Poker is a card game that has a certain amount of chance involved, but when you introduce betting (and the possibility of losing real money), it becomes much more of a game of skill. Regardless, poker is a very intense game that requires a lot of attention and concentration. Poker also helps you to sharpen your mental skills and improve your ability to assess risk and make sound decisions.
It also forces you to learn how to deal with losses and be able to take a beating without becoming emotional. This is an important skill to have in any aspect of life and poker can help you develop it. Of course, you should only play poker with the money that you can afford to lose.
This means playing small games at first and getting a coach or a group of people to talk through hands with. These will help you make the right adjustments and improve your game much faster.
In addition, you can read poker strategy books and blogs to help you become a better player. Ultimately, the divide between break-even beginner players and big time winners is often just a few little adjustments that they can learn over time to start winning at a higher rate. These adjustments will often have to do with starting to view poker in a more cold, detached, mathematical, and logical way than they do at present. This is an extremely difficult thing to learn, but once mastered, it can lead to huge improvements.