i really been thinking a lot about something that come up on a thread i was reading. guy said something like “i’m pretty good trader because i was good at playing poker”
now it made me wonder, why bother with learning all this trading terms and strategies and risk and stuff if you can just have fun playing poker and make lots of money??
so to all people who play poker and trade (or do one or the other) please explain to me why one is better than the other. because if nobody can explain the advantage of trading forex i might as well go play poker, it a lot more fun and i can have a beer too :33:
Some thouhts:
+) In forex you have a potential to make much more money.
+) You don’t need to analyze each entity participating in forex seperately…you can analyze the whole market… so your opponent is the same every day… but your poker opponents will change and you will meet tougher opposition as you move to table with higher stakes.
+) If you play poker to make money… it is your job … and you know what… every job gets boring. I think it is much easier to combine trading with doing something else meanwhile… like excercises, reading news, watching tv, posting in forums…
Depending on your trading system you might need to glance to your charts only now and then.
+) By constantly folding hands you lose your blinds. By skipping (bad) trades you don’t.
+) I feel like forex is much more deeper, complicated. There are countless things that influence market and it is up to you to decide what matters and what doesn’t. In poker you generally have to play good hands and bet/raise amount that is within some range and most players know it very well. It is much easier for beginners.
+) In some sense forex requires more patience, because you can’t just turn on a computer and make trades… you must wait for your setups. Playing poker is probably more susceptible to addiction, emotional judgements etc.
I do not think they are similar at all, but to answer your question which one is better I would say the one where you are able to achieve consistent weekly profits. Some do that in forex, others in poker. Personally my strategy allows me to generate weekly profits as I trade for a living while I may cash out ones out of 100 poker tournaments. Due to that forex is my primary choice while I play poker for fun. A pro-poker player will likely give you the opposite response. In the end you need to answer that question for yourself.
As an aside, most poker players switch over the trading because they are not very good at playing poker (or are undercapitalised, have poor concentration, get emotional). They switch over to see if they can make money trading. They then usually find that they do not make money trading either unsurprisingly.
True, except with risk, you must protect your capital, all costs, as in poker you cannot win all hands but still can end up with lots of dough, just don’t get impolsive and don’t bet all you have in one single hand.
who’s the muppet who said you can’t have a beer while trading forex??? i drink/sip what i want when i trade. sometimes it’s water, sometimes italian espresso, sometimes ethanol.
I find drinking fuels the ego, which is fun when you’re hanging out with your friends and havin a good time, but when you’re trying to focus, I just can’t see how it could do anything but have a negative impact overall
to each his own… i find that alcohol tends to make me more “snappy” (kind of puts me into a “zone”) and it removes quite a bit of my inhibitions / reservations. it almost helps me to “cut through” various walls.
Interesting trading technique! I actually think there are a lot of similarities between trading and online poker, mostly money management, patience and psychology. In each you need to know when to wait for the right trade / hand and how to manage your risk.
I think poker is a much tougher game because many times you are dealing with only a few individual personalities. That makes the volatility really high. But if you can play against people in a crowd (trading), they start to do more predictable things.
On top of that, you have to do other things like bluff and trap in poker, which are separate skills to learn. You can’t always get a poker game anywhere in the world either, but you can trade anywhere that there is an internet connection.
I’d compare it too sports betting. One difference is there are not fixed odds from the bookie in forex, it’s still guessing the future though just you don’t have worse odds if you back the currency that is favourite to win.
I think the worst part of playing poker as a career is washing the Sleeze off your body after every tournament. I feel much better taking people’s money anonymously via my liquidity providers.
