If anyone happened to be at the Rio Hotel and Casinos at Las Vegas in attendance for the 2014 WSOP then they couldn’t have missed the many orange booths and banners of dough.com. Dough is a trading advice, investor tool and stock tips website which was one of the sponsors of the WSOP. Faraz Zaka was their appointed player who could be seen giving poker and stock tips to people to try their hand at trading. So what is it that made a stock trading site made the move towards a poker tournament? How does poker and stock trading relate to each other? Do poker players and stock brokers have something in common? OPN decided to check out and found some very interesting facts.
Poker Players and Stock Traders know their probabilities and play with numbers
Poker is a game where players deal with probabilities all the time. In every hand, a player calculates his odds and outs and the probability of winning a hand. Similarly in trading, a broker has to calculate his probability of making profits in an investment. Nowadays in poker there are many hand calculation tools that can help calculate pot odds, probability etc; similarly, there are websites which offer similar tools for Stock traders too.
In researching for this topic, we chanced upon this article on Money control, India’s No 1 Financial Advice Portal which lists out the 4 common things between stock traders and poker players. It does go a long way in proving the connection. Read it here.
It’s all about Money, Honey!
Poker is a numbers game and so is Stock Trading. Both poker and stock trading, when played with skill and zeal lead to profits. A lot of profits! So the end reaping benefit of both these activities is always money.
Information guzzlers!
In poker, as the dealer opens each of the community cards, the scenario changes. Similarly, in stock trading the markets are always changing leading to a constant need to adapt. Poker players and stock traders are both these information guzzlers who take in new info with open hands and adapt to changes. With each new card that opens or each new financial number that is leaked in the market, the scenario changes and both these smart people learn to adapt.
Risk Takers- Profit Makers
Poker is a game where the one who doesn’t have the necessary skill can have a very bad outing. But if you can enter this risky game where your skill, your poise at the table and your money management matter; then you can have the fattest wallet of all. Similarly for stock trading, entering the volatile markets involves a lot of risk but once you play your stocks well, the big profits are yours.
Stress Busters
Poker Players, especially in a tournament make smart decisions in stressful circumstances. They risk their tournament life and make informed decisions, handling stress all too well. Stock Brokers also experience and handle stress all day long, churning numbers and taking risks all the time. Each of these people have their own set of risks and stress, but both write home busting stress all the day.