5 Reasons Why Stock Investing >>> Poker

[AL5AcE]

Hi, I used to be a marginal small stakes winner at teh pokerz but I don't play currently. I believe stock investing is much better than poker in many instances, and is better overall.

1. Stocks: Investing in the market has a natural upward growth trend (~7-8%++) per year. (good businesses tend to grow, bad ones go out of business or no one invests in them to make them any bigger)
Pokerz: Playing poker has a natural(and very significant) losing rate because of the massive rake over time.

2. The money made / effort involved ratio is much lower.
Stocks: Do a great deal of studying on reasearch & analysis techniques, apply them to build a portfolio, then keep up with your investments over time.
Poker: Study. Grind your health, sanity, social skills and time away for an hourly wage. Repeat forever.

3. The upside at the top is much greater.
Best Poker Players: $2-20 mil/year
Best Investors / Hedge Funders: $50-5,000 mil/year
Avg Pokerer: Lose 10%-35% of salary/year
Avg Investor: Gain 3%-10% of wealth/year
Worst Pokerers: Busto
Worst Investors: might be busto but not necessarily

4. The study and knowledge of world markets could make someone a better person socially and reach higher status.
Even though you are good at pokerz, gambooling, and leveling, nobody cares.

5. Stocks: Tilting does not necessarily lead to making future bad decisions (options gambling excluded). Someone who just lost boatloads will rarely load the truck with another investment that one's knowledge deems is bad.
Pokerz: Tilting directly leads to making bad decisions and losing EV.
(This doesn't apply if the skill of each participant is -EV by default ie. if they already suck.)

* Note: similar pros and cons cancel each other out and were not mentioned: For example both endeavors:
- Deal with varience and one learns to manage and capitalize on risk.
- Only the diligent and persistent succeed.
- Both participants learn to manipulate and take advantage of the less knowlegable and weak.

[vetiver]

This is kind of comparing apples to oranges and it depends who you're talking to. Sbrugby gets a much higher return (and salary) than FGators. Any hedge fund manager clearly makes more than any poker player, but some HS poker players probably out-earn a lot of investors.

The two aren't mutually exclusive and a lot of people play poker to generate money and invest their idle portion of bankroll.

[thing85]

Yeah, you're essentially comparing active income vs. passive income (in many cases), when really, you can have both. The key is obviously finding +EV strategies in both and applying them correctly. Some of the best poker players probably also supplement their income with investing gains, while some professional investors probably make some extra money on the side in poker. You get the idea.