Thursday, 9 April 2009

Poker and the Investment Game

By Rick Amorey

All financial investments have risks; this much is true. About ninety percent of people who go into trading will end up losing money. So what is it exactly that you're doing wrong? Simply put, these people do not have a good perspective of the situation. In a way, going into investments is kind of like playing poker.

Thus, my theory: The game of poker is a good simulation of the investment world. At least, the correct strategies of winning or getting to the endgame are very similar in both cases. This may sound a bit out of the ordinary, but just hear me out.

When one plays poker, you won't get very far into the game if you just hold back and wait for the right hand to invest all your chips in. Obviously, even the best hands have an amount of risk in it, for one thing, and you may still end up losing all your chips in that single go. Also, going in with guns blazing, may end in a small yield of extra chips. It's not worth it.

Betting like mad on every single hand is not a very brilliant move, either. Do this and you'll probably end up being playing the fool. If you constantly expose your chips to high risk, it'll only lead to a sudden burnout; you'll be out of the game before anyone else, steadily losing all of your chips in a few rounds.

What then, is the right way to play poker? Anyone who plays often enough will quickly surmise that getting ahead in poker requires more than considering just your own hand and chips. You need to get a feel for the hands and chips of the other players around the table, too. Once you get a good feel for the game, you'll know that putting in all your chips in one hand is a bad idea. The way to go is to invest little by little, spreading out your game to good, but not necessarily great, plays.

The same principle applies to trading. The game table is essentially the market, and how it affects your investments. You'll need to avoid having all your capital placed onto one investment. Spread it out into a number of decent deals, and then if one fails, you won't be as devastated.

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