If you want to learn the FACTS about online poker this forum is the best. http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/
If you can learn anything from poke that will apply to Trading is "satying alive" and "Patience". Saving your capital is key in anyform of Trading day/swing or Longterm. Identifying a good hand/Trend and Making the best return on it is the key. Actually you have an edge when you trade. If you have a winning position you should not close your position until the trend reverses. However inpoker some "lucky" B can flush you out. Gamblers and Bad trades have the "problem" to be in action. if you can control that "Left Click" everytimeyou have an Urge you will gain an edge over many traders. Most traders make their living from few "stronG" trending days and thats the key thing to understand. Hope this helps.
mark1, you have a point, please see the following links: http://ezinearticles.com/?Types-of-Monitors-and-Specific-Features&id=74998 http://hubpages.com/hub/which_is_the_best_type_of_monitor_for_your_computer http://www.intersites.co.uk/475/index.html http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Hardware_Software/2005/all_about_monitors.asp http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080514020309AAvf0X2 http://ezinearticles.com/?Types-of-Monitors&id=175963 What are your views, thanks?
The question was "will it help my trading?" Yes. Because of the risk factor. You learn a ton from risking money and making decisions. You learn about yourself, and the players involved. You may be able to learn the basics on trading from a DEMO, and Poker in PLAY money, but its not the same. Trust me. Trading is a game of emotions (obviously, as well as strategy). You can never learn how to trade without feeling the emotions that come from risking money to make money and doing it for a living. How can you possibly learn how to trade without risking money? The point is Poker can teach you these same lessons on risk management and emotional discipline. The lessons come from the big swings of winning and losing. Until you master these emotions you can never be a great Trader or Poker Player. Anybody who tells you you cannot learn from poker has not played NL poker... OR they dont know enough about Trading Money to be giving the advice.
You can learn a lot about trading from all kinds of areas - Training for endurance events (physically activity self-manages stress and makes you more aware of your surroundings and self-aware of your own stress response) shopping / bidding on Ebay items (teachs you to wait until a decent price for something you want comes along and then to manage the purchase to get the best price, without risking a whole lot of money other than for what you needed to purchase anyways) Running a small business i.e - Handling the associated high-stress situations. Manage time and productivity - deal with limited information and deal with situations where other people make decisions that affect your own business. Training to learn a complex piece of software (teaches you to analyze complex systems and to utilize preexisting tools to solve your specific problem)
psytrade is mostly right- there are many other careers that make good practice for trading. However, what makes poker such a good foundation is it is more directly comparable in terms of emotional swings in account equity and the skillset required is almost identical. In addition, if you play online poker and multi-table then the intensity of emotions is huge as you are making so many 'transactions' per hour, usually with very large variance. This means you learn to become emotionally tough and detached at a very fast rate- for example the highs and lows of running a business that might take you years or even decades to experience 'in real life' can be achieved in just days or weeks at the online poker tables..
This is nonsense... you are selling a product. Over the years my hedge fund variance... Is about 3% of what is typically experinced by elite online NLHE players... (Yes, I did the math)... And virtually every trading firm in existence has < 10% of NLHE variance. Since you can choose your variance in trading... Only a complete degen would trade anywhere near NLHE variance... And would be an almost certain blowup. You can be mediocre at both trading and poker... But to excel at one or the other VERY SPECIFIC personality traits are required. To oversimplify... You must enjoy gambling to be a successful Poker Pro... Conversely, you must be an Arb and avoid gambling to run a Trading Firm... These are 2 completely different mindsets.