints about what weather will be like, but when the situation is dynamic, you can’t always be 100% sure.

Some hints come from the weather briefing products, like charts, METARs, TAFs, PIREPs and so on, but not only. To cope with an evolving weather system, you have to base your decision on your observations. A good pilot is able to detect the signs of hazardous weather before it evolves to a straight flush - and the sooner the better.

Being used to identify variations in other players behaviour, and catch the slightest reactions is somehow akin to follow evolution of weather. Even cirrus clouds carry a message about what will happen in the next hours. Note that this does not apply to weather only. Proper engine management means paying attention to a lot of details before you loose your bet.

There is however a major difference between poker and weather: bluff is useless with weather ! I never achieved to influence a cumulonimbus by looking brave or decided. Pretending you’re CAT-III when you’re not will not make the fog go away.

Ignoring signs results from a mixture of two well known “bad behaviours” we learn about in human performance courses: Macho and Invulnerability. I can do it - It won’t happen to me. Putting all your tokens on the carpet at once can impress other poker players, even if you only have a pair of three. Flying in a thunderstorm or going below minimums in fog will be impressive as well. At least for the accident investigation team.

I don’t play poker enough to say if flying improved my skills, but I got used to wear sunglasses when flying, to protect me from the outside. Wearing them at a poker table also protects me… somehow.

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