Poker and the Beginning Trader

FanOfFridays · Nov 22, 2005

Quote from JKTRADER:

If you equate trading to poker than you shouldn't be trading...it's that simple.

I don't know what kind of traders(not to be mistaken for investor) you guys are but I'm purely a day trader, which means I'm flat every night. You want to gamble, hold your positons over night and if your lucky maybe Crammer will pick your overnighter but other wise you're gambling

Actually, the whole point is that good trading and good poker play require many of the same skills.

Maybe you meant to say that if someone equates trading with gambling , they shouldn't be trading.

That might explain your suggestion that holding positions overnight is pure gambling? I assume you mean gambling in the roulette or slots sense, where the house has an edge, i.e. where a player will eventually lose everything if he keeps playing (unlike poker, which is a game of skill, not chance). Yeah, you're probably right. After all, there are hardly any guys who have made money in the markets by holding positions for weeks/months/years.

And if they hold a position for months or years, it doesn't necessarily mean they are investors.

Don Bright · Nov 22, 2005

Quote from Rearden Metal:

Poker is to trading what checkers is to chess. One is far more complex than the other, but they are still comparable.

If you think poker is 'gambling', you don't understand poker.
There is a luck factor involved, but over the long haul the best players always win, the fish always lose, and the players who believe they're gambling are always fish.

Risk management, pattern recognition, psychology, not getting emotional over losses, only playing when you have an edge, etc.
I'd say there are plenty of parallels between poker & trading.

I'd love to play a high stakes freezeout* (we play until one player has all the chips, and the other has nothing.) against any of these guys who think poker is all about luck. I'd even hand him 5% of my stack as a handicap before the first hand is dealt. If it's really a game of luck, they should be falling all over themselves to take the deal...

* A series of multiple freezeouts would be better. I'd raise the handicap to even more than 5%, should any 'gambler' agree to play. I'm near Chicago.

No gambling here, but perhaps we can get a game up...perhaps even online (FullTiltPoker)....I like to play heads up "Sit and Go's" - maybe an ET game of sorts.

Don

iceman1 · Nov 22, 2005

Quote from Rearden Metal:

Poker is to trading what checkers is to chess. One is far more complex than the other, but they are still comparable.

If you think poker is 'gambling', you don't understand poker.
There is a luck factor involved, but over the long haul the best players always win, the fish always lose, and the players who believe they're gambling are always fish.

Risk management, pattern recognition, psychology, not getting emotional over losses, only playing when you have an edge, etc.
I'd say there are plenty of parallels between poker & trading.

I'd love to play a high stakes freezeout* (we play until one player has all the chips, and the other has nothing.) against any of these guys who think poker is all about luck. I'd even hand him 5% of my stack as a handicap before the first hand is dealt. If it's really a game of luck, they should be falling all over themselves to take the deal...

* A series of multiple freezeouts would be better. I'd raise the handicap to even more than 5%, should any 'gambler' agree to play. I'm near Chicago.

Rearden Metal---

I am also in Chicago area-- SW

whre do you play-- what casinos?

also do you know of any local games looking for players- ?

thanks for getting back to me (or- PMing me)

Ice

biggerfish · Nov 22, 2005

Quote from Don Bright:

No gambling here, but perhaps we can get a game up
...perhaps even online (FullTiltPoker).
...I like to play heads up "Sit and Go's"

- maybe an ET game of sorts.

Right on, Don.

How about a new Game Theory & Skills Forum right here on EliteTrader.com?

Just as long as any head-to-head competition isn't relegated to Chit Chat
- plenty of "head" games going on there, already...

iceman1 · Nov 22, 2005

Quote from Don Bright:

No gambling here, but perhaps we can get a game up...perhaps even online (FullTiltPoker)....I like to play heads up "Sit and Go's" - maybe an ET game of sorts.

Don

Don-- what other tables do you play on FT?

((you play with dustin dirksen??)

icE

Don Bright · Nov 22, 2005

Quote from iceman1:

Don-- what other tables do you play on FT?

((you play with dustin dirksen??)

icE

No Dustin...but we do set up private tournaments for those interested. We have "Bright trader only" tourneys, and we have had "friends and traders" tournaments coming up.

If you're interested in being on our invitee list...register for Full Tilt poker from our website, and then send me an email with your "handle" and you'll be on the list. You can always get a different "handle" for yourself for privacy sake and other play. Just click on "Jesus" face from our homepage.

www.stocktrading.com

Don

Rearden Metal · Nov 24, 2005

To Don Bright & Iceman,

Actually, I haven't been dealt a single hand in half a year!
Poker is only something I used to do. Less than 18 months ago, the party $200+15 sng's were teaming with fresh succulent seafood. Today the easy money is gone, and so am I.
I was only willing to pick up the cards again vs. a representative from the poker=gambling crowd. ><}}}}}}*>

I wrote this in Jan. 2004:

Just like the late 90's was the golden age of trading, right now is the golden age of online poker. It's gotten to the point where I expect to make over one grand every day, plus another low 4-figure amount every month from affiliate pimping.

