Donkeytest - Neat Little Poker IQ Test

So, upon my nightly perusal of the ITH Forums, a post by Mecil caught my eye. I'm always a sucker for aptitude tests, as long as they're not general IQ tests - I'll rant about them shortly. I've seen my fair share of poker aptitude tests, and most of them fall well short of interesting, but this sets the bar fairly high.

The test can be found at http://www.donkeytest.com. It's a 50 question, timed test. There isn't a set time limit, but one of the measurements they judge you on is computational speed, which I assume is based on the overall time you take on the test. The other categories they measure you on are positional play, blinds, tournament play, big pairs, small/medium pairs, bluffing, flop texture, pot odds, logic, betting patterns, hand selection, aggression, and arm wrestling ability. Okay, perhaps not the last one.

I'm generally not a fan of IQ tests, because I went through the whole Gifted and Talented program in school, and I have the general idea that most "gifted" children are really kids that either a) are smart enough to take lateral thinking tests, but complete twits for doing anything else, or b) rich and had their parents get them into it with either money or whining. It's not a resentment thing, I just think that it's such a poor indicator of true intelligence that whenever I hear someone reference it or quote their own, I have this unhealthy backlash that makes me want to smack them across the face, and not in a Bud Light way.

This was a great test though. There were plenty of difficult decisions, and all of the questions seemed to be thought out very well. I'm sure there are many who will argue that poker is a game of "it depends", and there can't be one correct answer, but I think the way the questions were phrased, one should be able to reason out the correct answer based on the factors given. I wish it wasn't so heavily biased towards NL Cash (especially since I play so little of it), but I guess that's understandable, as there are a lot more tough decisions in that game and I think it's a better overall test of one's abilities.

Of course I'm going to have to brag about my scores, who didn't see this coming?

The test takes about a half hour, and I think is completely worth the time, even if it just gets you thinking about poker in a critical way. Try it!