Online Poker- is it a game of life?

Most of my friends react with amazement when I point out to poker online as my primary hobby. Many of them react with some doze of cautiousness as a gambler is to be for sure a dreamy and irresponsible person, loosing the last penny of his family’s funds at a table with players who are to be avoided in the streets.
A prevailing part of my friends would consider a valuable hobby as collecting stamps or performing some kind of sport. According to them gambling is both limiting and suspicious.
Well, my associations with what poker online could be were rather similar in the beginning. Sometimes I received emails with information on bankrolls and tournaments and very quickly chose the little black cross on the top right side of it.
It was a friend of mine who had already been a keen rakeback player that introduced me to all that. Probably you will know this story for yourself…
What keeps me with poker online is that I can find many similarities between it and real life. In life you get better or worse initial chances and in poker you get better and worse cards. The life shows that the most successful are not those who had a better chance but those who utilized wisely what they had got-and it poker, it does not matter what cards you’ve got but how you played them at the table.
Furthermore, poker online is a wonderful tool to train your psychological abilities. It is not what cards you have got but rather how fit psychologically you proved to be. After each game you learn life lessons like: how much should I risk? is he strong or just bluffs? everything goes too well, so maybe something will go wrong shortly?...(and probably many others which I still have to realize)
rakeback online teaches you how to get better as a social being. And to some professionals it can serve as an exercise in business relations with partners, an extremely valuable skills-do you know a better hobby then???
Rakeback poker has even more advantages does not bring me to the strange, dangerous basements as I can play from my home. It gets me in touch with many players around the world. It does not risk my money as I can check my level via free rolls first before spending the last bite of my family’s bread.
As you can see my hobby is neither limiting nor suspicious and besides, it can become an additional source of income, after accomplishing in it. But the most precious gain is the possibility to see what I can improve in myself as a player in the big game of life.
A very few hobbies can offer that much I suspect…