Most of these guys on party poker don't have a freaking clue how to play...there's no way the shark/fish ratio can stay this positive for more than 2 or 3 years tops. In summer of 2000, my podiatrist asked if I'd be willing to train him to daytrade, so he could give up all the HMO annoyances of the MD profession. I'll know poker has hit the top when I start getting requests from high end professionals to teach them to play cards. Quite enjoyable for as long as this lasts.

Even the mainstream media is starting to pick up on the trend:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1116731,00.html

_____

...and this in June, 2005:

It dried up even quicker than I thought. The shark/fish ratio has deteriorated to the point where I haven't even opened the software in weeks.

Poker is OVER for me, and for most of the people I know who were able to make a big hit in '03 and '04.

Playing on party now would feel like trading CMGI & YHOO in 2001.
<img src=http://tinyurl.com/99s4z>

2manywhiners · Nov 24, 2005

bigger fish - game/theory forum doesn't sound like a bad idea. This post probably should have been broken into at least a couple dozen different posts.

Now, I've been playing poker for quite a while (sometime mid 90's, I started with a weekly 7stud game 'til I saw Rounders, now it's strictly Texas or Omaha, if I can find an Omaha game) There are a lot of different views here about what poker is and isn't and how it relates to trading, so here's my 2 cents.

Poker IS gambling, there is a tremendous amount of luck involved. However, Poker IS also a game of skill. Meaning that skilled players WILL win over the long run. I have won more (many more) times than I have lost, however losing still happens. Mostly for me it comes in the form of a bad beat and rarely a bad read (I don't play online, finding fear in an opponent's face when you can't see his face renders a lot of my skill useless) So, most of the time I lose, it's because someone got lucky. When I win, it's because I have superior skills to those I play against. Now, in my opinion poker and trading do have a lot in common, but so does fly fishing and baseball (I can think of at least a dozen things they have in common) A good trader could play very good technical poker, but end up losing more often than winning. That's because traders think in numbers. Good poker players read the emotions of a technical player, especially if he has calculated pre-determined entry & exits for specific types of hands, 20 hands or less and he's just become a Level 2 screen
(example: I once beat a technical player heads up and played nothing but losing hands. I threw away pocket pairs, Anna Kournikova, QJ suited, etc. I only played crappy starting hands, and I NEVER won a hand after 5th street, he left the table after 20 minutes of heads up play. I read him like the book that he was. I folded when he had anything bigger than a pair, and put him all in when he didn't. Granted I had a chip stack 3 or 4 times the size of his, and I just pushed him around, but that's because I had been doing it the entire evening. The point is his technical game was at a disadvantage because poker isn't about what you have, the only hand that matters is what your opponent has, and how you play your hand based on his/hers.)
Technical poker players are probably better suited (pardon the pun) for 7 card stud, it allows you to see the statistical probability of everyone's hand, thereby allowing you to analyze your own probability of winning. I personally don't play 7stud very much at all. First, because not too many others do either, but second, its not much fun and it feels kind of like work. The one thing from this forum I do agree with though, is people who equate poker to gambling or trading to gambling are most likely losing both.

easyrider · Nov 24, 2005

Quote from 2manywhiners:

The one thing from this forum I do agree with though, is people who equate poker to gambling or trading to gambling are most likely losing both. [/B]

I agree. It clearly points to a lack of understanding of those things essential to both for success.

trader3 · Nov 29, 2005

I don't agree with this at all. I think the games are quite good. You just have to outplay people as opposed to waiting for better hands and hoping they don't draw out. In some ways the games are better than they were before. Also, sngs are not the best place to make money playing poker.

Quote from Rearden Metal:

To Don Bright & Iceman,

Actually, I haven't been dealt a single hand in half a year!
Poker is only something I used to do. Less than 18 months ago, the party $200+15 sng's were teaming with fresh succulent seafood. Today the easy money is gone, and so am I.
I was only willing to pick up the cards again vs. a representative from the poker=gambling crowd. ><}}}}}}*>

I wrote this in Jan. 2004:

Just like the late 90's was the golden age of trading, right now is the golden age of online poker. It's gotten to the point where I expect to make over one grand every day, plus another low 4-figure amount every month from affiliate pimping.

Most of these guys on party poker don't have a freaking clue how to play...there's no way the shark/fish ratio can stay this positive for more than 2 or 3 years tops. In summer of 2000, my podiatrist asked if I'd be willing to train him to daytrade, so he could give up all the HMO annoyances of the MD profession. I'll know poker has hit the top when I start getting requests from high end professionals to teach them to play cards. Quite enjoyable for as long as this lasts.

Even the mainstream media is starting to pick up on the trend:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1116731,00.html

_____

...and this in June, 2005:

It dried up even quicker than I thought. The shark/fish ratio has deteriorated to the point where I haven't even opened the software in weeks.

Poker is OVER for me, and for most of the people I know who were able to make a big hit in '03 and '04.

Playing on party now would feel like trading CMGI & YHOO in 2001.