Poker Player Looking To Get Into Trading

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Stuart31

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Hi,

I am a 31 year old guy who has been playing poker professionally for the past six years. Prior to this I was a sales manager in the States.

I am certainly green around the ears when it comes to trading itself but the similarities between poker and trading seem quite extensive. Part of being a poker player has included making smart decisions quickly under pressure and employing short and long term strategic thinking.

I am now looking to get into a firm as a trader. I have looked up firms like Schnieders, but it seems like they are not the right places to start. If anyone has any advice or tips then that would be great!

Thanks,

Stuart
 
TBH I'd say 31 is probably too old unless you had an excellent own account track record.
Thats leaves prop firms.

Reason I answered was curiosity, if you're a pro poker player with 6 years experience, why not stick at that,
and use the profit to fund your own trading account as you learn.

Only reasons I can see for quitting poker are if you are too well known in online/B&M games
and are avoided or barred as a consequence.If that is the case, why not just find all
your local B&M casino's in a 100 mile radius and rotate them, travelling expenses
should be easy to cover and allow a profit overall if you are good.
If you play tournaments, again why not stick at it.
6 years as a pro must mean you are doing something right.
 
Indeed, there are lots of similarities between the poker and trading floor. Do you think it might be valuable to include that you are above the average level(that's in my case) in your CV/during the interview? Do the HRs of the trading firms know about the likelihood between these "games" and are they going to appreciate this fact or star at you as retard gambler?
 
Stuart31 said:
Hi,

I am a 31 year old guy who has been playing poker professionally for the past six years. Prior to this I was a sales manager in the States.

I am certainly green around the ears when it comes to trading itself but the similarities between poker and trading seem quite extensive. Part of being a poker player has included making smart decisions quickly under pressure and employing short and long term strategic thinking.

I am now looking to get into a firm as a trader. I have looked up firms like Schnieders, but it seems like they are not the right places to start. If anyone has any advice or tips then that would be great!

Thanks,

Stuart
Click to expand...

Learn to Trade, Trading Coaches, Simulated Futures Trading has a cheap program for someone that has no experience trading...its a good place to get your feet wet see how it works for you
 
Stuart31 said:
Hi,

I am a 31 year old guy who has been playing poker professionally for the past six years. Prior to this I was a sales manager in the States.

I am certainly green around the ears when it comes to trading itself but the similarities between poker and trading seem quite extensive. Part of being a poker player has included making smart decisions quickly under pressure and employing short and long term strategic thinking.

I am now looking to get into a firm as a trader. I have looked up firms like Schnieders, but it seems like they are not the right places to start. If anyone has any advice or tips then that would be great!

Thanks,

Stuart
Click to expand...


I don't think there is any harm in applying to trading firms and using your poker background.

Just be honest, say.... "i'm new to trading, but heres what i've been doing for the last 6 years" It will demonstrate you have the right attitude towards risk and you may be what they are looking for.
 
Stuart31 said:
Hi,

I am a 31 year old guy who has been playing poker professionally for the past six years. Prior to this I was a sales manager in the States.

I am certainly green around the ears when it comes to trading itself but the similarities between poker and trading seem quite extensive. Part of being a poker player has included making smart decisions quickly under pressure and employing short and long term strategic thinking.

I am now looking to get into a firm as a trader. I have looked up firms like Schnieders, but it seems like they are not the right places to start. If anyone has any advice or tips then that would be great!

Thanks,

Stuart
Click to expand...

Hey S

stick to poker as you are good at it ......

why try to fix something thats not broken ?

N
 
Stuart31 said:
Hi,

I am a 31 year old guy who has been playing poker professionally for the past six years. Prior to this I was a sales manager in the States.
Click to expand...

Successful poker playing is one of the best backgrounds you can have for trading.
 
I trade my own account.. I played poker for a living for a while back in the late nineties and I'll add three things to this thread.

First, for those that think poker is a great way to earn a living -- The truth is full time poker gets boring after a while. You have to put in an amazing number of hours and it is just not as varied or as mentally challenging as trading full time is... and I bet plenty would find the life of a solitary trader boring, with long hours etc. But trading is an ever changing game, and you never really master it.

One can master poker. As market conditions evolve and change, you have to adapt much more as a trader. I never stop learning or getting new ideas and insights to program, test and include in my trade plans as the markets change or I learn something I didn't see before.

Poker is just a card game... the rules never change... True, you play the players not the cards... but after a while you can pigeon hole every opponent and then it seems like the players never change.. just their faces do.

I make poker sound romantic don't I? I played professionally before internet poker, so we got 35 hands an hour and had to deal with the actual people. There was no disabling chat in those days.

Second, I can't tell you how much the self discipline I learned by being a winning poker player helps me every week in my trading. If you're a winning player you already have a life skill that few will ever gain. It will give you a huge leg up and it will never let you down.

