Poker and the Beginning Trader

Quote from Ron In-a-sauna:




i totally agree with your point on the entry analogy. however 21 is analagous as well in that you must stay disciplined i.e. hitting that 2 vs a 2 or a 6 vs. 10 even though you emotinally dont want to b/c of the bust potential maybe like holding onto a position through a shakeout that looksk scary but you know its the right thing to do. yo umust stay focused and count the cards acurately like reading the tape. you must stay disciplined in your betting spread i.e. i have seen many players steam and tilt and bet more and more on bad beats to try and make it up quicky sometimes placing htere whole stack in hte middle, similar to a rookie trader who adds to losers hoping it will go his way to break even. and btw when i talk 21 i am assuming a card count and zt least basic strategy so you have an edge. you may win 50% of the hands or less but you bet more when you have an edge in hands your more likely to win or hit BJ and get paid 3/2 i.e. cutting your losers and letting winners run you can make money trading and have a losing record of trades. i like 21 better than poker b/c you just stick to your rules and the play is, i guess more static, where in poker esp. at the higher limits as discussed it becomes a mindfu** i think he thinks etc... so youalways have to compete against a possible bigger fish whereas in 21 you ALWAYS have your edge no matter how much money u put out there; of course you get floor personell than but thats a different story. you can def. make good money at hold em though as high as 3/6 4/8 and not worry too much if your an above avereage player, i htink 6/12 is where you see the biggest jump in talent. IMO.
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Ron;

Those are excellent points that you made and I won't argue them. Higher stakes poker tables definitely move quickly away from the black and white rules of the low limit games.

I'm curious about 21---Do you find that the counting advantage holds with multiple deck shuffles? And how many decks before it makes a differrence? Does the house reshuffle more often if they think that there is counting going on?


Nitro;

I haven't read Poker Nation. I looked at it on Amazon and it looks like a fun read.

kempo
 
Here are my four basic questions related to this discussion, and its relevance to this forum:

#1. Are online casino games legitimate, rather than rigged?

#2. Is it possible to make good money playing online poker, assuming that the casinos are in fact legitimate.

#3. Is online trading less of a gamble for an individual than online
poker, or is it more of a gamble?

#4. Is gambling immoral?

My current thoughts:

1. Of course, if the games are rigged and I'm just being set up to get taken, then there's no possibility of succeeding at making money this way.
But the more I look at it the more it seems likely that any misconduct taking place is probably only a tiny percentage of the activity on at least the site I've been playing.

For one thing, they have certain bonuses on pokerroom.com. They give bonus points worth 10¢ each for each hand you sit in at a real-money table. And each day they pay out cash bonuses to the top ten list of players who have sat in the most rounds. Each day they list the top 30 players in terms of rounds sat in. If there were hustlers stationed at these tables, you would think it would be hard for them to disguise that fact, when the players in the most rounds have their player names publicly posted like that. Who knows, maybe part of the reasoning for them creating this bonus was to be able to expose any frauds in this way? Probably not, but it could be accomplishing it anyhow.

2. If the system is legitimate, and not merely somehow designed to lure naive suckers like me in by giving easy winnings at the play money tables just to fleece them at the real money games, then I think I have a real shot. Maybe I'm some kind of natural to this game or something. I sit at a table with 9 other players, and I seem to be handed the perfect cards time after time. I have spent a lot of time the last two months playing Addiction Solitaire on Yahoo, and maybe this simple game is good exercise for playing Hold-Em poker? In that solitaire game you just line up a deck of cards in four rows according to suit and number. It's possible that having done a fair amount of that has somehow conditioned me to lining up the poker cards simply and effectively in my mind?

3. If my answers to #1 and #2 have any accuracy, and I will find out next week when my real money is on the line, then I'll have to say that for myself online trading is far more of a gamble. But I'll reserve my comments about that until I have actual results to back it up with.

4. I was brought up to believe that gambling was immoral, as well as generally illegal on that account, and of course generally risky due not only to its own inherent risks but also because the people who run these things are presumed to be sleazy and their games are presumed to be crooked and rigged. This is a large part of why I never considered attempting online gambling before. And why I was attracted to the stock market.

