The Connection Between Poker and Trading
An internationally trading group called Susana has explored the intersection of gambling and investing more deeply than most. Their innovative training program teaches would-be traders to play the game of poker as a means to understanding the stock market. The critical questions raised by this approach—about what it means to make decisions under the kind of uncertainty that nearly always accompanies the financial markets, about what it means to manage risk, and, not to be understated, about the psychological essence of both the poker table and the stock market—make for slippery and elusive answers that better reveal fundamental human instincts that drive why and how we make our financial decisions.
Understanding Risk and Decision-Making
The principles of poker provide a valuable framework for comprehending trading strategies and risk management in the financial markets. The psychological parallels between poker players and investors are striking. The main lesson learned from the poker table—what I call the “Big Shot” error—is not only applicable to the current volatile economic landscape but also essential to understand if one is to successfully navigate through it.
This topic is of great importance. In the past few years, financial markets have become increasingly unpredictable, with COVID-19 and geopolitical tensions creating a perfect storm of volatility. According to the International Monetary Fund’s 2022 report, global market fluctuations have increased by 30% compared with pre-pandemic levels. Investors today, my group pointed out, are kind of like people who have lost a game of poker and are trying to recoup their lost cash. We no longer have the appearance of long-term investors calmly sitting on a bus with the driver in front, heads forward, and the only thing we can hear is the low rumble of the bus engine as it pushes through the night. The poker players in our markets today seem desperate to win and aren’t acting very smart. Pro traders aren’t seen and aren’t smarting in part because they don’t know what to do with all their cash.
Common Mistakes Rookie Investors Make
This discussion centers on risk-taking. Trading and poker are both high-stakes, high-uncertainty decision-making environments. The most skilled players and traders are not the ones who always have the best information but are instead those who know how to make the best of the information they have. In no-limit Texas Hold’em, your chances of winning the hand may not improve on the flop, turn, or river. If you’re playing well, you should lose any hand that you don’t have a strong read on your opponent with and/or a good read on your own betting patterns in the context of the situation. Conversely, if you are trading well, you should have fewer losing trades but with bigger losses than winning trades because you’re letting your winners run while getting out of your losing trades before they get even worse. These parallels between the two are not merely interesting; they are also useful.
Navigating Incomplete Information in Markets
Poker and trading both involve making judicious decisions under conditions of uncertainty. In the game of poker, players wager with bets they think are good calls, raises, or folds, all in limited or incomplete information about the other players’ hands. Traders also have to make bets—in the form of weighing potential rewards against risks and deciding when to enter or exit trades—with a good amount of their own incomplete information. This is why understanding poker psychology can lead to better trading performance. It’s not that traders and professors of trading should sit around with their friends playing poker all night. Rather, what they should do is reconsider the old saying about trading and poker: If you can play the former, then you can surely do the latter.
Both poker and trading share an emotional component that simply can’t be ignored. Think of how often amateur players lament their bad fortune, as if the poker gods had worked against them when they should have triumphed. Now think of how often novice traders criticize what’s wrong with the system when they lose. Both amateur players and beginner traders tend to overestimate their true abilities—this is the well-known Dunning-Kruger effect. The best players and the best traders aren’t always the ones marked by extraordinary talent; they’re the ones who…
Some people might say that poker and trading are quite different, with one being a game of chance and the other being a structured endeavor with rules and regulations. However, the difference between them is largely superficial. The two are quite similar, really, and for good reason: both are dominated by the psychology of the participant and the decisions he or she makes, either under pressure or in more relaxed moments. Trading is not an easy thing to do well, just as poker is not. Both require a kind of mental toughness, the ability to play the long game and not the short one, and each provides its own set of challenges for “getting ahead.” Yet, the main problem with these comparisons is not that they denote trading as being something less than it should be. It is really a question of behavior and how one acts under various conditions, reinforcements, and the amount of free time one has.
For the typical reader, discerning the similarities between poker and trading could lend new perspectives on personal finance and investment strategies. Understanding these parallels could be especially useful for those individuals who have recently ventured into the world of stock trading, particularly in light of the recent uptick in retail trading platforms. Indeed, the platforms themselves pose a danger because they can create the illusion of a poker-like game where one is “playing” against the house when, in reality, trading stocks is a rigorous mental exercise in which one must constantly assess probabilities of future events without ever really knowing the outcome. From my perspective as an author and an educator, I also see the potential societal benefit of using such unconventional methods to teach investing.
To sum up, the marriage of poker and trading offers some rather deep insights into risk management, decision-making, and, of course, psychological resilience. Trading, like poker, is a game of incomplete information played under conditions of uncertainty. Yet both activities are also puffed-up versions of a familiar childhood game, wherein you might as well be holding the face-down cards that your opponents think you have. In both endeavors, bluffing is essential. And while the stakes in trading are real, the pretended stakes in poker are just as high for the players, who put their estimates of worth on the line when they go all in. What do you suppose is more stressful: playing in a big-money tournament in Las Vegas or trying to get by on a daily basis while your net worth is held up in an uncertain market?