For a long time I have been interested as to why they say people good at poker make good traders on the stock markets, because it is a similar skill set. I have very limited experience with stock trading, but I have come up with a theory which might explain the link between the two.

Disclaimer 1: this might be a very obvious thought, and totally unoriginal. Disclaimer 2: Quite possibly, it really is just a load of horse shit...nevertheless, here goes:

NLHE, or any poker variant, is a closed market. It is a market where players come together to trade with one another. What they are trading is probabilities, and odds. In effect, therefore, each player is setting him or herself up as a bookie. I set myself up, with my avatar of Cindy Lauper in 80's pose, as a business, as a bookie. My job is then to take odds, and give odds to other bookies, on the probability of certain outcomes occurring. The reason great players are so much better than others is simply because they know the parameters of this market better than others. The better you know the probabilities of certain outcomes, the better placed you are to set a correct price. Crap players don't understand the market at all. They take ridiculous odds from better players, which are mathematical mistakes. They have no clue about the likelihood of different outcomes, so the prices they offer are ridiculous. In effect, they are a crap bookie business. The good players are the good bookies, and they are successful within the market place.

So there it is...either another piece of Riceman genius, or another theory of the Riceman to rank alongside the GTO Bet Sizing Dice TM from a few years back...in other words, a load of old bollocks, and a waste of valuable TPE web space.

Be interested in anyone's thoughts, either way!