Poker players everywhere frequently find themselves having to defend their hobby to friends and family who don’t understand the game. They may view poker as an activity similar to playing the lottery – a game of luck where nearly everyone loses.
While it may be difficult to explain the intricacies of poker to individuals with no concept of the game, it’s pretty easy to compare poker to a much more common and societally acceptable activity – stock trading.
Like poker players, stock traders have to deal with variance. There will be frequent up and down days. An individual stock – or poker session – can leave you with a lot more money, a lot less money, or anywhere in between.
In the long term, however, prudent investors and smart poker players slowly but surely earn more than they lose. Talent and hard work pays off in both activities. The investors who spend the most time researching companies are likely to come out on top, as are the poker players who spend the most time working on strategies to win at the tables.
Additionally, traders and players can both benefit tremendously if they’re smart about dealing with costs. A trader who makes 20 trades a week can save himself $200 if he can reduce his transaction fee from $20/trade to $10/trade.
The concept of reducing costs applies to poker in a different way. For example, a player on William Hill Poker can stand to benefit if he’s smart and reduces the amount he pays the site in rake. Players who do this via use of a William Hill bonus can significantly decrease their cost of playing and save themselves up to $2,000 when getting started on the site.
The bottom line is simple – poker playing has far more in common with stock trading than it does with most other forms of gambling. Explaining this to doubtful friends and family may not get them to start playing, but it may get some of them to be less critical of the game we love.