Third, now that you have lived a life by your own wits, on your own schedule, I believe you will find it hard if not impossible to switch back to working under someone else's thumb. I can't do it.
Consider trading your own account from your own desk. You now have market access and tools that 25 years ago where only available to you if you worked for a firm or owned your own seat on an exchange.

Teach yourself how to program, get a good platform like NinjaTrader and start your journey. You don't need to work for anyone, and you may well find you can't any more. You likely are no longer domesticated.

Treat trading like a business just like you must be treating poker as a business otherwise you wouldn't be a winner. Do it full time, or as close as you can... work a day job Friday Saturday and Sunday, and trade Monday through Thursday if you need to keep the lights on. It will take you longer than you think to trade better than break even after expenses over the long haul, so the more hours you put in the shorter the time will be till you can quit the day job.
 
Last edited:
Stuart31 said:
Hi,

I am a 31 year old guy who has been playing poker professionally for the past six years. Prior to this I was a sales manager in the States.

I am certainly green around the ears when it comes to trading itself but the similarities between poker and trading seem quite extensive. Part of being a poker player has included making smart decisions quickly under pressure and employing short and long term strategic thinking.

I am now looking to get into a firm as a trader. I have looked up firms like Schnieders, but it seems like they are not the right places to start. If anyone has any advice or tips then that would be great!

Thanks,

Stuart
Click to expand...

If you are serious tell me what you would do if you had pocket aces and you go all in - pre flop only to be beaten by my triple 8's. I mean how would you handle it?
 
Stuart31 said:
Hi,

I am a 31 year old guy who has been playing poker professionally for the past six years. Prior to this I was a sales manager in the States.

I am certainly green around the ears when it comes to trading itself but the similarities between poker and trading seem quite extensive. Part of being a poker player has included making smart decisions quickly under pressure and employing short and long term strategic thinking.

I am now looking to get into a firm as a trader. I have looked up firms like Schnieders, but it seems like they are not the right places to start. If anyone has any advice or tips then that would be great!

Thanks,

Stuart
Click to expand...

Hi Stuart are you still interested in trading? I am looking for new traders to join my team. Drop me a PM.
 
Raleigh Lee said:
Successful poker playing is one of the best backgrounds you can have for trading.
Click to expand...

I read this unproven assertion all the time and I don't believe it.
In poker, the strongest hand wins the pot most of the time.
In trading, even the strongest hand can get beaten senseless by the market.
And whether you have played cards professionally before makes no difference.
 
PipStar said:
I read this unproven assertion all the time and I don't believe it.
In poker, the strongest hand wins the pot most of the time.
In trading, even the strongest hand can get beaten senseless by the market.
And whether you have played cards professionally before makes no difference.
Click to expand...
In Poker the strongest hand when all the money flies into the middle usually gets beaten senseless by the bag of crap that someone else was holding and shoved with because he `Had a Feeling'
 
PipStar said:
I read this unproven assertion all the time and I don't believe it.
In poker, the strongest hand wins the pot most of the time.
In trading, even the strongest hand can get beaten senseless by the market.
And whether you have played cards professionally before makes no difference.
Click to expand...

In trading the "strongest hand" wins "most of the time" too. While I have never played professionally, I have won good money playing poker and I can say definitively that the discipline/patience required to play poker well (profitably) transfer to professional trading quite nicely.
 
mrmenstig said:
In Poker the strongest hand when all the money flies into the middle usually gets beaten senseless by the bag of crap that someone else was holding and shoved with because he `Had a Feeling'
Click to expand...

Usually? If it usually gets beat, then it is not the strongest hand. What a strange statement.

I too have noticed a lot of these poker player turning to trading threads. I can believe some skills are useful from poker, but why do they all have to tell us they were poker players? You don't get as many threads for any other occupation that I've seen. Bouncer turning to trading, farmer, teacher, window cleaner, undertaker taking up trading. What is it with the poker players?
 
Stuart I am a 24 year old who played poker professionally part time during my degrees specialising in heads up sit and go $200-$1000 stake level. Over all sites im up like 320-350k ish (i really dont keep track) since i started 3 years ago, with 80-85% of that coming in the last 1.5 years as I ran up the stake levels. I dont know how on earth you kept playing the game for 6 years because I am bored of it and I was doing full time uni throughout the whole thing. I applied for one trading firm in HK recently and told them I had never studied finance before but heres what I have done in poker and gave examples of former heads up friends of mine who are now traders and love it and told them thats the reason i want in and they snap gave me the job. I dont understand anything about trading yet but I assure you they have a lot of respect for poker players so you are probably in good shape mate, get ready for a pay cut though :) intellectual stimulation>$$ imo
 
Question for the poker players...have you ever designed a poker playing algo? Do these things exist in online poker (i'd guess yes)?
 
PipStar said:
I read this unproven assertion all the time and I don't believe it.
In poker, the strongest hand wins the pot most of the time.
In trading, even the strongest hand can get beaten senseless by the market.
And whether you have played cards professionally before makes no difference.
Click to expand...

Where does this absolute rubbish come from?
 
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