Do you believe that poker is just a game of luck? Well, if you have played poker for a long time, you would realize that while there is some element of luck involved in poker, it does involve plenty of skills and strategic thinking. You would be surprised to know that there are poker tips for investors to follow. Yes, you heard it right! In fact, many successful investors (including stock market investors) are also poker enthusiasts, and they attribute a lot of their investment success to the investment lessons or money-making tips from poker.
Such is the game of poker that it takes minutes to learn, but a lifetime to master. Isn’t it? This is because your poker skills evolve as you play more, and eventually you become quite good at it. You don’t become a professional poker player from the first day. You have to be patient and work on your game consistently, so as to make money regularly in the long run. This is the first learning that poker provides to investors for making profitable investments. So, what are the other money saving tips that you learn from poker? Let us find out the top poker tips for investors below.
Calculate Your Risks & Probabilities
Just like the game of poker, investing too is mainly about probabilities. There are uncertainties involved in poker, and so you are required to evaluate your potential losses against your potential winnings. Base on this comparison, you take an informed decision of whether to bet, raise, or fold up during the real game time. The objective behind every such decision in poker is to help you gain the best possible returns (real money) in the long term.
For this purpose, you need to be good at math as well as probabilities and work hard on evaluating/analyzing all possible outcomes that can emerge from your moves. It teaches you that you may have to accept when the odds are not in your favour and take a risk when the odds are in your favour so that you can easily outweigh the losses. The same is the case with stock investing where you have to be ready to sell off stocks that lose their potential and instead focus more on your winners so that you can maximize your winnings and diminish your losses.
Enhance Your Logical and Critical Reasoning Abilities
As a poker player, you have to be good at analytical as well as logical reasoning if you wish to win more. This skill is an important poker tip for investors as well. Such skills are developed only by regularly simplifying and rationalizing your decisions with the limited information that is available. In the same way, you are able to rationalize your decisions about the amount of money to be invested in a particular stock or particular sector or particular investment instrument (mutual funds, stocks, gold, etc.).
Effective Money Management
This is one of the highly valuable poker tips for investors. In poker, you aim to build your bankroll so that you can play for long and enhance your chances of having those big wins which can make you profitable. It is this knowledge of your bankroll that enables you to decide when you should bet or raise, and when you should avoid the losing more and just fold your cards. You want to save money for the rounds where you get a really strong hand and can go big at the poker table.
Strong Emotional Maturity
You will do well to not miss having control over your emotions as one of the vital poker tips for investors. If you have played a few poker games, you would agree that it is a game of extreme swings. At one moment you are not doing well, and at another moment you are doing good because of favourable odds. You have to be emotionally strong to withstand a bad run of cards and wait for that turnaround game which can outweigh your losses. However, you have to develop that maturity to say, ‘It’s not my day’ and take a break from the poker table. As an investor, this kind of maturity will hold you in good stead against market crashes and recession times. These are some of the important money saving tips from poker and let us have a glimpse at one more below.
Decision Making Under Pressure
When you are under the pump in poker, you can sometimes make a bad decision despite having the chance of winning a game. Or perhaps you could continue playing a game till the showdown despite not having any chance of winning the game. This is a key point to remember as a poker tips for investors. You learn from your mistakes, and since real money is involved, you learn it the hard way. All this experience helps you to work hard and develop better decision-making ability. In the same way, this decision-making capability will help you to avoid hasty decisions during market fluctuations or recession years.
The Verdict
Your poker skills also help you to trade and invest effectively in the stock market – especially by preparing you to take tough decisions under scenarios of uncertainty. Certain stock trading firms have also included poker in their training program to provide exposure to their participants to money saving tips from poker. A successful poker player has more chances of becoming a successful stock market investor by applying the learnings from the wonderful game. As an investor, all you need to do is start playing online poker on platforms like Spartan Poker and experience the real-time correlation between poker and investing while applying the above discussed poker tips for investors!
