Online Poker is Electronic Day Trading
It really is amazing when you look at other fields how much similar they really are to poker. I have recently been reading books about electronic day trading and the styles and strategies that some of the leading participants engage in. The similarities are there for all to see when you look hard enough.
I will list a few of them here but this list is certainly not exhaustive in any way. Firstly because both disciplines are executed electronically then the similarities are even more striking. How successful day traders operate and reach the top is strikingly similar to online poker.
I really like to read about how these guys are aggressive with their trading as being aggressive is the hall mark of a top poker player. Also the area of minimising risk and bankroll management is also very high on the agenda of participants in both fields. Most electronic day traders lose money initially, this once again is no different to poker. I think if anyone makes money from online poker immediately then they must have had a very strong live poker background.
In most cases of course then this isn’t enough but learning how to day trade and how to play poker is a process of trial and error and experience is king. For those of you who do not know what electronic day trading is, it is the process of buying and selling stocks and shares within very short time frames usually all within the same day and most of the time within minutes or even seconds of each other.
All this wasn’t possible years ago but just like with online poker, the internet coupled with advances in computer technology and software have made all this possible. But another factor that encompasses both fields lays in the concept of getting out with the minimum loss. In poker let us say that you raised to steal the blinds with a hand like the Js-9s and the big blind re-raised you the size of the pot.
Even if the stacks were deep then you really have no further business being in this hand. You have raised on a steal, you haven’t got away with it and now you have been re-raised. Most top day traders will tell you that stubbornness is one of the primary dangers for losing money. If you take a position and the market proves you wrong then get out and don’t get stubborn trying to prove that you were right all along.
This is exactly the same with Online Texas poker, you have no visual tells to go on and only betting sequences and betting patterns.
But it amazes me how many people in these situations either call the re-raise or re-raise again getting into some ego war. They run all sorts of thoughts through their minds “he is only raising because he thinks that I am stealing” or another one may be “I am not going to let this joker run me off this hand”.
What happens in these situations is that stubbornness gets in the way and losses inevitably ensue. I have seen so many situations over the years where the blinds have got all-in against each other with one of them taking their bluff far further than what they ever should have done. Then one player shows something like K-K while the other one shows A-9 and the guy with the weaker hand ends up losing a hundred big blinds.
Most of the time it is a case of one player getting stubborn and not releasing their hand when they really should have done! But if you look at the lives of professional electronic day traders then you will see that they are really poker players after all.