Working on your focus and concentration can improve your overall intelligence, stave off debilitating diseases like Alzheimer’s, and give you a more alert, more in tune day-to-day life.
A lot of people look to specialized games and riddles when it’s time to exercise their brains. And while they certainly come in handy and allow you to work on concentration and overall cognitive function, a lot of games you wouldn’t expect can produce the same results.
Take blackjack as an example. Blackjack, or 21 as it’s often called, is one of the most popular games out there period. Whether it’s at an online casino, a land-based casino or at your kitchen table, 21 is wildly popular and easy to play.
But how does it qualify as a brain training game?
Blackjack can help you in a few essential areas, including memory, math and even on-the-spot reasoning/rationalization.
Due to the nature of this game, if you’re expected to be any good at playing and hope to actually win, you will need to memorize certain things about the game. For instance: how many cards have been dealt with a 10 value as opposed to how many cards are left in the deck?
There are 16 cards in a 52-card deck with the value of 10, and more often than not, it’s going to help to know the odds of catching one of these cards either to put you in a good position to best the dealer’s hand or to keep you from busting out of the hand by totaling over 21.
You don’t have the luxury of sitting around all day and plotting your next move, either. When you play online blackjack, you have to think fast. You will eventually learn to recognize your odds in a split second. You’ll take in how much to bet, whether to hit or stay, what the dealer’s possibilities are, etc, all in the blink of an eye.
When you learn how to play and become adept in blackjack, you’re actually training your brain in many ways which will help you in other areas of life.
Not everyone out there is a gambler, to be sure, but simply playing a few rounds for fun is an easy and effective brain exercise.
