Skip to main content

Dasan on poker & investing

A little evening reading from rogue speculator & blogger, Dasan.

Being a bit of a poker player, Dasan has collected some of his thoughts on the parallels between poker and investing and put them down for us to read in a post entitled, "Fishes, Donkeys, Bulls & Bears...".

Here's an excerpt from that piece:

"
Element of Luck. No Limit Hold’em, for the uninitiated (is there anyone left in the US who hasn’t played Hold’em?) is a game consisting of luck and skill. Why is it so popular? Because it has a huge component of luck in the short run.

If I play one hand against Phil Helmuth, and just go all-in, he has no advantage over me. In fact, many beginning poker books advocate an extremely aggressive pre-flop game as a way to neutralize your disadvantage against more highly skilled players.

This is why you often see Helmuth go into a childlike tantrum when he raises the standard 3x raise and some amateur that raises him all-in pre-flop.
This is an important point – in the short run, luck dominates, but in the long run, skill dominates.

Stock price movements are the same thing- in the short run they are close to random, and the most skilled analyst has no “edge” at all.
In short periods, even lousy investors can make money in bull markets. But over medium to longer term periods, a skillful investor will completely blow away the performance of a lesser-skilled investor.
.."

While I'm not much of a card player, I can still appreciate the lessons drawn from Dasan's post. I hope you will too; enjoy the piece!

Related articles and posts:

1. Knowing when to fold - Davian Letter.

2. Wisdom of Johnny Chan - The Kirk Report.

Popular posts from this blog

Nasdaq credit rating junked.

S&P cut Nasdaq's credit rating to junk status citing debt burdens and its questionable strategy to buy a controlling interest in the London Stock Exchange. Financial Times reported that the exchange's counterparty credit & bank loan rating were lowered fromm BBB- (lowest investment grade rating) to BB+. The change will increase Nasdaq's borrowing costs should it wish to pursue aquisition targets. For an earlier look at the exchange consolidation trend that brought about Nasdaq's push for a stake in the LSE, please see "Exchange fever" .

Clean Money - John Rubino: Book review

Clean Money by John Rubino 274 pages. Hoboken, New Jersey John Wiley & Sons. 2009. 1st Edition. The bouyant stock market environment of the past several years is gone, and the financial wreckage of 2008 is still sharp in our minds as a new year starts to unfold. Given the recent across-the-board-declines in global stock markets (and most asset classes) that have left many investors shell-shocked, you might wonder if there is any good reason to consider the merits of a hot new investment theme, such as clean energy. However, we shouldn't be too hasty to write off all future stock investments. After all, the market declines of 2008 may continue into 2009, but they may also leave interesting investment opportunities in their wake. Which brings us to the subject of this review. John Rubino, author and editor of GreenStockInvesting.com , recently released a new book on renewable energy and clean-tech investing entitled, Clean Money: Picking Winners in the Green Tech Boom . In Clean ...

Jesse Livermore: How to Trade in Stocks (1940 Ed. E-book)

If you've been around markets for any length of time, you've probably heard of 20th century supertrader, Jesse Livermore . Today we're highlighting his rare 1940 work, How to Trade in Stocks (ebook, pdf). But first, a brief overview of Livermore's life and trading career (bio from Jesse Livermore's Wikipedia entry). "During his lifetime, Livermore gained and lost several multi-million dollar fortunes. Most notably, he was worth $3 million and $100 million after the 1907 and 1929 market crashes, respectively. He subsequently lost both fortunes. Apart from his success as a securities speculator, Livermore left traders a working philosophy for trading securities that emphasizes increasing the size of one's position as it goes in the right direction and cutting losses quickly. Ironically, Livermore sometimes did not follow his rules strictly. He claimed that lack of adherence to his own rules was the main reason for his losses after making his 1907 and...