How many online pros average +500k a year in the world?

[fnord_too]

[ QUOTE ]
It is a lot MORE consistent money if you are good at poker to play poker than if you are a good trader and you personally invest.

[/ QUOTE ]

I completely disagree but even if you are correct a fund manager or trader not investing his own money has a guaranteed up side (his salary, unless and until he get fired), a huge variable up side (his bonus) and zero downside. The distribution is strictly to the right of zero.

But fundamentally, trading is not intrinsically a zero or negative sum game because the market should be growing at least with population. Poker on the other hand is intrinsically a negative sum game because money is taken off the table by the house.

Additionally, as has been noted, the scale of money is way off. And poker is variant as hell. The best cannot make money consistently at the high levels. They make it in the long run, but the graphs are pretty jagged. And if you play at a level where they are not so jagged, you are not playing for anywhere near comparable money (except maybe on the party of yesteryear, maybe, but probably not even there).

[leatherass]

$500k being in a rarified atmosphere may be true in the sense that there are million of people playing online poker and only a few hundred that make that. But I make $500k easy and I sure as hell don't feel like my game is in a "rarified atmosphere." I just don't win $5k in a session and then go surfing the rest of the week like so many do. I treat it like a job and grind out lots of hands. I'm not sure what the number is but if people actually tried to make aas much as they could and played 40 hours a week there would be a ton of people making $500k imo.

[jeff329]

Its nice to ignore the words of my post and then reply as you want. I said PERSONALLY invest, not invest someone elses money. And yes, a top poker player has a far greater % of winning days than a top trader, and that is all I was saying, I was not making a point about which profession is more lucrative.

[flipdeadshot22]

[ QUOTE ]
$500k being in a rarified atmosphere may be true in the sense that there are million of people playing online poker and only a few hundred that make that. But I make $500k easy and I sure as hell don't feel like my game is in a "rarified atmosphere." I just don't win $5k in a session and then go surfing the rest of the week like so many do. I treat it like a job and grind out lots of hands. I'm not sure what the number is but if people actually tried to make aas much as they could and played 40 hours a week there would be a ton of people making $500k imo.

[/ QUOTE ]

How many people would qualify as a "ton" of people in your opinion (not trying to be a smartass, just a question.)

[bustedromo]

[ QUOTE ]
Well, as I said, those people raking in that much of money in poker are not stupid... A lot of companies want people who are smart 'cause they tend to make money for the named company... And even if that doesn't work there is always the stock market, a lot more money to be made than at poker and I've heard (and it's not that weird when you come to think of it) you need about the same talents as making it to the big time in poker so...

[/ QUOTE ]

Not exactly ...

I'm a professional trader for a hedge fund, and a decent intermediate level poker player. Yes, there are some similarities, but financials trading (true directional trading, not quantitative arbitrage, or similar) is much more about specific knowledge. Poker by comparison is a relatively generic, homogeneous game.

What you can learn from poker to apply to trading is memory skills (pattern recognition), consistent discipline in the face of variance and varied environments, bankroll management, adaptability when not going according to plan ... these sorts of skills.

Probably the most directly transferable is psychological discipline. Good traders tend to be incredibly even keeled, and not just at work, also in their personal lives. I know this goes contrary to a lot of what you hear about in the media, but the media tends to report on the outlier cases, not the norm.

Second is memory and the application of memory to pattern matching. It's no accident the Doyle says Todd could be the best of all time because he has a better memory than Doyle. Memory and the recognition of the significant likelihood that a non-obvious pattern is recurring is key to poker and trading.

[David Sklansky]

You don't need graphs. Just statistics 101.

[ama0330]

[ QUOTE ]
You don't need graphs. Just statistics 101.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes clearly, you too can be a billionare trader with nothing more than statistics 101! Introductory courses $59.99! NO boring graphs required!



wtf

[kahntrutahn]

I just want to say that making 500k+ a year in LHE can be a real bitch.

[the_casino_kid]

[ QUOTE ]
69, dude!

[/ QUOTE ]

[ama0330]

[ QUOTE ]
I just want to say that making 500k+ a year in LHE can be a real bitch.

[/ QUOTE ]

big version of graph pls