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I wonder when they'll go after people for gambling in the the stock market? How would you defend them?
It is worth noting that the other 14.8% of hands, where a showdown is reached, are typically the ones where (much) larger amounts of money are exchanged.
So, betting decisions might decide the outcome of a majority of hands, but it's unlikely this corresponds to a majority of the money flow.
I wonder when they'll go after people for gambling in the the stock market? How would you defend them?
Gambling involves the creation of risk to speculate on for no other reason than the thrill of speculation. Participants in financial markets (at least in theory) take positions in risk that already exists. In other words, they assume existing risk for others.
Roulette is often held up as an example of "random chance" but this is not entirely true. There are on occasions patterns in Roulette, especially with certain dealers. In addition, there is a little trick casinos sometimes employ. They loosen the legs on the table to the point it wobbles slightly. The dealer will then lean against the table and watch as the ball is about to drop. They can then pop the ball out of an…
It does appear that serious poker players do better in the long run as they not only consider pot-odds when playing but also management of their bankroll to ensure long-term survival. Is there an element of chance? Of course, but it's not the only factor - few things are black and white.
But if someone choose to go all-in blind pre-flop then they are choosing to play the game as pure gambling and their version of the game would be pure chance.
But again, it's all about the circumstances. Poker is often compared to day trading in the markets and though it's not a perfect comparison, there are some analogies. For examples, options can and often are used in complex strategies to either reduce risk or enhance returns. But that doesn't mean they can't be used to speculate wildly - in these situations, the potential payoff profile begins to look something like a straight up bet.
This is a really interesting read - I played a lot in college, but never really got "good" per se. We had a group of about 20 or so of us who played semi-regularly. There were two players who were both far superior to everyone else, but they didn't always win. Just like everyone else, they naturally suffered the turmoil of a bad beat here and there. But aggregate their winnings over the course of the two years we all…
And those both seem awfully similar to the stock market. If you're good at poker over the long-term, then you may be better off "gambling" than "investing." And hey, at least when you lose at poker, you may have still enjoyed it -- no one enjoys a stock market crash. Oh, and don't get me started on naked futures/forward positions...
[0] http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equity-index/us-index/e-mini...
This is a really interesting read - I played a lot in college, but never really got "good" per se. We had a group of about 20 or so of us who played semi-regularly. There were two players who were both far superior to everyone else, but they didn't always win. Just like everyone else, they naturally suffered the turmoil of a bad beat here and there. But aggregate their winnings over the course of the two years we all…
And those both seem awfully similar to the stock market. If you're good at poker over the long-term, then you may be better off "gambling" than "investing." And hey, at least when you lose at poker, you may have still enjoyed it -- no one enjoys a stock market crash. Oh, and don't get me started on naked futures/forward positions...
>Oh, and don't get me started on naked futures/forward positions...
Some of the people that purchase these are plenty happy during a crash. What is it about time-based derivatives that you have a problem with in particular?
Any game where you can play badly on purpose has skill involved. Some games still involve more luck than skill--blackjack, for instance. Other games involve more skill than luck, and poker certainly falls into that category. Poker is a game of skill with an element of luck. It is not a game of chance.
As a casual poker player, I find this line of reasoning specious. Sports betting, blackjack and even roulette with a biased wheel are all games of skill by this definition. Poker games are designed specifically to appeal to our gambling instinct so that better players can play the house while worse players gamble away their chips. It's true that from the perspective of the best players, it's not truly gambling, but t…
Roulette is a particularly bad example as there is no decision (well, there's one decision on American Roulette tables that is worse than every other) that changes your expectation on the amount wagered.
I have to disagree. Moneymaker, a complete nobody, winning the World Series of Poker.
A book like Kill Everyone [1] puts forth a pretty reasonable tournament strategy where you try and accumulate a lot of chips early on and then start making risky moves in later rounds based your cards, position, and relative chip count.
Tournaments are played this way because the blinds and antes increase faster than the average chip stack increases. Once you get to the point where you have to make risky moves, you open up the luck angle a lot. The skill comes from knowing the probabilities and making plays with positive expected value over the long run, even if it means eliminating yourself from the tournament due to chance. But in the short-run, a relatively unskilled player could make similar decisions, get lucky and win the risky plays, and do very well.