And the idea of taking money directly out of the hands of other players, seemed a shameful and guilt-ridden thing to end up doing. I didn't want to have to live with that kind of guilt. I wanted to make money, but I didn't want to be a thief. Even though, yeah I know the other players chose to play and would gladly take my money without guilt.

I thought that trying to glean a few crumbs from the truckloads of money moving through the stock market wouldn't make me an immoral pickpocket of other specific human individuals.
And I was confident that the stock market was not a racket, but a well-regulated forthright out-in-the-open system, and that profiting from the market was dependent on genuine studious analysis, not gambling.

But I really don't feel that way now. Sure when I see at the end of the day that NQ futures moved 30 points, and I could have made 50% profit using intraday leverage if I had known, it makes me feel like I ought to have been in that hand. But to try to predict how those things will move and when? It's just too much of a guesswork for me. Predicting the viability of two poker cards I am handed seems much less risky to me.

I do still feel bad about taking other gamblers' money. But less and less. Because what I see now is that "if I don't take it from them, someone else will" is not just a moral copout, but a completely accurate assessment. If I take money from the successful players (before they can take it from me), then I am merely a personal Robin Hood helping bring them down to size. And the less successful players (hoping I'm not included among them) are going to lose their money, to better players but most of all to the casino rake. The casino eventually gets about 50% of all the money played, whether I get in the game or not. I'm not taking money from people that they would not be losing if I didn't play.
 
Quote from kempo:


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Nitro;

I haven't read Poker Nation. I looked at it on Amazon and it looks like a fun read.

kempo
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Heh,

I really learned alot about the "typical" poker players life from this book, except probably the drugs and the hookers which are probably not part of 90% of all pro players life.

nitro
 
Another similiarity between trading and poker is that there is a rhythm to both. Over the long run the law of averages rules but in the short term there are cycles that no law that I know of can account for. When your hot your hot and when your not your not and if you can learn to press when your hot and pucker up when your not you will be ok.

p.s. he who has the most discipline wins!!
 
Quote from easyrider:

Another similiarity between trading and poker is that there is a rhythm to both. Over the long run the law of averages rules but in the short term there are cycles that no law that I know of can account for. When your hot your hot and when your not your not and if you can learn to press when your hot and pucker up when your not you will be ok.

p.s. he who has the most discipline wins!!
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That's exactly how it seems to me, after my first week at this. That's why I said when I get the good cards, I just keep raising without hesitation, and it really works (I profit from the larger pots when I'm winning). When you don't get the good cards, just fold. Maybe try a different table.
People comment that I had a lucky hand when I win. But the "luck" is that I kept raising that hand, so that when my cards win my winnings are 3-4 times what more cautious bettors' are.
 
I read the lee jones book a couple of years ago and yes it is good. I can remember that i didn't agree with everything but teh basic point is play tight and agressive. Lou Kregiers "from beginner to winner is good two" also the limit holdem section of supersysytem is extremely good despite what people say about the structure of holdem changing over the years. There are many other books but i would read these first.

#1. Are online casino games legitimate, rather than rigged?
probably not. mostly. hard to say. there have been cases where people could see others cards. again I refer you to rec.gambling.poker or twoplustwo.com

#2. Is it possible to make good money playing online poker, assuming that the casinos are in fact legitimate.
Maybe but not unless you are extremely good. Suffice it to say if you have been playing for a month you don't fall into this category.....Yet.

#3. Is online trading less of a gamble for an individual than online
poker, or is it more of a gamble? I suppose you could measure your standard deviation for both activities and determine which ahs more gamble (I plead only semi-literacy in math) but I think you mean something more anecdotal that i wont try to answer. I know hardly anything about trading but it seems that you can make quite a lot of money without becoming absolutely world class. this is not really true in poker.


#4. Is gambling immoral?
No. Even Benjamin Graham said so. You can't hold everybody's hand in life. Especially people you don't even know.
 
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