I set the market aside to play online poker professionally during the Great Volatility Drought of 2003-2004 ('The Golden Age of online poker'). There have been quite a few extensive ET threads on this topic: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=70730&highlight=poker A massive 821-post, poker & trading thread, spanning four years: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showt...12455&perpage=10&highlight=poker&pagenumber=1
Online poker was soooo amazing then. The action was non-stop on every site. Every noob in America was handing their money over trying to be the next tv star. I had a D average my last year of university because of it, but I sure was making some nice bank. The online game today is tougher and hardly worth playing. Really dried up =/ Fortunately the casinos still have a good amount of the action as they did back then during the boom.
IMO no it wouldn't. Spend the time working on your trading and you'll get much better results. Apart from a few very elementary principles, I don't think trading and poker have much in common.
N.B. for the psychological side it can be helpful e.g. learning not to go on tilt, developing patience etc. I just don't think the decision making process has much in common.
While it may not be exactly the same it sure has many things in common ( when playing high stakes; when playing for nickles i see your point. ).... 1) What set-up do I take....same thing depending how your opponents perceive you and how you percieve them is how you know when to take that set-up. What Position Am I in; How many chips in relation to the table; knowing your opponents and their betting pattern..... It's not only about playing pocket aces. 2) Money Management...pretty much same thing 3) Stop-loss....pretty much the same thing..per hand and per session. this is just a few things they have in common...again while it may not be exactly the same it sure has things in common....watching poker on TV and assuming that's how its played is incorrect...TV is all about ratings.... peace
I used to post on this site quite frequently... the reason why I dont post here very often is because I have made a complete transition from trading to online poker... Online poker has produced a much smoother equity curve for me and the approach that I take (short stacking) is actually more mathematical than most forms of directional trading....
We have dozens of poker player/traders, including Chris (Jesus) Ferguson and others from Full Tilt Poker (which was launched in my L.A. office a few years ago, and their CEO is my ex office manager). Sure, there are similarities, no denying that. My brother plays gigantic games with some top players, and he has brought several into trading. Some do well, some haven't, for various reasons. I think it's just as much the independent "free thinker" who wants to run his own financial life as the general similarities between trading and poker. However, we wrote this a while back. http://www.stocktrading.com/Pokerarticle2006.htm Don